Daemon
Daemon, dæ—. Write dae-. This spelling, instead of demon, in used to distinguish the Greek-mythology senses of supernatural being, indwelling spirit, etc., from the modern sense of devil.
Gallows
gallows, though originally a plural form, is now singular (set up a g. etc.); the plural is usually avoided, but when unavoidable is gallowses.
hair-do
hair-do. This now common compound noun has reached the dictionaries, and deserves to supersede the alien coiffure and be written hairdo.
rhyming slang
Rhyming slang originated in the cockney underworld in the early part of the 19th c., and later spread to Australia, and the United States, and Ireland. The slang term consists of two or more words of which the last is a rhyme or assonance of the word to be represented. A few examples are: apples and pears (stairs), Cain and Abel (table), elephant’s trunk (drunk), France and Spain (rain), plates of meat (feet), round the houses (trousers), trouble and strife (wife), Uncle Ned (bed). The slang term is often abbreviated: thus the slang for feet is plates and for trousers is round me. Rhyming slang sometimes passes into ordinary colloquialism; it is for instance the origin of brass tacks (facts), dicky (unsound), and raspberry (expression of disapproval).
salad days
salad days (one’s raw youth) is one of the phrases whose existence depends on single passages (see Ant. and Cleop. I. V. 73 My s. d. when I was green in judgment). Whether the point is that youth, like salad, is green and raw, or that salad is highly flavoured and youth loves high flavours, or that innocent herbs are youth’s food as milk is babes’ and meat is men’s, few of those who use the phrase could perhaps tell us; if so, it is fitter for parrots’ than for human speech.
queer
queer. It has become dangerous to apply this apparently innocent adjective to a person, since, as a noun, it is now a slang euphemism for a homosexual.
Briticism
Briticism, the name for an idiom used in Great Britain and not in America, is a BARBARISM*; and should either be Britannicism or Britishism, just as Hibernicism or Irishism will do, but not Iricism. Gallicism and Scot(t)icism and Scotch are in Latin Gallicus and Scot(t)icus, but British is Britannicus. The verbal critic, who alone uses such words, should at least see to it that they are above criticism.
(*Barbarism: a word or expression that is badly formed according to traditional philiological rules)
Forth
Forth. And so forth is (compare to and the like) a convenience to the writer who does not wish to rehearse his list at length, but shrinks from the suggestion, now so firmly attached to etc. as to disqualify it for literary use, that he breaks off because it is too much trouble to proceed. The slightly antique turn of the phrase acquits him of unceremoniousness; and so on is in this respect midway between and so forth and etc.
Post hoc (ergo) propter hoc
Post hoc (ergo) propter hoc. The fallacy of confusing consequence with sequence. On Sunday we prayed for rain; on Monday it rained; therefore the prayers caused rain.
