Bernstein’s Second Law (From Theodore Bernstein (1965), The Careful Writer)

Until now Bernstein’s Law has designated a statement, known throughout the civilized world, of a property common to such articles as cuff links, dimes, table-tennis balls, and caps of toothpaste tubes. Stated in its simplest, nay its only, form, it affirms: “A falling body always rolls to the most inaccessible spot.” Practically, this means that if you drop a cuff link, it is useless to look at the open floor area near your feet. The only thing to do is to get down on all fours, preferably with a flashlight, and peer under the bed.

Henceforth this principle will have to be known as Bernstein’s First Law, for now there is a Second Law. The new one is a kind of Gresham’s Law applied to words. Gresham’s Law, it will be recalled (just as Sir Thomas Gresham recalled it from an earlier formulator), states that “bad money drives out good.” This is true of words, too, but the two laws differ in important respects.

When a bad currency drives out a good one, the good money at least retains its value and, indeed, sometimes gains in value, whereas the bad currency remains bad. When a bad word drives out a good one, however, different things may happen. First, the good word most often depreciates in value, although it may hold its own; it never, however, gains in value. Second, the bad word, like the bad currency, may remain bad, but often it appreciates to the level of the good word and sometimes even becomes more valuable than the word it displaced. Stated more succinctly but not more clearly, Bernstein’s Second Law holds: “Bad words tend to drive out good ones, and when they do, the good ones never appreciate in value, sometimes maintain their value, but most often lose in value, whereas the bad words may remain bad or get better.”

The term “bad words,” as used here, refers to secondary meanings that diverge from the true or primary meanings of words, and that come into use because of ignorance, confusion, faddishness, or the importunities of slang.

When such powerful words as awful, dreadful, fearful, or horrible are used as mere commonplace expressions of disapproval, the primary meanings of the words are displaced and depreciated. At the same time the new meanings remain debased, so that there is a gross loss all around. When enormity is widely used in contexts where enormousness is meant, the useful genuine meaning of the word tends to become lost and no one is the gainer. The same is true of such manhandled words as disinterested, glamour, publicist, and transpire. And, of course, there are countless more.

In another category are “bad words” with real utility that drive out “good words” with little or none. There is no need for fruition in the meaning of gratification in the use or possession of something, because the occasions for its use are rare and because pleasure or gratification will usually serve. But there is need for fruition meaning coming to fruit. Internecine in the sense of deadly – its original sense – is a redundant word in the language, but internecine referring to mutual destruction or fratricidal strife is useful. It is a rare occasion when a writer would wish to use shambles in its traditional meaning – a place of slaughter – but frequently he would have use for it in the more recent meaning of a scene of chaos. All these are instances of bad words that drive out good ones and then gain in value.

In another category are bad words that all but drive out good ones, but do not quite do it and so simply coexist with them. The noun alibi in the casual sense of an excuse is a prevalent word, but it also holds its own in its true meaning of a plea of having been elsewhere, undoubtedly because it is indispensable in jurisprudence. Connive as a casualism meaning to conspire or finagle is pressing hard the primary meaning of the word of shutting one’s eyes to wrongdoing, but the primary meaning survives and is likely to continue to do so.

It would be absurd to deplore without qualification the tendency of bad words to drive out good ones. This tendency is one of the ways in which the language grows and becomes more responsive to the writer’s and the speaker’s needs. Dip into the dictionary casually and you will find word after word – probably they add up to a majority – in which the present-day meaning is a derived or secondary one rather than a rigid rendering of the root of the word. Decide today does not mean to cut off; down does not mean off the hill; mass does not mean a barley cake or a kneading; piano does not mean something soft and smooth; secret does not mean something put apart. Words, like trees, grow from their roots.

What may well be deplored is the displacement of good words by bad ones to no purpose, or to the detriment of the good ones. It is in this field that the operation of Bernstein’s Second Law should be resisted. It is in this field that the language can lose precision and vitality.