Questions And Exercises: Chapter XVI. Figurative Phraseology

§76. 1. Use the word literally in several sentences, to be dure that yon are using it right. Hand in the sentences.

2. Here is an excellent piece of English:

Listen! Kipling is talking to the students of McGill University of the man who loves his work above his wage:

"Some day you will meet him; and his little finger shall be thicker than your thigh!"

(a) Is that an oriental or an occidental figure? (b) Give the book, chapter, and verse from which it is quoted; any good concordance of the Bible will help you. (c) Turn the figure into as literal a statement as you can.

3. Choose any adjective from the dictionary. Then discuss the various meanings of it as given in the dictionary, trying to show which are literal and which figurative.

$77. 1. Explain how jovial, mercurial, and contemplate came to have their present meaning.

2. Give the derivation of the words currant, onyx, heretic.

3. Why are some brokers called bulls and others bears?

4. In at least a dozen different expressions men are referred to as dogs or dog-like. Give some of these expressions.

5. Wordsworth refers to his wife as "no angel, but a dearer thing." Try to explain what he means.

§ 78. Take a recent book on some business topic, or a magazine devoted to business, and select half a dozen sentences containing effective practical figures of speech. Send them in.

§79. 1. Criticize but do not rewrite. Let your answers form a good paragraph concerning each number.

1. I'm confident I could put you on the other fellow's wire and get your message under the crust of his indifference.

2. If possible, I would purchase the article from a local dealer, for "charity begins at home" and home people are the great patrons of the farmer.

3. Eternally and forever the business wave must rise higher, higher, or it will reach the white-cap and recede.

4. The dividing line that separates the legal way of doing a thing from the illegal way is often a little, illusive point.

5. The bank ad. of today, if it is of the right caliber, is certainly a classy creation of real "pull order.

6. Too many people buy advertising space by the wrong kind of measure. They base its value on its weight in tons, as it were, instead of applying the acid test and measuring its value by the number of carats fine.

2. Rewrite,

1. A farm paper should get right down to "grass roots" and keep the feet on the ground.

2. God pity the solitary shrunken soul who goes through this world like a gosling in its nest, with its mouth open and its eyes shut expecting to receive all and give nothing in return.

3. Our Register takes away the red tape but leaves the flesh and blood of your System.

4. Lightning quickness measures the time it takes to insert a leaf in this binder.

5. Every corn you step on is the worst one. Break open your man's prejudices with a perfumed-velvet wedge of fact.

6. THE SALES LETTER that is flat and flavorless will not bite through the crust of the average man's indifference.

7. They are beginning to realize that the doctor who lags behind, who does not keep up with the latest advances in medical science, is out of place in the sweep forward.

8. A brain keyed to the big things of a business is naturally unfitted for the minor things - and the brain that is kept on the low-gear for details cannot swing the broader problems so capably.

§ 80. Choose three of the following words: sour, bitter, hard, soft, smooth, rough, chilly, black, blue, white, dark, blunt, sharp, low, high. Then write as many sentences as you can, using the words figuratively as applied to business situations. Revise all in the light of sections 1-79.