A Household for Christ: A Defense for Short Words

Gelett Burgess (1866-1951) authored a few faves of the under-four-footers in our family: Goops, and How to be Them and More Goops, and How Not to Be Them. He is more likely remembered for his whimsical poem The Purple Cow.

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/36664

I have been reading an old and wonderful book on public speaking to the girls which contains an excerpt from a newspaper publication of Burgess' titled Five Hundred Short Words. Here we find a nice defense for the use of short words:

Our speech has lost force by too much use of long words. A lot of old short words now sound queer and crude. We do not use them when we try to speak well. But short words are strong words. They would help us to make our talk more clean-cut, fresh, and hale; they give it salt and tang.

When we are tried sore, when we faint with fear, or pain stings, or we blaze with wrath, then we cry out: 'Help me! Come quick!' We snarl, 'You lie, you cur!' We yell, 'She is gone. She has left me. She does not love me!'

And when we are blithe and gay, too, we do not use long words that reek of books. We say: 'Oh, joy! I love you, Come and kiss me. Be mine!'

For short words come from deep down in our hearts, not from our brains. They are like the bones of speech that make talk firm and hard. Like blood that gives life. Long words are the fat and thews and skin that make speech fair of form. But with a lack of short words what one says has less truth and zest. Less youth, too.

Why not bring some of those old words back to life? They would be as stout as rough oaths to make our talk force home what we mean. They would be as sharp as slang, too, that have pash and pep to dart, flash, pinch with the quick play of wit.

Friend, read the Good Book and see how clear, how stark, how crisp are the short words of our great tongue. They are the words of might.

Short and common words are wonderful when they concisely convey grand thoughts and ideas... and they it possible for people with limited vocabularies to make remarkable statements. Yay! (very short word)

I have included an excerpt from the Sermon on the Mount to illustrate this point. Out of 150 it only contains 2 words with 3 syllables, yet its message is concentrated with wisdom and encouragement.

Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment?

Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they?

Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature?

And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin:

And yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.