Sri Aurobindo

Letters on Poetry and Art

SABCL - Volume 27

Part 2. On His Own and Others’ Poetry
Section 3. Practical Guidance for Aspiring Writers
Remarks on English Usage

On Some Words and Expressions Used by Writers of the Ashram [7]

Why should that poor “disperse” be inadmissible when English has many such Latin forms — e.g. “consecrate”, “dedicate”, “intoxicate”?

I don’t think people use “consecrate”, “intoxicate” etc. as adjectives nowadays — at any rate it sounds to me too scholastic. Of course, if one chose, this kind of thing might be perpetrate —

O wretched man intoxicate,

Let not thy life be consecrate

To wine’s red yell (spell, if you want to be “poetic”)

Else will thy soul be dedicate

To Hell.

but it is better not to do it. It makes no difference if there are other words like “diffuse” taken from French (not Latin) which have this form and are generally used as adjectives. Logic is not the sole basis of linguistic use. I thought at first it was an archaism and there might be some such phrase in old poetry as “lids disperse”, but as I could not find it even in the Oxford which claims to be exhaustive and omniscient, I concluded it must be a neologism of yours. But archaism or neologism does not matter. “Dispersed life-blood” brings three d’s so near together that they collide a little — if they were farther from each other it would not matter — or if they produced some significant or opportune effect. I think “diffuse” will do.

13 June 1937