In support of this observation I shall cite, for the reader’s satisfaction, a brief extract from a private memorandum, which I had originally made with a design of constructing a Fashionable glossary.
_Vernacular Terms_. _Fashionable Sense_. Age An infirmity which nobody owns. Buying Ordering goods without present purpose of payment. Conscience Something to swear by. Courage Fear of man. Cowardice Fear of God. Day Night. Debt A necessary evil. Decency Keeping up appearances. Dinner Supper. Dressed Half-naked. Duty Doing as other people do. Economy (Obsolete.) Enthusiasm Religion in earnest. Fortune The chief-good. Friend (Meaning not known.) Home Every body’s house but one’s own. Honour The modern Moloch, worshipped with licentious rites and human victims. Knowing Expert in folly and vice. Life Destruction of body and soul. Love (Meaning not known.) Modest Sheepish. New Delightful. Night Day. Nonsense Polite conversation. Old Insufferable. Pay Only applied to visits. Play Serious work. Protection Keeping a mistress. Religion Occupying a seat in some church or chapel. Spirit Contempt of decorum and conscience. Style Splendid extravagance. Thing (the) Any thing but what a man should be. Time Only regarded in music and dancing. Truth (Meaning uncertain). Virtue Any agreeable quality. Vice Only applied to servants and horses. Undress Complete clothing. Wicked Irresistibly agreeable. Work A vulgarism.
I am far from pretending to have assigned the precise significations in which the words above cited are employed by people of Fashion. Perhaps I have done as much towards fixing the sense, as will be expected of one who cannot pretend to be perfectly in their confidence. In fact, the transmutation of terms is an operation to which this people are most devoutly addicted. It is daily making some advances among them; and keeps pace with the progress of their ideas, from the correct and authentic notions of truth and virtue, to those loose and spurious ones by which they are superseded.
In proof of this statement, I need only adduce those phrases in which they are accustomed to pronounce the eulogium of their deceased associates.
For example,—Is reference made to an unthinking profligate who has lately been hurried from the world? His vices are glanced at, and cursorily condemned: but still it is affirmed, that, with all his faults, he always _meant well_; he had _a good heart __at the bottom_; and he was _nobody’s enemy but his own_.