[3]
Individual words will either be native or imported,
simple or compound, literal or metaphorical, in
current use or newly-coined.
A single word is more likely to be faulty than
to possess any intrinsic merit. For though we
may speak of a word as appropriate, distinguished
or sublime, it can possess none of these properties
save in relation to connected and consecutive speech;
since when we praise words, we do so because they
suit the matter.
Quintilian. With an English Translation. Harold Edgeworth Butler. Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1920.
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