'The First End of Writing'

“Few faults of style, whether real or imaginary, excite the malignity of a more numerous class of readers, than the use of hard words.” 

What does Dr. Johnson mean by “hard words”? Hard is one of those common words known, we assume, intuitively. Yet the OED offers dozens of definitions and gradations of meaning, confirming yet again that English is beautifully profligate. Even the seemingly simple combining form “hard word” comes with three definitions. Here’s the likely pertinent one, simply stated: “A word which is difficult to understand or spell.” Among the OED citations is one from Jonathan Swift’s  “A Letter to a Young Clergyman, Lately Entered into Holy Orders” (1719). Swift wishes that the young man

 

“. . . had applied yourself a little more to the study of the English language, than I fear you have done; the neglect whereof is one of the most general defects among the scholars of this kingdom, who seem not to have the least conception of a style, but run on in a flat kind of phraseology, often mingled with barbarous terms and expressions, peculiar to the nation.”

 

Swift discourages “the frequent use of obscure terms, which by the women are called hard words, and by the better sort of vulgar, fine language.” Nicely condescending. The part about “the scholars of the kingdom” is especially pertinent in my case. I have been reading papers devoted to the subject of quantum computing in preparation for writing an article on that subject. When I asked a computer science professor to define his terms – the basics of what I’m trying to understand -- I get tautologies. I’m not complaining too much. Explaining recondite matters in plain English is part of my job. When not resorting to “barbarous terms and expressions” (aka jargon), profs often rely on “a flat kind of phraseology.”

 

Johnson’s statement at the top is the first sentence of The Idler essay published on this date, August 18, in 1759. For Johnson, language, like everything else human, is open to moral (not moralistic) assessment:

  

“If an author be supposed to involve his thoughts in voluntary obscurity, and to obstruct, by unnecessary difficulties, a mind eager in pursuit of truth; if he writes not to make others learned, but to boast the learning which he possesses himself, and wishes to be admired rather than understood, he counteracts the first end of writing, and justly suffers the utmost severity of censure, or the more afflictive severity of neglect.”

 

In a nutshell, Johnson characterizes much contemporary writing, including the academic – language as egoistic posturing and applied obscurantism. Johnson ends up defending "hard words." He's not advocating subject-verb-object pap. But the hard word must be the appropriate word, the one that furthers the meaning, not the writer. “The first end of writing” echoes Johnson’s best-known pronouncement on the subject, in his review of Soame Jenyns’ A Free Enquiry into the Nature and Origin of Evil (1756): “The only end of writing is to enable the readers better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”