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Lewis’s term “verbicide,” the willful distortion or deprecation of a word’s original meaning.

In rambling Senate speeches, he quotes the Bible, Jefferson and Kipling; he opposes most civil rights bills and accuses the Supreme Court of killing the Constitution's meaning by "verbicide."

Associated words: glossary, glossarist, glossography, glossology, glossologist, lexicology, lexicologist, etymology, etymologist, etymologize, neology, lexicography, terminology, paronomasia, pun, punning, onomatopœoea, syncope, syncopation, literal, literally, literalism, transliteration, verbal, verbalist, verbalism, battology, logomachy, logomachist, verbarium, apocope, kyriology, metonomy, autonomasia, multiloquence, perissology, purism, purist, elision, polysynthesis, coin, coinage, apheresis, aphetic, aphetism, aphesis, onomatopoiesis, metaphrase, acrostic, rebus, synecdoche, verbicide, verbomaniac, locution. words of an opera. libretto.

Think of making "feeble" rhyme with "people," "abroad" with "Lord," and contemplate the following couplet which one cannot make rhyme without actual verbicide:—   "Where feeds the moose, and walks the surly bear,   And up the tall mast runs the woodpeck"-are!