PREDICATED UPON.  This abomination is paraded by persons who lose no chance of uttering “dictionary words,” hit or miss; and is sometimes heard from others from whom the educated world has a right to look for more correctness.

RELIABLE.  A counterfeit, which no stamping by good writers or universality of circulation will ever be able to introduce into the family circle of honest English as a substitute for the robust Saxon word whose place it would usurp—­trustworthy. Reliable is, however, good English when used to signify that one is liable again.  When you have lost a receipt, and cannot otherwise prove that a bill rendered has been paid, you are re-liable for the amount.

RELIGION.  Even by scholars this word is often used with looseness.  In strictness it expresses exclusively our relation to the Infinite, the bond between man and God.  You will sometimes read that he is the truly religious man who most faithfully performs his duties of neighbor, father, son, husband, citizen.  However much a religious man may find himself strengthened by his faith and inspirited for the performance of all his duties, this strength is an indirect, and not a uniform or necessary, effect of religious convictions.  Some men who are sincere in such convictions fail in these duties conspicuously; while, on the other hand, they are performed, at times, with more than common fidelity by men who do not carry within them any very lively religious belief or impressions.  “And now abideth faith, hope, and charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.”  Nor can the greatest do the work of the others any more than faith that of hope or charity.  Each one of “these three” is different from and independent of the other, however each one be aided by cooperation from the others.  The deep, unique feeling which lifts up and binds the creature to the Creator is elementarily one in the human mind, and the word used to denote it should be kept solely for this high office, and not weakened or perverted by other uses.  Worcester quotes from Dr. Watts the following sound definition:  “In a proper sense, virtue signifies duty toward men, and religion duty to God.”

SALOON.  That eminent pioneer of American sculpture, brilliant talker, and accomplished gentleman, the lamented Horatio Greenough, was indignantly eloquent against the American abuse of this graceful importation from France, applied as it is in the United States to public billiard-rooms, oyster-cellars and grog-shops.

SUBJECT-MATTER.  A tautological humpback.

TO VENTILATE, applied to a subject or person.  The scholar who should use this vilest of vulgarisms deserves to have his right thumb taken off.