Page:The king's English (IA kingsenglish00fowlrich).pdf/23

If the writer had a little more perspicuity he would have known that the Church Congress would do nothing of the kind.—Daily Telegraph.

Perspicuity is clearness or transparency: insight is perspicacity. -uity of style, -acity of mind. Very common.

Selected in the beginning, I know, for your great ability and trustfulness.—Dickens. (trustworthiness)

Wise, firm, faithless; secret, crafty, passionless; watchful and inscrutable; acute and insensate—withal perfectly decorous—what more could be desired?—C. Brontë.

Apparently for insensible in the meaning hardhearted. Though modern usage fluctuates, it seems to tend towards the meaning, stupidly unmoved by prudence or by facts; at any rate acute and insensate are incompatible.

In the meantime the colossal advertisement in the German Press of German aims, of German interests, and of German policy incontinently proceeds.—Times.

The idiomatic sense of incontinently is immediately; it seems here to be used for continually.

I was awaiting with real curiosity to hear the way in which M. Loubet would to-day acquit himself.—Times. (waiting)

Awaiting is always transitive.

But they too will feel the pain just where you feel it now, and they will bethink themselves the only unhappy on the earth.—Crockett.

There is no sort of authority for bethink—like think—with object and complement. To bethink oneself is to remember, or to hit upon an idea.

And Pizarro ... established the city of Arequipa, since arisen to such commercial celebrity.—Prescott.

Arethusa arose; a difficulty arises; but to greatness we can only rise—unless, indeed, we wake to find ourselves famous; then we do arise to greatness.

2. Words like the previous set, except that the differentiation may possibly be disputed.

The long drought left the torrent of which I am speaking, and such others, in a state peculiarly favourable to observance of their least action on the mountains from which they descend.—Ruskin. (observation)