The Words to be Used

w ould be correct to derive both the sentence He paid the retailer and
the sentence He paid five pounds. Because the verb pay and the verb
repay w ork thus, there is a tem ptation to try to make other verbs o f
paying w ork similarly. Thus a minister in the House o f Commons spoke
o f reim bursing the cost o f an enterprise. One hears this error repeated
on the radio. The announcer tells us that the National Health Service is
to recoup the cost o f treating road accident victims from insurance
companies. There is determ ination to track dow n the m oney and reim
burse it to the Health Service. But m oney cannot be reim bursed. To
reim burse is to repay someone, not to repay a sum. Thus the w ords it
to should be om itted in the above: track dow n the money and reim burse
the Health Service.
A comparably faulty use o f the verb to com pensate occurs w hen it is
treated as though it worked like the verb to pay. W e may pay someone
five pounds because we can either pay som eone or pay five pounds,
but we cannot compensate someone five pounds because, though we
can compensate som eone we cannot compensate five pounds.
They are now working out how much he should be compensated.
Thus that statement on Radio 4 will not serve. Add the w ord by: They
are now w orking out by how m uch he should be com pensated.
We can com pensate a person but not a sum o f money. Conversely,
however, we can condone an offence but not the person w ho com mitted
it. We hear on the radio:
A lot of parents condone their truant children.
To condone is to forgive or overlook an offence, not a person. Thus this
should be: A lot o f parents condone their childrens truancy.

Approving and Disapproving

creative, dogmatic, pathetic
W ords o f strong approval or strong disapproval acquire emotive force
w hich sometimes gets out o f hand. That is to say, speakers or writers
latch on to them for giving vent to likes or dislikes w ith a rather loose
awareness o f their exact meaning. An instance is provided by the words
creative and creativity. The precise connotation o f such words requires
us to use them o f acts w hich produce something w here nothing o f the