This article relies excessively on references to primary sources. (December 2023) |
A Dictionary of Modern English Usage (1926), by Henry Watson Fowler (1858–1933), is a style guide to British English usage, pronunciation, and writing. Covering topics such as plurals and literary technique, distinctions among like words (homonyms and synonyms), and the use of foreign terms, the dictionary became the standard for other style guides to writing in English. Hence, the 1926 first edition remains in print, along with the 1965 second edition, edited by Ernest Gowers, which was reprinted in 1983 and 1987. The 1996 third edition was re-titled as The New Fowler's Modern English Usage, and revised in 2004, was mostly rewritten by Robert W. Burchfield, as a usage dictionary that incorporated corpus linguistics data; and the 2015 fourth edition, revised and re-titled Fowler's Dictionary of Modern English Usage, was edited by Jeremy Butterfield, as a usage dictionary. Informally, readers refer to the style guide and dictionary as Fowler's Modern English Usage, Fowler, and Fowler's.
 The title page of A Dictionary of Modern English Usage (1926) | |
| Author | H. W. Fowler |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Published | 1926 |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press |
| Publication place | United Kingdom |
| OCLC | 815620926 |
Linguistic approach
In A Dictionary of Modern English Usage, H. W. Fowler's general approach encourages a direct, vigorous writing style, and opposes all artificiality, by firmly advising against convoluted sentence construction, the use of foreign words and phrases, and the use of archaisms. He opposed pedantry, and ridiculed artificial grammar rules unwarranted by natural English usage, such as bans on ending a sentence with a preposition, rules on the placement of the word only, and rules distinguishing between which and that. He classified and condemned every cliché, in the course of which he coined and popularised the terms battered ornament, vogue words, and worn-out humour, while defending useful distinctions between words whose meanings were coalescing in practice, thereby guiding the speaker and the writer away from illogical sentence construction, and the misuse of words. In the entries "Pedantic Humour" and "Polysyllabic Humour" Fowler mocked the use of arcane words (archaisms) and the use of unnecessarily long words.
Quotations
Widely and often cited, A Dictionary of Modern English Usage is renowned for its witty passages, such as:
- Didacticism
- The speaker who has discovered that Juan and Quixote are not pronounced in Spain as he used to pronounce them as a boy is not content to keep so important a piece of information to himself; he must have the rest of us call them Hwan and Keehotay; at any rate he will give us the chance of mending our ignorant ways by doing so.
- French Words
- Display of superior knowledge is as great a vulgarity as display of superior wealth—greater indeed, inasmuch as knowledge should tend more definitely than wealth towards discretion and good manners.
- Inversion
- Writers who observe the poignancy sometimes given by inversion, but fail to observe that 'sometimes' means 'when exclamation is appropriate', adopt inversion as an infallible enlivener; they aim at freshness and attain frigidity.
- Split infinitive
- The English-speaking world may be divided into (1) those who neither know nor care what a split infinitive is; (2) those who do not know, but care very much; (3) those who know and condemn; (4) those who know and approve; and (5) those who know and distinguish. ... Those who neither know nor care are the vast majority, and are a happy folk, to be envied by the minority classes.
- Terribly
- It is strange that a people with such a fondness for understatement as the British should have felt the need to keep changing the adverbs by which they hope to convince listeners of the intensity of their feelings.
- Welsh rarebit
- Welsh rabbit is amusing and right. Welsh rarebit is stupid and wrong.
Editions
Before writing A Dictionary of Modern English Usage, Henry W. Fowler and his younger brother, Francis George Fowler (1871–1918), wrote and revised The King's English (1906), a grammar and usage guide. Assisted in the research by Francis, who died in 1918 of tuberculosis contracted (1915–16) whilst serving with the British Expeditionary Force in the First World War (1914–1918), Henry dedicated the first edition of the Dictionary to his late brother:
I think of it as it should have been, with its prolixities docked, its dullnesses enlivened, its fads eliminated, its truths multiplied. He had a nimbler wit, a better sense of proportion, and a more open mind, than his twelve-year-older partner; and it is a matter of regret that we had not, at a certain point, arranged our undertakings otherwise than we did. ... This present book accordingly contains none of his actual writing; but, having been designed in consultation with him, it is the last fruit of a partnership that began in 1903 with our translation of Lucian.
The first edition of A Dictionary of Modern English Usage was published in 1926, and then was reprinted with corrections in 1930, 1937, 1954, and in 2009, with an introduction and commentary by the linguist David Crystal. The second edition, titled Fowler's Modern English Usage, was published in 1965, revised and edited by Ernest Gowers. The third edition, The New Fowler's Modern English Usage, was published in 1996, edited by Robert Burchfield; and in 2004, Burchfield's revision of the 1996 edition was published as Fowler's Modern English Usage. The fourth edition, Fowler's Dictionary of Modern English Usage, was published in 2015, edited by Jeremy Butterfield.
The modernisation of A Dictionary of English Usage (1926) yielded the Pocket Fowler's Modern English Usage (1999), edited by the lexicographer Robert Allen, which is based upon Burchfield's 1996 edition; the modernised edition is a forty per cent abridgement realised with reduced-length entries and the omission of about half the entries of the 1996 edition. A second edition of Allen's "Pocket Fowler" was published in 2008, the content of which the publisher said "harks back to the original 1926 edition".
- Fowler, Henry Watson (1926). A Dictionary of Modern English Usage (1st ed.). Oxford: Clarendon Press. OCLC 318492.
- Fowler, Henry Watson (1965). Fowler's Modern English Usage. Edited by Sir Ernest Gowers (2nd ed.). Great Britain: Oxford University Press. OCLC 318483.
- Burchfield, Robert William (1996). The New Fowler's Modern English Usage (3rd ed.). Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-869126-6. OCLC 36063311.
- Allen, Robert (1999). Pocket Fowler's Modern English Usage (1st ed.). Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-866237-2. OCLC 41660695.
- Burchfield, Robert William (2004). Fowler's Modern English Usage (Revised 3rd ed.). Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-861021-2. OCLC 56767410.
- Allen, Robert (26 August 2008). Pocket Fowler's Modern English Usage (2nd ed.). Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-923258-1. OCLC 495194507.
- Fowler, Henry Watson (2009). A Dictionary of Modern English Usage: The Classic First Edition. Introduction and notes by David Crystal. Great Britain: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-953534-7.
- Butterfield, Jeremy (March 2015). Fowler's Dictionary of Modern English Usage (4th ed.). Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-966135-0.
See also
- Disputes in English grammar
- Elegant variation
- False scent
Similar works
- The Elements of Style by William Strunk Jr. and E. B. White.
- The Chicago Manual of Style an American English guide to style and publishing markup.
- The Complete Plain Words by Sir Ernest Gowers.
- Practical English Usage by Michael Swan, a grammar for non-native English speakers.
- The Cambridge Guide to English Usage by Pam Peters.
- Merriam Webster's Dictionary of English Usage.
- Garner's Modern English Usage by Bryan A. Garner
Notes
- Third edition preface, p. xi.
- A Dictionary of Modern Usage, Second Edition, 1965. H.W. Fowler. Oxford University Press:New York, Oxford. p. 129.
- A Dictionary of Modern Usage, Second Edition, 1965. H.W. Fowler. Oxford University Press:New York, Oxford. pp. 212–213.
- A Dictionary of Modern Usage, Second Edition, 1965. H.W. Fowler. Oxford University Press:New York, Oxford. pp. 295–302.
- A Dictionary of Modern Usage, Second Edition, 1965. H.W. Fowler. Oxford University Press:New York, Oxford. pp. 579–582.
- A Dictionary of Modern Usage, Second Edition, 1965. H.W. Fowler. Oxford University Press:New York, Oxford. p. 618.
- A Dictionary of Modern Usage, Second Edition, 1965. H.W. Fowler. Oxford University Press:New York, Oxford. pp. 650–652.
- Weber, John (1978). Good Reading: A Guide for Serious Readers. R.R. Bowker. p. 225. ISBN 9780835210638.
- Shapiro, Fred R. (2006). The Yale Book of Quotations. Yale University Press. p. 284. ISBN 978-0-300-10798-2.
- Fowler, H.W. A Dictionary of Modern Usage Second Edition (1965) Oxford University Press:New York, Oxford. p. xiii.
- Fowler's Dictionary of Modern English Usage
- Allen, Robert (2008-06-26). "Preface to the second edition". Pocket Fowler's Modern English Usage. Oxford University Press. p. v. ISBN 9780199232581. Retrieved 3 April 2015.
- "Pocket Fowler's Modern English Usage: Paperback: Robert Allen". UK Catalogue. Oxford University Press. Archived from the original on 7 April 2015. Retrieved 3 April 2015.
References
- Fowler, Henry; Winchester, Simon (introduction) (2003 reprint). A Dictionary of Modern English Usage (Oxford Language Classics Series). Oxford Press. ISBN 0-19-860506-4.
- Nicholson, Margaret (1957). A Dictionary of American-English Usage Based on Fowler's Modern English Usage. Signet, by arrangement with Oxford University Press.
External links
- A Dictionary of Modern English Usage. 1926 ed. (1961 Reprint) on Internet Archive
This article relies excessively on references to primary sources Please improve this article by adding secondary or tertiary sources Find sources A Dictionary of Modern English Usage news newspapers books scholar JSTOR December 2023 Learn how and when to remove this message A Dictionary of Modern English Usage 1926 by Henry Watson Fowler 1858 1933 is a style guide to British English usage pronunciation and writing Covering topics such as plurals and literary technique distinctions among like words homonyms and synonyms and the use of foreign terms the dictionary became the standard for other style guides to writing in English Hence the 1926 first edition remains in print along with the 1965 second edition edited by Ernest Gowers which was reprinted in 1983 and 1987 The 1996 third edition was re titled as The New Fowler s Modern English Usage and revised in 2004 was mostly rewritten by Robert W Burchfield as a usage dictionary that incorporated corpus linguistics data and the 2015 fourth edition revised and re titled Fowler s Dictionary of Modern English Usage was edited by Jeremy Butterfield as a usage dictionary Informally readers refer to the style guide and dictionary as Fowler s Modern English Usage Fowler and Fowler s A Dictionary of Modern English UsageThe title page of A Dictionary of Modern English Usage 1926 AuthorH W FowlerLanguageEnglishPublished1926PublisherOxford University PressPublication placeUnited KingdomOCLC815620926Linguistic approachIn A Dictionary of Modern English Usage H W Fowler s general approach encourages a direct vigorous writing style and opposes all artificiality by firmly advising against convoluted sentence construction the use of foreign words and phrases and the use of archaisms He opposed pedantry and ridiculed artificial grammar rules unwarranted by natural English usage such as bans on ending a sentence with a preposition rules on the placement of the word only and rules distinguishing between which and that He classified and condemned every cliche in the course of which he coined and popularised the terms battered ornament vogue words and worn out humour while defending useful distinctions between words whose meanings were coalescing in practice thereby guiding the speaker and the writer away from illogical sentence construction and the misuse of words In the entries Pedantic Humour and Polysyllabic Humour Fowler mocked the use of arcane words archaisms and the use of unnecessarily long words QuotationsWidely and often cited A Dictionary of Modern English Usage is renowned for its witty passages such as Didacticism The speaker who has discovered that Juan and Quixote are not pronounced in Spain as he used to pronounce them as a boy is not content to keep so important a piece of information to himself he must have the rest of us call them Hwan and Keehotay at any rate he will give us the chance of mending our ignorant ways by doing so French Words Display of superior knowledge is as great a vulgarity as display of superior wealth greater indeed inasmuch as knowledge should tend more definitely than wealth towards discretion and good manners Inversion Writers who observe the poignancy sometimes given by inversion but fail to observe that sometimes means when exclamation is appropriate adopt inversion as an infallible enlivener they aim at freshness and attain frigidity Split infinitive The English speaking world may be divided into 1 those who neither know nor care what a split infinitive is 2 those who do not know but care very much 3 those who know and condemn 4 those who know and approve and 5 those who know and distinguish Those who neither know nor care are the vast majority and are a happy folk to be envied by the minority classes Terribly It is strange that a people with such a fondness for understatement as the British should have felt the need to keep changing the adverbs by which they hope to convince listeners of the intensity of their feelings Welsh rarebit Welsh rabbit is amusing and right Welsh rarebit is stupid and wrong EditionsFowler s Dictionary of Modern English Usage Before writing A Dictionary of Modern English Usage Henry W Fowler and his younger brother Francis George Fowler 1871 1918 wrote and revised The King s English 1906 a grammar and usage guide Assisted in the research by Francis who died in 1918 of tuberculosis contracted 1915 16 whilst serving with the British Expeditionary Force in the First World War 1914 1918 Henry dedicated the first edition of the Dictionary to his late brother I think of it as it should have been with its prolixities docked its dullnesses enlivened its fads eliminated its truths multiplied He had a nimbler wit a better sense of proportion and a more open mind than his twelve year older partner and it is a matter of regret that we had not at a certain point arranged our undertakings otherwise than we did This present book accordingly contains none of his actual writing but having been designed in consultation with him it is the last fruit of a partnership that began in 1903 with our translation of Lucian The first edition of A Dictionary of Modern English Usage was published in 1926 and then was reprinted with corrections in 1930 1937 1954 and in 2009 with an introduction and commentary by the linguist David Crystal The second edition titled Fowler s Modern English Usage was published in 1965 revised and edited by Ernest Gowers The third edition The New Fowler s Modern English Usage was published in 1996 edited by Robert Burchfield and in 2004 Burchfield s revision of the 1996 edition was published as Fowler s Modern English Usage The fourth edition Fowler s Dictionary of Modern English Usage was published in 2015 edited by Jeremy Butterfield The modernisation of A Dictionary of English Usage 1926 yielded the Pocket Fowler s Modern English Usage 1999 edited by the lexicographer Robert Allen which is based upon Burchfield s 1996 edition the modernised edition is a forty per cent abridgement realised with reduced length entries and the omission of about half the entries of the 1996 edition A second edition of Allen s Pocket Fowler was published in 2008 the content of which the publisher said harks back to the original 1926 edition Fowler Henry Watson 1926 A Dictionary of Modern English Usage 1st ed Oxford Clarendon Press OCLC 318492 Fowler Henry Watson 1965 Fowler s Modern English Usage Edited by Sir Ernest Gowers 2nd ed Great Britain Oxford University Press OCLC 318483 Burchfield Robert William 1996 The New Fowler s Modern English Usage 3rd ed Oxford University Press ISBN 978 0 19 869126 6 OCLC 36063311 Allen Robert 1999 Pocket Fowler s Modern English Usage 1st ed Oxford University Press ISBN 978 0 19 866237 2 OCLC 41660695 Burchfield Robert William 2004 Fowler s Modern English Usage Revised 3rd ed Oxford University Press ISBN 978 0 19 861021 2 OCLC 56767410 Allen Robert 26 August 2008 Pocket Fowler s Modern English Usage 2nd ed Oxford University Press ISBN 978 0 19 923258 1 OCLC 495194507 Fowler Henry Watson 2009 A Dictionary of Modern English Usage The Classic First Edition Introduction and notes by David Crystal Great Britain Oxford University Press ISBN 978 0 19 953534 7 Butterfield Jeremy March 2015 Fowler s Dictionary of Modern English Usage 4th ed Oxford University Press ISBN 978 0 19 966135 0 See alsoDisputes in English grammar Elegant variation False scentSimilar works The Elements of Style by William Strunk Jr and E B White The Chicago Manual of Style an American English guide to style and publishing markup The Complete Plain Words by Sir Ernest Gowers Practical English Usage by Michael Swan a grammar for non native English speakers The Cambridge Guide to English Usage by Pam Peters Merriam Webster s Dictionary of English Usage Garner s Modern English Usage by Bryan A GarnerNotesThird edition preface p xi A Dictionary of Modern Usage Second Edition 1965 H W Fowler Oxford University Press New York Oxford p 129 A Dictionary of Modern Usage Second Edition 1965 H W Fowler Oxford University Press New York Oxford pp 212 213 A Dictionary of Modern Usage Second Edition 1965 H W Fowler Oxford University Press New York Oxford pp 295 302 A Dictionary of Modern Usage Second Edition 1965 H W Fowler Oxford University Press New York Oxford pp 579 582 A Dictionary of Modern Usage Second Edition 1965 H W Fowler Oxford University Press New York Oxford p 618 A Dictionary of Modern Usage Second Edition 1965 H W Fowler Oxford University Press New York Oxford pp 650 652 Weber John 1978 Good Reading A Guide for Serious Readers R R Bowker p 225 ISBN 9780835210638 Shapiro Fred R 2006 The Yale Book of Quotations Yale University Press p 284 ISBN 978 0 300 10798 2 Fowler H W A Dictionary of Modern Usage Second Edition 1965 Oxford University Press New York Oxford p xiii Fowler s Dictionary of Modern English Usage Allen Robert 2008 06 26 Preface to the second edition Pocket Fowler s Modern English Usage Oxford University Press p v ISBN 9780199232581 Retrieved 3 April 2015 Pocket Fowler s Modern English Usage Paperback Robert Allen UK Catalogue Oxford University Press Archived from the original on 7 April 2015 Retrieved 3 April 2015 ReferencesFowler Henry Winchester Simon introduction 2003 reprint A Dictionary of Modern English Usage Oxford Language Classics Series Oxford Press ISBN 0 19 860506 4 Nicholson Margaret 1957 A Dictionary of American English Usage Based on Fowler s Modern English Usage Signet by arrangement with Oxford University Press External linksA Dictionary of Modern English Usage 1926 ed 1961 Reprint on Internet Archive
