| 词汇 | murder the language |
| 词源 | murder the language. This common saying, applied to inept writing, may have been suggested by a reference that the OED dates back to about 1644 (“Hopkins and Sternhold murder the Psalmes”). John Hopkins (d. 1549) and Thomas Sternhold (d. 1570) were joint versifiers of the Psalms, whose work was ridiculed by John Dryden and especially in an epigram by Lord Rochester entitled “Spoken Extempore to a County clerk after Having Heard Him Sing Psalms”: Sternhold and Hopkins had great qualms When they translated David’s psalms To make the heart feel glad; But it had been poor David’s fate To hear thee sing, and then translate, By God! ‘twould have made him mad. Novelist Henry Fielding, also a British justice of the peace, wrote an article for the satirical journal The Champion, de- manding that English poet laureate and playwright Colley Cib- ber (1671–1757) be tried for murder of the English language. Fielding was apparently getting even with Cibber, who had called him “a broken wit.” |
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