Authors, like words, must be tested by time before
their forms of expression may become a law for others. Pope, in his
Essay on Criticism, laid down a rule which, for point and brevity, has
never been excelled:
"In words, as fashions, the same rule will hold;
Alike fantastic, if too new or old;
Be not the first by whom the new are tried,
Nor yet the last to lay the old aside."
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BARBARISMS
Campbell, in his Philosophy of Rhetoric, says that a word to be
legitimate must have these three signs of authority:
1. It must be reputable, or that of educated people, as opposed to
that of the ignorant or vulgar.
2. It must be national, as opposed to what is either local or
technical.
3. It must be present, as opposed to what is obsolete.
Any word that does not have these three qualities may, in general, be
styled a barbarism.
ANGLICIZED WORDS
Many foreign words, in process of time, become so thoroughly
domesticated that their translation, or the use of an awkward
equivalent, would be a greater mark of pedantry than the use of the
foreign words.
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