the words ‘there’ and ‘here’. We still say ‘therefore’ and sometimes

‘thereby’, but for ‘therewith’ and ‘thereunder’ we must turn to legal and other official documents. Such documents still depend on compounds of

‘here’, such as ‘hereafter’, ‘hereat’, ‘hereby’, ‘herein’, ‘hereon’, ‘hereto’,

‘hereunder’, ‘hereunto’, and ‘herewith’. We continue to use ‘hereabouts’

as well as ‘whereabouts’ in conversation. The intensified forms, ‘whereso­

ever’ and ‘whensoever’, like the forms ‘whosoever’ and ‘whomsoever’,

are words which we associate now w ith lawyers and w ith past poets.

W hen we read the poet Robert Herrick’s famous lines,

Whenas in silks my Julia goes,

Then, then (me thinks) how sweetly flows

The liquefaction of her clothes

we mentally accept ‘whenas’ and ‘me thinks’ as archaic poetic diction.

If we have any doubt about the value of the kind of com pound here represented, we have only to study the prose of the King James Bible.

W hen we read the words of Saint Paul in the King James Bible, ‘Howbeit,

whereinsoever any is bold, I am bold also’, and we ask ourselves what

we should now substitute for the word ‘whereinsoever’, we realize what

a convenient w ord it was, and how many words it would take to replace

it. For ‘whereinsoever any is bold’ really amounts to ‘in whatever respects

anyone is bold’ or ‘in whatever circumstances anyone is bold’. Checking up on two more recent versions, I find the words ‘whereinsoever any is

bold’ multiplied to ‘whatever anyone dares to boast o f ’ and ‘in whatever

particular they enjoy such confidence’. It is perhaps a pity that we cannot

rescue words so useful, but we must face facts. The discerning writer

may be able to use an archaism from time to time, but clearly it is

desirable to exercise restraint in that respect. People may get away with a lavish use of archaisms in the world of ceremonial officialdom.

Anywhere else it will seem comic.

A M E R I C A N I S M S

That usages should have come into English from America is no more

surprising than that they have come into England from France. Where

words and expressions are equally well established in both the US and

the UK, no problem arises. In the UK we now all say ‘OK’ as naturally

as the Americans. We speak about ‘barking up the wrong tree’ or ‘burying

The Penguin Guide to Plain English