Institutio Oratoria

Quintilian

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

I might quote other collocations of words which are liable to the same objection, but to discuss them in detail would be to fall into that very fault which I have just said should be avoided. A similar offence against modesty may be caused by the division of words, as, for example, by the use of the nominative of intercapedinis. [*](interccapedo, of which the last two syllables might give rise to unseemly laughter; pedo = break wind. )

And it is not merely in writing that this may occur, but you will find, unless you exercise the greatest care, that there are a number of persons who take pleasure in putting an indecent interpretation on words, thinking, as Ovid [*](Met. i. 502. ) says:

  1. that whatsoe'er is hid is best of all.
Nay, an obscene meaning may be extracted even from words which are as far removed from indecency as possible. Celsus, for example, detects an instance of κακέμφατον in the Virgilian [*](Georg. i. 357. ) phrase:
  1. incipiunt agitata tumescere;
but if this point of view be accepted, it will be risky to say anything at all.

Next to indecency of expression comes meanness, styled ταπείνωσις, when the grandeur or dignity of anything is diminished by the words used, as in the line:

  1. There is a rocky wart upon the mountain's brow.
    [*](From an unknown tragedian.)
The opposite fault, which is no less serious, consists
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in calling small things by extravagant names, though such a practice is permissible when deliberately designed to raise a laugh. Consequently we must not call a parricide a scamp, nor a man who keeps a harlot a villain, since the first epithet is too weak and the second too strong.

This fault will result in making our language dull, or coarse, jejune, heavy, unpleasing or slovenly, all of which faults are best realised by reference to the virtues which are their opposites, that is, point, polish, richness, liveliness, charm, and finish.