Words That Sizzled

Wilfred J. Funk was born to words. He reveled in them, ranked them and made a small fortune from them. A lifelong lexicographer, he was a tireless missionary for the English language, and by the time he died at 83 last week, he had succeeded in converting many others to his cherished belief: "It pays to increase your word power."

Funk made the entire nation self-conscious about its vocabulary. For 20 years he turned out a monthly column on vocabulary building for the Reader's Digest, and he wrote innumerable books: 30 Days to a More Powerful Vocabulary, 25 Magic Steps to Word Power. No pedant, he praised Walter Winchell for adding phffft to the language, and H. L. Mencken for contributing booboisie. "Simple and clear expression," he said, "is usually the difference between a sizzle and a fizzle."

Son of the founder of Funk & Wagnails, publisher of dictionaries and encyclopedias, Funk joined the family firm after graduating from Princeton, where he was class poet and began absorbing all the world's words. He became company president in 1925, later started his own publishing house (Wilfred Funk, Inc.). He tried his hand at light verse, drew up a list of the ten most beautiful words in the English language (dawn, hush, lullaby, murmuring, tranquil, mist, luminous, chimes, golden, melody) and the ten most overworked (okay, terrific, lousy, definitely, racket, gal, honey, swell, contact, impact'). He even compiled a canine dictionary of 204 words that every well-bred dog should understand, ranging from a basic siccum to slippers and ice cream.

In the course of his career, Funk suffered one major mishap with words. In 1936 he was made editor in chief of Literary Digest, Funk & Wagnalls' weekly compendium of comment on current affairs, and he promptly ran a poll that showed Alf Landon trouncing Franklin Roosevelt.

Trouble is, the Digest culled the telephone book for the names to be polled at a time when the country was still struggling out of the Depression. Sampling only those people wealthy enough to have phones gave an inaccurate cross-section of voters. After the election returns were in, the Digest was denounced by press and pollsters alike; it soon folded. But in 1948, when the pollsters predicted a Dewey victory over Truman, Funk enjoyed a belated revenge. "I do not want to seem to be malicious, but 1 can't help but get a good chuckle out of this."

Despite a lifelong devotion to language, Funk had no use for stylistic precision. "Let's throw the old textbooks out the window," he once wrote, "along with the words correct and incorrect, because there's really no such thing as grammar, but only an ever-changing language pattern formed by everyday usage."

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