Institutio Oratoria

Quintilian

Quintilian. Institutio Oratoria, Volume 1-4. Butler, Harold Edgeworth, translator. Cambridge, Mass; London: Harvard University Press, William Heinemann Ltd., 1920-1922.

But there are still some old words that are endeared to us by

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their antique sheen, while there are others that we cannot avoid using occasionally, such, for example, as nuncupare and fari: [*](Name, speak.) there are yet others which it requires some daring to use, but which may still be employed so long as we avoid all appearance of that affectation which Virgil [*](Catal. ii. ) has derided so cleverly:
  1. Britain's Thucydides, whose mad Attic brain
  2. Loved word-amalgams like Corinthian bronze,
  3. First made a horrid blend of words from Gaul,
  4. Tau, al, min, sil and God knows how much else,
  5. Then mixed them in a potion for his brother!
This was a certain Cimber who killed his brother,

a fact which Cicero recorded in the words,

Cimber has killed his brother German.
[*](Phil. XI. vi. 14. A pun on the two meanings of gemanus, brother and German. ) The epigram against Sallust is scarcely less well known:
  1. Crispus, you, too, Jugurtha's fall who told,
  2. And filched such store of words from Cato old.

It is a tiresome kind of affectation; any one can practise it, and it is made all the worse by the fact that the man who catches the infection will not choose his words to suit his facts, but will drag in irrelevant facts to provide an opportunity for the use of such words. The coining of new words is, as I stated in the first book, [*](I. v. 70) more permissible in Greek, for the Greeks did not hesitate to coin nouns to represent certain sounds and emotions, and in truth they were taking no greater liberty than was taken by the first men when they gave names to things.

Our own writers have ventured on a few attempts at composition and derivation, but have not met with

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much success. I remember in my young days there was a dispute between Pomponius and Seneca which even found its way into the prefaces of their works, as to whether gradus eliminate [*]( Sc. moves his steps beyond the threshold. ) was a phrase which ought to have been allowed in tragedy. But the ancients had no hesitation about using even expectorate [*](banishes from his heart.) and, after all, it presents exactly the same formation as exanimat.

Of the coining of words by expansion and inflexion we have examples, such as the Ciceronian [*](De Nat. D. I. xxxiv. 95. ) beatitas and beatitudo, forms which he feels to be somewhat harsh, though he thinks they may be softened by use. Derivatives may even be fashioned from proper names, quite apart from ordinary words, witness Sullaturit [*](a Att. IX. x. 6. Desires to be a second Sulla. ) in Cicero and Fimbriatus and Figulatus [*]( Metamorphosed into Figulus. Presumably refers to Clusinius Figulus, see VII. ii. 26. ) in Asinius.

Many new words have been coined in imitation of the Greeks, [*](See II. xiv. 2.) more especially by Verginius Flavus, some of which, such as queens and essentia, are regarded as unduly harsh. But I see no reason why we should treat them with such contempt, except, perhaps, that we are highly self-critical and suffer in consequence from the poverty of our language. Some new formations do, however, succeed in establishing themselves.

For words which now are old, once were new, and there are some words in use which are of quite recent origin, such as reatus, [*](The condition of an accused person.) invented by Messala, and munerarius, [*](The giver of a gladiatorial show.) invented by Augustus. So, too, my own teachers still persisted in banning the use of words, such as piratica, musica and fabrica, while Cicero regards favor and urbanus as but newly introduced into the language. For in a letter to Brutus he says, eum amorer et eum, ut hoc

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verbo utar, favored in consilium advocabo, [*]( This letter is lost: I will call that love and that favour, if I may use the word, to be my counsellors. )

while to Appius Pulcher he writes, le hominem non solum sapientem, verum etiam, ut nunc loquimur, urbanum. [*](ad Fam. III. viii. 3. You who are not merely wise, but, as we say nowadays, urbane. ) He also thinks that Terence was the first to use the word obsequium, while Caecilius asserts that Sisenna was the first to use the phrase albente caelo. [*](When the sky grew white (at dawn).) Hortensius seems to have been the first to use cervix in the singular, since the ancients confined themselves to the plural. We must not then be cowards, for I cannot agree with Celsus when he forbids orators to coin new words.

For some words, as Cicero [*](Part Or. v. 16. ) says, are native, that is to say, are used in their original meaning, while others are derivative, that is to say, formed from the native. Granted then that we are not justified in coining entirely new words having no resemblance to the words invented by primitive man, I must still ask at what date we were first forbidden to form derivatives and to modify and compound words, processes which were undoubtedly permitted to later generations of mankind. If, however,