obsolescent.]

4. _THAT THE LOSS DUE TO HOMOPHONY THREATENS TO IMPOVERISH THE
LANGUAGE._

New words are being added to the dictionary much faster than old words
are passing out of use, but it is not a question of numbers nor of
dictionaries. A chemist told me that if the world were packed all over
with bottles as close as they could stand, he could put a different
substance into each one and label it. And science is active in all her
laboratories and will print her labels. If one should admit that as
many as ninety-nine per cent. of these artificial names are neither
literary nor social words, yet some of them are, since everything that
comes into common use must have a name that is frequently spoken.
Thus _baik_, _sackereen_, and _mahjereen_ are truly new English
word-sounds; and it may be, if we succumb to anarchical communism,
that margarine and saccharine will be lauded by its dissolute mumpers
as enthusiastically as men have hitherto praised and are still
praising butter and honey. 'Bike' certainly would have already won a
decent place in poetry had it been christened more gracefully and not
nicknamed off to live in backyards with cab and bus. The whole subject
of new terms is too vast to be parenthetically handled, and I hope
that some one will deal with it competently in an early publication
of the S.P.E. The question must here remain to be determined by the
evidence of the words in the table of obsoletes, which I think is
convincing; my overruling contention being that, however successful
we may be in the coinage of new words (and we have no reason to boast
of success) and however desirable it is to get rid of some of the bad
useless homophones, yet we cannot afford to part with any old term
that can conveniently be saved.