p. 14 | Exaggeration

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jun 23, 1868

Exaggeration

EXAGGERATION.—Modern civilization has taken from life so much of its former simplicity that the old names of things are almost forgotten, and it is considered a sign of ignorance to talk in plain Saxon words of one or two syllables. This is partly chargeable to the general tendency to exaggerated expressions, but very much to the notion which obtains among business men, that the most high-sounding advertisement is the best paying, and that a taking and mysterious name is half the battle of getting any new thing into use. Hence there is nothing common now. Everything is “improved,” and the more patents it can boast of the better. If it is also a combination article something is gained. A melodeon is a harmonium or a cabinet organ; a piano is an agraffe instrument; cheap cologne is a triple-refined bouquet, and even that name is beaten by Egyptian lotus and night-blooming cereals; and common dissolved gum-arabic is bottled under the name of extra-adhesive mucilage. There is no tooth-powder, but every druggist, who is now a pharmaceutist or a pharmaceutical chemist, sells dentifrices, such as fragrant sozodont, or philodont, or florimel, or swietenia, or balm of a thousand flowers. Gin is aromatic schiedam schnapps; paregoric is soothing syrup. Then there are an anodyne, an elixir of life, a buchu, a pectoral balsam, a bloom of youth, an ivory pearl-powder, a saponifier, a magical pain-extractor, a rheumatic remedy, a pulmo-bronchial troche, a chemical pomade, a hair-rejuvenator, a mammarial balm. Corns are removed without pain by chiropodists. Doctors are medical gentlemen. A conjuror is a prestidigitateur; a circus is a hippotheatron. Every concert, large or small, is a grand, vocal and instrumental concert. A fire is a devouring element. A man who dies by a rope is launched into eternity; if dying otherwise the vital spark becomes extinct.—N. Y. Evening Gazette.