+35.  Word Selection.+—­There are many shades of meaning which differ but little, and a careful writer will select just the word that best conveys his thought.  The reader needs to be no less careful in determining the exact meaning that the writer intends to convey.  Exercises in synonyms are thus of double importance (Section 21).

Another source of error, both in acquiring and expressing thought, arises from the confusion of similar words.  Some similarity of spelling causes one word to be substituted for another.  There are many words and expressions that are so often interchanged that some time may be spent with profit upon exercises in determining their correct usage.  These usually consist of brief reports to the class that set forth the meanings of the words, show their uses, and illustrate their differences.

In preparing such reports, determine the meaning of the words from as many sources as are available.  The usual meaning can be determined from the dictionary.  A fuller treatment is given in some dictionaries in a chapter on faulty diction.  Additional material may be found in many of the text-books on rhetoric, and in special books treating of word usage.  After you are sure that you know the correct use, prepare a report for the class that shall make that use clear to others.  In the simplest form this will consist of definitions and sentences in which the words are correctly used.  The following examples, handed in by pupils, will serve to illustrate such reports:—­

1.  A council is an assembly of persons convened for consultation or deliberation. Counsel is used to indicate either (1) an opinion as the result of consultation or (2) a lawyer engaged to give advice or to act as advocate in court.  Lewis furnishes the following example of the use of these two words:  “The plaintiff’s counsel held a council with his partners in law, and finally gave him as his best counsel the advice that he should drop the suit; but, as Swift says, ’No man will take counsel, but every man will take money,’ and the plaintiff refused to accept the advice unless the counsel could persuade the defendant to settle the case out of court by paying a large sum.”

2.  The correct meaning of transpire may perhaps be best understood by considering its derivations.  It comes from trans, through, and spiro, to breathe, from which it gets its meaning, to escape gradually from secrecy.  It is frequently used incorrectly in the sense of to happen, but both Webster and the Standard dictionary condemn this use of the word.  The latter says that it is often so misused especially in carelessly edited newspapers, as in “Comments on the heart-rending disaster which transpired yesterday are unnecessary, but,” etc.  When transpire is correctly used, it is not a synonym of happen.  A thing that happened a year ago may transpire to-day, that is, it may “become known through unnoticed channels, exhale, as it were, through invisible pores like a vapor or a gas disengaging itself.”  Many things which happen in school, thus become known by being passed along in a semi-secret manner until nearly all know of them though few can tell just how the information was spread. Transpire may properly be applied to such a diffusion of knowledge.