Kingsley Amis-The King's English A Guide to Modern Usage (1998) by Kingsley Amis

Author:Kingsley Amis [Amis, Kingsley]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Kingsley Amis
Publisher: Nepali Fiction
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Meticulous

Fowler devotes nearly a thousand of his own words to this one word, which he calls 'wicked', strong language for him, and shows unarguably that its Latin original, meticulosus, meant something quite different from its present sense, beset by small fears as against punctilious. He traces its appearance in English to the French Academy dictionary of 1835, and goes on, 'The question is whether we are going to allow the word to be imposed upon us for general use, now that the journalist of the daily papers has caught it up from the Ii terary critic,' and proceeds to put the case against our giving such permission, rounding things off with one quota- tion illustrating the correct use of the word and a dozen of the incorrect. There was undoubtedly a twinkle in Fowler's eye as he stated his question, though it is almost as clear that he was in earnest too, wishing at least that grammarians and lexicographers should indeed be the select body to admit new usages to language. But he must have known too that, by whatever process it may be that such usages get their start, 'we', the learned few, are never even con- sulted. Hence we should not be surprised to read in the fifth edition of COD that meticulous principally means 'over-

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