Stonehenge

They sit there forever on the dim horizon of my mind, that Stonehenge circle of elderly disapproving Faces--Faces of the Uncles and Schoolmasters and Tutors who frowned on my youth.

In the bright centre and sunlight I leap, I caper, I dance my dance; but when I look up, I see they are not deceived. For nothing ever placates them, nothing ever moves to a look of approval that ring of bleak and contemptuous Faces.

II. Alien Plurals.

The useless and pedantic process of de-assimilation takes other forms, one of the most common of which is the restoring their foreign plural forms to words borrowed from Greek, Latin, and Italian. No common noun is genuinely assimilated into our language and made available for the use of the whole community until it has an English plural, and thousands of indispensable words have been thus incorporated. We no longer write of ideæ, chori, asyla, musea, sphinges, specimina for ideas, choruses, asylums, museums, sphinxes, specimens, and the notion of returning to such plurals would seem barbarous and absurd. And yet this very process is now going on, and threatens us with deplorable results. Sanatoria, memoranda, gymnasia are now replacing sanatorium, memorandums, and gymnasiums; automata, formulae, and lacunae are taking the place of automatons, formulas, and lacunas; indices and apices of indexes and apexes, miasmata of miasmas or miasms; and even forms like lexica, rhododendra, and chimeræ have been recently noted in the writings of authors of repute.

Some of these words are no doubt exceptions. Memoranda is preferable when used collectively, but the English plural is better in such a phrase as ‘two different memorandums’. Automata, too, is sometimes collective; and lacuna always carries the suggestion of its classical meaning, which makes half the meaning of the word. So again, when the classical form is a scientific term, it is convenient and well to preserve its differentiation, e.g. formulae in science, or foci and indices in mathematics; but such uses create exceptions, and these should be recognized as exceptions, to a general rule that wherever there is choice then the English form is to be preferred: we should, for instance, say bandits and not banditti.