Institutio Oratoria

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

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,

one of our inventions seems a little risky, we must take certain measures in advance to save it from censure, prefacing it by phrases such as

so to speak,

if I may say so,

in a certain sense,

if you will allow me to make use of such a word.