{TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

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Obvious printing errors involving punctuation (such as missing singlequotes), as well as alphabetization errors in the index, have beencorrected without notes. Other corrections of printing errors, as wellas notes regarding spelling variations, are listed at the end of thisfile. }

 * * * * *

ENGLISHPAST AND PRESENT

BY

RICHARD CHENEVIX TRENCH, D. D. 

_Edited with Emendations_

BY

A. SMYTHE PALMER, D. D. 

_Author of ‘The Folk and their Word-lore, ’ ‘Folk-Etymology, ’‘Babylonian Influence on the Bible, ’ etc. _

{Illustration: Printer’s Mark}

LONDON

GEORGE ROUTLEDGE & SONS, LIMITED

NEW YORK: E. P. DUTTON & CO. 

1905

EDITOR’S PREFACE

In editing the present volume I have thought it well to follow the samerule which I laid down for myself in editing _The Study of Words_, andhave made no alteration in the text of Dr. Trench’s work (the fifthedition). Any corrections or additions that seemed to be demanded owingto the progress of lexicographical knowledge have been reserved for thefoot-notes, and these can always be distinguished from those in theoriginal by the square brackets [thus] within which they are placed. 

On the whole more corrections have been required in _English Past andPresent_ than in _The Study of Words_ owing to the sweeping statementswhich involve universal negatives--statements, e. G. That certain wordseither first came into use, or ceased to be employed, at a specific date. Nothing short of the combined researches of an army of co-operativeworkers, such as the _New English Dictionary_ commanded, could warrantthe correctness of assertions of this kind, which imply an exhaustiveacquaintance with a subject so immense as the entire range of Englishliterature. 

Even the mistakes of a learned man are instructive to those who essay tofollow in his steps, and it is not without use to point them out insteadof ignoring or expunging them. Thus, when the Archbishop falls into theerror (venial when he wrote) of assuming an etymological connexionbetween certain words which have a specious air of kinship--such as‘care’ and ‘cura, ’ ‘bloom’ and ‘blossom, ’ ‘ghastly’ and ‘ghostly, ’‘brat’ and ‘brood, ’ ‘slow’ and ‘slough’--he makes just the mistakeswhich we would be tempted to make ourselves had not Professor Skeat andDr. Murray and the great German School of philologists taught us to knowbetter. Our plan, therefore, has been to leave such errors in the textand point out the better way in the notes. In other words, we havetreated the Archbishop’s work as a classic, and the occasionalemendations in the notes serve to mark the progress of half a century ofetymological investigation. It is hardly necessary to point out that thechronological landmarks occurring here and there need an obviousequation of time to make them correct for the present year of grace, e. G. ‘lately, ’ when it occurs, must be understood to mean at least fiftyyears ago, and a similar addition must be made to other time-points whenthey present themselves. 

 A. SMYTHE PALMER. 

PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION

A series of four lectures which I delivered last spring to the pupils ofthe King’s College School, London, supplied the foundation to thispresent volume. These lectures, which I was obliged to prepare in haste, on a brief invitation, and under the pressure of other engagements, being subsequently enlarged and recast, were delivered in the autumnsomewhat more nearly in their present shape to the pupils of theTraining School, Winchester; with only those alterations, omissions andadditions, which the difference in my hearers suggested as necessary ordesirable. I have found it convenient to keep the lectures, as regardsthe persons presumed to be addressed, in that earlier form which I hadsketched out at the first; and, inasmuch as it helps much to keeplectures vivid and real that one should have some well defined audience, if not actually before one, yet before the mind’s eye, to suppose myselfthroughout addressing my first hearers. I have supposed myself, that is, addressing a body of young Englishmen, all with a fair amount ofclassical knowledge (in my explanations I have sometimes had others withless than theirs in my eye), not wholly unacquainted with modernlanguages; but not yet with any special designation as to their futurework; having only as yet marked out to them the duty in general ofliving lives worthy of those who have England for their native country, and English for their native tongue. To lead such through a moreintimate knowledge of this into a greater love of that, has been aprincipal aim which I have set before myself throughout. 

In a few places I have been obliged again to go over ground which I hadbefore gone over in a little book, _On the Study of Words_; but Ibelieve that I have never merely repeated myself, nor given to thereaders of my former work and now of this any right to complain that Iam compelling them to travel a second time by the same paths. At leastit has been my endeavour, whenever I have found myself at points wherethe two books come necessarily into contact, that what was treated withany fulness before, should be here touched on more lightly; and onlywhat there was slightly handled, should here be entered on at large. 

CONTENTS

 LECTURE I PAGE ENGLISH A COMPOSITE LANGUAGE 1

 LECTURE II GAINS OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE 40

 LECTURE III DIMINUTIONS OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE 113

 LECTURE IV CHANGES IN THE MEANING OF ENGLISH WORDS 176

 LECTURE V CHANGES IN THE SPELLING OF ENGLISH WORDS 212

 INDEX 257

ENGLISH PAST AND PRESENT

I

ENGLISH A COMPOSITE LANGUAGE

“A very slight acquaintance with the history of our own language willteach us that the speech of Chaucer’s age is not the speech ofSkelton’s, that there is a great difference between the language underElizabeth and that under Charles the First, between that under Charlesthe First and Charles the Second, between that under Charles the Secondand Queen Anne; that considerable changes had taken place between thebeginning and the middle of the last century, and that Johnson andFielding did not write altogether as we do now. For in the course of anation’s progress new ideas are evermore mounting above the horizon, while others are lost sight of and sink below it: others again changetheir form and aspect: others which seemed united, split into parts. Andas it is with ideas, so it is with their symbols, words. New ones areperpetually coined to meet the demand of an advanced understanding, ofnew feelings that have sprung out of the decay of old ones, of ideasthat have shot forth from the summit of the tree of our knowledge; oldwords meanwhile fall into disuse and become obsolete; others have theirmeaning narrowed and defined; synonyms diverge from each other and theirproperty is parted between them; nay, whole classes of words will nowand then be thrown overboard, as new feelings or perceptions of analogygain ground. A history of the language in which all these vicissitudesshould be pointed out, in which the introduction of every new wordshould be noted, so far as it is possible--and much may be done in thisway by laborious and diligent and judicious research--in which suchwords as have become obsolete should be followed down to their finalextinction, in which all the most remarkable words should be tracedthrough their successive phases of meaning, and in which moreover thecauses and occasions of these changes should be explained, such a workwould not only abound in entertainment, but would throw more light onthe development of the human mind than all the brainspun systems ofmetaphysics that ever were written”. 

 * * * * *

These words, which thus far are not my own, but the words of a greatlyhonoured friend and teacher, who, though we behold him now no more, still teaches, and will teach, by the wisdom of his writings, and thenobleness of his life (they are words of Archdeacon Hare), I have put inthe forefront of my lectures; seeing that they anticipate in the way ofmasterly sketch all which I shall attempt to accomplish, and indeed drawout the lines of much more, to which I shall not venture so much as toput my hand. They are the more welcome to me, because they encourage meto believe that if, in choosing the English language, its past and itspresent, as the subject of that brief course of lectures which I am todeliver in this place, I have chosen a subject which in many waystranscends my powers, and lies beyond the range of my knowledge, it isyet one in itself of deepest interest, and of fully recognized value. Nor can I refrain from hoping that even with my imperfect handling, itis an argument which will find an answer and an echo in the hearts ofall who hear me; which would have found this at any time; which will doso especially at the present. For these are times which naturally rouseinto liveliest activity all our latent affections for the land of ourbirth. It is one of the compensations, indeed the greatest of all, forthe wastefulness, the woe, the cruel losses of war{1}, that it causesand indeed compels a people to know itself a people; leading each one toesteem and prize most that which he has in common with his fellowcountrymen, and not now any longer those things which separate anddivide him from them. 

{Sidenote: _Love of our own Tongue_}

And the love of our own language, what is it in fact, but the love ofour country expressing itself in one particular direction? If the greatacts of that nation to which we belong are precious to us, if we feelourselves made greater by their greatness, summoned to a nobler life bythe nobleness of Englishmen who have already lived and died, and havebequeathed to us a name which must not by us be made less, what exploitsof theirs can well be nobler, what can more clearly point out theirnative land and ours as having fulfilled a glorious past, as beingdestined for a glorious future, than that they should have acquired forthemselves and for those who come after them a clear, a strong, anharmonious, a noble language? For all this bears witness tocorresponding merits in those that speak it, to clearness of mentalvision, to strength, to harmony, to nobleness in them that havegradually formed and shaped it to be the utterance of their inmost lifeand being. 

To know of this language, the stages which it has gone through, thesources from which its riches have been derived, the gains which it isnow making, the perils which have threatened or are threatening it, thelosses which it has sustained, the capacities which may be yet latent init, waiting to be evoked, the points in which it transcends othertongues, in which it comes short of them, all this may well be theobject of worthy ambition to every one of us. So may we hope to beourselves guardians of its purity, and not corrupters of it; tointroduce, it may be, others into an intelligent knowledge of that, withwhich we shall have ourselves more than a merely superficialacquaintance; to bequeath it to those who come after us not worse thanwe received it ourselves. “Spartam nactus es; hanc exorna”, --thisshould be our motto in respect at once of our country, and of ourcountry’s tongue. 

{Sidenote: _Duty to our own Tongue_}

Nor shall we, I trust, any of us feel this subject to be alien or remotefrom the purposes which have brought us to study within these walls. Itis true that we are mainly occupied here in studying other tongues thanour own. The time we bestow upon it is small as compared with thatbestowed on those others. And yet one of our main purposes in learningthem is that we may better understand this. Nor ought any other todispute with it the first and foremost place in our reverence, ourgratitude, and our love. It has been well and worthily said by anillustrious German scholar: “The care of the national language Iconsider as at all times a sacred trust and a most important privilegeof the higher orders of society. Every man of education should make itthe object of his unceasing concern, to preserve his language pure andentire, to speak it, so far as is in his power, in all its beauty andperfection. .. . A nation whose language becomes rude and barbarous, mustbe on the brink of barbarism in regard to everything else. A nationwhich allows her language to go to ruin, is parting with the last halfof her intellectual independence, and testifies her willingness to ceaseto exist”{2}. 

But this knowledge, like all other knowledge which is worth attaining, is only to be attained at the price of labour and pains. The languagewhich at this day we speak is the result of processes which have beengoing forward for hundreds and for thousands of years. Nay more, it isnot too much to affirm that processes modifying the English which at thepresent day we write and speak have been at work from the first day thatman, being gifted with discourse of reason, projected his thought fromout himself, and embodied and contemplated it in his word. Which thingsbeing so, if we would understand this language as it now is, we mustknow something of it as it has been; we must be able to measure, howeverroughly, the forces, which have been at work upon it, moulding andshaping it into the forms which it now wears. 

At the same time various prudential considerations must determine for ushow far up we will endeavour to trace the course of its history. Thereare those who may seek to trace our language to the forests of Germanyand Scandinavia, to investigate its relation to all the kindred tonguesthat were there spoken; again, to follow it up, till it and they areseen descending from an elder stock; nor once to pause, till they haveassigned to it its place not merely in respect of that small group oflanguages which are immediately round it, but in respect of all thetongues and languages of the earth. I can imagine few studies of a moresurpassing interest than this. Others, however, must be content withseeking such insight into their native language as may be within thereach of all who, unable to make this the subject of especial research, possessing neither that vast compass of knowledge, nor that immenseapparatus of books, not being at liberty to dedicate to it thatdevotion almost of a life which, followed out to the full, it wouldrequire, have yet an intelligent interest in their mother tongue, anddesire to learn as much of its growth and history and construction asmay be reasonably deemed within their reach. To such as these I shallsuppose myself to be speaking. It would be a piece of great presumptionin me to undertake to speak to any other, or to assume any other groundthan this for myself. 

{Sidenote: _The Past explains the Present_}

I know there are some, who, when they are invited to enter at all uponthe past history of the language, are inclined to make answer--“To whatend such studies to us? Why cannot we leave them to a few antiquariesand grammarians? Sufficient to us to know the laws of our presentEnglish, to obtain an accurate acquaintance with the language as we nowfind it, without concerning ourselves with the phases through which ithas previously past”. This may sound plausible enough; and I can quiteunderstand a real lover of his native tongue, who has not bestowed muchthought upon the subject, arguing in this manner. And yet indeed suchargument proceeds altogether on a mistake. One sufficient reason why weshould occupy ourselves with the past of our language is, because thepresent is only intelligible in the light of the past, often of a veryremote past indeed. There are anomalies out of number now existing inour language, which the pure logic of grammar is quite incapable ofexplaining; which nothing but a knowledge of its historic evolutions, and of the disturbing forces which have made themselves felt therein, will ever enable us to understand. Even as, again, unless we possesssome knowledge of the past, it is impossible that we can ourselvesadvance a single step in the unfolding of the latent capabilities of thelanguage, without the danger of committing some barbarous violation ofits very primary laws. 

 * * * * *

The plan which I have laid down for myself, and to which I shall adhere, in this lecture and in those which will succeed it, is as follows. Inthis my first lecture I will ask you to consider the language as now itis, to decompose with me some specimens of it, to prove by these means, of what elements it is compact, and what functions in it these elementsor component parts severally fulfil; nor shall I leave this subjectwithout asking you to admire the happy marriage in our tongue of thelanguages of the north and south, an advantage which it alone among allthe languages of Europe enjoys. Having thus presented to ourselves thebody which we wish to submit to scrutiny, and having become acquainted, however slightly, with its composition, I shall invite you to go backwith me, and trace some of the leading changes to which in time past ithas been submitted, and through which it has arrived at what it now is;and these changes I shall contemplate under four aspects, dedicating alecture to each;--changes which have resulted from the birth of new, orthe reception of foreign, words;--changes consequent on the rejection orextinction of words or powers once possessed by the language;--changesthrough the altered meaning of words;--and lastly, as not unworthy ofour attention, but often growing out of very deep roots, changes in theorthography of words. 

{Sidenote: _Alterations unobserved_}

I shall everywhere seek to bring the subject down to our present time, and not merely call your attention to the changes which have been, butto those also which are now being, effected. I shall not account thefact that some are going on, so to speak, before our own eyes, asufficient ground to excuse me from noticing them, but rather anadditional reason for doing this. For indeed changes which are actuallyproceeding in our own time, and which we are ourselves helping to bringabout, are the very ones which we are most likely to fail in observing. There is so much to hide the nature of them, and indeed their veryexistence, that, except it may be by a very few, they will often passwholly unobserved. Loud and sudden revolutions attract and compelnotice; but silent and gradual, although with issues far vaster instore, run their course, and it is only when their cycle is completed ornearly so, that men perceive what mighty transforming forces have beenat work unnoticed in the very midst of themselves. 

Thus, to apply what I have just affirmed to this matter of language--howfew aged persons, let them retain the fullest possession of theirfaculties, are conscious of any difference between the spoken languageof their early youth, and that of their old age; that words and ways ofusing words are obsolete now, which were usual then; that many words arecurrent now, which had no existence at that time. And yet it is certainthat so it must be. A man may fairly be supposed to remember clearly andwell for sixty years back; and it needs less than five of these sixtiesto bring us to the period of Spenser, and not more than eight to set usin the time of Chaucer and Wiclif. How great a change, what vastmodifications in our language, within eight memories. No one, contemplating this whole term, will deny the immensity of the change. For all this, we may be tolerably sure that, had it been possible tointerrogate a series of eight persons, such as together had filled upthis time, intelligent men, but men whose attention had not beenespecially roused to this subject, each in his turn would have deniedthat there had been any change worth speaking of, perhaps any change atall, during his lifetime. And yet, having regard to the multitude ofwords which have fallen into disuse during these four or five hundredyears, we are sure that there must have been some lives in this chainwhich saw those words in use at their commencement, and out of usebefore their close. And so too, of the multitude of words which havesprung up in this period, some, nay, a vast number, must have come intobeing within the limits of each of these lives. It cannot then besuperfluous to direct attention to that which is actually going forwardin our language. It is indeed that, which of all is most likely to beunobserved by us. 

 * * * * *

With these preliminary remarks I proceed at once to the special subjectof my lecture of to-day. And first, starting from the recognized factthat the English is not a simple but a composite language, made up ofseveral elements, as are the people who speak it, I would suggest to youthe profit and instruction which we might derive from seeking toresolve it into its component parts--from taking, that is, any passageof an English author, distributing the words of which it is made upaccording to the languages from which they are drawn; estimating therelative numbers and proportions, which these languages have severallylent us; as well as the character of the words which they have throwninto the common stock of our tongue. 

{Sidenote: _Proportions in English_}

Thus, suppose the English language to be divided into a hundred parts;of these, to make a rough distribution, sixty would be Saxon; thirtywould be Latin (including of course the Latin which has come to usthrough the French); five would be Greek. We should thus have assignedninety-five parts, leaving the other five, perhaps too large a residue, to be divided among all the other languages from which we have adoptedisolated words{3}. And yet these are not few; from our wide extendedcolonial empire we come in contact with half the world; we have pickedup words in every quarter, and, the English language possessing asingular power of incorporating foreign elements into itself, have notscrupled to make many of these our own{4}. 

{Sidenote: _Oriental Words_}

Thus we have a certain number of Hebrew words, mostly, if not entirely, belonging to religious matters, as ‘amen’, ‘cabala’, ‘cherub’, ‘ephod’, ‘gehenna’, ‘hallelujah’, ‘hosanna’, ‘jubilee’, ‘leviathan’, ‘manna’, ‘Messiah’, ‘sabbath’, ‘Satan’, ‘seraph’, ‘shibboleth’, ‘talmud’. TheArabic words in our language are more numerous; we have severalarithmetical and astronomical terms, as ‘algebra’, ‘almanack’, ‘azimuth’, ‘cypher’{5}, ‘nadir’, ‘talisman’, ‘zenith’, ‘zero’; andchemical, for the Arabs were the chemists, no less than the astronomersand arithmeticians of the middle ages; as ‘alcohol’, ‘alembic’, ‘alkali’, ‘elixir’. Add to these the names of animals, plants, fruits, or articles of merchandize first introduced by them to the notice ofWestern Europe; as ‘amber’, ‘artichoke’, ‘barragan’, ‘camphor’, ‘coffee’, ‘cotton’, ‘crimson’, ‘gazelle’, ‘giraffe’, ‘jar’, ‘jasmin’, ‘lake’ (lacca), ‘lemon’, ‘lime’, ‘lute’, ‘mattress’, ‘mummy’, ‘saffron’, ‘sherbet’, ‘shrub’, ‘sofa’, ‘sugar’, ‘syrup’, ‘tamarind’; and somefurther terms, ‘admiral’, ‘amulet’, ‘arsenal’, ‘assassin’, ‘barbican’, ‘caliph’, ‘caffre’, ‘carat’, ‘divan’, ‘dragoman’{6}, ‘emir’, ‘fakir’, ‘firman’, ‘harem’, ‘hazard’, ‘houri’, ‘magazine’, ‘mamaluke’, ‘minaret’, ‘monsoon’, ‘mosque’, ‘nabob’, ‘razzia’, ‘sahara’, ‘simoom’, ‘sirocco’, ‘sultan’, ‘tarif’, ‘vizier’; and I believe we shall havenearly completed the list. We have moreover a few Persian words, as‘azure’, ‘bazaar’, ‘bezoar’, ‘caravan’, ‘caravanserai’, ‘chess’, ‘dervish’, ‘lilac’, ‘orange’, ‘saraband’, ‘taffeta’, ‘tambour’, ‘turban’; this last appearing in strange forms at its first introductioninto the language, thus ‘tolibant’ (Puttenham), ‘tulipant’ (Herbert’s_Travels_), ‘turribant’ (Spenser), ‘turbat’, ‘turbant’, and at length‘turban’. We have also a few Turkish, such as ‘chouse’, ‘janisary’, ‘odalisque’, ‘sash’, ‘tulip’{7}. Of ‘civet’{8} and ‘scimitar’{9} Ibelieve it can only be asserted that they are Eastern. The following areHindostanee, ‘avatar’, ‘bungalow’, ‘calico’, ‘chintz’, ‘cowrie’, ‘lac’, ‘muslin’, ‘punch’, ‘rupee’, ‘toddy’. ‘Tea’, or ‘tcha’, as it was speltat first, of course is Chinese, so too are ‘junk’ and ‘satin’{10}. 

The New World has given us a certain number of words, Indian andother--‘cacique’ (‘cassique’, in Ralegh’s _Guiana_), ‘canoo’, ‘chocolate’, ‘cocoa’{11}, ‘condor’, ‘hamoc’ (‘hamaca’ in Ralegh), ‘jalap’, ‘lama’, ‘maize’ (Haytian), ‘pampas’, ‘pemmican’, ‘potato’(‘batata’ in our earlier voyagers), ‘raccoon’, ‘sachem’, ‘squaw’, ‘tobacco’, ‘tomahawk’, ‘tomata’ (Mexican), ‘wigwam’. If ‘hurricane’ is aword which Europe originally obtained from the Caribbean islanders{12}, it should of course be included in this list{13}. A certain number ofwords also we have received, one by one, from various languages, whichsometimes have not bestowed on us more than this single one. Thus‘hussar’ is Hungarian; ‘caloyer’, Romaic; ‘mammoth’, of some Siberianlanguage;{14} ‘tattoo’, Polynesian; ‘steppe’, Tartarian; ‘sago’, ‘bamboo’, ‘rattan’, ‘ourang outang’, are all, I believe, Malay words;‘assegai’{15} ‘zebra’, ‘chimpanzee’, ‘fetisch’, belong to differentAfrican dialects; the last, however, having reached Europe through thechannel of the Portuguese{16}. 

{Sidenote: _Italian Words_}

{Sidenote: _Spanish, Dutch and Celtic Words_}

To come nearer home--we have a certain number of Italian words, as‘balcony’, ‘baldachin’, ‘balustrade’, ‘bandit’, ‘bravo’, ‘bust’ (itwas ‘busto’ as first used in English, and therefore from the Italian, not from the French), ‘cameo’, ‘canto’, ‘caricature’, ‘carnival’, ‘cartoon’, ‘charlatan’, ‘concert’, ‘conversazione’, ‘cupola’, ‘ditto’, ‘doge’, ‘domino’{17}, ‘felucca’, ‘fresco’, ‘gazette’, ‘generalissimo’, ‘gondola’, ‘gonfalon’, ‘grotto’, (‘grotta’ is the earliest form inwhich we have it in English), ‘gusto’, ‘harlequin’{18}, ‘imbroglio’, ‘inamorato’, ‘influenza’, ‘lava’, ‘malaria’, ‘manifesto’, ‘masquerade’(‘mascarata’ in Hacket), ‘motto’, ‘nuncio’, ‘opera’, ‘oratorio’, ‘pantaloon’, ‘parapet’, ‘pedantry’, ‘pianoforte’, ‘piazza’, ‘portico’, ‘proviso’, ‘regatta’, ‘ruffian’, ‘scaramouch’, ‘sequin’, ‘seraglio’, ‘sirocco’, ‘sonnet’, ‘stanza’, ‘stiletto’, ‘stucco’, ‘studio’, ‘terra-cotta’, ‘umbrella’, ‘virtuoso’, ‘vista’, ‘volcano’, ‘zany’. ‘Becco’, and ‘cornuto’, ‘fantastico’, ‘magnifico’, ‘impress’ (thearmorial device upon shields, and appearing constantly in its Italianform ‘impresa’), ‘saltimbanco’ (=mountebank), all once common enough, are now obsolete. Sylvester uses often ‘farfalla’ for butterfly, but, as far as I know, this use is peculiar to him. If these are at all thewhole number of our Italian words, and I cannot call to mind anyother, the Spanish in the language are nearly as numerous; nor indeedwould it be wonderful if they were more so; our points of contact withSpain, friendly and hostile, have been much more real than with Italy. Thus we have from the Spanish ‘albino’, ‘alligator’ (el lagarto), ‘alcove’{19}, ‘armada’, ‘armadillo’, ‘barricade’, ‘bastinado’, ‘bravado’, ‘caiman’, ‘cambist’, ‘camisado’, ‘carbonado’, ‘cargo’, ‘cigar’, ‘cochineal’, ‘Creole’, ‘desperado’, ‘don’, ‘duenna’, ‘eldorado’, ‘embargo’, ‘flotilla’, ‘gala’, ‘grandee’, ‘grenade’, ‘guerilla’, ‘hooker’{20}, ‘infanta’, ‘jennet’, ‘junto’, ‘merino’, ‘mosquito’, ‘mulatto’, ‘negro’, ‘olio’, ‘ombre’, ‘palaver’, ‘parade’, ‘parasol’, ‘parroquet’, ‘peccadillo’, ‘picaroon’, ‘platina’, ‘poncho’, ‘punctilio’, (for a long time spelt ‘puntillo’, in English books), ‘quinine’, ‘reformado’, ‘savannah’, ‘serenade’, ‘sherry’, ‘stampede’, ‘stoccado’, ‘strappado’, ‘tornado’, ‘vanilla’, ‘verandah’. ‘Buffalo’also is Spanish; ‘buff’ or ‘buffle’ being the proper English word;‘caprice’ too we probably obtained rather from Spain than Italy, as wefind it written ‘capricho’ by those who used it first. Other Spanishwords, once familiar, are now extinct. ‘Punctilio’ lives on, but not‘punto’, which occurs in Bacon. ‘Privado’, signifying a prince’sfavourite, one admitted to his _privacy_ (no uncommon word in JeremyTaylor and Fuller), has quite disappeared; so too has ‘quirpo’(cuerpo), the name given to a jacket fitting close to the _body_;‘quellio’ (cuello), a ruff or _neck_-collar; and ‘matachin’, the titleof a sword-dance; these are all frequent in our early dramatists; and‘flota’ was the constant name of the treasure-fleet from the Indies. ‘Intermess’ is employed by Evelyn, and is the Spanish ‘entremes’, though not recognized as such in our dictionaries. ‘Mandarin’ and‘marmalade’ are our only Portuguese words I can call to mind. A goodmany of our sea-terms are Dutch, as ‘sloop’, ‘schooner’, ‘yacht’, ‘boom’, ‘skipper’, ‘tafferel’, ‘to smuggle’; ‘to wear’, in the senseof veer, as when we say ‘_to wear_ a ship’; ‘skates’, too, and‘stiver’, are Dutch. Celtic _things_ are for the most part designatedamong us by Celtic words; such as ‘bard’, ‘kilt’, ‘clan’, ‘pibroch’, ‘plaid’, ‘reel’. Nor only such as these, which are all of themcomparatively of modern introduction, but a considerable number, howlarge a number is yet a very unsettled question, of words which at amuch earlier date found admission into our tongue, are derived fromthis quarter. 

Now, of course, I have no right to presume that any among us areequipped with that knowledge of other tongues, which shall enable us todetect of ourselves and at once the nationality of all or most of thewords which we may meet--some of them greatly disguised, and havingundergone manifold transformations in the process of their adoptionamong us; but only that we have such helps at command in the shape ofdictionaries and the like, and so much diligence in their use, as willenable us to discover the quarter from which the words we may encounterhave reached us; and I will confidently say that few studies of thekind will be more fruitful, will suggest more various matter ofreflection, will more lead you into the secrets of the English tongue, than an analysis of a certain number of passages drawn from differentauthors, such as I have just now proposed. For this analysis you willtake some passage of English verse or prose--say the first ten lines of_Paradise Lost_--or the Lord’s Prayer--or the 23rd Psalm; you willdistribute the whole body of words contained in that passage, of coursenot omitting the smallest, according to their nationalities--writing, itmay be, A over every Anglo-Saxon word, L over every Latin, and so onwith the others, if any other should occur in the portion which you havesubmitted to this examination. When this is done, you will count up the_number_ of those which each language contributes; again, you will notethe _character_ of the words derived from each quarter. 

{Sidenote: _Two Shapes of Words_}

Yet here, before I pass further, I would observe in respect of thosewhich come from the Latin, that it will be desirable further to markwhether they are directly from it, and such might be marked L¹, or onlymediately from it, and to us directly from the French, which would beL², or L at second hand--our English word being only in the secondgeneration descended from the Latin, not the child, but the child’schild. There is a rule that holds pretty constantly good, by which youmay determine this point. It is this, --that if a word be directly fromthe Latin, it will not have undergone any alteration or modification inits form and shape, save only in the termination--‘innocentia’ willhave become ‘innocency’, ‘natio’ will have become ‘nation’, ‘firmamentum’ ‘firmament’, but nothing more. On the other hand, if itcomes _through_ the French, it will generally be considerably altered inits passage. It will have undergone a process of lubrication; itssharply defined Latin outline will in good part have departed from it;thus ‘crown’ is from ‘corona’, but though ‘couronne’, and itself adissyllable, ‘coroune’, in our earlier English; ‘treasure’ is from‘thesaurus’, but through ‘trésor’; ‘emperor’ is the Latin ‘imperator’, but it was first ‘empereur’. It will often happen that the substantivehas past through this process, having reached us through theintervention of the French; while we have only felt at a later periodour want of the adjective also, which we have proceeded to borrow directfrom the Latin. Thus, ‘people’ is indeed ‘populus’, but it was ‘peuple’first, while ‘popular’ is a direct transfer of a Latin vocable into ourEnglish glossary. So too ‘enemy’ is ‘inimicus’, but it was firstsoftened in the French, and had its Latin physiognomy to a great degreeobliterated, while ‘inimical’ is Latin throughout; ‘parish’ is‘paroisse’, but ‘parochial’ is ‘parochialis’; ‘chapter’ is ‘chapitre’, but ‘capitular’ is ‘capitularis’. 

{Sidenote: _Doublets_}

Sometimes you will find in English what I may call the double adoptionof a Latin word; which now makes part of our vocabulary in two shapes;‘doppelgängers’ the Germans would call such words{21}. There is firstthe elder word, which the French has given us; but which, before itgave, it had fashioned and moulded, cutting it short, it may be, by asyllable or more, for the French devours letters and syllables; andthere is the later word which we borrowed immediately from the Latin. Iwill mention a few examples; ‘secure’ and ‘sure’, both from ‘securus’, but one directly, the other through the French; ‘fidelity’ and ‘fealty’, both from ‘fidelitas’, but one directly, the other at second-hand;‘species’ and ‘spice’, both from ‘species’, spices being properly only_kinds_ of aromatic drugs; ‘blaspheme’ and ‘blame’, both from‘blasphemare’{22}, but ‘blame’ immediately from ‘blâmer’. Add to these‘granary’ and ‘garner’; ‘captain’ (capitaneus) and ‘chieftain’;‘tradition’ and ‘treason’; ‘abyss’ and ‘abysm’; ‘regal’ and ‘royal’;‘legal’ and ‘loyal’; ‘cadence’ and ‘chance’; ‘balsam’ and ‘balm’;‘hospital’ and ‘hotel’; ‘digit’ and ‘doit’{23}; ‘pagan’ and ‘paynim’;‘captive’ and ‘caitiff’; ‘persecute’ and ‘pursue’; ‘superficies’ and‘surface’; ‘faction’ and ‘fashion’; ‘particle’ and ‘parcel’;‘redemption’ and ‘ransom’; ‘probe’ and ‘prove’; ‘abbreviate’ and‘abridge’; ‘dormitory’ and ‘dortoir’ or ‘dorter’ (this last nowobsolete, but not uncommon in Jeremy Taylor); ‘desiderate’ and ‘desire’;‘fact’ and ‘feat’; ‘major’ and ‘mayor’; ‘radius’ and ‘ray’; ‘pauper’and ‘poor’; ‘potion’ and ‘poison’; ‘ration’ and ‘reason’; ‘oration’ and‘orison’{24}. I have, in the instancing of these named always the Latinform before the French; but the reverse I suppose in every instance isthe order in which the words were adopted by us; we had ‘pursue’ before‘persecute’, ‘spice’ before ‘species’, ‘royalty’ before ‘regality’, andso with the others{25}. 

The explanation of this greater change which the earlier form of theword has undergone, is not far to seek. Words which have been introducedinto a language at an early period, when as yet writing is rare, andbooks are few or none, when therefore orthography is unfixed, or beingpurely phonetic, cannot properly be said to exist at all, such words fora long while live orally on the lips of men, before they are set down inwriting; and out of this fact it is that we shall for the most part findthem reshaped and remoulded by the people who have adopted them, entirely assimilated to _their_ language in form and termination, so asin a little while to be almost or quite indistinguishable from natives. On the other hand a most effectual check to this process, a processsometimes barbarizing and defacing, however it may be the only one whichwill make the newly brought in entirely homogeneous with the old andalready existing, is imposed by the existence of a much written languageand a full formed literature. The foreign word, being once adopted intothese, can no longer undergo a thorough transformation. For the mostpart the utmost which use and familiarity can do with it now, is tocause the gradual dropping of the foreign termination. Yet this too isnot unimportant; it often goes far to making a home for a word, andhindering it from wearing the appearance of a foreigner andstranger{26}. 

{Sidenote: _Analysis of English_}

But to return from this digression--I said just now that you would learnvery much from observing and calculating the proportions in which thewords of one descent and those of another occur in any passage which youanalyse. Thus examine the Lord’s Prayer. It consists of exactly seventywords. You will find that only the following six claim the rights ofLatin citizenship--‘trespasses’, ‘trespass’, ‘temptation’, ‘deliver’, ‘power’, ‘glory’. Nor would it be very difficult to substitute for anyone of these a Saxon word. Thus for ‘trespasses’ might be substituted‘sins’; for ‘deliver’ ‘free’; for ‘power’ ‘might’; for ‘glory’‘brightness’; which would only leave ‘temptation’, about which therecould be the slightest difficulty, and ‘trials’, though we now ascribeto the word a somewhat different sense, would in fact exactly correspondto it. This is but a small percentage, six words in seventy, or lessthan ten in the hundred; and we often light upon a still smallerproportion. Thus take the first three verses of the 23rd Psalm:--“TheLord is my Shepherd; therefore can I lack nothing; He shall feed me in agreen _pasture_, and lead me forth beside the waters of _comfort_; Heshall _convert_ my soul, and bring me forth in the paths ofrighteousness for his Name’s sake”. Here are forty-five words, and onlythe three in italics are Latin; and for every one of these too it wouldbe easy to substitute a word of Saxon origin; little more, that is, thanthe proportion of seven in the hundred; while, still stronger than this, in five verses out of Genesis, containing one hundred and thirty words, there are only five not Saxon, less, that is, than four in the hundred. 

Shall we therefore conclude that these are the proportions in which theAnglo-Saxon and Latin elements of the language stand to one another? Ifthey are so, then my former proposal to express their relations by sixtyand thirty was greatly at fault; and seventy and twenty, or even eightyand ten, would fall short of adequately representing the realpredominance of the Saxon over the Latin element of the language. But itis not so; the Anglo-Saxon words by no means outnumber the Latin in thedegree which the analysis of those passages would seem to imply. It isnot that there are so many more Anglo-Saxon words, but that the wordswhich there are, being words of more primary necessity, do therefore somuch more frequently recur. The proportions which the analysis of the_dictionary_ that is, of the language _at rest_, would furnish, are verydifferent from these which I have just instanced, and which the analysisof _sentences_, or of the language _in motion_, gives. Thus if weexamine the total vocabulary of the English Bible, not more than sixtyper cent. Of the words are native; such are the results which theConcordance gives; but in the actual translation the native words arefrom ninety in some passages to ninety-six in others per cent{27}. 

{Sidenote: _Anglo-Saxon the Base of English_}

The notice of this fact will lead us to some very important conclusionsas to the _character_ of the words which the Saxon and the Latinseverally furnish; and principally to this:--that while the Englishlanguage is thus compact in the main of these two elements, we must notfor all this regard these two as making, one and the other, exactly thesame _kind_ of contributions to it. On the contrary their contributionsare of very different character. The Anglo-Saxon is not so much, as Ihave just called it, one element of the English language, as thefoundation of it, the basis. All its joints, its whole _articulation_, its sinews and its ligaments, the great body of articles, pronouns, conjunctions, prepositions, numerals, auxiliary verbs, all smaller wordswhich serve to knit together and bind the larger into sentences, these, not to speak of the grammatical structure of the language, areexclusively Saxon. The Latin may contribute its tale of bricks, yea, ofgoodly and polished hewn stones, to the spiritual building; but themortar, with all that holds and binds the different parts of ittogether, and constitutes them into a house, is Saxon throughout. Iremember Selden in his _Table Talk_ using another comparison; but to thesame effect: “If you look upon the language spoken in the Saxon time, and the language spoken now, you will find the difference to be just asif a man had a cloak which he wore plain in Queen Elizabeth’s days, andsince, here has put in a piece of red, and there a piece of blue, andhere a piece of green, and there a piece of orange-tawny. We borrowwords from the French, Italian, Latin, as every pedantic man pleases”. 

{Sidenote: _Composite Languages_}

I believe this to be the law which holds good in respect of allcomposite languages. However composite they may be, yet they are only soin regard of their words. There may be a medley in respect of these, some coming from one quarter, some from another; but there is never amixture of grammatical forms and inflections. One or other languageentirely predominates here, and everything has to conform andsubordinate itself to the laws of this ruling and ascendant language. The Anglo-Saxon is the ruling language in our present English. Thuswhile it has thought good to drop its genders, even so the Frenchsubstantives which come among us, must also leave theirs behind them; asin like manner the French verbs must renounce their own conjugations, and adapt themselves to ours{28}. I believe that a remarkable parallelto this might be found in the language of Persia, since the conquest ofthat country by the Arabs. The ancient Persian religion fell with thegovernment, but the language remained totally unaffected by therevolution, in its grammatical structure and character. Arabic vocables, the only exotic words in Persian, are found in numbers varying with theobject and quality, style and taste of the writers, but pages of pureidiomatic Persian may be written without employing a single word fromthe Arabic. 

At the same time the secondary or superinduced language, even while itis quite unable to force any of its forms on the language which receivesits words, may yet compel that to renounce a portion of its own forms, by the impossibility which is practically found to exist of making themfit the new comers; and thus it may exert although not a positive, yet anegative, influence on the grammar of the other tongue. It has been so, as is generally admitted, in the instance of our own. “When the Englishlanguage was inundated by a vast influx of French words, few, if any, French forms were received into its grammar; but the Saxon forms soondropped away, because they did not suit the new roots; and the genius ofthe language, from having to deal with the newly imported words in arude state, was induced to neglect the inflections of the native ones. This for instance led to the introduction of the _s_ as the universaltermination of all plural nouns, which agreed with the usage of theFrench language, and was not alien from that of the Saxon, but wasmerely an extension of the termination of the ancient masculine to otherclasses of nouns”{29}. 

{Sidenote: _The Anglo-Saxon Element_}

If you wish to convince yourselves by actual experience, of the factwhich I just now asserted, namely, that the radical constitution of thelanguage is Saxon, I would say, Try to compose a sentence, let it beonly of ten or a dozen words, and the subject entirely of your choice, employing therein only words which are of a Latin derivation. I ventureto say you will find it impossible, or next to impossible to do it;whichever way you turn, some obstacle will meet you in the face. Andwhile it is thus with the Latin, whole pages might be written, I do notsay in philosophy or theology or upon any abstruser subject, but onfamiliar matters of common everyday life, in which every word should beof Saxon extraction, not one of Latin; and these, pages in which, withthe exercise of a little patience and ingenuity, all appearance ofawkwardness and constraint should be avoided, so that it should neveroccur to the reader, unless otherwise informed, that the writer hadsubmitted himself to this restraint and limitation in the words which heemployed, and was only drawing them from one section of the Englishlanguage. Sir Thomas Browne has given several long paragraphs soconstructed. Take for instance the following, which is only a littlefragment of one of them: “The first and foremost step to all good worksis the dread and fear of the Lord of heaven and earth, which throughthe Holy Ghost enlighteneth the blindness of our sinful hearts to treadthe ways of wisdom, and lead our feet into the land of blessing”{30}. This is not stiffer than the ordinary English of his time. I wouldsuggest to you at your leisure to make these two experiments; you willfind it, I think, exactly as I have here affirmed. 

While thus I bring before you the fact that it would be quite possibleto write English, forgoing altogether the use of the Latin portion ofthe language, I would not have you therefore to conclude that thisportion of the language is of little value, or that we could draw fromthe resources of our Teutonic tongue efficient substitutes for all thewords which it has contributed to our glossary. I am persuaded that wecould not; and, if we could, that it would not be desirable. I mentionthis, because there is sometimes a regret expressed that we have notkept our language more free from the admixture of Latin, a suggestionmade that we should even now endeavour to keep under the Latin elementof it, and as little as possible avail ourselves of it. I remember LordBrougham urging upon the students at Glasgow as a help to writing goodEnglish, that they should do their best to rid their diction oflong-tailed words in ‘osity’ and ‘ation’{31}. He plainly intended toindicate by this phrase all learned Latin words, or words derived fromthe Latin. This exhortation is by no means superfluous; for doubtlessthere were writers of a former age, Samuel Johnson in the last century, Henry More and Sir Thomas Browne in the century preceding, who gaveundue preponderance to the learned, or Latin, portion in our language;and very much of its charm, of its homely strength and beauty, of itsmost popular and truest idioms, would have perished from it, had theysucceeded in persuading others to write as they had written. 

{Sidenote: _Anglo-Saxon Aboriginal_}

But for all this we could _almost_ as ill spare this side of thelanguage as the other. It represents and supplies needs not less realthan the other does. Philosophy and science and the arts of a highcivilization find their utterance in the Latin words of our language, or, if not in the Latin, in the Greek, which for present purposes may begrouped with them. How they should have found utterance in the speech ofrude tribes, which, never having cultivated the things, must needs havebeen without the words which should express those things. Granting toothat, _cœteris paribus_, when a Latin and a Saxon word offer themselvesto our choice, we shall generally do best to employ the Saxon, to speakof ‘happiness’ rather than ‘felicity’, ‘almighty’ rather than‘omnipotent’, a ‘forerunner’ rather than a ‘precursor’, still theselatter must be regarded as much denizens in the language as the former, no alien interlopers, but possessing the rights of citizenship as fullyas the most Saxon word of them all. One part of the language is not tobe favoured at the expense of the other; the Saxon at the cost of theLatin, as little as the Latin at the cost of the Saxon. “Both areindispensable; and speaking generally without stopping to distinguish asto subject, both are _equally_ indispensable. Pathos, in situationswhich are homely, or at all connected with domestic affections, naturally moves by Saxon words. Lyrical emotion of every kind, which (tomerit the name of _lyrical_) must be in the state of flux and reflux, or, generally, of agitation, also requires the Saxon element of ourlanguage. And why? Because the Saxon is the aboriginal element; thebasis and not the superstructure: consequently it comprehends all theideas which are natural to the heart of man and to the elementarysituations of life. And although the Latin often furnishes us withduplicates of these ideas, yet the Saxon, or monosyllabic part, has theadvantage of precedency in our use and knowledge; for it is the languageof the nursery whether for rich or poor, in which great philologicalacademy no toleration is given to words in ‘osity’ or ‘ation’. There istherefore a great advantage, as regards the consecration to ourfeelings, settled by usage and custom upon the Saxon strands in themixed yarn of our native tongue. And universally, this may beremarked--that wherever the passion of a poem is of that sort which_uses_, _presumes_, or _postulates_ the ideas, without seeking to extendthem, Saxon will be the ‘cocoon’ (to speak by the language applied tosilk-worms), which the poem spins for itself. But on the other hand, where the motion of the feeling is _by_ and _through_ the ideas, where(as in religious or meditative poetry--Young’s, for instance, orCowper’s), the pathos creeps and kindles underneath the very tissues ofthe thinking, there the Latin will predominate; and so much so that, whilst the flesh, the blood, and the muscle, will be often almostexclusively Latin, the articulations only, or hinges of connection, willbe the Anglo-Saxon”. 

These words which I have just quoted are De Quincey’s--whom I must needsesteem the greatest living master of our English tongue. And on the samematter Sir Francis Palgrave has expressed himself thus: “Upon thelanguages of Teutonic origin the Latin has exercised great influence, but most energetically on our own. The very early admixture of the_Langue d’Oil_, the never interrupted employment of the French as thelanguage of education, and the nomenclature created by the scientificand literary cultivation of advancing and civilized society, haveRomanized our speech; the warp may be Anglo-Saxon, but the woof is Romanas well as the embroidery, and these foreign materials have so enteredinto the texture, that were they plucked out, the web would be torn torags, unravelled and destroyed”{32}. 

{Sidenote: _The English Bible_}

I do not know where we could find a happier example of the preservationof the golden mean in this matter than in our Authorized Version of theBible. One of the chief among the minor and secondary blessings whichthat Version has conferred on the nation or nations drawing spirituallife from it, --a blessing not small in itself, but only small bycomparison with the infinitely higher blessings whereof it is thevehicle to them, --is the happy wisdom, the instinctive tact, with whichits authors have steered between any futile mischievous attempt toignore the full rights of the Latin part of the language on the oneside, and on the other any burdening of their Version with such amultitude of learned Latin terms as should cause it to forfeit itshomely character, and shut up large portions of it from theunderstanding of plain and unlearned men. There is a remarkableconfession to this effect, to the wisdom, in fact, which guided themfrom above, to the providence that overruled their work, an honourableacknowledgement of the immense superiority in this respect of ourEnglish Version over the Romish, made by one now, unhappily, familiarwith the latter, as once he was with our own. Among those who haverecently abandoned the communion of the English Church one has expresthimself in deeply touching tones of lamentation over all, which inrenouncing our translation, he feels himself to have forgone and lost. These are his words: “Who will not say that the uncommon beauty andmarvellous English of the Protestant Bible is not one of the greatstrongholds of heresy in this country? It lives on the ear, like a musicthat can never be forgotten, like the sound of church bells, which theconvert hardly knows how he can forgo. Its felicities often seem to bealmost things rather than mere words. It is part of the national mind, and the anchor of national seriousness. .. . The memory of the dead passesinto it. The potent traditions of childhood are stereotyped in itsverses. The power of all the griefs and trials of a man is hiddenbeneath its words. It is the representative of his best moments, andall that there has been about him of soft and gentle and pure andpenitent and good speaks to him for ever out of his English Bible. .. . Itis his sacred thing, which doubt has never dimmed, and controversy neversoiled. In the length and breadth of the land there is not a Protestantwith one spark of religiousness about him, whose spiritual biography isnot in his Saxon Bible”{33}. 

{Sidenote: _The Rhemish Bible_}

Such are his touching words; and certainly one has only to compare thisversion of ours with the Rhemish, and the transcendent excellence of ourown reveals itself at once. I am not extolling now its superiorscholarship; its greater freedom from by-ends; as little would I urgethe fact that one translation is from the original Greek, the other fromthe Latin Vulgate, and thus the translation of a translation, oftenreproducing the mistakes of that translation; but, putting aside allconsiderations such as these, I speak only here of the superiority ofthe diction in which the meaning, be it correct or incorrect, isconveyed to English readers. Thus I open the Rhemish version atGalatians v. 19, where the long list of the “works of the flesh”, and ofthe “fruit of the Spirit”, is given. But what could a mere Englishreader make of words such as these--‘impudicity’, ‘ebrieties’, ‘comessations’, ‘longanimity’, all which occur in that passage? whileour Version for ‘ebrieties’ has ‘drunkenness’, for ‘comessations’ has‘revellings’, and so also for ‘longanimity’ ‘longsuffering’. Or set overagainst one another such phrases as these, --in the Rhemish, “theexemplars of the celestials” (Heb. Ix. 23), but in ours, “the patternsof things in the heavens”. Or suppose if, instead of the words _we_ readat Heb. Xiii. 16, namely “To do good and to communicate forget not; forwith such sacrifices God is well pleased”, we read as follows, which arethe words of the Rhemish, “Beneficence and communication do not forget;for with such hosts God is promerited”!--Who does not feel that if ourVersion had been composed in such Latin-English as this, had abounded inwords like ‘odible’, ‘suasible’, ‘exinanite’, ‘contristate’, ‘postulations’, ‘coinquinations’, ‘agnition’, ‘zealatour’, all, withmany more of the same mint, in the Rhemish Version, our loss would havebeen great and enduring, one which would have searched into the wholereligious life of our people, and been felt in the very depths of thenational mind{34}?

There was indeed something still deeper than love of sound and genuineEnglish at work in our Translators, whether they were conscious of it ornot, which hindered them from presenting the Scriptures to theirfellow-countrymen dressed out in such a semi-Latin garb as this. TheReformation, which they were in this translation so mightilystrengthening and confirming, was just a throwing off, on the part ofthe Teutonic nations, of that everlasting pupilage in which Rome wouldhave held them; an assertion at length that they were come to full age, and that not through her, but directly through Christ, they wouldaddress themselves unto God. The use of the Latin language as thelanguage of worship, as the language in which the Scriptures might alonebe read, had been the great badge of servitude, even as the Latin habitsof thought and feeling which it promoted had been the great helps to thecontinuance of this servitude, through long ages. It lay deep then inthe very nature of their cause that the Reformers should develop theSaxon, or essentially national, element in the language; while it wasjust as natural that the Roman Catholic translators, if they musttranslate the Scriptures into English at all, should yet translate theminto such English as should bear the nearest possible resemblance to theLatin Vulgate, which Rome with a very deep wisdom of this world wouldgladly have seen as the only one in the hands of the faithful. 

{Sidenote: _Future of the English Language_}

Let me again, however, recur to the fact that what our Reformers did inthis matter, they did without exaggeration; even as they had shown thesame wise moderation in still higher matters. They gave to the Latinside of the language its rights, though they would not suffer it toencroach upon and usurp those of the Teutonic part of the language. Itwould be difficult not to believe, even if many outward signs said notthe same, that great things are in store for the one language of Europewhich thus serves as connecting link between the North and the South, between the languages spoken by the Teutonic nations of the North and bythe Romance nations of the South; which holds on to and partakes ofboth; which is as a middle term between them{35}. There are who ventureto hope that the English Church, being in like manner double-fronted, looking on the one side toward Rome, being herself truly Catholic, looking on the other towards the Protestant communions, being herselfalso protesting and reforming, may yet in the providence of God have animportant part to play for the reconciling of a divided Christendom. Andif this ever should be so, if, notwithstanding our sins and unworthiness, so blessed a task should be in store for her, it will not be a smallhelp and assistance thereunto, that the language in which her mediationwill be effected is one wherein both parties may claim their own, inwhich neither will feel that it is receiving the adjudication of astranger, of one who must be an alien from its deeper thoughts andhabits, because an alien from its words, but a language in which bothmust recognize very much of that which is deepest and most precious oftheir own. 

{Sidenote: _Jacob Grimm on English_}

Nor is this prerogative which I have just claimed for our English themere dream and fancy of patriotic vanity. The scholar who in our days ismost profoundly acquainted with the great group of the Gothic languagesin Europe, and a devoted lover, if ever there was such, of his nativeGerman, I mean Jacob Grimm, has expressed himself very nearly to thesame effect, and given the palm over all to our English in words whichyou will not grudge to hear quoted, and with which I shall bring thislecture to a close. After ascribing to our language “a veritable powerof expression, such as perhaps never stood at the command of any otherlanguage of men”, he goes on to say, “Its highly spiritual genius, andwonderfully happy development and condition, have been the result of asurprisingly intimate union of the two noblest languages in modernEurope, the Teutonic and the Romance--It is well known in what relationthese two stand to one another in the English tongue; the formersupplying in far larger proportion the material groundwork, the latterthe spiritual conceptions. In truth the English language, which by nomere accident has produced and upborne the greatest and most predominantpoet of modern times, as distinguished from the ancient classical poetry(I can, of course, only mean Shakespeare), may with all right be calleda world-language; and like the English people, appears destinedhereafter to prevail with a sway more extensive even than its presentover all the portions of the globe{36}. For in wealth, good sense, andcloseness of structure no other of the languages at this day spokendeserves to be compared with it--not even our German, which is torn, even as we are torn, and must first rid itself of many defects, beforeit can enter boldly into the lists, as a competitor with theEnglish”{37}. 

{FOOTNOTES}

{1} These lectures were first delivered during the Russian War. [See De Quincey to the same effect, _Works_, 1862, vol. Iv. Pp. Vii, 286. ]

{2} F. Schlegel, _History of Literature, Lecture 10_. 

{3} [If dictionary words be counted as apart from the spoken language, the proportion of the component elements of English is very different. M. Müller quotes a calculation which makes the classical element about 68 per cent, the Teutonic about 30, and miscellaneous about 2 (_Science of Language_, 8th ed. I, 89). See Skeat, _Principles of Eng. Etymology_, ii, 15 _seq. _, and _infra_ p. 25. ]

{4} [What here follows should be compared with the fuller and more accurate lists of words borrowed from foreign sources given by Prof. Skeat in his larger _Etymolog. Dictionary_, 759 _seq. _; and more completely in his _Principles of Eng. Etymology_, 2nd ser. 294-440. ]

{5} Yet see J. Grimm, _Deutsche Mythologie_, p. 985. 

{6} The word hardly deserves to be called English, yet in Pope’s time it had made some progress toward naturalization. Of a real or pretended polyglottist, who might thus have served as an universal _interpreter_, he says:

 “Pity you was not _druggerman_ at Babel”. 

 ‘Truckman’, or more commonly ‘truchman’, familiar to all readers of our early literature, is only another form of this, one which probably has come to us through ‘turcimanno’, the Italian form of the word. [See my _Folk and their Word-Lore_, p. 19]. 

{7} [‘Tulip’, at first spelt _tulipan_, is really the same word as _turban_ (_tulipant_ just above), which the flower was thought to resemble (Persian _dulband_). ]

{8} [Ultimately from the Arabic _zabād_ (N. E. D. ). ]

{9} [Apparently to be traced to the Persian _shim-shír_ or _sham-shír_ (“lion’s-nail”), a crooked sword (Skeat). ]

{10} [Rather through the French from low Latin _satinus_ or _setinus_, a fabric made of _seta_, silk. But Yule holds that it may be from Zayton or Zaitun (in Fokien, China), an important emporium of Western trade in the Middle Ages (_Hobson-Jobson_, 602). ]

{11} [Probably intended for _cacao_, which is Mexican. _Cocoa_, the nut, is from Portuguese _coco_. ]

{12} See Washington Irving, _Life and Voyages of Columbus_, b. 8, c. 9. 

{13} [It is from the Haytian _Hurakan_, the storm-god (_The Folk and their Word-Lore_, 90). ]

{14} [From old Russian _mammot_, whence modern Russian _mamant_. ]

{15} [‘Assagai’ is from the Arabic _az-_ (_al-_) _zaghāyah_, ‘the _zagāyah_’, a Berber name for a lance (N. E. D. ). ]

{16} [This puts the cart before the horse. ‘Fetish’ is really the Portuguese word _feitiço_, artificial, made-up, factitious (Latin _factitius_), applied to African amulets or idols. ]

{17} [‘Domino’ is Spanish rather than Italian (Skeat, _Principles_, ii, 312). ]

{18} [‘Harlequin’ appears to be an older word in French than in Italian (_ibid. _). ]

{19} On the question whether this ought to have been included among the Arabic, see Diez, _Wörterbuch d. Roman. Sprachen_, p. 10. 

{20} Not in our dictionaries; but a kind of coasting vessel well known to seafaring men, the Spanish ‘urca’; thus in Oldys’ _Life of Raleigh_: “Their galleons, galleasses, gallies, _urcas_, and zabras were miserably shattered”. 

{21} [A valuable list of such doublets is given by Prof. Skeat in his large _Etymological Dictionary_, p. 772 _seq. _]

{22} This particular instance of double adoption, of ‘dimorphism’ as Latham calls it, ‘dittology’ as Heyse, recurs in Italian, ‘bestemmiare’ and ‘biasimare’; and in Spanish, ‘blasfemar’ and ‘lastimar’. 

{23} [‘Doit’, a small coin (Dutch _duit_) has no relation to, ‘digit’. Was the author thinking of old French _doit_, a finger, from Latin _digitus_?]

{24} Somewhat different from this, yet itself also curious, is the passing of an Anglo-Saxon word in two different forms into English, and continuing in both; thus ‘desk’ and ‘dish’, both the Anglo-Saxon ‘disc’ [a loan-word from Latin _discus_, Greek _diskos_] the German ‘tisch’; ‘beech’ and ‘book’, both the Anglo-Saxon ‘boc’, our first books being _beechen_ tablets (see Grimm, _Wörterbuch_, s. Vv. ‘Buch’, ‘Buche’); ‘girdle’ and ‘kirtle’; both of them corresponding to the German ‘gürtel’; already in Anglo-Saxon a double spelling, ‘gyrdel’, ‘cyrtel’, had prepared for the double words; so too ‘haunch’ and ‘hinge’; ‘lady’ and ‘lofty’ [these last three instances are not doublets at all, being quite unrelated; see Skeat, s. Vv. ]; ‘shirt’, and ‘skirt’; ‘black’ and ‘bleak’; ‘pond’ and ‘pound’; ‘deck’ and ‘thatch’; ‘deal’ and ‘dole’; ‘weald’ and ‘wood’†; ‘dew’ and ‘thaw’†; ‘wayward’ and ‘awkward’†; ‘dune’ and ‘down’; ‘hood’ and ‘hat’†; ‘ghost’ and ‘gust’†; ‘evil’ and ‘ill’†; ‘mouth’ and ‘moth’†; ‘hedge’ and ‘hay’. 

 [All these suggested doublets which I have obelized must be dismissed as untenable. ]

{25} We have in the same way double adoptions from the Greek, one direct, at least as regards the forms; one modified by its passage through some other language; thus, ‘adamant’ and ‘diamond’; ‘monastery’ and ‘minster’; ‘scandal’ and ‘slander’; ‘theriac’ and ‘treacle’; ‘asphodel’ and ‘daffodil’; ‘presbyter’ and ‘priest’. 

{26} The French itself has also a double adoption, or as perhaps we should more accurately call it there, a double formation, from the Latin, and such as quite bears out what has been said above: one going far back in the history of the language, the other belonging to a later and more literary period; on which subject there are some admirable remarks by Génin, _Récréations Philologiques_, vol. I. Pp. 162-66; and see Fuchs, _Die Roman. Sprachen_, p. 125. Thus from ‘separare’ is derived ‘sevrer’, to separate the child from its mother’s breast, to wean, but also ‘séparer’, without this special sense; from ‘pastor’, ‘pâtre’, a shepherd in the literal, and ‘pasteur’ the same in a tropical, sense; from ‘catena’, ‘chaîne’ and ‘cadène’; from ‘fragilis’, ‘frêle’ and ‘fragile’; from ‘pensare’, ‘peser’ and ‘penser’; from ‘gehenna’, ‘gêne’ and ‘géhenne’; from ‘captivus’, ‘chétif’ and ‘captif’; from ‘nativus’, ‘naïf’ and ‘natif’; from ‘designare’, ‘dessiner’ and ‘designer’; from ‘decimare’, ‘dîmer’ and ‘décimer’; from ‘consumere’, ‘consommer’ and ‘consumer’; from ‘simulare’, ‘sembler’ and ‘simuler’; from the low Latin, ‘disjejunare’, ‘dîner’ and ‘déjeûner’; from ‘acceptare’, ‘acheter’ and ‘accepter’; from ‘homo’, ‘on’ and ‘homme’; from ‘paganus’, ‘payen’ and ‘paysan’ [the latter from ‘pagensis’]; from ‘obedientia’, ‘obéissance’ and ‘obédience’; from ‘strictus’, ‘étroit’ and ‘strict’; from ‘sacramentum’, ‘serment’ and ‘sacrement’; from ‘ministerium’, ‘métier’ and ‘ministère’; from ‘parabola’, ‘parole’ and ‘parabole’; from ‘peregrinus’, ‘pélerin’ and ‘pérégrin’; from ‘factio’, ‘façon’ and ‘faction’, and it has now adopted ‘factio’ in a third shape, that is, in our English ‘fashion’; from ‘pietas’, ‘pitié’ and ‘piété’; from ‘capitulum’, ‘chapitre’ and ‘capitule’, a botanical term. So, too, in Italian, ‘manco’, maimed, and ‘monco’, maimed _of a hand_; ‘rifutáre’, to refute, and ‘rifiutáre’, to refuse; ‘dama’ and ‘donna’, both forms of ‘domina’. 

{27} See Marsh, _Manual of the English Language_, Engl. Ed. P. 88 _seq. _

{28} W. Schlegel (_Indische Bibliothek_, vol. I. P. 284): Coeunt quidem paullatim in novum corpus peregrina vocabula, sed grammatica linguarum, unde petitæ sunt, ratio perit. 

{29} J. Grimm, quoted in _The Philological Museum_ vol. I. P. 667. 

{30} _Works_, vol. Iv. P. 202. 

{31} [These words are taken from the ‘Whistlecraft’ of John Hookham Frere:--

 “Don’t confound the language of the nation With long-tail’d words in _osity_ and _ation_”. 

 (_Works_, 1872, vol. 1, p. 206). ]

{32} _History of Normandy and England_, vol. I, p. 78. 

{33} [F. W. Faber, ] _Dublin Review_, June, 1853. 

{34} There is more on this matter in my book _On the Authorized Version of the New Testament_, pp. 33-35. 

{35} See a paper _On the Probable Future Position of the English Language_, by T. Watts, Esq. , in the _Proceedings of the Philological Society_, vol. Iv, p. 207. 

{36} A little more than two centuries ago a poet, himself abundantly deserving the title of ‘well-languaged’; which a cotemporary or near successor gave him, ventured in some remarkable lines timidly to anticipate this. Speaking of his native tongue, which he himself wrote with such vigour and purity, though wanting in the fiery impulses which go to the making of a first-rate poet, Daniel exclaims:--

 “And who, in time, knows whither we may vent The treasure of our tongue, to what strange shores This gain of our best glory shall be sent, To enrich unknowing nations with our stores? What worlds in the yet unformèd Occident May come refined with the accents that are ours? Or who can tell for what great work in hand The greatness of our style is now ordained? What powers it shall bring in, what spirits command, What thoughts let out, what humours keep restrained, What mischief it may powerfully withstand, And what fair ends may thereby be attained”?

{37} _Ueber den Ursprung der Sprache_, Berlin, 1832, p. 5. 

II

GAINS OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE

It is not for nothing that we speak of some languages as _living_, ofothers as _dead_. All spoken languages may be ranged in the first class;for as men will never consent to use a language without more or lessmodifying it in their use, will never so far forgo their own activity asto leave it exactly where they found it, it will therefore, so long asit is thus the utterance of human thought and feeling, inevitably showitself alive by many infallible proofs, by motion, growth, acquisition, loss, progress, and decay. A living language therefore is one whichabundantly deserves this name; for it is one in which, spoken as it isby living men, a _vital_ formative energy is still at work. It is onewhich is in course of actual evolution, which, if the life that animatesit be a healthy one, is appropriating and assimilating to itself what itanywhere finds congenial to its own life, multiplying its resources, increasing its wealth; while at the same time it is casting off uselessand cumbersome forms, dismissing from its vocabulary words of which itfinds no use, rejecting from itself by a re-active energy the foreignand heterogeneous, which may for a while have been forced upon it. Iwould not assert that in the process of all this it does not makemistakes; in the desire to simplify it may let go distinctions whichwere not useless, and which it would have been better to retain; theacquisitions which it makes are very far from being all gains; itsometimes rejects words as worthless, or suffers words to die out, whichwere most worthy to have lived. So far as it does this its life is notperfectly healthy; there are here signs, however remote, ofdisorganization, decay, and ultimate death; but still it lives, and eventhese misgrowths and malformations, the rejection of this good, thetaking up into itself of that ill, all these errors are themselves theutterances and evidences of life. A dead language is the contrary of allthis. It is dead, because books, and not now any generation of livingmen, are the guardians of it, and what they guard, they guard withoutchange. Its course has been completely run, and it is now equallyincapable of gaining and of losing. We may come to know it better; butin itself it is not, and never can be, other than it was when it ceasedfrom the lips of men. 

{Sidenote: _English a Living Language_}

Our own is, of course, a living language still. It is therefore gainingand losing. It is a tree in which the vital sap is circulating yet, ascending from the roots into the branches; and as this works, newleaves are continually being put forth by it, old are dying and droppingaway. I propose for the subject of my present lecture to consider someof the evidences of this life at work in it still. As I took for thesubject of my first lecture the actual proportions in which the severalelements of our composite English are now found in it, and the servicewhich they were severally called on to perform, so I shall consider inthis the _sources_ from which the English language has enriched itsvocabulary, the _periods_ at which it has made the chief additions tothis, the _character_ of the additions which at different periods it hasmade, and the _motives_ which induced it to seek them. 

I had occasion to mention in that lecture and indeed I dwelt with someemphasis on the fact, that the core, the radical constitution of ourlanguage, is Anglo-Saxon; so that, composite or mingled as it must befreely allowed to be, it is only such in respect to words, not inrespect of construction, inflexions, or generally its grammatical forms. These are all of one piece; and whatever of new has come in has beencompelled to conform itself to these. The framework is English; only apart of the filling in is otherwise; and of this filling in, of theseits comparatively more recent accessions, I now propose to speak. 

{Sidenote: _The Norman Conquest_}

The first great augmentation by foreign words of our Saxon vocabulary, setting aside those which the Danes brought us, was a consequence, although not an immediate one, of the battle of Hastings, and of theNorman domination which Duke William’s victory established in our land. And here let me say in respect of that victory, in contradiction to thesentimental regrets of Thierry and others, and with the fullestacknowledgement of the immediate miseries which it entailed on the Saxonrace, that it was really the making of England; a judgment, it is true, but a judgment and mercy in one. God never showed more plainly that Hehad great things in store for the people which should occupy thisEnglish soil, than when He brought hither that aspiring Norman race. Atthe same time the actual interpenetration of our Anglo-Saxon with anylarge amount of French words did not find place till very considerablylater than this event, however it was a consequence of it. Some Frenchwords we find very soon after; but in the main the two streams oflanguage continued for a long while separate and apart, even as the twonations remained aloof, a conquering and a conquered, and neitherforgetting the fact. 

Time however softened the mutual antipathies. The Norman, after a whileshut out from France, began more and more to feel that England was hishome and sphere. The Saxon, recovering little by little from the extremedepression which had ensued on his defeat, became every day a moreimportant element of the new English nation which was gradually formingfrom the coalition of the two races. His language partook of hiselevation. It was no longer the badge of inferiority. French was nolonger the only language in which a gentleman could speak, or a poetsing. At the same time the Saxon, now passing into the English language, required a vast addition to its vocabulary, if it were to serve all theneeds of those who were willing to employ it now. How much was there ofhigh culture, how many of the arts of life, of its refined pleasures, which had been strange to Saxon men, and had therefore found noutterance in Saxon words. All this it was sought to supply from theFrench. 

We shall not err, I think, if we assume the great period of theincoming of French words into the English language to have been when theNorman nobility were exchanging their own language for the English; andI should be disposed with Tyrwhitt to believe that there is muchexaggeration in attributing the large influx of these into English toone man’s influence, namely to Chaucer’s{38}. Doubtless he did much; hefell in with and furthered a tendency which already prevailed. But tosuppose that the majority of French vocables which he employed in hispoems had never been employed before, had been hitherto unfamiliar toEnglish ears, is to suppose that his poems must have presented to hiscontemporaries an absurd patchwork of two languages, and leaves itimpossible to explain how he should at once have become the popular poetof our nation. 

{Sidenote: _Influence of Chaucer_}

That Chaucer largely developed the language in this direction is indeedplain. We have only to compare his English with that of another greatmaster of the tongue, his contemporary Wiclif, to perceive how much morehis diction is saturated with French words than is that of the Reformer. We may note too that many which he and others employed, and as it wereproposed for admission, were not finally allowed and received; so thatno doubt they went beyond the needs of the language, and were here inexcess{39}. At the same time this can be regarded as no condemnation oftheir attempt. It was only by actual experience that it could be provedwhether the language wanted those words or not, whether it could absorbthem into itself, and assimilate them with all that it already was andhad; or did not require, and would therefore in due time reject and putthem away. And what happened then will happen in every attempt totransplant on a large scale the words of one language into another. Somewill take root; others will not, but after a longer or briefer periodwill wither and die. Thus I observe in Chaucer such French words asthese, ‘misericorde’, ‘malure’ (malheur), ‘penible’, ‘ayel’ (aieul), ‘tas’, ‘gipon’, ‘pierrie’ (precious stones); none of which, and Wiclif’s‘creansur’ (2 Kings iv. 1) as little, have permanently won a place inour tongue. For a long time ‘mel’, used often by Sylvester, struggledhard for a place in the language side by side with honey; ‘roy’ side byside with king; this last quite obtained one in Scotch. It is curious tomark some of these French adoptions keeping their ground to acomparatively late day, and yet finally extruded: seeming to have takenfirm root, they have yet withered away in the end. Thus it has been, forexample, with ‘egal’ (Puttenham); with ‘ouvert’, ‘mot’, ‘ecurie’, ‘baston’, ‘gite’ (Holland); with ‘rivage’, ‘jouissance’, ‘noblesse’, ‘tort’ (=wrong), ‘accoil’ (accuellir), ‘sell’ (=saddle), all occurringin Spenser; with ‘to serr’ (serrer), ‘vive’, ‘reglement’, used all byBacon; and so with ‘esperance’, ‘orgillous’ (orgueilleux), ‘rondeur’, ‘scrimer’ (=fencer), all in Shakespeare; with ‘amort’ (this also inShakespeare){40}, and ‘avie’ (Holland). ‘Maugre’, ‘congie’, ‘devoir’, ‘dimes’, ‘sans’, and ‘bruit’, used often in our Bible, were Englishonce{41}; when we employ them now, it is with the sense that we areusing foreign words. The same is true of ‘dulce’, ‘aigredoulce’(=soursweet), of ‘mur’ for wall, of ‘baine’ for bath, of the verb ‘tocass’ (all in Holland), of ‘volupty’ (Sir Thomas Elyot), ‘volunty’(Evelyn), ‘medisance’ (Montagu), ‘petit’ (South), ‘aveugle’, ‘colline’(both in _State Papers_), and ‘eloign’ (Hacket){42}. 

We have seen when the great influx of French words took place--that is, from the time of the Conquest, although scantily and feebly at thefirst, to that of Chaucer. But with him our literature and language hadmade a burst, which they were not able to maintain. He has by Wartonbeen well compared to some warm bright day in the very early spring, which seems to say that the winter is over and gone; but its promise isdeceitful; the full bursting and blossoming of the springtime are yetfar off. That struggle with France which began so gloriously, but endedso disastrously, even with the loss of our whole ill-won dominion there, the savagery of our wars of the Roses, wars which were a legacybequeathed to us by that unrighteous conquest, leave a huge gap in ourliterary history, nearly a century during which very little was done forthe cultivation of our native tongue, during which it could have madefew important accessions to its wealth. 

{Sidenote: _Latin Importation_}

The period however is notable as being that during which for the firsttime we received a large accession of Latin words. There was indeedalready a small settlement of these, for the most part ecclesiastical, which had long since found their home in the bosom of the Anglo-Saxonitself, and had been entirely incorporated into it. The fact that we hadreceived our Christianity from Rome, and that Latin was the constantlanguage of the Church, sufficiently explains the incoming of these. Such were ‘monk’, ‘bishop’ (I put them in their present shapes, and donot concern myself whether they were originally Greek or no; theyreached _us_ as Latin); ‘provost’, ‘minster’, ‘cloister’, ‘candle’, ‘psalter’, ‘mass’, and the names of certain foreign animals, as‘camel’, or plants or other productions, as ‘pepper’, ‘fig’; which areall, with slightly different orthography, Anglo-Saxon words. These, however, were entirely exceptional, and stood to the main body of thelanguage not as the Romance element of it does now to the Gothic, onepower over against another, but as the Spanish or Italian or Arabicwords in it now stand to the whole present body of the language--andcould not be affirmed to affect it more. 

So soon however as French words were imported largely, as I have justobserved, into the language, and were found to coalesce kindly with thenative growths, this very speedily suggested, as indeed it alonerendered possible, the going straight to the Latin, and drawing directlyfrom it; and thus in the hundred years which followed Chaucer a largeamount of Latin found its way, if not into our speech, yet at all eventsinto our books--words which were not brought _through_ the French, forthey are not, and have not at any time been, French, but yet words whichwould never have been introduced into English, if their way had not beenprepared, if the French already domesticated among us had not bridgedover, as it were, the gulf, that would have otherwise been too widebetween them and the Saxon vocables of our tongue. 

In this period, a period of great depression of the national spirit, wemay trace the attempt at a pedantic latinization of English quite asclearly at work as at later periods, subsequent to the revival oflearning. It was now that a crop of such words as ‘facundious’, ‘tenebrous’, ‘solacious’, ‘pulcritude’, ‘consuetude’ (all these occur inHawes), with many more, long since rejected by the language, sprung up;while other words, good in themselves, and which have been sinceallowed, were yet employed in numbers quite out of proportion with theSaxon vocables with which they were mingled, and which they altogetherovertopped and shadowed. Chaucer’s hearty English feeling, his thoroughsympathy with the people, the fact that, scholar as he was, he was yetthe poet not of books but of life, and drew his best inspiration fromlife, all this had kept him, in the main, clear of this fault. But inothers it is very manifest. Thus I must esteem the diction of Lydgate, Hawes, and the other versifiers who filled up the period between Chaucerand Surrey, immensely inferior to Chaucer’s; being all stuck over withlong and often ill-selected Latin words. The worst offenders in thisline, as Campbell himself admits, were the Scotch poets of the fifteenthcentury. “The prevailing fault”, he says, “of English diction, in thefifteenth century, is redundant ornament, and an affectation ofanglicising Latin words. In this pedantry and use of “aureate terms” theScottish versifiers went even beyond their brethren of the south. .. . When they meant to be eloquent, they tore up words from the Latin, whichnever took root in the language, like children making a mock garden withflowers and branches stuck in the ground, which speedily wither”{43}. 

To few indeed is the wisdom and discretion given, certainly it wasgiven to none of those, to bear themselves in this hazardous enterpriseaccording to the rules laid down by Dryden; who in the followingadmirable passage declares the motives that induced him to seek forforeign words, and the considerations that guided him in theirselection: “If sounding words are not of our growth and manufacture, whoshall hinder me to import them from a foreign country? I carry not outthe treasure of the nation which is never to return, but what I bringfrom Italy I spend in England. Here it remains and here it circulates, for, if the coin be good, it will pass from one hand to another. I tradeboth with the living and the dead, for the enrichment of our nativelanguage. We have enough in England to supply our necessity, but if wewill have things of magnificence and splendour, we must get them bycommerce. Poetry requires adornment, and that is not to be had from ourold Teuton monosyllables; therefore if I find any elegant word in aclassic author, I propose it to be naturalized by using it myself; andif the public approves of it, the bill passes. But every man cannotdistinguish betwixt pedantry and poetry: every man therefore is not fitto innovate. Upon the whole matter a poet must first be certain that theword he would introduce is beautiful in the Latin; and is to consider inthe next place whether it will agree with the English idiom: after this, he ought to take the opinion of judicious friends, such as are learnedin both languages; and lastly, since no man is infallible, let him usethis licence very sparingly; for if too many foreign words are pouredin upon us, it looks as if they were designed not to assist the natives, but to conquer them”{44}. 

{Sidenote: _Influence of the Reformation_}

But this tendency to latinize our speech was likely to receive, andactually did receive, a new impulse from the revival of learning, andthe familiar re-acquaintance with the great masterpieces of ancientliterature which went along with this revival. Happily another movementaccompanied, or at least followed hard on this; a movement in Englandessentially national; and which stirred our people at far deeper depthsof their moral and spiritual life than any mere revival of learningcould have ever done; I refer, of course, to the Reformation. It wasonly among the Germanic nations of Europe, as has often been remarked, that the Reformation struck lasting roots; it found its strengththerefore in the Teutonic element of the national character, which alsoit in its turn further strengthened, purified, and called out. And thus, though Latin came in upon us now faster than ever, and in a certainmeasure also Greek, yet this was not without its redress andcounterpoise, in the cotemporaneous unfolding of the more fundamentallypopular side of the language. Popular preaching and discussion, thenecessity of dealing with truths the most transcendent in a way to beunderstood not by scholars only, but by ‘idiots’ as well, all thisserved to evoke the native resources of our tongue; and thus therelative proportion between the one part of the language and the otherwas not dangerously disturbed, the balance was not destroyed; as itmight well have been, if only the Humanists{45} had been at work, andnot the Reformers as well. 

The revival of learning, which made itself first felt in Italy, extendedto England, and was operative here, during the reigns of Henry theEighth and his immediate successors. Having thus slightly anticipated intime, it afterwards ran exactly parallel with, the period during whichour Reformation was working itself out. The epoch was in all respectsone of immense mental and moral activity, and such never leave thelanguage of a nation where they found it. Much is changed in it; muchprobably added; for the old garment of speech, which once served allneeds, has grown too narrow, and serves them now no more. “Change inlanguage is not, as in many natural products, continuous; it is notequable, but eminently by fits and starts”; and when the foundations ofthe national mind are heaving under the power of some new truth, greaterand more important changes will find place in fifty years than in twocenturies of calmer or more stagnant existence. Thus the activities andenergies which the Reformation awakened among us here--and I need nottell you that these reached far beyond the domain of our directlyreligious life--caused mighty alterations in the English tongue{46}. 

{Sidenote: _Rise of New Words_}

For example, the Reformation had its scholarly, we might say, itsscholastic, as well as its popular, aspect. Add this fact to the fact ofthe revived interest in classical learning, and you will not wonder thata stream of Latin, now larger than ever, began to flow into ourlanguage. Thus Puttenham, writing in Queen Elizabeth’s reign{47}, givesa long list of words which, as he declares, had been quite recentlyintroduced into the language. Some of them are Greek, a few French andItalian, but very far the most are Latin. I will not give you his wholecatalogue, but some specimens from it; it is difficult to understandconcerning some of these, how the language should have managed to dowithout them so long; ‘method’, ‘methodical’, ‘function’, ‘numerous’, ‘penetrate’, ‘penetrable’, ‘indignity’, ‘savage’, ‘scientific’, ‘delineation’, ‘dimension’--all which he notes to have recently come up;so too ‘idiom’, ‘significative’, ‘compendious’, ‘prolix’, ‘figurative’, ‘impression’, ‘inveigle’, ‘metrical’. All these he adduces with praise;others upon which he bestows equal commendation, have not held theirground, as ‘placation’, ‘numerosity’, ‘harmonical’. Of those neologieswhich he disallowed, he only anticipated in some cases, as in‘facundity’, ‘implete’, ‘attemptat’ (‘attentat’), the decision of alater day; other words which he condemned no less, as ‘audacious’, ‘compatible’, ‘egregious’, have maintained their ground. These too havedone the same; ‘despicable’, ‘destruction’, ‘homicide’, ‘obsequious’, ‘ponderous’, ‘portentous’, ‘prodigious’, all of them by another writer alittle earlier condemned as “inkhorn terms, smelling too much of theLatin”. 

{Sidenote: _French Neologies_}

It is curious to observe the “words of art”, as he calls them, whichPhilemon Holland, a voluminous translator at the end of the sixteenthand beginning of the seventeenth century, counts it needful to explainin a sort of glossary which he appends to his translation of Pliny’s_Natural History_{48}. One can hardly at the present day understand howany person who would care to consult the book at all would find anydifficulty with words like the following, ‘acrimony’, ‘austere’, ‘bulb’, ‘consolidate’, ‘debility’, ‘dose’, ‘ingredient’, ‘opiate’, ‘propitious’, ‘symptom’, all which, however, as novelties he carefully explains. Someof the words in his glossary, it is true, are harder and more technicalthan these; but a vast proportion of them present no greater difficultythan those which I have adduced{49}. 

The period during which this naturalization of Latin words in theEnglish Language was going actively forward, may be said to havecontinued till about the Restoration of Charles the Second. It firstreceived a check from the coming up of French tastes, fashions, andhabits of thought consequent on that event. The writers already formedbefore that period, such as Cudworth and Barrow, still continued towrite their stately sentences, Latin in structure, and Latin in diction, but not so those of a younger generation. We may say of this influx ofLatin that it left the language vastly more copious, with greatlyenlarged capabilities, but perhaps somewhat burdened, and not alwaysable to move gracefully under the weight of its new acquisitions; for asDryden has somewhere truly said, it is easy enough to acquire foreignwords, but to know what to do with them after you have acquired, is thedifficulty. 

{Sidenote: _Pedantic Words_}

It might have received indeed most serious injury, if _all_ the wordswhich the great writers of this second Latin period of our languageemployed, and so proposed as candidates for admission into it, hadreceived the stamp of popular allowance. But happily it was not so; itwas here, as it had been before with the French importations, and withthe earlier Latin of Lydgate and Occleve. The re-active powers of thelanguage, enabling it to throw off that which was foreign to it, did notfail to display themselves now, as they had done on former occasions. The number of unsuccessful candidates for admission into, and permanentnaturalization in, the language during this period, is enormous; and onemay say that in almost all instances where the Alien Act has beenenforced, the sentence of exclusion was a just one; it was such as thecircumstances of the case abundantly bore out. Either the word was notidiomatic, or was not intelligible, or was not needed, or looked ill, orsounded ill, or some other valid reason existed against it. A lover ofhis native tongue will tremble to think what that tongue would havebecome, if all the vocables from the Latin and the Greek which were thenintroduced or endorsed by illustrious names, had been admitted on thestrength of their recommendation; if ‘torve’ and ‘tetric’ (Fuller), ‘cecity’ (Hooker), ‘fastide’ and ‘trutinate’ (_State Papers_), ‘immanity’ (Shakespeare), ‘insulse’ and ‘insulsity’ (Milton, prose), ‘scelestick’ (Feltham), ‘splendidious’ (Drayton), ‘pervicacy’ (Baxter), ‘stramineous’, ‘ardelion’ (Burton), ‘lepid’ and ‘sufflaminate’ (Barrow), ‘facinorous’ (Donne), ‘immorigerous’, ‘clancular’, ‘ferity’, ‘ustulation’, ‘stultiloquy’, ‘lipothymy’ (λειποθυμία), ‘hyperaspist’(all in Jeremy Taylor), if ‘mulierosity’, ‘subsannation’, ‘coaxation’, ‘ludibundness’, ‘delinition’, ‘septemfluous’, ‘medioxumous’, ‘mirificent’, ‘palmiferous’ (all in Henry More), ‘pauciloquy’ and‘multiloquy’ (Beaumont, _Psyche_); if ‘dyscolous’ (Foxe), ‘ataraxy’(Allestree), ‘moliminously’ (Cudworth), ‘luciferously’ (Sir ThomasBrowne), ‘immarcescible’ (Bishop Hall), ‘exility’, ‘spinosity’, ‘incolumity’, ‘solertiousness’, ‘lucripetous’, ‘inopious’, ‘eluctate’, ‘eximious’ (all in Hacket), ‘arride’{50} (ridiculed by Ben Johnson), with the hundreds of other words like these, and even more monstrousthan are some of these, not to speak of such Italian as ‘leggiadrous’ (afavourite word in Beaumont’s _Psyche_), ‘amorevolous’ (Hacket), had notbeen rejected and disallowed by the true instinct of the national mind. 

{Sidenote: _Naturalization of Words_}

A great many too _were_ allowed and adopted, but not exactly in the shapein which they first were introduced among us; they were made to droptheir foreign termination, or otherwise their foreign appearance, toconform themselves to English ways, and only so were finally incorporatedinto the great family of English words{51}. Thus of Greek words we havethe following: ‘pyramis’ and ‘pyramides’, forms often employed byShakespeare, became ‘pyramid’ and ‘pyramids’; ‘dosis’ (Bacon) ‘dose’;‘distichon’ (Holland) ‘distich’; ‘hemistichion’ (North) ‘hemistich’;‘apogæon’ (Fairfax) and ‘apogeum’ (Browne) ‘apogee’; ‘sumphonia’(Lodge) ‘symphony’; ‘prototypon’ (Jackson) ‘prototype’; ‘synonymon’(Jeremy Taylor) or ‘synonymum’ (Hacket), and ‘synonyma’ (Milton, prose), became severally ‘synonym’ and ‘synonyms’; ‘syntaxis’ (Fuller) became‘syntax’; ‘extasis’ (Burton) ‘ecstasy’; ‘parallelogrammon’ (Holland)‘parallelogram’; ‘programma’ (Warton) ‘program’; ‘epitheton’ (Cowell)‘epithet’; ‘epocha’ (South) ‘epoch’; ‘biographia’ (Dryden) ‘biography’;‘apostata’ (Massinger) ‘apostate’; ‘despota’ (Fox) ‘despot’;‘misanthropos’ (Shakespeare) if ‘misanthropi’ (Bacon) ‘misanthrope’;‘psalterion’ (North) ‘psaltery’; ‘chasma’ (Henry More) ‘chasm’; ‘idioma’and ‘prosodia’ (both in Daniel, prose) ‘idiom’ and ‘prosody’; ‘energia’, ‘energy’, and ‘Sibylla’, ‘Sibyl’ (both in Sidney); ‘zoophyton’ (HenryMore) ‘zoophyte’; ‘enthousiasmos’ (Sylvester) ‘enthusiasm’; ‘phantasma’(Donne) ‘phantasm’; ‘magnes’ (Gabriel Harvey) ‘magnet’; ‘cynosura’(Donne) ‘cynosure’; ‘galaxias’ (Fox) ‘galaxy’; ‘heros’ (Henry More)‘hero’; ‘epitaphy’ (Hawes) ‘epitaph’. 

The same process has gone on in a multitude of Latin words, whichtestify by their terminations that they were, and were felt to be, Latinat their first employment; though now they are such no longer. ThusBacon uses generally, I know not whether always, ‘insecta’ for‘insects’; and ‘chylus’ for ‘chyle’; Bishop Andrews ‘nardus’ for ‘nard’;Spenser ‘zephyrus’, and not ‘zephyr’; so ‘interstitium’ (Fuller)preceded ‘interstice’; ‘philtrum’ (Culverwell) ‘philtre’; ‘expansum’(Jeremy Taylor) ‘expanse’; ‘preludium’ (Beaumont, _Psyche_), ‘prelude’;‘precipitium’ (Coryat) ‘precipice’; ‘aconitum’ (Shakespeare) ‘aconite’;‘balsamum’ (Webster) ‘balsam’; ‘heliotropium’ (Holland) ‘heliotrope’;‘helleborum’ (North) ‘hellebore’; ‘vehiculum’ (Howe) ‘vehicle’;‘trochæus’ and ‘spondæus’ (Holland) ‘trochee’ and ‘spondee’; and‘machina’ (Henry More) ‘machine’. We have ‘intervalla’, not ‘intervals’, in Chillingworth; ‘postulata’, not ‘postulates’, in Swift; ‘archiva’, not ‘archives’, in Baxter; ‘demagogi’, not ‘demagogues’, in Hacket;‘vestigium’, not ‘vestige’, in Culverwell; ‘pantomimus’ in Lord Baconfor ‘pantomime’; ‘mystagogus’ for ‘mystagogue’, in Jackson; ‘atomi’ inLord Brooke for ‘atoms’; ‘ædilis’ (North) went before ‘ædile’;‘effigies’ and ‘statua’ (both in Shakespeare) before ‘effigy’ and‘statue’; ‘abyssus’ (Jackson) before ‘abyss’; ‘vestibulum’ (Howe) before‘vestibule’; ‘symbolum’ (Hammond) before ‘symbol’; ‘spectrum’ (Burton)before ‘spectre’; while only after a while ‘quære’ gave place to‘query’; ‘audite’ (Hacket) to ‘audit’; ‘plaudite’ (Henry More) to‘plaudit’; and the low Latin ‘mummia’ (Webster) became ‘mummy’. Thewidely extended change of such words as ‘innocency’, ‘indolency’, ‘temperancy’, and the large family of words with the same termination, into ‘innocence’, ‘indolence’, ‘temperance’, and the like, can only beregarded as part of the same process of entire naturalization. 

The plural very often tells the secret of a word, and of the light inwhich it is regarded by those who employ it, when the singular, beingless capable of modification, would have failed to do so; thus whenHolland writes ‘phalanges’, ‘bisontes’, ‘ideæ’, it is clear that‘phalanx’, ‘bison’, ‘idea’, were still Greek words for him; as ‘dogma’was for Hammond, when he made its plural not ‘dogmas’, but ‘dogmata’{52};and when Spenser uses ‘heroes’ as a trisyllable, it plainly is not yetthoroughly English for him{53}. ‘Cento’ is not English, but a Latin wordused in English, so long as it makes its plural not ‘centos’, but‘centones’, as in the old anonymous translation of Augustin’s _City ofGod_{54}; and ‘specimen’, while it makes its plural ‘specimina’ (Howe). Pope making, as he does, ‘satellites’ a quadrisyllable in the line

 “Why Jove’s _satellites_ are less than Jove”, must have felt that he was still dealing with it as Latin; just as‘terminus’, a word which the necessities of railways have introducedamong us, will not be truly naturalized till we use ‘terminuses’, andnot ‘termini’ for its plural; nor ‘phenomenon’, till we have renounced‘phenomena’. Sometimes it has been found convenient to retain bothplurals, that formed according to the laws of the classical language, and that formed according to the laws of our own, only employing them indifferent senses; thus is it with ‘indices’ and ‘indexes’, ‘genii’ and‘geniuses’. 

The same process has gone on with words from other languages, as fromthe Italian and the Spanish; thus ‘bandetto’ (Shakespeare), ‘bandito’(Jeremy Taylor), becomes ‘bandit’; ‘ruffiano’ (Coryat) ‘ruffian’;‘concerto’, ‘concert’; ‘busto’ (Lord Chesterfield) ‘bust’; ‘caricatura’(Sir Thomas Browne) ‘caricature’; ‘princessa’ (Hacket) ‘princess’;‘scaramucha’ (Dryden) ‘scaramouch’; ‘pedanteria’ (Sidney) ‘pedantry’;‘impresa’ ‘impress’; ‘caprichio’ (Shakespeare) becomes first ‘caprich’(Butler), then ‘caprice’; ‘duello’ (Shakespeare) ‘duel’; ‘alligarta’(Ben Jonson), ‘alligator’; ‘parroquito’ (Webster) ‘parroquet’; ‘scalada’(Heylin) or ‘escalado’ (Holland) ‘escalade’; ‘granada’ (Hacket)‘grenade’; ‘parada’ (J. Taylor) ‘parade’; ‘emboscado’ (Holland)‘stoccado’, ‘barricado’, ‘renegado’, ‘hurricano’ (all in Shakespeare), ‘brocado’ (Hackluyt), ‘palissado’ (Howell), drop their foreignterminations, and severally become ‘ambuscade’, ‘stockade’, ‘barricade’, ‘renegade’, ‘hurricane’, ‘brocade’, ‘palisade’; ‘croisado’ in likemanner (Bacon) becomes first ‘croisade’ (Jortin), and then ‘crusade’;‘quinaquina’ or ‘quinquina’, ‘quinine’. Other slight modifications ofspelling, not in the termination, but in the body of a word, willindicate in like manner its more entire incorporation into the Englishlanguage. Thus ‘shash’, a Turkish word, becomes ‘sash’; ‘colone’(Burton) ‘clown’{55}; ‘restoration’ was at first spelt ‘rest_au_ration’;and so long as ‘vicinage’ was spelt ‘voisinage’{56} (Sanderson), ‘mirror’ ‘miroir’ (Fuller), ‘recoil’ ‘recule’, or ‘career’ ‘carriere’(both by Holland), they could scarcely be considered those purelyEnglish words which now they are{57}. 

Here and there even at this comparatively late period of the languageawkward foreign words will be recast in a more thoroughly English mould;‘chirurgeon’ will become ‘surgeon’; ‘hemorrhoid’, ‘emerod’; ‘squinancy’will become first ‘squinzey’ (Jeremy Taylor) and then ‘quinsey’;‘porkpisce’ (Spenser), that is sea-hog, or more accurately hogfish{58}will be ‘porpesse’, and then ‘porpoise’, as it is now. In other wordsthe attempt will be made, but it will be now too late to be attendedwith success. ‘Physiognomy’ will not give place to ‘visnomy’, howeverSpenser and Shakespeare employ this briefer form; nor ‘hippopotamus’ to‘hippodame’, even at Spenser’s bidding. In like manner the attempt tonaturalize ‘avant-courier’ in the shape of ‘vancurrier’ has failed. Other words also we meet which have finally refused to take a morepopular form, although such was once more or less current; or, if thisis too much to say of all, yet hazarded by good authors. Thus Hollandwrote ‘cirque’, but we ‘circus’; ‘cense’, but we ‘census’; ‘interreign’, but we ‘interregnum’; Sylvester ‘cest’, but we ‘cestus’; ‘quirry’, butwe ‘equerry’; ‘colosse’, but we still ‘colossus’; Golding ‘ure’, but we‘urus’; ‘metropole’, but we ‘metropolis’; Dampier ‘volcan’, but this hasnot superseded ‘volcano’; nor ‘pagod’ (Pope) ‘pagoda’; nor ‘skelet’(Holland) ‘skeleton’; nor ‘stimule’ (Stubbs) ‘stimulus’. Bolingbrokewrote ‘exode’, but we hold fast to ‘exodus’; Burton ‘funge’, but we‘fungus’; Henry More ‘enigm’, but we ‘enigma’; ‘analyse’, but we‘analysis’. ‘Superfice’ (Dryden) has not put ‘superficies’, nor‘sacrary’ (Hacket) ‘sacrarium’, nor ‘limbeck’ ‘alembic’, out of use. Chaucer’s ‘potecary’ has given way to a more Greek formation‘apothecary’. Yet these and the like must be regarded quite asexceptions; the tendency of things is altogether the other way. 

Looking at this process of the reception of foreign words, with theirafter assimilation in feature to our own, we may trace, as was to beexpected, a certain conformity between the genius of our institutionsand that of our language. It is the very character of our institutionsto repel none, but rather to afford a shelter and a refuge to all, fromwhatever quarter they come; and after a longer or shorter while all thestrangers and incomers have been incorporated into the English nation, within one or two generations have forgotten that they were ever oughtelse than members of it, have retained no other reminiscence of theirforeign extraction than some slight difference of name, and that oftendisappearing or having disappeared. Exactly so has it been with theEnglish language. No language has shown itself less exclusive; none hasstood less upon niceties; none has thrown open its arms wider, with afuller confidence, a confidence justified by experience, that it couldmake truly its own, assimilate and subdue to itself, whatever itreceived into its bosom; and in none has this experiment in a largernumber of instances been successfully carried out. 

 * * * * *

{Sidenote: _French at the Restoration_}

Such are the two great enlargements from without of our vocabulary. Allother are minor and subordinate. Thus the introduction of French tastesby Charles the Second and his courtiers returning from exile, to which Ihave just adverted, though it rather modified the structure of oursentences than the materials of our vocabulary, gave us some new words. In one of Dryden’s plays, _Marriage à la Mode_, a lady full ofaffectation is introduced, who is always employing French idioms inpreference to English, French words rather than native. It is not alittle curious that of these, thus put into her mouth to render herridiculous, not a few are excellent English now, and have nothingfar-sought or affected about them: for so it frequently proves that whatis laughed at in the beginning, is by all admitted and allowed at thelast. For example, to speak of a person being in the ‘good graces’ ofanother has nothing in it ridiculous now; the words ‘repartee’, ‘embarrass’, ‘chagrin’, ‘grimace’, do not sound novel and affected nowas they all must plainly have done at the time when Dryden wrote. ‘Fougue’ and ‘fraischeur’, which he himself employed--being, it is true, no frequent offender in this way--have not been justified by the samesuccess. 

{Sidenote: _Greek Words Naturalized_}

Nor indeed can it be said that this adoption and naturalization offoreign words ever ceases in a language. There are periods, as we haveseen, when this goes forward much more largely than at others; when alanguage throws open, as it were, its doors, and welcomes strangers withan especial freedom; but there is never a time, when one by one theseforeigners and strangers are not slipping into it. We do not for themost part observe the fact, at least not while it is actually doing. Time, the greatest of all innovators, manages his innovations sodexterously, spreads them over such vast periods, and therefore bringsthem about so gradually, that often, while effecting the mightiestchanges, we have no suspicion that he is effecting any at all. Thus howimperceptible are the steps by which a foreign word is admitted into thefull rights of an English one; the process of its incoming ofteneluding our notice altogether. There are numerous Greek words, forexample which, quite unchanged in form, have in one way or another endedin finding a home and acceptance among us. We may in almost everyinstance trace step by step the naturalization of one of these; and themanner of this singularly confirms what has just been said. We can noteit spelt for a while in Greek letters, and avowedly employed as a Greekand not an English vocable; then after it had thus obtained a certainallowance among us, and become not altogether unfamiliar, we note itexchanging its Greek for English letters, and finally obtainingrecognition as a word which however drawn from a foreign source, is yetitself English. Thus ‘acme’, ‘apotheosis’, ‘criterion’, ‘chrysalis’, ‘encyclopedia’, ‘metropolis’, ‘opthalmia’, ‘pathos’, ‘phenomena’, areall now English words, while yet South with many others always wroteἀκμή, Jeremy Taylor ἀποθέωσις and κριτήριον, Henry More χρυσαλίς, BenJonson speaks of ‘the knowledge of the liberal arts, which the Greekscall ἐγκυκλοπαδείαν’{59}, Culverwell wrote μητρόπολις and ὀφθαλμία, Preston, φαινόμενα--Sylvester ascribes to Baxter, not ‘pathos’, butπάθος{60}. Ἠθος is a word at the present moment preparing for a likepassage from Greek characters to English, and certainly before long willbe acknowledged as an English word{61}. The only cause which hashindered this for some time past is the misgiving whether it will not beread ‘ĕthos, ’ and not ‘ēthos, ’ and thus not be the word intended. 

Let us trace a like process in some French word, which is at this momentbecoming English. I know no better example than the French ‘prestige’will afford. ‘Prestige’ has manifestly no equivalent in our ownlanguage; it expresses something which no single word in English, whichonly a long circumlocution, could express; namely, that magic influenceon others, which past successes as the pledge and promise of futureones, breed. The word has thus naturally come to be of very frequent useby good English writers; for they do not feel that in employing it theyare passing by as good or a better word of their own. At first all usedit avowedly as French, writing it in italics to indicate this. At thepresent moment some write it so still, some do not; some, that is, regard it still as foreign, others consider that it has now becomeEnglish, and obtained a settlement among us{62}. Little by little thenumber of those who write it in italics will become fewer and fewer, till they cease altogether. It will then only need that the accentshould be shifted, in obedience to the tendencies of the Englishlanguage, as far back in the word as it will go, that instead of‘prestíge’, it should be pronounced ‘préstige’ even as within these fewyears instead of ‘depót’ we have learned to say ‘dépot’, and itsnaturalization will be complete. I have little doubt that in twentyyears it will be so pronounced by the majority of well educatedEnglishmen{63}, --some pronounce it so already, --and that our presentpronunciation will pass away in the same manner as ‘obl_ee_ge’, onceuniversal, has past away, and everywhere given place to ‘obl_i_ge’{64}. 

{Sidenote: _Shifting of Accents_}

Let me here observe in passing, that the process of throwing the accentof a word back, by way of completing its naturalization, is one which wemay note constantly going forward in our language. Thus, while Chauceraccentuates sometimes ‘natúre’, he also accentuates elsewhere ‘náture’, while sometimes ‘virtúe’, at other times ‘vírtue’. ‘Prostrate’, ‘adverse’, ‘aspect’, ‘process’, ‘insult’, ‘impulse’, ‘pretext’, ‘contrite’, ‘uproar’, ‘contest’, had all their accent on the lastsyllable in Milton; they have it now on the first; ‘cháracter’ was‘charácter’ with Spenser; ‘théatre’ was ‘theátre’ with Sylvester; while‘acádemy’ was accented ‘académy’ by Cowley and Butler{65}. ‘Essay’ was‘essáy’ with Dryden and with Pope; the first closes an heroic line withthe word; Pope does the same with ‘barrier’{66} and ‘effort’; thereforepronounced ‘barríer’, ‘effórt’, by him. 

There are not a few other French words which like ‘prestige’ are at thismoment hovering on the verge of English, hardly knowing whether theyshall become such, or no. Such are ‘ennui’, ‘exploitation’, ‘verve’, ‘persiflage’, ‘badinage’, ‘chicane’, ‘finesse’, and others; all of themoften employed by us, --and it is out of such frequent employment thatadoption proceeds, --because expressing shades of meaning not expressedby any words of our own{67}. Some of these, we may confidentlyanticipate, will complete their naturalization; others will after a timeretreat again, and become for us avowedly French. ‘Solidarity’, a wordwhich we owe to the French Communists, and which signifies a fellowshipin gain and loss, in honour and dishonour, in victory and defeat, abeing, so to speak, all in the same bottom, is so convenient, thatunattractive as confessedly it is, it will be in vain to struggleagainst its reception. The newspapers already have it, and books willnot long exclude it; not to say that it has established itself inGerman, and probably in other European languages as well. 

{Sidenote: _Greek in English_}

Greek and Latin words also we still continue to adopt, although now nolonger in troops and companies, but only one by one. With the livelyinterest which always has been felt in classical studies among us, andwhich will continue to be felt, so long as any greatness and noblenesssurvive in our land, it must needs be that accessions from thesequarters would never cease altogether. I do not refer here to purelyscientific terms; these, so long as they continue such, and do not passbeyond the threshold of the science or sciences for the use of whichthey were invented, being never heard on the lips, or employed in thewritings, of any but the cultivators of these sciences, have no right tobe properly called words at all. They are a kind of shorthand of thescience, or algebraic notation; and will not find place in a dictionaryof the language, constructed upon true principles, but rather in atechnical dictionary apart by themselves. Of these, compelled by theadvances of physical science, we have coined multitudes out of number inthese later times, fashioning them mainly from the Greek, no otherlanguage within our reach yielding itself at all so easily to our needs. 

Of non-scientific words, both Greek and Latin, some have made their wayamong us quite in these latter times. Burke in the House of Commons issaid to have been the first who employed the word ‘inimical’{68}. Healso launched the verb ‘to spheterize’ in the sense of to appropriateor make one’s own; but this without success. Others have been morefortunate; ‘æsthetic’ we have got indeed _through_ the Germans, but_from_ the Greeks. Tennyson has given allowance to ‘æon’{69}; and ‘myth’is a deposit which wide and far-reaching controversies have left in thepopular language. ‘Photography’ is an example of what I was just nowspeaking of--namely, a scientific word which has travelled beyond thelimits of the science which it designates and which gave it birth. ‘Stereotype’ is another word of the same character. It was invented--notthe thing, but the word, --by Didot not very long since; but it is nowabsorbed into healthy general circulation, being current in a secondaryand figurative sense. Ruskin has given to ‘ornamentation’ the sanctionand authority of his name. ‘Normal’ and ‘abnormal’, not quite so new, are yet of recent introduction into the language{70}. 

{Sidenote: _German Importations_}

When we consider the near affinity between the English and Germanlanguages, which, if not sisters, may at least be regarded as firstcousins, it is somewhat remarkable that almost since the day when theyparted company, each to fulfil its own destiny, there has been littlefurther commerce between them in the matter of giving or taking. At anyrate adoptions on our part from the German have been till within thisperiod extremely rare. ‘Crikesman’ (Kriegsmann) and ‘brandschat’(Brandschatz), with some other German words common enough in the _StatePapers_ of the sixteenth century, found no permanent place in thelanguage. The explanation lies in the fact that the literary activity ofGermany did not begin till very late, nor our interest in it till laterstill, not indeed till the beginning of the present century. Yet‘plunder’, as I have mentioned elsewhere, was brought back from Germanyabout the beginning of our Civil Wars, by the soldiers who had servedunder Gustavus Adolphus and his captains{71}. And ‘trigger’, written‘tricker’ in _Hudibras_ is manifestly the German ‘drücker’{72}, thoughnone of our dictionaries have marked it as such; a word first appearingat the same period, it may have reached us through the same channel. ‘Iceberg’ (eisberg) also we must have taken whole from the German, as, had we constructed the word for ourselves, we should have made it not‘ice_berg_’, but ‘ice-_mountain_’. I have not found it in our earliervoyagers, often as they speak of the ‘icefield’, which yet is notexactly the same thing. An English ‘swindler’ is not exactly a German‘schwindler’, yet the notion of the ‘nebulo’, though more latent in theGerman, is common to both; and we must have drawn the word fromGermany{73} (it is not an old one in our tongue) during the course ofthe last century. If ‘_life_-guard’ was originally, as Richardsonsuggests, ‘_leib_-garde’, or ‘_body_-guard’, and from that transformed, by the determination of Englishmen to make it significant in English, into ‘_life_-guard’, or guard defending the _life_ of the sovereign, this will be another word from the same quarter. Yet I have my doubts;‘leibgarde’ would scarcely have found its way hither before theaccession of the House of Hanover, or at any rate before the arrival ofDutch William with his memorable guards; while ‘lifeguard’, in itspresent shape, is certainly an older word in the language; we hear oftenof the ‘lifeguards’ in our Civil Wars; as witness too Fuller’s words:“The Cherethites were a kind of _lifegard_ to king David”{74}. 

Of late our German importations have been somewhat more numerous. Withseveral German compound words we have been in recent times so wellpleased, that we must needs adopt them into English, or imitate them init. We have not always been very happy in those which we have selectedfor imitation or adoption. Thus we might have been satisfied with‘manual’, and not called back from its nine hundred years of oblivionthat ugly and unnecessary word ‘handbook’. And now we are threatenedwith ‘word-building’, as I see a book announced under the title of“Latin _word-building_”, and, much worse than this, with ‘stand-point’. ‘Einseitig’ (itself a modern word, if I mistake not, or at any ratemodern in its secondary application) has not, indeed, been adopted, butis evidently the pattern on which we have formed ‘onesided’--a word towhich a few years ago something of affectation was attached; so that anyone who employed it at once gave evidence that he was more or less adealer in German wares; it has however its manifest conveniences, andwill hold its ground. ‘Fatherland’ (Vaterland) on the contrary willscarcely establish itself among us, the note of affectation willcontinue to cleave to it, and we shall go on contented with ‘nativecountry’ to the end{75}. The most successful of these compounded words, borrowed recently from the German, is ‘folk-lore’, and the substitutionof this for popular superstitions, must be esteemed, I think, anunquestionable gain{76}. 

To speak now of other sources from which the new words of a language arederived. Of course the period when absolutely new roots are generatedwill have past away, long before men begin by a reflective act to takeany notice of processes going forward in the language which they speak. This pure productive energy, creative we might call it, belongs only tothe earlier stages of a nation’s existence, --to times quite out of theken of history. It is only from materials already existing either in itsown bosom, or in the bosom of other languages, that it can enrich itselfin the later, or historical stages of its life. 

{Sidenote: _Compound Words_}

And first, it can bring its own words into new combinations; it can jointwo, and sometimes even more than two, of the words which it alreadyhas, and form out of them a new one. Much more is wanted here thanmerely to attach two or more words to one another by a hyphen; this isnot to make a new word: they must really coalesce and grow together. Different languages, and even the same language at different stages ofits existence, will possess this power of forming new words by thecombination of old in very different degrees. The eminent felicity ofthe Greek in this respect has been always acknowledged. “The joints ofher compounded words”, says Fuller, “are so naturally oiled, that theyrun nimbly on the tongue, which makes them though long, never tedious, because significant”{77}. Sir Philip Sidney boasts of the capability ofour English language in this respect--that “it is particularly happy inthe composition of two or three words together, near equal to the Greek”. No one has done more than Milton to justify this praise, or to makemanifest what may be effected by this marriage of words. Many of hiscompound epithets, as ‘golden-tressed’, ‘tinsel-slippered’, ‘coral-paven’, ‘flowry-kirtled’, ‘violet-embroidered’, ‘vermeil-tinctured’, arethemselves poems in miniature. Not unworthy to be set beside these areSylvester’s “_opal-coloured_ morn”, Drayton’s “_silver-sanded_ shore”, and perhaps Marlowe’s “_golden-fingered_ Ind”{78}. 

Our modern inventions in the same kind are for the most part veryinferior: they could hardly fail to be so, seeing that the formative, plastic powers of a language are always waning and diminishing more andmore. It may be, and indeed is, gaining in other respects, but in thisit is losing; and thus it is not strange if its later births in thiskind are less successful than its earlier. Among the poets of our owntime Shelley has done more than any other to assert for the languagethat it has not quite renounced this power; while among writers of prosein these later days Jeremy Bentham has been at once one of the boldest, but at the same time one of the most unfortunate, of those who haveissued this money from their mint. Still we ought not to forget, whilewe divert ourselves with the strange and formless progeny of his brain, that we owe ‘international’ to him--a word at once so convenient andsupplying so real a need, that it was, and with manifest advantage, atonce adopted by all{79}. 

{Sidenote: _Adjectives ending in al_}

Another way in which languages increase their stock of vocables is bythe forming of new words according to the analogy of formations, whichin seemingly parallel cases have been already allowed. Thus long sinceupon certain substantives such as ‘congregation’, ‘convention’, wereformed their adjectives, ‘congregational’, ‘conventional’; yet thesealso at a comparatively modern period; ‘congregational’ first rising upin the Assembly of Divines, or during the time of the Commonwealth{80}. These having found admission into the language, it is attempted to repeatthe process in the case of other words with the same ending. I confessthe effect is often exceedingly disagreeable. We are now pretty well usedto ‘educational’, and the word is sometimes serviceable enough; but I canperfectly remember when some twenty years ago an “_Educational_ Magazine”was started, the first impression on one’s mind was, that a work havingto do with education should not thus bear upon its front an offensive, orto say the best, a very dubious novelty in the English language{81}. These adjectives are now multiplying fast. We have ‘inflexional’, ‘seasonal’, ‘denominational’, and, not content with this, in dissentingmagazines at least, the monstrous birth, ‘denominationalism’; ‘emotional’is creeping into books{82}, ‘sensational’, and others as well, so thatit is hard to say where this influx will stop, or whether all our wordswith this termination will not finally generate an adjective. Convenientas you may sometimes find these, I would yet certainly counsel you toabstain from all but the perfectly well recognized formations of thiskind. There may be cases of exception; but for the most part Pope’sadvice is good, as certainly it is safe, that we be not among the lastto use a word which is going out, nor among the first to employ one thatis coming in. 

‘Starvation’ is another word of comparatively recent introduction, formed in like manner on the model of preceding formations of anapparently similar character--its first formers, indeed, not observingthat they were putting a Latin termination to a Saxon word. Some havesupposed it to have reached us from America. It has not howevertravelled from so great a distance, being a stranger indeed, yet notfrom beyond the Atlantic, but only from beyond the Tweed. It is an oldScottish word, but unknown in England, till used by Mr. Dundas, thefirst Viscount Melville, in an American debate in 1775. That it thenjarred strangely on English ears is evident from the nickname, “_Starvation_ Dundas”, which in consequence he obtained{83}. 

{Sidenote: _Revival of Words_}

Again, languages enrich themselves, our own has done so, by recoveringtreasures which for a while had been lost by them or forgone. I do notmean that all which drops out of use _is_ loss; there are words which itis gain to be rid of; which it would be folly to wish to revive; ofwhich Dryden, setting himself against an extravagant zeal in thisdirection, says in an ungracious comparison--they do “not deserve thisredemption, any more than the crowds of men who daily die, or are slainfor sixpence in a battle, merit to be restored to life, if a wish couldrevive them”{84}. There are others, however, which it is a real gain todraw back again from the temporary oblivion which had overtaken them;and this process of their setting and rising again, or of what, to useanother image, we might call their suspended animation, is not sounfrequent as at first might be supposed. 

You may perhaps remember that Horace, tracing in a few memorable linesthe history of words, while he notes that many once current have nowdropped out of use, does not therefore count that of necessity theirrace is for ever run; on the contrary he confidently anticipates a_palingenesy_ for many among them{85}; and I am convinced that there hasbeen such in the case of our English words to a far greater extent thanwe are generally aware. Words slip almost or quite as imperceptibly backinto use as they once slipped out of it. Let me produce a few facts inevidence of this. In the contemporary gloss which an anonymous friend ofSpenser’s furnished to his _Shepherd’s Calendar_, first published in1579, “for the exposition of old words”, as he declares, he thinks itexpedient to include in his list, the following, ‘dapper’, ‘scathe’, ‘askance’, ‘sere’, ‘embellish’, ‘bevy’, ‘forestall’, ‘fain’, with not afew others quite as familiar as these. In Speght’s _Chaucer_ (1667), there is a long list of “old and obscure words in Chaucer explained”;including ‘anthem’, ‘blithe’, ‘bland’, ‘chapelet’, ‘carol’, ‘deluge’, ‘franchise’, ‘illusion’, ‘problem’, ‘recreant’, ‘sphere’, ‘tissue’, ‘transcend’, with very many easier than these. In Skinner’s_Etymologicon_ (1671), there is another list of obsolete, words{86}, andamong these he includes ‘to dovetail’, ‘to interlace’, ‘elvish’, ‘encombred’, ‘masquerade’ (mascarade), ‘oriental’, ‘plumage’, ‘pummel’(pomell), and ‘stew’, that is, for fish. Who will say of the verb ‘tohallow’ that it is now even obsolescent? and yet Wallis two hundredyears ago observed--“It has almost gone out of use” (fer. Desuevit). Itwould be difficult to find an example of the verb, ‘to advocate’, between Milton and Burke{87}. Franklin, a close observer in suchmatters, as he was himself an admirable master of English style, considered the word to have sprung up during his own residence inEurope. In this indeed he was mistaken; it had only during this periodrevived{88}. Johnson says of ‘jeopardy’ that it is a “word not now inuse”; which certainly is not any longer true{89}. 

{Sidenote: _Dryden and Chaucer’s English_}

I am persuaded that in facility of being understood, Chaucer is notmerely as near, but much nearer, to us than Dryden and his cotemporariesfelt him to be to them. He and the writers of his time make exactly thesame sort of complaints, only in still stronger language, about hisarchaic phraseology and the obscurities which it involves, that are madeat the present day. Thus in the _Preface_ to his _Tales from Chaucer_, having quoted some not very difficult lines from the earlier poet whomhe was modernizing, he proceeds: “You have here a specimen of Chaucer’slanguage, which is so obsolete that his sense is scarce to beunderstood”. Nor was it merely thus with respect of Chaucer. These witsand poets of the Court of Charles the Second were conscious of a greatergulf between themselves and the Elizabethan era, separated from them bylittle more than fifty years, than any of which _we_ are aware, separated from it by nearly two centuries more. I do not mean merelythat they felt themselves more removed from its tone and spirit; theiraltered circumstances might explain this; but I am convinced that theyfound a greater difficulty and strangeness in the language of Spenserand Shakespeare than we find now; that it sounded in many ways moreuncouth, more old-fashioned, more abounding in obsolete terms than itdoes in our ears at the present. Only in this way can I explain thetone in which they are accustomed to speak of these worthies of the nearpast. I must again cite Dryden, the truest representative of literaryEngland in its good and in its evil during the last half of theseventeenth century. Of Spenser, whose death was separated from his ownbirth by little more than thirty years, he speaks as of one belonging toquite a different epoch, counting it much to say, “Notwithstanding hisobsolete language, he is still intelligible”{90}. Nay, hear what hisjudgment is of Shakespeare himself, so far as language is concerned: “Itmust be allowed to the present age that the tongue in general is so muchrefined since Shakespeare’s time, that many of his words and more of hisphrases are scarce intelligible. And of those which we understand, someare ungrammatical, others coarse; and his whole style is so pesteredwith figurative expressions, that it is as affected as it isobscure”{91}. 

{Sidenote: _Nugget_, _Ingot_}

Sometimes a word will emerge anew from the undercurrent of society, notindeed new, but yet to most seeming as new, its very existence havingbeen altogether forgotten by the larger number of those speaking thelanguage; although it must have somewhere lived on upon the lips of men. Thus, for instance, since the Californian and Australian discoveries ofgold we hear often of a ‘nugget’ of gold; being a lump of the puremetal; and there has been some discussion whether the word has been bornfor the present necessity, or whether it be a recent malformation of‘ingot’, I am inclined to think that it is neither one nor the other. Iwould not indeed affirm that it may not be a popular recasting of‘ingot’; but only that it is not a recent one; for ‘nugget’ very nearlyin its present form, occurs in our elder writers, being spelt ‘niggot’by them{92}. There can be little doubt of the identity of ‘niggot’ and‘nugget’; all the consonants, the _stamina_ of a word, being the same;while this early form ‘niggot’ makes more plausible their suggestionthat ‘nugget’ is only ‘ingot’ disguised, seeing that there wants nothingbut the very common transposition of the first two letters to bring thatout of this{93}. 

{Sidenote: _Words from Proper Names_}

New words are often formed from the names of persons, actual ormythical. Some one has observed how interesting would be a completecollection, or a collection approaching to completeness, in any languageof the names of _persons_ which have afterwards become names of_things_, from ‘nomina _appellativa_’ have become ‘nomina _realia_’{94}. Let me without confining myself to those of more recent introductionendeavour to enumerate as many as I can remember of the words which haveby this method been introduced into our language. To begin with mythicalantiquity--the Chimæra has given us ‘chimerical’, Hermes ‘hermetic’, Tantalus ‘to tantalize’, Hercules ‘herculean’, Proteus ‘protean’, Vulcan‘volcano’ and ‘volcanic’, and Dædalus ‘dedal’, if this word may onSpenser’s and Shelley’s authority be allowed. Gordius, the Phrygian kingwho tied that famous ‘gordian’ knot which Alexander cut, will supply anatural transition from mythical to historical. Here Mausolus, a king ofCaria, has left us ‘mausoleum’, Academus ‘academy’, Epicurus ‘epicure’, Philip of Macedon a ‘philippic’, being such a discourse as Demosthenesonce launched against the enemy of Greece, and Cicero ‘cicerone’. Mithridates, who had made himself poison-proof, gave us the nowforgotten word ‘mithridate’, for antidote; as from Hippocrates wederived ‘hipocras’, or ‘ypocras’, a word often occurring in our earlypoets, being a wine supposed to be mingled after his receipt. Gentius, aking of Illyria, gave his name to the plant ‘gentian’, having been, itis said, the first to discover its virtues. A grammar used to be calleda ‘donnat’, or ‘donet’ (Chaucer), from Donatus, a famous grammarian. Lazarus, perhaps an actual person, has given us ‘lazar’ and ‘lazaretto’;St. Veronica and the legend connected with her name, a ‘vernicle’;being a napkin with the Saviour’s face portrayed on it; Simon Magus‘simony’; Mahomet a ‘mammet’ or ‘maumet’, meaning an idol{95}, and‘mammetry’ or idolatry; ‘dunce’ is from Duns Scotus; while there is alegend that the ‘knot’ or sandpiper is named from Canute or Knute, withwhom this bird was a special favourite. To come to more modern times, and not pausing at Ben Johnson’s ‘chaucerisms’, Bishop Hall’s‘scoganisms’, from Scogan, Edward the Fourth’s jester, or his‘aretinisms’, from an infamous writer, ‘a poisonous Italian ribald’ asGabriel Harvey calls him, named Aretine; these being probably notintended even by their authors to endure; a Roman cobbler named Pasquinhas given us the ‘pasquil’ or ‘pasquinade’; ‘patch’ in the sense offool, and often so used by Shakespeare, was originally the proper nameof a favourite fool of Cardinal Wolsey{96}; Colonel Negus in QueenAnne’s time first mixed the beverage which goes by his name; Lord Orrerywas the first for whom an ‘orrery’ was constructed; and Lord Spencerfirst wore, or at least first brought into fashion, a ‘spencer’. Dahl, aSwede, introduced the cultivation of the ‘dahlia’, and M. Tabinet, aFrench Protestant refugee, the making of the stuff called ‘tabinet’ inDublin; in ‘_tram_-road’, the second syllable of the name of Ou_tram_, the inventor, survives{97}. The ‘tontine’ was conceived by an Italiannamed Tonti; and another Italian, Galvani, first noted the phenomena ofanimal electricity or ‘galvanism’; while a third Italian, ‘Volta’, gavea name to the ‘voltaic’ battery. ‘Martinet’, ‘mackintosh’, ‘doyly’, ‘brougham’, ‘to macadamize’, ‘to burke’, are all names of persons orfrom persons, and then transferred to things, on the score of someconnection existing between the one and other{98}. 

Again the names of popular characters in literature, such as have takenstrong hold on the national mind, give birth to a number of new words. Thus from Homer we have ‘mentor’ for a monitor; ‘stentorian’, forloud-voiced; and inasmuch as with all of Hector’s nobleness there is acertain amount of big talking about him, he has given us ‘tohector’{99}; while the medieval romances about the siege of Troy ascribeto Pandarus that shameful ministry out of which his name has past intothe words ‘to pandar’ and ‘pandarism’. ‘Rodomontade’ is from Rodomont, ablustering and boasting hero of Boiardo, adopted by Ariosto;‘thrasonical’, from Thraso, the braggart of the Roman comedy. Cervanteshas given us ‘quixotic’; Swift ‘lilliputian’; to Molière the Frenchlanguage owes ‘tartuffe’ and ‘tartufferie’. ‘Reynard’ too, which with usis a duplicate for fox, while in the French ‘renard’ has quite excludedthe older ‘volpils’, was originally not the name of a kind, but theproper name of the fox-hero, the vulpine Ulysses, in that famousbeast-epic of the middle ages, _Reineke Fuchs_; the immense popularityof which we gather from many evidences, from none more clearly than fromthis. ‘Chanticleer’ is in like manner the proper name of the cock, and‘Bruin’ of the bear in the same poem{100}. These have not made fortuneto the same extent of actually putting out in any language the nameswhich before existed, but still have become quite familiar to us all. 

We must not count as new words properly so called, although they maydelay us for a minute, those comic words, most often comic combinationsformed at will, and sometimes of enormous length, in which, as playsand displays of power, great writers ancient and modern have delighted. These for the most part are meant to do service for the moment, andthen to pass away{101}. The inventors of them had themselves nointention of fastening them permanently on the language. Thus amongthe Greeks Aristophanes coined μελλονικιάω, to loiter like Nicias, withallusion to the delays with which this prudent commander sought to putoff the disastrous Sicilian expedition, with not a few other familiarto every scholar. The humour of them sometimes consists in theirenormous length, as in the ἀμφιπτολεμοπηδησίστρατος of Eupolis; theσπερμαγοραιολεκιθολαχανόπωλις of Aristophanes; sometimes in theirmingled observance and transgression of the laws of the language, as inthe ‘oculissimus’ of Plautus, a comic superlative of ‘oculus’;‘occisissimus’ of ‘occisus’; as in the ‘dosones’, ‘dabones’, which inGreek and in medieval Latin were names given to those who were everpromising, ever saying “I will give” but never performing their promise. Plautus with his exuberant wit, and exulting in his mastery and commandof the Latin language, will compose four or five lines consistingentirely of comic combinations thrown off for the occasion{102}. Of thesame character is Butler’s ‘cynarctomachy’, or battle of a dog and bear. Nor do I suppose that Fuller, when he used ‘to avunculize’, to imitateor follow in the steps of one’s uncle, or Cowper, when he suggested‘extraforaneous’ for out of doors, in the least intended them as lastingadditions to the language. 

{Sidenote: ‘_To Chouse_’}

Sometimes a word springs up in a very curious way; here is one, nothaving, I suppose, any great currency except among schoolboys; yet beingno invention of theirs, but a genuine English word, though of somewhatlate birth in the language, I mean ‘to chouse’. It has a singularorigin. The word is, as I have mentioned already, a Turkish one, andsignifies ‘interpreter’. Such an interpreter or ‘chiaous’ (written‘chaus’ in Hackluyt, ‘chiaus’ in Massinger), being attached to theTurkish embassy in England, committed in the year 1609 an enormous fraudon the Turkish and Persian merchants resident in London. He succeeded incheating them of a sum amounting to £4000--a sum very much greater atthat day than at the present. From the vast dimensions of the fraud, andthe notoriety which attended it, any one who cheated or defrauded wassaid ‘to chiaous’, ‘chause’, or ‘chouse’; to do, that is, as this‘chiaous’ had done{103}. 

{Sidenote: _Different Spelling of Words_}

There is another very fruitful source of new words in a language, orperhaps rather another way in which it increases its vocabulary, for aquestion might arise whether the words thus produced ought to be callednew. I mean through the splitting of single words into two or even more. The impulse and suggestion to this is in general first given byvarieties in pronunciation, which are presently represented by varietiesin spelling; but the result very often is that what at first were onlyprecarious and arbitrary differences in this, come in the end to beregarded as entirely different words; they detach themselves from oneanother, not again to reunite; just as accidental varieties in fruits orflowers, produced at hazard, have yet permanently separated off, andsettled into different kinds. They have each its own distinct domain ofmeaning, as by general agreement assigned to it; dividing theinheritance between them, which hitherto they held in common. No one whohas not had his attention called to this matter, who has not watched andcatalogued these words as they have come under his notice, would at allbelieve how numerous they are. 

{Sidenote: _Doublets_}

Sometimes as the accent is placed on one syllable of a word or another, it comes to have different significations, and those so distinctlymarked, that the separation may be regarded as complete. Examples ofthis are the following: ‘dívers’, and ‘divérse’; ‘cónjure’ and‘conjúre’; ‘ántic’ and ‘antíque’; ‘húman’ and ‘humáne’; ‘úrban’ and‘urbáne’; ‘géntle’ and ‘gentéel’; ‘cústom’ and ‘costúme’; ‘éssay’ and‘assáy’; ‘próperty’ and ‘propríety’. Or again, a word is pronounced witha full sound of its syllables, or somewhat more shortly: thus ‘spirit’and ‘sprite’; ‘blossom’ and ‘bloom’{104}; ‘personality’ and‘personalty’; ‘fantasy’ and ‘fancy’; ‘triumph’ and ‘trump’ (the_winning_ card{105}); ‘happily’ and ‘haply’; ‘waggon’ and ‘wain’;‘ordinance’ and ‘ordnance’; ‘shallop’ and ‘sloop’; ‘brabble’ and‘brawl’{106}; ‘syrup’ and ‘shrub’; ‘balsam’ and ‘balm’; ‘eremite’ and‘hermit’; ‘nighest’ and ‘next’; ‘poesy’ and ‘posy’; ‘fragile’ and‘frail’; ‘achievement’ and ‘hatchment’; ‘manœuvre’ and ‘manure’;--orwith the dropping of the first syllable: ‘history’ and ‘story’;‘etiquette’ and ‘ticket’; ‘escheat’ and ‘cheat’; ‘estate’ and ‘state’;and, older probably than any of these, ‘other’ and ‘or’;--or with adropping of the last syllable, as ‘Britany’ and ‘Britain’; ‘crony’ and‘crone’;--or without losing a syllable, with more or less stress laid onthe close: ‘regiment’ and ‘regimen’; ‘corpse’ and ‘corps’; ‘bite’ and‘bit’; ‘sire’ and ‘sir’; ‘land’ or ‘laund’ and ‘lawn’; ‘suite’ and‘suit’; ‘swinge’ and ‘swing’; ‘gulph’ and ‘gulp’; ‘launch’ and ‘lance’;‘wealth’ and ‘weal’; ‘stripe’ and ‘strip’; ‘borne’ and ‘born’; ‘clothes’and ‘cloths’;--or a slight internal vowel change finds place, as between‘dent’ and ‘dint’; ‘rant’ and ‘rent’ (a ranting actor tears or _rends_ apassion to tatters){107}; ‘creak’ and ‘croak’; ‘float’ and ‘fleet’;‘sleek’ and ‘slick’; ‘sheen’ and ‘shine’; ‘shriek’ and ‘shrike’; ‘pick’and ‘peck’; ‘peak’, ‘pique’, and ‘pike’; ‘weald’ and ‘wold’; ‘drip’ and‘drop’; ‘wreathe’ and ‘writhe’; ‘spear’ and ‘spire’ (“the least _spire_of grass”, South); ‘trist’ and ‘trust’; ‘band’, ‘bend’ and ‘bond’;‘cope’, ‘cape’ and ‘cap’; ‘tip’ and ‘top’; ‘slent’ (now obsolete) and‘slant’; ‘sweep’ and ‘swoop’; ‘wrest’ and ‘wrist’; ‘gad’ (now survivingonly in gadfly) and ‘goad’; ‘complement’ and ‘compliment’; ‘fitch’ and‘vetch’; ‘spike’ and ‘spoke’; ‘tamper’ and ‘temper’; ‘ragged’ and‘rugged’; ‘gargle’ and ‘gurgle’; ‘snake’ and ‘sneak’ (both crawl);‘deal’ and ‘dole’; ‘giggle’ and ‘gaggle’ (this last is now commonlyspelt ‘cackle’); ‘sip’, ‘sop’, ‘soup’ and ‘sup’; ‘clack’, ‘click’ and‘clock’; ‘tetchy’ and ‘touchy’; ‘neat’ and ‘nett’; ‘stud’ and ‘steed’;‘then’ and ‘than’{108}; ‘grits’ and ‘grouts’; ‘spirt’ and ‘sprout’;‘cure’ and ‘care’{109}; ‘prune’ and ‘preen’; ‘mister’ and ‘master’;‘allay’ and ‘alloy’; ‘ghostly’ and ‘ghastly’{110}; ‘person’ and‘parson’; ‘cleft’ and ‘clift’, now written ‘cliff’; ‘travel’ and‘travail’; ‘truth’ and ‘troth’; ‘pennon’ and ‘pinion’; ‘quail’ and‘quell’; ‘quell’ and ‘kill’; ‘metal’ and ‘mettle’; ‘chagrin’ and‘shagreen’; ‘can’ and ‘ken’; ‘Francis’ and ‘Frances’{111}; ‘chivalry’and ‘cavalry’; ‘oaf’ and ‘elf’; ‘lose’ and ‘loose’; ‘taint’ and ‘tint’. Sometimes the difference is mainly or entirely in the initialconsonants, as between ‘phial’ and ‘vial’; ‘pother’ and ‘bother’;‘bursar’ and ‘purser’; ‘thrice’ and ‘trice’{110}; ‘shatter’ and‘scatter’; ‘chattel’ and ‘cattle’; ‘chant’ and ‘cant’; ‘zealous’ and‘jealous’; ‘channel’ and ‘kennel’; ‘wise’ and ‘guise’; ‘quay’ and ‘key’;‘thrill’, ‘trill’ and ‘drill’;--or in the consonants in the middle ofthe word, as between ‘cancer’ and ‘canker’; ‘nipple’ and ‘nibble’;‘tittle’ and ‘title’; ‘price’ and ‘prize’; ‘consort’ and ‘concert’;--orthere is a change in both, as between ‘pipe’ and ‘fife’. 

Or a word is spelt now with a final _k_ and now with a final _ch_; outof this variation two different words have been formed; with, it may be, other slight differences superadded; thus is it with ‘poke’ and ‘poach’;‘dyke’ and ‘ditch’; ‘stink’ and ‘stench’; ‘prick’ and ‘pritch’ (nowobsolete); ‘break’ and ‘breach’; to which may be added ‘broach’; ‘lace’and ‘latch’; ‘stick’ and ‘stitch’; ‘lurk’ and ‘lurch’; ‘bank’ and‘bench’; ‘stark’ and ‘starch’; ‘wake’ and ‘watch’. So too _t_ and _d_are easily exchanged; as in ‘clod’ and ‘clot’; ‘vend’ and ‘vent’;‘brood’ and ‘brat’{112}; ‘halt’ and ‘hold’; ‘sad’ and ‘set’{113}; ‘card’and ‘chart’; ‘medley’ and ‘motley’. Or there has grown up, besides therigorous and accurate pronunciation of a word, a popular as well; andthis in the end has formed itself into another word; thus is it with‘housewife’ and ‘hussey’; ‘hanaper’ and ‘hamper’; ‘puisne’ and ‘puny’;‘patron’ and ‘pattern’; ‘spital’ (hospital) and ‘spittle’ (house ofcorrection); ‘accompt’ and ‘account’; ‘donjon’ and ‘dungeon’; ‘nestle’and ‘nuzzle’{114} (now obsolete); ‘Egyptian’ and ‘gypsy’; ‘Bethlehem’and ‘Bedlam’; ‘exemplar’ and ‘sampler’; ‘dolphin’ and ‘dauphin’; ‘iota’and ‘jot’. 

Other changes cannot perhaps be reduced exactly under any of theseheads; as between ‘ounce’ and ‘inch’; ‘errant’ and ‘arrant’; ‘slack’ and‘slake’; ‘slow’ and ‘slough’{115}; ‘bow’ and ‘bough’; ‘hew’ and‘hough’{115}; ‘dies’ and ‘dice’ (both plurals of ‘die’); ‘plunge’ and‘flounce’{115}; ‘staff’ and ‘stave’; ‘scull’ and ‘shoal’; ‘benefit’ and‘benefice’{116}. Or, it may be, the difference which constitutes the twoforms of the word into two words is in the spelling only, and of acharacter to be appreciable only by the eye, escaping altogether theear: thus it is with ‘draft’ and ‘draught’; ‘plain’ and ‘plane’; ‘coign’and ‘coin’; ‘flower’ and ‘flour’; ‘check’ and ‘cheque’; ‘straight’ and‘strait’; ‘ton’ and ‘tun’; ‘road’ and ‘rode’; ‘throw’ and ‘throe’;‘wrack’ and ‘rack’; ‘gait’ and ‘gate’; ‘hoard’ and ‘horde’{117}; ‘knoll’and ‘noll’; ‘chord’ and ‘cord’; ‘drachm’ and ‘dram’; ‘sergeant’ and‘serjeant’; ‘mask’ and ‘masque’; ‘villain’ and ‘villein’. 

{Sidenote: _Words in Two Forms_}

Now, if you will put the matter to proof, you will find, I believe, inevery case that there has attached itself to the different forms of aword a modification of meaning more or less sensible, that each has wonfor itself an independent sphere of meaning, in which it, and it only, moves. For example, ‘divers’ implies difference only, but ‘diverse’difference with opposition; thus the several Evangelists narrate thesame event in ‘divers’ manner, but not in ‘diverse’. ‘Antique’ isancient, but ‘antic’, is now the ancient regarded as overlived, out ofdate, and so in our days grotesque, ridiculous; and then, with adropping of the reference to age, the grotesque, the ridiculous alone. ‘Human’ is what every man is, ‘humane’ is what every man ought to be;for Johnson’s suggestion that ‘humane’ is from the French feminine, ‘humaine’, and ‘human’ from the masculine, cannot for an instant beadmitted. ‘Ingenious’ expresses a mental, ‘ingenuous’ a moral, excellence{118}. A gardener ‘prunes’, or trims his trees, properlyindeed his _vines_ alone (pro_vigner_), birds ‘preen’ or trim theirfeathers. We ‘allay’ wine with water; we ‘alloy’ gold with platina. ‘Bloom’ is a finer and more delicate efflorescence even than ‘blossom’;thus the ‘bloom’, but not the ‘blossom’, of the cheek. It is now always‘clots’ of blood and ‘clods’ of earth; a ‘float’ of timber, and a‘fleet’ of ships; men ‘vend’ wares, and ‘vent’ complaints. A ‘curtsey’is one, and that merely an external, manifestation of ‘courtesy’. ‘Gambling’ may be, as with a fearful irony it is called, _play_, but itis nearly as distant from ‘gambolling’ as hell is from heaven{119}. Norwould it be hard, in almost every pair or larger group of words which Ihave adduced, as in others which no doubt might be added to complete thelist, to trace a difference of meaning which has obtained a more or lessdistinct recognition{120}. 

But my subject is inexhaustible; it has no limits except those, whichindeed may be often narrow enough, imposed by my own ignorance on theone side; and on the other, by the necessity of consulting yourpatience, and of only choosing such matter as will admit a popularsetting forth. These necessities, however, bid me to pause, and suggestthat I should not look round for other quarters from whence accessionsof new words are derived. Doubtless I should not be long without findingmany such. I must satisfy myself for the rest with a very briefconsideration of the _motives_ which, as they have been, are still atwork among us, inducing us to seek for these augmentations of ourvocabulary. 

And first, the desire of greater clearness is a frequent motive andinducement to this. It has been well and truly said: “Every new term, expressing a fact or a difference not precisely or adequately expressedby any other word in the same language, is a new organ of thought forthe mind that has learned it”{121}. The limits of their vocabulary arein fact for most men the limits of their knowledge; and in a greatdegree for us all. Of course I do not affirm that it is absolutelyimpossible to have our mental conceptions clearer and more distinct thanour words; but it is very hard to have, and still harder to keep, themso. And therefore it is that men, conscious of this, so soon as everthey have learned to distinguish in their minds, are urged by an almostirresistible impulse to distinguish also in their words. They feel thatnothing is made sure till this is done. 

{Sidenote: _Dissimilation of Words_}

The sense that a word covers too large a space of meaning, is thefrequent occasion of the introduction of another, which shall relieveit of a portion of this. Thus, there was a time when ‘witch’ was appliedequally to male and female dealers in unlawful magical arts. SimonMagus, for example, and Elymas are both ‘witches’, in Wiclif’s _NewTestament_ (Acts viii. 9; xiii. 8), and Posthumus in _Cymbeline_: butwhen the medieval Latin ‘sortiarius’ (not ‘sortitor’ as in Richardson), supplied another word, the French ‘sorcier’, and thus our English‘sorcerer’ (originally the “caster of lots”), then ‘witch’ gradually wasconfined to the hag, or female practiser of these arts, while ‘sorcerer’was applied to the male. 

New necessities, new evolutions of society into more complex conditions, evoke new words; which come forth, because they are required now; butdid not formerly exist, because they were not required in the periodpreceding. For example, in Greece so long as the poet sang his ownverses ‘singer’ (ἀοιδὸς) sufficiently expressed the double function;such a ‘singer’ was Homer, and such Homer describes Demodocus, the bardof the Phæacians; that double function, in fact, not being in his timecontemplated as double, but each part of it so naturally completing theother, that no second word was required. When, however, in the divisionof labour one made the verses which another chaunted, then ‘poet’ or‘maker’, a word unknown in the Homeric age, arose. In like manner, when‘physicians’ were the only natural philosophers, the word covered thismeaning as well as that other which it still retains; but when theinvestigation of nature and natural causes detached itself from the artof healing, became an independent study of itself, the name ‘physician’remained to that which was as the stock and stem of the art, while thenew offshoot sought out a new name for itself. 

Another motive to the invention of new words, is the desire thereby tocut short lengthy{122} explanations, tedious circuits of language. Science is often an immense gainer by words, which say singly what itwould have taken whole sentences otherwise to have said. Thus‘isothermal’ is quite of modern invention; but what a long story itwould be to tell the meaning of ‘_isothermal_ lines’, all which issummed up in and saved by the word. We have long had the word‘assimilation’ in our dictionaries; ‘dissimilation’ has not yet foundits way into them, but it speedily will. It will appear first, if ithas not already appeared, in our books on language{123}. I expressmyself with this confidence, because the advance of philologicalenquiry has rendered it almost a matter of necessity that we shouldpossess a word to designate a certain process, and no other word woulddesignate it at all so well. There is a process of ‘assimilation’going on very extensively in language; it occurs where the organs ofspeech find themselves helped by changing a letter for another whichhas just occurred, or will just occur in a word; thus we say not‘_adf_iance’ but ‘_aff_iance’, not ‘re_n_ow_m_’, as our ancestors didwhen the word ‘renommée’ was first naturalized, but ‘re_n_ow_n_’. Atthe same time there is another opposite process, where some letterwould recur too often for euphony or comfort in speaking, if thestrict form of the word were too closely held fast, and whereconsequently this letter is exchanged for some other, generally forsome nearly allied; thus it is at least a reasonable suggestion, that‘cœ_r_uleum’ was once ‘cœ_l_uleum’, from cœlum: so too the Italiansprefer ‘ve_l_e_n_o’ to ‘ve_n_e_n_o’; and we ‘cinnamo_n_’ to‘cinnamo_m_’ (the earlier form); in ‘turtle’ and ‘purple’ we haveshrunk from the double ‘_r_’ of ‘turtur’ and ‘purpura’; and thisprocess of _making unlike_, requiring a term to express it, willcreate, or indeed has created, the word ‘dissimilation’, whichprobably will in due time establish itself among us in far wider thanits primary use. 

‘Watershed’ has only recently begun to appear in books of geography; andyet how convenient it must be admitted to be; how much more so than‘line of water parting’, which it has succeeded; meaning, as I needhardly tell you it does, not merely that which _sheds_ the waters, butthat which _divides_ them (‘wasserscheide’); and being applied to thatexact ridge and highest line in a mountain region, where the waters ofthat region separate off and divide, some to one side, and some to theother; as in the Rocky Mountains of North America there are streamsrising within very few miles of one another, which flow severally eastand west, and, if not in unbroken course, yet as affluents to largerrivers, fall at least severally into the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. Itmust be allowed, I think, that not merely geographical terminology, butgeography itself, had a benefactor in him who first endowed it with soexpressive and comprehensive a word, bringing before us a fact which weshould scarcely have been aware of without it. 

There is another word which I have just employed, ‘affluent’, in thesense of a stream which does not flow into the sea, but joins a largerstream, as for instance, the Isis is an ‘affluent’ of the Thames, theMoselle of the Rhine. It is itself an example in the same kind of thatwhereof I have been speaking, having been only recently constituted asubstantive, and employed in this sense, while yet its utility isobvious. ‘Confluents’ would perhaps be a fitter name, where the rivers, like the Missouri and the Mississippi, were of equal or nearly equalimportance up to the time of their meeting{124}. 

{Sidenote: ‘_Selfishness_’, ‘_Suicide_’}

Again, new words are coined out of the necessity which men feel offilling up gaps in the language. Thoughtful men, comparing their ownlanguage with that of other nations, become conscious of deficiencies, of important matters unexpressed in their own, and with more or lesssuccess proceed to supply the deficiency. For example, that sin of sins, the undue love of self, with the postponing of the interests of allothers to our own, had for a long time no word to express it in English. Help was sought from the Greek, and from the Latin. ‘Philauty’(φιλαυτία) had been more than once attempted by our scholars; but foundno popular acceptance. This failing, men turned to the Latin; one writertrying to supply the want by calling the man a ‘suist’, as one seeking_his own_ things (‘sua’), and the sin itself, ‘suicism’. The gap, however, was not really filled up, till some of the Puritan writers, drawing on our Saxon, devised ‘selfish’ and ‘selfishness’, words whichto us seem obvious enough, but which yet are little more than twohundred [and fifty] years old{125}. 

{Sidenote: _Notices of New Words_}

Before quitting this part of the subject, let me say a few words inconclusion on this deliberate introduction of words to supply feltomissions in a language, and the limits within which this or any otherconscious interference with the development of a language is desirableor possible. By the time that a people begin to meditate upon theirlanguage, to be aware by a conscious reflective act either of its meritsor deficiencies, by far the greater and more important part of its workis done; it is fixed in respect of its structure in immutable forms; theregion in which any alteration or modification, addition to it, orsubstraction from it, deliberately devised and carried out, may bepossible, is very limited indeed. Its great laws are too firmlyestablished to admit of this; so that almost nothing can be taken fromit, which it has got; almost nothing added to it, which it has _not_got. It will travel indeed in certain courses of change; but it would beas easy almost to alter the career of a planet as for man to alterthese. This is sometimes a subject of regret with those who see whatthey believe manifest defects or blemishes in their language, and suchas appear to them capable of remedy. And yet in fact this is well; sincefor once that these redressers of real or fancied wrongs, thesesuppliers of things lacking, would have mended, we may be tolerablyconfident that ten times, yea, a hundred times, they would have marred;letting go that which would have been well retained; retaining thatwhich by a necessary law the language now dismisses and lets go; and inmanifold ways interfering with those processes of a natural logic, whichare here evermore at work. The genius of a language, unconsciouslypresiding over all its transformations, and conducting them to adefinite issue, will have been a far truer, far safer guide, than theartificial wit, however subtle, of any single man, or of any associationof men. For the genius of a language is the sense and inner convictionof all who speak it, as to what it ought to be, and the means by whichit will best attain its objects; and granting that a pair of eyes, ortwo or three pairs of eyes may see much, yet millions of eyes willcertainly see more. 

{Sidenote: _German Purists_}

It is only with the words, and not with the forms and laws of alanguage, that any interference such as I have just supposed ispossible. Something, indeed much, may here be done by wise masters, inthe way of rejecting that which would deform, allowing and adopting thatwhich will strengthen and enrich. Those who would purify or enrich alanguage, so long as they have kept within this their proper sphere, have often effected much, more than at first could have seemed possible. The history of the German language affords so much better illustrationof this than our own would do, that I shall make no scruple in seekingmy examples there. When the patriotic Germans began to wake up to aconsciousness of the enormous encroachments which foreign languages, the Latin and French above all, had made on their native tongue, thelodgements which they had therein effected, and the danger whichthreatened it, namely, that it should cease to be German at all, butonly a mingle-mangle, a variegated patchwork of many languages, withoutany unity or inner coherence at all, various societies were institutedamong them, at the beginning and during the course of the seventeenthcentury, for the recovering of what was lost of their own, for theexpelling of that which had intruded from abroad; and these withexcellent effect. 

But more effectual than these societies were the efforts of singlemen, who in this merited well of their country{126}. In respect ofwords which are now entirely received by the whole nation, it isoften possible to designate the writers who first substituted themfor some affected Gallicism or unnecessary Latinism. Thus to Lessinghis fellow-countrymen owe the substitution of ‘zartgefühl’ for‘delicatesse’, of ‘empfindsamkeit’ for ‘sentimentalität’, of‘wesenheit’ for ‘essence’. It was Voss (1786) who first employed‘alterthümlich’ for ‘antik’. Wieland too was the author or reviver ofa multitude of excellent words, for which often he had to do earnestbattle at the first; such were ‘seligkeit’, ‘anmuth’, ‘entzückung’, ‘festlich’, ‘entwirren’, with many more. For ‘maskerade’, Campe wouldhave fain substituted ‘larventanz’. It was a novelty when Büschingcalled his great work on geography ‘erdbeschreibung’ instead of‘geographie’; while ‘schnellpost’ instead of ‘diligence’, ‘zerrbild’for ‘carricatur’ are also of recent introduction. In regard of‘wörterbuch’ itself, J. Grimm tells us he can find no example of itsuse dating earlier than 1719. 

Yet at the same time it must be acknowledged that some of thesereformers proceeded with more zeal than knowledge, while others didwhatever in them lay to make the whole movement absurd--even as thereever hang on the skirts of a noble movement, be it in literature orpolitics or higher things yet, those who contribute their little all tobring ridicule and contempt upon it. Thus in the reaction againstforeign interlopers which ensued, and in the zeal to purify the languagefrom them, some went to such extravagant excesses as to desire to getrid of ‘testament’, ‘apostel’, which last Campe would have replaced by‘lehrbote’, with other words like these, consecrated by longest use, andto find native substitutes in their room; or they understood so littlewhat words deserved to be called foreign, or how to draw the linebetween them and native, that they would fain have gotten rid of‘vater’, ‘mutter’, ‘wein’, ‘fenster’, ‘meister’, ‘kelch’{127}; the firstthree of which belong to the German language by just as good a right asthey do to the Latin and the Greek; while the other three have beennaturalized so long that to propose to expel them now was as if, havingpassed an alien act for the banishment of all foreigners, we shouldproceed to include under that name, and as such drive forth from thekingdom, the descendants of the French Protestants who found refuge hereat the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, or even of the Flemings whosettled among us in the time of our Edwards. One notable enthusiast inthis line proposed to create an entirely new nomenclature for all themythological personages of the Greek and the Roman pantheon, who, onewould think, might have been allowed, if any, to retain their Greek andLatin names. So far however from this, they were to exchange these forequivalent German titles; Cupid was to be ‘Lustkind’, Flora ‘Bluminne’, Aurora ‘Röthin’; instead of Apollo schoolboys were to speak of‘Singhold’; instead of Pan of ‘Schaflieb’; instead of Jupiter of‘Helfevater’, with much else of the same kind. Let us beware (and thewarning extends much further than to the matter in hand) of making agood cause ridiculous by our manner of supporting it, of assuming thatexaggerations on one side can only be redressed by exaggerations asgreat upon the other. 

{FOOTNOTES}

{38} Thus Alexander Gil, head-master of St. Paul’s School, in his book, _Logonomia Anglica_, 1621, _Preface_: Huc usque peregrinæ voces in linguâ Anglicâ inauditæ. Tandem circa annum 1400 Galfridus Chaucerus, infausto omine, vocabulis Gallicis et Latinis poësin suam famosam reddidit. The whole passage, which is too long to quote, as indeed the whole book, is curious. Gil was an earnest advocate of phonetic spelling, and has adopted it in all his English quotations in this book. 

{39} We may observe exactly the same in Plautus: a multitude of Greek words are used by him, which the Latin language did not want, and therefore refused to take up; thus ‘clepta’, ‘zamia’ (ζημία), ‘danista’, ‘harpagare’, ‘apolactizare’, ‘nauclerus’, ‘strategus’, ‘morologus’, ‘phylaca’, ‘malacus’, ‘sycophantia’, ‘euscheme’ (εὐσχήμως), ‘dulice’ (δουλικῶς), [so ‘scymnus’ by Lucretius], none of which, I believe, are employed except by him; ‘mastigias’ and ‘techna’ appear also in Terence. Yet only experience could show that they were superfluous; and at the epoch of Latin literature in which Plautus lived, it was well done to put them on trial. 

{40} [Modern poets have given ‘amort’ a new life; it is used by Keats, by Bailey (_Festus_, xxx), and by Browning (_Sordello_, vi). ]

{41} [‘Bruit’ has been revived by Carlyle and Chas. Merivale. Its verbal form is used by Cowper, Byron and Dickens. ]

{42} Let me here observe once for all that in adding the name of an author, which I shall often do, to a word, I do not mean to affirm the word in any way peculiar to him; although in some cases it may be so; but only to give one authority for its use. [Coleridge uses ‘eloign’. ]

{43} _Essay on English Poetry_, p. 93. 

{44} _Dedication of the Translation of the Æneid_. 

{45} [i. E. The promoters of Classical learning. ]

{46} We have notable evidence in some lines of Waller of the sense which in his time scholars had of the rapidity with which the language was changing under their hands. Looking back at what the last hundred years had wrought of alteration in it, and very naturally assuming that the next hundred would effect as much, he checked with misgivings such as these his own hope of immortality:

 “Who can hope his lines should long Last in a daily changing tongue? While they are new, envy prevails, And as that dies, our language fails. 

 * * * * *

 “Poets that lasting marble seek, Must carve in Latin or in Greek: _We_ write in sand; our language grows, And like the tide our work o’erflows”. 

 Such were his misgivings as to the future, assuming that the rate of change would continue what it had been. How little they have been fulfilled, every one knows. In actual fact two centuries, which have elapsed since he wrote, have hardly antiquated a word or a phrase in his poems. If we care very little for them now, that is to be explained by quite other causes--by the absence of all moral earnestness from them. 

{47} In his _Art of English Poesy_, London, 1589, republished in Haslewood’s _Ancient Critical Essays upon English Poets and Poesy_, London, 1811, vol. I. Pp. 122, 123; [and in Arber’s _English Reprints_, 1869]. 

{48} London, 1601. Besides this work Holland translated the whole of Plutarch’s _Moralia_, the _Cyropœdia_ of Xenophon, Livy, Suetonius, Ammianus Marcellinus, and Camden’s _Britannia_. His works make a part of the “library of dullness” in Pope’s _Dunciad_:

 “De Lyra there a dreadful front extends, And here the groaning shelves _Philemon_ bends”--

 very unjustly; the authors whom he has translated are all more or less important, and his versions of them a mine of genuine idiomatic English, neglected by most of our lexicographers, wrought to a considerable extent, and with eminent advantage by Richardson; yet capable, as it seems to me, of yielding much more than they hitherto have yielded. 

{49} And so too in French it is surprising to find of how late introduction are many words, which it seems as if the language could never have done without. ‘Désintéressement’, ‘exactitude’, ‘sagacité’, ‘bravoure’, were not introduced till late in the seventeenth century. ‘Renaissance’, ‘emportement’, ‘sçavoir-faire’, ‘indélébile’, ‘désagrément’, were all recent in 1675 (Bouhours); ‘indévot’, ‘intolérance’, ‘impardonnable’, ‘irréligieux’, were struggling into allowance at the end of the seventeenth century, and were not established till the beginning of the eighteenth. ‘Insidieux’ was invented by Malherbe; ‘frivolité’ does not appear in the earlier editions of the _Dictionary of the Academy_; the Abbé de St. Pierre was the first to employ ‘bienfaisance’, the elder Balzac ‘féliciter’, Sarrasin ‘burlesque’. Mad. De Sevigné exclaims against her daughter for employing ‘effervescence’ in a letter (comment dites-vous cela, ma fille? Voilà un mot dont je n’avais jamais ouï parler). ‘Demagogue’ was first hazarded by Bossuet, and was counted so bold a novelty that it was long before any ventured to follow him in its use. Somewhat earlier Montaigne had introduced ‘diversion’ and ‘enfantillage’, though not without being rebuked by cotemporaries on the score of the last. Desfontaines was the first who employed ‘suicide’; Caron gave to the language ‘avant-propos’, Ronsard ‘avidité’, Joachim Dubellay ‘patrie’, Denis Sauvage ‘jurisconsulte’, Menage ‘gracieux’ (at least so Voltaire affirms) and ‘prosateur’, Desportes ‘pudeur’, Chapelain ‘urbanité’, and Etienne first brought in, apologizing at the same time for the boldness of it, ‘analogie’ (si les oreilles françoises peuvent porter ce mot). ‘Préliber’ (prælibare) is a word of our own day; and it was Charles Nodier who, if he did not coin, yet revived the obsolete ‘simplesse’. --See Génin, _Variations du Langage Français_, pp. 308-19. 

{50} [Resuscitated in vain by Charles Lamb. ]

{51} J. Grimm (_Wörterbuch_, p. Xxvi. ): Fällt von ungefähr ein fremdes wort in den brunnen einer sprache, so wird es so lange darin umgetrieben, bis es ihre farbe annimmt, und seiner fremden art zum trotze wie ein heimisches aussieht. 

{52} Have we here an explanation of the ‘battalia’ of Jeremy Taylor and others? Did they, without reflecting on the matter, regard ‘battalion’ as a word with a Greek neuter termination? It is difficult to think they should have done so; yet more difficult to suggest any other explanation. [‘Battalia’ was sometimes mistaken as a plural, which indeed it was originally, the word being derived through the Italian _battaglia_, from low Latin _battalia_, which (like _biblia_, _gaudia_, etc. ) was afterwards regarded as a feminine singular (Skeat, _Principles_, ii, 230). But Shakespeare used it as a singular, “Our _battalia_ trebles that account” (_Rich. III_, v. 3, 11); and so Sir T. Browne, “The Roman _battalia_ was ordered after this manner” (_Garden of Cyrus_, 1658, p. 113). ]

{53} “And old heroës, which their world did daunt”. 

 _Sonnet on Scanderbeg. _

{54} [By J. H(ealey), 1610, who has “centones . .. Of diuerse colours”, p. 605. ]

{55} [The identity of these two words, notwithstanding the analogy of _corona_ and _crown_, is denied by Skeat, Kluge and Lutz. ]

{56} Skinner (_Etymologicon_, 1671) protests against the word altogether, as purely French, and having no right to be considered English at all. 

{57} It is curious how effectually the nationality of a word may by these slight alterations in spelling be disguised. I have met an excellent French and English scholar, to whom it was quite a surprise to learn that ‘redingote’ was ‘riding-coat’. 

{58} [Compare French _marsouin_ (=German _meer-schwein_), “sea-pig”, the dolphin; Breton _mor-houc’h_; Irish _mucc mara_, “pig of the sea”, the dolphin (W. Stokes, _Irish Glossaries_, p. 118); French _truye de mer_ (Cotgrave); old English _brun-swyne_ (_Prompt. Parv. _), “brown-pig”, the dolphin or seal. ]

{59} He is not indeed perfectly accurate in this statement, for the Greeks spoke of ἐν κύκλῳ παιδεία and ἐγκύκλιος παιδεία, but had no such composite word as ἐγκυκλοπαδεία. We gather however from these expressions, as from Lord Bacon’s using the term ‘circle-learning’ (=‘orbis doctrinæ’, Quintilian), that ‘encyclopædia’ did not exist in their time. [But ‘encyclopedia’ occurs in Elyot, _Governour_, 1531, vol. I, p. 118 (ed. Croft); ‘encyclopædie’ in J. Sylvester, _Workes_, 1621, p. 660. ]

{60} See the passages quoted in my paper, _On some Deficiencies in our English Dictionaries_, p. 38. 

{61} [This prediction has been verified. ‘Ethos’ is used by Sir F. Palgrave, 1851, and in the ‘Encyclopædia Britannica’, 1875. N. E. D. ]

{62} We may see the same progress in Greek words which were being incorporated in the Latin. Thus Cicero writes ἀντίποδες (_Acad. _ ii, 39, 123), but Seneca (_Ep. _ 122), ‘antipodes’; that is, the word for Cicero was still Greek, while in the period that elapsed between him and Seneca, it had become Latin: so too Cicero wrote εἴδωλον, the Younger Pliny ‘idolon’, and Tertullian ‘idolum’. 

{63} [This rash prophecy has not been fulfilled. English speakers are still no more inclined to say ‘préstige’ than ‘pólice’. ]

{64} See in Coleridge’s _Table Talk_, p. 3, the amusing story of John Kemble’s stately correction of the Prince of Wales for adhering to the earlier pronunciation, ‘obl_ee_ge, ’--“It will become your royal mouth better to say obl_i_ge. ”

{65} “In this great _académy_ of mankind”. 

 Butler, _To the Memory of Du Val_. 

{66} “‘Twixt that and reason what a nice _barrier_”. 

{67} [A fairly complete collection of these and similar semi-naturalized foreign words will be found in _The Stanford Dictionary of Anglicized Words_, edited by Dr. C. A. M. Fennell, 1892. ]

{68} [This is quite wrong. Mr. Fitzedward Hall shows that ‘inimical’ was used by Gaule in 1652, as well as by Richardson in 1758 (_Modern English_, p. 287). The N. E. D. Quotes an instance of it from Udall in 1643. ]

{69} [The word had been already naturalized by H. More, 1647, Cudworth, 1678, Tucker 1765, and Carlyle, 1831. --N. E. D. ]

{70} [The earliest citation for ‘abnormal’ in the N. E. D. Is dated 1835. The older word was ‘abnormous’. Curious to say it is unrelated to ‘normal’ to which it has been assimilated, being merely an alteration of ‘anomal-ous’. ]

{71} [Fuller says of ‘plunder’, “we first heard thereof in the Swedish wars”, and that it came into England about 1642 (_Church History_, bk. Xi, sec. 4, par. 33). It certainly occurs under that date in _Memoirs of the Verney Family_, “It is in danger of _plonderin_” (vol. I, p. 71, also p. 151). It also occurs in a document dated 1643, “We must _plunder_ none but Roundheads” (_Camden Soc. Miscellany_, iii, 31). Drummond (died 1649) has “Go fight and _plunder_” (_Poems_, ed. Turnbull, p. 330). It appears in a quotation from _The Bellman of London_ (no reference) given in Timbs, _London and Westminster_, vol. I, p. 254. ]

{72} [It is rather from the old Dutch _trecker_, a ‘puller’. Very few English words come to us from German. ]

{73} [So Skeat, _Etym. Dict. _ But the Germans themselves take their _schwindler_ (in the sense of cheat) to have been adopted from the English ‘swindler’. Dr. Dunger asserts that it was introduced into their language by Lichtenberg in his explanation of Hogarth’s engravings, 1794-99 (_Englanderei in der Deutschen Sprache_, 1899, p. 7). ]

{74} _Pisgah Sight of Palestine_, 1650, p. 217. 

{75} [This word introduced as a ‘pure neologism’ by D’Israeli (_Curiosities of Literature_, 1839, 11th ed. P. 384) as a companion to ‘mother-tongue’, had been already used by Sir W. Temple in 1672 (Hall, _Mod. English_, p. 44). Nay, even by Tyndale, see T. L. K. Oliphant, _The New English_, i, 439. ]

{76} [‘Folk-lore’ was introduced by Mr. W. J. Thoms, editor of _Notes and Queries_, in 1846. Still later came ‘Folk-etymology’, the earliest use of which in N. E. D. Is given as 1883, but the editor’s work bearing that title appeared in 1882. ]

{77} _Holy State_, b. 2, c. 6. There was a time when the Latin promised to display, if not an equal, yet not a very inferior, freedom in this forming of new words by the happy marriage of old. But in this, as in so many respects, it seemed possessed at the period of its highest culture with a timidity, which caused it voluntarily to abdicate many of its own powers. Where do we find in the Augustan period of the language so grand a pair of epithets as these, occurring as they do in a single line of Catullus: Ubi cerva _silvicultrix_, ubi aper _nemorivagus_? or again, as his ‘fluentisonus’? Virgil’s vitisator (_Æn. _ 7, 179) is not his own, but derived from one of the earlier poets. Nay, the language did not even retain those compound epithets which it once had formed, but was content to let numbers of them drop: ‘parcipromus’; ‘turpilucricupidus’, and many more, do not extend beyond Plautus. On this matter Quintilian observes (i. 5, 70): Res tota magis Græcos decet, nobis minus succedit; nec id fieri naturâ puto, sed alienis favemus; ideoque cum κυρταύχενα mirati sumus, _incurvicervicum_ vix a risu defendimus. Elsewhere he complains, though not with reference to compound epithets, of the little _generative_ power which existed in the Latin language, that its continual losses were compensated by no equivalent gains (viii. 6, 32): Deinde, tanquum consummata sint omnia, nihil generare audemus ipsi, quum multa quotidie ab antiquis ficta moriantur. Notwithstanding this complaint, it must be owned that the silver age of the language, which sought to recover, and did recover to some extent the abdicated energies of its earlier times, reasserted among other powers that of combining words with a certain measure of success. 

{78} [For Shakespearian compounds see Abbott’s _Shakespearian Grammar_, pp. 317-20. ]

{79} [Writing in the year 1780 Bentham says: “The word it must be acknowledged is a new one”. ]

{80} _Collection of Scarce Tracts_, edited by Sir W. Scott, vol. Vii, p. 91. 

{81} [Hardly a novelty, as the word occurs in J. Gaule, Πῦς-μαντια, 1652, p. 30. See F. Hall, _Mod. English_, p. 131. ]

{82} [First used apparently by Grote, 1847, and Mrs. Gaskell, 1857, N. E. D. ]

{83} See _Letters of Horace Walpole and Mann_, vol. Ii. P. 396, quoted in _Notes and Queries_, No. 225; and another proof of the novelty of the word in Pegge’s _Anecdotes of the English Language_, 1814, p. 38. 

{84} Postscript to his _Translation of the Æneid_. 

{85} Multa renascentur, quæ jam cecidere. 

 _De A. P. _ 46-72; cf. _Ep. _ 2, 2, 115. 

{86} _Etymologicon vocum omnium antiquarum quæ usque a Wilhelmo Victore invaluerunt, et jam ante parentum ætatem in usu esse desierunt. _

{87} [As a matter of fact the N. E. D. Fails to give any quotation for this word in the period named. ]

{88} [The verb ‘to advocate’ had long before been employed by Nash, 1598, Sanderson, 1624, and Heylin, 1657 (F. Hall, _Mod. English_, p. 285). ]

{89} In like manner La Bruyère, in his _Caractères_, c. 14, laments the extinction of a large number of French words which he names. At least half of these have now free course in the language, as ‘valeureux’, ‘haineux’, ‘peineux’, ‘fructueux’, ‘mensonger’, ‘coutumier’, ‘vantard’, ‘courtois’, ‘jovial’, ‘fétoyer’, ‘larmoyer’, ‘verdoyer’. Two or three of these may be rarely used, but every one would be found in a dictionary of the living language. 

{90} _Preface to Juvenal. _

{91} _Preface to Troilus and Cressida. _ In justice to Dryden, and lest it should be said that he had spoken poetic blasphemy, it ought not to be forgotten that ‘pestered’ had not in his time at all so offensive a sense as it would have now. It meant no more than inconveniently crowded; thus Milton: “Confined and _pestered_ in this pinfold here”. 

{92} Thus in North’s _Plutarch_, p. 499: “After the fire was quenched, they found in _niggots_ of gold and silver mingled together, about a thousand talents”; and again, p. 323: “There was brought a marvellous great mass of treasure in _niggots_ of gold”. The word has not found its way into our dictionaries or glossaries. 

{93} [‘Niggot’ rather stands for ‘ningot’, due to a coalescence of the article in ‘an ingot’ (as if ‘a ningot’); just as, according to some, in French _l’ingot_ became _lingot_. ]

{94} [Such collections were essayed in J. C. Hare’s _Two Essays in English Philology_, 1873, “_Words derived from Names of Persons_”, and in R. S. Charnock’s _Verba Nominalia_, pp. 326. ]

{95} [In a strangely similar way the stone-worshipper in the Malay Peninsula gives to his sacred boulder the title of Mohammed (Tylor, _Primitive Culture_, 3rd ed. Ii. 254). ]

{96} [But Wolsey’s jester was most probably so called from his wearing a varicoloured or patchwork coat; compare the Shakespearian use of ‘motley’. Similarly the _maquereaux_ of the old French comedy were clothed in a mottled dress like our harlequin, just as the Latin _maccus_ or mime wore a _centunculus_ or patchwork coat, his name being perhaps connected with _macus_ (in _macula_), a spot (Gozzi, _Memoirs_, i, 38). In stage slang the harlequin was called _patchy_, as his Latin counterpart was _centunculus_. ]

{97} [An error. Prof. Skeat shows that ‘tram’ was an old word in Scottish and Northern English (_Etym. Dict. _, 655 and 831). ]

{98} Several of these we have in common with the French. Of their own they have ‘sardanapalisme’, any piece of profuse luxury, from Sardanapalus; while for ‘lambiner’, to dally or loiter over a task, they are indebted to Denis Lambin, a worthy Greek scholar of the sixteenth century, whom his adversaries accused of sluggish movement and wearisome diffuseness in style. Every reader of Pascal’s _Provincial Letters_ will remember Escobar, the great casuist among the Jesuits, whose convenient subterfuges for the relaxation of the moral law have there been made famous. To the notoriety which he thus acquired he owes his introduction into the French language; where ‘escobarder’ is used in the sense of to equivocate, and ‘escobarderie’ of subterfuge or equivocation. The name of an unpopular minister of finance, M. De Silhouette, unpopular because he sought to cut down unnecessary expenses in the state, was applied to whatever was cheap, and, as was implied, unduly economical; it has survived in the black outline portrait which is now called a ‘silhouette’. (Sismondi, _Histoire des Français_, tom. Xix, pp. 94, 95. ) In the ‘mansarde’ roof we have the name of Mansart, the architect who introduced it. I need hardly add ‘guillotine’. 

{99} See Col. Mure, _Language and Literature of Ancient Greece_, vol. I, p. 350. 

{100} See Génin, _Des Variations du Langage Français_, p. 12. 

{101} [Dr. Murray in the N. E. D. Calls these by the convenient term ‘nonce-words’. ]

{102} _Persa_, iv. 6, 20-23. At the same time these words may be earnest enough; such was the ἐλαχιστότερος of St. Paul (Ephes. Iii, 8); just as in the Middle Ages some did not account it sufficient to call themselves “fratres minores, minimi, postremi”, but coined ‘postremissimi’ to express the depth of their “voluntary humility”. 

{103} It is curious that a correspondent of Skinner (_Etymologicon_, 1671), although quite ignorant of this story, and indeed wholly astray in his application, had suggested that ‘chouse’ might be thus connected with the Turkish ‘chiaus’. I believe Gifford, in his edition of Ben Jonson, was the first to clear up the matter. A passage in _The Alchemist_ (Act i. Sc. 1) will have put him on the right track. [But Dr. Murray notes that Gifford’s story, as given above, has not hitherto been substantiated from any independent source, and is so far open to doubt. ]

{104} [These are quite distinct words, though perhaps distantly related. ]

{105} If there were any doubt about this matter, which indeed there is not, a reference to Latimer’s famous _Sermon on Cards_ would abundantly remove it, where ‘triumph’ and ‘trump’ are interchangeably used. 

{106} [Dr. Murray does not regard these words as ultimately identical. ]

{107} [‘Rant’ (old Dutch _ranten_) has no connection with ‘rend’ (Anglo-Saxon _hrendan_) (Skeat). ]

{108} On these words see a learned discussion in _English Retraced_, Cambridge, 1862. 

{109} [These are quite unconnected (Skeat). ]

{110} [Neither are these words to be confused with one another. ]

{111} The appropriating of ‘Franc_e_s’ to women and ‘Franc_i_s’ to men is quite of modern introduction; it was formerly nearly as often Sir Franc_e_s Drake as Sir Franc_i_s, while Fuller (_Holy State_, b. Iv, c. 14) speaks of Franc_i_s Brandon, eldest _daughter_ of Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk; and see Ben Jonson’s _New Inn_, Act. Ii, Sc. 1. 

{112} [Not connected. ]

{113} [‘Sad’ akin to ‘sated’ bears no relationship to ‘set’; neither does ‘medley’ to ‘motley’. ]

{114} [On the connection of these words see my _Folk and their Word-Lore_, p. 110. ]

{115} [Not connected, see Skeat. ]

{116} Were there need of proving that these both lie in ‘beneficium’, which there is not, for in Wiclif’s translation of the Bible the distinction is still latent (1 Tim. Vi. 2), one might adduce a singularly characteristic little trait of Papal policy, which once turned upon the double use of this word. Pope Adrian the Fourth writing to the Emperor Frederic the First to complain of certain conduct of his, reminded the Emperor that he had placed the imperial crown upon his head, and would willingly have conferred even greater ‘beneficia’ upon him than this. Had the word been allowed to pass, it would no doubt have been afterwards appealed to as an admission on the Emperor’s part, that he held the Empire as a feud or fief (for ‘beneficium’ was then the technical word for this, though the meaning had much narrowed since) from the Pope--the very point in dispute between them. The word was indignantly repelled by the Emperor and the whole German nation, whereupon the Pope appealed to the etymology, that ‘beneficium’ was but ‘bonum factum’, and protested that he meant no more than to remind the Emperor of the ‘benefits’ which he had done him, and which he would have willingly multiplied still more. [‘Benefice’ from Latin _beneficium_, and ‘benefit’ from Latin _bene-factum_, are here confused. ]

{117} [‘Hoard’ (Anglo-Saxon _hord_) cannot be equated with ‘horde’ (from Persian _órdú_). ]

{118} [These words have been differentiated in comparatively modern times. ‘Ingenuity’ was once used for ‘ingenuousness’. ]

{119} [The words are really unconnected, ‘to gamble’ being ‘to gamle’ or ‘game’, and ‘to gambol’ being akin to French _gambiller_, to fling up the legs (_gambes_ or _jambes_) like a frisking lamb. ]

{120} The same happens in other languages. Thus in Greek ‘ἀνάθεμα’ and ‘ἀνάθημα’ both signify that which is devoted, though in very different senses, to the gods; ‘θάρσος’, boldness, and ‘θράσος’, temerity, were no more at first than different spellings of the same word; not otherwise is it with γρῖπος and γρῖφος, ἔθος and ἦθος, βρύκω and βρύχω, while ὀβελὸς and ὀβολὸς, σορὸς and σωρὸς, are probably the same words. So too in Latin ‘penna’ and ‘pinna’ differ only in form, and signify alike a ‘wing’; while yet ‘penna’ has come to be used for the wing of a bird, ‘pinna’ (its diminutive ‘pinnaculum’, has given us ‘pinnacle’) for that of a building. So is it with ‘Thrax’ a Thracian, and ‘Threx’ a gladiator; with ‘codex’ and ‘caudex’; ‘forfex’ and ‘forceps’; ‘anticus’ and ‘antiquus’; ‘celeber’ and ‘creber’; ‘infacetus’ and ‘inficetus’; ‘providentia’, ‘prudentia’, and ‘provincia’; ‘columen’ and ‘culmen’; ‘coitus’ and ‘cœtus’; ‘ægrimonia’ and ‘ærumna’; ‘Lucina’ and ‘luna’; ‘navita’ and ‘nauta’; in German with ‘rechtlich’ and ‘redlich’; ‘schlecht’ and ‘schlicht’; ‘ahnden’ and ‘ahnen’; ‘biegsam’ and ‘beugsam’; ‘fürsehung’ and ‘vorsehung’; ‘deich’ and ‘teich’; ‘trotz’ and ‘trutz’; ‘born’ and ‘brunn’; ‘athem’ and ‘odem’; in French with ‘harnois’ the armour, or ‘harness’, of a soldier, ‘harnais’ of a horse; with ‘Zéphire’ and ‘zéphir’, and with many more. 

{121} Coleridge, _Church and State_, p. 200. 

{122} [One hardly expects to find this otiose Americanism (first used by J. Adams in 1759) in the work of a verbal purist, when ‘longish’ or the old ‘longsome’ were at hand. No one, as yet, has ventured on ‘strengthy’ or ‘breadthy’ for somewhat strong or broad. ]

{123} [This prediction was correct. ‘Dissimilation’ is first found in philological works published in the decade 1874-85. See N. E. D. ]

{124} [Coblenz, at the junction of the Moselle and Rhine (from _Confluentes_), reminds us that the word was so used. ]

{125} A passage from Hacket’s _Life of Archbishop Williams_, part 2, p. 144, marks the first rise of this word, and the quarter from whence it arose: “When they [the Presbyterians] saw that he was not _selfish_ (it is a word of their own new mint), etc”. In Whitlock’s _Zootomia_ (1654) there is another indication of it as a novelty, p. 364: “If constancy may be tainted with this _selfishness_ (to use our _new wordings_ of old and general actings)”--It is he who in his striking essay, _The Grand Schismatic, or Suist Anatomized_, puts forward his own words, ‘suist’, and ‘suicism’, in lieu of those which have ultimately been adopted. ‘Suicism’, let me observe, had not in his time the obvious objection of resembling another word nearly, and being liable to be confused with it; for ‘suicide’ did not then exist in the language, nor indeed till some twenty years later. The coming up of ‘suicide’ is marked by this passage in Phillips’ _New World of Words_, 1671, 3rd ed. : “Nor less to be exploded is the word ‘_suicide_’, which may as well seem to participate of _sus_ a sow, as of the pronoun _sui_”. In the _Index_ to Jackson’s Works, published two years later, it is still ‘_suicidium_’--“the horrid _suicidium_ of the Jews at York”. ‘Suicide’ is apparently of much later introduction into French. Génin (_Récréations Philol. _ vol. I, p. 194) places it about the year 1728, and makes the Abbé Desfontaines its first sponsor. He is wrong, as the words just quoted show, in supposing that we borrowed it from the French, or that the word did not exist in English till the middle of last century. The French sometimes complain that the fashion of suicide was borrowed from England. It would seem at all events probable that the word was so borrowed. 

 Let me urge here the advantage of a complete collection, or one as nearly complete as the industry of the collectors would allow, of all the notices in our literature, which mark, and would serve as dates for, the first incoming of new words into the language. These notices are of the most various kinds. Sometimes they are protests and remonstrances, as that just quoted, against a new word’s introduction; sometimes they are gratulations at the same; while many hold themselves neuter as to approval or disapproval, and merely state, or allow us to gather, the fact of a word’s recent appearance. There are not a few of these notices in Richardson’s _Dictionary_: thus one from Lord Bacon under ‘essay’; from Swift under ‘banter’; from Sir Thomas Elyot under ‘mansuetude’; from Lord Chesterfield under ‘flirtation’; from Davies and Marlowe’s _Epigrams_ under ‘gull’; from Roger North under ‘sham’ (Appendix); the third quotation from Dryden under ‘mob’; one from the same under ‘philanthropy’, and again under ‘witticism’, in which he claims the authorship of the word; that from Evelyn under ‘miss’; and from Milton under ‘demagogue’. There are also notices of the same kind in _Todd’s Johnson_. The work, however, is one which no single scholar could hope to accomplish, which could only be accomplished by many lovers of their native tongue throwing into a common stock the results of their several studies. The sources from which these illustrative passages might be gathered cannot beforehand be enumerated, inasmuch as it is difficult to say in what unexpected quarter they would not sometimes be found, although some of these sources are obvious enough. As a very slight sample of what might be done in this way by the joint contributions of many, let me throw together references to a few passages of the kind which I do not think have found their way into any of our dictionaries. Thus add to that which Richardson has quoted on ‘banter’, another from _The Tatler_, No. 230. On ‘plunder’ there are two instructive passages in Fuller’s _Church History_, b. Xi, § 4, 33; and b. Ix, § 4; and one in Heylin’s _Animadversions_ thereupon, p. 196. On ‘admiralty’ see a note in Harington’s _Ariosto_, book 19; on ‘maturity’ Sir Thomas Elyot’s _Governor_, b. I, c. 22; and on ‘industry’ the same, b. I, c. 23; on ‘neophyte’ a notice in Fulke’s _Defence of the English Bible_, Parker Society’s edition, p. 586; and on ‘panorama’, and marking its recent introduction (it is not in Johnson), a passage in Pegge’s _Anecdotes of the English Language_, first published in 1803, but my reference is to the edition of 1814, p. 306; on ‘accommodate’, and supplying a date for its first coming into popular use, see Shakespeare’s _2 Henry IV. _ Act 3, Sc. 2; on ‘shrub’, Junius’ _Etymologicon_, s. V. ‘syrup’; on ‘sentiment’ and ‘cajole’ Skinner, s. Vv. , in his _Etymologicon_ (‘vox nuper civitate donata’); and on ‘opera’ Evelyn’s _Memoirs and Diary_, 1827, vol. I, pp. 189, 190. In such a collection should be included those passages of our literature which supply implicit evidence for the non-existence of a word up to a certain moment. It may be urged that it is difficult, nay impossible, to prove a negative; and yet a passage like this from Bolingbroke makes certain that when it was written the word ‘isolated’ did not exist in our language: “The events we are witnesses of in the course of the longest life, appear to us very often original, unprepared, signal and _unrelative_: if I may use such a word for want of a better in English. In French I would say _isolés_” (_Notes and Queries_, No. 226). Compare Lord Chesterfield in a letter to Bishop Chenevix, of date March 12, 1767: “I have survived almost all my cotemporaries, and as I am too old to make new acquaintances, I find myself _isolé_”. So, too, it is pretty certain that ‘amphibious’ was not yet English, when one writes (in 1618): “We are like those creatures called ἀμφίβια, who live in water or on land”. Ζωολογία, the title of a book published in 1649, makes it clear that ‘zoology’ was not yet in our vocabulary, as ζωόφυτον (Jackson) proves the same for ‘zoophyte’, and πολυθεϊσμος (Gell) for ‘polytheism’. One precaution, let me observe, would be necessary in the collecting, or rather in the adopting of any statements about the newness of a word--for the passages themselves, even when erroneous, ought not the less to be noted--namely, that, where there is the least motive for suspicion, no one’s affirmation ought to be accepted simply and at once as to the novelty of a word; for all here are liable to error. Thus more than one which Sir Thomas Elyot indicates as new in his time, ‘magnanimity’ for example (_The Governor_, 2, 14), are to be met in Chaucer. When Skinner affirmed of ‘sentiment’ that it had only recently obtained the rights of English citizenship from the translators of French books, he was altogether mistaken, this word being also one of continual recurrence in Chaucer. An intelligent correspondent gives in _Notes and Queries_, No. 225, a useful catalogue of recent neologies in our speech, which yet would require to be used with caution, for there are at least half a dozen in the list which have not the smallest right to be so considered. 

{126} There is an admirable Essay by Leibnitz with this view (_Opera_, vol. Vi, part 2, pp. 6-51) in French and German, with this title, _Considérations sur la Culture et la Perfection de la Langue Allemande_. 

{127} _Zur Geschichte und Beurtheilung der Fremdwörter im Deutschen_, von. Aug. Fuchs, Dessau, 1842, pp. 85-91. 

III

DIMINUTIONS OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE

I took occasion to observe at the commencement of my last lecture thatit is the essential character of a living language to be in flux{128}and flow, to be gaining and losing; the words which constitute it aslittle continuing exactly the same, or in the same relations to oneanother, as do the atoms which at any one moment make up our bodiesremain for ever without subtraction or addition. As I then undertook formy especial subject to trace some of the acquisitions which our ownlanguage had made, I shall consider in the present some of the losses, or at any rate diminutions, which during the same period it has endured. But it will be well here, by one or two remarks going before, to avertany possible misapprehensions of my meaning. 

It is certain that all languages must, or at least all languages do inthe end, perish. They run their course; not at all at the same rate, forthe tendency to change is different in different languages, both frominternal causes (mechanism and the like), and also from causes externalto the language, laid in the varying velocities of social progress andsocial decline; but so it is, that whether of shorter or longer life, they have their youth, their manhood, their old age, their decrepitude, their final dissolution. Not indeed that, even when this last hour hasarrived, they disappear, leaving no traces behind them. On the contrary, out of their death a new life comes forth; they pass into new forms, thematerials of which they were composed more or less survive, but thesenow organized in new shapes and according to other laws of life. Thusfor example, the Latin perishes as a living language, but a chief partof the words that composed it live on in the four daughter languages, French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese; or the six, if we count theProvençal and Wallachian; not a few in our own. Still in their ownproper being languages perish and pass away; there are dead records ofwhat they were in books; not living men who speak them any more. Seeingthen that they thus die, they must have had the germs of a possibledecay and death in them from the beginning. 

{Sidenote: _Languages Gain and Lose_}

Nor is this all; but in such mighty strong built fabrics as these, thecauses which thus bring about their final dissolution must have beenactually at work very long before the results began to be visible. Indeed, very often it is with them as with states, which, while in somerespects they are knitting and strengthening, in others are alreadyunfolding the seeds of their future and, it may be, still remoteoverthrow. Equally in these and those, in states and in languages, itwould be a serious mistake to assume that all up to a certain point andperiod is growth and gain, while all after is decay and loss. On thecontrary, there are long periods during which growth in some directionsis going hand in hand with decay in others; losses in one kind arebeing compensated, or more than compensated, by gains in another; duringwhich a language changes, but only as the bud changes into the flower, and the flower into the fruit. A time indeed arrives when the growth andgains, becoming ever fewer, cease to constitute any longer acompensation for the losses and the decay; which are ever becoming more;when the forces of disorganization and death at work are stronger thanthose of life and order. It is from this moment the decline of alanguage may properly be dated. But until that crisis and turning pointhas arrived, we may be quite justified in speaking of the losses of alanguage, and may esteem them most real, without in the least therebyimplying that the period of its commencing degeneracy has begun. Thismay yet be far distant, and therefore when I dwell on certain losses anddiminutions which our own has undergone, or is undergoing, you will notconclude that I am seeking to present it to you as now travelling thedownward course to dissolution and death. This is very far from myintention. If in some respects it is losing, in others it is gaining. Nor is everything which it lets go, a loss; for this too, the partingwith a word in which there is no true help, the dropping of a cumbrousor superfluous form, may itself be sometimes a most real gain. Englishis undoubtedly becoming different from what it has been; but onlydifferent in that it is passing into another stage of its development;only different, as the fruit is different from the flower, and theflower from the bud; having changed its merits, but not havingrenounced them; possessing, it may be, less of beauty, but more ofusefulness; not, perhaps, serving the poet so well, but serving thehistorian and philosopher and theologian better than before. 

One observation more let me make, before entering on the special detailsof my subject. It is this. The losses and diminutions of a languagediffer in one respect from its gains and acquisitions--namely, that theyare of _two_ kinds, while its gains are only of _one_. Its gains areonly in _words_; it never puts forth in the course of its evolution anew _power_; it never makes for itself a new case, or a new tense, or anew comparative. But its losses are both in words and in _powers_--inwords of course, but in powers also: it leaves behind it, as it travelsonwards, cases which it once possessed; renounces the employment oftenses which it once used; forgets its dual; is content with onetermination both for masculine and feminine, and so on. Nor is this apeculiar feature of one language, but the universal law of all. “In alllanguages”, as has been well said, “there is a constant tendency torelieve themselves of that precision which chooses a fresh symbol forevery shade of meaning, to lessen the amount of nice distinction, anddetect as it were a royal road to the interchange of opinion”. Forexample, a vast number of languages had at an early period of theirdevelopment, besides the singular and plural, a dual number, some even atrinal, which they have let go at a later. But what I mean by a languagerenouncing its powers will, I trust, be more clear to you before mylecture is concluded. This much I have here said on the matter, toexplain and justify a division which I shall make, considering first thelosses of the English language in _words_, and then in _powers_. 

{Sidenote: _Words become Extinct_}

And first, there is going forward a continual extinction of the words inour language--as indeed in every other. When I speak of this, the dyingout of words, I do not refer to mere _tentative_, experimental words, not a few of which I adduced in my last lecture, words offered to thelanguage, but not accepted by it; I refer rather to such as eitherbelonged to the primitive stock of the language, or if not so, which hadbeen domiciled in it long, that they might have been supposed to havefound in it a lasting home. Thus not a few pure Anglo-Saxon words whichlived on into the times of our early English, have subsequently droppedout of our vocabulary, sometimes leaving a gap which has never sincebeen filled, but their places oftener taken by others which have come upin their room. Not to mention those of Chaucer and Wiclif, which arevery numerous, many held their ground to far later periods, and yet havefinally given way. That beautiful word ‘wanhope’ for despair, hope whichhas so _waned_ that now there is an entire _want_ of it, was in use downto the reign of Elizabeth; it occurs so late as in the poems ofGascoigne{129}. ‘Skinker’ for cupbearer, (an ungraceful word, no doubt)is used by Shakespeare and lasted till Dryden’s time and beyond. 

Spenser uses often ‘to welk’ (welken) in the sense of to fade, ‘to sty’for to mount, ‘to hery’ as to glorify or praise, ‘to halse’ as toembrace, ‘teene’ as vexation or grief: Shakespeare ‘to tarre’ as toprovoke, ‘to sperr’ as to enclose or bar in; ‘to sag’ for to droop, orhang the head downward. Holland employs ‘geir’{130} for vulture(“vultures or _geirs_”), ‘specht’ for woodpecker, ‘reise’ for journey, ‘frimm’ for lusty or strong. ‘To schimmer’ occurs in Bishop Hall; ‘totind’, that is, to kindle, and surviving in ‘tinder’, is used by BishopSanderson; ‘to nimm’, or take, as late as by Fuller. A rogue is a‘skellum’ in Sir Thomas Urquhart. ‘Nesh’ in the sense of soft throughmoisture, ‘leer’ in that of empty, ‘eame’ in that of uncle, _mother’s_brother (the German ‘oheim’), good Saxon-English once, still live on insome of our provincial dialects; so does ‘flitter-mouse’ or‘flutter-mouse’ (mus volitans), where we should use bat. Indeed of thoseabove named several do the same; it is so with ‘frimm’, with ‘to sag’, ‘to nimm’. ‘Heft’ employed by Shakespeare in the sense of weight, isstill employed in the same sense by our peasants in Hampshire{131}. 

{Sidenote: _Vigorous Compound Words_}

A number of vigorous compounds we have dropped and let go. ‘Earsports’for entertainments of song or music (ἀκροάματα) is a constantlyrecurring word in Holland’s _Plutarch_. Were it not for Shakespeare, weshould have quite forgotten that young men of hasty fiery valour werecalled ‘hotspurs’; and even now we regard the word rather as the propername of one than that which would have been once alike the designationof all{132}. Fuller warns men that they should not ‘witwanton’ with God. Severe austere old men, such as, in Falstaff’s words would “hate usyouth”, were ‘grimsirs’, or ‘grimsires’ once (Massinger). ‘Realmrape’(=usurpation), occurring in _The Mirror for Magistrates_, is a vigorousword. ‘Rootfast’ and ‘rootfastness’{133} were ill lost, being worthy tohave lived; so too was Lord Brooke’s ‘bookhunger’; and Baxter’s‘word-warriors’, with which term he noted those whose strife was onlyabout words. ‘Malingerer’ is familiar enough to military men, but I donot find it in our dictionaries; being the soldier who, out of _evilwill_ (malin gré) to his work, shams and shirks and is not found in theranks{134}. 

Those who would gladly have seen the Anglo-Saxon to have predominatedover the Latin element in our language, even more than it actually hasdone, must note with regret that in many instances a word of the formerstock had been dropped, and a Latin coined to supply its place; or wherethe two once existed side by side, the Saxon has died, and the Latinlived on. Thus Wiclif employed ‘soothsaw’, where we now use proverb;‘sourdough’, where we employ leaven; ‘wellwillingness’ for benevolence;‘againbuying’ for redemption; ‘againrising’ for resurrection;‘undeadliness’ for immortality; ‘uncunningness’ for ignorance;‘aftercomer’ for descendant; ‘greatdoingly’ for magnificently; ‘toafterthink’ (still in use in Lancashire) for to repent; ‘medeful’, whichhas given way to meritorious; ‘untellable’ for ineffable; ‘dearworth’for precious; Chaucer has ‘forword’ for promise; Sir John Cheke‘freshman’ for proselyte; ‘mooned’ for lunatic; ‘foreshewer’ forprophet; ‘hundreder’ for centurion; Jewel ‘foretalk’, where we nowemploy preface; Holland ‘sunstead’ where we use solstice; ‘leechcraft’instead of medicine; and another, ‘wordcraft’ for logic; ‘starconner’(Gascoigne) did service once, if not instead of astrologer, yet side byside with it; ‘halfgod’ (Golding) had the advantage over ‘demigod’, thatit was all of one piece; ‘to eyebite’ (Holland) told its story at leastas well as to fascinate; ‘shriftfather’ as confessor; ‘earshrift’(Cartwright) is only two syllables, while ‘auricular confession’ iseight; ‘waterfright’ is a better word than our awkward Greekhydrophobia. The lamprey (lambens petram) was called once the‘suckstone’ or the ‘lickstone’; and the anemone the ‘windflower’. ‘Umstroke’, if it had lived on (it appears as late as Fuller, thoughour dictionaries know nothing of it), might have made ‘circumference’and ‘periphery’ unnecessary. ‘Wanhope’, as we saw just now, has givenplace to despair, ‘middler’ to mediator; and it would be easy toincrease this list. 

{Sidenote: _Local and Provincial English_}

I had occasion just now to notice the fact that many words survive inour provincial dialects, long after they have died out from the mainbody of the speech. The fact is one connected with so much of deepinterest in the history of language that I cannot pass it thus slightlyover. It is one which, rightly regarded, may assist to put us in a justpoint of view for estimating the character of the local and provincialin speech, and rescuing it from that unmerited contempt and neglect withwhich it is often regarded. I must here go somewhat further back than Icould wish; but only so, only by looking at the matter in connexion withother phenomena of speech, can I hope to explain to you the worth andsignificance which local and provincial words and usages must oftentimespossess. 

Let us then first suppose a portion of those speaking a language to havebeen separated off from the main body of its speakers, either throughtheir forsaking for one cause or other of their native seats, or by theintrusion of a hostile people, like a wedge, between them and theothers, forcibly keeping them asunder, and cutting off theircommunications one with the other, as the Saxons intruded between theBritons of Cornwall and of Wales. In such a case it will inevitablyhappen that before very long differences of speech will begin to revealthemselves between those to whom even dialectic distinctions may havebeen once unknown. The divergences will be of various kinds. Idioms willcome up in the separated body, which, not being recognized and allowedby those who remain the arbiters of the language, will be esteemed bythem, should they come under their notice, violations of its law, or atany rate departures from its purity. Again, where a colony has goneforth into new seats, and exists under new conditions, it is probablethat the necessities, physical and moral, rising out of these newconditions, will give birth to words, which there will be nothing tocall out among those who continue in the old haunts of the nation. Intercourse with new tribes and people will bring in new words, as, forinstance, contact with the Indian tribes of North America has given toAmerican English a certain number of words hardly or not at all allowedor known by us; or as the presence of a large Dutch population at theCape has given to the English spoken there many words, as ‘inspan’, ‘outspan’{135}, ‘spoor’, of which our home English knows nothing. 

{Sidenote: _Antiquated English_}

There is another cause, however, which will probably be more effectualthan all these, namely, that words will in process of time be dropped bythose who constitute the original stock of the nation, which will not bedropped by the offshoot; idioms which those have overlived, and havestored up in the unhonoured lumber-room of the past, will still be inuse and currency among the smaller and separated section which has goneforth; and thus it will come to pass that what seems and in fact is thenewer swarm, will have many older words, and very often an archaic airand old-world fashion both about the words they use, their way ofpronouncing, their order and manner of combining them. Thus after theConquest we know that our insular French gradually diverged from theFrench of the Continent. The Prioress in Chaucer’s _Canterbury Tales_could speak her French “full faire and fetishly”, but it was French, asthe poet slyly adds, “After the scole of Stratford atte bow, For French of Paris was to hire unknowe”. 

One of our old chroniclers, writing in the reign of Elizabeth, informsus that by the English colonists within the Pale in Ireland numerouswords were preserved in common use, “the dregs of the old ancientChaucer English”, as he contemptuously calls it, which had become quiteobsolete and forgotten in England itself. For example, they still calleda spider an ‘attercop’--a word, by the way, still in popular use in theNorth;--a physician a ‘leech’, as in poetry he still is called; adunghill was still for them a ‘mixen’; (the word is still common allover England in this sense;) a quadrangle or base court was a‘bawn’{136}; they employed ‘uncouth’ in the earlier sense of unknown. Nay more, their general manner of speech was so different, thoughcontaining English still, that Englishmen at their first coming overoften found it hard or impossible to comprehend. We have another exampleof the same in what took place after the revocation of the Edict ofNantes, and the consequent formation of colonies of Protestant Frenchemigrants in various places, especially in Amsterdam and other chiefcities of Holland. There gradually grew up among these what came to becalled ‘refugee French’, which within a generation or two diverged inseveral particulars from the classical language of France; itsdivergence being mainly occasioned by this, that it remained stationary, while the classical language was in motion; it retained usages andwords, which the latter had dismissed{137}. 

{Sidenote: _Provincial English_}

Nor is it otherwise in respect of our English provincialisms. It is truethat our country people who in the main employ them, have not beenseparated by distance of space, nor yet by insurmountable obstaclesintervening, from the main body of their fellow-countrymen; but theyhave been quite as effectually divided by deficient education. They havebeen, if not locally, yet intellectually, kept at a distance from theonward march of the nation’s mind; and of them also it is true that manyof their words, idioms, turns of speech, which we are ready to set downas vulgarisms, solecisms of speech, violations of the primary rules ofgrammar, do merely attest that those who employ them have not keptabreast with the advance of the language and nation, but have been leftbehind by it. The usages are only local in the fact that, having oncebeen employed by the whole body of the English people, they have nowreceded from the lips of all except those in some certain countrydistricts, who have been more faithful than others to the tradition ofthe past{138}. 

It is thus in respect of a multitude of isolated words, which wereexcellent Anglo-Saxon, which were excellent early English, and whichonly are not excellent present English, because use, which is thesupreme arbiter in these matters, has decided against their furtheremployment. Several of these I enumerated just now. It is thus also withseveral grammatical forms and flexions. For instance, where we declinethe plural of “I sing”, “we sing”, “ye sing”, “they sing”, there areparts of England in which they would decline, “we sin_gen_”, “yesin_gen_”, “they sin_gen_”. This is not indeed the original form of theplural, but it is that form of it which, coming up about Chaucer’s time, was just going out in Spenser’s; he, though we must ever keep in mindthat he does not fairly represent the language of his time, or indeed ofany time, affecting a certain artificial archaism both in words andforms, continually uses it{139}. After him it becomes ever rarer, thelast of whom I am aware as occasionally using it being Fuller, until itquite disappears. 

{Sidenote: _Earlier and Later English_}

Of such as may now employ forms like these we must say, not that theyviolate the laws of the language, but only that they have taken their_permanent_ stand at a point which was only a point of transition, andwhich it has now left behind, and overlived. Thus, to take exampleswhich you may hear at the present day in almost any part of England--acountryman will say, “He made me _afeard_”; or “The price of corn _ris_last market day”; or “I will _axe_ him his name”; or “I tell _ye_”. Youwould probably set these phrases down for barbarous English. They arenot so at all; in one sense they are quite as good English as “He mademe _afraid_”; or “The price of corn _rose_ last market day”; or “I will_ask_ him his name”. ‘Afeard’, used by Spenser, is the regularparticiple of the old verb to ‘affear’, still existing as a law term, as‘afraid’ is of to ‘affray’, and just as good English{140}; ‘ris’ or‘risse’ is an old præterite of ‘to rise’; to ‘axe’ is not amispronunciation of ‘to ask’, but a genuine English form of the word, the form which in the earlier English it constantly assumed; in Wiclif’sBible almost without exception; and indeed ‘axe’ occurs continually, Iknow not whether invariably, in Tyndale’s translation of the Scriptures;there was a time when ‘ye’ was an accusative, and to have used it as anominative or vocative, the only permitted uses at present, would havebeen incorrect. Even such phrases as “Put _them_ things away”; or “Theman _what_ owns the horse” are not bad, but only antiquatedEnglish{141}. Saying this, I would not in the least imply that theseforms are open to you to employ, or that they would be good English for_you_. They would not; inasmuch as they are contrary to present use andcustom, and these must be our standards in what we speak, and in what wewrite; just as in our buying and selling we are bound to employ thecurrent coin of the realm, must not attempt to pass that which longsince has been called in, whatever merits or intrinsic value it maypossess. All which I affirm is that the phrases just brought forwardrepresent past stages of the language, and are not barbarous violationsof it. 

{Sidenote: _Luncheon_, _Nuncheon_}

The same may be asserted of certain ways of pronouncing words, which arenow in use among the lower classes, but not among the higher; as, forexample, ‘contrāry’, ‘mischiēvous’, ‘blasphēmous’, instead of‘contrăry’, ‘mischiĕvous’, ‘blasphĕmous’. It would be abundantly easy toshow by a multitude of quotations from our poets, and those reachingvery far down, that these are merely the retention of the earlierpronunciation by the people, after the higher classes have abandonedit{142}. And on the strength of what has just been spoken, let me heresuggest to you how well worth your while it will prove to be on thewatch for provincial words and inflexions, local idioms and modes ofpronunciation, and to take note of these. Count nothing in this kindbeneath your notice. Do not at once ascribe anything which you hear tothe ignorance or stupidity of the speaker. Thus if you hear ‘nuncheon’, do not at once set it down for a malformation of ‘luncheon’{143}, nor‘yeel’{144}, of ‘eel’. Lists and collections of provincial usage, suchas I have suggested, always have their value. If you are not able toturn them to any profit yourselves, and they may not stand in closeenough connexion with your own studies for this, yet there always arethose who will thank you for them; and to whom the humblest of thesecollections, carefully and intelligently made, will be in one way oranother of real assistance{145}. And there is the more need to urge thisat the present, because, notwithstanding the tenacity with which ourcountry folk cling to their old forms and usages, still these forms andusages must now be rapidly growing fewer; and there are forces, moraland material, at work in England, which will probably cause that ofthose which now survive the greater part will within the next fiftyyears have disappeared{146}. 

{Sidenote: _‘Its’ of Late Introduction_}

Before quitting this subject, let me instance one example more of thatwhich is commonly accounted ungrammatical usage, but which is really theretention of old grammar by some, where others have substituted new; Imean the constant application by our rustic population in the south, andI dare say through all parts of England, of ‘his’ to inanimate objects, and to these not personified, no less than to persons; where ‘its’ wouldbe employed by others. This was once the manner of speech among all; for‘its’ is a word of very recent introduction, many would be surprised tolearn of how recent introduction, into the language. You will look forit in vain through the whole of our Authorized Version of the Bible;the office which it now fulfils being there accomplished, as our rusticsaccomplish it at the present, by ‘his’ (Gen. I. 11; Exod. Xxxvii. 17;Matt. V. 15) or ‘her’ (Jon. I. 15; Rev. Xxii. 2) applied as freely toinanimate things as to persons, or else by ‘thereof’ (Ps. Lxv. 10) or‘of it’ (Dan. Vii. 5). Nor may Lev. Xx. 5 be urged as invalidating thisassertion; for reference to the exemplar edition of 1611, or indeed toany earlier editions of King James’ Bible, will show that in them thepassage stood, “of _it_ own accord”{147}. ‘Its’ occurs very rarely inShakespeare, in many of his plays it will not once be found. Milton alsofor the most part avoids it, and this, though in his time others freelyallowed it. How soon all this was forgotten we have striking evidence inthe fact that when Dryden, in one of his fault-finding moods with thegreat men of the preceding generation, is taking Ben Jonson to task forgeneral inaccuracy in his English diction, among other counts of hisindictment, he quotes this line from _Catiline_

 “Though heaven should speak with all _his_ wrath at once”, and proceeds, “_heaven_ is ill syntax with _his_”; while in fact up towithin forty or fifty years of the time when Dryden began to write, noother syntax was known; and to a much later date was exceedingly rare. Curious also, is it to note that in the earnest controversy whichfollowed on Chatterton’s publication of the poems ascribed by him to amonk Rowlie, who should have lived in the fifteenth century, no oneappealed to such lines as the following, “Life and all _its_ goods I scorn”, as at once deciding that the poems were not of the age which theypretended. Warton, who denied, though with some hesitation, theantiquity of the poems, giving many and sufficient reasons for thisdenial, failed to take note of this little word; while yet there neededno more than to point it out, for the disposing of the whole question;the forgery at once was betrayed. 

{Sidenote: _American English_}

What has been here affirmed concerning our provincial English, namelythat it is often _old_ English rather than _bad_ English, may beaffirmed with equal right of many so-called Americanisms. There areparts of America where ‘het’ is used, or was used a few years since, asthe perfect of ‘to heat’; ‘holp’ as the perfect of ‘to help’; ‘stricken’as the participle of ‘to strike’. Again there are the words which havebecome obsolete during the last two hundred years, which have not becomeobsolete there, although many of them probably retain only a provincialexistence. Thus ‘slick’, which indeed is only another form of ‘sleek’, was employed by our good writers of the seventeenth century{148}. Otherwords again, which have remained current on both sides of the Atlantic, have yet on our side receded from their original use, while they haveremained true to it on the other. ‘Plunder’ is a word in point{149}. 

In the contemplation of facts like these it has been sometimes asked, whether a day will ever arrive when the language spoken on this side ofthe Atlantic and on the other, will divide into two languages, an oldEnglish and a new. We may confidently answer, No. Doubtless, if thosewho went out from us to people and subdue a new continent, had left ourshores two or three centuries earlier than they did, when the languagewas very much farther removed from that ideal after which it wasunconsciously striving, and in which, once reached, it has in greatmeasure acquiesced; if they had not carried with them to their distanthomes their English Bible, and what else of worth had been alreadyuttered in the English tongue; if, having once left us, the intercoursebetween Old and New England had been entirely broken off, or only rareand partial; there would then have unfolded themselves differencesbetween the language spoken here and there, which in tract of timeaccumulating and multiplying, might in the end have justified theregarding of the languages as no longer one and the same. It could nothave failed but that such differences should have displayed themselves;for while there is a law of _necessity_ in the evolution of languages, while they pursue certain courses and in certain directions, from whichthey can be no more turned aside by the will of men than one of theheavenly bodies could be pushed from its orbit by any engines of ours, there is a law of _liberty_ no less; and this liberty must inevitablyhave made itself in many ways felt. In the political and socialcondition of America, so far removed from our own, in the many naturalobjects which are not the same with those which surround us here, inefforts independently carried out to rid the language of imperfections, or to unfold its latent powers, even in the different effects of soiland climate on the organs of speech, there would have been causes enoughto have provoked in the course of time not immaterial divergencies oflanguage. 

As it is, however, the joint operation of those three causes referred toalready, namely, that the separation did not take place in the infancyor youth of the language, but only in its ripe manhood, that England andAmerica owned a body of literature, to which they alike looked up andappealed as containing the authoritative standards of the language, thatthe intercourse between the one people and the other has been large andfrequent, hereafter probably to be larger and more frequent still, haseffectually wrought. It has been strong enough so to traverse, repress, and check all those causes which tended to divergence, that the_written_ language of educated men on both sides of the water remainsprecisely the same, their _spoken_ manifesting a few trivialdifferences of idiom; while even among those classes which do notconsciously acknowledge any ideal standard of language, there arescarcely greater differences, in some respects far smaller, than existbetween inhabitants of different provinces in this one island ofEngland; and in the future we may reasonably anticipate that thesedifferences, so far from multiplying, will rather diminish anddisappear. 

{Sidenote: _Extinct English_}

But I must return from this long digression. It seems often as if analmost unaccountable caprice presided over the fortunes of words, anddetermined which should live and which die. Thus in instances out ofnumber a word lives on as a verb, but has ceased to be employed as anoun; we say ‘to embarrass’, but no longer an ‘embarrass’; ‘to revile’, but not, with Chapman and Milton, a ‘revile’; ‘to dispose’, but not a‘dispose’{150}; ‘to retire’ but not a ‘retire’; ‘to wed’, but nota ‘wed’; we say ‘to infest’, but use no longer the adjective ‘infest’. Or with a reversed fortune a word lives on as a noun, but has perishedas a verb--thus as a noun substantive, a ‘slug’, but no longer ‘to slug’or render slothful; a ‘child’, but no longer ‘to child’, (“_childing_autumn”, Shakespeare); a ‘rape’, but not ‘to rape’ (South); a ‘rogue’, but not ‘to rogue’; ‘malice’, but not ‘to malice’; a ‘path’, but not ‘topath’; or as a noun adjective, ‘serene’, but not ‘to serene’, a beautifulword, which we have let go, as the French have ‘sereiner’{151}; ‘meek’, but not ‘to meek’ (Wiclif); ‘fond’, but not ‘to fond’ (Dryden); ‘dead’, but not ‘to dead’; ‘intricate’, but ‘to intricate’ (Jeremy Taylor) nolonger. 

Or again, the affirmative remains, but the negative is gone; thus‘wisdom’, ‘bold’, ‘sad’, but not any more ‘unwisdom’, ‘unbold’, ‘unsad’(all in Wiclif); ‘cunning’, but not ‘uncunning’; ‘manhood’, ‘wit’, ‘mighty’, ‘tall’, but not ‘unmanhood’, ‘unwit’, ‘unmighty’, ‘untall’(all in Chaucer); ‘buxom’, but not ‘unbuxom’ (Dryden); ‘hasty’, but not‘unhasty’ (Spenser); ‘blithe’, but not ‘unblithe’; ‘ease’, but not‘unease’ (Hacket); ‘repentance’, but not ‘unrepentance’; ‘remission’, but not ‘irremission’ (Donne); ‘science’, but not ‘nescience’(Glanvill){152}; ‘to know’, but not ‘to unknow’ (Wiclif); ‘to give’, butnot ‘to ungive’. Or once more, with a curious variation from this, thenegative survives, while the affirmative is gone; thus ‘wieldy’(Chaucer) survives only in ‘unwieldy’; ‘couth’ and ‘couthly’ (both inSpenser), only in ‘uncouth’ and ‘uncouthly’; ‘rule’ (Foxe) only in‘unruly’; ‘gainly’ (Henry More) in ‘ungainly’; these last two were bothof them serviceable words, and have been ill lost{153}; ‘gainly’ isindeed still common in the West Riding of Yorkshire; ‘exorable’(Holland) and ‘evitable’ only in ‘inexorable’ and ‘inevitable’;‘faultless’ remains, but hardly ‘faultful’ (Shakespeare). In likemanner ‘semble’ (Foxe) has, except as a technical law term, disappeared; while ‘dissemble’ continues. So also of other pairs onehas been taken and one left; ‘height’, or ‘highth’, as Milton betterspelt it, remains, but ‘lowth’ (Becon) is gone; ‘righteousness’, or‘rightwiseness’, as it would once more accurately have been written, for ‘righteous’ is a corruption of ‘rightwise’, remains, but itscorrespondent ‘wrongwiseness’ has been taken; ‘inroad’ continues, but‘outroad’ (Holland) has disappeared; ‘levant’ lives, but ‘ponent’(Holland) has died; ‘to extricate’ continues, but, as we saw just now, ‘to intricate’ does not; ‘parricide’, but not ‘filicide’ (Holland). Again, of whole groups of words formed on some particular scheme itmay be only a single specimen will survive. Thus ‘gainsay’, that is, again say, survives; but ‘gainstrive’ (Foxe), ‘gainstand’, ‘gaincope’(Golding), and other similarly formed words exist no longer. It is thesame with ‘foolhardy’, which is but one, though now indeed the onlyone remaining, of at least five adjectives formed on the sameprinciple; thus ‘foollarge’, quite as expressive a word as prodigal, occurs in Chaucer, and ‘foolhasty’, found also in him, lived on to thetime of Holland; while ‘foolhappy’ is in Spencer; and ‘foolbold’ inBale. ‘Steadfast’ remains, but ‘shamefast’, ‘rootfast’, ‘bedfast’(=bedridden), ‘homefast’, ‘housefast’, ‘masterfast’ (Skelton), withothers, are all gone. ‘Exhort’ remains; but ‘dehort’ a word whoseplace neither ‘dissuade’ nor any other exactly supplies, has escapedus{154}. We have ‘twilight’, but ‘twibill’ = bipennis (Chapman) isextinct. 

Let me mention another real loss, where in like manner there remains inthe present language something to remind us of that which is gone. Thecomparative ‘rather’ stands alone, having dropped on one side itspositive ‘rathe’{155}, and on the other its superlative ‘rathest’. ‘Rathe’, having the sense of early, though a graceful word, and notfallen quite out of popular remembrance, inasmuch as it is embalmed inthe _Lycidas_ of Milton, “And the _rathe_ primrose, which forsaken dies”, might still be suffered without remark to share the common lot of so manywords which have perished, though worthy to have lived; but the disuseof ‘rathest’ has left a real gap in the language, and the more so, seeing that ‘liefest’ is gone too. ‘Rather’ expresses the Latin ‘potius’;but ‘rathest’ being out of use, we have no word, unless ‘soonest’ maybe accepted as such, to express ‘potissimum’, or the preference not ofone way over another or over certain others, but of one over all; whichwe therefore effect by aid of various circumlocutions. Nor has ‘rathest’been so long out of use, that it would be playing the antic to attemptto revive it. It occurs in the _Sermons_ of Bishop Sanderson, who in theopening of that beautiful sermon from the text, “When my father and mymother forsake me, the Lord taketh me up”, puts the consideration, “whythese”, that is, father and mother, “are named the _rathest_, and therest to be included in them”{156}. 

It is sometimes easy enough, but indeed oftener hard, and not seldomquite impossible, to trace the causes which have been at work to bringabout that certain words, little by little, drop out of the language ofmen, come to be heard more and more rarely, and finally are not heardany more at all--to trace the motives which have induced a whole peoplethus to arrive at a tacit consent not to employ them any longer; forwithout this tacit consent they could never have thus become obsolete. That it is not accident, that there is a law here at work, howeverhidden it may be from us, is plain from the fact that certain familiesof words, words formed on certain patterns, have a tendency thus to fallinto desuetude. 

{Sidenote: _Words in ‘-some’_}

Thus, I think, we may trace a tendency in words ending in ‘some’, theAnglo-Saxon and early English ‘sum’, the German ‘sam’ (‘friedsam’, ‘seltsam’) to fall out of use. It is true that a vast number of thesesurvive, as ‘gladsome’, ‘handsome’, ‘wearisome’, ‘buxom’ (this lastspelt better ‘bucksome’, by our earlier writers, for its presentspelling altogether disguises its true character, and the family towhich it belongs); being the same word as the German ‘beugsam’ or‘biegsam’, bendable, compliant{157}; but a larger number of these wordsthan can be ascribed to accident, many more than the due proportion ofthem, are either quite or nearly extinct. Thus in Wiclif’s Bible aloneyou might note the following, ‘lovesum’, ‘hatesum’, ‘lustsum’, ‘gilsum’(guilesome), ‘wealsum’, ‘heavysum’, ‘lightsum’, ‘delightsum’; of these‘lightsome’ long survived, and indeed still survives in provincialdialects; but of the others all save ‘delightsome’ are gone; and that, although used in our Authorized Version (Mal. Iii, 12), is now onlyemployed in poetry. So too ‘mightsome’ (see Coleridge’s _Glossary_), ‘brightsome’ (Marlowe), ‘wieldsome’, and ‘unwieldsome’ (Golding), ‘unlightsome’ (Milton), ‘healthsome’ (_Homilies_), ‘ugsome’ and‘ugglesome’ (both in Foxe), ‘laboursome’ (Shakespeare), ‘friendsome’, ‘longsome’ (Bacon), ‘quietsome’, ‘mirksome’ (both in Spenser), ‘toothsome’ (Beaumont and Fletcher), ‘gleesome’, ‘joysome’ (both inBrowne’s _Pastorals_), ‘gaysome’ (_Mirror for Magistrates_), ‘roomsome’, ‘bigsome’, ‘awesome’, ‘timersome’, ‘winsome’, ‘viewsome’, ‘dosome’(=prosperous), ‘flaysome’ (=fearful), ‘auntersome’ (=adventurous), ‘clamorsome’ (all these still surviving in the North), ‘playsome’(employed by the historian Hume), ‘lissome’{158}, have nearly or quitedisappeared from our English speech. They seem to have held theirground in Scotland in considerably larger numbers than in the south ofthe Island{159}. 

{Sidenote: _Words in ‘-ard’_}

Neither can I esteem it a mere accident that of a group of depreciatoryand contemptuous words ending in ‘ard’, at least one half should havedropped out of use; I refer to that group of which ‘dotard’, ‘laggard’, ‘braggard’, now spelt ‘braggart’, ‘sluggard’, ‘buzzard’, ‘bastard’, ‘wizard’, may be taken as surviving specimens; ‘blinkard’ (_Homilies_), ‘dizzard’ (Burton), ‘dullard’ (Udal), ‘musard’ (Chaucer), ‘trichard’(_Political Songs_), ‘shreward’ (Robert of Gloucester), ‘ballard’ (abald-headed man, Wiclif); ‘puggard’, ‘stinkard’ (Ben Jonson), ‘haggard’, a worthless hawk, as extinct. 

Thus too there is a very curious province of our language, in which wewere once so rich, that extensive losses here have failed to make uspoor; so many of its words still surviving, even after as many or morehave disappeared. I refer to those double words which either containwithin themselves a strong rhyming modulation, such for example as‘willy-nilly’, ‘hocus-pocus’, ‘helter-skelter’, ‘tag-rag’, ‘namby-pamby’, ‘pell-mell’, ‘hodge-podge’; or with a slight differencefrom this, though belonging to the same group, those of which thecharacteristic feature is not this internal likeness with initialunlikeness, but initial likeness with internal unlikeness; not rhyming, but strongly alliterative, and in every case with a change of theinterior vowel from a weak into a strong, generally from _i_ into _a_or _o_; as ‘shilly-shally’, ‘mingle-mangle’, ‘tittle-tattle’, ‘prittle-prattle’, ‘riff-raff’, ‘see-saw’, ‘slip-slop’. No one who isnot quite out of love with the homelier yet more vigorous portions ofthe language, but will acknowledge the life and strength which there isoften in these and in others still current among us. But of the samesort what vast numbers have fallen out of use, some so fallen out of allremembrance that it may be difficult almost to find credence for them. Thus take of rhyming the following: ‘hugger-mugger’, ‘hurly-burly’, ‘kicksy-wicksy’ (all in Shakespeare); ‘hibber-gibber’, ‘rusty-dusty’, ‘horrel-lorrel’, ‘slaump paump’ (all in Gabriel Harvey), ‘royster-doyster’(Old Play), ‘hoddy-doddy’ (Ben Jonson); while of alliterative might beinstanced these: ‘skimble-skamble’, ‘bibble-babble’ (both inShakespeare), ‘twittle-twattle’, ‘kim-kam’ (both in Holland), ‘hab-nab’(Lilly), ‘trim-tram’, ‘trish-trash’, ‘swish-swash’ (all in GabrielHarvey), ‘whim-wham’ (Beaumont and Fletcher), ‘mizz-mazz’ (Locke), ‘snip-snap’ (Pope), ‘flim-flam’ (Swift), ‘tric-trac’, and others{160}. 

{Sidenote: _Words under Ban_}

Again, there was once a whole family of words whereof the greater numberare now under ban; which seemed at one time to have been formed almostat pleasure, the only condition being that the combination should be ahappy one--I mean all those singularly expressive words formed by acombination of verb and substantive, the former governing the latter; as‘telltale’, ‘scapegrace’, ‘turncoat’, ‘turntail’, ‘skinflint’, ‘spendthrift’, ‘spitfire’, ‘lickspittle’, ‘daredevil’ (=wagehals), ‘makebate’ (=störenfried), ‘marplot’, ‘killjoy’. These with a certainnumber of others, have held their ground, and may be said to be stillmore or less in use; but what a number more are forgotten; and yet, though not always elegant, they constituted a very vigorous portion ofour language, and preserved some of its most genuine idioms{161}. Itcould not well be otherwise; they are almost all words of abuse, and theabusive words of a language are always among the most picturesque andvigorous and imaginative which it possesses. The whole man speaks out inthem, and often the man under the influence of passion and excitement, which always lend force and fire to his speech. Let me remind you of afew of them; ‘smellfeast’, if not a better, is yet a more graphic, wordthan our foreign parasite; as graphic indeed for us as τρεχέδειπνος toGreek ears; ‘clawback’ (Hackett) is a stronger, if not a more graceful, word than flatterer or sycophant; ‘tosspot’ (Fuller), or less frequently‘reel-pot’ (Middleton), tells its own tale as well as drunkard; and‘pinchpenny’ (Holland), or ‘nipfarthing’ (Drant), as well as or betterthan miser. And then what a multitude more there are in like kind;‘spintext’, ‘lacklatin’, ‘mumblematins’, all applied to ignorantclerics; ‘bitesheep’ (a favourite word with Foxe) to such of these aswere rather wolves tearing, than shepherds feeding, the flock;‘slip-string’ = pendard (Beaumont and Fletcher), ‘slip-gibbet’, ‘scapegallows’; all names given to those who, however they might haveescaped, were justly owed to the gallows, and might still “go upstairsto bed”. 

{Sidenote: _Obsolete Compounds_}

How many of these words occur in Shakespeare. The following list makesno pretence to completeness; ‘martext’, ‘carrytale’, ‘pleaseman’, ‘sneakcup’, ‘mumblenews’, ‘wantwit’, ‘lackbrain’, ‘lackbeard’, ‘lacklove’, ‘ticklebrain’, ‘cutpurse’, ‘cutthroat’, ‘crackhemp’, ‘breedbate’, ‘swinge-buckler’, ‘pickpurse’, ‘pickthank’, ‘picklock’, ‘scarecrow’, ‘breakvow’, ‘breakpromise’, ‘makepeace’--this last and‘telltruth’ (Fuller) being the only ones in the whole collection whereinreprobation or contempt is not implied. Nor is the list exhausted yet;there are further ‘dingthrift’ = prodigal (Herrick), ‘wastegood’(Cotgrave), ‘stroygood’ (Golding), ‘wastethrift’ (Beaumont andFletcher), ‘scapethrift’, ‘swashbuckler’ (both in Holinshed), ‘shakebuckler’, ‘rinsepitcher’ (both in Bacon), ‘crackrope’ (Howell), ‘waghalter’, ‘wagfeather’ (both in Cotgrave), ‘blabtale’ (Racket), ‘getnothing’ (Adams), ‘findfault’ (Florio), ‘tearthroat’ (Gayton), ‘marprelate’, ‘spitvenom’, ‘nipcheese’, ‘nipscreed’, ‘killman’(Chapman), ‘lackland’, ‘pickquarrel’, ‘pickfaults’, ‘pickpenny’ (HenryMore), ‘makefray’ (Bishop Hall), ‘make-debate’ (Richardson’s _Letters_), ‘kindlecoal’ (attise feu), ‘kindlefire’ (both in Gurnall), ‘turntippet’(Cranmer), ‘swillbowl’ (Stubbs), ‘smell-smock’, ‘cumberwold’ (Drayton), ‘curryfavor’, ‘pinchfist’, ‘suckfist’, ‘hatepeace’ (Sylvester), ‘hategood’ (Bunyan), ‘clutchfist’, ‘sharkgull’ (both in Middleton), ‘makesport’ (Fuller), ‘hangdog’ (“Herod’s _hangdogs_ in the tapestry”, Pope), ‘catchpoll’, ‘makeshift’ (used not impersonally as now), ‘pickgoose’ (“the bookworm was never but a _pickgoose_”){162}, ‘killcow’(these three last in Gabriel Harvey), ‘rakeshame’ (Milton, prose), withothers which it will be convenient to omit. ‘Rakehell’, which used to bespelt ‘rakel’ or ‘rakle’ (Chaucer), a good English word, would be onlythrough an error included in this list, although Cowper, when he writes‘rakehell’ (“_rake-hell_ baronet”) evidently regarded it as belonging tothis group{163}. 

{Sidenote: _Words become Vulgar_}

Perhaps one of the most frequent causes which leads to the disuse ofwords is this: in some inexplicable way there comes to be attachedsomething of ludicrous, or coarse, or vulgar to them, out of a feelingof which they are no longer used in earnest serious writing, and at thesame time fall out of the discourse of those who desire to speakelegantly. Not indeed that this degradation which overtakes words is inall cases inexplicable. The unheroic character of most men’s minds, withtheir consequent intolerance of that heroic which they cannotunderstand, is constantly at work, too often with success, in takingdown words of nobleness from their high pitch; and, as the mosteffectual way of doing this, in casting an air of mock-heroic aboutthem. Thus ‘to dub’, a word resting on one of the noblest usages ofchivalry, has now something of ludicrous about it; so too has ‘doughty’;they belong to that serio-comic, mock-heroic diction, the multiplicationof which, as of all parodies on greatness, and the favour with which itis received, is always a sign of evil augury for a nation, is at presenta sign of evil augury for our own. 

‘Pate’ in the sense of head is now comic or ignoble; it was not so once;as is plain from its occurrence in the Prayer Book Version of the Psalms(Ps. Vii. 17); as little was ‘noddle’, which occurs in one of the fewpoetical passages in Hawes. The same may be said of ‘sconce’, in thissense at least; of ‘nowl’ or ‘noll’, which Wiclif uses; of ‘slops’ fortrousers (Marlowe’s _Lucan_); of ‘cocksure’ (Rogers), of ‘smug’, whichonce meant no more than adorned (“the _smug_ bridegroom”, Shakespeare). ‘To nap’ is now a word without dignity; while yet in Wiclif’s Bible itis said, “Lo he schall not _nappe_, nether slepe that kepeth Israel”(Ps. Cxxi. 4). ‘To punch’, ‘to thump’, both of which, and in seriouswriting, occur in Spenser, could not now obtain the same use, nor yet‘to wag’, or ‘to buss’. Neither would any one now say that at LystraBarnabas and Paul “rent their clothes and _skipped out_ among thepeople” (Acts xiv. 14), which is the language that Wiclif employs; noryet that “the Lord _trounced_ Sisera and all his host” as it stands inthe Bible of 1551. “A _sight_ of angels”, for which phrase see Cranmer’sBible (Heb. Xii. 22), would be felt as a vulgarism now. We shouldscarcely call now a delusion of Satan a “_flam_ of the devil” (HenryMore). It is not otherwise in regard of phrases. “Through thick andthin”, occurring in Spenser, “cheek by jowl” in Dubartas{164}, do notnow belong to serious poetry. In the glorious ballad of _Chevy Chase_, anoble warrior whose legs are hewn off, is described as being “in dolefuldumps”; just as, in Holland’s _Livy_, the Romans are set forth as being“in the dumps” as a consequence of their disastrous defeat at Cannæ. InGolding’s _Ovid_, one fears that he will “go to pot”. In one of thebeautiful letters of John Careless, preserved in Foxe’s _Martyrs_, apersecutor, who expects a recantation from him, is described as “in thewrong box”. And in the sermons of Barrow, who certainly intended towrite an elevated style, and did not seek familiar, still less vulgar, expressions, we constantly meet such terms as ‘to rate’, ‘to snub’, ‘togull’, ‘to pudder’, ‘dumpish’, and the like; which we may confidentlyaffirm were not vulgar when he used them. 

Then too the advance of refinement causes words to be forgone, which arefelt to speak too plainly. It is not here merely that one age has moredelicate ears than another; and that matters are freely spoken of at onetime which at another are withdrawn from conversation. This issomething; but besides this, and even if this delicacy were at astandstill, there would still be a continual process going on, by whichthe words, which for a certain while have been employed to designatecoarse or disagreeable facts or things, would be disallowed, or at allevents relinquished to the lower class of society, and others adopted intheir place. The former by long use being felt to have come into toodirect and close relation with that which they designate, to summon itup too distinctly before the mind’s eye, they are thereupon exchangedfor others, which, at first at least, indicate more lightly andallusively the offensive thing, rather hint and suggest than paint anddescribe it: although by and by these new will also in their turn bediscarded, and for exactly the same reasons which brought about thedismissal of those which they themselves superseded. It lies in thenecessity of things that I must leave this part of my subject, verycurious as it is, without illustration{165}. But no one, evenmoderately acquainted with the early literature of the Reformation, canbe ignorant of words freely used in it, which now are not merely coarseand as such under ban, but which no one would employ who did not mean tospeak impurely and vilely. 

 * * * * *

{Sidenote: _Lost Powers of a Language_}

Thus much in respect of the words, and the character of the words, whichwe have lost or let go. Of these, indeed, if a language, as it travelsonwards, loses some, it also acquires others, and probably many morethan it loses; they are leaves on the tree of language, of which if somefall away, a new succession takes their place. But it is not so, as Ialready observed, with the _forms_ or _powers_ of a language, that is, with the various inflections, moods, duplicate or triplicate formationof tenses; which the speakers of a language come gradually to perceivethat they can do without, and therefore cease to employ; seeking tosuppress grammatical intricacies, and to obtain grammatical simplicityand so far as possible a pervading uniformity, sometimes even at thehazard of letting go what had real worth, and contributed to the morelively, if not to the clearer, setting forth of the inner thought orfeeling of the mind. Here there is only loss, with no compensating gain;or, at all events, diminution only, and never addition. In regard ofthese inner forces and potencies of a language, there is no creativeenergy at work in its later periods, in any, indeed, but quite theearliest. They are not as the leaves, but may be likened to the stem andleading branches of a tree, whose shape, mould and direction aredetermined at a very early stage of its growth; and which age, oraccident, or violence may diminish, but which can never be multiplied. Ihave already slightly referred to a notable example of this, namely, tothe dropping of the dual number in the Greek language. Thus in all theNew Testament it does not once occur, having quite fallen out of thecommon dialect in which that is composed. Elsewhere too it has been feltthat the dual was not worth preserving, or at any rate, that no seriousinconvenience would follow on its loss. There is no such number in themodern German, Danish or Swedish; in the old German and Norse there was. 

{Sidenote: _Extinction of Powers_}

How many niceties, delicacies, subtleties of language, _we_, speakers ofthe English tongue, in the course of centuries have got rid of; how bare(whether too bare is another question) we have stripped ourselves; whatsimplicity for better or for worse reigns in the present English, ascompared with the old Anglo-Saxon. That had six declensions, our presentEnglish but one; that had three genders, English, if we except one ortwo words, has none; that formed the genitive in a variety of ways, weonly in one; and the same fact meets us, wherever we compare thegrammars of the two languages. At the same time, it can scarcely berepeated too often, that in the estimate of the gain or loss thereuponensuing, we must by no means put certainly to loss everything which thelanguage has dismissed, any more than everything to gain which it hasacquired. It is no real wealth in a language to have needless andsuperfluous forms. They are often an embarrassment and an encumbrance toit rather than a help. The Finnish language has fourteen cases. Withoutpretending to know exactly what it is able to effect, I yet feelconfident that it cannot effect more, nor indeed so much, with itsfourteen as the Greek is able to do with its five. It therefore seems tome that some words of Otfried Müller, in many ways admirable, do yetexaggerate the losses consequent on the reduction of the forms of alanguage. “It may be observed”, he says, “that in the lapse of ages, from the time that the progress of language can be observed, grammaticalforms, such as the signs of cases, moods and tenses have never beenincreased in number, but have been constantly diminishing. The historyof the Romance, as well as of the Germanic, languages shows in theclearest manner how a grammar, once powerful and copious, has beengradually weakened and impoverished, until at last it preserves only afew fragments of its ancient inflections. Now there is no doubt thatthis luxuriance of grammatical forms is not an essential part of alanguage, considered merely as a vehicle of thought. It is well knownthat the Chinese language, which is merely a collection of radical wordsdestitute of grammatical forms, can express even philosophical ideaswith tolerable precision; and the English, which, from the mode of itsformation by a mixture of different tongues, has been stripped of itsgrammatical inflections more completely than any other Europeanlanguage, seems, nevertheless, even to a foreigner, to be distinguishedby its energetic eloquence. All this must be admitted by everyunprejudiced inquirer; but yet it cannot be overlooked, that thiscopiousness of grammatical forms, and the fine shades of meaning whichthey express, evince a nicety of observation, and a faculty ofdistinguishing, which unquestionably prove that the race of mankindamong whom these languages arose was characterized by a remarkablecorrectness and subtlety of thought. Nor can any modern European, whoforms in his mind a lively image of the classical languages in theirancient grammatical luxuriance, and compares them with his mothertongue, conceal from himself that in the ancient languages the words, with their inflections, clothed as it were with muscles and sinews, comeforward like living bodies, full of expression and character, while inthe modern tongues the words seem shrunk up into mere skeletons”{166}. 

{Sidenote: _Words in ‘-ess’_}

Whether languages are as much impoverished by this process as is hereassumed, may, I think, be a question. I will endeavour to give you somematerials which shall assist you in forming your own judgment in thematter. And here I am sure that I shall do best in considering not formswhich the language has relinquished long ago, but mainly such as it isrelinquishing now; which, touching us more nearly, will have a far morelively interest for us all. For example, the female termination whichwe employ in certain words, such as from ‘heir’ ‘heiress’, from‘prophet’ ‘prophetess’, from ‘sorcerer’ ‘sorceress’, was once far morewidely extended than at present; the words which retain it are dailybecoming fewer. It has already fallen away in so many, and is evidentlybecoming of less frequent use in so many others, that, if we may augurof the future from the analogy of the past, it will one day altogethervanish from our tongue. Thus all these occur in Wiclif’s Bible;‘techeress’ as the female teacher (2 Chron. Xxxv. 25); ‘friendess’(Prov. Vii. 4); ‘servantess’ (Gen. Xvi. 2); ‘leperess’ (=saltatrix, Ecclus. Ix. 4); ‘daunceress’ (Ecclus. Ix. 4); ‘neighbouress’ (Exod. Iii. 22); ‘sinneress’ (Luke vii. 37); ‘purpuress’ (Acts xvi. 14); ‘cousiness’(Luke i. 36); ‘slayeress’ (Tob. Iii. 9); ‘devouress’ (Ezek. Xxxvi. 13);‘spousess’ (Prov. V. 19); ‘thralless’ (Jer. Xxxiv. 16); ‘dwelleress’(Jer. Xxi. 13); ‘waileress’ (Jer. Ix. 17); ‘cheseress’ (=electrix, Wisd. Viii. 4); ‘singeress’, ‘breakeress’, ‘waiteress’, this last indeedhaving recently come up again. Add to these ‘chideress’, the femalechider, ‘herdess’, ‘constabless’, ‘moveress’, ‘jangleress’, ‘soudaness’(=sultana), ‘guideress’, ‘charmeress’ (all in Chaucer); and others, which however we may have now let them fall, reached to far laterperiods of the language; thus ‘vanqueress’ (Fabyan); ‘poisoneress’(Greneway); ‘knightess’ (Udal); ‘pedleress’, ‘championess’, ‘vassaless’, ‘avengeress’, ‘warriouress’, ‘victoress’, ‘creatress’ (all in Spenser);‘fornicatress’, ‘cloistress’, ‘jointress’ (all in Shakespeare);‘vowess’ (Holinshed); ‘ministress’, ‘flatteress’ (both in Holland);‘captainess’ (Sidney); ‘saintess’ (Sir T. Urquhart); ‘heroess’, ‘dragoness’, ‘butleress’, ‘contendress’, ‘waggoness’, ‘rectress’ (all inChapman); ‘shootress’ (Fairfax); ‘archeress’ (Fanshawe); ‘clientess’, ‘pandress’ (both in Middleton); ‘papess’, ‘Jesuitess’ (Bishop Hall);‘incitress’ (Gayton); ‘soldieress’, ‘guardianess’, ‘votaress’ (all inBeaumont and Fletcher); ‘comfortress’, ‘fosteress’ (Ben Jonson);‘soveraintess’ (Sylvester); ‘preserveress’ (Daniel); ‘solicitress’, ‘impostress’, ‘buildress’, ‘intrudress’ (all in Fuller); ‘favouress’(Hakewell); ‘commandress’ (Burton); ‘monarchess’, ‘discipless’ (Speed);‘auditress’, ‘cateress’, ‘chantress’, ‘tyranness’ (all in Milton);‘citess’, ‘divineress’ (both in Dryden); ‘deaness’ (Sterne);‘detractress’ (Addison); ‘hucksteress’ (Howell); ‘tutoress’(Shaftesbury); ‘farmeress’ (Lord Peterborough, _Letter to Pope_);‘laddess’, which however still survives in the contracted form of‘lass’{167}; with more which, I doubt not, it would not be very hard tobring together{168}. 

{Sidenote: _Words in ‘-ster’_}

Exactly the same thing has happened with another feminine affix. I referto ‘ster’, taking the place of ‘er’ where a feminine doer isintended{169}. ‘Spinner’ and ‘spinster’ are the only pair of suchwords, which still survive. There were formerly many such; thus ‘baker’had ‘bakester’, being the female who baked: ‘brewer’ ‘brewster’; ‘sewer’‘sewster’; ‘reader’ ‘readster’; ‘seamer’ ‘seamster’; ‘fruiterer’‘fruitester’; ‘tumbler’ ‘tumblester’; ‘hopper’ ‘hoppester’ (these lastthree in Chaucer; “the shippes _hoppesteres_”, about which so muchdifficulty has been made, are the ships _dancing_, i. E. , on thewaves){170}, ‘knitter’ ‘knitster’ (a word, I am told, still alive inDevon). Add to these ‘whitster’ (female bleacher, Shakespeare), ‘kempster’ (pectrix), ‘dryster’ (siccatrix), ‘brawdster’, (I supposeembroideress){171}, and ‘salster’ (salinaria){172}. It is a singularexample of the richness of a language in forms at the earlier stages ofits existence, that not a few of the words which had, as we have justseen, a feminine termination in ‘ess’, had also a second in ‘ster’. Thus‘daunser’, beside ‘daunseress’, had also ‘daunster’ (Ecclus. Ix. 4);‘wailer’, beside ‘waileress’, had ‘wailster’ (Jer. Ix. 17); ‘dweller’‘dwelster’ (Jer. Xxi. 13); and ‘singer’ ‘singster’ (2 Kin. Xix. 35); sotoo, ‘chider’ had ‘chidester’ (Chaucer), as well as ‘chideress’, ‘slayer’ ‘slayster’ (Tob. Iii. 9), as well as ‘slayeress’, ‘chooser’‘chesister’, (Wisd. Viii. 4), as well as ‘cheseress’, with others thatmight be named. 

{Sidenote: _Deceptive Analogies_}

It is difficult to understand how Marsh, with these examples before himshould affirm, “I find no positive evidence to show that the termination‘ster’ was ever regarded as a feminine termination in English”. It maybe, and indeed has been, urged that the existence of such words as‘seamstr_ess_’, ‘songstr_ess_’, is decisive proof that the ending ‘ster’of itself was not counted sufficient to designate persons as female; forif, it has been said, ‘seam_ster_’ and ‘song_ster_’ had been felt to bealready feminine, no one would have ever thought of doubling on this, and adding a second female termination; ‘seam_stress_’, ‘song_stress_’. But all which can justly be concluded from hence is, that when thisfinal ‘ess’ was added to these already feminine forms, and examples ofit will not, I think, be found till a comparatively late period of thelanguage, the true principle and law of the words had been lost sight ofand forgotten{173}. The same may be affirmed of such other of thesefeminine forms as are now applied to men, such as ‘gamester’, ‘youngster’, ‘oldster’, ‘drugster’ (South), ‘huckster’, ‘hackster’, (=swordsman, Milton, prose), ‘teamster’, ‘throwster’, ‘rhymester’, ‘punster’ (_Spectator_), ‘tapster’, ‘whipster’ (Shakespeare), ‘trickster’. Either, like ‘teamster’, and ‘punster’, the words firstcame into being, when the true significance of this form was altogetherlost{174}; or like ‘tapster’, which was female in Chaucer (“the gay_tapstere_”), as it is still in Dutch and Frisian, and distinguishedfrom ‘tapper’, the _man_ who keeps the inn, or has charge of the tap, oras ‘bakester’, at this day used in Scotland for ‘baker’, as ‘dyester’for ‘dyer’, the word did originally belong of right and exclusively towomen; but with the gradual transfer of the occupation to men, and anincreasing forgetfulness of what this termination implied, there wentalso a transfer of the name{175}, just as in other words, and out ofthe same causes, the exact converse has found place; and ‘baker’ or‘brewer’, not ‘bakester’ or ‘brewster’{176}, would be now in Englandapplied to the woman baking or brewing. So entirely has this power ofthe language died out, that it survives more apparently than really evenin ‘spinner’ and ‘spinster’; seeing that ‘spinster’ has obtained nowquite another meaning than that of a woman spinning, whom, as well asthe man, we should call not a ‘spinster’, but a ‘spinner’{177}. It wouldindeed be hard to believe, if we had not constant experience of thefact, how soon and how easily the true law and significance of someform, which has never ceased to be in everybody’s mouth, may yet be lostsight of by all. No more curious chapter in the history of languagecould be written than one which should trace the violations of analogy, the transgressions of the most primary laws of a language, which followhereupon; the plurals like ‘welkin’ (=wolken, the clouds){178}, ‘chicken’{179}, which are dealt with as singulars, the singulars, like‘riches’ (richesse){180}, ‘pease’ (pisum, pois){181}, ‘alms’, ‘eaves’{182}, which are assumed to be plurals. 

{Sidenote: _The Genitival Inflexion ‘-s’_}

There is one example of this, familiar to us all; probably so familiarthat it would not be worth while adverting to it, if it did notillustrate, as no other word could, this forgetfulness which mayovertake a whole people, of the true meaning of a grammatical form whichthey have never ceased to employ. I refer to the mistaken assumptionthat the ‘s’ of the genitive, as ‘the king’s countenance’, was merely amore rapid way of pronouncing ‘the king _his_ countenance’, and that thefinal ‘s’ in ‘king’s’ was in fact an elided ‘his’. This explanation fora long time prevailed almost universally; I believe there are many whoaccept it still. It was in vain that here and there a deeper knower ofour tongue protested against this “monstrous syntax”, as Ben Jonson inhis _Grammar_ justly calls it{183}. It was in vain that Wallis, anotherEnglish scholar of the seventeenth century, pointed out in _his_ Grammarthat the slightest examination of the facts revealed the untenablecharacter of this explanation, seeing that we do not merely say “the_king’s_ countenance”, but “the _queen’s_ countenance”; and in this casethe final ‘s’ cannot stand for ‘his’, for “the queen _his_ countenance”cannot be intended{184}; we do not say merely “the _child’s_ bread”, but“the _children’s_ bread”, where it is no less impossible to resolve thephrase into “the children _his_ bread”{185}. Despite of these proteststhe error held its ground. This much indeed of a plea it could make foritself, that such an actual employment of ‘his’ _had_ found its wayinto the language, as early as the fourteenth century, and had been inoccasional, though rare use, from that time downward{186}. Yet this, which has only been elicited by the researches of recent scholars, doesnot in the least justify those who assumed that in the habitual ‘s’ ofthe genitive were to be found the remains of ‘his’--an error from whichthe books of scholars in the seventeenth, and in the early decades ofthe eighteenth, century are not a whit clearer than those of others. Spenser, Donne, Fuller, Jeremy Taylor, all fall into it; I cannot sayconfidently whether Milton does. Dryden more than once helps out hisverse with an additional syllable gained by its aid. It has even forcedits way into our Prayer Book itself, where in the “Prayer for all sortsand conditions of men”, added by Bishop Sanderson at the last revisionof the Liturgy in 1661, we are bidden to say, “And this we beg for JesusChrist _his_ sake”{187}. I need hardly tell you that this ‘s’ is in factthe one remnant of flexion surviving in the singular number of ourEnglish noun substantives; it is in all the Indo-Germanic languages theoriginal sign of the genitive, or at any rate the earliest of which wecan take cognizance; and just as in Latin ‘lapis’ makes ‘lapidis’ in thegenitive, so ‘king’, ‘queen’, ‘child’, make severally ‘kings’, ‘queens’, ‘childs’, the comma, an apparent note of elision, being a mere modernexpedient, “a late refinement”, as Ash calls it{188}, to distinguish thegenitive singular from the plural cases{189}. 

{Sidenote: _Adjectives in ‘-en’_}

Notice another example of this willingness to dispense with inflection, of this endeavour on the part of the speakers of a language to reduceits forms to the fewest possible, consistent with the accuratecommunication of thought. Of our adjectives in ‘en’, formed onsubstantives, and expressing the material or substance of a thing, somehave gone, others are going, out of use; while we content ourselves withthe bare juxtaposition of the substantive itself, as sufficientlyexpressing our meaning. Thus instead of “_golden_ pin” we say “_gold_pin”; instead of “_earthen_ works” we say “_earth_ works”. ‘Golden’ and‘earthen’, it is true, still belong to our living speech, though mainlyas part of our poetic diction, or of the solemn and thus stereotypedlanguage of Scripture; but a whole company of such words have nearly orquite disappeared; some lately, some long ago. ‘Steelen’ and ‘flowren’belong only to the earliest period of the language; ‘rosen’ also wentearly. Chaucer is my latest authority for it (“_rosen_ chapelet”). ‘Hairen’ is in Wiclif and in Chaucer; ‘stonen’ in the former (John iii. 6){190}. ‘Silvern’ stood originally in Wiclif’s Bible (“_silverne_housis to Diane”, Acts xix. 24); but already in the second recension ofthis was exchanged for ‘silver’; ‘hornen’, still in provincial use, healso employs, and ‘clayen’ (Job iv. 19) no less. ‘Tinnen’ occurs inSylvester’s _Du Bartas_; where also we meet with “Jove’s _milken_alley”, as a name for the _Via Lactea_, in Bacon also not “the _Milky_”, but “the _Milken_ Way”. In the coarse polemics of the Reformation thephrase, “_breaden_ god”, provoked by the Romish doctrine oftransubstantiation, was of frequent employment, and occurs as late as inOldham. “_Mothen_ parchments” is in Fulke; “_twiggen_ bottle” inShakespeare; ‘_yewen_’, or, according to earlier spelling, “_ewghen_bow”, in Spenser; “_cedarn_ alley”, and “_azurn_ sheen” are both inMilton; “_boxen_ leaves” in Dryden; “a _treen_ cup” in Jeremy Taylor;“_eldern_ popguns” in Sir Thomas Overbury; “a _glassen_ breast”, inWhitlock; “a _reeden_ hat” in Coryat; ‘yarnen’ occurs in Turberville;‘furzen’ in Holland; ‘threaden’ in Shakespeare; and ‘bricken’, ‘papern’appear in our provincial glossaries as still in use. 

It is true that many of these adjectives still hold their ground; butit is curious to note how the roots which sustain even these are beinggradually cut away from beneath them. Thus ‘brazen’ might at first sightseem as strongly established in the language as ever; it is far from sobeing; its supports are being cut from beneath it. Even now it onlylives in a tropical and secondary sense, as ‘a _brazen_ face’; or if ina literal, in poetic diction or in the consecrated language ofScripture, as ‘the _brazen_ serpent’; otherwise we say ‘a _brass_farthing’, ‘a _brass_ candlestick’. It is the same with ‘oaten’, ‘birchen’, ‘beechen’, ‘strawen’, and many more, whereof some areobsolescent, some obsolete, the language manifestly tending now, as ithas tended for a long time past, to the getting quit of these, and tothe satisfying of itself with an adjectival apposition of thesubstantive in their stead. 

{Sidenote: _Weak and Strong Præterites_}

Let me illustrate by another example the way in which a language, as ittravels onward, simplifies itself, approaches more and more to agrammatical and logical uniformity, seeks to do the same thing always inthe same manner; where it has two or three ways of conducting a singleoperation, lets all of them go but one; and thus becomes, no doubt, easier to be mastered, more handy, more manageable; for its very richeswere to many an embarrassment and a perplexity; but at the same timeimposes limits and restraints on its own freedom of action, and is indanger of forfeiting elements of strength, variety and beauty, which itonce possessed. I refer to the tendency of our verbs to let go theirstrong præterites, and to substitute weak ones in their room; or, wherethey have two or three præterites, to retain only one of them, and thatinvariably the weak one. Though many of us no doubt are familiar withthe terms ‘strong’ and ‘weak’ præterites, which in all our bettergrammars have put out of use the wholly misleading terms, ‘irregular’and ‘regular’, I may perhaps as well remind you of the exact meaning ofthe terms. A strong præterite is one formed by an internal vowel change;for instance the verb ‘to _drive_’ forms the præterite ‘_drove_’ by aninternal change of the vowel ‘i’ into ‘o’. But why, it may be asked, called ‘strong’? In respect of the vigour and indwelling energy in theword, enabling it to form its past tense from its own resources, andwith no calling in of help from without. On the other hand ‘lift’ formsits præterite ‘lift_ed_’, not by any internal change, but by theaddition of ‘ed’; ‘grieve’ in like manner has ‘griev_ed_’. Here are weaktenses; as strength was ascribed to the other verbs, so weakness tothese, which can form their præterites only by external aid andaddition. You will see at once that these strong præterites, while theywitness to a vital energy in the words which are able to put them forth, do also, as must be allowed by all, contribute much to the variety andcharm of a language{191}. 

The point, however, which I am urging now is this, --that these arebecoming fewer every day; multitudes of them having disappeared, whileothers are in the act of disappearing. Nor is the balance redressed andcompensation found in any new creations of the kind. The power offorming strong præterites is long ago extinct; probably no verb whichhas come into the language since the Conquest has asserted this power, while a whole legion have let it go. For example, ‘shape’ has now a weakpræterite, ‘shaped’, it had once a strong one, ‘shope’; ‘bake’ has now aweak præterite, ‘baked’, it had once a strong one, ‘boke’; the præteriteof ‘glide’ is now ‘glided’, it was once ‘glode’ or ‘glid’; ‘help’ makesnow ‘helped’, it made once ‘halp’ and ‘holp’. ‘Creep’ made ‘crope’, still current in the north of England; ‘weep’ ‘wope’; ‘yell’ ‘yoll’(both in Chaucer); ‘seethe’ ‘soth’ or ‘sod’ (Gen. Xxv. 29); ‘sheer’ inlike manner once made ‘shore’; as ‘leap’ made ‘lope’; ‘wash’ ‘wishe’(Chaucer); ‘snow’ ‘snew’; ‘sow’ ‘sew’; ‘delve’ ‘dalf’ and ‘dolve’;‘sweat’ ‘swat’; ‘yield’ ‘yold’ (both in Spenser); ‘mete’ ‘mat’ (Wiclif);‘stretch’ ‘straught’; ‘melt’ ‘molt’; ‘wax’ ‘wex’ and ‘wox’; ‘laugh’‘leugh’; with others more than can be enumerated here{192}. 

{Sidenote: _Strong Præterites_}

Observe further that where verbs have not actually renounced theirstrong præterites, and contented themselves with weak in their room, yet, once possessing two, or, it might be three of these strong, theynow retain only one. The others, on the principle of dismissing whatevercan be dismissed, they have let go. Thus ‘chide’ had once ‘chid’ and‘chode’, but though ‘chode’ is in our Bible (Gen. Xxxi. 36), it has notmaintained itself in our speech; ‘sling’ had ‘slung’ and ‘slang’ (1 Sam. Xvii. 49); only ‘slung’ remains; ‘fling’ had once ‘flung’ and ‘flang’;‘strive’ had ‘strove’ and ‘strave’; ‘stick’ had ‘stuck’ and ‘stack’;‘hang’ had ‘hung’ and ‘hing’ (Golding); ‘tread’ had ‘trod’ and ‘trad’;‘choose’ had ‘chose’ and ‘chase’; ‘give’ had ‘gave’ and ‘gove’; ‘lead’had ‘led’ ‘lad’ and ‘lode’; ‘write’ had ‘wrote’ ‘writ’ and ‘wrate’. Inall these cases, and more might easily be cited, only [of] thepræterites which I have named the first remains in use. 

Observe too that in every instance where a conflict is now going onbetween weak and strong forms, which shall continue, the battle is notto the strong; on the contrary the weak is carrying the day, is gettingthe better of its stronger competitor. Thus ‘climbed’ is gaining theupper hand of ‘clomb’, ‘swelled’ of ‘swoll’, ‘hanged’ of ‘hung’. It isnot too much to anticipate that a time will come, although it may bestill far off, when all English verbs will form their præterites weakly;not without serious damage to the fulness and force which in thisrespect the language even now displays, and once far more eminentlydisplayed{193}. 

{Sidenote: _Comparatives and Superlatives_}

Take another proof of this tendency in our own language to drop itsforms and renounce its own inherent powers; though here also therenunciation, threatening one day to be complete, is only partial at thepresent. I refer to the formation of our comparatives and superlatives;and I will ask you again to observe here that curious law of language, namely, that wherever there are two or more ways of attaining the sameresult, there is always a disposition to drop and dismiss all of thesebut one, so that the alternative or choice of ways once existing, shallnot exist any more. If only it can attain a greater simplicity, it seemsto grudge no self-impoverishment by which this result may be broughtabout. We have two ways of forming our comparatives and superlatives, one dwelling in the word itself, which we have inherited from our oldGothic stock, as ‘bright’, ‘bright_er_’, ‘bright_est_’, the othersupplementary to this, by prefixing the auxiliaries ‘more’ and ‘most’. The first, organic we might call it, the indwelling power of the word tomark its own degrees, must needs be esteemed the more excellent way;which yet, already disallowed in almost all adjectives of more than twosyllables in length, is daily becoming of narrower and more restrainedapplication. Compare in this matter our present with our past. Wicliffor example forms such comparatives as ‘grievouser’, ‘gloriouser’, ‘patienter’, ‘profitabler’, such superlatives as ‘grievousest’, ‘famousest’; this last occurring also in Bacon. We meet in Tyndale, ‘excellenter’, ‘miserablest’; in Shakespeare, ‘violentest’; in GabrielHarvey, ‘vendiblest’, ‘substantialest’, ‘insolentest’; in Rogers, ‘insufficienter’, ‘goldener’; in Beaumont and Fletcher, ‘valiantest’. Milton uses ‘virtuosest’, and in prose ‘vitiosest’, ‘elegantest’, ‘artificialest’, ‘servilest’, ‘sheepishest’, ‘resolutest’, ‘sensualest’;Fuller has ‘fertilest’; Baxter ‘tediousest’; Butler ‘preciousest’, ‘intolerablest’; Burnet ‘copiousest’, Gray ‘impudentest’. Of theseforms, and it would be easy to adduce almost any number, we shouldhardly employ any now. In participles and adverbs in ‘ly’, these organiccomparatives and superlatives hardly survive at all. We do not say‘willinger’ or ‘lovinger’, and still less ‘flourishingest’, or‘shiningest’, or ‘surmountingest’, all which Gabriel Harvey, a foremostmaster of the English of his time, employs; ‘plenteouslyer’, ‘fulliest’(Wiclif), ‘easiliest’ (Fuller), ‘plainliest’ (Dryden), would be allinadmissible at present. 

In the manifest tendency of English at the present moment to reduce thenumber of words in which this more vigorous scheme of expressing degreesis allowed, we must recognize an evidence that the energy which thelanguage had in its youth is in some measure abating, and the stiffnessof age overtaking it. Still it is with us here only as it is with alllanguages, in which at a certain time of their life auxiliary words, leaving the main word unaltered, are preferred to inflections of thislast. Such preference makes itself ever more strongly felt; and, judgingfrom analogy, I cannot doubt that a day, however distant now, willarrive, when the only way of forming comparatives and superlatives inthe English language will be by prefixing ‘more’ and ‘most’; or, if theother survive, it will be in poetry alone. 

It will fare not otherwise, as I am bold to predict, with the flexionalgenitive, formed in ‘s’ or ‘es’ (see p. 161). This too will finallydisappear altogether from the language, or will survive only in poetry, and as much an archaic form there as the ‘pictaï’ of Virgil. A time willcome when it will not any longer be free to say, as now, either, “_theking’s sons_”, or “_the sons of the king_”, but when the latter will bethe only admissible form. Tokens of this are already evident. The regionin which the alternative forms are equally good is narrowing. We shouldnot now any more write, “When _man’s son_ shall come” (Wiclif), but“When _the Son of man_ shall come”, nor yet, “_The hypocrite’s hope_shall perish” (Job viii. 13, Authorized Version), but, “_The hope of thehypocrite_ shall perish”; not with Barrow, “No man can be ignorant _ofhuman life’s brevity and uncertainty_”, but “No man can be ignorant _ofthe brevity and uncertainty of human life_”. The consummation which Ianticipate may be centuries off, but will assuredly arrive{194}. 

{Sidenote: _Lost Diminutives_}

Then too diminutives are fast disappearing from the language. If wedesire to express smallness, we prefer to do it by an auxiliary word;thus a little fist, and not a ‘fistock’ (Golding), a little lad, and nota ‘ladkin’, a little worm, rather than a ‘wormling’ (Sylvester). It istrue that of diminutives very many still survive, in all our fourterminations of such, as ‘hillock’, ‘streamlet’, ‘lambkin’, ‘gosling’;but those which have perished are many more. Where now is ‘kingling’(Holland), ‘whimling’ (Beaumont and Fletcher), ‘godling’, ‘loveling’, ‘dwarfling’, ‘shepherdling’ (all in Sylvester), ‘chasteling’ (Bacon), ‘niceling’ (Stubbs), ‘fosterling’ (Ben Johnson), and ‘masterling’? Wherenow ‘porelet’ (=paupercula, Isai. X. 30, Vulg. ), ‘bundelet’, (both inWiclif); ‘cushionet’ (Henry More), ‘havenet’, or little ‘haven’, ‘pistolet’, ‘bulkin’ (Holland), and a hundred more? Even of those whichremain many are putting off, or have long since put off, theirdiminutive sense; a ‘pocket’ being no longer a _small_ poke, nor a‘latchet’ a _small_ lace, nor a ‘trumpet’ a small _trump_, as once theywere. 

{Sidenote: _Thou and Thee_}

Once more--in the entire dropping among the higher classes of ‘thou’, except in poetry or in addresses to the Deity, and as a necessaryconsequence, the dropping also of the second singular of the verb withits strongly marked flexion, as ‘lovest’, ‘lovedst’, we have anotherexample of a force once existing in the language, which has been, or isbeing, allowed to expire. In the seventeenth century ‘thou’ in English, as at the present ‘du’ in German, ‘tu’ in French, was the sign offamiliarity, whether that familiarity was of love, or of contempt andscorn{195}. It was not unfrequently the latter. Thus at Sir WalterRaleigh’s trial (1603), Coke, when argument and evidence failed him, insulted the defendant by applying to him the term ‘thou’:--“All thatLord Cobham did was at _thy_ instigation, _thou_ viper, for I _thou_thee, _thou_ traitor”. And when Sir Toby Belch in _Twelfth Night_ isurging Sir Andrew Aguecheek to send a sufficiently provocative challengeto Viola, he suggests to him that he “taunt him with the licence of ink;if thou _thou’st_ him some thrice, it shall not be amiss”. To keep thisin mind will throw much light on one peculiarity of the Quakers, andgive a certain dignity to it, as once maintained, which at present it isvery far from possessing. However needless and unwise theirdetermination to ‘thee’ and ‘thou’ the whole world was, yet this had asignificance. It was not, as now to us it seems, and, through the silentchanges which language has undergone, as now it indeed is, a gratuitousdeparture from the ordinary usage of society. Right or wrong, it meantsomething, and had an ethical motive: being indeed a testimony upontheir parts, however misplaced, that they would not have high or greator rich men’s persons in admiration; nor give the observance to somewhich they withheld from others. It was a testimony too which cost themsomething; at present we can very little understand the amount ofcourage which this ‘thou-ing’ and ‘thee-ing’ of all men must havedemanded on their parts, nor yet the amount of indignation and offencewhich it stirred up in them who were not aware of, or would not allowfor, the scruples which obliged them to it{196}. It is, however, in itsother aspect that we must chiefly regret the dying out of the use of‘thou’--that is, as the pledge of peculiar intimacy and specialaffection, as between husband and wife, parents and children, and suchother as might be knit together by bands of more than common affection. 

{Sidenote: _Gender Words_}

I have preferred during this lecture to find my theme in changes whichare now going forward in English, but I cannot finish it without drawingone illustration from its remoter periods, and bidding you to note aforce not now waning and failing from it, but extinct long ago. Icannot well pass it by; being as it is by far the boldest step which inthis direction of simplification the English language has at any timetaken. I refer to the renouncing of the distribution of its nouns intomasculine, feminine, and neuter, as in German, or even into masculineand feminine, as in French; and with this, and as a necessaryconsequence of this, the dropping of any flexional modification in theadjectives connected with them. Natural _sex_ of course remains, beinginherent in all language; but grammatical _gender_, with the exceptionof ‘he’, ‘she’, and ‘it’, and perhaps one or two other fragmentaryinstances, the language has altogether forgone. An example will makeclear the distinction between these. Thus it is not the word ‘poetess’which is _feminine_, but the person indicated who is _female_. So too‘daughter’, ‘queen’, are in English not _feminine_ nouns, but nounsdesignating _female_ persons. Take on the contrary ‘filia’ or ‘regina’, ‘fille’ or ‘reine’; there you have _feminine_ nouns as well as _female_persons. I need hardly say to you that we did not inherit thissimplicity from others, but, like the Danes, in so far as they have donethe like, have made it for ourselves. Whether we turn to the Latin, or, which is for us more important, to the old Gothic, we find gender; andin all daughter languages which have descended from the Latin, in mostof those which have descended from the ancient Gothic stock, it is fullyestablished to this day. The practical, business-like character of theEnglish mind asserted itself in the rejection of a distinction, which ina vast proportion of words, that is, in all which are the signs of_inanimate_ objects, and as such incapable of sex, rested upon afiction, and had no ground in the real nature of things. It is only byan act and effort of the imagination that sex, and thus gender, can beattributed to a table, a ship, or a tree; and there are aspects, thisbeing one, in which the English is among the least imaginative of alllanguages even while it has been employed in some of the mightiest worksof imagination which the world has ever seen{197}. 

What, it may be asked, is the meaning and explanation of all this? It isthat at certain earlier periods of a nation’s life its genius issynthetic, and at later becomes analytic. At earlier periods all is bysynthesis; and men love to contemplate the thing, and the mode of thething, together, as a single idea, bound up in one. But a time arriveswhen the intellectual obtains the upper hand of the imaginative, whenthe tendency of those that speak the language is to analyse, todistinguish between these two, and not only to distinguish but todivide, to have one word for the thing itself, and another for thequality of the thing; and this, as it would appear, is true not of somelanguages only, but of all. 

{FOOTNOTES}

{128} [Apparently a slip for ‘ebb’]

{129} It is still used in prose as late as the age of Henry VIII; see the _State Papers_, vol. Viii. P. 247. It was the latest survivor of a whole group or family of words which continued much longer in Scotland than with us; of which some perhaps continue there still; these are but a few of them; ‘wanthrift’ for extravagance; ‘wanluck’, misfortune; ‘wanlust’, languor; ‘wanwit’, folly; ‘wangrace’, wickedness; ‘wantrust’ (Chaucer), distrust, [Also ‘wan-ton’, devoid of breeding (_towen_). Compare German _wahn-sinn_, insanity, and _wahn-witz_. ]

{130} We must not suppose that this still survives in ‘_gir_falcon’; which wholly belongs to the Latin element of the language; being the later Latin ‘gyrofalco’, and that, “a _gyrando_, quia diu _gyrando_ acriter prædam insequitur”. 

{131} [‘Heft’, from ‘heave’ (_Winter’s Tale_, ii. 1, 45), is widely diffused in the Three Kingdoms and in America. See E. D. D. _s. V. _]

{132} “Some _hot-spurs_ there were that gave counsel to go against them with all their forces, and to fright and terrify them, if they made slow haste”. (Holland’s _Livy_, p. 922. )

{133} _State Papers_, vol. Vi. P. 534. 

{134} [‘Malinger’, French _malingre_ (mistakenly derived above), stands for old French _mal-heingre_ (maliciously or falsely ill, feigning sickness), which is from Latin _male aeger_, with an intrusive _n_--Scheler. ]

{135} [To which the late Boer War contributed many more, such as ‘kopje’, ‘trek’, ‘slim’, ‘veldt’, etc. ]

{136} The only two writers of whom I am aware as subsequently using this word are, both writing in Ireland and of Irish matters, Spenser and Swift. The passages are both quoted in Richardson’s _Dictionary_. [‘Bawn’ stands for the Irish _ba-dhun_ (not _bábhun_, as in N. E. D. ), or _bo-dhun_, literally ‘cow-fortress’, a cattle enclosure (Irish _bo_, a cow). See P. W. Joyce, _Irish Names of Places_, 1st ser. P. 297. ]

{137} There is an excellent account of this “refugee French” in Weiss’ _History of the Protestant Refugees of France_. 

{138} [Thus the Shakespearian word _renege_ (Latin _renegare_), to deny (_Lear_ ii, 2) still lives in the mouths of the Irish peasantry. I have heard a farmer’s wife denounce those who “_renege_ [_renaig_] their religion”. ]

{139} With all its severity, there is some truth in Ben Johnson’s observation: “Spenser, in affecting the ancients, writ no language”. In this matter, however, Ben Jonson was at one with him; for he does not hesitate to express his strong regret that this form has not been retained. “The _persons_ plural” he says (_English Grammar_, c. 17), “keep the termination of the first _person_ singular. In former times, till about the reign of King Henry VIII, they were wont to be formed by adding _en_; thus, _loven_, _sayen_, _complainen_. But now (whatsoever is the cause) it hath quite grown out of use, and that other so generally prevailed, that I dare not presume to set this afoot again; albeit (to tell you my opinion) I am persuaded that the lack hereof, well considered, will be found a great blemish to our tongue. For seeing _time_ and _person_ be as it were the right and left hand of a verb, what can the maiming bring else, but a lameness to the whole body”?

{140} [The two words are often popularly confounded. When a good woman said “I’m _afeerd_”, Mr. Pickwick exclaimed “_Afraid_”! (_Pickwick Papers_, ch. V. ). Chaucer, instructively, uses both in the one sentence, “This wyf was not _affered_ ne _affrayed_” (_Shipman’s Tale_, l. 400). ]

{141} Génin (_Récréations Philologiques_, vol. I. P. 71) says to the same effect: “Il n’y a guères de faute de Français, je dis faute générale, accréditée, qui n’ait sa raison d’être, et ne pût au besoin produire ses lettres de noblesse; et souvent mieux en règle que celles des locutions qui ont usurpé leur place au soleil”. 

{142} A single proof may in each case suffice:

 “Our wills and fates do so _contráry_ run”. --_Shakespeare. _

 “Ne let _mischiévous_ witches with their charms”. --_Spenser. _

 “O argument _blasphémous_, false and proud”. --_Milton. _

 [These archaisms are still current in Ireland. ]

{143} I cannot doubt that this form which our country people in Hampshire, as in many other parts, always employ, either retains the original pronunciation, our received one being a modern corruption; or else, as is more probable, that _we_ have made a confusion between two originally different words, from which they have kept clear. Thus in Howell’s _Vocabulary_, 1659, and in Cotgrave’s _French and English Dictionary_ both words occur: “nuncion or nuncheon, the afternoon’s repast”, (cf. _Hudibras_, i. 1, 346: “They took their breakfasts or their _nuncheons_”), and “lunchion, a big piece” i. E. Of bread; for both give the old French ‘caribot’, which has this meaning, as the equivalent of ‘luncheon’. It is clear that in this sense of lump or ‘big piece’ Gay uses ‘luncheon’:

 “When hungry thou stood’st staring like an oaf, I sliced the _luncheon_ from the barley loaf”;

 and Miss Baker in her _Northamptonshire Glossary_ explains ‘lunch’ as “a large lump of bread, or other edible; ‘He helped himself to a good _lunch_ of cake’”. We may note further that this ‘nuntion’ may possibly put us on the right track for arriving at the etymology of the word. Richardson has called attention to the fact that it is spelt “noon-shun” in Browne’s _Pastorals_, which must at least suggest as possible and plausible that the ‘nuntion’ was originally applied to the labourer’s slight meal, to which he withdrew for the _shunning_ of the heat of the middle _noon_: especially when in Lancashire we find a word of similar formation, ‘noon-scape’, and in Norfolk ‘noon-miss’, for the time when labourers rest after dinner. [It really stands for the older English _none-schenche_, i. E. ‘noon-skink’ or noon-drink (see Skeat, _Etym. Dict. _, _s. V. _), correlative to ‘noon-meat’ or ‘nam-met’. ] It is at any rate certain that the dignity to which ‘lunch’ or ‘luncheon’ has now arrived, as when we read in the newspapers of a “magnificent _luncheon_”, is altogether modern; the word belonged a century ago to rustic life, and in literature had not travelled beyond the “hobnailed pastorals” which professed to describe that life. 

{144} See it so written, Holland’s _Pliny_, vol. Ii. P. 428, and often. 

{145} As a proof of the excellent service which an accurate acquaintance with provincial usages may render in the investigation of the innumerable perplexing phenomena of the English language, I would refer to the admirable article _On English Pronouns Personal_ in _Transactions of the Philological Society_, vol. I. P. 277. 

{146} [We now have the good fortune to possess a complete collection of this valuable class of words in the splendid “English Dialect Dictionary”, edited by Professor Joseph Wright of Oxford, which is an essential supplement to all existing dictionaries of our language. ]

{147} This last very curious usage, which served as a kind of stepping-stone to ‘its’, and of which another example occurs in the Geneva Version (Acts xii. 10), and three or four in Shakespeare, has been abundantly illustrated by those who have lately written on the early history of the word ‘its’; thus see Craik, _On the English of Shakespeare_, p. 91; Marsh, _Manual of the English Language_ (Eng. Edit. ), p. 278; _Transactions of the Philological Society_, vol. 1. P. 280; and my book _On the Authorized Version of the New Testament_, p. 59. 

{148} Thus Fuller (_Pisgah Sight of Palestine_, vol. Ii. P. 190): “Sure I am this city [the New Jerusalem] as presented by the prophet, was fairer, finer, _slicker_, smoother, more exact, than any fabric the earth afforded”. 

{149} [In the United States ‘plunder’ is used for personal effects, baggage and luggage (Webster). This is not noticed in the E. D. D. ]

{150} [But we have acquired, in some quarters, the abomination ‘an invite’. ]

{151} How many words modern French has lost which are most vigorous and admirable, the absence of which can only now be supplied by a circumlocution or by some less excellent word--‘Oseur’, ‘affranchisseur’ (Amyot), ‘mépriseur’, ‘murmurateur’, ‘blandisseur’ (Bossuet), ‘abuseur’ (Rabelais), ‘désabusement’, ‘rancœur’, are all obsolete at the present. So ‘désaimer’, to cease to love (‘disamare’ in Italian), ‘guirlander’, ‘stériliser’, ‘blandissant’, ‘ordonnément’ (Montaigne), with innumerable others. 

{152} [It has now attained a fair currency. ]

{153} [‘Gainly’ is still used by nineteenth century writers, 1855-86; see N. E. D. ]

{154} [‘Dehort’ has been used in modern times by Southey (_Letters_, 1825, iii, 462), and Cheyne (_Isaiah, introd. _ 1882, xx. )--N. E. D. ]

{155} [Tennyson has endeavoured to resuscitate the word--“_Rathe_ she rose”--_Lancelot and Elaine_--but with no great success. ]

{156} For other passages in which ‘rathest’ occurs, see the _State Papers_, vol. Ii. Pp. 92, 170. 

{157} [‘Buxom’ for old English _buc-sum_ or _buch-sum_, i. E. ‘bow-some’, yielding, compliant, obedient. “Sara was _buxom_ to Abraham”, 1 Pet. Iii, 6 (xiv. Cent. Version, ed. Pawes, p. 216). ]

{158} [‘Lissome’ for _lithe-some_, like Wessex _blissom_ for _blithe-some_. Tennyson has “as _lissome_ as a hazel wand”--_The Brook_, l. 70. ]

{159} Jamieson’s _Dictionary_ gives a large number of words with this termination which I should suppose were always peculiar to Scotland, as ‘bangsome’, i. E. Quarrelsome, ‘freaksome’, ‘drysome’, ‘grousome’ (the German ‘grausam’) [Now in common use as ‘gruesome’. ]

{160} [A list of some of these reduplicated words was given by Dr. Booth in his “Analytical Dictionary of the English Language”, 1835; but a full collection of nearly six hundred was published by Mr. H. B. Wheatley in the _Transactions of the Philological Society_ for 1865. ]

{161} Many languages have groups of words formed upon the same scheme, although, singularly enough, they are altogether absent from the Anglo-Saxon. (J. Grimm, _Deutsche Gramm. _, vol. Ii. P. 976). The Spaniards have a great many very expressive words of this formation. Thus with allusion to the great struggle in which Christian Spain was engaged for so many centuries, a vaunting braggart is a ‘matamoros’, a ‘slaymoor’; he is a ‘matasiete’, a ‘slayseven’; a ‘perdonavidas’, a ‘sparelives’. Others may be added to these, as ‘azotacalles’, ‘picapleytos’, ‘saltaparedes’, ‘rompeesquinas’, ‘ganapan’, ‘cascatreguas’. 

{162} [This stands for ‘peak-goose’ (_peek goos_ in Ascham, _Scholemaster_, 1570, p. 54, ed. Arber), a _goose_ that _peaks_ or pines, used for a sickly, delicate person, and a simpleton. In Chapman, Cotgrave and others it appears as ‘pea-goose’. ]

{163} The mistake is far earlier; long before Cowper wrote the sound suggested first this sense, and then this spelling. Thus Stanihurst, _Description of Ireland_, p. 28: “They are taken for no better than _rakehels_, or _the devil’s black guard_”; and often elsewhere. 

{164} [i. E. In Joshua Sylvester’s translation of “Du Bartas, his Diuine Weekes and Workes”, 1621. ]

{165} As not, however, turning on a _very_ coarse matter, and illustrating the subject with infinite wit and humour, I might refer the Spanish scholar to the discussion between Don Quixote and his squire on the dismissal of ‘regoldar’, from the language of good society, and the substitution of ‘erutar’ in its room (_Don Quixote_, 4. 7. 43). In a letter of Cicero to Pætus (_Fam. _ ix. 22) there is a subtle and interesting disquisition on forbidden words, and their philosophy. 

{166} _Literature of Greece_, p. 5. 

{167} [Notwithstanding the analogous instance of ‘abbess’ for ‘abbatess’ this account of ‘lass’ must be abandoned. It is the old English _lasce_ (akin to Swedish _lösk_), meaning (1) one free or disengaged, (2) an unmarried girl (N. E. D. )]

{168} In Cotgrave’s _Dictionary_ I find ‘praiseress’, ‘commendress’, ‘fluteress’, ‘possesseress’, ‘loveress’, but have never met them in use. 

{169} On this termination see J. Grimm, _Deutsche Gramm. _, vol. Ii. P. 134; vol. Iii. P. 339. 

{170} [_The Knightes Tale_, ed. Skeat, l. 2017. ]

{171} [Yes; so in N. E. D. ]

{172} I am indebted for these last four to a _Nominale_ in the _National Antiquities_, vol. I. P. 216. 

{173} The earliest example which Richardson gives of ‘seamstress’ is from Gay, of ‘songstress’, from Thomson. I find however ‘sempstress’ in the translation of Olearius’ _Voyages and Travels_, 1669, p. 43. It is quite certain that as late as Ben Jonson, ‘seamster’ and ‘songster’ expressed the _female_ seamer and singer; a single passage from his _Masque of Christmas_ is evidence to this. One of the children of Christmas there is “Wassel, like a neat _sempster_ and _songster_; _her_ page bearing a brown bowl”. Compare a passage from _Holland’s Leaguer_, 1632: “A _tyre-woman_ of phantastical ornaments, a _sempster_ for ruffes, cuffes, smocks and waistcoats”. 

{174} This was about the time of Henry VIII. In proof of the confusion which reigned on the subject in Shakespeare’s time, see his use of ‘spinster’ as--‘spinner’, the _man_ spinning, _Henry VIII_, Act. I. Sc. 2; and I have no doubt that it is the same in _Othello_, Act i. Sc. 1. And a little later, in Howell’s _Vocabulary_, 1659, ‘spinner’ and ‘spinster’ are _both_ referred to the male sex, and the barbarous ‘spinstress’ invented for the female. 

{175} I have included ‘huckster’, as will be observed, in this list. I certainly cannot produce any passage in which it is employed as the _female_ pedlar. We have only, however, to keep in mind the existence of the verb ‘to huck’, in the sense of to peddle (it is used by Bishop Andrews), and at the same time not to let the present spelling of ‘hawker’ mislead us, and we shall confidently recognize ‘hucker’ (the German ‘höker’ or ‘höcker’), in hawker, that is, the _man_ who ‘hucks’, ‘hawks’, or peddles, as in ‘huckster’ the _female_ who does the same. When therefore Howell and others employ ‘hucksteress’, they fall into the same barbarous excess of expression, whereof we are all guilty, when we use ‘seamstress’ and ‘songstress’. --The note stood thus in the third edition. Since that was published, I have met in the _Nominale_ referred to p. 155, the following, “hæc auxiatrix, a _hukster_”. [Huckster, xiii. Cent. _huccster_, it may be noted is an older word in the language than _hukker_ (hucker) and _to huck_, both first appearing in the xiv. Cent. N. E. D. ]

{176} [Preserved in the surnames Baxter and Brewster. See C. W. Bardsley, _English Surnames_, 2nd ed. 364, 379. ]

{177} _Notes and Queries_, No. 157. 

{178} [‘Welkin’ is possibly a plural, but in Anglo-Saxon _wolcen_ is a cloud, and the plural _wolcnu_. ]

{179} When Wallis wrote, it was only beginning to be forgotten that ‘chick’ was the singular, and ‘chicken’ the plural: “_Sunt qui dicunt_ in singulari ‘chicken’, et in plurali ‘chickens’”; and even now the words are in many country parts correctly employed. In Sussex, a correspondent writes, they would as soon think of saying ‘oxens’ as ‘chickens’. [‘Chicken’ is properly a singular, old English _cicen_, the _-en_ being a diminutival, not a plural, suffix (as in ‘kitten’, ‘maiden’). Thus ‘chicken’ was originally ‘a little chuck’ (or cock), out of which ‘chick’ was afterwards developed. ]

{180} See Chaucer’s _Romaunt of the Rose_, 1032, where Richesse, “an high lady of great noblesse”, is one of the persons of the allegory; and compare Rev. Xviii. 17, Authorized Version. This has so entirely escaped the knowledge of Ben Jonson, English scholar as he was, that in his _Grammar_ he cites ‘riches’ as an example of an English word wanting a singular. 

{181} “Set shallow brooks to surging seas, An orient pearl to a white _pease_”. 

 _Puttenham. _

{182} [‘Eaves’ (old English _efes_) from which an imaginary singular ‘eave’ has sometimes been evolved, as when Tennyson speaks of a ‘cottage-eave’ (_In Memoriam_, civ. ), and Cotgrave of ‘an house-eave’. ]

{183} It is curious that despite of this protest, one of his plays has for its name, _Sejanus his Fall_. 

{184} Even this does not startle Addison, or cause him any misgiving; on the contrary he boldly asserts (_Spectator_, No. 135), “The same single letter ‘s’ on many occasions does the office of a whole word, and represents the ‘his’ _or ‘her’_ of our forefathers”. 

{185} Nothing can be better than the way in which Wallis disposes of this scheme, although less successful in showing what this ‘s’ does mean than in showing what it cannot mean (_Gramm. Ling. Anglic. _, c. 5); Qui autem arbitrantur illud s, loco _his_ adjunctum esse (priori scilicet parte per aphæresim abscissâ), ideoque apostrophi notam semper vel pingendam esse, vel saltem subintelligendam, omnino errant. Quamvis enim non negem quin apostrophi nota commode nonnunquam affigi possit, ut ipsius litteræ s usus distinctius, ubi opus est, percipiatur; ita tamen semper fieri debere, aut etiam ideo fieri quia vocem _his_ innuat, omnino nego. Adjungitur enim et fœminarum nominibus propriis, et substantivis pluralibus, ubi vox _his_ sine solœcismo locum habere non potest: atque etiam in possessivis _ours_, _yours_, _theirs_, _hers_, ubi vocem _his_ innui nemo somniaret. 

{186} See the proofs in Marsh’s _Manual of the English Language_, English Edit. , pp. 280, 293. 

{187} I cannot think that it would exceed the authority of our University Presses, if this were removed from the Prayer Books which they put forth, as certainly it is supprest by many of the clergy in the reading. Such a liberty they have already assumed with the Bible. In all earlier editions of the Authorized Version it stood at 1 Kin. Xv. 24: “Nevertheless _Asa his_ heart was perfect with the Lord”; it is “_Asa’s_ heart” now. In the same way “_Mordecai his_ matters” (Esth. Iii. 4) has been silently changed into “_Mordecai’s_ matters”; and in some modern editions, but not in all, “_Holofernes his_ head” (Judith xiii. 9) into “_Holofernes’_ head”. 

{188} In a good note on the matter, p. 6, in the _Comprehensive Grammar_ prefixed to his _Dictionary_, London, 1775. 

{189} See Grimm. _Deut. Gramm. _, vol. Ii. Pp. 609, 944. 

{190} The existence of ‘stony’--‘lapidosus’, ‘steinig’, does not make ‘stonen’--‘lapideus’, ‘steinern’, superfluous, any more than ‘earthy’ makes ‘earthen’. That part of the field in which the good seed withered so quickly (Matt. Xiii. 5) was ‘stony’. The vessels which held the water that Christ turned into wine (John iii. 6) were ‘stonen’. 

{191} J. Grimm (_Deutsche Gramm. _ vol. I, p. 1040): Dass die starke form die ältere, kräftigere, innere; die schwache die spätere, gehemmtere und mehr äusserliche sey, leuchtet ein. Elsewhere, speaking generally of inflections by internal vowel change, he characterizes them as a ‘chief beauty’ (hauptschönheit) of the Teutonic languages. Marsh (_Manual of the English Language_, p. 233, English ed. ) protests, though, as it seems to me, on no sufficient grounds, against these terms ‘strong’ and ‘weak’, as themselves fanciful and inappropriate. 

{192} The entire ignorance as to the past historic evolution of the language, with which some have undertaken to write about it, is curious. Thus the author of _Observations upon the English Language_, without date, but published about 1730, treats all these strong præterites as of recent introduction, counting ‘knew’ to have lately expelled ‘knowed’, ‘rose’ to have acted the same part toward ‘rised’, and of course esteeming them as so many barbarous violations of the laws of the language; and concluding with the warning that “great care must be taken to prevent their increase”!!--p. 24. Cobbett does not fall into this absurdity, yet proposes in his _English Grammar_, that they should all be abolished as inconvenient. [Now many others are rapidly becoming obsolescent. How seldom do we hear ‘drank’, ‘shrank’, ‘sprang’, ‘stank’. ]

{193} J. Grimm (_Deutsche Gramm. _ vol. I. P. 839): “Die starke flexion stufenweise versinkt und ausstirbt, die schwache aber um sich greift”. Cf. I. 994, 1040; ii. 5; iv. 509. 

{194} [See also J. C. Hare, _Two Essays in Eng. Philology_ i. 47-56. ]

{195} Thus Wallis (_Gramm. Ling. Anglic. _, 1654): Singulari numero siquis alium compellet, vel dedignantis illud esse solet, vel familiariter blandientis. [For a good discussion of the old use of ‘thou’, see the Hares, _Guesses at Truth_, 1847, pp. 169-90. Even at the present day a Wessex matron has been known to resent the too familiar address of an inferior with the words, “Who bist thou _a-theein’_ of”? (_The Spectator_, 1904, Sept. 3, p. 319). ]

{196} What the actual position of the compellation ‘thou’ was at that time, we may perhaps best learn from this passage in Fuller’s _Church History, Dedication of Book_ vii. : “In opposition whereunto [i. E. To the Quaker usage] we maintain that _thou_ from superiors to inferiors is proper, as a sign of command; from equals to equals is passable, as a note of familiarity; but from inferiors to superiors, if proceeding from ignorance, hath a smack of clownishness; if from affectation, a tone of contempt”. 

{197} See on this subject of the dropping of grammatical gender, Pott, _Etymologische Forschungen_, part 2, pp. 404, _sqq. _

IV

CHANGES IN THE MEANING OF ENGLISH WORDS

I propose, according to the plan sketched out in my first lecture, totake for my subject in the present those changes which in the course oftime have found place, or now are finding place, in the meaning of manyamong our English words; so that, whether we are aware of it or not, weemploy them at this day in senses very different from those in which ourforefathers employed them of old. You observe that it is not _obsolete_words, words quite fallen out of present use, which I propose toconsider; but such, rather, as are still on the lips of men, but withmeanings more or less removed from those which once they possessed. Mysubject is far more practical, has far more to do with your actual life, than if I had taken obsolete words, and considered them. These last havean interest indeed, but it is an interest of an antiquarian character. They constituted a part of the intellectual money with which ourancestors carried on the business of their life; but now they are rathermedals for the cabinets and collections of the curious than currentmoney for the needs and pleasures of all. Their wings are clipped, sothat they are “_winged_ words” no more; the spark of thought orfeeling, kindling from mind to mind, no longer runs along them, as alongthe electric wires of the soul. 

{Sidenote: _Obsolete Words_}

And then, besides this, there is little or no danger that any should bemisled by them. A reader lights for the first time on one of theseobsolete English words, as ‘frampold’, or ‘garboil’, or ‘brangle’{198};he is at once conscious of his ignorance; he has recourse to a glossary, of if he guesses from the context at the word’s signification, still hisguess is as a guess to him, and no more. But words that have changedtheir meaning have often a deceivableness about them; a reader not oncedoubts but that he knows their intention, has no misgiving but that theypossess for him the same force which they possessed for their writer, and conveyed to _his_ contemporaries, when indeed it is quite otherwise. The old life has gone out of them and a new life entered in. 

Thus, for example, a reader of our day lights upon such a passage as thefollowing (it is from the _Preface_ to Howell’s _Lexicon_, 1660):“Though the root of the English language be _Dutch_{199}, yet it may besaid to have been inoculated afterwards on a French stock”. He may knowthat the Dutch is a sister language or dialect to our own; but thisthat it is the mother or root of it will certainly perplex him, and hewill hardly know what to make of the assertion; perhaps he ascribes itto an error in his author, who is thereby unduly lowered in his esteem. But presently in the course of his reading he meets with the followingstatement, this time in Fuller’s _Holy War_, being a history of theCrusades: “The French, _Dutch_, Italian, and English were the fourelemental nations, whereof this army [of the Crusaders] was compounded”. If the student has sufficient historical knowledge to know that in thetime of the Crusades there were no Dutch in our use of the word, thisstatement would merely startle him; and probably before he had finishedthe chapter, having his attention once aroused, he would perceive thatFuller with the writers of his time used ‘Dutch’ for German; even as itwas constantly so used up to the end of the seventeenth century; and asthe Americans use it to this present day; what we call now a Dutchmanbeing then a Hollander. But a young student might very possibly wantthat amount of previous knowledge, which should cause him to receivethis announcement with misgiving and surprise; and thus he might carryaway altogether a wrong impression, and rise from a perusal of the book, persuaded that the Dutch, as we call them, played an important part inthe Crusades, while the Germans took little or no part in them at all. 

{Sidenote: _Miscreant_}

And as it is here with an historic fact, so still more often will ithappen with the subtler changes which words have undergone. Out of thisit will continually happen that they convey now much more blame andcondemnation, or convey now much less, than formerly they did; or of adifferent kind; and a reader not aware of the altered value which theynow possess, may be in continual danger of misreading his author, ofmisunderstanding his intentions, while he has no doubt whatever that heperfectly apprehends and takes it in. Thus when Shakespeare in _1 HenryVI_ makes the gallant York address Joan of Arc as a ‘miscreant’, howcoarse a piece of invective this sounds; how unlike what the chivalroussoldier would have uttered; or what one might have supposed Shakespeare, even with his unworthy estimate of the holy warrior Maid, would have putinto his mouth. But a ‘miscreant’ in Shakespeare’s time had nothing ofthe meaning which now it has. It was simply, in agreement with itsetymology, a misbeliever, one who did not believe rightly the Articlesof the Catholic Faith. And I need not remind you that this was theconstant charge which the English brought against Joan, --namely, thatshe was a dealer in hidden magical arts, a witch, and as such had fallenfrom the faith. On this plea they burnt her, and it is this which Yorkmeans when he calls her a ‘miscreant’, and not what we should intend bythe name. 

In reading of poetry above all what beauties are often missed, whatforces lost, through this assumption that the present of a word isalways equivalent to its past. How often the poet is wronged in ourestimation; that seeming to us now flat and pointless, which at oncewould lose this character, did we know how to read into some word theemphasis which it once had, but which now has departed from it. Forexample, Milton ascribes in _Comus_ the “_tinsel-slippered_ feet” toThetis, the goddess of the sea. How comparatively poor an epithet this‘tinsel-slippered’ sounds for those who know of ‘tinsel’ only in itsmodern acceptation of mean and tawdry finery, affecting a splendourwhich it does not really possess. But learn its earlier use by learningits derivation, bring it back to the French ‘étincelle’, and the Latin‘scintillula’; see in it, as Milton and the writers of his time saw, ‘the sparkling’, and how exquisitely beautiful a title does this becomeapplied to a goddess of the sea; how vividly does it call up before ourmind’s eye the quick glitter and sparkle of the waves under the light ofsun or moon{200}. It is Homer’s ‘silver-footed’ (ἀργυρόπεζα), notservilely transferred, but reproduced and made his own by the Englishpoet, dealing as one great poet will do with another; who will notdisdain to borrow, but to what he borrows will add often a further graceof his own. 

{Sidenote: ‘_Influence_’}

Or, again, do we keep in mind, or are we even aware, that whenever theword ‘influence’ occurs in our English poetry, down to comparatively amodern date, there is always more or less remote allusions to invisibleillapses of power, skyey, planetary effects, supposed to be exercised bythe heavenly luminaries upon the lives of men{201}? How many a passagestarts into new life and beauty and fulness of allusion, when this ispresent with us; even Milton’s

 “store of ladies, whose bright eyes Rain _influence_”, as spectators of the tournament, gain something, when we regardthem--and using this language, he intended we should--as the luminariesof this lower sphere, shedding by their propitious presence strength andvalour into the hearts of their knights. 

{Sidenote: ‘_Baffle_’}

The word even in its present acceptation may yield, as here, aconvenient and even a correct sense; we may fall into no positivemisapprehension about it; and still, through ignorance of its pasthistory and of the force which it once possessed, we may miss a greatpart of its significance. We are not _beside_ the meaning of our author, but we are _short_ of it. Thus in Beaumont and Fletcher’s _King and noKing_, (Act iii. Sc. 2, ) a cowardly braggart of a soldier describes thetreatment he experienced, when like Parolles he was at length found out, and stripped of his lion’s skin:--“They hung me up by the heels and beatme with hazel sticks, . .. That the whole kingdom took notice of me for a_baffled_, whipped fellow”. The word to which I wish here to call yourattention is ‘baffled’. Were you reading this passage, there wouldprobably be nothing here to cause you to pause; you would attach to‘baffled’ a sense which sorts very well with the context--“hung up bythe heels and beaten, all his schemes of being thought much of were_baffled_ and defeated”. But “baffled” implies far more than this; itcontains allusion to a custom in the days of chivalry, according towhich a perjured or recreant knight was either in person, or morecommonly in effigy, hung up by the heels, his scutcheon blotted, hisspear broken, and he himself or his effigy made the mark and subject ofall kinds of indignities; such a one being said to be ‘baffled’{202}. Twice in Spenser recreant knights are so dealt with. I can only quote aportion of the shorter passage, in which this infamous punishment isdescribed:

 “And after all, for greater infamy He by the heels him hung upon a tree, And _baffled_ so, that all which passéd by The picture of his punishment might see”{203}. 

Probably when Beaumont and Fletcher wrote, men were not so remote fromthe days of chivalry, or at any rate from the literature of chivalry, but that this custom was still fresh in their minds. How much more tothem than to us, so long as we are ignorant of the same, would thosewords I just quoted have conveyed?

{Sidenote: ‘_Religion_’}

There are several places in the Authorized Version of Scripture wherethose who are not aware of the changes which have taken place during thelast two hundred and fifty years in our language, can hardly fail ofbeing to a certain extent misled as to the intention of our Translators;or, if they are better acquainted with Greek than with early English, will be tempted to ascribe to them, though unjustly, an inexactrendering of the original. Thus the altered meaning of a word involvesa serious misunderstanding in that well known statement of St. James, “Pure _religion_ and undefiled before God and the Father is this, tovisit the fatherless and widows in their affliction”. “There”, exclaimsone who wishes to set up St. James against St. Paul, that so he mayescape the necessity of obeying either, “listen to what St. James says;there is nothing mystical in what he requires; instead of harping onfaith as a condition necessary to salvation, he makes all religion toconsist in practical deeds of kindness from one to another”. But let uspause for a moment. Did ‘religion’, when our translation was made, meangodliness? did it mean the _sum total_ of our duties towards God? for, of course, no one would deny that deeds of charity are a necessary partof our Christian duty, an evidence of the faith which is in us. There isabundant evidence to show that ‘religion’ did not mean this; that, likethe Greek θρησκεία, for which it here stands, like the Latin ‘religio’, it meant the outward forms and embodiments in which the inward principleof piety arrayed itself, the _external service_ of God; and St. James isurging upon those to whom he is writing something of this kind: “Insteadof the ceremonial services of the Jews, which consisted in diverswashings and in other elements of this world, let our service, ourθρησκεία, take a nobler shape, let it consist in deeds of pity and oflove”--and it was this which our Translators intended, when they used‘religion’ here and ‘religious’ in the verse preceding. How little‘religion’ once meant godliness, how predominantly it was used for the_outward_ service of God, is plain from many passages in our_Homilies_, and from other contemporary literature. 

Again, there are words in our Liturgy which I have no doubt are commonlymisunderstood. The mistake involves no serious error; yet still in ourown language, and in words which we have constantly in our mouths, andat most solemn times, it is certainly better to be right than wrong. Inthe Litany we pray God that it would please Him, “to give and preserveto our use the _kindly_ fruits of the earth”. What meaning do we attachto this epithet, “the _kindly_ fruits of the earth”? Probably weunderstand by it those fruits in which the _kindness_ of God or ofnature towards us finds its expression. This is no unworthy explanation, but still it is not the right one. The “_kindly_ fruits” are the“_natural_ fruits”, those which the earth according to its _kind_ shouldnaturally bring forth, which it is appointed to produce. To show you howlittle ‘kindly’ meant once benignant, as it means now, I will instancean employment of it from Sir Thomas More’s _Life of Richard the Third_. He tells us that Richard calculated by murdering his two nephews in theTower to make himself accounted “a _kindly_ king”--not certainly a‘kindly’ one in our present usage of the word{204}; but, having put themout of the way, that he should then be lineal heir of the Crown, andshould thus be reckoned as king _by kind_ or natural descent; and suchwas of old the constant use of the word. 

{Sidenote: ‘_Worship_’}

A phrase in one of our occasional Services “with my body I thee_worship_”, has sometimes offended those who are unacquainted with theearly use of English words, and thus with the intention of the actualframers of that Service. Clearly in our modern sense of ‘worship’, thislanguage would be unjustifiable. But ‘worship’ or ‘worthship’ meant‘honour’ in our early English, and ‘to worship’ to honour, this meaningof ‘worship’ still very harmlessly surviving in the title of “yourworship”, addressed to the magistrate on the bench. So little was itrestrained of old to the honour which man is bound to pay to God, thatit was employed by Wiclif to express the honour which God will render tohis faithful servants and friends. Thus our Lord’s declaration “If anyman serve Me, him will my Father _honour_”, in Wiclif’s translationreads thus, “If any man serve Me, my Father shall _worship_ him”. I donot say that there is not sufficient reason to change the words, “withmy body I thee _worship_”, if only there were any means of changinganything which is now antiquated and out of date in our services orarrangements. I think it would be very well if they were changed, liableas they are to misunderstanding and misconstruction now; but still theydid not mean at the first, and therefore do not now really mean, anymore than, “with my body I thee _honour_”, and so you may reply to anyfault-finder here. 

Take another example of a very easy misapprehension, although not nowfrom Scripture or the Prayer Book, Fuller, our Church historian, havingoccasion to speak of some famous divine that was lately dead, exclaims, “Oh the _painfulness_ of his preaching!” If we did not know the formeruses of ‘painfulness’, we might take this for an exclamation wrung outat the recollection of the tediousness which he inflicted on hishearers. Far from it; the words are a record not of the _pain_ which hecaused to others, but of the _pains_ which he bestowed himself: and I ampersuaded, if we had more ‘painful’ preachers in the old sense of theword, that is, who _took_ pains themselves, we should have fewer‘painful’ ones in the modern sense, who _cause_ pain to their hearers. So too Bishop Grosthead is recorded as “the _painful_ writer of twohundred books”--not meaning hereby that these books were painful in thereading, but that he was laborious and painful in their composing. 

Here is another easy misapprehension. Swift wrote a pamphlet, or, as hecalled it, a _Letter to the Lord Treasurer_, with this title, “Aproposal for correcting, improving, and _ascertaining_ the EnglishTongue”. Who that brought a knowledge of present English, and no more, to this passage, would doubt that “_ascertaining_ the English Tongue”meant arriving at a certain knowledge of what it was? Swift, however, means something quite different from this. “_To ascertain_ the Englishtongue” is not with him to arrive at a subjective certainty in our ownminds of what that tongue is, but to give an objective certainty to thattongue itself, so that henceforth it shall not alter nor change. Foreven Swift himself, with all his masculine sense, entertained a dreamof this kind, as is more fully declared in the work itself{205}. 

{Sidenote: ‘_Treacle_’}

In other places unacquaintance with the changes in a word’s usage willnot so much mislead as leave you nearly or altogether at a loss inrespect of the intention of an author whom you may be reading. It isevident that he has a meaning, but what it is you are unable to divine, even though all the words he employs are words in familiar employment tothe present day. For example, the poet Waller is congratulating Charlesthe Second on his return from exile, and is describing the way in whichall men, even those formerly most hostile to him, were now seeking hisfavour, and he writes:

 “Offenders now, the chiefest, do begin To strive for grace, and expiate their sin: All winds blow fair that did the world embroil, _Your vipers treacle yield_, and scorpions oil”. 

Many a reader before now has felt, as I cannot doubt, a moment’sperplexity at the now courtly poet’s assertion that “_vipers treacleyield_”--who yet has been too indolent, or who has not had theopportunity, to search out what his meaning might be. There is in factallusion here to a curious piece of legendary lore. ‘Treacle’, or‘triacle’, as Chaucer wrote it, was originally a Greek word, and wrappedup in itself the once popular belief (an anticipation, by the way, ofhomœopathy), that a confection of the viper’s flesh was the most potentantidote against the viper’s bite{206}. Waller goes back to this theword’s old meaning, familiar enough in his time, for Milton speaks of“the sovran _treacle_ of sound doctrine”{207}, while “Venice treacle”, or “viper wine”, as it sometimes was called, was a common name for asupposed antidote against all poisons; and he would imply that regicidesthemselves began to be loyal, vipers not now yielding hurt any more, butrather healing for the old hurts which they themselves had inflicted. Totrace the word down to its present use, it may be observed that, designating first this antidote, it then came to designate any antidote, then any medicinal confection or sweet syrup; and lastly that particularsyrup, namely, the sweet syrup of molasses, to which alone it is nowrestricted. 

{Sidenote: ‘_Blackguard_’}

I will draw on the writings of Fuller for one more example. In his _HolyWar_, having enumerated the rabble rout of fugitive debtors, runawayslaves, thieves, adulterers, murderers, of men laden for one cause oranother with heaviest censures of the Church, who swelled the ranks, andhelped to make up the army, of the Crusaders, he exclaimed, “Alamentable case that the devil’s _black guard_ should be God’ssoldiers”! What does he mean, we may ask, by “the devil’s _blackguard_”? Nor is this a solitary mention of the “black guard”. On thecontrary, the phrase is of very frequent recurrence in the earlydramatists and others down to the time of Dryden, who gives as one ofhis stage directions in _Don Sebastian_, “Enter the captain of therabble, with the _Black guard_”. What is this “black guard”? Has it anyconnexion with a word of our homeliest vernacular? We feel that probablyit has so; yet at first sight the connexion is not very apparent, norindeed the exact force of the phrase. Let me trace its history. In oldtimes, the palaces of our kings and seats of our nobles were not so welland completely furnished as at the present day: and thus it wascustomary, when a royal progress was made, or when the great nobilityexchanged one residence for another, that at such a removal all kitchenutensils, pots and pans, and even coals, should be also carried withthem where they went. Those who accompanied and escorted these, thelowest, meanest, and dirtiest of the retainers, were called ‘the blackguard’{208}; then any troop or company of ragamuffins; and lastly, whenthe origin of the word was lost sight of, and it was forgotten that itproperly implied a company, a rabble rout, and not a single person, onewould compliment another, not as belonging to, but as himself being, the‘blackguard’. 

The examples which I have adduced are, I am persuaded, sufficient toprove that it is not a useless and unprofitable study, nor yet onealtogether without entertainment, to which I invite you; that on thecontrary any one who desires to read with accuracy, and thus withadvantage and pleasure, our earlier classics, who would avoid continualmisapprehension in their perusal, and would not often fall short of, andoften go astray from, their meaning, must needs bestow some attention onthe altered significance of English words. And if this is so, we couldnot more usefully employ what remains of this present lecture than inseeking to indicate those changes which words most frequently undergo;and to trace as far as we can the causes, mental and moral, at work inthe minds of men to bring these changes about, with the good and evilout of which they have sprung, and to which they bear witness. 

For indeed these changes to which words in the progress of time aresubmitted are not changes at random, but for the most part are obedientto certain laws, are capable of being distributed into certain classes, being the outward transcripts and witnesses of mental and moralprocesses inwardly going forward in those who bring them about. Many, itis true, will escape any classification of ours, the changes which havetaken place in their meaning being, or at least seeming to us, theresult of mere caprice; and not explicable by any principle which we canappeal to as habitually at work in the mind. But, admitting all this, amajority will still remain which are reducible to some law or other, andwith these we will occupy ourselves now. 

{Sidenote: ‘_Duke_’, ‘_Corpse_’, ‘_Weed_’}

And first, the meaning of a word oftentimes is gradually narrowed. Itwas once as a generic name, embracing many as yet unnamed species withinitself, which all went by its common designation. By and bye it is foundconvenient that each of these should have its own more special signallotted to it{209}. It is here just as in some newly enclosed country, where a single household will at first loosely occupy a whole district;while, as cultivation proceeds, this district is gradually parcelled outamong a dozen or twenty, and under more accurate culture employs andsustains them all. Thus, for example, all food was once called ‘meat’;it is so in our Bible, and ‘horse-meat’ for fodder is still no unusualphrase; yet ‘meat’ is now a name given only to flesh. Any little book orwriting was a ‘libel’ once; now only such a one as is scurrilous andinjurious. Any leader was a ‘duke’ (dux); thus “_duke_ Hannibal” (SirThomas Eylot), “_duke_ Brennus” (Holland), “_duke_ Theseus”(Shakespeare), “_duke_ Amalek”, with other ‘dukes’ (Gen. Xxxvi. ). Anyjourney, by land as much as by sea, was a ‘voyage’. ‘Fairy’ was not aname restricted, as now, to the _Gothic_ mythology; thus “the _fairy_Egeria” (Sir J. Harrington). A ‘corpse’ might be quite as well living asdead{210}. ‘Weeds’ were whatever covered the earth or the person; whilenow as respects the earth, those only are ‘weeds’ which are noxious, orat least self-sown; as regards the person, we speak of no other ‘weeds’but the widow’s{211}. In each of these cases, the same contraction ofmeaning, the separating off and assigning to other words of largeportions of this, has found place. ‘To starve’ (the German ‘sterben’, and generally spelt ‘sterve’ up to the middle of the seventeenthcentury), meant once to die any manner of death; thus Chaucer says, Christ “_sterved_ upon the cross for our redemption”; it now isrestricted to the dying by cold or by hunger. Words not a few were onceapplied to both sexes alike, which are now restricted to the female. Itis so even with ‘girl’, which was once a young person of eithersex{212}; while other words in this list, such for instance as‘hoyden’{213} (Milton, prose), ‘shrew’ (Chaucer), ‘coquet’ (Phillips, _New World of Words_), ‘witch’ (Wiclif), ‘termagant’ (Bale), ‘scold’, ‘jade’, ‘slut’ (Gower), must be regarded in their present exclusiveappropriation to the female sex as evidences of men’s rudeness, and notof women’s deserts. 

{Sidenote: _Words used more accurately_}

The necessities of an advancing civilization demand a greater precisionand accuracy in the use of words having to do with weight, measure, number, size. Almost all such words as ‘acre’, ‘furlong’, ‘yard’, ‘gallon’, ‘peck’, were once of a vague and unsettled use, and only at alater day, and in obedience to the requirements of commerce and sociallife, exact measures and designations. Thus every field was once an‘acre’; and this remains so still with the German ‘acker’, and in our“God’s acre”, as a name for a churchyard{214}; it was not till about thereign of Edward the First that ‘acre’ was commonly restricted to adetermined measure and portion of land. Here and there even now aglebeland will be called “the acre”; and this, even while it containsnot one but many of our measured acres. A ‘furlong’ was a ‘furrowlong’, or length of a furrow{215}. Any pole was a ‘yard’, and this vaguer usesurvives in ‘sail_yard_’, ‘hal_yard_’, and in other sea-terms. Everypitcher was a ‘galon’ (Mark xiv. 13, Wiclif), while a ‘peck’ was no morethan a ‘poke’ or bag{216}. And the same has no doubt taken place in allother languages. I will only remind you how the Greek ‘drachm’ was atfirst a handful (δραχμή = ‘manipulus’, from δράσσω, to grasp); itslater word for ‘ten thousand’ (μύριοι) implied in Homer’s time any greatmultitude; and with the accent on a different syllable always retainedthis meaning. 

{Sidenote: _Words used less accurately_}

Opposite to this is a counter-process by which words of narrowerintention gradually enlarge the domain of their meaning, becomingcapable of much wider application than any which once they admitted. Instances in this kind are fewer than in that which we have just beenconsidering. The main stream and course of human thoughts and humandiscourse tends the other way, to discerning, distinguishing, dividing;and then to the permanent fixing of the distinctions gained, by the aidof designations which shall keep apart for ever in word that which hasbeen once severed and sundered in thought. Nor is it hard to perceivewhy this process should be the more frequent. Men are first struck withthe likenesses between those things which are presented to them, withtheir points of resemblance; on the strength of which they bracket themunder a common term. Further acquaintance reveals their points ofunlikeness, the real dissimilarities which lurk under superficialresemblances, the need therefore of a different notation for objectswhich are essentially different. It is comparatively much rarer todiscover real likeness under what at first appeared as unlikeness; andusually when a word moves forward, and from a specialty indicates now agenerality, it is not in obedience to any such discovery of the trueinner likeness of things, --the steps of successful generalizations beingmarked and secured in other ways. But this widening of a word’s meaningis too often a result of those elements of disorganization and decaywhich are at work in a language. Men forget a word’s history andetymology; its distinctive features are obliterated for them, with allwhich attached it to some thought or fact which by right was its own. Appropriated and restricted once to some striking specialty which itvigorously set out, it can now be used in a wider, vaguer, moreunsettled way. It can be employed twenty times for once when it wouldhave been possible formerly to employ it. Yet this is not gain, but pureloss. It has lost its place in the disciplined _army_ of words, andbecome one of a loose and disorderly _mob_. 

Let me instance the word ‘preposterous’. It is now no longer of anypractical service at all in the language, being merely an ungraceful andslipshod synonym for absurd. But restore and confine it to its old use;let it designate that one peculiar branch of absurdity which itdesignated once, namely the reversing of the true order of things, theputting of the last first, and, by consequence, of the first last, andof what excellent service the word would be capable. Thus it is‘preposterous’, in the most accurate use of the word, to put the cartbefore the horse, to expect wages before the work is done, to hang a manfirst and try him afterwards; and in this strict and accurate sense theword was always used by our elder writers{217}. 

In like manner ‘to prevaricate’ was never employed by good writers ofthe seventeenth century without nearer or more remote allusion to theuses of the word in the Roman law courts, where a ‘prævaricator’(properly a straddler with distorted legs) did not mean generally andloosely, as now with us, one who shuffles, quibbles, and evades; but onewho plays false in a particular manner; who, undertaking, or being byhis office bound, to prosecute a charge, is in secret collusion with theopposite party; and, betraying the cause which he affects to support, somanages the accusation as to obtain not the condemnation, but theacquittal, of the accused; a “feint pleader”, as, I think, in our oldlaw language he would have been termed. How much force would the keepingof this in mind add to many passages in our elder divines. 

Or take ‘equivocal’, ‘equivocate’, ‘equivocation’. These words, whichbelonged at first to logic, have slipped down into common use, and in sodoing have lost all the precision of their first employment. ‘Equivocation’ is now almost any such dealing in ambiguous words withthe intention of deceiving, as falls short of an actual lie; butaccording to its etymology and in its primary use ‘equivocation’, thisfruitful mother of so much error, is the calling by the same name, ofthings essentially diverse, hiding intentionally or otherwise a realdifference under a verbal resemblance{218}. Nor let it be urged indefence of its present looser use, that only so could it have served theneeds of our ordinary conversation; on the contrary, had it retained itsfirst use, how serviceable an implement of thought would it have been indetecting our own fallacies, or those of others; all which it can be nowno longer. 

{Sidenote: ‘_Idea_’}

What now is ‘idea’ for us? How infinite the fall of this word since thetime when Milton sang of the Creator contemplating his newly createdworld, “how it showed, Answering his great _idea_”, to its present use when this person “has an _idea_ that the train hasstarted”, and the other “had no _idea_ that the dinner would be so bad”. But this word ‘idea’ is perhaps the worst case in the English language. Matters have not mended here since the times of Dr. Johnson; of whomBoswell tells us: “He was particularly indignant against the almostuniversal use of the word _idea_ in the sense of _notion_ or _opinion_, when it is clear that _idea_ can only signify something of which animage can be formed in the mind”. There is perhaps no word in the wholecompass of English, so seldom used with any tolerable correctness; innone is the distance so immense between the frequent sublimity of theword in its proper use, and the triviality of it in its slovenly and itspopular. 

This tendency in words to lose the sharp, rigidly defined outline ofmeaning which they once possessed, to become of wide, vague, looseapplication instead of fixed, definite, and precise, to mean almostanything, and so really to mean nothing, is among the most fatallyeffectual which are at work for the final ruin of a language, and, I donot fear to add, for the demoralization of those that speak it. It isone against which we shall all do well to watch; for there is none of uswho cannot do something in keeping words close to their own propermeaning, and in resisting their encroachment on the domain of others. 

The causes which bring this mischief about are not hard to trace. We allknow that when a piece of our silver money has long fulfilled its part, as “pale and common drudge ’tween man and man”, whatever it had at firstof sharper outline and livelier impress is in the end wholly obliteratedfrom it. So it is with words, above all with words of science andtheology. These getting into general use, and passing often from mouthto mouth, lose the “image and superscription” which they had, beforethey descended from the school to the market-place, from the pulpit tothe street. Being now caught up by those who understand imperfectly andthus incorrectly their true value, who will not be at the pains ofunderstanding that, or who are incapable of doing so, they are obligedto accommodate themselves to the lower sphere in which they circulate, by laying aside much of the precision and accuracy and depth which oncethey had; they become weaker, shallower, more indefinite; till in theend, as exponents of thought and feeling, they cease to be of anyservice at all. 

 * * * * *

{Sidenote: ‘_Bombast_’, ‘_Garble_’}

Sometimes a word does not merely narrow or extend its meaning, butaltogether changes it; and this it does in more ways than one. Thus asecondary figurative sense will quite put out of use and extinguish theliteral, until in the entire predominance of that it is altogetherforgotten that it ever possessed any other. I may instance ‘bombast’ asa word about which this forgetfulness is nearly complete. What ‘bombast’now means is familiar to us all, namely inflated words, “full of soundand fury”, but “signifying nothing”. This, at present its sole meaning, was once only the secondary and superinduced; ‘bombast’ being properlythe cotton plant, and then the cotton wadding with which garments werestuffed out and lined. You remember perhaps how Prince Hal addressesFalstaff, “How now, my sweet creature of _bombast_”; using the word inits literal sense; and another early poet has this line:

 “Thy body’s bolstered out with _bombast_ and with bags”. 

‘Bombast’ was then transferred in a vigorous image to the big wordswithout strength or solidity wherewith the discourses of some werestuffed out, and has now quite forgone any other meaning. So too ‘togarble’ was once “to cleanse from dross and dirt, as grocers do theirspices, to pick or cull out”{219}. It is never used now in this itsprimary sense, and has indeed undergone this further change, that whileonce ‘to garble’ was to sift for the purpose of selecting the best, itis now to sift with a view of picking out the worst{220}. ‘Polite’ isanother word which in the figurative sense has quite extinguished theliteral. We still speak of ‘polished’ surfaces; but not any more, withCudworth, of “_polite_ bodies, as looking glasses”. Neither do we now‘exonerate’ a ship (Burton); nor ‘stigmatize’, at least otherwise thanfiguratively, a ‘malefactor’ (the same); nor ‘corroborate’ our health(Sir Thomas Elyot). 

Again, a word will travel on by slow and regularly progressive coursesof change, itself a faithful index of changes going on in society and inthe minds of men, till at length everything is changed about it. Theprocess of this it is often very curious to observe; capable as notseldom it is of being watched step by step in its advances to the finalconsummation. There may be said to be three leading phases which theword successively presents, three steps in its history. At first itgrows naturally out of its own root, is filled with its own naturalmeaning. Presently the word allows another meaning, one superinduced onthe former, and foreign to its etymology, to share with the other in thepossession of it, on the ground that where the former exists, the lattercommonly co-exists with it. At the third step, the newly introducedmeaning, not satisfied with its moiety, with dividing the possession ofthe word, has thrust out the original and rightful possessor altogether, and remains in sole and exclusive possession. The three successivestages may be represented by _a_, _ab_, _b_; in which series _b_, whichwas wanting altogether at the first stage, and was only admitted assecondary at the second, does at the third become primary and indeedalone. 

{Sidenote: _Gradual Change of Meaning_}

We are not to suppose that in actual fact the transitions from onesignification to another are so strongly and distinctly marked, as Ihave found it convenient to mark them here. Indeed it is hard to imagineanything more gradual, more subtle and imperceptible, than the processof change. The manner in which the new meaning first insinuates itselfinto the old, and then drives out the old, can only be compared to theprocess of petrifaction, as rightly understood--the water not graduallyturning what is put into it to stone, as we generally take the operationto be; but successively displacing each several particle of that whichis brought within its power, and depositing a stony particle, in itsstead, till, in the end, while all appears to continue the same, all hasin fact been thoroughly changed. It is precisely thus, by such slow, gradual, and subtle advances that the new meaning filters through andpervades the word, little by little displacing entirely that which itbefore possessed. 

No word would illustrate this process better than that old example, familiar probably to us all, of ‘villain’. The ‘villain’ is, first, theserf or peasant, ‘villanus’, because attached to the ‘villa’ or farm. Heis, secondly, the peasant who, it is further taken for granted, will bechurlish, selfish, dishonest, and generally of evil moral conditions, these having come to be assumed as always belonging to him, and to bepermanently associated with his name, by those higher classes of societywho in the main commanded the springs of language. At the third step, nothing of the meaning which the etymology suggests, nothing of ‘villa’, survives any longer; the peasant is wholly dismissed, and the evil moralconditions of him who is called by this name alone remain; so that thename would now in this its final stage be applied as freely to peer, ifhe deserved it, as to peasant. ‘Boor’ has had exactly the same history;being first the cultivator of the soil; then secondly, the cultivator ofthe soil who, it is assumed, will be coarse, rude, and unmannerly; andthen thirdly, any one who is coarse, rude, and unmannerly{221}. So too‘pagan’; which is first villager, then heathen villager, and lastlyheathen. You may trace the same progress in ‘churl’, ‘clown’, ‘antic’, and in numerous other words. The intrusive meaning might be likened inall these cases to the egg which the cuckoo lays in the sparrow’s nest;the young cuckoo first sharing the nest with its rightful occupants, butnot resting till it has dislodged and ousted them altogether. 

{Sidenote: ‘_Gossip_’}

I will illustrate by the aid of one word more this part of my subject. Icalled your attention in my last lecture to the true character ofseveral words and forms in use among our country people, and claimed forthem to be in many instances genuine English, though English now moreor less antiquated and overlived. ‘Gossip’ is a word in point. I havemyself heard this name given by our Hampshire peasantry to the sponsorsin baptism, the godfathers and godmothers. I do not say that it is ausual word; but it is occasionally employed, and well understood. Thisis a perfectly correct employment of ‘gossip’, in fact its proper andoriginal one, and involves moreover a very curious record of pastbeliefs. ‘Gossip’, or ‘gossib’, as Chaucer spelt it, is a compound word, made up of the name of ‘God’, and of an old Anglo-Saxon word, ‘sib’, still alive in Scotland, as all readers of Walter Scott will remember, and in some parts of England, and which means, akin; they were said tobe ‘sib’, who are related to one another. But why, you may ask, was thename given to sponsors? Out of this reason;--in the middle ages it wasthe prevailing belief (and the Romish Church still affirms it), thatthose who stood as sponsors to the same child, besides contractingspiritual obligations on behalf of that child, also contracted spiritualaffinity one with another; they became _sib_, or akin, in _God_; andthus ‘gossips’; hence ‘gossipred’, an old word, exactly analogous to‘kindred’. Out of this faith the Roman Catholic Church will not allow(unless indeed by dispensations procured for money), those who havestood as sponsors to the same child, afterwards to contract marriagewith one another, affirming them too nearly related for this to belawful. 

Take ‘gossip’ however in its ordinary present use, as one addicted toidle tittle-tattle, and it seems to bear no relation whatever to itsetymology and first meaning. The same three steps, however, which wehave traced before will bring us to its present use. ‘Gossips’ are, first, the sponsors, brought by the act of a common sponsorship intoaffinity and near familiarity with one another; secondly, thesesponsors, who being thus brought together, allow themselves one with theother in familiar, and then in trivial and idle talk; thirdly, any whoallow themselves in this trivial and idle talk, --called in French‘commérage’, from the fact that ‘commére’ has run through exactly thesame stages as its English equivalent. 

It is plain that words which designate not things and persons only, butthese as they are contemplated more or less in an ethical light, wordswhich tinge with a moral sentiment what they designate, are peculiarlyexposed to change; are constantly liable to take a new colouring, or tolose an old. The gauge and measure of praise or blame, honour ordishonour, admiration or abhorrence, which they convey, is so purely amental and subjective one, that it is most difficult to take accuratenote of its rise or of its fall, while yet there are causes continuallyat work leading it to the one or the other. There are words not a few, but ethical words above all, which have so imperceptibly drifted awayfrom their former moorings, that although their position is now verydifferent from that which they once occupied, scarcely one in a hundredof casual readers, whose attention has not been specially called to thesubject, will have observed that they have moved at all. Here too weobserve some words conveying less of praise or blame than once, andsome more; while some have wholly shifted from the one to the other. Some were at one time words of slight, almost of offence, which havealtogether ceased to be so now. Still these are rare by comparison withthose which once were harmless, but now are harmless no more; whichonce, it may be, were terms of honour, but which now imply a slight oreven a scorn. It is only too easy to perceive why these should exceedthose in number. 

{Sidenote: ‘_Imp_’, ‘_Brat_’}

Let us take an example or two. If any were to speak now of royalchildren as “royal _imps_”, it would sound, and with our present use ofthe word would be, impertinent and unbecoming enough; and yet ‘imp’ wasonce a name of dignity and honour, and not of slight or of unduefamiliarity. Thus Spenser addresses the Muses in this language, “Ye sacred _imps_ that on Parnasso dwell”;

and ‘imp’ was especially used of the scions of royal or illustrioushouses. More than one epitaph, still existing, of our ancient nobilitymight be quoted, beginning in such language as this, “Here lies thatnoble _imp_”. Or what should we say of a poet who commenced a solemnpoem in this fashion, “Oh Israel, oh household of the Lord, Oh Abraham’s _brats_, oh brood of blessed seed”?

Could we conclude anything else but that he meant, by using low words onlofty occasions, to turn sacred things into ridicule? Yet this was veryfar from the intention of Gascoigne, the poet whose lines I have justquoted. “Abraham’s _brats_” was used by him in perfect good faith, andwithout the slightest feeling that anything ludicrous or contemptuousadhered to the word ‘brat’, as indeed in his time there did not, anymore than adheres to ‘brood’, which is another form of the same wordnow{222}. 

Call a person ‘pragmatical’, and you now imply not merely that he isbusy, but _over_-busy, officious, self-important, and pompous to boot. But it once meant nothing of the kind, and ‘pragmatical’ (likeπραγματικός) was one engaged in affairs, being an honourable title, given to a man simply and industriously accomplishing the business whichproperly concerned him{223}. So too to say that a person ‘meddles’ or isa ‘meddler’ implies now that he interferes unduly in other men’smatters, without a call mixing himself up with them. This was notinsinuated in the earlier uses of the word. On the contrary three of ourearlier translations of the Bible have, “_Meddle_ with your ownbusiness” (1 Thess. Iv. 11); and Barrow in one of his sermons draws atsome length the distinction between ‘meddling’ and “being _meddlesome_”, and only condemns the latter. 

{Sidenote: ‘_Proser_’}

Or take again the words, ‘to prose’ or a ‘proser’. It cannot indeed beaffirmed that they convey any _moral_ condemnation, yet they certainlyconvey no compliment now; and are almost among the last which any onewould desire should with justice be applied either to his talking or hiswriting. For ‘to prose’, as we all now know too well, is to talk orwrite heavily and tediously, without spirit and without animation; butonce it was simply the antithesis of to versify, and a ‘proser’ theantithesis of a versifier or a poet. It will follow that the most rapidand liveliest writer who ever wrote, if he did not write in verse wouldhave ‘prosed’ and been a ‘proser’, in the language of our ancestors. Thus Drayton writes of his contemporary Nashe:

 “And surely Nashe, though he a _proser_ were, A branch of laurel yet deserves to bear”;

that is, the ornament not of a ‘proser’, but of a poet. The tacitassumption that vigour, animation, rapid movement, with all theprecipitation of the spirit, belong to verse rather than to prose, andare the exclusive possession of it, is that which must explain thechanged uses of the word. 

{Sidenote: ‘_Knave_’}

Still it is according to a word’s present signification that we mustapply it now. It would be no excuse, having applied an insulting epithetto any, if we should afterwards plead that, tried by its etymology andprimary usage, it had nothing offensive or insulting about it; althoughindeed Swift assures us that in his time such a plea was made and wasallowed. “I remember”, he says, “at a trial in Kent, where Sir GeorgeRooke was indicted for calling a gentleman ‘knave’ and ‘villain’, thelawyer for the defendant brought off his client by alleging that thewords were not injurious; for ‘knave’ in the old and true significationimported only a servant{224}; and ‘villain’ in Latin is villicus, whichis no more than a man employed in country labour, or rather a baily”. The lawyer may have deserved his success for his ingenuity and hisboldness; though, if Swift reports him aright, not certainly on theground of the strict accuracy either of his Anglo-Saxon or his Latin. 

The moral sense and conviction of men is often at work upon their words, giving them new turns in obedience to these convictions, of which theirchanged use will then remain a permanent record. Let me illustrate thisby the history of our word ‘sycophant’. You probably are acquainted withthe story which the Greek scholiasts invented by way of explaining aword of which they knew nothing, namely that the ‘sycophant’ was a“manifester of figs”, one who detected others in the act of exportingfigs from Attica, an act forbidden, they asserted, by the Athenian law;and accused them to the people. Be this explanation worth what it may, the word obtained in Greek a more general sense; any accuser, and thenany _false_ accuser, was a ‘sycophant’; and when the word was firstadopted into the English language, it was in this meaning: thus an oldEnglish poet speaks of “the railing route of _sycophants_”; and Holland:“The poor man that hath nought to lose, is not afraid of the_sycophant_”. But it has not kept this meaning; a ‘sycophant’ is now afawning flatterer; not one who speaks ill of you behind your back;rather one who speaks good of you before your face, but good which hedoes not in his heart believe. Yet how true a moral instinct haspresided over the changed signification of the word. The calumniator andthe flatterer, although they seem so opposed to one another, how closelyunited they really are. They grow out of the same root. The samebaseness of spirit which shall lead one to speak evil of you behind yourback, will lead him to fawn on you and flatter you before your face;there is a profound sense in that Italian proverb, “Who flatters mebefore, spatters me behind”. 

{Sidenote: _Weakening of Words_}

But it is not the moral sense only of men which is thus at work, modifying their words; but the immoral as well. If the good which menhave and feel, penetrates into their speech, and leaves its depositthere, so does also the evil. Thus we may trace a constant tendency--intoo many cases it has been a successful one--to empty words employed inthe condemnation of evil, of the depth and earnestness of the moralreprobation which they once conveyed. Men’s too easy toleration of sin, the feebleness of their moral indignation against it, brings about thatthe blame which words expressed once, has in some of them become muchweaker now than once, has from others vanished altogether. “To do a_shrewd_ turn”, was once to do a _wicked_ turn; and Chaucer, using‘shrewdness’ by which to translate the Latin ‘improbitas’, shows that itmeant wickedness for him; nay, two murderers he calls two ‘shrews’, --forthere were, as already noticed, male shrews once as well as female. But“a _shrewd_ turn” now, while it implies a certain amount of sharpdealing, yet implies nothing more; and ‘shrewdness’ is applied to menrather in their praise than in their dispraise. And not ‘shrewd’ and‘shrewdness’ only, but a multitude of other words, --I will only instance‘prank’ ‘flirt’, ‘luxury’, ‘luxurious’, ‘peevish’, ‘wayward’, ‘loiterer’, ‘uncivil’, --conveyed once a much more earnest moraldisapproval than now they do. 

But I must bring this lecture to a close. I have but opened to youpaths, which you, if you are so minded, can follow up for yourselves. Wehave learned lately to speak of men’s ‘antecedents’{225}; the phrase isnewly come up; and it is common to say that if we would know what a manreally now is, we must know his ‘antecedents’, that is, what he has beenin time past. This is quite as true about words. If we would know whatthey now are, we must know what they have been; we must know, ifpossible, the date and place of their birth, the successive stages oftheir subsequent history, the company which they have kept, all the roadwhich they have travelled, and what has brought them to the point atwhich now we find them; we must know, in short, their antecedents. 

{Sidenote: _Changes of Meaning_}

And let me say, without attempting to bring back school into theselectures which are out of school, that, seeking to do this, we might addan interest to our researches in the lexicon and the dictionary whichotherwise they could never have; that taking such words, for example, asἐκκλησία, or παλιγγενεσία, or εὐτραπελία, or σοφιστής, or σχολαστικός, in Greek; as ‘religio’, or ‘sacramentum’, or ‘urbanitas’, or‘superstitio’, in Latin; as ‘libertine’, or ‘casuistry’{226}, or‘humanity’, or ‘humorous’, or ‘danger’, or ‘romance’, in English, andendeavouring to trace the manner in which one meaning grew out of andsuperseded another, and how they arrived at that use in which they havefinally rested (if indeed before our English words there is not a futurestill), we shall derive, I believe, amusement, I am sure, instruction;we shall feel that we are really getting something, increasing the moraland intellectual stores of our minds; furnishing ourselves with thatwhich may hereafter be of service to ourselves, may be of service toothers--than which there can be no feeling more pleasurable, none moredelightful. I shall be glad and thankful, if you can feel as much inregard of that lecture, which I now bring to its end{227}. 

{FOOTNOTES}

{198} [‘Frampold’, peevish, perverse (_Merry Wives of Windsor_, 1598, ii, 2, 94) is supposed to be another form of ‘from-polled’, as if ‘wrong-headed’. ‘Garboil’, a tumult or hubbub, was originally _garboyl_, and came from old French _garbouil_ (Italian _garbuglio_). ‘Brangle’, a brawl, stands for ‘brandle’ from Old Fr. _brandeler_, akin to ‘brandish’. ]

{199} [‘Dutch’ i. E. Teutonic, Mid. High-German _diutsch_, old High-German _diut-isk_ from _diot_, people, and so the people-ish or popular language the mother-tongue, founded on a primitive _teuta_, ‘people’. See Kluge _s. V. Deutsch_. ]

{200} So in Herrick’s _Electra_:

 “More white than are the whitest creams, Or moonlight _tinselling_ the streams”. 

{201} [Hence also the epidemic of malefic power supposed to be air-borne, ‘influenza’. ]

{202} See Holinshed’s _Chronicles_, vol. Iii, pp. 827, 1218; Ann. 1513, 1570. 

{203} _Fairy Queen_, vi, 7, 27; cf. V. 3, 37. 

{204} [The two words are intimately related, ‘king’, contracted for _kining_ (Anglo-Saxon _cyn-ing_), ‘son of the kin’ or ‘tribe’, one of the people, cognate with _cynde_, true-born, native, ‘kind’, and _cynd_, nature ‘kind’, whence ‘kindly’, natural. ]

{205} See Sir W. Scott’s edition of Swift’s _Works_, vol. Ix, p. 139. 

{206} θηριακή, from θηρίον, a designation given to the viper, see Acts xxviii, 4. ‘Theriac’ is only the more rigid form of the same word, the scholarly, as distinguished from the popular, adoption of it. Augustine (_Con. Duas Epp. Pelag. _ iii, 7): Sicut fieri consuevit antidotum etiam de serpentibus contra venena serpentum. 

{207} And Chaucer, more solemnly still:

 “Christ, which that is to every harm _triacle_”. 

 The _antidotal_ character of treacle comes out yet more in these lines of Lydgate:

 “There is no _venom_ so parlious in sharpnes, As whan it hath of _treacle_ a likenes”. 

{208} “A slave that within these twenty years rode with the _black guard_ in the Duke’s carriage, ’mongst spits and dripping pans”. (Webster’s _White Devil_. ) [First ed. 1612. “The Black Guard of the King’s Kitchen” is mentioned in a State Paper of 1535 (N. E. D. ). ]

{209} Génin (_Lexique de la Langue de Molière_, p. 367) says well: “En augmentant le nombre des mots, il a fallu restreindre leur signification, et faire aux nouveaux un apanage aux dépens des anciens”. 

{210} [Accordingly there is nothing tautological in the “dead corpses” of 2 Kings xix, 35, in the A. V. ]

{211} [‘Weed’, vegetable growth, Anglo-Saxon _weód_, is here confounded with a perfectly distinct word ‘weed’, clothing, which is the Anglo-Saxon _waéd_, a garment. ]

{212} And no less so in French with ‘dame’, by which form not ‘domina’ only, but ‘dominus’, was represented. Thus in early French poetry, “_Dame_ Dieu” for “_Dominus_ Deus” continually occurs. We have here the key to the French exclamation, or oath, as we now perceive it to be, ‘Dame’! of which the dictionaries give no account. See Génin’s _Variations du Langage Français_, p. 347. 

{213} [‘Hoyden’ seems to be derived from the old Dutch _heyden_, a heathen, then a clownish, boorish fellow. ]

{214} [This “ancient Saxon phrase”, as Longfellow calls it, has not been found in any old English writer, but has been adopted from the Modern German. Neither is it known in the dialects, E. D. D. ]

{215} “A _furlong_, quasi _furrowlong_, being so much as a team in England plougheth going forward, before they return back again”. (Fuller, _Pisgah Sight of Palestine_, p. 42. ) [‘Furlong’ in St. Luke xxiv, 13, already occurs in the Anglo-Saxon version of that passage as _furlanga_. ]

{216} [Recent etymologists cannot see any connexion between ‘peck’ and ‘poke’. ]

{217} [e. G. “One said thus _preposterously_: ‘when we had climbed the clifs and were a shore’” (Puttenham, _Arte of Eng. Poesie_, 1589, p. 181, ed. Arber). “It is a _preposterous_ order to teach first and to learn after” (_Preface to Bible_, 1611). “Place not the coming of the wise men, _preposterously_, before the appearance of the star” (Abp. Secker, _Sermons_, iii, 85, ed. 1825). ]

{218} Thus Barrow: “Which [courage and constancy] he that wanteth is no other than _equivocally_ a gentleman, as an image or a carcass is a man”. 

{219} Phillips, _New World of Words_, 1706. [‘Garble’ comes through old French _garbeler_, _grabeler_ (Italian _garbellare_) from Latin _cribellare_, to sift, and that from _cribellum_, a sieve, diminutive of _cribrum_. ]

{220} “But his [Gideon’s] army must be _garbled_, as too great for God to give victory thereby; all the fearful return home by proclamation” (Fuller, _Pisgah Sight of Palestine_, b. Ii, c. 8). 

{221} [Compare the transitions of meaning in French _manant_ = (1) a dweller (where he was born--from _manoir_ to dwell), the inhabitant of a homestead, (2) a countryman, (3) a clown or boor, a coarse fellow. ]

{222} [These words lie totally apart. ‘Brat’, an infant, seems a figurative use of ‘brat’, a rag or pinafore, just as ‘bantling’ comes from ‘band’, a swathe. ]

{223} “We cannot always be contemplative, or _pragmatical_ abroad: but have need of some delightful intermissions, wherein the enlarged soul may leave off awhile her severe schooling”. (Milton, _Tetrachordon_. )

{224} [Anglo-Saxon _cnafa_, or _cnapa_, a boy. ]

{225} [Mr. Fitzedward Hall in 1873 says ‘antecedents’ is “not yet a generation old” (_Mod. English_, 303). Landor in 1853 says “the French have lately taught (it to) us” (_Last Fruit of an Old Tree_, 176). De Quincey, in 1854 calls it “modern slang” (_Works_ xiv, 449); and the earliest quotation, 1841, given in the N. E. D. , introduces it as “what the French call their antecedents”. ]

{226} See Whewell, _History of Moral Philosophy in England_, pp. Xxvii. -xxxii. 

{227} For a fuller treatment of the subject of this lecture, see my _Select Glossary of English Words used formerly in senses different from their present_, 2nd ed. London, 1859. 

V

CHANGES IN THE SPELLING OF ENGLISH WORDS

When I announce to you that the subject of my lecture to-day will beEnglish orthography, or the spelling of the words in our nativelanguage, with the alterations which this has undergone, you may perhapsthink with yourselves that a weightier, or, if not a weightier, at allevents a more interesting subject might have occupied this ourconcluding lecture. I cannot admit it to be wanting either in importanceor in interest. Unimportant it certainly is not, but might well engage, as it often has engaged, the attention of those with far higheracquirements than any which I possess. Uninteresting it may be, byfaults in the manner of treating it; but I am sure it ought as little tobe this; and would never prove so in competent hands{228}. Let us thenaddress ourselves to this matter, not without good hope that it mayyield us both profit and pleasure. 

I know not who it was that said, “The invention of printing was verywell; but, as compared to the invention of writing, it was no such greatmatter after all”. Whoever it was who made this observation, it is clearthat for him use and familiarity had not obliterated the wonder whichthere is in that, whereat we probably have long ceased to wonder atall--the power, namely, of representing sounds by written signs, ofreproducing for the eye that which existed at first only for the ear:nor was the estimate which he formed of the relative value of these twoinventions other than a just one. Writing indeed stands more nearly on alevel with speaking, and deserves rather to be compared with it, thanwith printing; which, with all its utility, is yet of altogether anotherand inferior type of greatness: or, if this is too much to claim forwriting, it may at any rate be affirmed to stand midway between theother two, and to be as much superior to the one as it is inferior tothe other. 

The intention of the written word, that which presides at its firstformation, the end whereunto it is a mean, is by aid of symbols agreedon beforehand, to represent to the eye with as much accuracy as possiblethe spoken word. 

{Sidenote: _Imperfection of Writing_}

It never fulfils this intention completely, and by degrees more and moreimperfectly. Short as man’s spoken word often falls of his thought, hiswritten word falls often as short of his spoken. Several causescontribute to this. In the first place, the marks of imperfection andinfirmity cleave to writing, as to every other invention of man. Allalphabets have been left incomplete. They have superfluous letters, letters, that is, which they do not want, because other letters alreadyrepresent the sound which they represent; they have dubious letters, letters, that is, which say nothing certain about the sounds they standfor, because more than one sound is represented by them--our ‘c’ forinstance, which sometimes has the sound of ‘s’, as in ‘_c_ity’, sometimes of ‘k’, as in ‘_c_at’; they are deficient in letters, that is, the language has elementary sounds which have no corresponding lettersappropriated to them, and can only be represented by combinations ofletters. All alphabets, I believe, have some of these faults, not a fewof them have all, and more. This then is one reason of the imperfectreproduction of the spoken word by the written. But another is, that thehuman voice is so wonderfully fine and flexible an organ, is able tomark such subtle and delicate distinctions of sound, so infinitely tomodify and vary these sounds, that were an alphabet complete as humanart could make it, did it possess eight and forty instead of four andtwenty letters, there would still remain a multitude of sounds which itcould only approximately give back{229}. 

{Sidenote: _Alphabets Inadequate_}

But there is a further cause for the divergence which comes gradually tofind place between men’s spoken and their written words. What men dooften, they will seek to do with the least possible trouble. There isnothing which they do oftener than repeat words; they will seek herethen to save themselves pains; they will contract two or more syllablesinto one; (‘toto opere’ will become ‘topper’; ‘vuestra merced’, ‘usted’;and ‘topside the other way’, ‘topsy-turvey’{230}); they will slur over, and thus after a while cease to pronounce, certain letters; for hardletters they will substitute soft; for those which require a certaineffort to pronounce, they will substitute those which require little ornone. Under the operation of these causes a gulf between the written andspoken word will not merely exist; but it will have the tendency to growever wider and wider. This tendency indeed will be partiallycounterworked by approximations which from time to time will by silentconsent be made of the written word to the spoken; here and there aletter dropped in speech will be dropped also in writing, as the ‘s’ inso many French words, where its absence is marked by a circumflex; a newshape, contracted or briefer, which a word has taken on the lips of men, will find its representation in their writing; as ‘chirurgeon’ will notmerely be pronounced, but also spelt, ‘surgeon’, and ‘synodsman’‘sidesman’. Still for all this, and despite of these partialreadjustments of the relations between the two, the anomalies will beinfinite; there will be a multitude of written letters which have ceasedto be sounded letters; a multitude of words will exist in one shape uponour lips, and in quite another in our books. 

It is inevitable that the question should arise--Shall these anomaliesbe meddled with? shall it be attempted to remove them, and bring writingand speech into harmony and consent--a harmony and consent which neverindeed in actual fact at any period of the language existed, but whichyet may be regarded as the object of written speech, as the idea which, however imperfectly realized, has, in the reduction of spoken sounds towritten, floated before the minds of men? If the attempt is to be made, it is clear that it can only be made in one way. The alternative is notopen, whether Mahomet shall go to the mountain, _or_ the mountain toMahomet. The spoken word is the mountain; it will not stir; it willresist all interference. It feels its own superior rights, that itexisted the first, that it is, so to say, the elder brother; and it willnever be induced to change itself for the purpose of conforming andcomplying with the written word. Men will not be persuaded to pronounce‘wou_l_d’ and ‘de_b_t’, because they write ‘would’ and ‘debt’ severallywith an ‘l’ and with a ‘b’: but what if they could be induced to write‘woud’ and ‘det’, because they pronounce so; and to deal in like mannerwith all other words, in which there exists at present a discrepancybetween the word as it is spoken, and the word as it is written?

{Sidenote: _Phonetic Systems_}

Here we have the explanation of that which in the history of almost allliteratures has repeated itself more than once, namely, the endeavour tointroduce phonetic writing. It has certain plausibilities to rest on; ithas its appeal to the unquestionable fact that the written word wasintended to picture to the eye what the spoken word sounded in the ear. At the same time I believe that it would be impossible to introduce it;and, even if it _were_ possible, that it would be most undesirable, andthis for two reasons; the first being that the losses consequent uponits introduction, would far outweigh the gains, even supposing thosegains as great as the advocates of the scheme promise; the second, thatthese promised gains would themselves be only very partially realized, or not at all. 

{Sidenote: _Alphabets Imperfect_}

In the first place, I believe it to be impossible. It is clear that sucha scheme must begin with the reconstruction of the alphabet. The firstthing that the phonographers have perceived is the necessity for thecreation of a vast number of new signs, the poverty of all existingalphabets, at any rate of our own, not yielding a several sign for allthe several sounds in the language. Our English phonographers havetherefore had to invent ten of these new signs or letters, which arehenceforth to take their place with our _a_, _b_, _c_, and to enjoyequal rights with them. Rejecting two (_q_, _x_), and adding ten, theyhave raised their alphabet from twenty-six letters to thirty-four. Butto procure the reception of such a reconstructed alphabet is simply animpossibility, as much an impossibility as would be the reconstitutionof the structure of the language in any points where it was manifestlydeficient or illogical. Sciolists or scholars may sit down in theirstudies, and devise these new letters, and prove that we need them, andthat the introduction of them would be a great gain, and a manifestimprovement; and this may be all very true; but if they think they caninduce a people to adopt them, they know little of the ways in which itsalphabet is entwined with the whole innermost life of a people. One mayfreely own that all present alphabets are redundant here, are deficientthere; our English perhaps is as greatly at fault as any, and with thatwe have chiefly to do. Unquestionably it has more letters than one toexpress one and the same sound; it has only one letter to express two orthree sounds; it has sounds which are only capable of being expressed atall by awkward and roundabout expedients. Yet at the same time we mustaccept the fact, as we accept any other which it is out of our power tochange--with regret, indeed, but with a perfect acquiescence: as oneaccepts the fact that Ireland is not some thirty or forty miles nearerto England--that it is so difficult to get round Cape Horn--that theclimate of Africa is so fatal to European life. A people will no morequit their alphabet than they will quit their language; they will nomore consent to modify the one _ab extra_ than the other. Cæsar avowedthat with all his power he could not introduce a new word, and certainlyClaudius could not introduce a new letter. Centuries may sanction thebringing in of a new one, or the dropping of an old. But to imagine thatit is possible to suddenly introduce a group of ten new letters, asthese reformers propose--they might just as feasibly propose that theEnglish language should form its comparatives and superlatives on someentirely new scheme, say in Greek fashion, by the terminations ‘oteros’and ‘otatos’; or that we should agree to set up a dual; or that oursubstantives should return to our Anglo-Saxon declensions. Any one ofthese or like proposals would not betray a whit more ignorance of theeternal laws which regulate human language, and of the limits withinwhich deliberate action upon it is possible, than does this ofincreasing our alphabet by ten entirely novel signs. 

But grant it possible, grant our six and twenty letters to have solittle sacredness in them that Englishmen would endure a crowd ofupstart interlopers to mix themselves on an equal footing with them, still this could only be from a sense of the greatness of the advantageto be derived from this introduction. Now the vast advantage claimed bythe advocates of the system is, that it would facilitate the learning toread, and wholly save the labour of learning to spell, which “on thepresent plan occupies”, as they assure us, “at the very lowestcalculation from three to five years”. Spelling, it is said, would nolonger need to be learned at all; since whoever knew the sound, wouldnecessarily know also the spelling, this being in all cases in perfectconformity with that. The anticipation of this gain rests upon twoassumptions which are tacitly taken for granted, but both of themerroneous. 

The first of these assumptions is, that all men pronounce all wordsalike, so that whenever they come to spell a word, they will exactlyagree as to what the outline of its sound is. Now we are sure men willnot do this from the fact that, before there was any fixed and settledorthography in our language, when therefore everybody was more or less aphonographer, seeking to write down the word as it sounded to _him_, (for he had no other law to guide him, ) the variations of spelling wereinfinite. Take for instance the word ‘sudden’; which does not seem topromise any great scope for variety. I have myself met with this wordspelt in the following fifteen ways among our early writers: ‘sodain’, ‘sodaine’, ‘sodan’, ‘sodayne’, ‘sodden’, ‘sodein’, ‘sodeine’, ‘soden’, ‘sodeyn’, ‘suddain’, ‘suddaine’, ‘suddein’, ‘suddeine’, ‘sudden’, ‘sudeyn’. Again, in how many ways was Raleigh’s name spelt, orShakespeare’s? The same is evident from the spelling of uneducatedpersons in our own day. They have no other rule but the sound to guidethem. How is it that they do not all spell alike; erroneously, it maybe, as having only the sound for their guide, but still falling all intoexactly the same errors? What is the actual fact? They not merely spellwrong, which might be laid to the charge of our perverse system ofspelling, but with an inexhaustible diversity of error, and that too inthe case of simplest words. Thus the little town of Woburn would seem togive small room for caprice in spelling, while yet the postmaster therehas made, from the superscription of letters that have passed throughhis hands, a collection of two hundred and forty-four varieties of waysin which the place has been spelt{231}. It may be replied that thesewere all or nearly all from the letters of the ignorant and uneducated. Exactly so;--but it is for their sakes, and to place them on a levelwith the educated, or rather to accelerate their education by theomission of a useless yet troublesome discipline, that the change isproposed. I wish to show you that after the change they would be just asmuch, or almost as much, at a loss in their spelling as now. 

{Sidenote: _Pronouncing Dictionaries_}

And another reason which would make it quite as necessary then to learnorthography as now, is the following. Pronunciation, as I have alreadynoticed, is far too fine and subtle a thing to be more than approximatedto, and indicated in the written letter. In a multitude of cases thedifficulties which pronunciation presented would be sought to beovercome in different ways, and thus different spelling, would arise; orif not so, one would have to be arbitrarily selected, and would haveneed to be learned, just as much as the spelling of a word now has needto be learned. I will only ask you, in proof of this which I affirm, toturn to any Pronouncing Dictionary. That greatest of all absurdities, aPronouncing Dictionary, may be of some service to you in this matter; itwill certainly be of none in any other. When you mark the elaborate andyet ineffectual artifices by which it toils after the finer distinctionsof articulation, seeks to reproduce in letters what exists, and can onlyexist, as the spoken tradition of pronunciation, acquired from lip tolip by the organ of the ear, capable of being learned, but incapable ofbeing taught; or when you compare two of these dictionaries with oneanother, and mark the entirely different schemes and combinations ofletters which they employ for representing the same sound to the eye;you will then perceive how idle the attempt to make the written inlanguage commensurate with the sounded; you will own that not merelyout of human caprice, ignorance, or indolence, the former falls short ofand differs from the later; but that this lies in the necessity ofthings, in the fact that man’s _voice_ can effect so much more than everhis _letter_ can{232}. You will then perceive that there would be asmuch, or nearly as much, of the arbitrary in spelling which calls itselfphonetic as in our present, that spelling would have to be learned justas really then as now. We should be unable to dismiss the spelling cardeven after the arrival of that great day, when, for example, those linesof Pope which hitherto we have thus spelt and read, “But errs not nature from this gracious end, From burning suns when livid deaths descend, When earthquakes swallow, or when tempests sweep Towns to one grave, whole nations to the deep”?

when I say, instead of this they should present themselves to our eyesin the following attractive form:

 “But ¿ erz not nɛtiur from ðis grɛcus end, from burniŋ sunz when livid deθs dɨsend, when erθkwɛks swolɵ, or when tempests swɨp tounz tu wun grɛv, hɵl nɛconz tu ðe dɨp”. 

{Sidenote: _Losses of Phonetic Spelling_}

The scheme would not then fulfil its promises. Its vaunted gains, whenwe come to look closely at them, disappear. And now for its losses. There are in every language a vast number of words, which the ear doesnot distinguish from one another, but which are at once distinguishableto the eye by the spelling. I will only instance a few which are thesame parts of speech; thus ‘sun’ and ‘son’; ‘virge’ (‘virga’, nowobsolete) and ‘verge’; ‘reign’, ‘rain’, and ‘rein’; ‘hair’ and ‘hare’;‘plate’ and ‘plait’; ‘moat’ and ‘mote’; ‘pear’ and ‘pair’; ‘pain’ and‘pane’; ‘raise’ and ‘raze’; ‘air’ and ‘heir’; ‘ark’ and ‘arc’; ‘mite’and ‘might’; ‘pour’ and ‘pore’; ‘veil’ and ‘vale’; ‘knight’ and ‘night’;‘knave’ and ‘nave’; ‘pier’ and ‘peer’; ‘rite’ and ‘right’; ‘site’ and‘sight’; ‘aisle’ and ‘isle’; ‘concent’ and ‘consent’; ‘signet’ and‘cygnet’. Now, of course, it is a real disadvantage, and may be thecause of serious confusion, that there should be words in spokenlanguages of entirely different origin and meaning which yet cannot insound be differenced from one another. The phonographers simply proposeto extend this disadvantage already cleaving to our spoken languages, tothe written languages as well. It is fault enough in the Frenchlanguage, that ‘mère’ a mother, ‘mer’ the sea, ‘maire’ a mayor of atown, should have no perceptible difference between them in the spokentongue; or again that in some there should be nothing to distinguish‘sans’, ‘sang’, ‘sent’, ‘sens’, ‘s’en’, ‘cent’; nor yet between ‘ver’, ‘vert’, ‘verre’ and ‘vers’. Surely it is not very wise to proposegratuitously to extend the same fault to the written languages as well. 

This loss in so many instances of the power to discriminate betweenwords, which however liable to confusion now in our spoken language, areliable to none in our written, would be serious enough; but far moreserious than this would be the loss which would constantly ensue, of allwhich visibly connects a word with the past, which tells its history, and indicates the quarter from which it has been derived. In how manyEnglish words a letter silent to the ear, is yet most eloquent to theeye--the _g_ for instance in ‘deign’, ‘feign’, ‘reign’, ‘impugn’, telling as it does of ‘dignor’, ‘fingo’, ‘regno’, ‘impugno’; even as the_b_ in ‘debt’, ‘doubt’, is not idle, but tells of ‘debitum’ and‘dubium’{233}. 

{Sidenote: _Pronunciation Alters_}

At present it is the written word which is in all languages theirconservative element. In it is the abiding witness against themutilations or other capricious changes in their shape whichaffectation, folly, ignorance, and half-knowledge would introduce. It isnot indeed always able to hinder the final adoption of these corrupterforms, but does not fail to oppose to them a constant, and very often asuccessful, resistance. With the adoption of phonetic spelling, thiswitness would exist no longer; whatever was spoken would have also to bewritten, let it be never so barbarous, never so great a departure fromthe true form of the word. Nor is it merely probable that such abarbarizing process, such an adopting and sanctioning of a vulgarism, might take place, but among phonographers it already has taken place. Weall probably are aware that there is a vulgar pronunciation of the word‘Eu_rope_’, as though it were ‘Eu_rup_’. Now it is quite possible thatnumerically more persons in England may pronounce the word in thismanner than in the right; and therefore the phonographers are only trueto their principles when they spell it in the fashion which they do, ‘Eurup’, or indeed omitting the E at the beginning, ‘Urup’{234} withthus the life of the first syllable assailed no less than that of thesecond. What are the consequences? First its relations with the oldmythology are at once and entirely broken off; secondly, its mostprobable etymology from two Greek words, signifying ‘broad’ and ‘face’, Europe being so called from the _Broad_ line or _face_ of coast whichour continent presented to the Asiatic Greek, is totally obscured. Butso far from the spelling servilely following the pronunciation, I shouldbe bold to affirm that if ninety-nine out of every hundred persons inEngland chose to call Europe ‘Urup’, this would be a vulgarism still, against which the written word ought to maintain its protest, notsinking down to their level, but rather seeking to elevate them to itsown{235}. 

{Sidenote: _Changes of Pronunciation_}

And if there is much in orthography which is unsettled now, how muchmore would be unsettled then. Inasmuch as the pronunciation of words iscontinually altering, their spelling would of course have continually toalter too. For the fact that pronunciation is undergoing constantchanges, although changes for the most part unmarked, or marked only bya few, would be abundantly easy to prove. Take a Pronouncing Dictionaryof fifty or a hundred years ago; turn to almost any page, and you willobserve schemes of pronunciation there recommended, which are now merelyvulgarisms, or which have been dropped altogether. We gather from adiscussion in Boswell’s _Life of Johnson_{236}, that in his time ‘great’was by some of the best speakers of the language pronounced ‘gr_ee_t’, not ‘gr_a_te’: Pope usually rhymes it with ‘cheat’, ‘complete’, and thelike; thus in the _Dunciad_:

 “Here swells the shelf with Ogilby the _great_, There, stamped with arms, Newcastle shines com_plete_”. 

Spenser’s constant use of the word a century and a half earlier, leavesno doubt that such was the invariable pronunciation of his time{237}. Again, Pope rhymes ‘obliged’ with ‘beseiged’; and it has only ceased tobe ‘obl_ee_ged’ almost in our own time. Who now drinks a cup of ‘tay’?yet there is abundant evidence that this was the fashionablepronunciation in the first half of the last century; the word, that is, was still regarded as French: Locke writes it ‘thé’; and in Pope’s time, though no longer written, it was still pronounced so. Take this coupletof his in proof:

 “Here thou, great Anna, whom three realms _obey_, Dost sometimes counsel take, and sometimes _tea_”. 

So too a pronunciation which still survives, though scarcely amongwell-educated persons, I mean ‘Room’ for ‘Rome’, must have been inShakespeare’s time the predominant one, else there would have been nopoint in that play on words where in _Julius Cæsar_ Cassius, complainingthat in all _Rome_ there was not _room_ for a single man, exclaims, “Now is it _Rome_ indeed, and _room_ enough”. 

Samuel Rogers too assures us that in his youth “everybody said‘Lonnon’{238} not ‘London’; that Fox said ‘Lonnon’ to the last”. 

The following quotation from Swift will prove to you that I have beenonly employing here an argument, which he employed long ago against thephonographers of his time. He exposes thus the futility of theirscheme{239}: “Another cause which has contributed not a little to themaiming of our language, is a foolish opinion advanced of late yearsthat we ought to spell exactly as we speak: which, besides the obviousinconvenience of utterly destroying our etymology, would be a thing weshould never see an end of. Not only the several towns and counties ofEngland have a different way of pronouncing, but even here in Londonthey clip their words after one manner about the court, another in thecity, and a third in the suburbs; and in a few years, it is probable, will all differ from themselves, as fancy or fashion shall direct; allwhich, reduced to writing, would entirely confound orthography”. 

This much I have thought good to say in respect of that entirerevolution in English orthography, which some rash innovators haveproposed. Let me, dismissing them and their innovations, call yourattention now to those changes in spelling which are constantly goingforward, at some periods more rapidly than at others, but which neverwholly cease out of a language; while at the same time I endeavour totrace, where this is possible, the motives and inducements which bringthem about. It is a subject which none can neglect, who desire to obtaineven a tolerably accurate acquaintance with their native tongue. Someprinciples have been laid down in the course of what has been saidalready, that may help us to judge whether the changes which have foundplace in our own have been for better or for worse. We shall find, if Iam not mistaken, of both kinds. 

{Sidenote: ‘_Grogram_’}

There are alterations in spelling which are for the worse. Thus analtered spelling will sometimes obscure the origin of a word, concealingit from those who, but for this, would at once have known whence andwhat it was, and would have found both pleasure and profit in thisknowledge. I need not say that in all those cases where the earlierspelling revealed the secret of the word, told its history, which thelatter defaces or conceals, the change has been injurious, and is to beregretted; while, at the same time, where it has thoroughly establisheditself, there is nothing to do but to acquiesce in it: the attempt toundo it would be absurd. Thus, when ‘gro_c_er’ was spelt ‘gro_ss_er’, itwas comparatively easy to see that he first had his name, because hesold his wares not by retail, but in the _gross_. ‘Co_x_comb’ tells usnothing now; but it did when spelt, as it used to be, ‘co_cks_comb’, the_comb_ of a _cock_ being then an ensign or token which the fool wasaccustomed to wear. In ‘grogra_m_’ we are entirely to seek for thederivation; but in ‘grogra_n_’ or ‘grogra_in_’, as earlier it was spelt, one could scarcely miss ‘grosgrain’, the stuff of a _coarse grain_ orwoof. How many now understand ‘woodbin_e_’? but who could have helpedunderstanding ‘woodbin_d_’ (Ben Jonson)? What a mischievous alterationin spelling is ‘d_i_vest’ instead of ‘d_e_vest’{240}. This change is sorecent that I am tempted to ask whether it would not here be possible toreturn to the only intelligible spelling of this word. 

{Sidenote: ‘_Pigmy_’}

‘P_i_gmy’ used formerly to be spelt ‘p_y_gmy’, and so long as it was so, no Greek scholar could see the word, but at once he knew that by itwere indicated manikins whose measure in height was no greater thanthat of a man’s arm from the elbow to the closed _fist_{241}. Now he mayknow this in other ways; but the word itself, so long as he assumes itto be rightly spelt, tells him nothing. Or again, the old spelling, ‘diam_ant_’, was preferable to the modern ‘diam_ond_’. It waspreferable, because it told more of the quarter whence the word hadreached us. ‘Diamant’ and ‘adamant’ are in fact only two differentadoptions on the part of the English tongue, of one and the same Greek, which afterwards became a Latin word. The primary meaning of ‘adamant’is, as you know, the indomitable, and it was a name given at first tosteel as the hardest of metals; but afterwards transferred{242} to themost precious among all the precious stones, as that which in power ofresistance surpassed everything besides. 

{Sidenote: ‘_Cozen_’, ‘_Bless_’}

Neither are new spellings to be commended, which obliterate or obscurethe relationship of a word with others to which it is really allied;separating from one another, for those not thoroughly acquainted withthe subject, words of the same family. Thus when ‘_j_aw’ was spelt‘_ch_aw’, no ne could miss its connexions with the verb ‘to chew’{243}. Now probably ninety-nine out of a hundred who use both words, areentirely unaware of any relationship between them. It is the same with‘cousin’ (consanguineus), and ‘to cozen’ or to deceive. I do not proposeto determine which of these words should conform itself to the spellingof the other. There was great irregularity in the spelling of both fromthe first; yet for all this, it was then better than now, when apermanent distinction has established itself between them, keeping outof sight that ‘to cozen’ is in all likelihood to deceive under show ofkindred and affinity; which if it be so, Shakespeare’s words, “_Cousins_ indeed, and by their uncle _cozened_ Of comfort”{244}, will be found to contain not a pun, but an etymology{245}. The realrelation between ‘bliss’ and ‘to bless’ is in like manner at presentobscured{246}. 

The omission of a letter, or the addition of a letter, may eacheffectually do its work in keeping out of sight the true character andorigin of a word. Thus the omission of a letter. When the first syllableof ‘bran-new’ was spelt ‘bran_d_’ with a final ‘d’, ‘bran_d_-new’, howvigorous an image did the word contain. The ‘brand’ is the fire, and‘brand-new’ equivalent to ‘fire-new’ (Shakespeare), is that which isfresh and bright, as being newly come from the forge and fire. As nowspelt, ‘bran-new’ conveys to us no image at all. Again, you have theword ‘scrip’--as a ‘scrip’ of paper, government ‘scrip’. Is this thesame word with the Saxon ‘scrip’, a wallet, having in some strangemanner obtained these meanings so different and so remote? Have we hereonly two different applications of one and the same word, or twohomonyms, wholly different words, though spelt alike? We have only tonote the way in which the first of these ‘scrips’ used to be written, namely with a final ‘t’, not ‘scrip’ but ‘scrip_t_’, and we are at onceable to answer the question. This ‘script’ is a Latin, as the other isan Anglo-Saxon, word, and meant at first simply a _written_ (scripta)piece of paper--a circumstance which since the omission of the final ‘t’may easily escape our knowledge. ‘Afraid’ was spelt much better in oldtimes with the double ‘ff’, than with the single ‘f’ as now. It was thenclear that it was not another form of ‘afeared’, but wholly separatefrom it, the participle of the verb ‘to affray’, ‘affrayer’, or, as itis now written, ‘effrayer’{247}. 

{Sidenote: ‘_Whole_’, ‘_Hale_’, ‘_Heal_’}

In the cases hitherto adduced, it has been the omission of a letterwhich has clouded and concealed the etymology. The intrusion of a lettersometimes does the same. Thus in the early editions of _Paradise Lost_, and in all writers of that time, you will find ‘scent’, an odour, spelt‘sent’. It was better so; there is no other noun substantive ‘sent’, with which it is in danger of being confounded; while its relation with‘sentio’, with ‘re_sent_’{248}, ‘dis_sent_’, and the like, is put out ofsight by its novel spelling; the intrusive ‘_c_’, serves only tomislead. The same thing was attempted with ‘site’, ‘situate’, ‘situation’, spelt for a time by many, ‘s_c_ite’, ‘s_c_ituate’, ‘s_c_ituation’; but it did not continue with these. Again, ‘whole’, inWiclif’s Bible, and indeed much later, occasionally as far down asSpenser, is spelt ‘hole’, without the ‘w’ at the beginning. The presentorthography may have the advantage of at once distinguishing the word tothe eye from any other; but at the same time the initial ‘w’, nowprefixed, hides its relation to the verb ‘to heal’, with which it isclosely allied. The ‘whole’ man is he whose hurt is ‘healed’ orcovered{249} (we say of the convalescent that he ‘recovers’){250};‘whole’ being closely allied to ‘hale’ (integer), from which also byits modern spelling it is divided. ‘Wholesome’ has naturally followedthe fortunes of ‘whole’; it was spelt ‘holsome’ once. 

Of ‘island’ too our present spelling is inferior to the old, inasmuch asit suggests a hybrid formation, as though the word were made up of theLatin ‘insula’, and the Saxon ‘land’. It is quite true that ‘isle’ _is_in relation with, and descent from, ‘insula’, ‘isola’, ‘île’; and henceprobably the misspelling of ‘island’. This last however has nothing todo with ‘insula’, being identical with the German ‘eiland’, theAnglo-Saxon ‘ealand’{251} and signifying the sea-land, or land girt, round with the sea. And it is worthy of note that this ‘s’ in the firstsyllable of ‘island’ is quite of modern introduction. In all the earlierversions of the Scriptures, and in the Authorized Version as at firstset forth, it is ‘iland’; while in proof that this is not accidental, itmay be observed that, while ‘iland’ has not the ‘s’, ‘isle’ has it (seeRev. I. 9). ‘Iland’ indeed is the spelling which we meet with far downinto the seventeenth century. 

{Sidenote: _Folk-etymologies_}

What has just been said of ‘island’ leads me as by a natural transitionto observe that one of the most frequent causes of alteration in thespelling of a word is a wrongly assumed derivation. It is then sought tobring the word into harmony with, and to make it by its spellingsuggest, this derivation, which has been erroneously thrust upon it. Here is a subject which, followed out as it deserves, would form aninteresting and instructive chapter in the history of language{252}. Letme offer one or two small contributions to it; noting first by the wayhow remarkable an evidence we have in this fact, of the manner in whichnot the learned only, but all persons learned and unlearned alike, craveto have these words not body only, but body and soul. What anattestation, I say, of this lies in the fact that where a word in itsproper derivation is unintelligible to them, they will shape and mouldit into some other form, not enduring that it should be a mere inertsound without sense in their ears; and if they do not know its rightorigin, will rather put into it a wrong one, than that it should havefor them no meaning, and suggest no derivation at all{253}. 

There is probably no language in which such a process has not been goingforward; in which it is not the explanation, in a vast number ofinstances, of changes in spelling and even in form, which words haveundergone. I will offer a few examples of it from foreign tongues, before adducing any from our own. ‘Pyramid’ is a word, the spelling ofwhich was affected in the Greek by an erroneous assumption of itsderivation; the consequences of this error surviving in our own word tothe present day. It is spelt by us with a ‘y’ in the first syllable, asit was spelt with the υ corresponding in the Greek. But why was this? Itwas because the Greeks assumed that the pyramids were so named fromtheir having the appearance of _flame_ going up into a point{254}, andso they spelt ‘pyramid’, that they might find πῦρ or ‘pyre’ in it; whilein fact ‘pyramid’ has nothing to do with flame or fire at all; being, asthose best qualified to speak on the matter declare to us, an Egyptianword of quite a different signification{255}, and the Coptic lettersbeing much better represented by the diphthong ‘ei’ than by the letter‘y’, as no doubt, but for this mistaken notion of what the word wasintended to mean, they would have been. 

Once more--the form ‘Hierosolyma’, wherein the Greeks reproduced theHebrew ‘Jerusalem’, was intended in all probability to express that thecity so called was the _sacred_ city of the _Solymi_{256}. At all eventsthe intention not merely of reproducing the Hebrew word, but also ofmaking it significant in Greek, of finding ἱερόν in it, is plainlydiscernible. For indeed the Greeks were exceedingly intolerant offoreign words, till they had laid aside their foreign appearance--ofall words which they could not thus quicken with a Greek soul; and, witha very characteristic vanity, an ignoring of all other tongues but theirown, assumed with no apparent misgivings that all words, from whateverquarter derived, were to be explained by Greek etymologies{257}. 

‘Tartar’ is another word, of which it is at least possible that awrongly assumed derivation has modified the spelling, and indeed notthe spelling only, but the very shape in which we now possess it. Tomany among us it may be known that the people designated by thisappellation are not properly ‘Tartars’, but ‘Tatars’; and you sometimesperhaps have noted the omission of the ‘r’ on the part of those who arecurious in their spelling. How, then, it may be asked, did the form‘Tartar’ arise? When the terrible hordes of middle Asia burst in uponcivilized Europe in the thirteenth century, many beheld in the ravagesof their innumerable cavalry a fulfilment of that prophetic word in theRevelation (chap. Ix. ) concerning the opening of the bottomless pit; andfrom this belief ensued the change of their name from ‘Tatars’ to‘Tartars’, which was thus put into closer relation with ‘Tartarus’ orhell, out of which their multitudes were supposed to have proceeded{258}. 

Another good example in the same kind is the German word ‘sündflut’, theDeluge, which is now so spelt as to signify a ‘sinflood’, the plague or_flood_ of waters brought on the world by the _sins_ of mankind; andprobably some of us have before this admired the pregnant significanceof the word. Yet the old High German word had originally no suchintention; it was spelt ‘sinfluot’, that is, the great flood; and aslate as Luther, indeed in Luther’s own translation of the Bible, is sospelt as to make plain that the notion of a ‘_sin_-flood’ had not yetfound its way into, even as it had not affected the spelling of, theword{259}. 

{Sidenote: ‘_Currants_’}

But to look now nearer home for our examples. The little raisins broughtfrom Greece, which play so important a part in one of the nationaldishes of England, the Christmas plum-pudding, used to be called‘corinths’; and so you would find them in mercantile lists of a hundredyears ago: either that for the most part they were shipped from Corinth, the principal commercial city in Greece, or because they grew in largeabundance in the immediate district round about it. Their likeness inshape and size and general appearance to our own currants, workingtogether with the ignorance of the great majority of English peopleabout any such place as Corinth, soon brought the name ‘corinths’ into‘currants’, which now with a certain unfitness they bear; being notcurrants at all, but dried grapes, though grapes of diminutivesize{260}. 

{Sidenote: ‘_Court-cards_’}

‘_Court_-cards’, that is, the king, queen, and knave in each suit, wereonce ‘coat-cards’{261}; having their name from the long splendid ‘coat’(vestis talaris) with which they were arrayed. Probably ‘coat’ after awhile did not perfectly convey its original meaning and intention; beingno more in common use for the long garment reaching down to the heels;and then ‘coat’ was easily exchanged for ‘court’, as the word is nowboth spelt and pronounced, seeing that nowhere so fitly as in a Courtshould such splendidly arrayed personages be found. A public house inthe neighbourhood of London having a few years since for its sign “TheGeorge _Canning_” is already “The George and _Cannon_”, --so rapidly dothese transformations proceed, so soon is that forgotten which wesuppose would never be forgotten. “Welsh _rarebit_” becomes “Welsh_rabbit_”{262}; and ‘_farced_’ or stuffed ‘meat’ becomes “forced meat”. Even the mere determination to make a word _look_ English, to put itinto an English shape, without thereby so much as seeming to attain anyresult in the way of etymology, this is very often sufficient to bringabout a change in its spelling, and even in its form{263}. It is thusthat ‘sipahi’ has become ‘sepoy’; and only so could ‘weissager’ havetaken its present form of ‘wiseacre’{264}. 

{Sidenote: _Transformation of Words_}

It is not very uncommon for a word, while it is derived from one word, to receive a certain impulse and modification from another. This extendssometimes beyond the spelling, and in cases where it does so, wouldhardly belong to our present theme. Still I may notice an instance ortwo. Thus our ‘obsequies’ is the Latin ‘exequiæ’, but formed under acertain impulse of ‘obsequium’, and seeking to express and include theobservant honour of that word. ‘To refuse’ is ‘recusare’, while yet ithas derived the ‘f’ of its second syllable from ‘refutare’; it is amedley of the two{265}. The French ‘rame’, an oar, is ‘remus’, but thatmodified by an unconscious recollection of ‘ramus’. ‘Orange’ is no doubta Persian word, which has reached us through the Arabic, and which theSpanish ‘naranja’ more nearly represents than any form of it existing inthe other languages of Europe. But what so natural as to think of theorange as the _golden_ fruit, especially when the “_aurea_ mala” of theHesperides were familiar to all antiquity? There cannot be a doubt that‘aurum’, ‘oro’, ‘or’, made themselves felt in the shapes which the wordassumed in the languages of the West, and that here we have theexplanation of the change in the first syllable, as in the low Latin‘aurantium’, ‘orangia’, and in the French ‘orange’, which has given usour own. 

It is foreign words, or words adopted from foreign languages, as mightbeforehand be expected, which are especially subjected to suchtransformations as these. The soul which the word once had in its ownlanguage, having, for as many as do not know that language, departedfrom it, or at least not being now any more to be recognized by such asemploy the word, these are not satisfied till they have put another soulinto it, and it has thus become alive to them again. Thus--to take firstone or two very familiar instances, but which serve as well as any otherto illustrate my position--the Bellerophon becomes for our sailors the‘Billy Ruffian’, for what can they know of the Greek mythology, or ofthe slayer of Chimæra? an iron steamer, the Hirondelle, now or latelyplying on the Tyne, is the ‘Iron Devil’. ‘_Contre_ danse’, or dance inwhich the parties stand _face to face_ with one another, and which oughtto have appeared in English as ‘_counter_ dance’, does become ‘_country_dance’{266}, as though it were the dance of the country folk and ruraldistricts, as distinguished from the quadrille and waltz and moreartificial dances of the town{267}. A well known rose, the “rose _desquatre saisons_”, or of the four seasons, becomes on the lips of some ofour gardeners, the “rose of the _quarter sessions_”, though here it isprobable that the eye has misled, rather than the ear. ‘Dent de lion’, (it is spelt ‘dentdelyon’ in our early writers) becomes ‘dandylion’, “_chaude_ melée”, or an affray in _hot_ blood, “_chance_-medley”{268}, ‘causey’ (chaussée) becomes ‘causeway’{269}, ‘rachitis’ ‘rickets’{270}, and in French ‘mandragora’ ‘main de gloire’{271}. 

{Sidenote: ‘_Necromancy_’}

‘Necromancy’ is another word which, if not now, yet for a long periodwas erroneously spelt, and indeed assumed a different shape, under theinfluence of an erroneous derivation; which, curiously enough, even nowthat it has been dismissed, has left behind it the marks of itspresence, in our common phrase, “the _Black_ Art”. I need hardly remindyou that ‘necromancy’ is a Greek word, which signifies, according to itsproper meaning, a prophesying by aid of the dead, or that it rests onthe presumed power of raising up by potent spells the dead, andcompelling them to give answers about things to come. We all know thatit was supposed possible to exercise such power; we have a very awfulexample of it in the story of the witch of Endor, and a very horrid onein Lucan{272}. But the Latin medieval writers, whose Greek was eitherlittle or none, spelt the word, ‘nigromantia’, as if its first syllableshad been Latin: at the same time, not wholly forgetting the originalmeaning, but in fact getting round to it though by a wrong process, theyunderstood the dead by these ‘nigri’, or blacks, whom they had broughtinto the word{273}. Down to a rather late period we find the forms, ‘_negro_mancer’ and ‘_negro_mancy’ frequent in English. 

{Sidenote: _Words Misspelt_}

‘Pleurisy’ used often to be spelt, (I do not think it is so now, )without an ‘e’ in the first syllable, evidently on the tacit assumptionthat it was from _plus pluris_{274}. When Shakespeare falls into anerror, he “makes the offence gracious”; yet, I think, he would scarcelyhave written, “For goodness growing to a _plurisy_ Dies of his own _too much_”, but that _he_ too derived ‘plurisy’ from _pluris_. This, even with the“small Latin and less Greek”, which Ben Jonson allows him, he scarcelywould have done, had the word presented itself in that form, which byright of its descent from πλευρά (being a pain, stitch, or sickness _inthe side_) it ought to have possessed. Those who for ‘crucible’ wrote‘chrysoble’ (Jeremy Taylor does so) must evidently have done this underthe assumption that the Greek for _gold_, and not the Latin for _cross_, lay at the foundation of this word. ‘Anthymn’ instead of ‘anthem’(Barrow so spells the word), rests plainly on a wrong etymology, even asthis spelling clearly betrays what that wrong etymology is. ‘Rhyme’ witha ‘y’ is a modern misspelling; and would never have been but for theundue influence which the Greek ‘rhythm’ has exercised upon it. Spenserand his cotemporaries spell it ‘rime’. ‘Abominable’ was by someetymologists of the seventeenth century spelt ‘abhominable’, as thoughit were that which departed from the human (ab homine) into the bestialor devilish. 

In all these words which I have adduced last, the correct spelling hasin the end resumed its sway. It is not so with ‘frontisp_ie_ce’, whichought to be spelt ‘frontisp_i_ce’ (it was so by Milton and others), being the low Latin ‘frontispicium’, from ‘frons’ and ‘aspicio’, theforefront of the building, that part which presents itself to the view. It was only the entirely ungrounded notion that the word ‘piece’constitutes the last syllable, which has given rise to our presentorthography{275}. 

{Sidenote: Wrong Spelling}

You may, perhaps, wonder that I have dwelt so long on these details ofspelling; that I have bestowed on them so much of my own attention, that I have claimed for them so much of yours; yet in truth I cannotregard them as unworthy of our very closest heed. For indeed of how muchbeyond itself is accurate or inaccurate spelling the certain indication. Thus when we meet ‘s_y_ren’, for ‘s_i_ren’, as so strangely often we do, almost always in newspapers, and often where we should hardly haveexpected (I met it lately in the _Quarterly Review_, and again inGifford’s _Massinger_), how difficult it is not to be “judges of evilthoughts”, and to take this slovenly misspelling as the specimen andevidence of an inaccuracy and ignorance which reaches very far widerthan the single word which is before us. But why is it that so muchsignificance is ascribed to a wrong spelling? Because ignorance of aword’s spelling at once argues ignorance of its origin and derivation. Ido not mean that one who spells rightly may not be ignorant of it too, but he who spells wrongly is certainly so. Thus, to recur to the exampleI have just adduced, he who for ‘s_i_ren’ writes ‘s_y_ren’, certainlyknows nothing of the magic _cords_ (σειραί) of song, by which those fairenchantresses were supposed to draw those that heard them to theirruin{276}. 

Correct or incorrect orthography being, then, this note of accurate orinaccurate knowledge, we may confidently conclude where two spellingsof a word exist, and are both employed by persons who generally writewith precision and scholarship, that there must be something to accountfor this. It will generally be worth your while to inquire into thecauses which enable both spellings to hold their ground and to findtheir supporters, not ascribing either one or the other to merecarelessness or error. It will in these cases often be found that twospellings exist, because two views of the word’s origin exist, and eachof those spellings is the correct expression of one of these. Thequestion therefore which way of spelling should continue, and whollysupersede the other, and which, while the alternative remains, we shouldourselves employ, can only be settled by settling which of theseetymologies deserves the preference. So is it, for example, with‘ch_y_mist’ and ‘ch_e_mist’, neither of which has obtained in our commonuse the complete mastery over the other{277}. It is not here, as in someother cases, that one is certainly right, the other as certainly wrong:but they severally represent two different etymologies of the word, andeach is correct according to its own. If we are to spell ‘ch_y_mist’ and‘ch_y_mistry’, it is because these words are considered to be derivedfrom the Greek word, χυμός, sap; and the chymic art will then haveoccupied itself first with distilling the juice and sap of plants, andwill from this have derived its name. I have little doubt, however, thatthe other spelling, ‘ch_e_mist’, not ‘ch_y_mist’, is the correct one. Itwas not with the distillation of herbs, but with the amalgamation ofmetals, that chemistry occupied itself at its rise, and the wordembodies a reference to Egypt, the land of Ham or ‘Cham’{278}, in whichthis art was first practised with success. 

{Sidenote: ‘_Satyr_’, ‘_Satire_’}

Of how much confusion the spelling which used to be so common, ‘satyr’for ‘satire’, is at once the consequence, the expression, and again thecause; not indeed that this confusion first began with us{279}; for thesame already found place in the Latin, where ‘satyricus’ was continuallywritten for ‘satiricus’ out of a false assumption of the identitybetween the Roman _satire_ and the Greek _satyric_ drama. The Roman‘satira’, --I speak of things familiar to many of my hearers, --isproperly a _full_ dish (lanx being understood)--a dish heaped up withvarious ingredients, a ‘farce’ (according to the original significationof that word), or hodge-podge; and the word was transferred from this toa form of poetry which at first admitted the utmost variety in thematerials of which it was composed, and the shapes into which thesematerials were wrought up; being the only form of poetry which theRomans did _not_ borrow from the Greeks. Wholly different from this, having no one point of contact with it in its form, its history, or itsintention, is the ‘satyric’ drama of Greece, so called because Silenusand the ‘Satyrs’ supplied the chorus; and in their naïve selfishness, and mere animal instincts, held up before men a mirror of what theywould be, if only the divine, which is also the truly human, element ofhumanity, were withdrawn; what man, all that properly made him man beingwithdrawn, would prove. 

{Sidenote: ‘_Mid-wife_’, ‘_Nostril_’}

And then what light, as we have already seen, does the older spelling ofa word often cast upon its etymology; how often does it clear up themystery, which would otherwise have hung about it, or which _had_ hungabout it till some one had noticed and turned to profit this its earlierspelling. Thus ‘dirge’ is always spelt ‘dirige’ in early English. This‘dirige’ may be the first word in a Latin psalm or prayer once used atfunerals; there is a reasonable probability that the explanation of theword is here; at any rate, if it is not here, it is nowhere{280}. Thederivation of ‘mid-wife’ is uncertain, and has been the subject ofdiscussion; but when we find it spelt ‘medewife’ and ‘meadwife’, inWiclif’s Bible, this leaves hardly a doubt that it is the _wife_ orwoman who acts for a _mead_ or reward{281}. In cases too where therewas no mystery hanging about a word, how often does the early spellingmake clear to all that which was before only known to those who had madethe language their study. For example, if an early edition of Spensershould come into your hands, or a modern one in which the early spellingis retained, what continual lessons in English might you derive from it. Thus ‘nostril’ is always spelt by him and his cotemporaries‘nosethrill’; a little earlier it was ‘nosethirle’. Now ‘to thrill’ isthe same as to drill or pierce; it is plain then here at once that theword signifies the orifice or opening with which the _nose_ is_thrilled_, drilled, or pierced. We might have read the word for ever inour modern spelling without being taught this. ‘Ell’ tells us nothingabout itself; but in ‘eln’ used in Holland’s translation of Camden, werecognize ‘ulna’ at once. 

Again, the ‘morris’ or ‘morrice-dance’, which is alluded to so often byour early poets, as it is now spelt informs us nothing about itself; butread ‘_moriske_ dance’, as it is generally spelt by Holland and hiscotemporaries, and you will scarcely fail to perceive that of whichindeed there is no manner of doubt; namely, that it was so called eitherbecause it was really, or was supposed to be, a dance in use among the_moriscoes_ of Spain, and from thence introduced into England{282}. 

Again, philologers tell us, and no doubt rightly, that our ‘cray-fish’, or ‘craw-fish’, is the French ‘écrevisse’. This is true, but certainlyit is not self-evident. Trace however the word through these successivespellings, ‘krevys’ (Lydgate), ‘crevish’ (Gascoigne), ‘craifish’(Holland), and the chasm between ‘cray-fish’ or ‘craw-fish’ and‘écrevisse’ is by aid of these three intermediate spellings bridged overat once; and in the fact of our Gothic ‘fish’ finding its way into thisFrench word we see only another example of a law, which has been alreadyabundantly illustrated in this lecture{283}. 

{Sidenote: ‘_Emmet_’, ‘_Ant_’}

In other ways also an accurate taking note of the spelling of words, andof the successive changes which it has undergone, will often throw lightupon them. Thus we may know, others having assured us of the fact, that‘ant’ and ‘emmet’ were originally only two different spellings of oneand the same word; but we may be perplexed to understand how two formsof a word, now so different, could ever have diverged from a singleroot. When however we find the different spellings, ‘emmet’, ‘emet’, ‘amet’, ‘amt’, ‘ant’, the gulf which appeared to separate ‘emmet’ from‘ant’ is bridged over at once, and we do not merely know on theassurance of others that these two are in fact identical, theirdifferences being only superficial, but we perceive clearly in whatmanner they are so{284}. 

Even before any close examination of the matter, it is hard not tosuspect that ‘runagate’ is in fact another form of ‘renegade’, slightlytransformed, as so many words, to put an English signification into itsfirst syllable; and then the meaning gradually modified in obedience tothe new derivation which was assumed to be its original and true one. Our suspicion of this is very greatly strengthened (for we see how veryclosely the words approach one another), by the fact that ‘renega_d_e’is constantly spelt ‘renega_t_e’ in our old authors, while at the sametime the denial of _faith_, which is now a necessary element in‘renegade’, and one differencing it inwardly from ‘runagate’, isaltogether wanting in early use--the denial of _country_ and of theduties thereto owing being all that is implied in it. Thus it isconstantly employed in Holland’s _Livy_ as a rendering of ‘perfuga’{285};while in the one passage where ‘runagate’ occurs in the Prayer BookVersion of the Psalms (Ps. Lxviii. 6), a reference to the original willshow that the translators could only have employed it there on theground that it also expressed rebel, revolter, and not runawaymerely{286}. 

{Sidenote: _Assimilating Power of English_}

I might easily occupy your attention much longer, so little barren orunfruitful does this subject of spelling appear likely to prove; but allthings must have an end; and as I concluded my first lecture with aremarkable testimony borne by an illustrious German scholar to themerits of our English tongue, I will conclude my last with the words ofanother, not indeed a German, but still of the great Germanic stock;words resuming in themselves much of which we have been speaking uponthis and upon former occasions: “As our bodies”, he says, “have hiddenresources and expedients, to remove the obstacles which the very art ofthe physician puts in its way, so language, ruled by an indomitableinward principle, triumphs in some degree over the folly of grammarians. Look at the English, polluted by Danish and Norman conquests, distortedin its genuine and noble features by old and recent endeavours to mouldit after the French fashion, invaded by a hostile entrance of Greek andLatin words, threatening by increasing hosts to overwhelm the indigenousterms. In these long contests against the combined power of so manyforcible enemies, the language, it is true, has lost some of its powerof inversion in the structure of sentences, the means of denoting thedifference of gender, and the nice distinctions by inflection andtermination--almost every word is attacked by the spasm of the accentand the drawing of consonants to wrong positions; yet the old Englishprinciple is not overpowered. Trampled down by the ignoble feet ofstrangers, its springs still retain force enough to restore itself. Itlives and plays through all the veins of the language; it impregnatesthe innumerable strangers entering its dominions with its temper, andstains them with its colour, not unlike the Greek which in taking uporiental words, stripped them of their foreign costume, and bid them toappear as native Greeks”{287}. 

{FOOTNOTES}

{228} In proof that it need not be so, I would only refer to a paper, _On Orthographical Expedients_, by Edwin Guest, Esq. , in the _Transactions of the Philological Society_, vol. Iii. P. 1. 

{229} [The scientific treatises on Phonetics of Mr. Alexander J. Ellis and Dr. Henry Sweet have surmounted the difficulty of registering sounds with great accuracy. ]

{230} I have not observed this noticed in our dictionaries as the original form of the phrase. There is no doubt however of the fact; see _Stanihurst’s Ireland_, p. 33, in Holinshed’s _Chronicles_. [Rather from _torvien_, to throw, --Skeat]. 

{231} _Notes and Queries_, No. 147. 

{232} See Boswell’s _Life of Johnson_, Croker’s edit. 1848, p. 233. 

{233} [The _b_ was purposely foisted into these words by bookmen to suggest their Latin derivation; it did not belong to them in earlier English. The same may be said of the _g_, intruded into ‘deign’ and ‘feign’. ]

{234} A chief phonographer writes to me to deny that this is the present spelling (1856) of ‘Europe’. It was so when this paragraph was written. [Most people would now consider [Yeuroap] as American pronunciation. ]

{235} Quintilian has expressed himself with the true dignity of a scholar on this matter (_Inst. _ 1, 6, 45): Consuetudinem sermonis vocabo _consensum eruditorum_; sicut vivendi consensum bonorum. --How different from innovations like this the changes in the spelling of German which J. Grimm, so far as his own example may reach, _has_ introduced; and the still bolder and more extensive ones which in the _Preface_ to his _Deutsches Wörterbuch_, pp. Liv. -lxii. , he avows his desire to see introduced;--as the employment of _f_, not merely where it is at present used, but also wherever _v_ is now employed; the substituting of the _v_, which would be thus disengaged, for _w_, and the entire dismissal of _w_. They may be advisable, or they may not; it is not for strangers to offer an opinion; but at any rate they are not a seizing of the fluctuating, superficial accidents of the present, and a seeking to give permanent authority to these, but they all rest on a deep historic study of the language, and of the true genius of the language. 

{236} Croker’s edit. 1848, pp. 57, 61, 233. 

{237} [An incorrect conclusion. Almost all ‘ea’ words were pronounced ‘ai’ down to the eighteenth century. Thus ‘great’ was a true rhyme to ‘cheat’ and ‘complete’, their ordinary pronunciation being ‘grait’, ‘chait’, ‘complait’. ]

{238} [i. E. ‘Lunnun’. ]

{239} _A proposal for correcting, improving and ascertaining the English Tongue_, 1711, Works, vol. Ix, pp. 139-59. 

{240} [‘Devest’ was still in use till the end of the eighteenth century, but ‘divest’ is already found in _King Lear_, 1605, i, 1, 50. ]

{241} Pygmæi, quasi _cubitales_ (Augustine). 

{242} First so used by Theophrastus in Greek, and by Pliny in Latin. --The real identity of the two words explains Milton’s use of ‘diamond’ in _Paradise Lost_, b. 7; and also in that sublime passage in his _Apology for Smectymnuus_: “Then zeal, whose substance is ethereal, arming in complete _diamond_”. --Diez (_Wörterbuch d. Roman. Sprachen_, p. 123) supposes, not very probably, that it was under a certain influence of ‘_dia_fano’, the translucent, that ‘adamante’ was in the Italian, whence we have derived the word, changed into ‘_dia_mante’. 

{243} [Similarly _jowl_ for _chowl_ or _chavel_. ]

{244} _Richard III_, Act iv, Sc. 4. 

{245} [For another account of this word, approved by Dr. Murray, see _The Folk and their Word-Lore_, p. 156. ]

{246} [‘Bliss’ representing the old English _bliths_ or _blidhs_, blitheness, is really a quite distinct word from ‘bless’, standing for _blets_, old English _blétsian_ (=_blóedsian_, to consecrate with blood, _blód_), although the latter was by a folk-etymology very frequently spelt ‘bliss’. ]

{247} [But ‘afraied’ is the earliest form of the word (1350), the verb itself being at first spelt ‘afray’ (1325). N. E. D. ]

{248} How close this relationship was once, not merely in respect of etymology, but also of significance, a passage like this will prove: “Perchance, as vultures are said to smell the earthiness of a dying corpse; so this bird of prey [the evil spirit which personated Samuel, 1 Sam. Xxviii. 41] _resented_ a worse than earthly savor in the soul of Saul, as evidence of his death at hand”. (Fuller, _The Profane State_, b. 5, c. 4. )

{249} [There is an unfortunate confusion here between ‘heal’ to make ‘hale’ or ‘[w]hole’ (Anglo-Saxon _hælan_) and the old (and Provincial) English _hill_, to cover, _hilling_, covering, _hellier_, a slater, akin to ‘hell’, the covered place, ‘helm’; Icelandic _hylja_, to cover. ]

{250} [By a curious slip Dr. Trench here confounds ‘recover’, to recuperate or regain health (derived through old French _recovrer_ from Latin _recuperare_), with a totally distinct word _re-cover_, to cover or clothe over again, which comes from old French _covrir_, Latin _co-operire_. It is just the difference between ‘recovering’ a lost umbrella through the police and ‘recovering’ a torn one at a shop. I pointed this out to the author in 1869, and I think he altered the passage in his later editions. ]

{251} [‘Island’, though cognate with Anglo-Saxon _eá-land_ “water-land” (German _ei-land_), is really identical with Anglo-Saxon _íg-land_, i. E. “isle-land”, from _íg_, an island, the diminutive of which survives in _eyot_ or _ait_. ]

{252} [The editor essayed to make a complete collection of this class of words in his _Folk-etymology, a Dictionary of Words corrupted by False Derivation or Mistaken Analogy_, 1882, and more recently in a condensed form in _The Folk and their Word-Lore_, 1904. ]

{253} Diez looks with much favour on this process, and calls it, ein sinnreiches mittel fremdlinge ganz heimisch zu machen. 

{254} Ammianus Marcellinus, xxii, 15, 28. 

{255} [The Greek _pyramis_ probably represents the Egyptian _piri-m-ûisi_ (Maspero, _Dawn of Civilization_, 358), or _pir-am-us_ (Brugsch, _Egypt under the Pharaohs_, i, 73), rather than _pi-ram_, ‘the height’ (Birch, _Bunsen’s Egypt_, v, 763). ]

{256} Tacitus, _Hist. _ v. 2. 

{257} Let me illustrate this by further instances in a note. Thus βούτυρον, from which, through the Latin, our ‘butter’ has descended to us, is borrowed (Pliny, _H. N. _ xxviii. 9) from a Scythian word, now to us unknown: yet it is sufficiently plain that the Greeks so shaped and spelt it as to contain apparent allusion to _cow_ and _cheese_; there is in βούτυρον an evident feeling after βοῦς and τυρόν. Bozra, meaning citadel in Hebrew and Phœnician, and the name, no doubt, which the citadel of Carthage bore, becomes Βύρσα on Greek lips; and then the well known legend of the ox-hide was invented upon the name; not having suggested it, but being itself suggested by it. Herodian (v. 6) reproduces the name of the Syrian goddess Astarte in a shape that is significant also for Greek ears--Ἀστροάρχη, The Star-ruler, or Star-queen. When the apostate and hellenizing Jews assumed Greek names, ‘Eliakim’ or “Whom God has set”, became ‘Alcimus’ (ἄλκιμος) or The Strong (1 Macc. Vii. 5). Latin examples in like kind are ‘com_i_ssatio’, spelt continually ‘com_e_ssatio’, and ‘com_e_ssation’ by those who sought to naturalize it in England, as though it were connected with ‘cŏmedo’, to eat, being indeed the substantive from the verb ‘cōmissari’ (--κωμάζειν), to revel, as Plutarch, whose Latin is in general not very accurate, long ago correctly observed; and ‘orichalcum’, spelt often ‘_au_richalcum’, as though it were a composite metal of mingled _gold_ and brass; being indeed the _mountain_ brass (ὀρείχαλκος). The miracle play, which is ‘mystère’, in French, whence our English ‘mystery’ was originally written ‘mistère’, being properly derived from ‘ministère’, and having its name because the clergy, the _ministri_ Ecclesiæ, conducted it. This was forgotten, and it then took its present form of ‘mystery’, as though so called because the mysteries of the faith were in it set out. 

{258} We have here, in this bringing of the words by their supposed etymology together, the explanation of the fact that Spenser (_Fairy Queen_, i, 7, 44), Middleton (_Works_, vol. 5, pp. 524, 528, 538), and others employ ‘Tartary’ as equivalent to ‘Tartarus’ or hell. 

{259} For a full discussion of this matter and fixing of the period at which ‘sinfluot’ became ‘sündflut’, see the _Theol. Stud. U. Krit. _ vol. Ii, p. 613; and Delitzsch, _Genesis_, 2nd ed. Vol. Ii, p. 210. 

{260} [The name of the small grape, originally _raisins de Corauntz_, was transferred to the _ribes_ in the sixteenth century. ]

{261} Ben Jonson, _The New Inn_, Act i, Sc. I. 

{262} [On the contrary, it is the modern “Welsh _rarebit_” which has been mistakenly evolved out of the older “Welsh _rabbit_” as I have shown in _Folk-Etymology_, p. 431. Grose has both forms in his _Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue_, 1785. ]

{263} ‘Leghorn’ is sometimes quoted as an example of this; but erroneously; for, as Admiral Smyth has shown (_The Mediterranean_, p. 409) ‘Livorno’ is itself rather the modern corruption, and ‘Ligorno’ the name found on the earlier charts. 

{264} Exactly the same happens in other languages; thus ‘armbrust’, a crossbow, _looks_ German enough, and yet has nothing to do with ‘arm’ or ‘brust’, being a contraction of ‘arcubalista’, but a contraction under these influences. As little has ‘abenteuer’ anything to do with ‘abend’ or ‘theuer’, however it may seem to be connected with them, being indeed the Provençal ‘adventura’. And ‘weissagen’ in its earlier forms had nothing in common with ‘sagen’. 

{265} [So Diez. But Prof. Skeat and Scheler see no reason why it should not be direct from French _refuser_ and Low Latin _refusare_, from _refusus_, rejected. ]

{266} It is upon this word that De Quincey (_Life and Manners_, p. 70, American Ed. ) says excellently well: “It is in fact by such corruptions, by off-sets upon an old stock, arising through ignorance or mispronunciation originally, that every language is frequently enriched; and new modifications of thought, unfolding themselves in the progress of society, generate for themselves concurrently appropriate expressions. .. . It must not be allowed to weigh against a word once fairly naturalized by all, that originally it crept in upon an abuse or a corruption. Prescription is as strong a ground of legitimation in a case of this nature, as it is in law. And the old axiom is applicable--Fieri non debuit, factum valet. Were it otherwise, languages would be robbed of much of their wealth”. [_Works_, vol. Xiv. , p. 201. ]

{267} [The direct opposite is the fact. The French _contredanse_ was borrowed from the English ‘country-dance’. See _The Folk and their Word-Lore_, p. 153. ]

{268} [These words are not identical. They were in use as distinct words in the fifteenth century. See N. E. D. ]

{269} [Dr. Murray has shown that ‘causeway’ is not a corruption of ‘causey’ but a compound of that word with ‘way’. ]

{270} [Prof. Skeat has demonstrated that the supposed Greek ‘rachitis’, inflammation of the back, is an ætiological invention to serve as etymon of ‘rickets’, the condition of being rickety, a purely native word. See also _Folk-Etymology_, 312. ]

{271} [See _The Folk and their Word-Lore_, p. 124. ]

{272} _Phars. _ vi. 720-830. 

{273} Thus in a _Vocabulary_, 1475: Nigromansia dicitur divinatio facta _per nigros_. 

{274} [Dyce believed that it was really thus derived and distinct from _pleurisy_, but it was evidently modelled upon that word (_Remarks on Editions of Shakespeare_, p. 218). ]

{275} As ‘orthography’ itself means properly “_right_ spelling”, it might be a curious question whether it is permissible to speak of an _incorrect_ _ortho_graphy, that is of a _wrong_ _right_-spelling. The question which would be thus started is one of not unfrequent recurrence, and it is very worthy of observation how often, so soon as we take note of etymologies, this _contradictio in adjecto_ is found to occur. I will here adduce a few examples from the Greek, the Latin, the German, and from our own tongue. Thus the Greeks having no convenient word to express a rider, apart from a rider _on a horse_, did not scruple to speak of the _horse_man (ἱππεύς) upon an _elephant_. They often allowed themselves in a like inaccuracy, where certainly there was no necessity; as in using ἀνδριάς of the statue of a _woman_; where it would have been quite as easy to have used εἱκών or ἄγαλμα. So too their ‘table’ (τράπεζα = τετράπεζα) involved probably the _four_ feet which commonly support one; yet they did not shrink from speaking of a _three_-footed table (τρίπους τράπεζα), in other words, a “_three_-footed _four_-footed”; much as though we should speak of a “_three_-footed _quadru_ped”. Homer writes of a ‘hecatomb’ not of a _hundred_, but of twelve, oxen; and elsewhere of Hebe he says, in words not reproducible in English, νέκταρ ἐωνοχόει. ‘Tetrarchs’ were often rulers of quite other than _fourth_ parts of a land. Ἀκρατος had so come to stand for wine, without any thought more of its signifying originally the _unmingled_, that St. John speaks of ἄκρατος κεκερασμένος (Rev. Xiv. 10), or the unmingled mingled. Boxes in which precious ointments were contained were so commonly of alabaster, that the name came to be applied to them whether they were so or not; and Theocritus celebrates “_golden_ alabasters”. Cicero having to mention a water-clock is obliged to call it a _water_ _sun_dial (solarium ex aquâ). Columella speaks of a “_vintage_ of honey” (vindemia mellis), and Horace invites his friend to im_pede_, not his _foot_, but his head, with myrtle (_caput_ im_ped_ire myrto). Thus too a German writer who desired to tell of the golden shoes with which the folly of Caligula adorned his horse could scarcely avoid speaking of _golden_ hoof-_irons_. The same inner contradiction is involved in such language as our own, a “_false_ _ver_dict”, a “_steel_ _cuirass_” (‘coriacea’ from corium, leather), “antics new” (Harrington’s _Ariosto_), an “_erroneous_ _etymo_logy”, a “_corn_ _chandler_”; that is, a “_corn_ _candle_-maker”, “_rather_ _late_”, ‘rather’ being the comparative of ‘rathe’, early, and thus “rather late” being indeed “more early late”; and in others. 

{276} [‘Siren’ is now generally understood to have meant originally a songstress, from the root _svar_, to sing or sound, seen in _syrinx_, a flute, _su(r)-sur-us_, etc. See J. E. Harrison, _Myths of the Odyssey_, p. 175. ]

{277} [‘Chymist’ seems to be the oldest form of the word in English; see N. E. D. ]

{278} χημία, the name of Egypt; see Plutarch, _De Is. Et Os. _ c. 33. 

{279} We have a notable evidence how deeply rooted this error was, how long this confusion endured, of the way in which it was shared by the learned as well as the unlearned, in Milton’s _Apology for Smectymnuus_, sect. 7, which everywhere presumes the identity of the ‘satyr’ and the ‘satirist’. It was Isaac Casaubon who first effectually dissipated it even for the learned world. The results of his investigations were made popular for the unlearned reader by Dryden, in the very instructive _Discourse on Satirical Poetry_, prefixed to his translations of Juvenal; but the confusion still survives, and ‘satyrs’ and ‘satires’, the Greek ‘satyric’ drama, the Latin ‘satirical’ poetry, are still assumed by most to have something to do with one another. 

{280} [‘Dirige’ was the first word of the antiphon at matins in the Office for the Dead, taken from Psalm v, 9 (Vulg. ), in which occur the words “_dirige_ in conspectu tuo vitam meam”. See Skeat, _Piers Plowman_, ii, 52. Hence also Scotch _dregy_, a dirge. ]

{281} [Incorrect: the ‘mid-wife’ is etymologically she that is _with_ (old English _mid_) a woman to help her in her hour of need, like German _bei-frau_, Spanish _co-madre_, Icelandic _naer-kona_, “near-woman”, Latin _ob-stetrix_, “by-stander”, all words for the lying-in nurse. Compare German _mit-bruder_, a comrade. ]

{282} “I have seen him Caper upright, like a wild _Môrisco_, Shaking the bloody darts, as he his bells”. 

 Shakespeare, _2 Henry VI_ Act iii, Sc. 1. 

{283} In the reprinting of old books it is often very difficult to determine how far the old shape in which words present themselves should be retained, how far they should be conformed to present usage. It is comparatively easy to lay down as a rule that in books intended for popular use, wherever the form of the word is not affected by the modernizing of the spelling, as where this modernizing consists merely in the dropping of superfluous letters, there it shall take place; as who would wish our Bibles to be now printed letter for letter after the edition of 1611, or Shakespeare with the orthography of the first folio; but wherever more than the spelling, the actual shape, outline, and character of the word has been affected by the changes which it has undergone, that in all such cases the earlier form shall be held fast. The rule is a judicious one; but when it is attempted to carry it out, it is not always easy to draw the line, and to determine what affects the form and essence of a word, and what does not. About some words there can be no doubt; and therefore when a modern editor of Fuller’s _Church History_ complacently announces that he has allowed himself in such changes as ‘dirige’ into ‘dirge’, ‘barreter’ into ‘barrister’, ‘synonymas’ into ‘synonymous’, ‘extempory’ into ‘extemporary’, ‘scited’ into ‘situated’, ‘vancurrier’ into ‘avant-courier’; he at the same time informs us that for all purposes of the study of the English language (and few writers are for this more important than Fuller), he has made his edition utterly worthless. Or again, when modern editors of Shakespeare print, and that without giving any intimation of the fact, “Like quills upon the fretful _porcupine_”, he having written, and in his first folio and quarto the words standing, “Like quills upon the fretful _porpentine_”, this being the earlier, and in Shakespeare’s time the more common form of the word [e. G. “the _purpentines_ nature” (Puttenham, _Eng. Poesie_, 1589, p. 118, ed. Arber)], they must be considered as taking a very unwarrantable liberty with his text; and no less, when they substitute ‘Kenilworth’ for ‘Killingworth’, which he wrote, and which was his, Marlowe’s, and generally the earlier form of the name. 

{284} [Compare Latin _amita_, yielding old French _ante_, our ‘aunt’. ]

{285} “The Carthaginians shall restore and deliver back all the _renegates_ [perfugas] and fugitives that have fled to their side from us”. --p. 751. 

{286} [See further in _The Folk and their Word-Lore_, p. 80. ]

{287} Halbertsma quoted by Bosworth, _Origin of the English and Germanic Languages_, p. 39. 

INDEX OF WORDS

 PAGE Abenteuer 240 Abnormal 72 Abominable 245 Academy 70 Accommodate 107 Acre 193 Adamant 230 Admiralty 107 Advocate 82 Æon 72 Æsthetic 72 Afeard 126 Affluent 104 Afraid 127 Afterthink 120 Alcimus 237 Alcove 16 Amphibious 107 Analogie 56 Ant 253 Antecedents 210 Anthem 245 Antipodes 68 Apotheosis 67 -ard 141 Armbrust 240 Arride 58 Ascertain 186 Ask 126 Astarte 237 Attercop 123 Aurantium 241 Aurichalcum 237 Avunculize 91 Axe 126

 Baffle 181 Baker, bakester 157 Banter 106 Barrier 70 Battalion 61 Bawn 123 Benefice, benefit 97 Bitesheep 144 Black art 243 Blackguard 189 Blasphemous 128 Bless 231 Bombast 199 Book 21 Boor 202 Bozra 237 Brangle 177 Bran-new 231 Brat 205 Brazen 164 Breaden 163 Bruin 89 Buffalo 16 Butter 237 Buxom 139

 Chagrin 95 Chance-medley 243 Chanticleer 89 Chemist, chemistry 248 Chicken 158 Chouse 91 Chymist, chymistry 248 Clawback 144 Comissatio 237 Commérage 204 Confluent 104 Congregational 79 Contrary 128 Corpse 191 Country dance 242 Court card 239 Coxcomb 229 Cozen 231 Crawfish 252 Creansur 45 Criterion 67 Crone, crony 93 Crucible 245 Crusade 62 Cuirass 246 Currant 239 Cynarctomachy 91

 Dahlia 88 Dame 192 Dandylion 243 Dearworth 120 Dedal 86 Dehort 137 Demagogue 55 Denominationalism 79 Depot 69 Diamond 230 Dirge 250 Dissimilation 103 Divest 229 Donat 86 Dorter 20 Dosones 90 Doughty 146 Drachm 193 Dragoman 12 Dub 146 Duke 191 Dumps 147 Dutch 177

 Eame 118 Earsport 119 Eaves 159 Educational 79 Effervescence 55 Einseitig 75 Eliakim 237 Ell 251 Emet 253 Emotional 79 Encyclopedia 67 Enfantillage 55 Equivocation 196 Erutar 149 Escobarder 88 -ess 153 Europe 224 Eyebite 120

 Fairy 191 Farfalla 15 Fatherland 75 Flitter-mouse 118 Flota 17 Folklore 75 Foolhappy 137 Foolhardy 137 Foolhasty 137 Foollarge 137 Foretalk 120 Fougue 66 Fraischeur 66 Frances 95 Francis 95 Frimm 118 Frivolité 55 Frontispiece 245 Furlong 193

 Gainly 136 Gallon 193 Galvanism 88 Garble 199 Geir 118 Gentian 86 Girdle 21 Girfalcon 118 Girl 192 Glassen 163 Gordian 86 Gossip 203 Great 226 Grimsire 119 Grocer 229 Grogram 229

 Halfgod 120 Hallow 82 Handbook 75 Hangdog 145 Hector 89 Heft 118 Hermetic 86 Hery 118 Hierosolyma 236 Hipocras 86 Hippodame 64 His 131 Hooker 16 Hoppester 155 Hotspur 119 Hoyden 192 Huck 157 Huckster, huckstress 157 Hurricane 14

 Iceberg 73 Icefield 74 Idea 197 Imp 205 Influence 181 International 78 Island 234 Isle 234 Isolated 107 Isothermal 102 Its 130

 Jaw 230 Jeopardy 82

 Kenilworth 253 Kindly 184 Kirtle 21 Knave 207 Knitster 155 Knot 87

 Lambiner 88 Lass 154 Lazar 86 Leer 118 Leghorn 240 Libel 191 Lifeguard 74 Lissome 140 London 227 Lunch, luncheon 129

 Malingerer 119 Mammet, mammetry 87 Mandragora 243 Mansarde 89 Matachin 17 Matamoros 143 Mausoleum 86 Meat 191 Meddle, meddlesome 206 Middler 121 Mid-wife 250 Milken 163 Mischievous 128 Miscreant 179 Mithridate 86 Mixen 123 Morris dance 251 Mystery, mystère 237 Myth 72

 Nap 147 Necromancy 243 Negus 87 Nemorivagus 77 Neophyte 107 Nesh 118 Niggot 85 Nimm 118 Noonscape 129 Noonshun 129 Normal 72 Nostril 251 Nugget 85 Nuncheon 128

 Oblige 69 Obsequies 241 Oculissimus 90 Orange 241 Orichalcum 237 Ornamentation 72 Orrery 87 Orthography 245

 Pagan 202 Painful, painfulness 186 Pandar, pandarism 89 Panorama 107 Pasquinade 87 Patch 87 Pate 146 Pease 159 Peck 193 Pester 84 Philauty 105 Photography 72 Physician 101 Pigmy 229 Pinchpenny 144 Pleurisy 244 Plunder 73, 106 Poet 101 Polite 200 Polytheism 107 Porcupine 253 Porpoise 63 Postremissimus 91 Potecary 64 Prævaricator 196 Pragmatical 206 Préliber 56 Preposterous 195 Prestige 68 Prevaricate 196 Privado 16 Prose, proser 206 Punctilio 16 Punto 16 Pyramid 235

 Quellio 17 Quinsey 63 Quirpo 16 Quirry 64

 Rakehell 145 Rame 241 Rathe, rathest 138 Realmrape 119 Recover 233 Redingote 63 Refuse 241 Regoldar 149 Religion 183 Renegade 254 Renown 103 Resent 233 Reynard 89 Rhyme 245 Riches 159 Rickets 243 Righteousness 137 Rodomontade 89 Rome 227 Rootfast 119 Rosen 162 Ruly 136 Runagate 254

 Sag 118 Sardanapalisme 88 Sash 63 Satellites 61 Satire, satirical 250 Satyr, satyric 249, 250 Scent 232 Schimmer 118 Scrip 232 Seamster, seamstress 155, 156 Selfish, selfishness 105 Sentiment 107 Sepoy 240 Serene 135 Shrewd, shrewdness 209 Silhouette 88 Silvern 163 Silvicultrix 77 Siren 247 Skinker 117 Skip 147 Slick 132 Smellfeast 143 Smug 146 Solidarity 70 Songster, songstress 155, 156 Sorcerer 101 Spencer 88 Sperr 118 Spheterize 72 Spinner, spinster 156 Starconner 120 Starvation 80 Starve 192 Stereotype 72 Stonen 163 Suckstone 120 Sudden 220 Suicide 105 Suicism, suist 105 Sündflut 238 Sunstead 120 Swindler 74 Sycophant 208

 Tabinet 88 Tapster 157 Tarre 118 Tartar 237 Tartary 238 Tea 227 Theriac 187 Thou 171 Thrasonical 89 Tind 118 Tinnen 163 Tinsel 180 Tinsel-slippered 180 Tontine 88 Topsy-turvy 215 Tosspot 144 Tram 88 Treacle 187 Trigger 73 Trounce 147 Turban 13

 Umstroke 120 Uncouth 124

 Vancurrier 64 Vicinage 63 Villain 201, 208 Volcano 86 Voltaic 88 Voyage 191

 Wanhope 117 Waterfright 120 Watershed 103 Weed 192 Welk 118 Welkin 158 Welsh rabbit 240 Whole 234 Windflower 120 Wiseacre 240 Witch 101 Witticism 106 Witwanton 119 Woburn 220 Woodbine 229 Worship 185 Wörterbuch 111

 Yard 193 Youngster 156

 Zoology 107 Zoophyte 107

THE END. 

Butler & Tanner, The Selwood Printing Works, Frome, and London. 

 * * * * *

{TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE

Variation in the spelling of the names Jonson/Johnson, Spenser/Spencer, and Ralegh/Raleigh is as in the original. 

The following have been left as they appear in the original:

 fetisch There are who venture substraction tanquum consummata (probable error for “tamquam consumpta”) divergencies In ‘grogra_m_’ we are entirely to seek

The following obvious printing errors have been corrected:

 LECTURE I

 _ORIGINAL TEXT_ _CHANGE_ up words n every quarter in el lagarto’ removed quote mark ‘trespasses’ might be substitued substituted matter than in our authorized Authorized Galations v. 19 Galatians artificial, made-up, facititious factitious such doublets is given by Pro f Prof. 

 LECTURE II

 _ORIGINAL TEXT_ _CHANGE_ masterpieces of antient ancient Ἡθος is a word at Ἠθος at other times ‘vìrtue’. Vírtue ‘hcáracter’ with Spenser; charácter perfectly well recognised recognized Shakesspeare than we find now Shakespeare ‘maumet’, meaning an idol{95} added comma after footnote marker ‘aretinisms’, from an, removed comma after “an” whith hitherto they held which Missouri and the Missisippi Mississippi things lacking, would have mended added comma after “mended” εἰδωλον εἴδωλον “The word t must be it we have in common with the French added period after “French” Language Français_, p. 12. Langage ἀνάθέμα ἀνάθεμα ‘fursehung’ and ‘vorsehung’ fürsehung ἀμφιβια ἀμφίβια πολυθεισμος πολυθεϊσμος

 LECTURE III

 _ORIGINAL TEXT_ _CHANGE_ so dose ‘flitter-mouse’ does is an old preterite præterite instrinsic value it may possess. Intrinsic which it belongs; being the same added “)” before semicolon ‘guideress’; ‘charmeress’ changed semicolon to comma superlatives as ‘griveousest’ grievousest ‘dwarfling’, ‘sherperdling’ shepherdling _contráry_ run”--_Shakespeare. _ added period after quotes their charms”. --_Spenser, _ changed comma to period _bu h-sum_, i. E. ‘bow-some’, buch-sum

 LECTURE IV

 _ORIGINAL TEXT_ _CHANGE_ Shakespeare in _I Henry VI_ changed I to 1 words justI quoted have conveyed? I just misapprehension in their persual perusal as by sea, was a ‘voyage’, changed final comma to period Langage Francais_, p. 347 Français before they return back again. Added double quotes after “again” 1589, p. 181 (ed. 181, ed. _Preface to Bible_, 1611. Added “)” before period Secker, _Sermons_, iii, 85 (ed. 85, ed. 

 LECTURE V

 _ORIGINAL TEXT_ _CHANGE_ of the arbitary in spelling arbitrary ‘vert’, ‘verre’ and ‘vers’, changed final comma to period v corresponding in the Greek. Changed “v” to υ and a very horried one horrid χ υμο χυμός Croker’s edit. 1848, pp. 57 ‘5’ unclear in the original the Provencal ‘adventura’. Provençal oua ‘aunt’. Our

 INDEX

 _ORIGINAL TEXT_ _CHANGE_ Alcove 15 16 Book 20 21 Creansur 46 45 Flota 16 17 Galvanism 9 88 Girdle 20 21 Hooker 15 16 Icefield 73 74 Imp 215 205 Kirtle 20 21 Matachin 16 17 Milken 162 163 Postremissimus 90 91 Quellio 16 17 Rosen 161 162 Silvern 162 163 Stonen 162 163 Tapster 156 157}