Chapter IV: Preface: To the First Edition (3)

There are not a few other French words which like ‘prestige’ are at this moment hovering on the verge of English, hardly knowing whether they shall become such, or no. Such are ‘ennui’, ‘exploitation’, ‘verve’, ‘persiflage’, ‘badinage’, ‘chicane’, ‘finesse’, and others; all of them often employed by us,--and it is out of such frequent employment that adoption proceeds,--because expressing shades of meaning not expressed by any words of our own{67}. Some of these, we may confidently anticipate, will complete their naturalization; others will after a time retreat again, and become for us avowedly French. ‘Solidarity’, a word which we owe to the French Communists, and which signifies a fellowship in gain and loss, in honour and dishonour, in victory and defeat, a being, so to speak, all in the same bottom, is so convenient, that unattractive as confessedly it is, it will be in vain to struggle against its reception. The newspapers already have it, and books will not long exclude it; not to say that it has established itself in German, and probably in other European languages as well.

{Sidenote: _Greek in English_}

Greek and Latin words also we still continue to adopt, although now no longer in troops and companies, but only one by one. With the lively interest which always has been felt in classical studies among us, and which will continue to be felt, so long as any greatness and nobleness survive in our land, it must needs be that accessions from these quarters would never cease altogether. I do not refer here to purely scientific terms; these, so long as they continue such, and do not pass beyond the threshold of the science or sciences for the use of which they were invented, being never heard on the lips, or employed in the writings, of any but the cultivators of these sciences, have no right to be properly called words at all. They are a kind of shorthand of the science, or algebraic notation; and will not find place in a dictionary of the language, constructed upon true principles, but rather in a technical dictionary apart by themselves. Of these, compelled by the advances of physical science, we have coined multitudes out of number in these later times, fashioning them mainly from the Greek, no other language within our reach yielding itself at all so easily to our needs.

Of non-scientific words, both Greek and Latin, some have made their way among us quite in these latter times. Burke in the House of Commons is said to have been the first who employed the word ‘inimical’{68}. He also launched the verb ‘to spheterize’ in the sense of to appropriate or make one’s own; but this without success. Others have been more fortunate; ‘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 the popular language. ‘Photography’ is an example of what I was just now speaking of--namely, a scientific word which has travelled beyond the limits of the science which it designates and which gave it birth. ‘Stereotype’ is another word of the same character. It was invented--not the thing, but the word,--by Didot not very long since; but it is now absorbed into healthy general circulation, being current in a secondary and figurative sense. Ruskin has given to ‘ornamentation’ the sanction and 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 German languages, which, if not sisters, may at least be regarded as first cousins, it is somewhat remarkable that almost since the day when they parted company, each to fulfil its own destiny, there has been little further commerce between them in the matter of giving or taking. At any rate adoptions on our part from the German have been till within this period extremely rare. ‘Crikesman’ (Kriegsmann) and ‘brandschat’ (Brandschatz), with some other German words common enough in the _State Papers_ of the sixteenth century, found no permanent place in the language. The explanation lies in the fact that the literary activity of Germany did not begin till very late, nor our interest in it till later still, not indeed till the beginning of the present century. Yet ‘plunder’, as I have mentioned elsewhere, was brought back from Germany about the beginning of our Civil Wars, by the soldiers who had served under Gustavus Adolphus and his captains{71}. And ‘trigger’, written ‘tricker’ in _Hudibras_ is manifestly the German ‘drücker’{72}, though none of our dictionaries have marked it as such; a word first appearing at 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 earlier voyagers, often as they speak of the ‘icefield’, which yet is not exactly the same thing. An English ‘swindler’ is not exactly a German ‘schwindler’, yet the notion of the ‘nebulo’, though more latent in the German, is common to both; and we must have drawn the word from Germany{73} (it is not an old one in our tongue) during the course of the last century. If ‘_life_-guard’ was originally, as Richardson suggests, ‘_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 the accession of the House of Hanover, or at any rate before the arrival of Dutch William with his memorable guards; while ‘lifeguard’, in its present shape, is certainly an older word in the language; we hear often of 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. With several German compound words we have been in recent times so well pleased, that we must needs adopt them into English, or imitate them in it. We have not always been very happy in those which we have selected for imitation or adoption. Thus we might have been satisfied with ‘manual’, and not called back from its nine hundred years of oblivion that ugly and unnecessary word ‘handbook’. And now we are threatened with ‘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 rate modern in its secondary application) has not, indeed, been adopted, but is evidently the pattern on which we have formed ‘onesided’--a word to which a few years ago something of affectation was attached; so that any one who employed it at once gave evidence that he was more or less a dealer in German wares; it has however its manifest conveniences, and will hold its ground. ‘Fatherland’ (Vaterland) on the contrary will scarcely establish itself among us, the note of affectation will continue to cleave to it, and we shall go on contented with ‘native country’ to the end{75}. The most successful of these compounded words, borrowed recently from the German, is ‘folk-lore’, and the substitution of this for popular superstitions, must be esteemed, I think, an unquestionable gain{76}.

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

{Sidenote: _Compound Words_}

And first, it can bring its own words into new combinations; it can join two, and sometimes even more than two, of the words which it already has, and form out of them a new one. Much more is wanted here than merely to attach two or more words to one another by a hyphen; this is not to make a new word: they must really coalesce and grow together. Different languages, and even the same language at different stages of its existence, will possess this power of forming new words by the combination of old in very different degrees. The eminent felicity of the Greek in this respect has been always acknowledged. “The joints of her compounded words”, says Fuller, “are so naturally oiled, that they run nimbly on the tongue, which makes them though long, never tedious, because significant”{77}. Sir Philip Sidney boasts of the capability of our English language in this respect--that “it is particularly happy in the 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 make manifest what may be effected by this marriage of words. Many of his compound epithets, as ‘golden-tressed’, ‘tinsel-slippered’, ‘coral-paven’, ‘flowry-kirtled’, ‘violet-embroidered’, ‘vermeil-tinctured’, are themselves poems in miniature. Not unworthy to be set beside these are Sylvester’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 very inferior: they could hardly fail to be so, seeing that the formative, plastic powers of a language are always waning and diminishing more and more. It may be, and indeed is, gaining in other respects, but in this it is losing; and thus it is not strange if its later births in this kind are less successful than its earlier. Among the poets of our own time Shelley has done more than any other to assert for the language that it has not quite renounced this power; while among writers of prose in 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 have issued this money from their mint. Still we ought not to forget, while we divert ourselves with the strange and formless progeny of his brain, that we owe ‘international’ to him--a word at once so convenient and supplying so real a need, that it was, and with manifest advantage, at once adopted by all{79}.

{Sidenote: _Adjectives ending in al_}

Another way in which languages increase their stock of vocables is by the forming of new words according to the analogy of formations, which in seemingly parallel cases have been already allowed. Thus long since upon certain substantives such as ‘congregation’, ‘convention’, were formed their adjectives, ‘congregational’, ‘conventional’; yet these also at a comparatively modern period; ‘congregational’ first rising up in the Assembly of Divines, or during the time of the Commonwealth{80}. These having found admission into the language, it is attempted to repeat the process in the case of other words with the same ending. I confess the effect is often exceedingly disagreeable. We are now pretty well used to ‘educational’, and the word is sometimes serviceable enough; but I can perfectly remember when some twenty years ago an “_Educational_ Magazine” was started, the first impression on one’s mind was, that a work having to do with education should not thus bear upon its front an offensive, or to 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 dissenting magazines at least, the monstrous birth, ‘denominationalism’; ‘emotional’ is creeping into books{82}, ‘sensational’, and others as well, so that it is hard to say where this influx will stop, or whether all our words with this termination will not finally generate an adjective. Convenient as you may sometimes find these, I would yet certainly counsel you to abstain from all but the perfectly well recognized formations of this kind. There may be cases of exception; but for the most part Pope’s advice is good, as certainly it is safe, that we be not among the last to use a word which is going out, nor among the first to employ one that is coming in.

‘Starvation’ is another word of comparatively recent introduction, formed in like manner on the model of preceding formations of an apparently similar character--its first formers, indeed, not observing that they were putting a Latin termination to a Saxon word. Some have supposed it to have reached us from America. It has not however travelled from so great a distance, being a stranger indeed, yet not from beyond the Atlantic, but only from beyond the Tweed. It is an old Scottish word, but unknown in England, till used by Mr. Dundas, the first Viscount Melville, in an American debate in 1775. That it then jarred 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 recovering treasures which for a while had been lost by them or forgone. I do not mean that all which drops out of use _is_ loss; there are words which it is gain to be rid of; which it would be folly to wish to revive; of which Dryden, setting himself against an extravagant zeal in this direction, says in an ungracious comparison--they do “not deserve this redemption, any more than the crowds of men who daily die, or are slain for sixpence in a battle, merit to be restored to life, if a wish could revive them”{84}. There are others, however, which it is a real gain to draw back again from the temporary oblivion which had overtaken them; and this process of their setting and rising again, or of what, to use another image, we might call their suspended animation, is not so unfrequent as at first might be supposed.

You may perhaps remember that Horace, tracing in a few memorable lines the history of words, while he notes that many once current have now dropped out of use, does not therefore count that of necessity their race is for ever run; on the contrary he confidently anticipates a _palingenesy_ for many among them{85}; and I am convinced that there has been such in the case of our English words to a far greater extent than we are generally aware. Words slip almost or quite as imperceptibly back into use as they once slipped out of it. Let me produce a few facts in evidence of this. In the contemporary gloss which an anonymous friend of Spenser’s furnished to his _Shepherd’s Calendar_, first published in 1579, “for the exposition of old words”, as he declares, he thinks it expedient to include in his list, the following, ‘dapper’, ‘scathe’, ‘askance’, ‘sere’, ‘embellish’, ‘bevy’, ‘forestall’, ‘fain’, with not a few 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}, and among 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 ‘to hallow’ that it is now even obsolescent? and yet Wallis two hundred years ago observed--“It has almost gone out of use” (fer. desuevit). It would be difficult to find an example of the verb, ‘to advocate’, between Milton and Burke{87}. Franklin, a close observer in such matters, as he was himself an admirable master of English style, considered the word to have sprung up during his own residence in Europe. In this indeed he was mistaken; it had only during this period revived{88}. Johnson says of ‘jeopardy’ that it is a “word not now in use”; 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 not merely as near, but much nearer, to us than Dryden and his cotemporaries felt him to be to them. He and the writers of his time make exactly the same sort of complaints, only in still stronger language, about his archaic phraseology and the obscurities which it involves, that are made at the present day. Thus in the _Preface_ to his _Tales from Chaucer_, having quoted some not very difficult lines from the earlier poet whom he was modernizing, he proceeds: “You have here a specimen of Chaucer’s language, which is so obsolete that his sense is scarce to be understood”. Nor was it merely thus with respect of Chaucer. These wits and poets of the Court of Charles the Second were conscious of a greater gulf between themselves and the Elizabethan era, separated from them by little more than fifty years, than any of which _we_ are aware, separated from it by nearly two centuries more. I do not mean merely that they felt themselves more removed from its tone and spirit; their altered circumstances might explain this; but I am convinced that they found a greater difficulty and strangeness in the language of Spenser and Shakespeare than we find now; that it sounded in many ways more uncouth, more old-fashioned, more abounding in obsolete terms than it does in our ears at the present. Only in this way can I explain the tone in which they are accustomed to speak of these worthies of the near past. I must again cite Dryden, the truest representative of literary England in its good and in its evil during the last half of the seventeenth century. Of Spenser, whose death was separated from his own birth by little more than thirty years, he speaks as of one belonging to quite a different epoch, counting it much to say, “Notwithstanding his obsolete language, he is still intelligible”{90}. Nay, hear what his judgment is of Shakespeare himself, so far as language is concerned: “It must be allowed to the present age that the tongue in general is so much refined since Shakespeare’s time, that many of his words and more of his phrases are scarce intelligible. And of those which we understand, some are ungrammatical, others coarse; and his whole style is so pestered with figurative expressions, that it is as affected as it is obscure”{91}.

{Sidenote: _Nugget_, _Ingot_}

Sometimes a word will emerge anew from the undercurrent of society, not indeed new, but yet to most seeming as new, its very existence having been altogether forgotten by the larger number of those speaking the language; although it must have somewhere lived on upon the lips of men. Thus, for instance, since the Californian and Australian discoveries of gold we hear often of a ‘nugget’ of gold; being a lump of the pure metal; and there has been some discussion whether the word has been born for 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. I would 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 nearly in 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 suggestion that ‘nugget’ is only ‘ingot’ disguised, seeing that there wants nothing but the very common transposition of the first two letters to bring that out of this{93}.

{Sidenote: _Words from Proper Names_}

New words are often formed from the names of persons, actual or mythical. Some one has observed how interesting would be a complete collection, or a collection approaching to completeness, in any language of 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 introduction endeavour to enumerate as many as I can remember of the words which have by this method been introduced into our language. To begin with mythical antiquity--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 on Spenser’s and Shelley’s authority be allowed. Gordius, the Phrygian king who tied that famous ‘gordian’ knot which Alexander cut, will supply a natural transition from mythical to historical. Here Mausolus, a king of Caria, has left us ‘mausoleum’, Academus ‘academy’, Epicurus ‘epicure’, Philip of Macedon a ‘philippic’, being such a discourse as Demosthenes once launched against the enemy of Greece, and Cicero ‘cicerone’. Mithridates, who had made himself poison-proof, gave us the now forgotten word ‘mithridate’, for antidote; as from Hippocrates we derived ‘hipocras’, or ‘ypocras’, a word often occurring in our early poets, being a wine supposed to be mingled after his receipt. Gentius, a king of Illyria, gave his name to the plant ‘gentian’, having been, it is said, the first to discover its virtues. A grammar used to be called a ‘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 a legend that the ‘knot’ or sandpiper is named from Canute or Knute, with whom 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’ as Gabriel Harvey calls him, named Aretine; these being probably not intended even by their authors to endure; a Roman cobbler named Pasquin has given us the ‘pasquil’ or ‘pasquinade’; ‘patch’ in the sense of fool, and often so used by Shakespeare, was originally the proper name of a favourite fool of Cardinal Wolsey{96}; Colonel Negus in Queen Anne’s time first mixed the beverage which goes by his name; Lord Orrery was the first for whom an ‘orrery’ was constructed; and Lord Spencer first wore, or at least first brought into fashion, a ‘spencer’. Dahl, a Swede, introduced the cultivation of the ‘dahlia’, and M. Tabinet, a French Protestant refugee, the making of the stuff called ‘tabinet’ in Dublin; in ‘_tram_-road’, the second syllable of the name of Ou_tram_, the inventor, survives{97}. The ‘tontine’ was conceived by an Italian named Tonti; and another Italian, Galvani, first noted the phenomena of animal electricity or ‘galvanism’; while a third Italian, ‘Volta’, gave a name to the ‘voltaic’ battery. ‘Martinet’, ‘mackintosh’, ‘doyly’, ‘brougham’, ‘to macadamize’, ‘to burke’, are all names of persons or from persons, and then transferred to things, on the score of some connection existing between the one and other{98}.

Again the names of popular characters in literature, such as have taken strong hold on the national mind, give birth to a number of new words. Thus from Homer we have ‘mentor’ for a monitor; ‘stentorian’, for loud-voiced; and inasmuch as with all of Hector’s nobleness there is a certain amount of big talking about him, he has given us ‘to hector’{99}; while the medieval romances about the siege of Troy ascribe to Pandarus that shameful ministry out of which his name has past into the words ‘to pandar’ and ‘pandarism’. ‘Rodomontade’ is from Rodomont, a blustering and boasting hero of Boiardo, adopted by Ariosto; ‘thrasonical’, from Thraso, the braggart of the Roman comedy. Cervantes has given us ‘quixotic’; Swift ‘lilliputian’; to Molière the French language owes ‘tartuffe’ and ‘tartufferie’. ‘Reynard’ too, which with us is a duplicate for fox, while in the French ‘renard’ has quite excluded the older ‘volpils’, was originally not the name of a kind, but the proper name of the fox-hero, the vulpine Ulysses, in that famous beast-epic of the middle ages, _Reineke Fuchs_; the immense popularity of which we gather from many evidences, from none more clearly than from this. ‘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 fortune to the same extent of actually putting out in any language the names which before existed, but still have become quite familiar to us all.

We must not count as new words properly so called, although they may delay us for a minute, those comic words, most often comic combinations formed at will, and sometimes of enormous length, in which, as plays and displays of power, great writers ancient and modern have delighted. These for the most part are meant to do service for the moment, and then to pass away{101}. The inventors of them had themselves no intention of fastening them permanently on the language. Thus among the Greeks Aristophanes coined μελλονικιάω, to loiter like Nicias, with allusion to the delays with which this prudent commander sought to put off the disastrous Sicilian expedition, with not a few other familiar to every scholar. The humour of them sometimes consists in their enormous length, as in the ἀμφιπτολεμοπηδησίστρατος of Eupolis; the σπερμαγοραιολεκιθολαχανόπωλις of Aristophanes; sometimes in their mingled observance and transgression of the laws of the language, as in the ‘oculissimus’ of Plautus, a comic superlative of ‘oculus’; ‘occisissimus’ of ‘occisus’; as in the ‘dosones’, ‘dabones’, which in Greek and in medieval Latin were names given to those who were ever promising, ever saying “I will give” but never performing their promise. Plautus with his exuberant wit, and exulting in his mastery and command of the Latin language, will compose four or five lines consisting entirely of comic combinations thrown off for the occasion{102}. Of the same character is Butler’s ‘cynarctomachy’, or battle of a dog and bear. Nor do I suppose that Fuller, when he used ‘to avunculize’, to imitate or follow in the steps of one’s uncle, or Cowper, when he suggested ‘extraforaneous’ for out of doors, in the least intended them as lasting additions to the language.

{Sidenote: ‘_To Chouse_’}

Sometimes a word springs up in a very curious way; here is one, not having, I suppose, any great currency except among schoolboys; yet being no invention of theirs, but a genuine English word, though of somewhat late birth in the language, I mean ‘to chouse’. It has a singular origin. The word is, as I have mentioned already, a Turkish one, and signifies ‘interpreter’. Such an interpreter or ‘chiaous’ (written ‘chaus’ in Hackluyt, ‘chiaus’ in Massinger), being attached to the Turkish embassy in England, committed in the year 1609 an enormous fraud on the Turkish and Persian merchants resident in London. He succeeded in cheating them of a sum amounting to £4000--a sum very much greater at that day than at the present. From the vast dimensions of the fraud, and the notoriety which attended it, any one who cheated or defrauded was said ‘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, or perhaps rather another way in which it increases its vocabulary, for a question might arise whether the words thus produced ought to be called new. I mean through the splitting of single words into two or even more. The impulse and suggestion to this is in general first given by varieties in pronunciation, which are presently represented by varieties in spelling; but the result very often is that what at first were only precarious and arbitrary differences in this, come in the end to be regarded as entirely different words; they detach themselves from one another, not again to reunite; just as accidental varieties in fruits or flowers, produced at hazard, have yet permanently separated off, and settled into different kinds. They have each its own distinct domain of meaning, as by general agreement assigned to it; dividing the inheritance between them, which hitherto they held in common. No one who has not had his attention called to this matter, who has not watched and catalogued these words as they have come under his notice, would at all believe 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 distinctly marked, that the separation may be regarded as complete. Examples of this 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 with a 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’;--or with 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 a dropping of the last syllable, as ‘Britany’ and ‘Britain’; ‘crony’ and ‘crone’;--or without losing a syllable, with more or less stress laid on the 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_ a passion 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 surviving only 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 commonly spelt ‘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 initial consonants, 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 of the word, as between ‘cancer’ and ‘canker’; ‘nipple’ and ‘nibble’; ‘tittle’ and ‘title’; ‘price’ and ‘prize’; ‘consort’ and ‘concert’;--or there 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_; out of 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’ (now obsolete); ‘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 the rigorous and accurate pronunciation of a word, a popular as well; and this 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 of correction); ‘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 these heads; 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 two forms of the word into two words is in the spelling only, and of a character to be appreciable only by the eye, escaping altogether the ear: 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, in every case that there has attached itself to the different forms of a word a modification of meaning more or less sensible, that each has won for 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 the same event in ‘divers’ manner, but not in ‘diverse’. ‘Antique’ is ancient, but ‘antic’, is now the ancient regarded as overlived, out of date, and so in our days grotesque, ridiculous; and then, with a dropping 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 be admitted. ‘Ingenious’ expresses a mental, ‘ingenuous’ a moral, excellence{118}. A gardener ‘prunes’, or trims his trees, properly indeed his _vines_ alone (pro_vigner_), birds ‘preen’ or trim their feathers. 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 it is nearly as distant from ‘gambolling’ as hell is from heaven{119}. Nor would it be hard, in almost every pair or larger group of words which I have adduced, as in others which no doubt might be added to complete the list, to trace a difference of meaning which has obtained a more or less distinct recognition{120}.

But my subject is inexhaustible; it has no limits except those, which indeed may be often narrow enough, imposed by my own ignorance on the one side; and on the other, by the necessity of consulting your patience, and of only choosing such matter as will admit a popular setting forth. These necessities, however, bid me to pause, and suggest that I should not look round for other quarters from whence accessions of new words are derived. Doubtless I should not be long without finding many such. I must satisfy myself for the rest with a very brief consideration of the _motives_ which, as they have been, are still at work among us, inducing us to seek for these augmentations of our vocabulary.

And first, the desire of greater clearness is a frequent motive and inducement to this. It has been well and truly said: “Every new term, expressing a fact or a difference not precisely or adequately expressed by any other word in the same language, is a new organ of thought for the mind that has learned it”{121}. The limits of their vocabulary are in fact for most men the limits of their knowledge; and in a great degree for us all. Of course I do not affirm that it is absolutely impossible to have our mental conceptions clearer and more distinct than our words; but it is very hard to have, and still harder to keep, them so. And therefore it is that men, conscious of this, so soon as ever they have learned to distinguish in their minds, are urged by an almost irresistible impulse to distinguish also in their words. They feel that nothing is made sure till this is done.

{Sidenote: _Dissimilation of Words_}

The sense that a word covers too large a space of meaning, is the frequent occasion of the introduction of another, which shall relieve it of a portion of this. Thus, there was a time when ‘witch’ was applied equally to male and female dealers in unlawful magical arts. Simon Magus, for example, and Elymas are both ‘witches’, in Wiclif’s _New Testament_ (Acts viii. 9; xiii. 8), and Posthumus in _Cymbeline_: but when 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 was confined 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; but did not formerly exist, because they were not required in the period preceding. For example, in Greece so long as the poet sang his own verses ‘singer’ (ἀοιδὸς) sufficiently expressed the double function; such a ‘singer’ was Homer, and such Homer describes Demodocus, the bard of the Phæacians; that double function, in fact, not being in his time contemplated as double, but each part of it so naturally completing the other, that no second word was required. When, however, in the division of 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 this meaning as well as that other which it still retains; but when the investigation of nature and natural causes detached itself from the art of healing, became an independent study of itself, the name ‘physician’ remained to that which was as the stock and stem of the art, while the new offshoot sought out a new name for itself.

Another motive to the invention of new words, is the desire thereby to cut short lengthy{122} explanations, tedious circuits of language. Science is often an immense gainer by words, which say singly what it would have taken whole sentences otherwise to have said. Thus ‘isothermal’ is quite of modern invention; but what a long story it would be to tell the meaning of ‘_isothermal_ lines’, all which is summed up in and saved by the word. We have long had the word ‘assimilation’ in our dictionaries; ‘dissimilation’ has not yet found its way into them, but it speedily will. It will appear first, if it has not already appeared, in our books on language{123}. I express myself with this confidence, because the advance of philological enquiry has rendered it almost a matter of necessity that we should possess a word to designate a certain process, and no other word would designate it at all so well. There is a process of ‘assimilation’ going on very extensively in language; it occurs where the organs of speech find themselves helped by changing a letter for another which has 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 did when the word ‘renommée’ was first naturalized, but ‘re_n_ow_n_’. At the same time there is another opposite process, where some letter would recur too often for euphony or comfort in speaking, if the strict form of the word were too closely held fast, and where consequently this letter is exchanged for some other, generally for some nearly allied; thus it is at least a reasonable suggestion, that ‘cœ_r_uleum’ was once ‘cœ_l_uleum’, from cœlum: so too the Italians prefer ‘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 have shrunk from the double ‘_r_’ of ‘turtur’ and ‘purpura’; and this process of _making unlike_, requiring a term to express it, will create, or indeed has created, the word ‘dissimilation’, which probably will in due time establish itself among us in far wider than its primary use.

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

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

{Sidenote: ‘_Selfishness_’, ‘_Suicide_’}

Again, new words are coined out of the necessity which men feel of filling up gaps in the language. Thoughtful men, comparing their own language with that of other nations, become conscious of deficiencies, of important matters unexpressed in their own, and with more or less success proceed to supply the deficiency. For example, that sin of sins, the undue love of self, with the postponing of the interests of all others 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 found no popular acceptance. This failing, men turned to the Latin; one writer trying 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 which to us seem obvious enough, but which yet are little more than two hundred [and fifty] years old{125}.

{Sidenote: _Notices of New Words_}

Before quitting this part of the subject, let me say a few words in conclusion on this deliberate introduction of words to supply felt omissions in a language, and the limits within which this or any other conscious interference with the development of a language is desirable or possible. By the time that a people begin to meditate upon their language, to be aware by a conscious reflective act either of its merits or deficiencies, by far the greater and more important part of its work is done; it is fixed in respect of its structure in immutable forms; the region in which any alteration or modification, addition to it, or substraction from it, deliberately devised and carried out, may be possible, is very limited indeed. Its great laws are too firmly established to admit of this; so that almost nothing can be taken from it, 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 be as easy almost to alter the career of a planet as for man to alter these. This is sometimes a subject of regret with those who see what they believe manifest defects or blemishes in their language, and such as appear to them capable of remedy. And yet in fact this is well; since for once that these redressers of real or fancied wrongs, these suppliers of things lacking, would have mended, we may be tolerably confident that ten times, yea, a hundred times, they would have marred; letting go that which would have been well retained; retaining that which by a necessary law the language now dismisses and lets go; and in manifold ways interfering with those processes of a natural logic, which are here evermore at work. The genius of a language, unconsciously presiding over all its transformations, and conducting them to a definite issue, will have been a far truer, far safer guide, than the artificial wit, however subtle, of any single man, or of any association of men. For the genius of a language is the sense and inner conviction of all who speak it, as to what it ought to be, and the means by which it will best attain its objects; and granting that a pair of eyes, or two or three pairs of eyes may see much, yet millions of eyes will certainly see more.

{Sidenote: _German Purists_}

It is only with the words, and not with the forms and laws of a language, that any interference such as I have just supposed is possible. Something, indeed much, may here be done by wise masters, in the way of rejecting that which would deform, allowing and adopting that which will strengthen and enrich. Those who would purify or enrich a language, 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 illustration of this than our own would do, that I shall make no scruple in seeking my examples there. When the patriotic Germans began to wake up to a consciousness of the enormous encroachments which foreign languages, the Latin and French above all, had made on their native tongue, the lodgements which they had therein effected, and the danger which threatened it, namely, that it should cease to be German at all, but only a mingle-mangle, a variegated patchwork of many languages, without any unity or inner coherence at all, various societies were instituted among them, at the beginning and during the course of the seventeenth century, for the recovering of what was lost of their own, for the expelling of that which had intruded from abroad; and these with excellent effect.

But more effectual than these societies were the efforts of single men, who in this merited well of their country{126}. In respect of words which are now entirely received by the whole nation, it is often possible to designate the writers who first substituted them for some affected Gallicism or unnecessary Latinism. Thus to Lessing his 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 of a multitude of excellent words, for which often he had to do earnest battle at the first; such were ‘seligkeit’, ‘anmuth’, ‘entzückung’, ‘festlich’, ‘entwirren’, with many more. For ‘maskerade’, Campe would have fain substituted ‘larventanz’. It was a novelty when Büsching called 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 its use dating earlier than 1719.

Yet at the same time it must be acknowledged that some of these reformers proceeded with more zeal than knowledge, while others did whatever in them lay to make the whole movement absurd--even as there ever hang on the skirts of a noble movement, be it in literature or politics or higher things yet, those who contribute their little all to bring ridicule and contempt upon it. Thus in the reaction against foreign interlopers which ensued, and in the zeal to purify the language from them, some went to such extravagant excesses as to desire to get rid of ‘testament’, ‘apostel’, which last Campe would have replaced by ‘lehrbote’, with other words like these, consecrated by longest use, and to find native substitutes in their room; or they understood so little what words deserved to be called foreign, or how to draw the line between them and native, that they would fain have gotten rid of ‘vater’, ‘mutter’, ‘wein’, ‘fenster’, ‘meister’, ‘kelch’{127}; the first three of which belong to the German language by just as good a right as they do to the Latin and the Greek; while the other three have been naturalized so long that to propose to expel them now was as if, having passed an alien act for the banishment of all foreigners, we should proceed to include under that name, and as such drive forth from the kingdom, the descendants of the French Protestants who found refuge here at the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, or even of the Flemings who settled among us in the time of our Edwards. One notable enthusiast in this line proposed to create an entirely new nomenclature for all the mythological personages of the Greek and the Roman pantheon, who, one would think, might have been allowed, if any, to retain their Greek and Latin names. So far however from this, they were to exchange these for equivalent 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 the warning extends much further than to the matter in hand) of making a good cause ridiculous by our manner of supporting it, of assuming that exaggerations on one side can only be redressed by exaggerations as great 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.]