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The Mechanics and Rhetoric of Conversation - part 6
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But what is most important is that one make scrupulously sure that the picturesque name one intends is fair and refers to a just responsibility. In some college circles, a girl "determined" to win the man she loves, is called a war horse. Here an uncomplimentary comparison is used for a trait which is not morally wrong and is probably socially good. At least Bernard Shaw thinks that girls, instead of waiting patiently for someone to ask them, should make a determined effort themselves to find the man they want! To call a serious, hard-studying student a bookworm is no longer bad, since long use has virtually converted the word to the compliment it ought to be, but to call him a grind or, worse, a greasy grind is too sharply critical of a trait which is more virtue than vice. Hence it is truly slang, and ought to be avoided. Somewhere in this happy land, chaperones are called fire extinguisher^. I leave it to the reader to determine whether this is slang or poetry.
"Calling a frivolous girl a powder puff is all right. But calling girls, God's creations, human beings with immortal souls, by such names as him, rib, skirt, or tomato is slang, is language which St. Paul's Christian must avoid. One may not figuratively apply to any human beings, merely in their capacity as human beings, names which humiliate or belittle them. Definitely, when one does not specifically play against a correctable social and moral flaw, one should not apply any but complimentary comparisons to human beings. Otherwise one is guilty of slang in the true sense of the word. Conversation should beautify the world, not make it even uglier than it is. When a cadaver is called a stiff, life is made uglier. That which housed a human soul and cannot help its present condition may not be called an unedifying name. Generally, whatever is crude, any comparison that could rightly offend the much-cited Victorian maiden, even when otherwise apt or powerful, is slang in the objectionable sense. The word bellyache, for complaining, is most picturesque and apt, but the proper conversationalist will tend to avoid it. There are two current picturesque expressions for being caught off guard, namely, caught flat-footed and that which describes one as being caught with a part of man's usual apparel unsuspended! A conversationalist will not be cheated of the former by any charge of slang, but he will resolutely avoid the latter as introducing unnecessary ugliness into talk. What has often helped me personally in deciding the propriety of an expression, as I was evolving through my various school years, was the question, "How would this sound, even if it were in a smoking car, on the lips of a bishop or college president or governor?" If even in a smoking car it would sound improper coming from them, then it should always be regarded as improper for ourselves. My mother on one occasion gave me a sharp lesson in this matter of harmless, nonsinful, but ugly, unrefined expressions. In boarding school, I had somehow picked up, as an alternative to the worse expression, the term son-of-a-buck. Home on vacation I used it unthinkingly and with gusto. My mother, hearing it, declared herself shocked. Surprised, I said that there was nothing sinful about the word. She answered that that was not the only issue; that it was ugly and sounded crude, and must be avoided. She was right. Now I shudder to think I ever could have used it. Picturesque expressions should be rejected, if they are unjust or unfair, if they unnecessarily hurt, if they are coarse. These are the marks of slang, that is, of objectionable figurative language. Perhaps one could call slang a compliment in reverse.
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