There are other technical terms of the motor-car industry which present more difficult problems. Tonneau is not troublesome, even if its spelling is awkward.  There is chauffeur first of all; and I wish that it might generally acquire the local pronunciation it is said to have in Norfolk—­shover.  Then there is chassis.  Is this the exact equivalent of ‘running gear’?  Is there any available substitute for the French word?  And if chassis is to impose itself from sheer necessity what is to be done with it?  Our forefathers boldly cut down chaise to ’shay’—­at least my forefathers did it in New England, long before Oliver Wendell Holmes commemorated their victory over the alien in the ‘Deacon’s Masterpiece’, more popularly known as the ‘One Horse Shay’.  And the men of old were even bolder when they curtailed cabriolet to ‘cab’, just as their children have more recently and with equal courage shortened ‘taximeter vehicle’ to ‘taxi’, and ‘automobile’ itself to ‘auto’.  Unfortunately it is not possible to cut the tail off chassis, or even to cut the head off, as the men of old did with ‘wig’, originally ‘periwig’, which was itself only a daring and summary anglicization of peruke.

Due to the fact that the drama has been more continuously alive in the literature of France than in that of any other country, and due also, it may be, to the associated fact that the French have been more loyally devoted to the theatre than any other people, the vocabulary of the English-speaking stage has probably more unassimilated French words than we can discover in the vocabulary of any of our other activities.  We are none of us surprised when we find in our newspaper criticisms artiste, ballet, conservatoire, comedienne, costumier, danseuse, debut, denoument, diseuse, encore, ingenue, mise-en-scene, perruquier, pianiste, premiere, repertoire, revue, role, tragedienne—­the catalogue stretches out to the crack of doom.

Long as the list is, the words on it demand discussion.  As to role I need say nothing since it has been considered carefully in Tract No. 3; I may merely mention that it appeared in English at least as early as 1606, so that it has had three centuries to make itself at home in our tongue. Conservatoire and repertoire have seemingly driven out the English words, which were long ago made out of them, ‘conservatory’ and ‘repertory’.  What is the accepted pronunciation of ballet?  Is it bal-lett or ballay or bally? (If it is bally, it has a recently invented cockney homophone.) For costumier and perruquier I can see no excuse whatever; although I have observed them frequently on London play-bills, I am delighted to be able to say that they do not disgrace the New York programmes, which mention the ‘costumer’ and the ‘wigmaker’.  ‘Encore’ was used by Steele in 1712; it was early made into an English verb; and yet I have heard the verb pronounced with the nasal n of the original French.  Here is another instance of English taking over a French word and giving it a meaning not acceptable in Paris, where the playgoers do not encore, they bis.