Chapter V: Preface: To the First Edition (4)

{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 that it 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 as little continuing exactly the same, or in the same relations to one another, as do the atoms which at any one moment make up our bodies remain for ever without subtraction or addition. As I then undertook for my especial subject to trace some of the acquisitions which our own language 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 avert any possible misapprehensions of my meaning.

It is certain that all languages must, or at least all languages do in the end, perish. They run their course; not at all at the same rate, for the tendency to change is different in different languages, both from internal causes (mechanism and the like), and also from causes external to the language, laid in the varying velocities of social progress and social 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 has arrived, they disappear, leaving no traces behind them. On the contrary, out of their death a new life comes forth; they pass into new forms, the materials of which they were composed more or less survive, but these now organized in new shapes and according to other laws of life. Thus for example, the Latin perishes as a living language, but a chief part of the words that composed it live on in the four daughter languages, French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese; or the six, if we count the Provençal and Wallachian; not a few in our own. Still in their own proper being languages perish and pass away; there are dead records of what they were in books; not living men who speak them any more. Seeing then that they thus die, they must have had the germs of a possible decay 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, the causes which thus bring about their final dissolution must have been actually at work very long before the results began to be visible. Indeed, very often it is with them as with states, which, while in some respects they are knitting and strengthening, in others are already unfolding the seeds of their future and, it may be, still remote overthrow. Equally in these and those, in states and in languages, it would be a serious mistake to assume that all up to a certain point and period is growth and gain, while all after is decay and loss. On the contrary, there are long periods during which growth in some directions is going hand in hand with decay in others; losses in one kind are being compensated, or more than compensated, by gains in another; during which 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 and gains, becoming ever fewer, cease to constitute any longer a compensation for the losses and the decay; which are ever becoming more; when the forces of disorganization and death at work are stronger than those of life and order. It is from this moment the decline of a language may properly be dated. But until that crisis and turning point has arrived, we may be quite justified in speaking of the losses of a language, and may esteem them most real, without in the least thereby implying that the period of its commencing degeneracy has begun. This may yet be far distant, and therefore when I dwell on certain losses and diminutions which our own has undergone, or is undergoing, you will not conclude that I am seeking to present it to you as now travelling the downward course to dissolution and death. This is very far from my intention. 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 parting with a word in which there is no true help, the dropping of a cumbrous or superfluous form, may itself be sometimes a most real gain. English is undoubtedly becoming different from what it has been; but only different in that it is passing into another stage of its development; only different, as the fruit is different from the flower, and the flower from the bud; having changed its merits, but not having renounced them; possessing, it may be, less of beauty, but more of usefulness; not, perhaps, serving the poet so well, but serving the historian and philosopher and theologian better than before.

One observation more let me make, before entering on the special details of my subject. It is this. The losses and diminutions of a language differ in one respect from its gains and acquisitions--namely, that they are of _two_ kinds, while its gains are only of _one_. Its gains are only in _words_; it never puts forth in the course of its evolution a new _power_; it never makes for itself a new case, or a new tense, or a new comparative. But its losses are both in words and in _powers_--in words of course, but in powers also: it leaves behind it, as it travels onwards, cases which it once possessed; renounces the employment of tenses which it once used; forgets its dual; is content with one termination both for masculine and feminine, and so on. Nor is this a peculiar feature of one language, but the universal law of all. “In all languages”, as has been well said, “there is a constant tendency to relieve themselves of that precision which chooses a fresh symbol for every shade of meaning, to lessen the amount of nice distinction, and detect as it were a royal road to the interchange of opinion”. For example, a vast number of languages had at an early period of their development, besides the singular and plural, a dual number, some even a trinal, which they have let go at a later. But what I mean by a language renouncing its powers will, I trust, be more clear to you before my lecture is concluded. This much I have here said on the matter, to explain and justify a division which I shall make, considering first the losses 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 in our language--as indeed in every other. When I speak of this, the dying out 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 the language, but not accepted by it; I refer rather to such as either belonged to the primitive stock of the language, or if not so, which had been domiciled in it long, that they might have been supposed to have found in it a lasting home. Thus not a few pure Anglo-Saxon words which lived on into the times of our early English, have subsequently dropped out of our vocabulary, sometimes leaving a gap which has never since been filled, but their places oftener taken by others which have come up in their room. Not to mention those of Chaucer and Wiclif, which are very numerous, many held their ground to far later periods, and yet have finally given way. That beautiful word ‘wanhope’ for despair, hope which has so _waned_ that now there is an entire _want_ of it, was in use down to the reign of Elizabeth; it occurs so late as in the poems of Gascoigne{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 to embrace, ‘teene’ as vexation or grief: Shakespeare ‘to tarre’ as to provoke, ‘to sperr’ as to enclose or bar in; ‘to sag’ for to droop, or hang 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; ‘to tind’, that is, to kindle, and surviving in ‘tinder’, is used by Bishop Sanderson; ‘to nimm’, or take, as late as by Fuller. A rogue is a ‘skellum’ in Sir Thomas Urquhart. ‘Nesh’ in the sense of soft through moisture, ‘leer’ in that of empty, ‘eame’ in that of uncle, _mother’s_ brother (the German ‘oheim’), good Saxon-English once, still live on in some of our provincial dialects; so does ‘flitter-mouse’ or ‘flutter-mouse’ (mus volitans), where we should use bat. Indeed of those above named several do the same; it is so with ‘frimm’, with ‘to sag’, ‘to nimm’. ‘Heft’ employed by Shakespeare in the sense of weight, is still 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 constantly recurring word in Holland’s _Plutarch_. Were it not for Shakespeare, we should have quite forgotten that young men of hasty fiery valour were called ‘hotspurs’; and even now we regard the word rather as the proper name of one than that which would have been once alike the designation of all{132}. Fuller warns men that they should not ‘witwanton’ with God. Severe austere old men, such as, in Falstaff’s words would “hate us youth”, were ‘grimsirs’, or ‘grimsires’ once (Massinger). ‘Realmrape’ (=usurpation), occurring in _The Mirror for Magistrates_, is a vigorous word. ‘Rootfast’ and ‘rootfastness’{133} were ill lost, being worthy to have lived; so too was Lord Brooke’s ‘bookhunger’; and Baxter’s ‘word-warriors’, with which term he noted those whose strife was only about words. ‘Malingerer’ is familiar enough to military men, but I do not find it in our dictionaries; being the soldier who, out of _evil will_ (malin gré) to his work, shams and shirks and is not found in the ranks{134}.

Those who would gladly have seen the Anglo-Saxon to have predominated over the Latin element in our language, even more than it actually has done, must note with regret that in many instances a word of the former stock had been dropped, and a Latin coined to supply its place; or where the two once existed side by side, the Saxon has died, and the Latin lived 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; ‘to afterthink’ (still in use in Lancashire) for to repent; ‘medeful’, which has 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’ for prophet; ‘hundreder’ for centurion; Jewel ‘foretalk’, where we now employ 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 by side with it; ‘halfgod’ (Golding) had the advantage over ‘demigod’, that it was all of one piece; ‘to eyebite’ (Holland) told its story at least as well as to fascinate; ‘shriftfather’ as confessor; ‘earshrift’ (Cartwright) is only two syllables, while ‘auricular confession’ is eight; ‘waterfright’ is a better word than our awkward Greek hydrophobia. 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, though our dictionaries know nothing of it), might have made ‘circumference’ and ‘periphery’ unnecessary. ‘Wanhope’, as we saw just now, has given place to despair, ‘middler’ to mediator; and it would be easy to increase this list.

{Sidenote: _Local and Provincial English_}

I had occasion just now to notice the fact that many words survive in our provincial dialects, long after they have died out from the main body of the speech. The fact is one connected with so much of deep interest in the history of language that I cannot pass it thus slightly over. It is one which, rightly regarded, may assist to put us in a just point of view for estimating the character of the local and provincial in speech, and rescuing it from that unmerited contempt and neglect with which it is often regarded. I must here go somewhat further back than I could wish; but only so, only by looking at the matter in connexion with other phenomena of speech, can I hope to explain to you the worth and significance which local and provincial words and usages must oftentimes possess.

Let us then first suppose a portion of those speaking a language to have been separated off from the main body of its speakers, either through their forsaking for one cause or other of their native seats, or by the intrusion of a hostile people, like a wedge, between them and the others, forcibly keeping them asunder, and cutting off their communications one with the other, as the Saxons intruded between the Britons of Cornwall and of Wales. In such a case it will inevitably happen that before very long differences of speech will begin to reveal themselves between those to whom even dialectic distinctions may have been once unknown. The divergences will be of various kinds. Idioms will come up in the separated body, which, not being recognized and allowed by those who remain the arbiters of the language, will be esteemed by them, should they come under their notice, violations of its law, or at any rate departures from its purity. Again, where a colony has gone forth into new seats, and exists under new conditions, it is probable that the necessities, physical and moral, rising out of these new conditions, will give birth to words, which there will be nothing to call out among those who continue in the old haunts of the nation. Intercourse with new tribes and people will bring in new words, as, for instance, contact with the Indian tribes of North America has given to American English a certain number of words hardly or not at all allowed or known by us; or as the presence of a large Dutch population at the Cape 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 effectual than all these, namely, that words will in process of time be dropped by those who constitute the original stock of the nation, which will not be dropped by the offshoot; idioms which those have overlived, and have stored up in the unhonoured lumber-room of the past, will still be in use and currency among the smaller and separated section which has gone forth; and thus it will come to pass that what seems and in fact is the newer swarm, will have many older words, and very often an archaic air and old-world fashion both about the words they use, their way of pronouncing, their order and manner of combining them. Thus after the Conquest we know that our insular French gradually diverged from the French of the Continent. The Prioress in Chaucer’s _Canterbury Tales_ could speak her French “full faire and fetishly”, but it was French, as the 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, informs us that by the English colonists within the Pale in Ireland numerous words were preserved in common use, “the dregs of the old ancient Chaucer English”, as he contemptuously calls it, which had become quite obsolete and forgotten in England itself. For example, they still called a spider an ‘attercop’--a word, by the way, still in popular use in the North;--a physician a ‘leech’, as in poetry he still is called; a dunghill was still for them a ‘mixen’; (the word is still common all over 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, though containing English still, that Englishmen at their first coming over often found it hard or impossible to comprehend. We have another example of the same in what took place after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and the consequent formation of colonies of Protestant French emigrants in various places, especially in Amsterdam and other chief cities of Holland. There gradually grew up among these what came to be called ‘refugee French’, which within a generation or two diverged in several particulars from the classical language of France; its divergence being mainly occasioned by this, that it remained stationary, while the classical language was in motion; it retained usages and words, which the latter had dismissed{137}.

{Sidenote: _Provincial English_}

Nor is it otherwise in respect of our English provincialisms. It is true that our country people who in the main employ them, have not been separated by distance of space, nor yet by insurmountable obstacles intervening, from the main body of their fellow-countrymen; but they have been quite as effectually divided by deficient education. They have been, if not locally, yet intellectually, kept at a distance from the onward march of the nation’s mind; and of them also it is true that many of their words, idioms, turns of speech, which we are ready to set down as vulgarisms, solecisms of speech, violations of the primary rules of grammar, do merely attest that those who employ them have not kept abreast with the advance of the language and nation, but have been left behind by it. The usages are only local in the fact that, having once been employed by the whole body of the English people, they have now receded from the lips of all except those in some certain country districts, who have been more faithful than others to the tradition of the past{138}.

It is thus in respect of a multitude of isolated words, which were excellent Anglo-Saxon, which were excellent early English, and which only are not excellent present English, because use, which is the supreme arbiter in these matters, has decided against their further employment. Several of these I enumerated just now. It is thus also with several grammatical forms and flexions. For instance, where we decline the plural of “I sing”, “we sing”, “ye sing”, “they sing”, there are parts of England in which they would decline, “we sin_gen_”, “ye sin_gen_”, “they sin_gen_”. This is not indeed the original form of the plural, 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 mind that he does not fairly represent the language of his time, or indeed of any time, affecting a certain artificial archaism both in words and forms, continually uses it{139}. After him it becomes ever rarer, the last of whom I am aware as occasionally using it being Fuller, until it quite disappears.

{Sidenote: _Earlier and Later English_}

Of such as may now employ forms like these we must say, not that they violate the laws of the language, but only that they have taken their _permanent_ stand at a point which was only a point of transition, and which it has now left behind, and overlived. Thus, to take examples which you may hear at the present day in almost any part of England--a countryman 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_”. You would probably set these phrases down for barbarous English. They are not so at all; in one sense they are quite as good English as “He made me _afraid_”; or “The price of corn _rose_ last market day”; or “I will _ask_ him his name”. ‘Afeard’, used by Spenser, is the regular participle 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 a mispronunciation of ‘to ask’, but a genuine English form of the word, the form which in the earlier English it constantly assumed; in Wiclif’s Bible almost without exception; and indeed ‘axe’ occurs continually, I know 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 a nominative or vocative, the only permitted uses at present, would have been incorrect. Even such phrases as “Put _them_ things away”; or “The man _what_ owns the horse” are not bad, but only antiquated English{141}. Saying this, I would not in the least imply that these forms 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 and custom, and these must be our standards in what we speak, and in what we write; just as in our buying and selling we are bound to employ the current coin of the realm, must not attempt to pass that which long since has been called in, whatever merits or intrinsic value it may possess. All which I affirm is that the phrases just brought forward represent past stages of the language, and are not barbarous violations of it.

{Sidenote: _Luncheon_, _Nuncheon_}

The same may be asserted of certain ways of pronouncing words, which are now in use among the lower classes, but not among the higher; as, for example, ‘contrāry’, ‘mischiēvous’, ‘blasphēmous’, instead of ‘contrăry’, ‘mischiĕvous’, ‘blasphĕmous’. It would be abundantly easy to show by a multitude of quotations from our poets, and those reaching very far down, that these are merely the retention of the earlier pronunciation by the people, after the higher classes have abandoned it{142}. And on the strength of what has just been spoken, let me here suggest to you how well worth your while it will prove to be on the watch for provincial words and inflexions, local idioms and modes of pronunciation, and to take note of these. Count nothing in this kind beneath your notice. Do not at once ascribe anything which you hear to the 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, such as I have suggested, always have their value. If you are not able to turn them to any profit yourselves, and they may not stand in close enough connexion with your own studies for this, yet there always are those who will thank you for them; and to whom the humblest of these collections, carefully and intelligently made, will be in one way or another of real assistance{145}. And there is the more need to urge this at the present, because, notwithstanding the tenacity with which our country folk cling to their old forms and usages, still these forms and usages must now be rapidly growing fewer; and there are forces, moral and material, at work in England, which will probably cause that of those which now survive the greater part will within the next fifty years have disappeared{146}.

{Sidenote: _‘Its’ of Late Introduction_}