We are told that the French Academy expects to be able to publish the first volume of the eighth edi-stion of the dictionary of the French language towards the end of the year 1924, or at any rate early in 1925. By that time there will Lo another large crop of new words awaiting official recognition. The development of wireless telegraphy and telephony will give the Academy plenty of trouble. The first edition of this celebrated dictionary came out in 1694. Diotionary-making was not conducted on scientific lines in those days, and this edition was summary in some of its definition It described the AIchster, for instance, as "a small red fish that walks backwards." While the Academy of to-day will certainly not endorse inexactitudes of this kind, the volume now approaching completion will necessarily be incomplete, in consequence of the slowness with which the Academicians work;* what they de is done very thoroughly, but one really cannot expect 40 illustrious gentlemen, with many and varied interests, to assemble day after dag for the mere sake of indulging in philological discussions productive of neither glory nor profit. We read occasionally, in reports of the Academy's doings, that "the remainder of the sitting wag taken up by work on the dictionary," which means that the Academy carries on these labours when it has nothing better to do. One would have thought that the vast majority of words had already been sufficiently defined and that discussion would be necessary only in regard to new importations; but the Academicians can argue for hours over shades of meaning, and so the language grows faster than the dictionary.
"Modern Charlotte Corday's Mistake: Gaming Tax: Tales of W.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.