Portentous advice.(Ryan)(changes in the English Language)(use of the word "portentous")(Column)

IT'S A BOLD WRITER who forges too far ahead of his dictionary, even though the onward creep of usage turns the signification of words into frontiers. A writer oblivious to the inbuilt, almost daily dynamic of words will soon find himself alone in a corner, mumbling a contemporary dead language.

As words, by subtle trespass, extend and alter their reach and meaning, the apparently fixed values pronounced by dictionaries are as worthless as Hitler's promise of "no more territorial claims".

When I use a word, I hope that it will convey something pretty close to what the Oxford Dictionary says it means. This is the minimum politesse owed to readers who are gracious enough to scan my article. Creative genius (James Joyce, say, or Bob Ellis) may take rough liberties with what you and I used to think was English, but such impudence is,not for your ordinary journeyman journalist.

Well ... not as a rule. But today I have jacked up on the word portentous. I accept that its original sense lies among the nouns portents, omens and prophecies. But I thought that its modern adjectival form had now taken on a derisive colour; that when (say) a prime ministerial statement is reported as "portentous", it is really being sent up as pretentious or pompous; that anything "portentous" is likely to draw the up-thrust middle-finger salute from your ordinary citizen.

Not, alas, according to my two-volume Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles. The single faint concession it offers to change is: "sometimes joc."--that is, used jokingly.

A swift private poll among friends showed a unanimous belief that "portentous" words were those likely to be heard from governors, bishops, headmasters, lord mayors and politicians, and that in most cases it is safe to greet them with a raspberry. More than that, most of those polled said that they hoped that future editions of the Oxford will soon carry also its neat standard put-down of "derog." In that derogatory sense I employ the word here.

Now we can get back to where this little essay was supposed to start.