“NEVER TOO LATE TO LEARN!”
FIVE HUNDRED MISTAKES
OF DAILY OCCURRENCE
IN SPEAKING, PRONOUNCING, AND WRITING
THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE,
CORRECTED.
| “Which—if you but open— You will be unwilling, For many a shilling, To part with the profit Which you shall have of it.” [The Key to Unknown Knowledge.—London, 1569. |
“It is highly important, that whatever we learn or know, we shouldknow correctly; for unless our knowledge be correct, we lose half itsvalue and usefulness.”—Conversations on Botany.
NEW-YORK:
DANIEL BURGESS & CO., 60 JOHN STREET.
1856.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1855, by
WALTON BURGESS,
in the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern
District of New York.
PREFACE.
This book is offered to the public, not to be classed with elaborate orlearned works, nor expected, like some of its more pretending companionsamong the offspring of the press, to run the gauntlet of literarycriticism. It was prepared to meet the wants of persons—numbered bymultitudes in even the most intelligent and refined communities—whofrom deficiency of education, or from carelessness of manner, are in thehabit of misusing many of the most common words of the English language,distorting its grammatical forms, destroying its beauty, and corruptingits purity. The most thorough mode that could be adopted to correct sucherrors, would doubtless be to impart to the ignorant a practical knowledge[Pg iv]of the principles of language, as embodied in treatises on grammar; butsuch a good work, however desirable its results, has, in time past, beentoo difficult for the promoters of education to complete, and is still toogreat to give promise of speedy accomplishment. A better expedient,bearing immediate fruits, has been adopted in the present volume, which,while it does not aim to produce a radical reform, cannot fail to rendergreat service to those who need to improve their usual modes ofexpression, and to be more discriminating in their choice of words.
The more frequent and less excusable mistakes that may be noticed inordinary conversation or correspondence, are here taken up, one byone—exposed, explained, and corrected. They consist variously of abusesof grammar, misapplications of words and phrases, improprieties ofmetaphor and comparison, misstatements of meaning, and faults ofpronunciation. They are grouped miscellaneously, without classification,not so much because of the difficulty of devising an arrangement thatwould be systematic and intelligible, as from the evident fact that adivision of subjects would render no assistance to those for whom the bookis specially designed; for an appropriate classification would necessarily[Pg v]derive its features from the forms of grammar, and with these the readersof this book are supposed to be to a great extent unfamiliar.
The volume is put forth with no flourish of trumpets, and makes no