America, and was received in England at the point of the bayonet. Huxley
and other "scientists" disowned it, and only a few years ago the _Daily
News_ denounced it as "an ignoble Americanism," a "cheap and vulgar
product of transatlantic slang." But "scientist" is undoubtedly holding
its own, and will soon be as generally accepted as "retrograde,"
"reciprocal," "spurious," and "strenuous," against which Ben Jonson, in
his day, so--strenuously protested. It holds its own because it is felt
to be a necessity. No one who is in the habit of writing will pretend
that it is always possible to fall back upon the cumbrous phrase "man of
science."[U] On the other hand, the purist objection to
"scientist"--that it is a Latin word with a Greek termination, and that
it implies the existence of a non-existent verb--may be urged with
equal force against such harmless necessary words as deist, aurist,
dentist, florist, jurist, oculist, somnambulist, ventriloquist,
and--purist. Much more valid objection might be made to the word
"scientific," which is not hybrid indeed, but is, if strictly examined,
illogical and even nonsensical. The fact is that three-fourths of the
English language would crumble away before a purist analysis, and we
should be left without words to express the commonest and most necessary
ideas.

Contrast with the case of "scientist" a vulgarism such as the use of
"transpire" in the sense of "happen." I do not quote it as an
Americanism; it is probably of English origin; it occurs, I regret to
note, in Dickens. I select it merely as an example of a demonstrably
vicious locution which ought indubitably to be banished from the
language. It has its origin in sheer blundering. Some one, at some time,
has come upon the phrase "such-and-such a thing has transpired"--that
is, leaked out, become known--and, ignorantly mistaking its meaning, has
noted and employed the word as a finer-sounding synonym for "occurred"