^/J/ 
 
 ENGLISH WORDS 
 
 AN 
 
 ELEMENTARY STUDY OF DERIVATIONS 
 
 CHARLES F. JOHNSON 
 
 PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH LITERATURE, TRINITY 
 COLLEGE, HARTFORD 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 HARPER & BROTHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE 
 
 189I
 
 Copyright, 1891, by IIarper & Brothers. 
 
 All rights reserved.
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 This book is written primarily for use as a text- 
 book in high-schools and colleges. Its object is 
 to call attention to the literary values of words as 
 far as can be done in a brief examination of deriva- 
 tions. It is hoped, therefore, that it may not be 
 without interest for that large class who, though 
 in no sense specialists, take an interest in the his- 
 tory of words, and that some young men may be 
 prompted by it to take up the study of our lan- 
 guage seriously. 
 \ My acknowledgments are due to Messrs. G. P. 
 ^ Putnam's Sons for permission to insert the tables 
 ' of Latin and English derivatives from Professor 
 ]\Iarsh"s lectures, and to the Open Court Publish- 
 ing Company of Chicago for permission to make 
 some extracts from ]\Iax >.Iuller's latest lectures. 
 
 To my colleague. Dr. Samuel Hart, I am in- 
 debted for many valuable suggestions. 
 
 Professor Skeat has been relied on as an au- 
 thority in et3'mology. 
 
 C. F. J. 
 
 Trinity College, Hartford,/;//}' 29, i8gi.
 
 CONTENTS, 
 
 CHAP. PAGE 
 
 I. THE IMPORTANXE OF LANGUAGE I 
 
 II. THE RELATIONSHIP OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE I3 
 
 III. NATURE AND PROOF OF LINGUISTIC RELATION- 
 
 SHIP 23 
 
 IV. SOURCES OF MODERN ENGLISH WORDS ... 36 
 V. ENGLISH WORDS DERIVED FROM CELTIC . . 46 
 
 VI, CLASSES OF LATIN DERIVATIVES 5G 
 
 VII. ARTIFICIAL CHAR.VCIER OF THE LATIN ELE- 
 MENT 63 
 
 VIII. LITERARV CHARACTER uF THE LATIN DERIV- 
 ATIVES Si 
 
 IN. MINOR SOURCES OF ENGLISH WORDS . . . (/j 
 
 X. METHOD OF THE WORD-FORMING INSTINCT , II3 
 
 XI. GROUPS OF WORDS WITH A COMMON ROOT . I2g 
 
 XII. ERRONEOUS DERIVATIONS I40 
 
 XUI. ODD AND DISGUISED DERIVATIONS .... I55 
 
 XIV. GEOGRAPHICAL NAMES 1 70 
 
 XV. SURNAMES I()4 
 
 XVI. WORDS OF THE PROFESSIONS AND TRADES . 2lG 
 
 ADDITIONAL WORDS FOR ILLUSTR.A.TI()N . . 244 
 
 INDEX OF sUI'.JECTS 249 
 
 INDEX OF WORDS AND EXPRESSIONS EXPLAINED 2^2
 
 ENGLISH WORDS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE IMPORTANCE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 We find ourselves in possession of a very com- 
 plicated and delicate instrument which we are 
 constantly using even when we are asleep. It is 
 called language, and the first fifteen or twenty 
 years of our lives are spent in learning to use it 
 in a very feeble and imperfect way. If any edu- 
 cational process goes on during the rest of our 
 lives, its result is shown principally in increased 
 readiness and dexterity in the use of language. 
 Language, indeed, is so closely related to char- 
 acter that, setting moral distinctions aside, the 
 manner of using it is what chiefly distinguishes one 
 man from another, and the power of acquiring it 
 is what distinguishes a man from a beast. We 
 naturally use the word " dumb " as a synonym for 
 stupid, and when we say "dumb beast" we in- 
 I
 
 2 ENGLISH WORDS. 
 
 stinctively refer to our belief that the power of 
 speech implies what wc call reason. Plomer calls 
 the human race "articulately-speaking" or " 'word- 
 dividing ' mortals." The later Greek philosophers, 
 with a sense that the two things were closely re- 
 lated, used the word logos for both speech and 
 reason. 
 
 In the proposition that the manner of express- 
 ing thought in words or language is the criterion of 
 intellectual character, we must be careful to note 
 that the term "words or language" has an extend- 
 ed meaning, for deaf and dumb men who cannot 
 use or liear vocal sounds at all are as certainly 
 intellectual beings as are the readiest and most 
 fluent talkers. When we say that the language- 
 power is the mark of a man, we do not mean the 
 power of vocal utterance, but the power of at- 
 taching any note or mark to an idea in the mind, 
 whether that note be a sound, or a gesture, or a 
 scratch on paper. In that broad sense deaf and 
 dumb people use language as truly as do talkers. 
 Even those unfortunates who are deaf, dumb, and 
 blind can, after infinite pains, be given a language 
 through the sense of touch. The fact that until 
 this is done their minds remain absolutely isolat- 
 ed and powerless to form an idea, is a proof of 
 the intimate connection between thought and the 
 means of expressing it. Until Dr. Howe gave the 
 girl Laura Dewey Bridgman an equivalent for a
 
 THE IMPORTANCE OF LANGUAGE. 3 
 
 word, she dwelt in blackness and remoteness, sub- 
 stantially without the power of thought. This may 
 give us some idea of the immense importance of 
 vocal words, since even an imperfect substitute 
 for them can produce the difference between ra- 
 tionality and apparent idiocy. 
 
 Again, the second proposition contained in the 
 first paragraph, that the power of language is the 
 criterion of human beings as distinguished from 
 brutes, implies another restriction of the usual 
 meaning of the phrase, " the power of language." 
 For beasts possess a certain kind of language- 
 power in great perfection. Their calls of affection 
 or warning to their young, and their notes of de- 
 fiance, or rage, or pain, are very emphatic and ex- 
 pressive, and are readily understood even by men. 
 But the call of the mother -bird, or the growl of 
 a dog, is not language in the scientific sense. 
 These sounds all express emotion, or are the phys- 
 ical counterparts of certain feelings. They are of 
 the same character as interjections, like "Oh," or 
 " Pshaw," are not in essential nature different from 
 a sigh or a groan, and are no more like real lan- 
 guage than is the creaking of machinery for lack 
 of oil. It is words as the sign of thought, not 
 words as the outcome of feeling, that is meant 
 when we say, " No beast has the power of lan- 
 guage." Professor Whitney says {Study of Lan- 
 guage, Lect. xii.) : "The essential characteristic of
 
 4 ENGLISH WORDS. 
 
 our speech is that it is arbitrary and conventional ; 
 that of animals, on the other hand, is natural and 
 instinctive ; the former is, therefore, capable of 
 indefinite growth, change, and development ; the 
 latter is unvarying, and cannot transcend its orig- 
 inal narrow limits." 
 
 The language which is the mark of humanity 
 consists of vocal sounds, or their equivalent, at- 
 tached to mental concepts. Some philosophers 
 hold that without the power of forming the sound, 
 or some equivalent, physical, correlated sign, that 
 we could not even form the concept. However 
 this may be, whether it is true that "without 
 thought no language is possible," or "without 
 language no thought is possible," it is certain that 
 without lan2:uage there could be no communica- 
 tion of thought, and, consequently, no civilization 
 and no individual development. The question 
 whether language or thought is the primary power 
 is at best a metaphysical one. The two powers 
 are certainly necessary to each other, and there is 
 a quality in one or both which distinguishes man 
 from the beasts. Whether we regard this quality 
 as a radical or an acquired one will depend our 
 fundamental philosophical notions. To the writer 
 it seems a radical quality. It may be instanced 
 that the power of making vocal sounds, and of at- 
 taching them to certain concepts, appears in in- 
 fants with the first ray of consciousness, and that
 
 THE IMPORTANCE OF LANGUAGE. 5 
 
 the growth of the power is commensurate with 
 the growth of consciousness. Furthermore, men 
 have been talking to horses and dogs for at least 
 eight thousand years, but neither of those races 
 has made the slightest progress towards acquiring 
 a language. Man, therefore, may be defined as 
 the animal who had originally the power of de- 
 veloping a language, or as the animal who has 
 developed a language. 
 
 Since language is so closely connected with 
 human thought, even if not absolutely necessary 
 to it, we can readily see how important the study 
 of words may become. We cannot get hold of a 
 new thought without learning some new words, or 
 at least adding something to the notions grouped 
 about the word we already know, and so enrich- 
 ing and rounding out our instinctive knowledge. 
 On the other hand, to learn something about a 
 word — a thought-implement — ought to enlarge 
 our thought- power by making us more familiar 
 with the implement. 
 
 From another point of view, the study of words 
 has a different and perhaps a greater value. It 
 increases our power of enjoyment and our sense 
 of relation to our fellows. The beauty of imag- 
 inative literature depends to a great degree on the 
 associations called up by particular words. The 
 use of a word rich in associations in such a man- 
 ner as to bring out those associations constitutes
 
 6 ENGLISH WORDS. 
 
 poetic form far more than does rhyme, or the rhyth- 
 mical arrangement of accent. These associations 
 — the intimate and poetic meaning of the word — 
 depend to some degree on the history and origin of 
 the word. If the study of words increases, though 
 slightly,our capacity for artistic enjoyment, or even 
 for rational intellectual enjoyment, no further ar- 
 gument for its importance is needed. Indeed, all 
 others may be overlooked. 
 
 From the intimate relations between language 
 and thought, from the fact that language is a so- 
 cial product, and the further fact that ruling ideas 
 and methods change from one generation to anoth- 
 er, it is evident that language must change also. 
 Entirely new meanings are given to words in the 
 course of time, and sometimes new words are 
 coined which after a while come into general use. 
 Again, many discoveries of new processes or in- 
 ventions of new devices are made in physical 
 science, for which new words must be found.* 
 That very delicate characteristic, the flavor or lit- 
 erary value of words, changes from century to cen- 
 tury, even if the meanings do not change. Some 
 words lose caste, others are promoted into good 
 
 * The vocabulary of the modern science of Zoology is 
 said by the author of the Introduction to the Cetitury 
 Dictionary to reach the enormous total of 100,000 words, 
 60,000 of which are in use in books at present. Probably 
 not more than two hundred of them are in general use.
 
 THE IMPORTANCE OF LANGUAGE. 7 
 
 society. Language is therefore in a continual 
 state of change from the action of several forces. 
 Old words are dropping out and coming under the 
 class marked '' obsolete " in our dictionaries. New 
 words are appearing, and, most important of all,* 
 new meanings, sometimes fuller, sometimes more 
 restricted, are slowly attaching themselves to the 
 old words which are retained. If the language 
 were not written, the words of one generation 
 would not only convey entirely different ideas to 
 the next, but they would hardly be intelligible to 
 it, for pronunciation changes even more rapidly 
 than meanings. If any body of men is isolated, 
 thei*- speech soon becomes a dialect, and before 
 many years possibly a new language. It is thus 
 that French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Provencal 
 grew out of the old Roman speech, as it displaced 
 the languages of the conquered countries. There- 
 fore it is usual to say that language is an evolu- 
 tion — that is, a product whose growth is predeter- 
 mined and regulated by certain laws. 
 
 But language is an evolution in a restricted 
 sense, since it follows the evolution of a nation — 
 or its growth in civilization — at a distance, and 
 may borrow much more or much less from some 
 
 * Compare, for instance, tlie words "freedom," 'anarchy," 
 " king," " righteousness," " people," "nature," as held no'iv 
 and in the seventeenth century.
 
 8 ENGLISH WORDS. 
 
 foreign language than the people themselves take 
 from any other nation. It is not an evolution as 
 a plant is which grows from a definite seed and 
 goes through certain stages of change till it 
 reaches maturity and then dies, because, if for 
 no other reason, its environment, the thought of 
 the people which moulds it, is itself an evolution 
 of a very complicated kind. The language of a 
 civilized nation undoubtedly changes continually, 
 both in pronunciation and in texture, according 
 to certain laws, but it does not necessarily expand 
 as the civilization of the people grows broader 
 and fuller. Our language, for instance, has ac- 
 cumulated a great many words during the past 
 three hundred years — many more, indeed, than it 
 has lost , but it is not a more perfected instru- 
 ment than it was three hundred years ago, when 
 Shakspeare began writing his comedies and King 
 James's version of the Bible was made, although 
 it responds to a wider range of thought. When 
 we use the word, evolution, as applied to the 
 growth of a language, we must remember that we 
 use it in a very restricted and metaphorical sense. 
 The importance of a study of words is illustrated 
 by the fact that so many mistakes arise from 
 the careless use of this very useful word, " evolu- 
 tion." For instance, the successive stages through 
 which a language passes are not necessarily stages 
 of development towards a definite and determined
 
 THE IMPORTANCE OF LANGUAGE. 9 
 
 end, as the use of the word " evolution " in this 
 connection would imply. 
 
 The study of a language falls into two main 
 branches : the examination of the material, and of 
 the way in which the material is put together. 
 The material is words, and they may be consid- 
 ered with reference to their meanings, or to their 
 derivations, or to both. The body of laws which 
 govern the grouping and modifications of words 
 is called grammar. The two branches constitute 
 philology, or the scientific examination of the 
 structure and material of a language as it is at 
 present, and as it v/as in its earlier stages. When 
 the words and grammar of more than one lan- 
 guage are carefully examined, with a view of dis- 
 covering resemblances or distinctions and bring- 
 ing them under general laws, if any can be found, 
 the study is called comparative philology, or — es- 
 pecially if the treatment is broad, and language in 
 general rather than some one language in partic- 
 ular is the subject-matter — linguistics. There is 
 also another branch of the general science of 
 language, and that is phonetics, or the examina- 
 tion of vocal sounds, the mechanism which pro- 
 duces them, and the laws and customs which 
 govern the changes in the pronunciation of words 
 in different nations and in different centuries. 
 It has thrown a flood of light on the manner in 
 which words grow, but it is an extremely difficult
 
 lO ENGLISH WORDS. 
 
 study, and is the basis of the modern "science 
 of language." This book will deal simply with 
 the immediate derivations of a few ' groups of 
 English words. Its object is literary, not phil- 
 ological, and it presupposes only the knowledge 
 of Latin that students entering college usually 
 possess. 
 
 When it is said that the object of this book is 
 literary, reference is had to the fact that by know- 
 ing something of the derivation and history of 
 English words we come to hold them in a fuller 
 and richer sense, and to have a certain number 
 of associations with them which enables us to 
 use them more accurately and more picturesque- 
 ly. A feeling for words, such as Charles Lamb 
 and Emerson, among others, possessed, is of 
 course a natural gift. But all men possess at 
 least the rudiments of that discriminative sense 
 in words, and it is a sense remarkably responsive 
 to cultivation. The true way to strengthen it is 
 to read good literature, and to note the peculiar 
 and delicate use of words by literary artists. The 
 study of derivations is only an aid to this exer- 
 cise. If we know the derivation and history of a 
 word we appreciate it more fully, just as we know 
 a man better when we have known him in his 
 youth than if we had first met him in middle age. 
 Thus, when we learn that ''precipitate" means to 
 throw one's self headforemost, and that it comes
 
 THE IMPORTANCE OF LANGUAGE. II 
 
 from pnc caput, the word acquires a life that it 
 had not before. " Dilapidated " is a strong word, 
 but how much more graphic it becomes when we 
 remember that it comes not from di lapsus (fallen 
 down), but ixoxwdls and lapis^ and is based on the 
 idea of a building where the stones have fallen 
 down in ruin — "not one stone left upon another." 
 We know that it is from lapis (a stone), from 
 the ^in the word. In the same way the deriva- 
 tions of many words throw light on their mean- 
 ings, and are frequently very suggestive of new 
 uses. All great writers have used words with an 
 unconscious sense of the various accretions of 
 meaning they have received from time to time. 
 The scientific study of language is perhaps the 
 greatest and most fruitful of all the modern lines 
 of investigation. It has secured a great body of 
 facts, and has thrown a flood of light on the his- 
 torical development of humanity. But only spe- 
 cialists have the time for this, whereas any one 
 can, v/ith the aid of a modern dictionary, examine 
 the history of a large number of words of his own 
 language, and gain some power of using them in 
 new relations. And all persons should do at least 
 as much as this, since words are the tools of all, 
 and not the special property of the philologist. 
 
 Before considering the subject of derivations, 
 it will be well, however, to make a brief classifi- 
 cation of the European languages, that we may
 
 12 ENGLISH WORDS. 
 
 the better understand the position and genesis of 
 our own. 
 
 On the question of the origin and growth of language, 
 students are advised to read Max Midler's two series of 
 lectures, entitled The Science of Language, and his later 
 book, Language ami Thought. Professor Whitney's ad- 
 mirable treatise, Language and the Study of Language, as 
 well as his shorter book in the International Science Series, 
 Life and Growth of Language, should also be read. The 
 most recent German views can be found in the Lntroduction 
 to the Study of the Llistory of Language, l^y Strong, Loge- 
 man, and Wheeler.
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE RELATIONSHIP OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 
 
 The English language is one of an extensive 
 group or stock of languages spoken by the peo- 
 ples in Europe and Asia, who have had the great- 
 est part in the development of civilization. This 
 is called the Indo-European, or Aryan, stock — 
 Indo-European referring to the territories in which 
 the languages of the stock have been spoken, and 
 Aryan to the original race or tribe from which all 
 or nearly all of those speaking the languages so 
 related are supposed to be descended. By Ger- 
 mans it is usually called the Indo-Germanic stock. 
 These languages are not all related to each other, 
 or to the primitive language, in the same de- 
 gree, and those which are the most closely related 
 to each other are gathered into sub-groups or 
 branches. No part of the original language has 
 survived, nor is it known where the speakers of 
 the original language lived, nor how long ago they 
 lived. The deduction from the nature of the 
 words that are common to all or nearly all the
 
 14 ENGLISH WORDS. 
 
 languages of the stock would point to a locality 
 where barley was raised and where certain trees 
 grow and certain animals could live. It has been 
 usual to refer to the high ground of Central Asia 
 as the home of the original Aryans, or the Proto- 
 Aryan tribe. Other philologists maintain that 
 they came originally from the fertile plain north- 
 ward of the Black Sea in Europe, and others, even, 
 that the Scandinavian peninsula has the best 
 claims to be regarded as the seat of our prehis- 
 toric, ancestral race. That there was an original 
 race there can be little doubt, for there certainly 
 was once an original tongue, and some few facts 
 about its mode of life can be discovered, but 
 the determination of its abode after the lapse 
 of so many centuries is probably impossible. At 
 all events, very v>'ide boundaries must be assigned. 
 It is quite possible, too, that the climate cf the 
 Old \Vorld may have changed materially since the 
 day of the ancient Aryans, so that the evidence 
 drawn from the names of the trees and plants 
 and animals known to them may not point to any 
 definite localit3\* 
 
 * As the original language must have developed before 
 political institutions made large empires possible, wc may 
 assume that the area in ^vllich it was spoken was limited. 
 It is not asserted tliat all, or even a considerable part, of 
 those now speaking Aryan languages are physical descend- 
 ants of the Proto-Aryan triiie. Race is one thing, and lan- 
 guage quite another. Some races perpetuate their language ;
 
 RELATIONSHIP OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE, 1 5 
 
 The branches of this great stock known since 
 historic times are as follows : 
 
 I. The Indian. — This contains the various dia- 
 lects of Hindustanee. The principal literary rep- 
 resentative of this group is the Sanskrit, which as 
 a spoken language died out some three centuries 
 before the Christian era. It is the speech of the 
 oldest Aryan civilization, and is a very copious 
 and graphic language, and knowledge of it forms 
 part of the education of learned Hindoos even 
 now. Probably as a whole it resembles most close- 
 ly the tongue of the primitive Aryans, although, 
 of course, the language of a highly intellectual and 
 thoughtful people, like that which wrote in San- 
 skrit, is far more developed than the speech of their 
 nomadic and semi- barbarous progenitors could 
 possibly have been. The modern representatives 
 of Sanskrit are the Hindustanee and other dia- 
 lects of Northern India. 
 
 II. The Iranian. — This covers the languages 
 of Persia — old Persian and modern Persian. The 
 Indian and Iranian branches of the Aryan stock 
 constitute the south-eastern or Asiatic division. 
 The five other branches constitute the north-west- 
 ern or European division. Its modern represent- 
 ative is the language now spoken in Persia. 
 
 otiiers seem to hold it very loosely. In the amalgamation 
 of races the better-developed language survives in a modified 
 form.
 
 1 6 ENGLISH WORDS. 
 
 III. The Hellenic. — This includes Greek, 
 ancient and modern, the most finished, exact, and 
 copious of the Aryan languages. ^lodern Greek 
 is sometimes called Romaic. As a literary and 
 national language, Greek has enjoyed a longer life 
 by far than any other Aryan tongue. 
 
 IV. The Slavonic, or Slavo-Lettic. — This 
 includes Russian, Bulgarian, Servian, etc. Rus- 
 sian, the leading language of this branch, is spoken 
 by many millions of people, and is developing a 
 fine literature. The race is the youngest to enter 
 the community of civilized peoples, and the lan- 
 guage is said to be marked by vigor and melody. 
 
 V. The Celtic. — The languages of this branch 
 are rapidly becoming extinct. The Celts are of 
 very great antiquity, and once occupied France 
 and the Ikitish Isles. They were divided into 
 two groups, the Kyiiiri or Cymric and the Gaels. 
 The tongue of the Cymri is represented by Welsh, 
 Cornish, and Armorican, or Breton, spoken by the 
 peasants of Brittany. Cornish became extinct 
 in the last generation. The Welsh possess a 
 copious imaginative literature, but although their 
 blood has entered largely into that of our ])co- 
 ple, their language seems to liave affected I'.ng- 
 lish but slightly. Cadhelic, the second division 
 of the Celtic branch, is represented by Irish, the 
 native language of Ireland ; I'^rse, the language 
 of the Highlands of Scotland ; and Manx, the Ian-
 
 RELATIOXSHIP OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 1 7 
 
 guage of the Isle of Man. The Celtic tongues, 
 all of which are dying out gradually, and being 
 replaced by French and English, are probably 
 among the oldest representatives of the great Ar- 
 yan stock in colloquial use in Europe, unless that 
 distinction be given to the modern representatives 
 of the Italic. Greek is considered to be a younger 
 offshoot from the parent stock than Latin. 
 
 VI. The Italic. — The Latin is, of course, the 
 most important of the languages of this branch, 
 which comprised many tongues spoken in ancient 
 Italy. It is perhaps more closely related to Greek 
 than to the Celtic or Teutonic. It is the source 
 of several important modern languages, called as 
 a group the Romance languages. They are the 
 Italian, the Spanish, the Portuguese, the French, 
 and the Provengal. The Provencal, once spoken 
 in Southern France and Northern Italy, developed 
 a highly-cultivated lyrical literature in the twelfth 
 century, but sank to the level of a peasant's pa fots 
 after the political supremacy of Northern France 
 was assured. Of late, successful efforts have been 
 made to revive it. The influence of classical 
 Latin on all of the modern European languages 
 has been very great, since for many centuries it 
 was tiie language of diplomacy, philosophy, and 
 religion. More than one -half of our English 
 words — though not the more important part — • 
 are derived from the Latin, either directly or in-
 
 15 ENGLISH WORDS. 
 
 directly, through French or some other Romance 
 tongue. 
 
 VII. The Teutonic. — This branch includes 
 English, Dutch, German, Danish, etc. The Italic 
 languages are spoken by about one hundred mill- 
 ions of people, and the Teutonic by not far from 
 twice that number. They have spread very rap- 
 idly in the past five centuries. The Teutonic 
 branch is divided into four groups : 
 
 1. Old Gothic. — This was the tongue of the first 
 of the Teutonic tribes that attained historic im- 
 portance. They lived in Moesia^ on the Danube. 
 A translation of the Bible was made into this lan- 
 guage in the fourth century by Ulfilas, a mission- 
 ary from Constantinople. The Gospels are still 
 extant, and constitute the oldest writing in any 
 Teutonic tongue. The language is extinct, al- 
 though branches of the Goths were once the rul- 
 ers of Europe. 
 
 2. The Norse, or Scandinavian, represented at 
 present by Icelandic, Danish, Swedish, and the 
 dialects spoken in Norway, which are slight modi- 
 fications of Danish, bearing somewhat the same 
 relation to it that Scotch does to English. 
 
 3. The High Gennanic. — This is so-called be- 
 cause it covers the languages spoken by the Teu- 
 tonic tribes of Upper Germany, /. e., the country 
 up the rivers or farthest from the sea. Old High 
 German dates back to the ele\-enth century, and
 
 RELATIONSHIP OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 1 9 
 
 includes the language of the Franks, the conquer- 
 ors of Gaul, and of the Suabians. Modern High 
 German is what we all know as German, and dates 
 from the printing of Luther's Bible. 
 
 4. The Lo7v Germanic group, so-called because 
 it was originally spoken by the Teutonic tribes 
 living in Northern Germany. The ancient tongues 
 of this group are P>iesic, Netherlandish, Old Sax- 
 on, and Anglo-Saxon, or Old English. The Friesic 
 is still spoken on the coast of Schleswig-Holstein. 
 Dutch, or Hollandish, is the modern representa- 
 tive of Netherlandish, and Platt-Deutsch, or Low 
 German — W'hich must by no means be considered 
 a dialect of German, since it is very much more 
 closely related to English and Hollandish than it 
 is to German — is the modern representative of 
 old Saxon. It is a popular idiom, though some 
 modern novels have been printed in it, and is quite 
 extensively spoken. The fourth member of this 
 group is English, which is a thoroughly Teutonic 
 language in spirit and descent, though it has taken 
 up so large a Latin element into its vocabulary. 
 Its grammar is a broken-down Anglo-Saxon gram- 
 mar, and its articulations are made by Teutonic 
 particles. It has been enriched, not diluted, by 
 words of foreign origin. It is now spoken and 
 read by a larger body of people than is any other 
 language, for Chinese is separated into a large 
 number of dialects, many of which are not Intel-
 
 20 ENGLISH WORDS. 
 
 ligible except to the dwellers in limited districts, 
 and the Mandarin, or Court language, is under- 
 stood only by the educated classes. 
 
 As philological science advances, under the 
 guidance of modern phonetics, judgments as to 
 the closeness of relationship between various lan- 
 guages become modified. Classifications slightly 
 differing from the above have been suggested. 
 One of the latest is found in Brugmann's Com- 
 parative Grammar (1888). He makes one more 
 main branch, the Albanian, the language of An- 
 cient Illyria, the words of which have been de- 
 tached by patient study from the mass of intrusive 
 Turkish, Slavonic, and Greek terms which have 
 overwhelmed the modern spoken Albanian. 
 
 The Armenian, instead of being ranked under 
 the Iranian branch, is made an independent mem- 
 ber, and Indian and Iranian are grouped together 
 to form the Aryan branch. 
 
 The Gallic is recognized as a member of the 
 Celtic branch, though all that is known of it is a 
 few words quoted by Latin authors and a few 
 proper names, mostly on coins. 
 
 The most important modification is in the ar- 
 rangement of the Teutonic tongues. These Iirug- 
 mann divides into Gothic, Xorse, and West Ger- 
 manic. Gothic and Norse (or Scandinavian) are 
 considered to be closely related, and the modern 
 representatives of the latter — Icelandic, Xorwe-
 
 RELATIONSHIP OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 2 1 
 
 gian, Swedish, and Danish — were practically a 
 single language down to the Viking period (a.d. 
 800-1000). These are also called East Germanic, 
 as opposed to the West Germanic tongues — 
 English, Dutch, Low German, and High German. 
 The Aryan languages are the only ones spoken 
 in Europe, if we except one or two representatives 
 of the Turanian stock, as Turkish, the Magyar 
 (still spoken in parts of Hungary), the Finnish and 
 Lapp of Northern Russia, and the fragmentary rep- 
 resentatives of the Semitic speech scattered over 
 Western Europe. To one Semitic race — the Jews 
 — we owe our religion, and to another — the Arabs 
 of Spain — we owe our rudimentary conceptions of 
 science. From the latter we have received quite 
 a number of words, arithmetical, astronomical, and 
 the like, but our speech is widely removed from 
 theirs. There is, however, in the Pyrenees in 
 Spain and France an interesting survival of a peo- 
 ple probably even older than the Proto- Aryans. 
 This is the Basques, a small community still ad- 
 hering to its original speech, which has no affinity 
 to any of the other tongues of Europe. They 
 represent a little fragment of a prehistoric race 
 stranded in a country which has been overrun by 
 Celts, Semitic Phoenicians and ^Nloors, Italians, 
 and Teutonic Goths and Vandals. They are like 
 the isolated vegetable life of a mountain that has 
 survived geologic changes which have transformed
 
 22 ENGLISH Vv'ORDS. 
 
 the figure of a continent and left the stunted 
 shrubs and mosses of the earher era unaffected, 
 but restricted to a limited territory where the 
 newer forms could find no foothold. Linguistic- 
 ally and ethnologically, these Basques are entitled 
 to look down upon Spaniards and Portuguese as 
 recent arrivals, and to consider themselves as the 
 pure-blooded, ancient race. Their language, into 
 which a large number of Spanish vocables has 
 been taken, is said to have little fitness for literary 
 use. Ethnologically, they are called Iberians. 
 They call themselves Euscaldunac, and their lan- 
 guage Euscara. They number 500,000, and retain 
 very many ancient customs and race characteris- 
 tics. The inhabitants of the south-western part of 
 France also show distinct traces of this ancient 
 blood, notably in Navarre, though the language 
 has long been abandoned. The geographical 
 term Biscay is derived from Basque. 
 
 The question of the original liome of the Proto-Aryans 
 must always remain unsettled for want of evidence, and for 
 the same reason will always be a favorite subject of discus- 
 sion among philologists. Students are recommended to read 
 Taylor's The Origin of the Aryans, and the papers brought 
 out by its publication. Also the Prehistoric Antiquities of 
 the Aryan Peoples (Schrader and Jevons).
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 NATURE AND PROOF OF LINGUISTIC RELATION- 
 SHIP. 
 
 The relationship of the Indo-European lan- 
 guages spoken of in the foregoing chapter is a 
 relationsliip of structure and of material both. 
 We shall consider only the relationship of mate- 
 rial — that is, of words. But we must remember 
 that merely finding a word, or even a number of 
 words, in one language naturalized in another is 
 no evidence of a common origin of the two lan- 
 guages. Words may of course be borrowed from 
 any other language at any time. These are fre- 
 quently retained and become fully naturalized. 
 This is especially likely to be the case when the 
 borrowing people does not previously possess or 
 knovvf the thing to which the word is applied. If 
 the telephone and the steam-engine are introduced 
 into China, the Chinese will probably adopt the 
 words we have invented for names of the parts 
 of the apparatus. But the words for the most 
 evident natural bodies and phenomena, and for
 
 24 ENGLISH WORDS. 
 
 the fundamental human relations, and for all com 
 mon operations, cannot well be intrusive words. 
 Sun, moon, water, man, son, daughter, sky, stars, 
 tree, as well as the verbs to kill, to eat, to strike, 
 to dig, to weave, and many others are very evi- 
 dently primitive words, as are also the numerals 
 from one to ten ; and when we find that the Ger- 
 man words sohii, rater, 7n:ittc>\ tochtcr, stern, essen, 
 gehen are very similar to our words for the same 
 things, we say confidently, either German is a 
 sort of English, or English is a sort of German, 
 or they are both changed forms of the same 
 original language. This last is evidently much 
 the most likely supposition, for both languages 
 are subject to change. It has been proved to be 
 true by a variety of arguments. One of the sim- 
 plest is, that when words appear under altered 
 forms in different members of the same family of 
 languages, the diversity of form is subject to a 
 definite rule. The sounds of the two languages 
 are connected by a law. The dift'erenccs are not 
 hap -hazard, but are regulated. A certain ten. 
 dency of pronunciation has worked in one lan- 
 guage and another tendency in the other. This 
 consideration enables us vastly to increase the 
 number of words wliich are evidently related in 
 each language, and to say that the differences 
 are accounted for as not original, but as growths. 
 The resemblances must be accounted for, and
 
 NATURE OF LINGUISTIC RELATIONSHIP. 
 
 they point to a common origin ; and to .show that 
 the differences also point to a common origin of 
 the two languages in question is one of the great 
 triumphs of modern philology — the scientific treat- 
 ment of the words of the Aryan languages. The 
 readiest and simplest illustration of this is to be 
 found in the consonantal reciprocity in cognate 
 tongues, which is expressed in what is known as 
 " Grimm's Law," named after its discoverer, the 
 German philologist, Jacob Grimm. The following 
 statement is taken from Earle's Philology of the 
 English Tongue : 
 
 " We suppose the reader is familiar with the 
 twofold division of the mute consonants into lip, 
 tooth, and throat consonants in one direction, 
 and into thin, medial, and aspirate consonants 
 on the other. If not, he should learn this little 
 table by heart before he proceeds a step further. 
 Learn it by rote both ways, both horizontally and 
 vertically : 
 
 
 Lip i Tooth 
 (Labial). : (Dental). 
 
 Throat 
 (Guttural). 
 
 
 Tiiix 
 
 Mi:i)iAL 
 Aspirate 
 
 P t 
 b 1 d 
 f th 
 
 c = k 
 h (Saxon) 
 
 TlIIN 
 
 Medl-vl 
 Aspirate 
 
 By means of this classification of the mutes,* 
 * Besides the mute consonants we have the trilled / and
 
 26 ENGLISH WORDS. 
 
 we are able to show traces of a law of transition 
 having: existed between English and the classical 
 languages. We find instances of words, for ex- 
 ample, which begin with a thin consonant in 
 Greek or Latin or both, and the same word is 
 found in English or its cognate dialects beginning 
 with an aspirate. Thus, if the Latin or Greek 
 word begins with/, the English word begins with 
 f, e.g., -vf) and Jire ; ttoo, TrpCjror. f?-inius ^nd first. 
 Compare with the Saxon words friniuu fre?n, the 
 modern preposition from — which is of the same 
 root and original sense — with for, fare, fortJi; 
 7r(D/\oc, punus,\s\\\\ foal, fiUy ; pellis\\\\X\fcIl; -vi, 
 pugnus, with yfj"// -arifp. pater, \\\\.\\fat/ier; -irre 
 w'lih. five; -our. pes, w'lih. foot; piseis \;\\\\fish. etc. 
 
 " If the classical word begins with an aspi- 
 rate, the English word begins with a medial : 
 e.g., the Greek f/>, or Latin f, is found respon- 
 sive to the English h. Tlius, ^.r\yuc, fagiis, and 
 beeeh ; i\>vm., fii (perfect stem of sum), and be; 
 (bparpia, f rater, and brother ; c;,fpai, fero, and bear. 
 The Greek by the same rule responds to the 
 English el, as in {)'\\i) and deer ; OvyuTi)!) and daugh- 
 ter ; Oufxt and door. 
 
 " If the Greek or Latin has the medial, the Eng- 
 
 ;', the sibilants s, z, and x =: A-s, and the nasals ;/, w, and f/,;: 
 The last are also labial mutes — that is, ilie sovmd is stopped 
 by the lips. Grimm's Law refers, however, only to the 
 consonants contained in the table.
 
 NATURE OF LINGUISTIC RELATIONSHIP. 27 
 
 lish should have the thin ; that is to say, a classic 
 ^ or ^ should correspond to our English /. So 
 it does in camv and fear; cuo, duo, and fzvo ; ci^a, 
 decern, and te7i ; ^e/dcj, domus, and thnbraii (the 
 Saxon word for building); circpoi', cpvc, and free ; 
 dingua, archaic Latin for lingua and tongue. These 
 and all such illustrations may be summarized for 
 convenience' sake in the following mnemonic 
 formula : 
 
 T A M 
 
 % m X 
 
 In this the letters of the Latin word tam placed 
 over the Gothic letters of the German word ^^(nit 
 are intended to bracket together the initial letters 
 of thins, medials, and aspirates, so as to repre- 
 sent the order of transition. 
 
 " In the use of this scheme, we will suppose the 
 student to be inquiring after the Greek and Latin 
 analogues to the English word kind. The word 
 begins with a tenuis or thin consonant, and thus 
 directs us to the letter / in the Gothic word Aint. 
 Over this / we find in the Latin word an ;;/, and 
 by this we are taught that the medial of k, which 
 is ^ (see Table), will be the corresponding initial 
 in Greek and Latin. Thus we are directed to 
 yiv and gigno as the analogues of kin and kind. 
 The same process will lead from knee to yow and 
 genu, from ken and know, to yiyrwcr/v-w."* 
 
 * Skeat formulates the law of phonetic change more con-
 
 28 ENGLISH WORDS. 
 
 In Other words, a Latin thin consonant changes 
 into an aspirate in the corresponding P^nglish 
 word, a Latin aspirate into an EngHsh medial, 
 and a Latin medial into an English thin, and the 
 reverse is of course true in all these cases, the 
 labial, dental, and guttural quality remaining un- 
 changed. A familiar example of a corresponding 
 phenomenon is that a German or Frenchman in- 
 variably changes the English /// into a d, saying 
 dc for the. 
 
 "These examples will satisfy the reader that 
 here we have traces of a regular law, and that 
 our language is of one and the same strain with 
 the Greek and Latin — that is to say, that it be- 
 longs to the great Aryan or Indo-European family. 
 
 " A succession of small divergences which run 
 upon stated lines of variation — lines having a 
 determinate relation to one another, and consti- 
 tuting an orbit in which the transitional move- 
 ment revolves : this is a phenomenon worthy of 
 our contemplation. It is tlie simplest conception 
 of a fact which in other shapes will meet us again^ 
 namely, that the beauty of philology springs out 
 of that variety in unity which makes all nature 
 beautiful and all study of nature profoundly at- 
 tractive." 
 
 cisely and compreliensively. I give Earlc's .--tatcmciit l)e- 
 cause it is more graphic, and seems to me more lil-cely to 
 imjiress on tlie young reader the breadth of tlie relation.
 
 NATURE OF LINGUISTIC RELATIONSHIP. 29 
 
 " It would be easy to discover a great number 
 of examples which lie outside of the above anal- 
 ogy. One important cause of unconformability 
 is the introduction of foreign words. This ap- 
 plies to all Teutonic words beginning with /, 
 which are foreigners* and not subject to Grimm's 
 Law. There is also a certain amount of acci- 
 dental disturbance. Casualties happen to words 
 as to all mortal products, and in the course of 
 time their forms become defaced. The German 
 language offers many examples of this. If I 
 wanted to understand the consonantal analogies 
 which exist between English and the German, I 
 should prefer as a general rule to go to the oldest 
 form of German, because a conventional orthog- 
 raphy, among other causes, has in German led to 
 a disfigurement of many of the forms." 
 
 Furthermore, it is only in the early stages of a 
 language that words are spelled as they are pro- 
 nounced, and Grimm's Law is applied to letters. 
 The spelling changes much more slowly than the 
 pronunciation. In fact, after printing becomes 
 general, it is very difficult to change the spelling 
 of words. Thus there have been many changes 
 
 * That is to say, " foreigners" in the sense of not conform- 
 ing to Grimm's Law. At least ninety-five per cent, of our 
 words beginning with / are derived from Latin or Greek, 
 but a few, e.g., pith, paddock (a toad), pad (in footpad), 
 path, pant, pebble, prick, pride, plough, pod, purr, etc., are 
 of undoubted Teutonic iineac;e.
 
 30 ENGLISH WORDS. 
 
 in the pronunciation of English during the past 
 century, but the changes in speUing have been 
 comparatively unimportant, and have not fol- 
 lowed the changes in sound. We have dropped 
 the /', for instance, in words ending in ick^ like 
 music and mathcmalics, derived from the Greek, 
 although the pronunciation of the final syllable 
 has not varied. Fortunately, consonants remain 
 comparatively fixed, but many words containing 
 the vowel sound represented by ea, like sea and 
 tea, have changed from the a sound to the t' sound 
 as represented in he, but the spelling remains and 
 will always remain the same.* 
 
 Thus, changes may be going on in the pronun- 
 ciation of a language of which philology has no 
 record.! It is very doubtful if we could under- 
 
 * The Irish still retain the early sound of ca, and call 
 tea, tay ; sea, say, etc. In this and in many other peculiar- 
 ities of what we call brogiw, their pronunciation of English 
 is much nearer to that of educated Englishmen of the sev- 
 enteenth and eigliteenth centuries than is ours. Pope makes 
 tea rhyme to away, and to say : 
 
 " Muse o'er some book, or trifle o'er tb.e tea, 
 Or with soft musick charm dull care away." 
 Again, 
 
 "Merc, thou great Anna I whom three realms obey, 
 Dost sometimes counsel take, and sometimes tea." 
 
 Still earlier, Surrey makes f raise rhyme to peas, Jieat to 
 great, 2eVii\ peace to days. We have saved this old sound in 
 great and break. The French words from which please, 
 reason, treason, and ease are derived, all have the <f sound. 
 f The decay of the trilled r in many parts of our coun-
 
 NATURE OF LINGUISTIC RELATIONSHIP. 3 1 
 
 stand English as spoken by Francis Bacon and his 
 contemporaries. Fortunately, the great charac- 
 teristics of English were formed long before that 
 date, and therefore stand embalmed in the print- 
 ed language, if spelling varied as rapidly as pro- 
 nunciation does, philologists would be very much 
 at sea. The origin of some modern words would 
 have been entirely obscured. 
 
 The effect of the discovery of the wide relation- 
 ship of the Aryan languages has undoubtedly 
 been very great. T^or a relationship of language 
 implies, though it does not prove, a relationship 
 of blood. Max Miiller says that the name Indo- 
 European "marked not only a new epoch in the 
 study of language, it ushered in a new period in 
 the history of the v.-orld."' In fact, he seems to 
 think that the linguistic bond, evidenced by con- 
 sonants, vowels, and accents, proves an intellect- 
 ual fraternity far stronger than any merely gene- 
 alogical relationship. Blood may be thicker than 
 water, but it does not follow that language is a 
 tie stronger than blood. The strength of the 
 '■ I'anslavic idea,'" for instance, is based on a feel- 
 ing of blood relationship, and German national- 
 try, and tlie New England tendency to change final azo into 
 aivr, making law and sa-a into law;' and sa'wr, is another 
 instance of phonetic change. The misplacement of the h 
 in England is still more remarkable. Xo matter how care- 
 ful an Englishman is to avoid it, he sometimes falls into it 
 if suificientlv excited.
 
 32 ENGLISH V/ORDS. 
 
 ity rests on the conception of race, not language. 
 It will be best, however, to allow this eminent 
 philologist and entertaining writer to speak for 
 himself. Max Miiller says : 
 
 "When the Hindus learned for the first time 
 that their ancient language, the Sanskrit, was 
 closely connected with Greek and Latin, and with 
 that uncouth jargon spoken by their rulers, they 
 began to feel a pride in their language and their 
 descent, and they ceased to look upon the pale- 
 skinned strangers from the North as strange 
 creatures from another, whether a better or a 
 worse, world. They felt what we feel when later 
 in life we meet with a man whom we had quite 
 forgotten. But as soon as he tells us that he 
 was at the same school with ourselves, as soon as 
 he can remind us of our common masters, or re- 
 peat some of the slang terms of our common 
 childhood and youth, he becomes a school-fellow, 
 a fellow, a man whom we seem to know, though 
 we do not even recollect his name. Neither the 
 English nor the Hindus recollected their having 
 been at the same school together thousands of 
 years ago, but the mere fact cf their using the 
 same slang words, such as nidLir and mother, 
 such as bhratar and brother, such as staras and 
 stars, was sufficient to convince them that most 
 likely they had been in the same scrapes and 
 had been liogsred bv the same masters. It was
 
 NATURE OF LINGUISTIC RELATIONSHIP, ^;^ 
 
 not SO much that either the one or the other par- 
 ty felt very much raised in their own eyes by this 
 discovery, as that a feeling sprang up between 
 them that, after all, they might be chips of the 
 same block. I could give you ever so many 
 proofs in support of this assertion, at all events 
 on the part of the Hindus, and likewise from the 
 speeches of some of the most enlightened rulers 
 of India. But as I might seem to be a not alto- 
 gether unprejudiced witness in such a matter, I 
 prefer to quote the words of an eminent Ameri- 
 can scholar, Mr. Horatio Hale: 'When the peo- 
 ple of Hindustan in the last century,' he writes, 
 'came under the British power, they were regard- 
 ed as a debased and alien race. Their complex- 
 ion reminded their conquerors of Africa. Their 
 divinities were hideous monsters. Their social 
 system was anti-human and detestable. Suttee, 
 Thuggee, Juggernaut, all sorts of cruel and shock- 
 ing abominations, seemed to characterize and de- 
 grade them. The proudest Indian prince was, 
 in the sight and ordinary speech of the rawest 
 white subaltern, only a "nigger." This univer- 
 sal contempt was retorted with a hatred as uni- 
 versal, and threatening in the future most disas- 
 trous consequences to the British rule. Then 
 came an unexpected and wonderful discovery. 
 European philologists, studying the language of 
 the conquered race, discovered that the classic 
 3
 
 34 ENGLISH WORDS. 
 
 mother tongue of Northern Hindustan was the 
 elder sister of the Greek, the Latin, the German, 
 and the Celtic languages. At the same time a 
 splendid literature was unearthed, which filled 
 the scholars of Europe with astonishment and 
 delight. The despised Asiatics became not only 
 the blood-relations, but the teachers and exem- 
 plars of their conquerors. The revolution of 
 feeling on both sides was immense. Mutual es- 
 teem and confidence, to a large extent, took the 
 place of revulsion and distrust. Even in the 
 mutiny which occurred while the change v,-as yet 
 in progress, a very large proportion of the native 
 princes and people refused to take part in the 
 outbreak. Since that time good-will has steadily 
 grown with the fellowship of common studies and 
 aims. It may freely be affirmed, at this day, that 
 the discovery of the Sanskrit language and literature 
 has been of more value to England in the retention 
 and increase of her Indian E?npire than an army of 
 a hundred thousand men.^ 
 
 " This is but one out of many lessons which the 
 Science of Language has taught us. "We have 
 become familiarized with many of these lessons, 
 and are apt to forget that not more than fifty 
 years ago they were scouted as absurd by the 
 majority of classical scholars, while they have 
 proved to be the discovery of a new v/orld, or, if 
 you like, the recovery of an old world.''
 
 NATURE OF LINGUISTIC RELATIONSHIP. 35 
 
 It may be doubted whether the practical hu- 
 manizing effect of the conclusions of philology is 
 quite as great in overcoming race prejudice as the 
 above quotation would lead us to infer. Their 
 power in broadening the minds of men of educa- 
 tion is certainly very great. They should be w^el- 
 comed and valued as truth without any reference 
 to political bearing. Imperial policy with regard 
 to Turkish alliances or to the government of Hin- 
 dustan will hardly be influenced by linguistic gen- 
 eralizations. But any sense of the antiquity of 
 our Aryan relationships ought to give us a fuller 
 sympathy with the other civilizations of our stock, 
 and a sounder foundation for our respect for those 
 of our own Germanic branch. 
 
 The mutations of vocal utterance in groups of men 
 wliereby first dialects, and finally distinct languages, are 
 formed, are subject to a number of laws which modern phi- 
 lology is seeking to disentangle. The article on pronuncia- 
 tion in the International Dictionary is as accessible an ex- 
 planation of the mechanism of human speech as can be 
 mentioned. It contains an admirable, systematic discussion 
 of the action of the vocal organs in forming the sounds of 
 the English language, and opens a branch of the subject to 
 which this book does nothing more than refer. 
 
 A 71 Introduction to Phonetics, by Laura .Soames, is an ex- 
 cellent analysis of the vocal sounds of English, French, and 
 German.
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 SOURCES OF MODERN ENGLISH WORDS. 
 
 Various theories have been advanced to ex- 
 plain the origin of language. None of them is 
 altogether convincing, although some are sus- 
 tained by very ingenious and original arguments. 
 If the origin of language was definitely settled, the 
 origin of the human race would be also settled, 
 and after that the origin of life on this planet 
 would present little mystery. It is much more 
 satisfactory to confine ourselves to historic time, 
 or to the period during which we have written 
 documents, which, indeed, offers a sufficient field 
 for the generalizer and for the accumulator of 
 facts. 
 
 Our English of to-day is the speech of a Low- 
 Germanic people, so greatly modified by change 
 as to be substantially a new language compared 
 with its form in the tenth century, and further 
 modified by the naturalization of a very great 
 number of words of a foreign tongue. During the 
 past nine or ten centuries there has never been a
 
 SOURCES OF MODERN ENGLISH WORDS. 37 
 
 period when a generation of Englishmen could 
 not understand the language of their grandchil- 
 dren, though possibly when the change was most 
 rapid the men of one century might have regard- 
 ed the men of the next as speakers of a foreign 
 tongue if they could have heard them talk. At 
 the same time, English is an entirely distinct lan- 
 guage from Anglo-Saxon. A very rapid review of 
 its stages of growth will enable us to understand 
 better the character of modern English. 
 
 The island of Britain was at the date of the 
 Christian era inhabited by Celts, representing 
 both of the great Celtic families : the Cymri and 
 the Gaels, the Cymric tribes occupying the south- 
 ern half. It was invaded by Julius Caisar 55 B.C., 
 and subsequently made a Roman province, the 
 work of subjugation extending from a.d. 42 to 
 the close of the first Christian century. The 
 northern part of the island, now Scotland, was 
 never entirely conquered, and savage tribes of 
 Celts — possibly of a still older race — maintained 
 their independence there. When tlie Roman Em- 
 pire began to break up, the legions were recalled, 
 and Britain was abandoned early in the fifth cen- 
 tury. The Roman invasion left no radical traces 
 on the language of the inhabitants, beyond a 
 few geographical names generally compounded 
 of caster, a camp, which will be noticed here- 
 after. It is evident that Britain was never Latin-
 
 38 ENGLISH WORDS. 
 
 ized in the thorough manner that Gaul and Spain 
 were. 
 
 Previous to the withdrawal of the Romans, it is 
 highly probable that members of the energetic Low 
 German tribes, who occupied what is now Hol- 
 land, Schleswig-Holstein, and North Germany on 
 the Baltic, had settled on the eastern shore. At 
 all events, a Roman officer, having command of a 
 number of galleys, was styled '' Count of the Sax- 
 on Shore,"* and his jurisdiction extended from the 
 Thames as far north as the Saxons would be like- 
 ly to land. His duty must have been to look after 
 those already in Britain, or to keep others of the 
 active marauders out. The Jutes especially were 
 dreaded as fierce and bold pirates as much as the 
 Northmen were later. But as soon as the military 
 power was withdrawn, the inhabitants of South 
 Britain were exposed to incursions from their 
 savage kindred of the North, and from the Lov/ 
 Germans across the Channel and the North Sea. 
 According to the Anglo-Saxon chronicle, Hengist 
 and Horsa came over in 449 with a body of Jutes 
 — either by invitation of the I'ritons or of their 
 own motion — and founded the kingdom of Kent. 
 In 477 /Ella landed near Chichester, and founded 
 the kingdom of the South Saxons, or Sussex. 
 During the sixth century the Angles, a closely- 
 
 * See Dean Church's story, so named, for an excellent 
 romantico-historic picture of this time.
 
 SOURCES OF MODERN ENGLISH WORDS. 39 
 
 related tribe, founded kingdoms in the north, the 
 largest of which was Northumbria. The seven 
 kingdoms, Kent, Essex, Sussex, Wessex, North- 
 umbria, Mercia (the marc/i, or frontier, or markcd- 
 ^ place), and East Anglia — including the modern 
 Norfolk and Suffolk (the North and South people) 
 — are sometimes referred to as the Heptarchy. 
 These invasions of course imply the conquest and 
 subjugation or removal of the Britons, and were 
 followed by bloody wars between the settlements 
 until Wessex and Mercia, under Alfred, attained a 
 precarious overlordship. There is some evidence 
 that the word Angle was regarded as a generic 
 name. At all events, the country as a whole came 
 to be called Angle-land. It may be, however, that 
 the Angles were so far superior in numbers that 
 their specific name was given to the entire coun- 
 tr}- conquered by them and the Saxons. 
 
 It must be borne in mind that at that time Eng- 
 land was a wild country, large portions of it be- 
 ing covered by unbroken forests and impassable 
 swamps. The settlements were made up the val- 
 leys of the rivers or along the old Roman roads. 
 Thus the division into independent kingdoms, as 
 they were called, is accounted for. The Celts were 
 driven into inaccessible places towards the west, 
 and occupied Cornwall, \\'ales, Cumberland, and 
 Strathclyde. They were called generically Welsh 
 — /. c, foreigners (Anglo-Saxon,, loelisc, fo/rign).
 
 40 ENGLISH WORDS. 
 
 Cornwall means West Wales ; and Cumberland, 
 the land of the Kumroi, or Cymri. Many of the 
 Celts were no doubt reduced to slavery, especially 
 in the large cities like London, or remained in a 
 semi-servile condition ; certainly their blood has 
 gone to make up the modern Englishman, although 
 their speech has affected his speech but little. 
 
 The Low Germans were hardly settled in their 
 new country when they were themselves subjected 
 to invasion. Their third cousins, the Danes, or 
 Northmen, were as enterprising pirates as the Sax- 
 ons had been. They landed in their open boats 
 on the coast of Yorkshire and East Anglia, and 
 burned and plundered in their turn. They also 
 made permanent settlements, and their king, Ca- 
 nute, became overlord of England. This historic 
 fact is mentioned because the Danish or Xorse 
 language has slightly influenced English. It seems 
 probable that at that time the Danes and Anglians 
 could understand one another's language imper- 
 fectly. At all events, there was no difficulty, at a 
 later date, in the reception of certain Danish forms 
 into the nascent tongue. It must be borne in 
 mind also that the language of the different dis- 
 tricts of England was different, and that there was 
 a southern, northern, and midland dialect, each of 
 which has left its mark on the agricultural speech 
 of the district where it was originally spoken, 
 the southern dialect being the foundation of the
 
 SOURCES OF MODERN ENGLISH WORDS. 41 
 
 English we speak. Dialects, if isolated, grow into 
 languages, but in a country under a central gov- 
 ernment one dialect assumes supremacy as the 
 language of the governing class and of educated 
 people, and the other dialects are relegated to pro- 
 vincial obscurity. Thus Scotland, having been 
 an independent kingdom, there is a marked differ- 
 ence between the speech of Scotchmen and Eng- 
 lishmen, whereas the dialect of Norfolk or Dorset 
 is confined to the lower classes. Particular events 
 having given the supremacy to the Saxons, arrd 
 London having been the capital, the dialect of 
 the Saxons is the foundation of modern English 
 as spoken by all educated people. 
 
 In 1066, England, which had become pretty well 
 consolidated, was invaded by the Duke of Nor- 
 mandy with a large army of men speaking Norman 
 French. He became King of England, and his 
 officers became the local feudal lords of the coun- 
 try. For a period the Anglo-Saxon tongue lost 
 its position as the language of the governing class 
 and of culture. The Christian priests, except in 
 remote country places, used very generally either 
 Latin or French, and one or the other vv'as the lan- 
 guage of law and of literature.* The native lan- 
 
 * Tlie fact that Englishmen obstinately continued to speak 
 English for two hundred years, so that even those descend- 
 ants of the Normans who habitually used French wero 
 finally cGi-npelled to acquire at least a speaking knowledge
 
 42 • ENGLISH WORDS. 
 
 guage was of course spoken by the body of the 
 people, but, being under no acknowledged head- 
 ship, began to change rapidly. Inflections were 
 dropped, and the language approached rapidly its 
 present simple grammatical structure. During 
 the twelfth and thirteenth centuries the course of 
 political events conspired ; first, to relieve the An- 
 glo-Saxon from the restraints which a conventional 
 literary standard imposes on a language ; second, 
 to bring it back under the yoke after a period of 
 linguistic freedom, and to make it under its new 
 form a strictly national language ; third, to rein- 
 force its vocabulary with a multitude of French 
 words. These events were the Conquest, as above 
 mentioned, and the inheritance of a large terri- 
 tory, in addition to Normandy, which the kings 
 of England acquired in France, and then the loss 
 of these Continental possessions, particularly the 
 loss of Normandy, by King John in 1244, after 
 which French civilization ceased to be paramount 
 
 of English, is evident from the following quotation from 
 a poem of the fourteenth century : 
 
 " Latyn also y trowe can nane, 
 IJot tho that hath hit of schole tane ; 
 Some can Frensch and no Latyne, 
 That useth hath Court and dwelt thereinne. 
 And some can of Latyn aparty, 
 That can Frensch full febylly : 
 And som untherstondith Englisch 
 That nother can Latyn ne Frensch, 
 Bot lerde and leiude, old and yonc^, 
 Allc iintkerstondith liiigUsiJt tcnj;.""
 
 SOURCES OF MODERN ENGLISH WORDS. 43 
 
 in England, English nationality reappeared, and 
 the English language took definite shape and as- 
 sumed the outlines of its present form. Chaucer, 
 who died in 1400, is not only the first writer who 
 is intelligible to us, but the first whom we recog- 
 nize as distinctly of our own kin in spirit and 
 manner and speech. 
 
 From 1060 to 1360 is a long period in the evo- 
 lution of a language, and to understand the de- 
 tails of the great movement is more than any one 
 not a specialist can hope to do. The changes 
 during this period were so great that we can fairly 
 say that they constitute, not the development of 
 Anglo-Saxon, but the birth of a new tongue. The 
 old speech furnished the skeleton — but even the 
 skeleton was modified — and the most important 
 words, so that the more excited and earnest a 
 man is, the more he tends to use Saxon forms. It 
 furnished also what, for want of a better term, we 
 may call the genius or spirit of the language. 
 This is rather an indefinite expression, but we 
 cannot help feeling that our language is in essen- 
 tials and manner of growth a Teutonic language, 
 though vastly richer than any other Teutonic 
 tongue, and certainly as far superior in scope and 
 power to Anglo-Saxon as English civilization is to 
 the old Saxon civilization. Of the great number 
 of French words which form part of our language, 
 many are long words expressive of abstractions.
 
 44 ENGLISH WORDS. 
 
 and are held in reserve for special service. But, 
 as we shall see hereafter, there are many short 
 French derivatives which form part of our every- 
 day v/orking vocabulary. English is more than a 
 Teutonic tongue into which there has been an in- 
 fusion of foreign words — it is English. Its char- 
 acteristic is force. It has its own rhythm quite 
 different from that of Anglo-Saxon. The rhythm, 
 or natural music, is a distinctive mark of a lan- 
 guage and probably closely related to the national 
 character of the people who speak it. There is 
 none more varied and vigorous and modern than 
 that of English. It is evident to any one that a 
 truth stated in one language has an entirely differ- 
 ent effect if translated into another. This is 
 owing to the great power of form. Language is a 
 form, and as Professor Marsh has pointed out, it 
 has the power of reacting even on him who uses it. 
 One who habitually thinks in French will in time 
 acquire a French coloring to his mind. The im- 
 portance of knowing something about our lan- 
 guage, and of endeavoring to use it in a v,-ay 
 conformable to its true character, is very great, 
 because it has this formative power. The use of 
 affected language is not only a sign but a cause 
 of mental affectation. I would not go so far as 
 to say that this malady can be cured by llie 
 study of the derivation of words, but at least 
 such study is one means of increasing our re-
 
 SOURCES OF MODERN ENGLISH WORDS. 45 
 
 spect for our most valuable inheritance — our 
 mother-tongue. 
 
 We will now examine briefly some groups of 
 words based on derivations, and also some groups 
 based on the use of various social and industrial 
 classes. The small and comparatively unimpor- 
 tant group derived from Celtic Vv-ords will claim 
 our attention first, because, with the exception of 
 a still smaller group called " Latin of the first 
 period," it constitutes the oldest addition to the 
 Anglo-Saxon vocabulary from any non -Teutonic 
 source.
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 ENGLISH WORDS DERIVED FROM CELTIC. 
 
 Philologists differ greatly in tlieir estimates of 
 the number of words in English derived from the 
 Celtic tongues. The reasons for this general lack 
 of agreement are : First ; Celtic and Anglo-Saxon 
 are both Aryan languages, and when a word is 
 found in one of these languages resembling a word 
 of the same general meaning in the other, the re- 
 semblance may be due to the fact that both are 
 descendants from the same word in the Proto- 
 Aryan tongue. Second ; the word in question 
 may have been transferred twice, first from the 
 Saxon into the Celtic, and then in its disguised 
 form readopted into Anglo-Saxon, so that what 
 seems a Celtic derivative may from another point 
 of view prove to be a genuine ancestral Elnglish 
 word. Third ; the paucity of Celtic documents 
 during the period when some interchange of 
 words might have taken place, renders it difficult, 
 by reason of lack of evidence, to decide questions 
 of origin.
 
 ENGLISH WORDS DERIVED FROM CELTIC. 47 
 
 As a matter of course, the two races were bit- 
 terly hostile, and had little friendly intercourse 
 with each other. The Britons hated the Saxons 
 as invaders, and the Saxons despised the Britons 
 as a conquered and inferior people; nor are these 
 racial feelings entirely eradicated on either side 
 at the present day. But the displacement of the 
 Britons by the Saxons and Angles was a slow 
 process, extending over at least two centuries, 
 and some intercourse must have taken place in 
 the intervals of war. Indeed, in one instance a 
 body of Britons acted as the allies of one tribe of 
 the Angles in their quarrel with another. 
 
 Before saying anything about the few words 
 which we have undoubtedly borrowed from the 
 Cymric or the Gaelic branches of the Celtic 
 tongue, it will be as well to notice that every 
 spoken language embraces minor divisions or 
 subvarieties. Thus Max M uller distinguishes four 
 kinds of English. He says : 
 
 " There is one kind of English which is spoken 
 in Parliament, in the pulpit, and in the courts of 
 law, which may be called \}aQ public, the ordinary 
 and recognized English. 
 
 "The colloquial English, as used by educated 
 people, differs but slightly from this Parliamentary 
 English, though it admits greater freedom of con- 
 struction and a more familiar phraseology. 
 
 " The literary English, again, requires still
 
 48 ENGLISH WORDS. 
 
 greater grammatical accuracy, and admits a num- 
 ber of uncommon, poetical, and even antiquated 
 expressions which would seem strange in ordinary 
 conversation. 
 
 " The dialectic English is by no means extinct. 
 The peasants in every part of England, Scot- 
 land, and Ireland, though they understand a ser- 
 mon and read their newspaper, both of which are 
 written in ordinary English, continue to speak 
 their own language among themselves, a language 
 full of ancient and curious expressions, which 
 often throw much light on the history of classical 
 English. These dialects have of late been most 
 carefully examined, and this is a branch of study 
 in which everybody, if only he has a well-trained 
 ear, is able to render most valuable assistance. 
 
 "Lastly, in discussing special subjects we are 
 driven to use a large number of technical, foreign, 
 and even slang expressions, many of which are 
 quite foreign to the ordinary speaker.'' 
 
 It is evident that there are many subdivisions 
 under each of the above heads. The ordinary 
 English is much the same all over the country at 
 any one period, but differs greatly in different 
 generations. Lord Ashburton's communication 
 and Mr. \^'ebster^s reply are made up of about 
 the same class of words, but a State paper or a 
 sermon of the seventeenth century contains many 
 expressions which we now recognize as antiquated.
 
 ENGLISH WORDS DERIVED FROM CELTIC. 49 
 
 The colloquial English changes much more rapidly, 
 and varies, not only in successive generations, but 
 in different parts of the country. In particular it 
 differs widely in this country and England to-day, 
 and should so differ, since in each it has its own 
 principles of growth. Colloquial English reflects 
 national character, and if national character is 
 individual, it, too, must be individual. If national 
 character is imitative and second-hand, then im- 
 ported phrases and words will mark colloquial 
 expression. 
 
 Literary English changes much more slowly, 
 and does not, or at least should not, vary in differ- 
 ent localities, for a writer must have at least some 
 acquaintance with the entire vocabulary of his 
 period, and must read the literature of his time 
 wherever it is produced. It is true that each 
 school is apt to run to a particular set of words, 
 and a master like Tennyson or Browning some- 
 times introduces a number of new words and 
 phrases which speedily become the literary fash- 
 ion. Writers of power are still more likely to res- 
 cue from oblivion some stray archaisms. But the 
 literary language is the standard, and is held by 
 conservative influences much more than it is dis- 
 turbed by innovating forces. The laws of liter- 
 ary art are always the same, though the ideas 
 which literature must present are progressive. 
 
 Dialects have a strange persistence when once 
 4
 
 50 ENGLISH WORDS. 
 
 established. The very essence of a dialect is, 
 however, that it differs from other dialects. Thus 
 we have Yorkshire, Dorset, Norfolk, Scotch, and 
 Irish, each with its own racy, antique flavor. 
 Imperfect English, as spoken by Germans and 
 Frenchmen, is not entitled to be regarded as a 
 dialect, nor are we willing to recognize technical 
 English as a variety, although the nomenclaturs 
 of botany and chemistry is unintelligible to those 
 who have not made a special study of it. Tech- 
 nical English is simply ordinary English applied 
 to special subject-matter. 
 
 Colloquial English and dialectic English are full 
 of what we call slang expressions, started by the 
 whims of individuals. If these are needed or "fill 
 a known want" — to use a slang expression — they 
 are sometimes retained, and, after a time, admitted 
 into the ordinary English and even into literary 
 English when they have proved their value. This 
 was the case with mob and fun, which are less 
 than a century old, and doubtless will be the 
 case with that very useful word, crank. To the 
 philologist a word is interesting as a specimen, 
 and slang, even low slang, may have a scien- 
 ■ tific value. Dialectic survivals, as in our New 
 England speech, may illustrate a law or prove an 
 ancient usage. It is not tlie dignity of a word 
 that measures its worth as an illustration. 
 
 Returning to the consideration of the words
 
 ENGLISH WORDS DERIVED FROM CELTIC. 5 1 
 
 we have borrowed from the Celtic tongues, we 
 must notice that most of them are of low origin 
 and belong to colloquial or ordinary English. 
 None of them express abstract ideas. The fol- 
 lowing were taken into old French from the Celtic, 
 for French is not entirely of Latin origin, but 
 contains some words taken from the Celtic 
 tongues of old Gaul, and some from the Frank- 
 ish, the language of the Teutonic conquerors of 
 France. From the French some of these passed 
 into English. The list is not a long one (about 
 seventy words), and contains, among others, bill- 
 iards, brisket, car, carry, carpenter, quay, bobbin, 
 cloak, baggage, gravel, varlet, valet, vassal, piece. 
 Some of these words are not found in modern 
 French, as brisket, cloak, carry, which are obsolete 
 in France, though carriere, for career, or the path 
 along which one is carried to success or failure 
 has been retained. Carpenter meant originally 
 a maker of cars or wagons, and v/as taken into 
 low Latin as carpentarius, a wood-worker, thence 
 into French, thence into English after the Con- 
 quest. Baggage is cognate with our English bag, 
 and illustrates the point before alluded to, that 
 an old English word and a Celtic word may 
 be much alike, since both are of Aryan origin. 
 Baggage is undoubtedly French from Celtic. We 
 should not have the well-known phrase "bag and 
 baggage "were both words from the same tongue.
 
 52 ENGLISH WORDS. 
 
 The words basket, brag, bog, dm id, cabin, flan- 
 nel, bump, dagger, peak (found also in French), 
 gkn, and some fifty others are of Celtic origin, 
 but came into English at an early date. 
 
 The words bard, brogue, brogan, clan, fun, collie, 
 cosey, plaid, shamrock, banshee, and 7vhiskey are 
 from the Celtic tongues of Ireland, Scotland, or 
 Wales, but they are of comparatively recent ap- 
 pearance in English. Brogue means a stout, 
 coarse shoe, but has taken up the meaning of 
 dialectic pronunciation. !Milton uses clan, and 
 Goldsmith///;/. Plaid is in jfohnsons Dictionary ; 
 it is undoubtedly Gaelic, and is cognate with 
 Latin /(?///> (a skin) and the English fell. Spenser 
 uses the word shamrock, but introduces it as an 
 Irish word. Sir Walter Scott is responsible for 
 the introduction of a number of Scotch words. 
 Of course many names of the great geographical 
 divisions — lakes, rivers, mountains — are of Celtic 
 origin, and so are many surnames. These will 
 be noticed hereafter. The names of the indig- 
 enous weeds and flowers of England are some- 
 times Celtic, like cockel. Both of these points 
 testify to the antiquity of the Celtic occupation. 
 
 The names of many of the simplest kitchen 
 utensils and materials are of Celtic origin, as : 
 spider, pic, bucket, bung, curd, crock, crockery, griddle, 
 gruel, mop, kettle, kale, mug, noggin, posset, pudding, 
 slab — iif- the sense of viscous, ''make the gruel
 
 ENGLISH WORDS DERIVED FROM CELTIC. 53 
 
 thick and slab" — skilkf, pan* ixvl(\ many others 
 of similar character. 
 
 The presence of this marked Celtic element in 
 kitchen nomenclature suggests that Celtic cap- 
 tives were held as household slaves by the Saxon 
 conquerorS; and that these preserved and handed 
 down a number of their native words in familiar 
 daily use. This inference is strengthened by the 
 fact that the name which the Saxons gave the 
 English Britons — lVeI:c/i, or strangers — was the 
 same word they used for slave, weal meaning 
 male slave, and wylen meaning female slave. 
 
 Again, the slang of the lowest class in Lon- 
 don, the vernacular of the Artful Dodger and 
 Charley Bates in Oliver Twisty contains a num- 
 ber of peculiar expressions, some of which are no 
 doubt of ancient Celtic origin. Thus, in that 
 argot a magistrate is a " beak,"' from the Celtic 
 beach ; '• twig'' is from tiiig, to understand ; " cove '' 
 from coove^ a courteous person ; " hook it " is from 
 t/ingad, begone; " masher," from j?ieas, elegant; 
 ''brick," from brigh, a courageous person; "cut 
 your stick," from cuii as teach, leave the house. 
 To '■ kick the bucket," to '"make your lucky," and 
 to '"cheese it'"t have, very likely, origins of the same 
 
 * Fait, though taken into English from the Welsh, may 
 have been taken by the Welsh from the 'L.^Xva patina. 
 
 f Query : Why is a constable called a cop in the same 
 slang? It can hardly be because he serves a capias.
 
 54 ENGLISH WORDS. 
 
 character — that is, they may be Celtic phrases 
 assimilated in pronunciation to English words 
 with which they have no connection in meaning. 
 "Cheese it" is conjectured to be from French 
 cesser (to cease), which seems an unlikely source 
 for a slang phrase, as " cease " is a dignified, book- 
 ish sort of a word to fall so low. '"Cheese."' in 
 the expression "that's the cheese," is probably 
 Gypsy, from the word meaning "thing'" in the 
 Romany dialect. 
 
 The presence of this singular element in low 
 London slang affords at least a presumption that 
 when the Saxons took possession of London,* 
 then an important Celtic city, a certain number of 
 Celts of the lowest class were unable to remove, 
 and so perpetuated a few remnants of their lan- 
 guage in the lowest stratum of society. How- 
 ever, it must be admitted that this lowest class 
 of thieves and beggars in the cities of the Middle 
 Ages was of such an anomalous character that 
 it is dangerous to draw any inferences from such 
 fragments of its speech as may have come down to 
 us. Again, slang is so lawless in its changes, and 
 is so rarely recorded, that slang dictionaries are 
 full of conjectures. All of the above derivations 
 
 '■• The theory that London was entirely abandoned by 
 tlie Celts is hardly tenable ; Ijut even if it were, the Saxons 
 in oceupying the deserted city v/ould bring Celtic slaves 
 with them.
 
 ENGLISH \yORDS DERIVED FROM CELTIC. 55 
 
 are disputed. Still, there seems to be enough of 
 the Celtic element to support the presumption, 
 though perhaps not very strongly. 
 
 Other English words of probable Celtic origin 
 are habe^ bad, bald, bludgeon, boast, clock, coax, cob, 
 crag, crease, drudge, gown, hassock, lad, lass, racket, 
 (a noise — a tennis racket is Arabic), flimsy. For 
 a full list Skcat's Etymological Dictionary, p. 757, 
 may be consulted. The list is not very long, 
 nor does it embrace many important words. 
 For some reason Celts never hold their mother- 
 tongue as tenaciously as do Teutons. Both 
 Welsh and Irish seem likely to become extinct 
 as spoken languages in the next century. The 
 Celtic blood is widely diffused, and contributes 
 valuable elements to the English character, but 
 our linguistic debt to the race is slight. It is 
 painful to reflect that these ancient tongues, repre- 
 senting the speech of one of the oldest branches 
 of the Aryan stock, must disappear and leave no 
 modern representatives ; but such seems to be 
 their destiny. 
 
 For a thorough modern examination of this question see 
 Skeat's Eiiglish Etymology, chap. xxii.
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 CLASSES OF LATIN DERIVATIVES. 
 
 We will now take up the Latin and Romance 
 element in our vocabulary. This is very much 
 the most important element, constituting as it 
 does over one-half of our dictionary words and a 
 large proportion of those in actual use. It is as 
 early an element as the Celtic, for Saxon took up 
 some Latin words even before the invasion of 
 Britain. A large number of Romance words came 
 into the language from the French, and a few from 
 Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese. Later the theo- 
 logical dissensions of the seventeenth century 
 brought about the introduction of a good many 
 Latin words directly from the Latin tongue. Ey 
 far the greater number came from the French or 
 Norman-French during the twelfth and thirteenth 
 centuries, the formative period of the language, 
 and contributed largely to the character of the 
 new tongue. Sometimes the same Latin word 
 was adopted into English twice, and took two 
 meanings, classic and romantic. Thus, //;/<? and
 
 CLASSES OF LATIN DERIVATIVES. 57 
 
 punish are both from the Latin pcejia, the latter 
 through the French piuii); being by two or three 
 hundred years the younger English word. Com- 
 pare also chalice and calix, cadence and chance, re- 
 gal and royal. 
 
 Again, there are in our language words that 
 have, to quote Professor Meiklejohn, " made their 
 appearances — once through Latin, once through 
 Norman - French, and once through ordinary 
 French." These seem to live quietly side by 
 side in our language, and no one asks by what 
 claim they are here. They are useful ; that is 
 enough. Examples of such triplets are legal, loy- 
 al, and leal — leal used in Scotland, where it has a 
 settled abode in the phrase "the land of the leal " 
 — -fidelity, faithfulness, znd fealty. Faithfulness has 
 two English suffixes on a Latin word. 
 
 The Latin words in our language have been 
 classified in various ways, the common method 
 being by dates and periods. Of the classifica- 
 tions by periods that given by Professor Meikle- 
 john is perhaps as satisfactory as any other. He 
 makes four periods. 
 
 Latix of the First Period. — This covers 
 Latin words left in Britain by the Romans, and 
 strictly numbers but six w^ords : castra, strata, 
 colonia, fossa, partus, and vallu7n. These words 
 appear only in geographical names. The word 
 castra has been colored by the usage of the local-
 
 58 ENGLISH WORDS. 
 
 ity where it was applied. Thus, in the north it 
 is sounded hard, as in Lancaster, Doncaster, Tad- 
 caster. In the IMidhind counties it takes the 
 softer form, ccster, as in Leicester, Towcester, and 
 in the extreme v/est and south it takes the still 
 softer form of c/ieskr, as in Chester, Manchester, 
 Winchester, and others. The first syllable in 
 these words is the Celtic name of the locality or 
 river by which the camp was distinguished. 
 Strata has also taken different forms in different 
 parts of England, but has always been a prefix. 
 One of the first things the Romans did was to 
 drive a strongly- built military road from Rich- 
 borough, near Dover, northward to the River Dee, 
 where they formed a permanent camp, Castra 
 Stativa, which is still called Chester. This road 
 was called the '' street," and by the Saxons " Wat- 
 ling Street." The word strata, in the forms of 
 strat, strad, strd, and strait, is a part of the mod- 
 ern names of many towns, all of which are on 
 this or some other great Roman road. Thus, we 
 have Stratford -on- Avon, Stratton, Stradbroke, 
 Stretton, Stretford, and Streatham, the other syl- 
 lables in these cases being Saxon. Colonia Ave 
 find in Colne, Lincoln, and others ; fossa in Foss- 
 way, Fossbrooke, and Fossbridge ; partus in Ports- 
 mouth and Bridgeport, and rail urn in the words 
 tiiall, hailey and bailiff. The Normans called the 
 two courts in front of their castles the inner
 
 CLASSES OF LATIN DERIVATIVES. 59 
 
 and outer baileys, and the officer in charge of 
 them, the bailiff* Mile, pine, pose, port, wick (a 
 village), and wine probably entered the English 
 language before a.d. 500, and therefore belong 
 to this class in one sense. 
 
 Latin Element of the Second Period. — In 
 the year 596 Pope Gregory the Great sent over 
 to Kent a missionary called Augustine with forty 
 monks. They were received by the King of 
 Kent, allowed to settle in Canterbury, and to 
 build a small cathedral there. This mission and 
 the churches that grew out of it brought into old 
 English a number of words from the Latin, most 
 of which have survived in a different form. 
 Among them are : postol, from apostolus (a person 
 sent) ; biscop, from episcopus (an overseer) ; calc, 
 from calix (a cup) •, clerc, from clericus (an ordained 
 member of the Church) ; munic, from monachus (a 
 solitary person) •, preost, irova presbyter (an elder) j 
 aehnesse, from eleemosune (alms) ;t regol, from 7'eg- 
 nla (a rule). To this period also belongs the in- 
 
 * There is some question about bail, bailiff, and bail- 
 tuick. It is not certain that they are derived from valhan 
 (an enclosing wall). The root is obscure, though certainly 
 Latin, but possibly later than the first period, and through 
 the Norman-French law-jargon. 
 
 f Apostle, bishop, clerk, monk, priest, and alms come to 
 us really from Greek words, but through the Latin. Wc 
 may note, too, that presbyter is not " priest writ large," as 
 Milton said, \mt priest \s presbyter wr'ii small.
 
 6o ENGLISH WORDS. 
 
 troduction of the words butter, cheese, fig, cedar, 
 pear, peach, lettuce, lily, pepper, pease, camel, lion, 
 elephant, oyster, trout, pound, ounce, candle, table, 
 marble. We cannot be certain, however, that some 
 of these words were not introduced into Anglo- 
 Saxon before the migration from the Continent, 
 since we have no complete glossary of all the dia- 
 lects spoken by the invaders. 
 
 There is one word of this or an earlier period 
 that is probably of Greek origin, and that is 
 church. It seems to have been introduced very 
 early into all the Teutonic tongues. The expla- 
 nation usually given for the appearance of this 
 word at so early a date is, that Ulphilas, a mis- 
 sionary from Constantinople, translated the Gos- 
 pels for the use of the ]\Ioesian Goths, among 
 whom he labored in the fourth century, and find- 
 ing no equivalent for church in their language, 
 transferred the word from the Greek, and so in- 
 troduced it was taken up by the other Teutonic 
 tribes. This is probably the true reason for its 
 adoption, unless the Goths and other Teutons, 
 who were allies of the Roman Empire and served 
 in its legions, had already used the Greek name 
 for a building with which they must have been 
 familiar, and so Ulphilas found the word ready 
 for his purpose. 
 
 Latin of thk Third Period. — This is in 
 reality French of the variety generally called Xor-
 
 CLASSES OF LATIN DERIVATIVES. 6 1 
 
 man-French, which has its own pecuUarities both 
 in spelling and pronunciation. At the period of 
 the Norman Conquest Parisian French did not 
 hold its present position of literary supremacy. 
 French grew out of the spoken dialects of Latin, 
 and the Norman-French, when it came to be writ- 
 ten, spelled peuple, people ; loyal, leal ; royaume, 
 realm ; royal, real, and so on. The Norsemen, to 
 whom the valley of the Seine was ceded in 912, 
 were, of course, originally Teutons, but when they 
 settled in France they learned in course of time 
 to speak French of the kind called Norman- 
 French. This language was used in the English 
 Court before the Norman Conquest, under Ed- 
 W'ard the Confessor, who came to the throne in 
 1042. He had been educated at the Norman 
 Court, and insisted that the nobles about him 
 should speak French. 
 
 William, Duke of Normandy, conquered Eng- 
 land pretty thoroughly, and as he was a great 
 administrator, covered the country with the feudal 
 executive machinery. Thus, Norman-French be- 
 came the language of the governmental and eccle- 
 siastical world, of the universities, and, conjointly 
 with Latin, of literature. The people held fast 
 to their own tongue, nor did it cease entirely to 
 be written, but it had no central standard, and of 
 course began to change rapidly. A series of im- 
 portant political events, culminating with the loss
 
 62 ENGLISH WORDS. 
 
 of Normandy in 1204, detached England from 
 France, drew all the people of England into a 
 national organization, and aroused a national 
 sentiment. The fact that the two languages were 
 both spoken in England for so many years, one 
 by the upper class and the other by the body of 
 the people, would naturally result in the vernacu- 
 lar English taking a number of words from the 
 courtly Norman. In 1272 Robert of Gloucester 
 wrote a metrical chronicle in English and used a 
 large number of French words. All others writ- 
 ers of the transition period, Robert of Brun, Laya- 
 mon, etc., use French words in varying proportions, 
 though Layamon (1155) is almost purely Saxon 
 in his vocabulary. The triumph of English may 
 be said to be marked by an Act of Parliament, 
 passed in 1362 under Edward III., by which it was 
 enacted that English should be used in the Law 
 Courts. Previous to this the statement or plead- 
 ings had been made in English, but the judgment 
 entered in Latin. Chaucer was born about 1340 
 and died in 1400, and his admirable poems, writ- 
 ten in English, contain about the same propor- 
 tion of words of French derivation as is used by 
 a modern writer, and mark the firm establishment 
 of a new language, a language of composite vo- 
 cabulary but of Teutonic structure. The English 
 accepted no French idioms, or at least very few, 
 though they took up many thousand French
 
 CLASSES OF LATIN DERIVATIVES. 63 
 
 words. Consequently, we are to-day at liberty to 
 use as many Latin words as we like, but few Latin 
 constructions, if we wish to speak or write English. 
 
 The words brought into the language by the 
 Normans are nearly all those connected in any 
 way with the governing or more important social 
 class. Nearly all the vocabulary of knight-er- 
 rantry and feudalism is of French origin. Such 
 words are arms, armor, assault, joust, lance, shield, 
 greaves, page, mistress, homage, fealty, esquire, her- 
 ald. l'\issal comes from vassus, a Celtic word 
 meaning man, introduced into French, The same 
 word gave us also i^arlet and valet. Scutcheon 
 meant originally shield, sctitum. Then it came to 
 mean heraldic devices painted on the shield. 
 The word is used by carpenters in the original 
 sense of a shield, to designate the plate of metal 
 surrounding the key-hole and shielding the wood 
 from injury. The terms connected with archery — 
 that is, the radical terms, bow, arrows, bolt, bow- 
 string, etc. — are Saxon, though the Normans 
 added some technical terms referring to the orna- 
 mental details of the art. 
 
 This fact shows that the Saxons were archers 
 before the Conquest, or rather bowmen, since 
 archer is the Norman word from arc, a bow, and 
 bowman is pure English, The practice of arch- 
 ery was, however, greatly improved under Nor- 
 man rule.
 
 64 ENGLISH WORDS. 
 
 All the words connected with hunting as a 
 sport are Norman, and so are the names of many 
 of the game-birds and animals. But a deer, a 
 hart, and a stag remained Saxon, the word ccrf 
 never taking root in England. The Saxons were 
 too familiar with the deer to give up the name, 
 but the word venison, from rcnari (to hunt), is 
 French. Quarry, as a place from which to take 
 stones for building, is French — the Normans were 
 great architects ; but quarry, a hunting term, is 
 from another source, the French quer from cor 
 (the heart), which was given to the dogs. Quarry, 
 in the other signification, is from quadrare (to 
 square). 
 
 Nearly all the French words of these classes 
 have been relegated to poetry, or have become 
 antiquated by the change of methods of war and 
 hunting. Arm, sJiicId, standard, forest, are words 
 in common use, but some hundreds of others of 
 this class are either entirely obsolete or are to be 
 found only in the list of literary or poetical words. 
 To many of them a tinge of affectation attaches. 
 Under no circumstances can we now call a horse 
 a courser or charger, though, for that matter, the 
 radical English word steed, applied to stud, is 
 equally obsolete. Brace, as applied to a couple 
 of birds, has held its place very well. It is de- 
 rived from the old French brace (an arm), from 
 which the derived meanin^rs of sustaining or brae-
 
 CLASSES OF LATIN DERIVATIVES. 65 
 
 ing up and encircling in the arms, or embracing, 
 flow naturally. The meaning of brace, or couple, 
 possibly comes from the fact that we have two 
 arms, possibly because a pair of birds were tied 
 together with a string. In the same \\iy leask (a 
 thong to hold dogs) got the signification of three, 
 since three dogs were usually tied together.* 
 
 The old romances ascribe the invention of the 
 vocabulary of the chase to Sir Tristram, and the 
 Morte d' Arthur says : 
 
 " Mesemeth alle gentylmen that beren old 
 armes oughte of ryght to honour Syre Tristram 
 for the godly termes that gentylmen have and 
 use, and shall to the day of dome, that thereby in 
 a manner all men maye discover a gentylman fro 
 a yoman, and from a yoman a vylane. For he 
 that gentyl is wylle drawe hym unto gentyl tatches, 
 and to followe the customes of noble gentylmen." 
 
 The Book of St. Albans, first printed in i486, 
 is very full on the subject of the technical terms 
 of the chase. These are nearly all Norman words. 
 This precision in the use of terms relating to 
 hunting is still characteristic of Englishmen, 
 
 * Leash once meant a brace and a half (see Shak., King 
 licnry IV. Part I., Act II., Scene iv. , line 7) : " Sirrah, 
 I am sworn brother to a leash of drawers, and can call 
 them all by their Christian names, as — Tom, Dick, and 
 Francis." Now it has gone back to the original meaning 
 of the thong, and usually binds t-wo dogs together, not ihrcL'.
 
 66 ENGLISH WORDS. 
 
 though so many of the old words have become 
 obsolete. The Normans carried this affectation 
 to an excess. Thus, Dame Juliana Berners, the 
 reputed author of the BooJz of St. Albans^ tells us 
 that in gentle speech it is said that " the h aw k _/(;///'- 
 eth^ not sleepeth ; she j-efonrrjicth her feders, and 
 not picketh her feders ; she rozcsit/i, and not shak- 
 eth herselfe ; she mantel/yth, and not stretchyth, 
 when she putteth her legges from her one after 
 another, and her wynges follow her legges ; and 
 when she hath mantylled her and bryngeth both 
 her wynges togyder over her backc, ye shall say 
 your hawkye warbdkth her wynges." Further, 
 v/e are told we must not use names of multitudes 
 promiscuously, but we are to say a '"' congrcgacion 
 of people," a "■" Jioost of men," a "■fcIysJiyppiiige of 
 yomen," and a ^'' bevy of ladycs;'' we must speak 
 of a '■'' Jicrde of dere," "sv;annys," '' crannys," or 
 "wrenys," 2^'"'' scgc of nyghtingales," a '■"/lyghfc of 
 cloves," a ^' datcryngc of choughes," a ^' prydc of 
 lyons," a '■'■ sleuthc of beeres," a ^' gagle of geys," 
 a '■• skulkc of foxes," a ^' sciille of frerys," a " p.m- 
 tificality of prestys," and ■a.''' supcrfliiytc of nonnes ;" 
 and so of other human and brute assemblages. 
 In like manner, in dividing game for the table, 
 the animals were not carved, but a " dcre was 
 broken, a goose rcryJ, a chckyny)7/i-j-//<;Y/, a coney 
 Jinlaccii, a crane dyspIayeJ, a curlew imjoynfcJ, a 
 cjualle 2cynggcd, a lamb sholdcrcd, a heron dys-
 
 CLASSES OF LATIN DERIVATIVES. 67 
 
 7ne)>ib2red, a peacock dysfygnrcd,'" etc. A strict 
 observance of all these niceties of speech was 
 more important as an indication of good breeding, 
 or, in the words of Dame Juliana Berners, as a 
 '• means of dystynguishing gentylmen from ungen- 
 tylmen," than was a rigorous conformity to the 
 rules of grammar or even to those of the moral 
 law; nor would it be difficult to find even now 
 people who judge others by a similar linguistic 
 standard. The slang of '" society " seems to be 
 as old and as artificial as society itself.
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 ARTIFICIAL CHARACTER OF THE LATIN ELEMENT. 
 
 It will be noticed that a large proportion of 
 tlie artificially-used words mentioned in the last 
 chapter are Norman-French. Even now if we set 
 ourselves to work in cold blood to force words 
 into unnatural uses we draw our material from 
 the same class. Most of the fanciful expressions 
 which the affected and self-conscious literary fash- 
 ion called Euphuism brought into use, come from 
 the Latin side of our language. It is difficult to 
 be affected in any Teutonic tongue unless, in- 
 deed, we affect a plain, unfinished rusticity. As 
 we shall see later, a large number of Erench de- 
 rivatives have become thoroughly anglicized, but 
 to many others a slight flavor of affectation still 
 attaches. We may notice, too, in passing, that a 
 certain set of artificial expressions is still the 
 shibboleth of fashionable society, just as it was 
 in the time of Dame Juliana IJerners. Tliese are 
 generally manufactured in London, but the vo- 
 cabulary is so limited as greatly to restrict con-
 
 ARTIFICIAL CHARACTER OF LATIN ELEMENT. 69 
 
 versation among those who use it. The society 
 vocabulary of the fifteenth century seems to have 
 been much less meagre than is that of the last 
 quarter of the nineteenth. 
 
 A great body of Norman-French words which 
 have been permanently adopted are those apper- 
 taining to the legal and ecclesiastical professions 
 and to philosophical conceptions. These classes 
 of words, especially the second and third, fre- 
 quently come direct from the Latin, which re- 
 mained till the eighteenth century the language 
 of scholars and theologians all over the Christian 
 world. Milton wrote his controversial tracts in 
 Latin. We will revert to these words under the 
 head of words of the trades and professions. 
 Nearly all titles of nobility, and of the sacred or- 
 ders, of rvLisonry, etc., are Latin of this period. 
 Indeed, the Normans gave us the words ////<?, dig- 
 nity, 7ioble (from nosco, iiobilis, kaozcifi), etc. ; also 
 the specific titles duke {dux), marquis, count {comes), 
 peer {par), marshall, etc. Marquis is the officer 
 in charge of the 7nark or border, and is therefore 
 originally a Teutonic word embedded in French. 
 MarsJial is of the same class. Mereschall meant 
 originally in Frankish the man who had charge 
 of the horses, and has retained in the French 
 word marec/ial (blacksmith or farrier) another 
 branch of its original meaning. But on another 
 side it developed to mean in French the leading
 
 70 ENGLISH WORDS. 
 
 military officer, as ^^ Le Marec/ial Ney." With us 
 this second meaning has been arrested, and de- 
 notes only one who has cliarge of a procession, 
 or the executive federal court officer. Our word 
 martial, from INIars, the god of war, is from a 
 totally different root, and came to us along 
 with jovial, saturnine, mercurial, and a number of 
 other words and expressions from the ancient 
 pseudo-science of astrology. Those who were 
 born when certain planets were in the "ascend- 
 ant "' were supposed to partake of certain " influ- 
 ences." As, however, the Latin contained the 
 adjective jnartialis, it is not absolutely certain that 
 the word martial comes to us through the astro- 
 logical term. 
 
 There is a well-worn but still interesting quo- 
 tation from Ivanhoe which illustrates the relative 
 positions of certain Norman and English words, 
 and, indirectly, the relations of the two peo- 
 ples : 
 
 " ' . . . I advise thee to call off Fangs and 
 leave the herd to their destiny, which, v/hether 
 they meet with bands of travelling soldiers, or 
 of outlaws, or of wandering pilgrims, can be 
 little else than to be converted into Normans 
 before morning, to thy no small ease and com- 
 fort' 
 
 " ' The swine turned into Normans to my com- 
 fort!' quotli Gurth. 'Expound that to me, Wam-
 
 ARTIFICIAL CHARACTER OF LATIN ELEMENT. 7 1 
 
 ba, for my brain is too dull and my mind too vexed 
 to read riddles.' * 
 
 " ' Why, how call you these grunting brutes run- 
 ning about on their four legs ?' demanded Wamba. 
 
 "'Swine, fool, swine,' said tlie herd; 'every 
 fool knows that.' 
 
 '■'And STvi/id is good Saxon,' said the jester; 
 'but how call you the sow when she is flayed, 
 and drawn, and quartered, and hung by the heels 
 like a traitor ?' 
 
 '•'Pork,' answered the swineherd. 
 
 " ' I am glad every fool knows that too,' said 
 Wamba ; ' and pork, I think, is good Xorman- 
 French, and so when the brute lives and is in 
 the ch-arge of a Saxon slave, she goes by her 
 Saxon nama ; but becomes a Norman and is czXX- 
 cd pork when she is carried to the castle-hall to 
 feast among the nobles. What dost thou think of 
 that, friend Gurth, ha ?' 
 
 '• ' It is but too true doctrine, friend Wamba, 
 however it got into thy fool's pate.' 
 
 ""Nay, I can tell you more,' said Wamba, in 
 the same tone. ' There is old Alderman Ox con- 
 tinues to hold his Saxon epithet while he is under 
 the charge of serfs and bondsmeii such as thou ; 
 
 '■• Rc\id 3.r\(\. riddles are from the same root, meaning " to 
 interpret." Riddles (something to be explained) v.-as not 
 plural. It has, however, lost the final s. liiddk (a large 
 seine) is from another .Saxon word.
 
 72 ENGLISH WORDS. 
 
 but becomes Beef, a fiery French gallant, when he 
 arrives before the worshipful jaws that are to con- 
 sume liim. IMynherr Calf, too, becomes Monsieur 
 d: Veau in the like manner ; he is Saxon when 
 he requires tendance, and takes a Xorman name 
 when he becomes a matter of enjoyment.' "' 
 
 From the Xorman-French came a number of 
 general or class names, while the corresponding 
 specilic names for individual things are mostly 
 Saxon. Anif?ial and beast are French, but dog, 
 cat, "uicassl, fox, bee, Jiorsc, 7uare, sheep, etc., are 
 Saxon. Again, if the Xorman gave ws palace, cas- 
 tle, viansion, we have kept the Saxon words house, 
 home, and cottage. Against the French word table 
 we have the humbler but more hospitable word 
 board. Dish, though originally from the Latin 
 discus, was naturalized so early as to come into 
 the same class with pitcher, mug. jug, and spoon. 
 We may conjecture that our Saxon ancestors ate 
 with their knives, since fork is Latin ; still they 
 must have used forks, though not for the table, 
 before the Conquest, since the word is found in 
 Saxon and is from farea, not from fourchette.*' 
 Mr. Spaulding observes : '" We use a foreign term 
 naturalized when we speak of color, but if we tell 
 what that color is. as red, yelloiu, bhrck, green, or 
 
 * We may make tliis conjecture with the more confi- 
 dence, since we know that fori-cs \\'ere not used in England 
 for the table till the seventeenth centurv.
 
 ARTIFICIAL CHARACTER OF LATIN ELEMENT. 73 
 
 brown, we use an English word. We are Romans 
 when we speak in a general way of moving, but 
 we are Teutons if we leap or springs or slip or 
 slide, or crawl, ox fall, or lualk, or ru/i, siuim, creep, 
 or fly. The more modern particularized colors 
 which were not differentiated by our ancestors, 
 like 7nauve, scarlet, crimson, vermilion, carmine, etc., 
 come under a different head. Many of them are 
 technical trade names, derived from dyes, like 
 car7nine and crimson, from kermcs, cochineal from 
 Spanish, through the Arabic." 
 
 The general effect of the Norman-French infu- 
 sion of words was to give us a large number of 
 synonyms, one of which is of Latin, the other of 
 Teutonic extraction, \\k.<i. floiver and bloom, stream 
 and river, language and speech, pitch and degree, 
 7C'ife and spouse, miserable and wretched, etc. Each 
 member of these pairs of words has a slightly dif- 
 ferent meaning, and goes properly with different 
 modifying adjectives and fits different figurative 
 usages. For instance, we can speak of a stream 
 of talk or of ideas, but a river of either would be 
 rather an unpleasant image. We say a high pitch 
 and a low pitch, but not low degree, for tliis has 
 a special meaning, and is an antiquated expres- 
 sion. Again, we say mother- tongue a.nd flne lan- 
 guage, but not mother- language nor fine tongue. 
 Language and tongue are based on the same 
 verbal metaphor, cause for effect, or instrument
 
 74 ENGLISH WORDS. 
 
 for product, since language is from lingua, tongue ; 
 but the two words have nov/ entirely different 
 shades of meaning, some of which are hardly 
 distinguishable. Language has reference to the 
 words themselves and to the grammatical con- 
 struction, tongue to the pronunciation and to 
 the specilic language. " His tongue bewrayeth 
 him." '"He used the English tongue." " I^ad 
 language "' has an idiomatic meaning of its own, 
 equivalent not to a bad tongue, but to blas- 
 phemous words. Speech is almost equivalent to 
 spoken language, and can hardly be applied to 
 written words. It v/ould be better to say " His 
 book was written in the I>atin language "' instead 
 of ''in the Latin tongue." We feel that tongue is 
 the more archaic and poetic word. English is full 
 of these niceties which we learn by usage, and 
 many of them grew out of the fact that our vo- 
 cabulary is drawn from two great reservoirs, the 
 stores in each of which have a slightly different 
 character, corresponding to the national spirit 
 of the people which originally used them. \\'e 
 are not aware of the great number of these idi- 
 oms or peculiar usages of words until we read 
 English written by a foreigner who has attempted 
 to learn the language after maturity or through 
 books. 
 
 Synonyms never cover exactly the same ground. 
 Thus, some uses of language are equivalent to
 
 ARTIFICIAL CHARACTER OF LATIN ELEMENT. 75 
 
 some uses of tongue, and other uses of ioiigut 
 are exchangeable for some uses of speech. If 
 we represent the notions or concepts covered by 
 the word language as enclosed in a circle, then 
 the circle which represents the word tongue would 
 be rather smaller, and would intersect it. The 
 space common to the two circles would represent 
 those meanings common to the two words. If, 
 now, we represent the meanings of the word speech 
 by another circle, this must intersect both and 
 also cover a portion of the space common to the 
 two. It should be the smallest of the three. Only 
 the metaphorical or secondary uses of tongue and 
 speech are here considered. The primary mean- 
 ing of tongue is the organ of speech and taste, 
 and for our present pfurpose we may consider the 
 primary meaning of speech to be vocal utterance. 
 These meanings are excluded because we are con- 
 sidering the words as synonyms. The special 
 meanings of speech are but few, like '"human 
 speech,"' which is really broader than '"human lan- 
 guage." In nearly all cases either the word lan- 
 guage or the v.'ord tongue could be substituted 
 for the word speech, though, of course, the reverse 
 is not true. The distinctions and likenesses of 
 the words may be represented by the circles on 
 the next page. 
 
 Xo two vrords are exact synonyms, because 
 even if the meanings are almost identical, the lit-
 
 76 ENGLISH WORDS, 
 
 erary flavor is differ- 
 ent. One of tlie 
 words is always the 
 right word for the 
 place, though the dif- 
 ference is frequently 
 so small that it is not 
 worth while to con- 
 sider it — at least in 
 ordinary prose. " Dc 771'mimis non curat kx "' — and 
 it were to "consider too curiously" to attempt to 
 discriminate the significations of begin and com- 
 mence, or trustworthy and reliable ; but we should 
 almost always use begin and trustworthy on account 
 of their Saxon force. Nevertheless, there are cases 
 where we should prefer to use the word commence. 
 '• Commenced operations," for instance, seems to 
 imply preparation and design more than does 
 began operations ; but it is rather a colloquial ex- 
 pression at best. When two words substantially 
 equivalent are in use, the genius of the language 
 assigns them to different duties or drops one of 
 them. 
 
 There are a number of expressions consisting 
 of two words of the same meaning, one of which 
 is English and the other Xorman-French. These 
 are survivals of the time when Xorman words 
 were sinking into the English language, and some 
 persons understood a Norman term and others
 
 ARTIFICIAL CHARACTER OF LATIN ELEMENT. 77 
 
 an English one. Mr. Earle gives a list of these 
 double expressions, some of which are given be- 
 low : 
 
 Act and deed. jSIetes and bounds. 
 
 Aid and abet. Will and testament. 
 
 Bag and baggage. Use and wont. 
 
 Head and chief. Pray and beseech. 
 
 The Prayer-book, revised 1 542-1 54S, and found- 
 ed largely on ancient usage, is apparently intiu- 
 enced by this feeling for a double vocabulary, and 
 uses the expressions " acknowledge and confess," 
 "assemble and meet together," '"dissemble and 
 cloak,"' ''humble and lowly."' Other instances of 
 survivals of the same usage can be found in the 
 writings of the sixteenth and seventeenth cen- 
 turies. 
 
 This great gain of material to the vocabulary 
 of t'.ie English language v.-as accompanied by 
 some loss, of the same nature as the gain, and 
 by other losses of a more serious character. The 
 net result, as seen summed up in the great Chau- 
 cer, was of course very great gain. In sympli- 
 fying the grammar a number of hnc terminations 
 were lost. The um of the dative plural, the cu, 
 ail, era, and aia, the igaiiic and i^cnJum of the 
 Saxons, could not have been other than digni- 
 fied and sonorous sounds. W'e have the admi- 
 rable syllable i?ig for the present participle, but
 
 78 ENGLISH WORDS. 
 
 the beautiful termination cnde must have been 
 less apt to degenerate into a nasal sound. The 
 strong suffix dom which we have in kingdojn, wis- 
 do7n, Chnstendo??i, etc., might well have been re- 
 tained in many other terminals. Heritage is a 
 grand v/ord, but it might have divided territor}' 
 with the still stronger Saxon word birthdom. We 
 might have appropriated heritage to our material," 
 and birt/idom to our spiritual inheritance. Of 
 course, in symplifying the grammar and passing 
 from an inflected to a synthetic language, the ter- 
 minals must go, for that v/as the very essence of 
 the change , and if v.'e look regretfully on the loss 
 of some words and sounds, we must try to keep 
 unharmed every element we have of the old Eng- 
 lish tongue. 
 
 Latin of the Fourth Period. — The Norman- 
 French v>^ords entered the national language — 
 that is, the tongue of the people ; but in the six- 
 teenth and seventeenth centuries the revival of 
 learning and the increased interest in theologi- 
 cal and philosophical discussion brought about 
 by the Reformation resulted in the introduction 
 into the written or literary language of a large 
 number of words directly from Latin. ]\Iilton, 
 and, later, Sir Thomas Browne, never hesitated 
 to anglicize a Latin term, and, in consequence, 
 many '• long tailed words in osity and ation " 
 crowded into the English language, most of them.
 
 ARTIFICIAL CHARACTER OF LATIN ELEMENT. 79 
 
 happily, doomed to a speedy death and entomb- 
 ment in our large dictionaries. Thus, words like 
 excruncate — not a bad v/ord, by the way — scpteii- 
 trioiiality, moribundiousness, strutted in the books 
 of the learned for a brief day and then disap- 
 peared. Even Dr. Johnson would have called 
 these ''ink-horn terms,"' though they were used 
 by good writers. 
 
 Words direct from the Latin can readily be 
 distinguished from words from Latin through 
 French. French nouns come from the accusa- 
 tives of Latin nouns, the terminations being much 
 disfigured. Frequently, as said before, we have 
 received the word through both channels, that 
 through the French being the more disguised 
 from the fact that it was received into the oral 
 language through the ear, while the Latin deriv- 
 ative was transplanted bodily to a written page. 
 The following is an imperfect list of such dupli- 
 cates : 
 
 FROM LATIN. 
 DIRECT. THROUGH FRENCH. 
 
 Antecessor. Ancestor. 
 
 Benediction. Benison. 
 
 Cadence. Chance. 
 
 Conception. Conceit. 
 
 ,-. ^ 1 ( Custom. 
 
 Consuetude. { ^ 
 
 [ Costume. 
 
 Example. Sample. 
 
 Fabric. For2;e.
 
 8o 
 
 ENGLISH WORDS. 
 
 DIRECT. 
 
 Faction. 
 
 Fact. 
 
 Fragile. 
 
 History. 
 
 Hospital. 
 
 Particle. 
 
 Pauper. 
 
 Persecute. 
 
 Pungent. 
 
 Quiet. 
 
 Separate. 
 
 Tradition. 
 
 Zealous. 
 
 Captive. 
 
 Radius. 
 
 THROUGH FRENCH. 
 
 Fashion. 
 
 Feat. 
 
 Frail. 
 
 Story. 
 
 Flotel. 
 
 Parcel. 
 
 Poor.> 
 
 Pursue. 
 
 Poignant. 
 
 Coy. 
 
 Sever. 
 
 Treason. 
 
 Jealous. 
 
 Caitiff. 
 
 Rav. 
 
 It will be observed that the words in the second 
 column are, on the whole, shorter, and have more 
 of the vernacular character than those in the first ; 
 and some of them, as, for example, forge, poor, 
 ray, sound like Teutonic words, so firmly have 
 they become imbedded in English speech, and so 
 entirely have their characteristic Romance ter- 
 minations disappeared. This, of course, results 
 from the fact that they were spoken v/ords. taken 
 from a living language, and not book words, taken 
 from the literature of a dead language, and were 
 assimilated by the v/ear and tear of oral speech.
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 LITERARY CHARACTER OF THE LATIN DERIVA- 
 TIVES. 
 
 We are frequently counselled to avoid the use 
 of Latin derivatives, and are told that the quality 
 of earnestness, simplicity, and power belongs to 
 the English element of our tongue. This caution 
 certainly can apply only to long words with Latin 
 terminations. The following is an imperfect list 
 of words of Latin root, of one syllable, which have 
 been in our language since 1400, and, like the Hu- 
 guenots in Amicrica, or the Xormans in Ireland, 
 have become more native than the natives them- 
 selves : 
 
 Add, air, art, beast, blame, blanch, boast, boil, 
 cape, case, cause, cease, chance, change, charm, 
 chaste, cheer, chief, clear, cook, cope, course, 
 court, crime, crown, cure, damn, dance, doubt, 
 dress, ease, face, faith, fail, false, fume, feast, fierce, 
 fool, force, form, fount, gay, grace, grant, grieve, 
 guide, guile, haste, haunt, host, hour, join, joy, 
 judge, large, mass, meat, moist, name, nurse, pace, 
 
 6
 
 82 EXGLISH WORDS. 
 
 pain, paint, pair, pale, pass, peace, plain, please, 
 point, pomp, poor, pope, port, pound, pray, preach, 
 prude, pounce, prince, prize, prove, pure, purge, 
 quaint, quit, rent, robe, rose, rote, route, rude, 
 saint, sauce, save, scliool, serve, siege, sign, sir, 
 sort, space, spend, spouse, squire, strait, taste, tent, 
 term, turn, vain, vice. 
 
 Here are more than one liundrcd monosyllables 
 of Latin lineage in constant use since Chaucer's 
 time, and the number of dissyllables of similar 
 character is much greater. Tliere is no reason 
 that we should avoid these words, and it would 
 be harmful to try to do so. But Latin sentence- 
 movement must be avoided at all hazards, and 
 the long Latin derivatives must be handled with 
 skill and discretion. Li the use of words we 
 should be independent, but with .Saxon proclivi- 
 ties. 
 
 Professor Earle says that ''A Xorman family 
 settled in England and edited the English lan- 
 guage," which is rather a neat epigram ; but would 
 it not be nearer the truth to say that the English 
 people edited their own language and Chaucer 
 published it ? The language grew out of the 
 usage of the people who were relieved from any 
 literary supervision for nearly three hundred 
 years, and it still grows very slowly, in spite of 
 literary supervision and criticism. 
 
 One influence which tended to retain archaisms
 
 CHARACTER OF LATIN DERIVATIVES. 83 
 
 arose from the successive translations of tlie Bi- 
 ble. Wycliffe, in the fourteenth century, trans- 
 lated it into middle English. The subsequent 
 revisers, Tyndall (1526), Coverdale (15S0), and 
 the revisers in King James' reign, were each fa- 
 miliar with the Bible used before their day, and 
 each version was founded on its predecessor. 
 Each reviser was desirous to retain archaisms 
 that had become associated with the text, and at 
 the same time to make the book '• understanded 
 of the people." Thus there was a sort of trans- 
 mission in a written book and in the minds of 
 the people of phrases and v.'ords which might 
 otherwise have dropped out of remembrance. 
 The Bible has undoubtedly been a conservative 
 influence for the English element of our com- 
 posite language. Its relations to English speech 
 and thought have been very close, and it is and 
 has been tlie storehouse of religious phraseology. 
 Professor }>Iarsh says : " Wycliffe must be consid- 
 ered as having originated the diction v/hich for 
 five centuries has constituted the consecrated dia- 
 lect of the English speech, and Tyndall as hav- 
 ing given to it that finish and perfection which 
 have so admirably adapted it to the expression 
 of religious doctrine and sentiment, and to the 
 narrative of the remarkable series of historical 
 facts which are recorded in the Christian Script- 
 ures."
 
 84 ENGLISH WORDS. 
 
 Professor Marsh calls attention to the fact that 
 the Norman words added greatly to our stock of 
 rhymes. He says : " Many of the French words 
 which first appear in Chaucer were introduced 
 for the sake of the rhyme, and not infrequently 
 taken as they stood in the poems which he trans- 
 lated or paraphrased, and there is almost as great 
 a preponderance of French rhymes in his ov/n 
 original works." '"The Squire's Tale" has not 
 been traced to any foreign source, and is believed 
 to be of Chaucer's own invention ; but of the six 
 hundred and twenty-tv;o lines of which that frag- 
 ment consists, one hundred and eighty-seven end 
 with Romance words, though the proportion of 
 Anglo-Saxon words in the poem is more than 
 ninety per cent. Puttenham, late in the sixteenth 
 century, is severe upon Gower for helping himself 
 to French rhymes when English v/ould not serve 
 his turn. Fie says : '" For a licentious maker is 
 in truth but a bungler, not a Poet. Such men 
 were in effect the most part of all your old rimers, 
 and specially Gower, who to make up his rime 
 would for the m.ost part write his terminal sylla- 
 ble with false orthograpliie, and menie times not 
 stickle to put in a plaine French word for an 
 English ; and so by your leave do many of our 
 common rimers at this day." 
 
 Chaucer concludes the complaint of ]\Fars v/ith 
 this lamentation :
 
 CHARACTER OF LATIN DERIVATIVES. 05 
 
 "And eke to me it is a great penaunce, 
 Sith rhyme in English hath such scarcite, 
 To follow word by word the curiosite 
 Of Graunson, flour of them that make in Fraunce." 
 
 Professor IMarsh points out also that double 
 rhymes are very frequently made by French words. 
 Double rhymes are words which have the same 
 terminal unaccented, and a rhyming accented pe- 
 nult — like "duty," '"beauty;" '"ringing," "sing- 
 ing:"' "gladness," sadness." Many of the rhyming 
 couplets among the English derivatives of our lan- 
 guage are heavy monosyllables, and the double 
 rhyming couplets from the same class are inflected 
 words, like "chiming," "rhyming," or the antiquat- 
 ed forms in dh and est ; '"lyeth," "trieth ;" ""lovest," 
 '• provest," which last are awkward enough, ^^'e 
 become rather tired of the double rhymes in iug^ 
 and double rhymes made of an unaccented word 
 preceded by a rhyming word have an element 
 of the ridiculous, like " write it " and " smite it." 
 Therefore, as double rhymes are very pleasing 
 to the ear, and as we have but few graceful and 
 effective polysyllabic endings of Saxon etymol- 
 ogy, versifiers will generally be forced to seek 
 them in the Roman and Romance elements of 
 our speech, and thus " the frequency of double 
 rhymes tends to increase the proportion of Latin 
 words in our poetic dialect." This is unfortunate, 
 to say the least, for any artificial pressure on our
 
 86 ENGLISH WORDS. 
 
 language must be regarded as likely to be injuri- 
 ous ; and Professor Marsh goes on to say that 
 our poetic diction might render a great service to 
 the language if it could revive some of the Saxon 
 inflectional terminals employed so charmingly by 
 Chaucer, as, for instance : 
 
 "With hearty will they sworen and asscutcn. 
 To all this thing ther said not o wight nay ; 
 Beseeching him of grace or that they ivenicn. 
 That he would granten hem a certain day." 
 
 " Mrs. Browning's fine poem, the ' Cry of the 
 Children,' contains one hundred and sixty verses, 
 with alternate doul^le and single rhymes, and of 
 course there are forty pairs of double rhymes, or 
 eighty double-rhymed words. The proportion of 
 Romance words in the whole poem is but eight 
 per cent., but of the double- rhymed terminals 
 thirty per cent, are Romance, so that nearly one- 
 fourth of the Romance words introduced into the 
 poem are found in the double rhymes, while of the 
 eighty single- rhymed terminals seventy are cer- 
 tainly Saxon, and of the remaining ten, three or 
 four are probably so." 
 
 Tennyson and ]!ro\vning revived a number of 
 archaic words — most of them for the sake of 
 their associations — which have permanently en- 
 riched poetic diction and through this the literary 
 language. Poetry is one root of linguistic growth, 
 and tlie words it introduces to good society or
 
 CHARACTER OF LATIN DERIVATIVES. 8/ 
 
 rescues from oblivion, though not numerous, not 
 infrequently obtain or resume good standing, and 
 are sometimes of great value. 
 
 In general, the Romance element of our lan- 
 guage lends itself to special subjects of which the 
 nomenclature is Romance, and to all abstract as 
 opposed to concrete treatment of a subject. Its 
 literary value is quite equal to that of the Saxon 
 element, but if wrongly used it can harm literary 
 expression, whereas Saxon can never work harm 
 even if used to excess. It is the Latin of the 
 Fourth Period which is apt to give a scholastic 
 and ponderous effect, not the Romance element, for 
 that has become a part of our mother-tongue. 
 The monosyllables mentioned on page 8i are 
 idiomatic, and dissyllables like defeat, delay, gen- 
 tle, story, severe, fortune^ honest, humble, intent, 
 pity, prayer, promise, study, tyrant, nsage, easy, 
 monster, and hundreds of others have been used 
 so long — they all occur in Chaucer — that they 
 have acquired the colloquial quality as fully as 
 any Saxon derivatives that could be named. How 
 could we do without the words people, party, pcr- 
 feet, office, repent, report, etc., all so firmly im- 
 bedded in English speech that they come to our 
 lips when needed as readily as any Saxon syn- 
 onyms would, if indeed there be Saxon synonj-ms 
 for them all. The particles and little connect- 
 ing words, the pronouns, prepositions, and auxil-
 
 88 ENGLISH WORDS. 
 
 liary verbs of our language are from the Saxon 
 side. "We cannot dispense with them, but if any 
 color is to be given to style, the Latin as well as 
 the Romance element in our tongue must be used. 
 Furthermore, if sonorousness is to be attained (a 
 quality visually to be eliminated, but not al- 
 ways,) we must use the long Latin words in their 
 proper places. They give the basis — the heavy 
 resonance— the carrying power — needed occasion- 
 ally, though rarely. But they should be used in- 
 stinctively, not of malice aforethought, and so in- 
 deed must all words. A man might as well insist 
 on expending his paternal inheritance to the ex- 
 clusion of what he had received from his mother, 
 as to insist on using Saxon words only. 
 
 Examination will prove that many striking im- 
 ages in our literature derive their force from Latin 
 and Romance words. Matthew Arnold calls Shel- 
 ley " a j^a/c, iincffcctual cingcl, beating his luminous 
 wings in the void.'' None of these words can be 
 changed, because there are associations with near- 
 ly all of them. A "v/an, weak ghost, flapping liis 
 bright wings in the emptiness,'' or any other Sax- 
 on paraphrase, is trash. I\7/l' and niicffcctual are 
 connected in a well-known quotation. Beating, 
 applied to wings, is used by Rosetti in another 
 beautiful passage, and had been applied to the 
 Angel of Death by John ]]right in an oratorical 
 passage of rare elevation and purity. Luminous
 
 CHARACTER OF LATIN DERIVATIVES. 8g 
 
 has scientific associations as a source of light. 
 Void suggests cosmic space through which a divine 
 message might be striving in vain to approach us. 
 So all these words strengthen each other.* 
 
 When Shakspeare's characters are to make a 
 plain, strong statement (as is pointed out by Pro- 
 fessor Corsen), they frequently use Saxon mono- 
 syllables ; but when their emotional and intellect- 
 ual natures are wrought up to a stress of passion, 
 and they have time to express their feelings, they 
 avail themselves of the stores of picturesque and 
 sonorous words which come from Latin and French. 
 Thus Macbeth, speaking of the blood on his hands, 
 says that it would 
 
 "the vniltLtudliioiis seas iucaniauinc ;'' / 
 
 but he has worked up to that tremendous, poly- 
 syllabic, exaggerated expression of guilt through 
 simpler Saxon words. When he hears that his 
 wife is dead, he falls back in his chair with a 
 groan, and says : 
 
 "She should have died hereafter: 
 There would have been a time for such a word. 
 To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrov/, 
 Creeps in its petty pace from day to day, 
 To the last syllable of recorded time." 
 
 * Examine Shelley's "Adonais"and the "Sensitive Plant," 
 and note that the elevated images are usually presented in 
 Latin and Romance words.
 
 go ENGLISH WORDS. 
 
 The image called up by the two Romance 
 words syllable and 7\rorded is the most sublime in 
 literature. No other words would be so powerful. 
 No other words would have brought before us the 
 image of the Angel of Eternity announcing the 
 close of time, as it arose in the mind of the trans- 
 gressor of the moral law. 
 
 But when Macbeth is giving an order or de- 
 scribing something he sees — though it be an illu- 
 sion — his language is Saxon : 
 
 "Go, bid thy mistress, when my drink is ready 
 She strike upon the belL Get thee to bed ' 
 Is this a dagger, which I see liefore me, 
 The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee : 
 I have thee not, and yet I see thee still." 
 
 Antony says of Cleopatra ; 
 
 "Age cannot wither lier, or custom stale 
 Her infiintc variety." 
 
 One of the most intellectually satisfying images 
 in the " Sonnets" lies in two Saxon words, but the 
 thing imaged is introduced by Romance words. 
 Lamenting the degrading and narrowing effect of 
 his vocation as a jourveyor of public amusement, 
 Shakspeare says : 
 
 "Thence comes it that my name receives a brand 
 And almost thence my nature is subdued 
 To wliat it works in, like the dyer's hand."
 
 CHARACTER OF LATIN DERIVATIVES. 9 1 
 
 Many of the great phrases in the " Collects '' ex- 
 emplify the dual nature of English. For instance, 
 '• Pour upon them the continual'* dew of thy bless- 
 ing." The Romance word has the same quality 
 of inevitableness as the Saxon ones, dew and blcsi:- 
 ing. Both come from the heart of the language. 
 It is unnecessary to multiply examples. 
 
 We^nay say in conclusion that English is a com- 
 posite language; that each element has its own 
 value ; that to try to limit ourselves to Saxon re- 
 sults in baldness and sterility — the danger of our 
 age; that to overwork the Latin results in in- 
 flation and pomposity, and that to translate ade- 
 quate Saxon expressions into Latin equivalents, 
 as is sometimes done, under the impression that 
 we must use a more elevated diction, is in such 
 bad taste that no one who reads needs be warned 
 against it. Nothing but careful reading of good 
 literature and constant practice will give us that 
 feeling for words which vvill enable us — supposing, 
 in the first place, that we have something to say — 
 to use the two elements of our vocabulary so as 
 to get the value of each. 
 
 Still, the examination of etymologies Avill be 
 found to be of considerable benefit in increasing 
 our power of appreciating verbal refinements. It 
 
 * A rule of modern rhetoric would change continual to 
 continuous, thereby spoiling the phrase.
 
 92 ENGLISH WORDS. 
 
 is true that many of those who have used words 
 with tlie greatest dehcacy and originahty have not 
 even known that tlie English language was com- 
 pounded of two elements. But in many of our 
 writers, whose claim to be considered literary art- 
 ists is undisputed, as De Quincey, Lamb, Lowell, 
 Thackeray — to go no further — it is evident that 
 the knovv'ledge of classical etymology has added 
 to their command of words and their power of 
 using them in new relations, and of bringing out 
 novel and striking shades of meaning. 
 
 In reference to the number of words in our lan- 
 guage, and the number derived from each great 
 source, Max ryliiller says : "Skeat's Etymological 
 Dictionary of the English Language, which confines 
 itself to primary v/ords — that is to say, which 
 would explain luck, but not lucky, unlucky, or luck- 
 less ; multitude, but not multitudinous, etc. — deals 
 with no more than 13,500 entries. Of these, 
 4000 are of Teutonic origin, 5000 are taken from 
 the French, 2700 direct from Latin, 250 from 
 Celtic, and the rest (1250) from various sources. 
 A language is, after all, not so bewildering a thing 
 as it seems to be, when v/e hear of a dictionary 
 of 250,000 words. For all the ordinary purposes 
 of life a dictionary of 4000 words would be quite 
 sufficient." 
 
 The material of the English language may there- 
 fore be taken to be about 13.500 words. The
 
 CHARACTER OF LATIN DERIVATIV^ES. 93 
 
 number of entries in our great dictionaries is 
 swelled by including all possible compounds, mul- 
 titudes of technical scientific words, and all the 
 parts of speech except plurals and possessives, 
 giving, for instance, under love, loveless, lovely, 
 lovingly, unlovely, etc., and by including obsolete 
 words and spellings, and many temporary and 
 slang words manufactured for some special use. 
 To put the vocabulary of educated persons at 
 4000 words only, would, hov;ever, seem rather 
 illiberal, although the vocabulary of agricultural 
 laborers in England is said not to exceed 6oo 
 words. 
 
 There are a few hybrid words in the language 
 made by giving a Saxon termination to a Latin 
 stem, or by compounding elements of any two 
 languages into a single word. Some of these are : 
 interloper (Latin -Dutch), keelhaul (Dutch -Scan- 
 dinavian), tarpaulin (Latin - English), chapman, 
 Christmas, partake, pastime, saltpetre, bankrupt, and 
 many others of the same double nature. The 
 Latin prefix dis and the English prefix mis''' are 
 joined freely to verbs of either root. Out and 
 over — English prefixes — can be compounded with 
 
 * Mis is, however, also a French prefix, from Latin minus 
 — as in miscliicf, miscreant, misalliance. But mis as in mis- 
 deed, is Englisli and connected with miss, and has a slightly 
 different force, Miscarry, viisapply, misdirect, are hybrid 
 v.-ords.
 
 94 ENGLISH WORDS. 
 
 words from all sources. The termination ncss — 
 pure English— is given to as many Latin words as 
 English, and so is the prefix /6'/r/ but in these 
 cases we should rank the word for literary classi- 
 fication according to the character of its principal 
 parts. Disburden and disbelieve, for instance, have 
 the same Saxon flavor that burden and believe 
 have. The same is true of such words as fore- 
 castle, forejudge, forefvnt. They remain French 
 in spite of their Saxon prefix. 
 
 We will close the examination of the character 
 of the Latin element in English by an extract 
 from that delicate artist in v.'ords, Emerson. He 
 says ("English Traits'"): 
 
 " The Saxon materialism and narrov;ncss ex- 
 alted into the sphere of intellect makes the very 
 genius of Shakspeare and INIilton. When it 
 reaches the pure element it treads the clouds as 
 securely as the adamant. Even in its elevations 
 materialistic, its poetry is common-sense inspired, 
 or iron raised to a white heat. 
 
 "The marriage of the two qualities is in tlieir 
 speech. It is a tacit rule of the language to make 
 the frame and skeleton of Saxon words, and when 
 elevation or ornament is sought, to interweave the 
 Roman, but sparingly. Xor is a sentence made of 
 ]<.oman words alone without loss of strength. 
 The children and laborers use Saxon unmixed. 
 The Latin unmixed is abandoned to the collee'es
 
 CHARACTER OF LATIN DERIVATIVES. 95 
 
 and Parliament. Mixture is a secret of the Eng- 
 lish island, and in their dialect the male principle 
 is the Saxon, the female the Latin, and they are 
 combined in every discourse. A good writer, if he 
 has indulged in a Roman roundness, makes haste 
 to chasten and nerve his period by English mono- 
 syllables."
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 MINOR SOURCES OF ENGLISH V/ORDS. 
 
 Judging from the relative numbers in the two 
 great word- groups, the one from Teutonic, the 
 other from Latin or Romance sources, vve should 
 conclude that English was a composite lan- 
 guage. But it is not so except in its vocabu- 
 lary. It is a language just as the United States 
 is a nation — -the evolution of a definite form of 
 social consciousness. It is a Low- Germanic 
 tongue, colored and enriched by an infusion of 
 Italic derivatives. On examining the two groups 
 we find that the Teutonic group contains : first, 
 the words we most frequently use in every- 
 day matters ; second, the little words we use 
 over and over again. Therefore, though we can- 
 not think discursi\'e!y on any subject without 
 using words from both sources, we select a word 
 from the Teutonic half of our store at least seven 
 or eight times as often as we do one from the 
 Latin-Romance h;ilf. Furthermore, the structure 
 of the language is Teutonic, and the most impor-
 
 MINOR SOURCES OF ENGLISH WORDS. 97 
 
 tant prefixes and suffixes are Teutonic. Be in 
 bemoan and befriend, for in forbid, fnis in mis- 
 deed, and the separable prefixes afler, in, off, on, 
 out, over, under, up, are old English. So, too, are 
 the strong suffixes ard — seen in cotvard, drunk- 
 ard, etc. — dom, er, hood, ncss, ship, stcd. fast, fold, 
 fill, ish, and ward. Compare these to the Latin 
 prefixes we use, like non, extra, inter, post, pro, 
 super, sub, trans, ultra, and to the Latin suffixes 
 like age — as in eoiirag:, beverage, etc. — ancy, ate, 
 ion, tion, vient, able, osity, ory, ation, and the supe- 
 rior power and native character of the old En- 
 glish syllables are evident. As a rule, they strike 
 us as growing more naturally out of the root. 
 The Greek suffixes and affixes we use — e.g., ism, 
 asm, iis, ize, ist, impart still more of a foreign, ar- 
 tificial character. Lastly, as said before, the nat- 
 ural rhythm of the English language, though Teu- 
 tonic, is individual, and differs from that of the 
 Anglo-Saxon, or of the German. An English 
 sentence forced to assume the Latin rhythm 
 strikes us at once as bookish and academic. The 
 grammatical structure and the order of the words 
 is Teutonic, though a few inversions are admiss- 
 ible or even pleasing. Tor all these reasons it is 
 evident that English is not a composite or hybrid 
 tongue compounded of Anglo-Saxon and Latin, 
 but distinctly a Teutonic language, an organic 
 growth from a vigorous national life. This point 
 7
 
 98 ENGLISH WORDS. 
 
 is emphasized at the risk of repetition, because it 
 certainly is important that every one who is born 
 to the use of a language sliould correctly appre- 
 ciate its native character. 
 
 The Teutonic root of the English language has 
 itself two branches, though not of equal impor- 
 tance. Before the Norman Conquest, v*-hich ini- 
 tiated the evolution of our modern tongue, the 
 Saxon invaders of England were themselves sub- 
 ject to invasion by bands of Nort'ncrn pirates 
 whom they called Danes. These Danes made 
 permanent settlements on the eastern coast, ex- 
 tended their ravages into the interior, and con- 
 solidated their power, till in the century before 
 the Norman Conquest their chief, Knut, became 
 king or overlord of England. They spoke old 
 Norse, or Scandinavian, a language allied to the 
 Low- Germanic tongues of the Angles and Sax- 
 ons. The aiTfinity of their languages, and the 
 juxtaposition and partial amalgamation of the 
 peoples resulted in the survival in English of a 
 number of words of Norse origin, ^^'hcn the 
 Norse word and the Anglo-Saxon word for the 
 same thing were not alike in sound— or at least 
 sufficiently unlike not to be confounded in ordi- 
 nary utterance — one would be retained in the Dan- 
 ish districts and the other in the Saxon districts. 
 liy degrees the meanings would be differentiated, 
 and in the end the language would possess two
 
 MINOR SOURCES OF ENGLISH WORDS. 99 
 
 words with slightly different shades of meaning. 
 Thus, zoJioIe conies from the Anglo-Saxon hal 
 (entire), and //^r/c? (hearty) comes from the Xorse* 
 or Scandinavian //iv'// (sound or entire). In many 
 cases the sounds were alike but the meanings dif- 
 ferent, and the result would be a pair of homo- 
 nyms (words of the same sound but of differ- 
 ent meanings). Thus, fast in the sense of firm, 
 is English; \>m\. fast in the sense of rapid, is 
 Xorse. Fast to refrain from food, is a branch 
 meaning of the former word, based on the idea 
 that the abstainer is observing a firmly-establish- 
 ed rule; hw.^. fast asle:p comes from the second 
 source, and means the state of sleeping rapidly, by 
 rather an odd metaphor. Again, y7(?^, to grov/ 
 v.'eary, is English ; but flag, an ensign, is Norse ; 
 aye, meaning yes, is English ; aye, meaning for- 
 ever, is X'orse ; bound, secured or fastened, is Eng- 
 lish, but bound, in the sense of determined (bound 
 to do itj, is Xorse. The same is true of cozi>, 
 the animal, and cou', to dishearten ; of crab, the 
 crustacean, and crab, the fruit; and of many other 
 pairs. 
 
 Many of the X^orse derivatives are harsh and 
 
 * Old Xorse is generally applied to Old \Yest Norse only 
 (Icelandic and Norwegian). Brugmann applies the term 
 old Norse to the whole development of the Scandinavian 
 languages up to the sixteenth century. — Comparative Graiii- 
 iiiar. f. 10.
 
 100 ENGLISH WORDS. 
 
 abrupt in sound, especially those beginning with 
 the sk or s/i sound. If we strike out skatd and 
 skipper (ixoxn the Dutch), sk in the beginning of a 
 word is an almost sure mark of a Norse deriva- 
 tive. Words beginning with sc are about evenly 
 divided between the English and the Norse groups. 
 but the initial s/i will be found about three times as 
 often on an old English word as on one from the 
 Norse.* Among the Norse words with the above 
 initial letters are scani, scald (a poet, probably 
 from same root as scold), scar (a rock), scarf (to 
 hew diagonally), scrip (a bag), scrape, scraggy, 
 skoal, sJiingIc, skunt, etc. Many words of Norse 
 origin end in g, as drag, dreg. /lag, Juig, keg, slag, 
 smug, rig, stag, and egg. 
 
 There are about six hundred and sixty words 
 in our language from the Norse, and three-fourths 
 of them are monosyllables. The literary charac- 
 ter of these words is about the same as that of 
 the great body of those from the Anglo-Saxon. 
 They are short and emphatic, often sibilant or 
 guttural, and have a close relation to their mean- 
 ings. They form a very valuable constituent 
 part of our language because they are genuine 
 folk-words, and entered it through oral speech, 
 and therefore form one of the organic elements, 
 and are not intruders like vrords that enter 
 
 * Xo Latin words begin with sk, and very few with sc 
 or sJi.
 
 MINOR SOURCES OF ENGLISH WORDS. lOI 
 
 through the written language.* Tslany of them 
 refer to maritime matters, and, as a rule, they 
 have concrete — as opposed to abstract — mean- 
 ings. The vigor of a language depends greatly 
 on its wealth in words of concrete meaning, be- 
 cause we can always manufacture abstract terms 
 from them. Concrete terms are the suggesters 
 and feeders of thought. 
 
 The names of many villages in the parts of 
 England inhabited by the Danes end in bye or by, 
 or even bee. This syllable is from the Xorse 
 word for town or home. Thus v.e find Grimsby, 
 Whitby, Netherby, Derby, etc. The laws of these 
 towns or settlements were called bye-larws, a term 
 we have retained for special rules. The word bye 
 still means home or safe place in many games, 
 and it is a Xorse survival when children shout 
 " Touch my bye first." Traces of Danish occupa- 
 tion can also be found in the names of towns 
 ending m ford ox forth, from Isorso. ford (a bay), 
 as in Waterford, Delforth, etc. The subject of 
 geographical names will be touched on hereafter. 
 
 We have now run over briefly the sources of 
 English words proper — that is, of words which 
 came into the language during its formative pe- 
 riod, and through the channel of general usage. 
 
 * A few words entered English from the Xorse through 
 the French. Such are abet, brandish, bandai^e, blemish. 
 I'or a full list see Skcafs Dictionary, p. 750.
 
 I02 ENGLISH WORDS. 
 
 Several minor groups of words are found in mod- 
 ern English which have been borrowed from 
 other languages. Some of them have come 
 through the oral and some through the literary 
 language. Some have been borrowed directly, 
 and some after having been taken into a third 
 language. Of these we v/ill instance only the 
 Greek, the Arabic, the Hebrew, and the Dutch 
 group, A full review would name also the spo- 
 radic words — hardly numerous enough to be 
 classified into groups — from the Xorth AmiCrican 
 Indian, the Hindustanee, the ^Malayan, the Amer- 
 ican Spaniards, the Portuguese, and the languages 
 of other peoples with whom the aggressive com- 
 mercial instinct of the English has brought them 
 in contact. These words are fully classilled in 
 Skeat's Etymological D'uiionary^ pp. ']z^-]--]Gi. 
 
 An interesting group of words — interesting 
 from the historical stand-point at least — is that 
 which has come to us from the Arabic, usually 
 from the language spoken by the Saracenic con- 
 querors of Spain, commonly known as the IMoors. 
 Their civilization was marked by intellectual in- 
 tensity as well as by artistic feeling. They were 
 the mediaeval pioneers in medicine and science, 
 and many of the older chemical, astronomical, 
 and mathematical terms are taken from their 
 tongue. Among these are such words as zenith, 
 nadir, and azimuth ; the names of fixed stars, as
 
 MINOR SOURCES OF ENGLISH WORDS. I03 
 
 Aldebaran, Antares, Algol, Altair, Betelgeuse, 
 Rigel, Fomalhaut, etc. All of these names have 
 meanings, and frequently embody a poetic image. 
 
 That these floors read Greek is shown not 
 only by their treatises on Greek philosophy, but 
 by the fact that many scientific terms are derived 
 by us from them which were first borrowed by 
 them from the Greek. Frequently they are com- 
 pounded of the Arabic definite article al and 
 some Greek term. Alc/ie7}iy, for instance, is made 
 up of this article and the Greek word meaning 
 mingling; a!c7nbic, of the article and the Greek 
 word meaning a cup. Algebra, too, is Arabic, 
 and consists of the article and the first word of 
 an expression meaning " the putting together and 
 comparing," as is done in an equation. Alkali 
 is pure Arabic, and means '"the ashes," and took 
 its meaning from the discovery that the ashes of 
 sea-weed possess certain properties due to the 
 presence of potash and soda. Kali also gives 
 us K as the symbol of potash. Alcohol in Ara- 
 bic means "the fine pov/der," and was supposed 
 to be of magical efficacy. The transference 
 of meaning to rectified spirit is comparatively 
 modern. 
 
 We owe to these Moors also the great gift of 
 simple characters for the numerals up to nine, 
 and for the decimal notation which fixes values 
 for these characters according to position on a
 
 I04 ENGLISH WORDS. 
 
 scale of ten. How valuable an invention this 
 was can be readily determined by learning to add 
 or multiply numbers expressed in the clumsy Ro- 
 man notation. The words cipher and zero come 
 from the same Arabic term, sifr. The old Latin 
 treatises on arithmetic wrote it zephyrum. The 
 Italians contracted this into zefiro, and we short- 
 ened it still further into zero. But the French 
 contracted the Latin word into cifre^ and from 
 them we took the form cipher. The -two words 
 have different meanings in English now, zero 
 meaning nothing, or the starting-point of gradua- 
 tion on a scale, and cipher meaning the cliarac- 
 ter. The word meant in yVrabic empty or hollow 
 before it was applied to the character. 
 
 Other words of Arabic origin which entered the 
 English language by a roundabout course through 
 some Romance language ?iXQ. juphtha, rose, Jasper, 
 nitre, amulet, mattress, sajfron, sultan, sofa, syrup, 
 and candy. Admiral is from Emir al bahr, lord 
 of the sea. We took this v»^ord from the French, 
 and at first spelled it ammiral. The Arabic 
 group numbers about one hundred words, and 
 their derivations are full of suggestions of Ori- 
 ental history. Emerson called words '' fossil 
 poetry," and Trench observes that they are "fos- 
 sil history," as well. Admiral carries us back 
 to the time when a ^Moorish sea-captain was lord 
 of the Mediterranean Sea, and Gibraltar {Gchcl
 
 MINOR SOURCES OF ENGLISH WORDS. 105 
 
 al Tarik, or Tarik's hill) was the landing-place of 
 the conqueror of Spain. 
 
 If our Teutonic civilization is greatly indebted 
 intellectually to one Semitic civilization, it is still 
 more indebted spiritually to another — the Hebrew. 
 But as Western civilization has come into contact 
 with Hebrew civilization only through a book, 
 our language has received very few words from 
 the Hebrew. The translation of the Bible neces- 
 sitated the transference of a few Hebrew words 
 for which no equivalents could be found in Eng- 
 lish. These number but thirty, and embrace such 
 words as alleluia, behemoth, ehenib, ci/inanion, 
 ephod, Jug, Messiah, saek, Satan, sabaoth, shibbo- 
 leth. But the Greeks had intercourse with the 
 Hebrews and Phoenicians before the Christian era, 
 so that a number of words were borrowed by 
 the Greeks from them. Alphabet, delta, iota are 
 words of Hebrew root which we have received 
 through the Greek. Most of these Hebrew-Greek 
 words went into I>atin from Greek in the Latin 
 translation of the Septuagint. Among these are 
 amen, viatina, fabbi, Pharisee, Sabbath, Saddueee, 
 etc. The names of the seven archangels, ^Michael, 
 Gabriel, Raphael, Uriel, Chamuel, Jophiel, and 
 Zadkiel * are also Semitic. 
 
 * In some lists Azrael, Satan, and Ithuriel take the place 
 )f the last tliree.
 
 I06 ENGLISH WORDS. 
 
 There has always been considerable commercial 
 intercourse between the English and their ances- 
 tral relatives in Holland. Antwerp, or "At the 
 Wharf," was the principal market for English 
 wool before manufacturing was established in 
 England. Colonies of Flemish artisans settled 
 in England at the invitation of the King, or fleeing 
 from religious persecution. The Dutch have al- 
 ways been a seafaring people, and many of our 
 maritime terms are traceable to their language. 
 Among these are ahoy, avast, ballast, belay, boo/n, 
 duck (sail-cloth), /loiJ, hoy, hull, lighter, /iiistoik, 
 marline, orhp, reef, skipper, splice, sloop, yacht, 
 yawl. The similarity of the languages allowed 
 the ready transference of vrords, but it is pos- 
 sible that some of the above maritime terms may 
 have existed in the English sailor-language from 
 very early times, parallel with their survival in 
 Dutch, but have been first printed or written in 
 Dutch. Sloop, yacht, and yaicl are unquestion- 
 ably Dutch. 
 
 Hollanders and Englishmen sympathized in 
 the religious questions brought into prominence 
 by the Reformation, but these questions were dis- 
 cussed for the most part in Latin. Otherwise, the 
 exchange of some words of a more elevated char- 
 acter than the above might have resulted. Tlie 
 few words introduced into our language by the 
 Dutch settlers of New^ York, like stO(p (for por-
 
 MINOR SOURCES OF ENGLISH WORDS. 107 
 
 tico), crullers^ supawn* have never attained com- 
 plete naturalization. 
 
 When we need a new scientific or mechanical 
 word we are very apt to manufacture it from the 
 Greek, as was done in the case of telegraphy tele- 
 pho7ie, phonograph, dynamo, thermodynamic, iso- 
 thermal, and the numerous "ologies." A large 
 number of scientific terms, especially those used 
 in mathematics and geology, and many political 
 and philosophical words, came from the Greek by 
 natural transference. Aristotle, Euclid, Pythag- 
 oras, and Plato furnished our forefathers with 
 thoughts and with terms for the thoughts. These 
 cover such words as analyze, anapest, dactyl, aph- 
 orism, axio7n, category, hexagon, and climax. The 
 list of words taken directly from Greek is quite a 
 long one — at least three hundred and fifty; but 
 they are nearly all special words. More generally 
 useful is the greater number that come from Greek 
 through Latin, or through French through Latin. 
 Many theological, literary, and poetic words are 
 in these classes. \\'e may instance of the first : 
 abyss, alms, angel, atom, asylum, echo, epoch, ethic, 
 fungus, story, impolitic, orphan. Of the second : 
 agony, air, austere, blame, cheer, diadem, giant, idiot, 
 jealous, logic, machine, music, ocean, phrase, tyrant. 
 
 * Supaiini is Indian rather than Dutcli, tliougii used by 
 the Dutch settlers. 
 
 y
 
 I08 ENGLISH WORDS. 
 
 trophy, tof)ib, tone, zeal, etc. It is evident that 
 English has enriched itself from many sources. 
 There is not one of these words that we would 
 be willing to part with. Though in some cases 
 they retain a slight scholastic flavor, they are 
 thoroughly embedded in our speech, and are now 
 just as truly English as are our words of un- 
 doubted Saxon ancestry. 
 
 The following tables are taken principally from 
 those in Marsh's Lcetiires on the EngUsJi Language. 
 The first is based on the number of words, count- 
 ing each word but once. For instance, after count- 
 ing the word is once, it would not be allowed to 
 enter the enumeration again, although it might 
 occur a hundred times in the matter under con- 
 sideration. In making the second table, how- 
 ever, the words is, the, an, etc., are counted 
 every time they are used. The first is called 
 an ''enumeration of the total vocabulary;'' the 
 second is called an " enumeration of the total 
 words used." The reason for the great prepon- 
 derance of Teutonic words in the second table 
 is, of course, that the particles, auxiliary verbs, 
 and words of commonest use are Saxon, al- 
 though our entire vocabulary is more than half 
 Romance. 
 
 The relative percentage of Latin words in the 
 Bible and in Milton are especially worthy of com- 
 parison.
 
 MINOR SOURCES OF ENGLISH WORDS. I09 
 
 TOTAL VOCABULARY, lOO. 
 
 Per cent, of 
 Name of Book or Writer. Anglo-Saxon 
 
 Words. 
 
 The Ormulum, a.d. 1225 (semi-Saxon) . 97 
 
 English Bible 60 
 
 Shakspeare 60 
 
 Milton (poetry) 33 
 
 TOTAL WORDS USED, INCLUDING REPETITIONS, ICO. 
 
 Per cent, of 
 N.VME OF Book or Writer. Anglo-Saxon 
 
 Words. 
 
 Robert of Gloucester, ten pages 96 
 
 Piers' Ploughman, Introduction, entire . 88 
 
 Chaucer, Prologue, 420 verses 88 
 
 Squire's Tale, entire 91 
 
 Sir Thomas More, seven pages 84 
 
 Faerie Queen, one canto 86 
 
 John's Gospel, four chapters 96 
 
 Matthew's Gospel, three chapters 93 
 
 Romans, four chapters 90 
 
 Othello, Act V 89 
 
 Tempest, -A.ct 1 88 
 
 Milton, L' Allegro 90 
 
 " II Penseroso 83 
 
 " Paradise Lost So 
 
 Addison, Spectator 82 
 
 Pope, poetry 80 
 
 Swift, Political Lying 88 
 
 " John Bull ' 85 
 
 Johnson, Preface to Dictionary 72
 
 no ENGLISH WORDS. 
 
 Per cent, of 
 Name of Book or Writer. Anglo-Saxon 
 
 Words. 
 
 Junius, two letters 76 
 
 Hume's History, one chapter 73 
 
 Gibbon, Decline and Fall, one chapter. 70 
 Webster,* Second Speech on Foote's 
 
 Resolution 75 
 
 Irving, Stout Gentleman 85 
 
 " Westminster Abbey 77 
 
 Macaulay, Essay on Lord Bacon 75 
 
 Channing, Essay on ^Milton 75 
 
 Cobbett, on Indian-corn 80 
 
 Prescott, one chapter 77 
 
 Bryant, Death of the Flowers 92 
 
 " Thanatopsis 84 
 
 Mrs. Browning, Cry of the Children ... 92 . 
 
 " " Lost Bower 77 
 
 Robert Browning, Bishop Blougram's 
 
 Apology 84 
 
 Edward Everett, Eulogy on Adams. ... 76 
 Ticknor, History of Spanish Literature, 
 
 one chapter 73 
 
 Tennyson, The Lotus-eaters 87 
 
 " In jNIemoriam, first twenty 
 
 strophes 89 
 
 * Laryjc Latin percentage owing to rc])etition of words 
 
 like congress, constitution, union, etc. Weljster ordinarily 
 employed about ciglity per cent, of Saxon words.
 
 MINOR SOURCES OF ENGLISH WORDS, III 
 
 Per cent, of 
 Name of Book or Writer. Anglo-Saxon 
 
 Words, 
 
 Ruskin, iNIoclern Painters, chapter on the 
 
 Superhuman Ideal 73 
 
 Longfellow, Miles Standish 87 
 
 IMartineau, Endeavors after the Chris- 
 tian Life 74 
 
 We see from the above that after the language 
 was first made a literary vehicle by Chaucer, down 
 to the middle of the eighteenth century, the pro- 
 portion of Saxon words used by the best writers 
 was not far from seventeen words, counting repe- 
 titions, to three of the foreign classes, and that 
 Shakspeare and the Bible are markedly Saxon ; 
 that after this period the proportion increased, 
 reaching the maximum of Latinity in Gibbon; 
 that during the present century there has been a 
 reversion to the use of Saxon, especially marked 
 in poetry ; and that the subject-matter influences 
 the number of Saxon words used. This last is 
 shown by the different ratios given by Milton's 
 '■ L'Allegro," where the thought is cheerful and 
 superficial, and the images drawn for the most 
 part from rural life; and by his "II Penseroso" 
 (^the reileclive man), the tone of which is more 
 philosophical, and the images scholastic or social. 
 Again, "Westminster Abbey" naturally suggests 
 topics connected with history and chivalry, and
 
 112 ENGLISH WORDS. 
 
 the writer draws more freely on our store of Ro- 
 marsce words. The " Stout Gentleman " is on a 
 less dignified plane, and familiar Saxon phrases 
 fit the thought. The same contrast is evident 
 between !Mrs. ]]rowning's two poems, the " Cry 
 of the Children " and the " Lost Bower." The 
 modern reversion to Saxon words v.'ill be the 
 niore marked if we reflect that since Dr. John- 
 son's day the number of Saxon words in ordinary 
 use has not increased materially, while a large 
 number of alien terms have been made familiar 
 by science and the arts. It is further notevrorthy 
 how Saxon our best poetry is, and how Latinized 
 our philosophic and artistic criticism, as shown 
 by Ruskin and Martineau. It seems strange, at 
 first sight, that, as the table makes evident, an 
 increase of only two or three per cent, in the 
 number of Latin derivatives used should give 
 the effect of excessive Latinity. Probably this 
 is produced by the cadence and structure of the 
 sentences more than by the character of the vo- 
 cabulary.
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 METHOD OF THE WORD-FORMING INSTINCT. 
 
 The origin of language is shrouded in impen- 
 etrable m3-stery, like the origin of everything else. 
 There can be no record before the means of 
 making a record exist. By studying languages 
 we can find out how they have changed during 
 the historic period, and how they are changing 
 now. We can then infer what the changes before 
 that period must have been — proceed from the 
 known to the unknown, on the hypothesis that 
 the process by which languages were developed 
 in the past 3000 years. is the same by which 
 they were developed in the much longer period 
 during which articulate speech was slowly as- 
 suming the forms which we now recognize as 
 the most archaic. This is all that we can do, and 
 we run the risk of overlooking some factor of 
 prime importance which has ceased to be oper- 
 ative. Again, we must remember that the part 
 of the total development of language that has 
 taken place in historic time is so slight in com-
 
 114 ENGLISH WORDS. 
 
 parison with what had taken place before, that 
 inferences carried from the nature of operations 
 in the known past to those of the unknown past 
 are very likely to be erroneous. The difference 
 between a modern man and the most primitive 
 man of whom we have record is small compared 
 to the difference between the most primitive man 
 and his earliest possible ancestor. Even if we 
 should become convinced that the original word- 
 forming instinct is still at work among modern 
 men, we must remember that, like all the great 
 primitive human instincts, it is so thwarted and 
 corrupted by civilization that its original trend 
 and character are barely discernible. Nor, for 
 obvious reasons, does the process of acquiring 
 the power of speech by infants throw much light 
 — if any — on the original race -process. The 
 powers and tendencies of the child are all in- 
 herited, and those which date from fifty or one 
 hundred generations back are the controlling 
 ones, to the exclusion of the primitive instincts, 
 and, what is of more consequence, the modern 
 child is born into a modern environment. 
 
 Since the discovery of Sanskrit a number of 
 conclusions have been established by philologists. 
 The great fact of the relationship of all the Aryan 
 tongues points towards, if it does not establish, 
 the unity of the race. The fact that all the 
 Aryan languages are based on a limited number
 
 METHOD OF WORD-FORMING INSTINCT. II5 
 
 of roots or simple sounds about two hundred in 
 number, most of which seem to be connected with 
 a certain action, proves that language is a growth, 
 in a fuller and more comprehensive sense than 
 had before been thought possible, and shows, 
 further, that man is a thinker just so far as he 
 is in possession of words, and that both these 
 powers must once have been in an elementary 
 condition. Furthermore, it has been shown that 
 language has been built on these roots by the 
 use of metaphors. When the need was felt of 
 expressing some new conception, an old word or 
 combination of words was used which expressed 
 a real or fancied resemblance between the thing 
 already named and the new thing for which a 
 name was wanted. Thus, man is a poet or 
 maker of words in very much the same way that 
 he is a creator of any poetical form. This met- 
 aphor-making power is the main force in the 
 formation of language, and it is necessary to as- 
 sume the possession of only a very elementary 
 vocabulary for a starting-point. In the present 
 chapter it is the intention to present evidences 
 of this poetic imaginative faculty in some of our 
 English words, the derivations of which are easily 
 ascertained. It has been exercised in the for- 
 mation of every word if we follow its history far 
 enough back. 
 
 For instance, breath and air and wind leaving
 
 Il6 ENGLISH WORDS. 
 
 names (probably one word), and a dead man or 
 animal being one which has ceased to breathe, 
 breath or air would naturally be thought to be 
 that which constitutes life, or that which, having 
 departed, made the living animal dead. There- 
 fore, in all languages we find that the word which 
 signifies soul or spirit has for a root the word 
 signifying air or breath. Thus, spirit is spiritus ; 
 aiiinuis is Greek ane7}ios, or wind. The origin of 
 our word soul is unknown, but it may be taken 
 for granted that it is some concrete and sensible 
 thing used as the sign of an invisible thing. The 
 Teutonic word g/iost is from the root meaning 
 breath. 
 
 When it is said that these primitive metaphors 
 are poetical, it is not meant that they always are 
 what we should recognize as poetically beautiful. 
 They are frequently so, for they are nearly always 
 apt illustrations of something abstract by some- 
 thing more concrete. It is the evidence of the 
 naive striving of primitfve man with his limited 
 stock of materials to express something just be- 
 yond him, that makes the roots of language poet- 
 ical, for this struggling to express something not 
 definitely understood is the main -spring of all 
 art. Strange as it may appear, these primitive 
 metaphors have widely colored our conceptions 
 of spiritual things. 
 
 It may very naturally be objected that, if a few
 
 METHOD OF WORD-FORMING INSTINCT. II7 
 
 verbal roots form the elements of primitive lan- 
 guage, we should find some savage tribes, whose 
 development is in the lowest possible condition, 
 in possession of these roots and nothing more, 
 whereas no such example can be found. The 
 answer to this is that the world is very old, and 
 that no savage tribe represents the condition of 
 primitive man, for all savages show traces of 
 great antiquity in their inherited instincts and 
 superstitions. The infant, undeveloped racial 
 man cannot be found, for it is too late. The 
 modern savage is mature, though in a state of 
 warped development, and behind him lie hun- 
 dreds of centuries of torpid life before we reach 
 the period — if ever there was such a period — 
 when language was formed from its elements, 
 and the original language - building power of 
 humanity was exerted. Therefore, we must look 
 on a savage tribe as a wreck quite as much as a 
 germ, and can draw no better inferences from its 
 speech than we can from the speech of a highly- 
 developed community. We find, too, that savages, 
 as far as they have risen to the conception of ab- 
 stractions, have employed the same method of ex- 
 pressing them in speech that civilized men did. 
 
 Names, then, are never given arbitrarily, ex- 
 cept by moderns. All the geographical names 
 mentioned in the chapter on local names, if of 
 any respectable antiquity, are real names — mean
 
 Il8 ENGLISH WORDS. 
 
 something, embody something. Hlmalay means 
 the abode of snow. SnccfcU and Ben - Nevis 
 have the same signification — the snow mountain. 
 Sutherland (the 6':-i;///dand), the north-west county 
 of Scotland, is so called because the name was 
 given by the Norse inhabitants of the islands to 
 the north of it. England, or Angle-land, is called 
 Albion on account of the white chalk cliffs of 
 the southern coast as seen from the Continent. 
 Even now if a folk-name is allowed to form it- 
 self, it grows from some root in the same way 
 that the earliest ones did. 
 
 The names of flowers not unfrequently embody 
 a rustic poetry. Chaucer's daisy is the eye of 
 day. Bnttereiip and golden - rod are equally de- 
 scriptive. Rosemary is ros marine, from some 
 fancied resemblance between the flower and sea 
 spray. It has been altered from ros marine by 
 reason of a popular etymology connecting it with 
 rose of ?^Iary. Rose is from an Arabic word which 
 passed into Greek, thence into Latin, thence into 
 English. Fo.xghree embodies a pretty conceit. 
 The asters have a star-like form. Geranium is 
 from the QxcoX^i gcranos, a crane, the flowers hav- 
 ing a fancied resemblance to a stork's bill in 
 color, rink comes from a Celtic word meaning 
 to pierce, as in '"to pink Vi'ith a rapier,"' and the 
 name was given on account of the "pinked" or 
 serrated edires of the flowers. Alalhru' is from
 
 METHOD OF WORD-FORMING INSTINCT. I19 
 
 a Latin word based on fnollis, soft. Through the 
 French it gives us viauve^ the color. The violet 
 also has given its name to a shade of blue. Lilac 
 was the Persian name of the indigo plant, but, 
 being appropriated in English to a flowering 
 shrub with purple blossoms, has given its name 
 to a shade of light purple. Bud is from a word 
 meaning to push. Nasturtium is supposed to be 
 from nas-torqucrc (nose-twister). Daffodil is from 
 Greek, asphodel. Wort is the Saxon word for 
 plant, and dock is the Celtic. In consequence, 
 these words appear very frequently in the folk- 
 names for plants and herbs. 
 
 Primitive metaphors are very well illustrated in 
 the words for feelings and actions of the mind. 
 Thus, attention is a stretching of the nrind. Ten- 
 sion., as applied to a mental state, is of modern 
 coinage, but is based on much the same met- 
 aphorical conception. Our modern notions of 
 physical science have given to this word and to 
 pressure a new meaning. Conception {con caapio), 
 a taking of two things together, or of one thing 
 with another,* is based on the idea that in an 
 
 * It is quite possible that the original force of the Latin 
 prefix con or emit was not taking two things together, but 
 taking all parts of a thing at once. ComprcJund and con- 
 ceive would then mean grasping the whole of a thing, not 
 grasping a thing with its attendant circumstances. But the 
 fact that the original metaphorical transfer lay in using a 
 physical action to express a mental action remains un-
 
 I20 ENGLISH WORDS. 
 
 elementary mental act we compare one thing 
 with another. One cannot comprehend anything 
 unless it is taken hold of with its associated 
 ideas. Associated ideas are companion thoughts. 
 from socius. Idea is from the root rid, to see. 
 An idea is a mental image. To see with the eye 
 and to know with the mind are analogous. Sym- 
 pathy^ from the Greek, and compassion, from the 
 Latin, express the thought that when we sympa- 
 thize or compassionate in th:i true sense, we 
 share suffering with another person. Passion is 
 from patior, to suffer, as if a man in a passion 
 were enduring the mastery of a demon. The old 
 use means suffering ; from the same root are 
 pathos, patient, and passive. Anger and anguish, 
 azoe, and even quinsy are all from the same root, 
 A Gil, to choke. Courage is from cceur, the 
 heart. Hate is based on the same root as ////;//, 
 meaning to pursue. Lo7'c is from a root meaning 
 • to covet, to desire. This would seem to show 
 that hate was recognized as an active principle 
 earlier than love, since its root contains a less 
 complex idea, though sucli an inference borders 
 on the fanciful. 
 
 IMental states and characteristics are expressed 
 by condensed metaphors. Modest signifies a 
 
 changed. This is tlie point in whicli the growth of lan- 
 guage illustrates the develojinicnt of the human intellect 
 from liiwcr views to higher ones.
 
 METHOD OF WORD-FORMING INSTINCT. 121 
 
 person who acts within a modus, or rule, and the 
 root MA, from which it comes, gives us also 
 measure and vioo/i, and, possibly, vian. The rad- 
 ical idea in the word temper is to moderate or 
 qualify by mixing. This original import of the 
 word is seen in the phrase to temper mortar, or 
 to te??iper steel, for in tempering steel something 
 was supposed to mix or unite with the metal so 
 as to harden it. Again, temperature was taken to 
 mean degree or amount of heat, in accordance 
 with the theory that something material mixed 
 with a substance to make it hot. Temper as a|^> 
 plied to the disposition meant the state resulting 
 from a mixture of moods or impulses. Origi- 
 nally, it was implied that the resulting state was 
 a proper and commendable one, but now when 
 we say a " fit of te-mpcr " we mean a fit of bad 
 temper. The use of the talents for mental apti- 
 tudes comes, of course, from the parable of the 
 intrusted talents or sums of money. The ad- 
 jective talented was objected to in the last genera- 
 tion, but seems to have acquired a good standing 
 now, though it is better to avoid using it. At all 
 events it has expelled the word gifted. The orig- 
 inal root of the word memory is not known. It 
 would probably mean something like picking up, 
 or sorting out, or seeing a second time. But the 
 verb think is supposed to be distantly connected 
 with the root of the v.'ord thiiiis, as if the thoujiht
 
 T22 ENGLISH WORDS. 
 
 were originally regarded as an image or emanation 
 of the thing thought of. Lunacy derives its name 
 from the superstition that the mental condition 
 was somehow influenced by the moon, though the 
 common word loony * is based on a metaphor 
 drawn from tlie Xorse word, loon^ which in Ice- 
 land may refer to a foolish bird, though in our 
 country it signifies one quite as intelligent as 
 those who try to shoot it. The point to notice 
 in all these cases is that a concrete thing is al- 
 ways found to be the godfather of an abstraction 
 in the early efforts of man to express himself, and 
 that his progress has been from the conception 
 of the material to the partial conception of the 
 spiritual. We are so closely bound to matter 
 that we cannot learn to think without using the 
 
 * The names of birds, with the exception of duck, are 
 used in a derogatory sense when applied to human beings, 
 to carry tlie idea that a person resemldes the bird in unde- 
 sirable quabties — I'-.v. ^^oot, ;^oosi\ peacock, ozi'l, loon, i^itll, 
 hoohy. Loon in the expression "crazy as a loon" has been 
 influenced in its meaning by tlie word lunatic froni Latin 
 hnia, \\hich v.'as applied to persons whose sanity was tempo- 
 rarily disturbed under tlie impression that the changes of the 
 moon were somehow responsible for periods of mental de- 
 rangement. I"or this reason loony is sometimes incorrectly 
 spelled luny. The old woxA loon or loom is al.^o ajijilied to 
 an awkward clown (".Macbeth," Act. \'., Scene iii., line 
 xi.). r>oohy, too, is ])r(jbably ]>rimarily aii epithet applied 
 to a man, and connected with lalbuticr, to slammer, and 
 afterwards idven to a bird in a derisive sense.
 
 METHOD OF WORD-FORMING INSTINCT. 1 23 
 
 words which represented matter in man's carUest 
 speech. 
 
 So great is the influence of our material sur 
 roundings on us that, had we lived as fishes do in 
 a gross medium like water, perhaps we should 
 never have risen to the conception of pure spirit. 
 The rarer medium, the ether, through which heat 
 and light are conveyed, is not perceptible by our 
 senses. Hence it has never been so fruitful of 
 words to express conceptions of mental and spir- 
 itual being as has air. Fiery is an old word, but 
 it is not based on the word meaning fire, and 
 does not radically mean a conflagration in the 
 mind, but simply a rapid movement. When we 
 say an "illuminated intellect," or an "ethereal 
 being," we arc using comparatively modern met- 
 aphors ; but the word spirit, from breath or air, is 
 so ancient a metaphor that we have ceased to be 
 conscious that it is one. Xevertheless, the for- 
 mation of all of these metaphors is due to an 
 effort of the word-building instinct. 
 
 There is another element, of comparatively lit- 
 tle importance, in the word-building instinct, and 
 that is the tendency to imitate the thing signified 
 by the vocal sound which represents it. Thus, 
 buzz^ 7u/iiz, crack, roar, creak, croak, crasli, boom, 
 hiss, hum, kotol (probably), roar, squeak, drum, 
 tomtom, Tiwd fizz are imitative words. As these 
 words are original, it has been thought that they
 
 124 ENGLISH WORDS. 
 
 were entitled to rank as roots, and that language 
 might have sprung from an attempt to reproduce 
 certain of the natural sounds or noises. If we 
 suppose man to have once been an animal desti- 
 tute of language but possessed of the power of 
 acquiring it, and eagerly desirous of communicat- 
 ing with his fellows, it is difficult to imagine what 
 he could have done except to gesture and make 
 imitative noises, just as persons do now when they 
 cannot speak the same language. But can we as- 
 sume an analogy between speechless man and 
 modern man without being misled by it.'' And 
 v.-hy should man not have developed a sign lan- 
 guage instead of a vocal language .'' Max Miiller 
 ridicules tlie theory that language may have orig- 
 inated in attempts to imitate the sounds of nature 
 as the 1)02O'1l'07o theory. The serious objections 
 to it are : First, the onomatopceic words, with 
 one or two exceptions, are not the fruitful words, 
 the generative sounds, by the compounding and 
 modification of which whole groups are formed. 
 Jliss and buzz arc two \-ery good examples of ono- 
 matopceic words, but they are destitute of progeny ; 
 while from sfa, to stand, is derived a family of at 
 least ten different groups, and s/^ak, to see, has 
 been still more productive. .Second, the imita- 
 tive words are quite different in closely -allied 
 languages, showing that they are of comparatively 
 late origin. Third, the number of things and
 
 METHOD OF WORD-FORMING INSTINCT. I 25 
 
 actions which can be represented by a character- 
 istic sound is quite limited, and entirely inade- 
 quate to form the basis of language. 
 
 It is true that there are a few onomatopoeic 
 roots, or rather roots having some onomatopoeic 
 quality, like bahl^ to resound, the root of bellow, 
 bawl, and bull ; gu^ to low, the root of cotv ; mu, 
 to mutter, the root of mutter ; and mnr, the root 
 of murmur, all of which refer to sounds ; but even 
 these are not the great fruitful roots from which 
 language draws its nourishment.* Again, there is 
 a large number of words like breeze, thunder, 
 freeze, grind, tear, etc., of which we think the 
 sound expressive of the sense, they are so closely 
 related in our minds. Possibly in the wear and 
 tear of time the onomatopa-ic sense of man may 
 have modified the sound of these words slightly, 
 but in their originals no resemblance between 
 sense and sound can be found. On the whole, 
 we should say that any pair of them might change 
 meanings even now without any loss of fitness. 
 ^^'e therefore allow to the onomatopoeic or imita- 
 tive propensity a very subordinate part in language- 
 formation, and recognize the imaginative or met- 
 aphor-suggesting power of the human thinker as 
 
 * l-"ur a full and plausible presentation of the arguments 
 sustaining the theory that language sprang from imitations 
 of natural sounds, see Canon Farrar's nook, Lairgiiage and
 
 126 ENGLISH WORDS. 
 
 the building energy of word-growth. It is true 
 this last does not account for the origin of the 
 roots. It takes these for granted, and so must 
 any rational theory of language. 
 ^ At present, when a name is sought for a new 
 thing or operation, it is arbitrarily manufactured. 
 The botanists go to the Latin dictionary, the phys- 
 icists to the Greek. There is no invention in this, 
 no word -creating. It is merely ransacking the 
 lumber-room for a disused tool and using it over 
 again. In this way we have telescope, the far- 
 seer-, telegraph, the far -writer; telephone,'^ the 
 distant -speaker; steiroscope, the solid -seer, and 
 thousands of others. The verb telescope, as ap- 
 plied to a train of cars that have been forced into 
 each other, is a happy example of the metaphor- 
 ical word-making power in modern days. It is 
 an indigenous growth out of a manufactured word. 
 So also is the use of the word photograph for the 
 quick fixing of a mental image on the memory. 
 A long time is required for these artificial words 
 to become fully naturalized in the language, though 
 they are very necessary for the naming of new de- 
 vices. Multitudes of them drop out or remain en- 
 tombed in our dictionaries alongside of many of 
 the barbarous Latin words of the seventeenth and 
 eighteenth centuries. Some of the coined words 
 
 * And yet we say " long-dibtance telephone," or long-dis- 
 tance long-distance speaker.
 
 METHOD OF WORD-FORMIXG INSTINCT. I27 
 
 of science are very happy inventions ; as, aiavisjn, 
 to express the mysterious appearance in an indi- 
 vidual of some mark of his remote ancestors, and, 
 isotkermals, lines drawn through points when the 
 mean annual temperatures are the same. The 
 conceptions of modern science are gradually col- 
 oring our thought, and the scientific terminology, 
 if apt and striking, must more and more enter our 
 daily speech. 
 
 The foregoing are words which enter the lan- 
 guage at the top and work down. Another class 
 take the natural course of entering at the bot- 
 tom and taking their chances. These are the 
 words of indigenous growth, or slang. Sometimes 
 they are coined, but not unfrequently they spring 
 from an expressive folk-metaphor.* Multitudes 
 of them die yearly, though they may have a vigor- 
 ous life for a v.-hile. Xo one can tell whether any 
 given slang-word will survive. Dicde and craiik 
 are valuable words, and each denotes something 
 not signified by any other English word. Ten 
 years from this time they may be out of use, or 
 
 * Victor Hugo says {Lcs Miscrahlcs) : " Slang is a vestibule 
 where language disguises itself when it has some crime to 
 commit. It puts on these masks of words, these rags of 
 metaphors." This applies to an Ar^ot, or slang dialect. 
 Teutonic slang is language too full of rude, boisterous life. 
 It expresses the humorous, not the criminal, attitude tow- 
 ards life. It is a sign of linguistic health and vivacity. It 
 reflects national character.
 
 128 ENGLISH WORDS. 
 
 they may be in as good standing as mob, once a 
 slang - word. Crank* a metaphor from cranky, 
 an unstable craft, if it can establish itself, will 
 prove a valuable acquisition and save many a 
 tedious circumlocution. The dude of 1890 is so 
 different from the dandy of 1840, and the word is 
 so expressive of one aspect of the genius of our 
 age that it ought to be saved, but probably it will 
 "have to go." Stcck/, originally from "swell 
 mob," is also expressive and seems to be making 
 its way. Rattled, demoralization accompanied by 
 alarm, is also a good folk -metaphor. It may be- 
 come respectable and literary. These indigenous 
 growths have far more of the genius of the lan- 
 guage than have the scientific formations. Never- 
 theless, they must be received with circumspec- 
 tion, for ninety in a hundred are ephemeral. The 
 word slan^^ itself is comparatively modern, and 
 originated in a slang expression connected with 
 sling. Now it is an indispensable word, if not 
 strictly literary. 
 
 * The entrance of crank inio literary society would sceni 
 to be signalized by its appearance in the title of an article in 
 the /f//i:?«//i: ^l/f?;/;*///)' (September, I S90) : "Cranks as Social 
 Motors." Max Muller's Scic7ice of Language (Second Se- 
 ries, Lecture viii.) contains a suggestive disquisition on this 
 subject — the extension of the meaning of words by meta- 
 phorical use until the metaphor is forgotten.
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 GROUPS OF WORDS WITH A COMMON ROOT. 
 
 To group words under their original Proto-Aryan 
 roots implies more philological knowledge than 
 is assumed for the readers of this book. But in 
 every language there are families of words spring- 
 ing from the same root in that language. This 
 relationship can be profitably examined by any 
 one, since it illustrates on a small scale what may 
 be called word-branching, the process by which 
 words, sometimes apparently unrelated in mean- 
 ing, grow out of the same root. What could 
 at first sight be more distinct in idea than the 
 word post in /6'i'/-haste and in i^wc^-post. Yet 
 they are the same in origin. Let us examine a 
 few groups of English words thus related. We 
 will take up the words connected with check, qiia- 
 ttioy (four), stick, post, stem, do, and a few others. 
 Skeat's smaller Etymological Dictionary, v,-hich 
 groups words by their root-relationships, contains 
 a great deal of information on this subject in a 
 compact form. 
 9
 
 130 ENGLISH WORDS. 
 
 Check is derived from the game of chess, which 
 is of Persian or Indian origin, and is much older 
 than the EngUsh language. '• Ex orie/ife lux ct 
 Indus scaccorumr CJicck- inate is shah mat, the 
 king is dead, and check is shah — that is, look out 
 for the king. From this came readily the mean- 
 ing of a sudden repulse, a stop, as in check-rein, 
 check-valve, to meet with a check. 
 
 Chess, the game, is shahs, shaks or checks, and 
 means the battle of the kings. 
 
 Checker-board, or cJiess-hjard, is the board of al- 
 ternate squares on which the game is played. 
 
 The table on which the accounts of the king's 
 treasurer were kept was called a checker-board or 
 exchequer, because it \vas painted with squares 
 of different colors. The squares v/ere used for 
 the purpose of coniputation, perhaps with the aid 
 of counters. The place, therefore, was known as 
 the '"court of exchequer," the e being euphonic 
 before s and x, as in escheat, estoppel, etc. The 
 treasury department is still called the exchequer, 
 in consequence. 
 
 Check, a written order for money deposited, 
 sometimes pedantically spelled cheque, was origi- 
 nally either an exchequer bill or draft on the 
 treasury, or else connected with the idea of a 
 check or restraint on the pa}"ing out of money by 
 the one to whom it is intrusted. 
 
 The derivatives of quatuor bear their origin on
 
 GROUPS OF WORDS WITH A COMMON ROOT, 131 
 
 their faces. A quadrangle has four angles, and a 
 quadrant is the fourth part of a circle. Quadrille 
 is a game at cards for four persons or a dance for 
 four couples. Quaternions is a branch of mathe- 
 matics which proceeds as if there were four di- 
 mensions. Quarry is a place where stones are 
 worked square. A quadroon has one-quarter ne- 
 gro blood ; a quadruped has four feet ; a quart is 
 a quarter of a gallon ; a quarto is a sheet folded 
 into four leaves ; a squadron and a squad is a 
 body of troops in a square — a square has four 
 sides. In all these words except quarry the idea 
 of four parts is very evident, and the branching 
 has not proceeded very far. 
 
 From /£>;/(?, besides the compounds deposit * ex- 
 pound, i?npost, etc., v/e have the word post in sev- 
 eral quite different senses. Thus, to post a sen- 
 try means to assign him a defmite position ; but 
 post, in 
 
 "Thousands at his bidding haste, 
 And post o'er land and sea," 
 and in 
 
 " My days are swifter than a post" 
 
 * It is odd enough tliat a hirge number of words con- 
 taining pose — all that come from the French — pose, com- 
 pose, dispose, expose, propose, purpose, repose, suppose, and 
 transpose, are not from pono luit from paiisare, to bring to 
 rest ; but everything connected with the sb. position, like 
 deponent or supposition, comes direct from the Latin pono 
 (position). Two Latin verbs were confused in France.
 
 132 ENGLISH WORDS. 
 
 evidently means to move rapidly. Post-office, fence- 
 post, to post a kdger, post-haste, post-chaise, ha\'e 
 all grown out of the idea of position. Thus the 
 fence-post is fixed in the ground, the military 
 post is established at a certain place, items are 
 placed or posted in the ledger ; the post-offices, 
 also, were established at fixed points ; the post- 
 chaise was drawn by horses kept at the posts; 
 and to post a letter and to post in the sense of 
 riding rapidly are evidently derived from the post 
 in post-office. 
 
 Stick is a word whose relationship takes in a 
 great many words. There are really two verbs, 
 stick, to pierce, and stick, to be fixed fast. A 
 butcher speaks of sticking a hog, and a wag- 
 oner of sticking in the 7nud. The active and 
 the transitive verb, though evidently different 
 words, are confounded in modern English, though 
 the connection between piercing and holding fast 
 is evidently remote. Stitig is the same as stick, 
 to pierce, but has retained its identity. From 
 this double word stick come tick, ticket, etiquette, 
 stack, stake, steak, stick (sb.), stitch, stock, stocking, 
 and stoker. Ticket and etiquette come through the 
 French from the German, and are therefore dis- 
 tant connections. A ticket was originally a little 
 bill or order stuck up on the gate of a court; 
 hence etiquette, a rule of social conduct. Tick, 
 credit, came from the practice of buying things
 
 GROUPS OF WORDS WITH A COMMON ROOT. 1 33 
 
 without paying for them, and having the charge 
 marked on a card which was stuck up. A mem- 
 orandum-book of charges is thus still known as 
 "a tickler," and the cashier, when he takes money 
 from the drawer, substitutes, or should substitute, 
 a "ticket." Sfac/; is a pile stuck up — that is, held 
 fast. A s/alr may be something stuck fast in the 
 ground, or it may be a sharp piece of wood to 
 pierce the ground. (We say a horse staked him- 
 self when he is wounded by a piece of wood.) 
 A beefsteak is a bit of meat stuck on the point of 
 a fork. A stick is a small bit of wood, so called 
 from its piercing or sticking into anything. A 
 printer's stick may be the holder in which the 
 types are stuck, but more probably is connected 
 with sto, to stand, and corrupted. A stake is money 
 held fast. Stock, originally that which is held fast, 
 as the stock or stem of a tree, has a great variety 
 of secondary meanings, as family stock, the stem 
 of the family tree, live-stock, that which is fixed 
 to the farm, the stock of a gun in which the 
 barrel is fixed. Fixed or invested capital is also 
 stock. The machine in which a malefactor's legs 
 were fastened was called the stocks. The con- 
 nection of stockings and of stock, the stiff con- 
 struction once worn about the neck by men, does 
 not seem so clear. A stoker cleans his fire by 
 sticking a long poker into it, and a stickleback is 
 a fish with a stick, or something to pierce, on his
 
 134 ENGLISH WORDS. 
 
 back. As the st appears in all these words, we 
 may note how much more obstinate a thing a con- 
 sonant is than a vowel. The combination st seems 
 to stand the wear and tear of use remarkably well. 
 In the Norse tongues was a word heil or hcl, 
 and in the Anglo-Saxon a word hal, both meaning, 
 substantially, whole, entire, both distantly related 
 to the Greek vaXoe, beautiful, complete. From one 
 or the other of these — they are really the same 
 word, though one may have been the origin of an 
 English word in one part of the country and the 
 other in another part — come hak, hail (a greet- 
 ing), ivhok, heal, health, holy, liallow, halibut, holi- 
 day, hollyJioch, and wassail. Wassail was Anglo- 
 Saxon Wes-Jial, be well (your health !), and was a 
 pledge or drinking of health at a feast. HollyJioch 
 is the holy mallow, so called because it was brought 
 from Palestine. Halibut is the Jioly but or tloun- 
 der, a fish which the Church allowed its votaries 
 to eat on fast-days. The connection between holi- 
 ness or perfection on the one hand, and health or 
 physical completeness on the other, is quite evi- 
 dent, as is also the connection between Jiail, a 
 greeting, and the original meaning. Halloo has 
 no connection with hal, though the sound, or 
 rather the spelling, suggests that it might have. 
 It is from an Anglo- Saxon interjection, eala, and 
 is confounded with the Xorman call, Hola, or Ho 
 there! the form used by Shakspeare.
 
 GROUPS OF WORDS WITH A COMMON ROOT. 135 
 
 Another prolific root-word is the base of the 
 Anglo-Saxon seer an, and of the equivalent Norse 
 word meaning to shear. Thus we have shear, jeer, 
 scar {^rock\ scare, score, shard, shred, share, sheer, 
 shire, sheriff, shore, shore (a prop), short, shirt, 
 shirt — all of the same family. Notice the ob- 
 duracy of the consonant sound in this instance, 
 and that the Norse members of the connection 
 begin with sk, and the Anglo-Saxon with sh. The 
 relation of signification is sufficiently evident, ex- 
 cept, perhaps, in the case oijeer, which Skeat gives 
 as from a Dutch phrase meaning to shear the fool, 
 i.e., to jest at one. Score, meaning twenty, comes 
 from the practice of keeping count by notches on 
 a stick, as Robinson Crusoe kept his diary. A 
 deeper notch was made at twenty. Axemen still 
 score a piece of timber before they '■ hew to the 
 line," and we keep the score of a game. The 
 shire is territory divided from the rest, and the 
 shire -reeve is the executive officer. The shore 
 is the dividing line between land and water. 
 When a vessel sheers off she cuts the water at 
 an angle. A shore is a prop cut to the proper 
 length, a ploughshare cuts the earth, and a share 
 of stock is a part separated or cut off. So with 
 shred and shard. A sliirt is a truncated garment, 
 and a skirt is cut round the bottom. To skirt 
 along the shore means, perhaps, to make short 
 cuts from point to point. Scare is more remotely
 
 136 ENGLISH WORDS. 
 
 connected in meaning, as it derives from Norse 
 skerre, timid, sliy, which is based on the idea of 
 sheering off. This group of words illustrates the 
 double Teutonic source — Norse and Low German 
 — of the modern English. 
 
 Do, to perform, comes from an Anglo-Saxon 
 word, as does also do, to be worth, to avail. The 
 use of the first as an emphatic auxiliary, as in "I 
 do say so," " I do not think so," is comparatively 
 modern. From this comes ado, to-do, deed, deem, 
 doom, doof, dup (to do off and to do up), indeed, 
 and deemster (a judge). From do, to avail, comes 
 doughty (valiant). " Flow do you do .-*" is a very 
 odd idiom when we examine it. " How actualize 
 you in practicable availability?" is about the sub- 
 stance of our daily salutation. 
 
 Latin words have branched in the original 
 language, and also since their naturalization in 
 English. Much of this is due to suffixes and 
 prefixes — compounding rather than growth. Dn- 
 cere to lead ; tangcre, to touch ; dieere, to say ; and 
 agere, to perform, are familiar examples. From 
 duco come duke, abduction, conduce, conduct (in both 
 senses), conluit, douche (a shower-bath, since the 
 water is brought through a duct), doge, ducat, duc- 
 tile, educate, introduce, redoubt (an intrenchment 
 to which to lead the men back), reduce, subdue, 
 traduce (to lead a reputation to dishonor), etc. 
 
 From tango come tangent, contain, contagious.
 
 GROUPS OF WORDS WITH A COMMON ROOT. 137 
 
 integer (a whole, intact), tad (a delicate toucli), 
 taste, and tax, of which last the original meaning 
 was primarily to handle, hence to value, to ap- 
 praise. 
 
 From dko come diction, abdicate, addict, con- 
 dition, contradict, dedicate, dictionary, ditto (what 
 has been said), ditty, edict, indicate, index, indite, 
 preach (predicare), predicate (in two senses), and 
 predict. In all of these the connection of mean- 
 ing is sufficiently evident. 
 
 From agere we have agent and act, agile, agi- 
 tate, atnhiguous, coagulate, cogent, cogitate, enact, ex- 
 act, transact, and others more remote ; in all of 
 which we see the idea of effective agency. 
 
 The relationship of meaning in words from the 
 Latin is usually very evident, though the form 
 is sometimes disguised in coming through the 
 French. In ?7iiscrea?it, originally unbeliever, and 
 in recreant, one false to faith, the credo is dis- 
 guised. So in defy, to proclaim all bonds of faith 
 broken, the Jides does not appear. Frontispiece, 
 again, is not connected with piece, but with specio, 
 and means something to be looked at in the be- 
 ginning. In pre/ace, from prcefatio, the root is 
 fari, to speak, notfacio, to do. Of disguised forms 
 something will be said hereafter. The English 
 roots, however, have been much longer under the 
 influence of phonetic changes, and, perhaps, are 
 more susceptible to them. A few more instances,
 
 138 ENGLISH WORDS. 
 
 in no case exhaustive, will finish this branch of 
 the subject. 
 
 Beatan, to strike, gives us bat, beetle (a wooden 
 maul), and batter, a kind of pudding beaten up. 
 
 Beor<^a/i, io shelter, besides its connection witii 
 biifough, aXxQTxdy spoken of, gives us /'///'-^'■/(7;'( prob- 
 ably corrupted from burgh and latro), Jiarbinger (one 
 who precedes to procure a harbor), harbor, and cold 
 harbor. A cold harbor was an inn where the trav- 
 eller could procure shelter but no cooking. There 
 are a number of places in England still called 
 Cold Harbour, and one or two in this country. 
 
 Blawan, to blow, is the origin of blaJd.r, of 
 blaze, to proclaim after giving notice with a horn. 
 We still speak of a blaze on a tree (a mark which 
 proclaims a boundary), blare (of a trumpet), b/is- 
 tcr^ and bloat. Skeat says, however, that the con- 
 nection between b/o:o and bloat is conjectural. 
 Blatant and bleat plainly belong here. 
 
 Froni bryne/i. to burn, comes brou'ii, brimstone, 
 brandy, brand, and brindled. Skeat places brnnt 
 here, as if the brunt of the battle was connect- 
 ed with a burning or hot fight, which seems odd 
 enough. 
 
 From ceapian, to buy, we have our word cheap, 
 chapman, chaffer ; and in composition, Cheapside 
 and Copenhagen, the merchan's haven. Since 
 buying necessitates trading or exchange, we have 
 chop in the phrases "to chop logic,'' and '• the wind
 
 GROUPS OF WORDS WITH A COMMON ROOT. 1 39 
 
 chops " or changes its direction. Tlie result is a 
 '' chopping sea." In this last we have gone some 
 distance from the idea of purchase, but each step 
 is logical. 
 
 Daeliaii, to divide, is found in the phrase " a 
 good deal,"' a considerable part ; dole, a portion 
 of food given in charity ; deal, a piece of wood 
 and to deal the cards. Distantly connected are 
 dale and dell, a division or cleft in the hills. 
 
 Wyrt, an herb, appears in wort — St. John's liwrt, 
 etc.; in ivart, a growth on the finger; in orchard, 
 or wort-yard. Orchard could not come from hor- 
 tus, a garden, because the last syllable must be 
 accounted for. 
 
 Our large modern dictionaries give the etymol- 
 ogies of words so fully that these few examples 
 are quoted merely to incite the reader to look up 
 others for himself. Take the following words : 
 unt, war, wade, tell, shoot, pike, vioti', batch, bear, 
 can, food, clover, kno'w, dray, and note their con- 
 nections, some of which are very peculiar. There 
 is no branch of the subject in which conjecture is 
 more apt to be misleading than in accounting for 
 the different meanings of words similar in sound. 
 Long experience sometimes fails to impart a trust- 
 worthy judgment, so capricious seems the popular 
 method of transferring meanings. In default of 
 an historical sequence great caution is necessary, 
 but sometimes not observed.
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 ERRONEOUS DERIVATIONS. 
 
 Etymologists are far from being infallible. 
 The usual causes of mistakes are excessive inge- 
 nuity and disregard of the method in which the 
 human mind works in forming a language and in 
 transferring the meaning of words from one thing 
 to another, or else ignorance of the way in v*'hich 
 old sounds and spellings have been modified. 
 Thus Dr. Thomas Fuller, a man of sense and acute- 
 ness, says : "As for those that count the Tartars the 
 offspring of the ten tribes of Israel which Shalma- 
 nasar led away captive, because Totari signifyeth 
 in the Hebrew and Syriac tongue a residue, or 
 remnant, learned men have sufficiently confuted 
 it. And surely it seemeth a forced and over- 
 strained deduction to farre fetch the name of 
 Tartars from a Hebrew word, a language so far 
 distant from them." 
 
 "The theory of Fuller," says Professor Marsh, 
 " was better than his practice, for he derives com- 
 pl'nfiejit from comJ)ldi incntiri, and not from com-
 
 ERRONEOUS DERIVATIONS. 141 
 
 plctio mentis, because compliments are usually 
 completely mendacious."' * Elsewhere he quotes, 
 with seeming assent, Sir John Harrington's ridicu- 
 lous derivation of the old English clf and goblin 
 from the two great political families, Guelf and 
 Ghibbeline. Thus, also, abominable, which is evi- 
 dently derived from the Latin ab and omen, and 
 involves the notion of what is religiously profane 
 and detestable — "the abominations of the hea- 
 then," for example — was supposed to be derived 
 from ab and hoino, as if it signified something in- 
 human. For a long time it was spelled abhomi- 
 nable, in accordance with this forced derivation, 
 and though the error in the spelling has not been 
 perpetuated, the word itself has taken up the 
 meaning of something repugnant to humanity and 
 not merely sacrilegious. 
 
 The word Amazoti is frequently given as com- 
 pounded of a, primitive, and jnazon (Greek), the 
 breast, with the explanation that the tribe of fe- 
 male warriors which bore the name, cut off their 
 left breasts to acquire greater facility in draw- 
 ing the bow% This is so evidently absurd that 
 the error is repeated in our dictionaries simply 
 because no one has made a better guess at the 
 derivation. 
 
 * Compliment and complement (math.) are both complctc- 
 !ii:iif, or filling up. Extending courtesies, flattery, complying 
 with wishes, is a meaning easily derived from "filling up."
 
 142 ENGLISH WORDS. 
 
 Mariposa, the Spanish for butterfly, is some- 
 times referred to marc, the sea, zxi^posa, position 
 or rest, because the insect flutters aniilessly and 
 then alights, and the sea is sometimes in motion 
 and sometimes quiet. Anything more flatly sen- 
 timental than this derivation cannot easily be 
 imagined. It has not even the merit of being a 
 really poetical invention. 
 
 Again, the word pie is referred in Webster to 
 pastry by a desperate guess. By this method all 
 words beginning in / and of similar meaning 
 would be connected. But words are connected 
 by some law which governs the relation of the 
 different sounds and meanings, and not hap- 
 hazard. The word//t' is probably a Celtic word, 
 like many of the elementary kitchen-words, and 
 dates from the time when Celtic slaves performed 
 the menial ofifices of the kitchen. The pie in 
 magpie is another word connected with the Latin 
 picus, a woodpecker. 
 
 Pic or //, meaning a heap of type, probably 
 comes from pica, the name of a certain size of 
 type, which might be applied to an unassorted 
 heap. 
 
 One source of absurd etymologies is the resem- 
 blance in the sound of words of different mean- 
 ings in two languages. Because a Latin and Greek 
 word sound alike v/e are tempted to think them 
 allied, whereas resemblance of sound is a reason
 
 ERRONEOUS DERIVATIONS. 1 43 
 
 for regarding the words as from different roots. 
 We take it for granted tliat the Spanish mucho 
 and our much are the same, whereas there is no 
 connection between them, nor is there any be- 
 tween the Greek iWoc, and our word whole. Dr. 
 Johnson in his dictionary gave cunnndgcon as de- 
 rived from the French cxur vurhanf, a wicked 
 heart. In reality it comes from coni-mudgin, 
 one wlio stores up grain to create an artificial 
 scarcity.* 
 
 A salt-cellar is referred to as if it were a cell in 
 which to hold salt. The v/ord cellar is originally 
 salarius, a salt-holder, and has nothing to do with 
 cell, which is connected v.-ith celare, to conceal. 
 
 The expression stone-blind means either blind 
 as a stone, or else refers to the stony look, as of a 
 white pebble, in the eyes of those afflicted with a 
 certain form of blindness. Having this expres- 
 sion, we have manufactured another, sand-blind, 
 out of semi-blind, to express near-sightedness. 
 Because sand is finer than stones, men jumped at 
 the conclusion that the proper expression for a 
 degree less than stone-blindness would be " sand- 
 
 * Dr. Johnson gave "curmudgeon" as from cxii) and 
 mcihaiit, and added tlie words " unknown correspondent," 
 referring to his autliority. Aslie, copying from Johnson, 
 makes another more Uidicrous mistake. He \ATote : " Cur- 
 mudgeon from CKitr, unknown, and nicchant, correspond- 
 ent."
 
 144 ENGLISH WORDS. 
 
 blind." Launcelot, in the " Merchant of Venice," 
 goes on to divide the scale again by inventing 
 the term gravel-blind * 
 
 Pliny actually thought that \\\q. panther was so 
 called from -av (jjepioy, as if the animal combined 
 the elements of all wild beasts — was an epitome 
 of savage life ; and another writer says the Latin 
 aj>is is derived from the Greek c'tTouc, footless, be- 
 cause at one stage of their existence bees are 
 footless grubs. 
 
 In his powerful poem, " Childe Roland," 
 Browning uses the expression slug-horn: 
 
 "I put ihe slug-horn to my lips and l)lc\v." 
 
 Slug-horn has a fine flavor of the Dark Ages, 
 and suggests a connection with slug and slaught- 
 er, as if it meant a battle-horn. But its origin 
 lies in a mistake of Chatterton's as to the mean- 
 ing of the Celtic slogan, sometimes written slog- 
 gornc. So he wrote, " some caught a slug-horn 
 and an onset wound," under the impression that 
 a sloggorne was a musical instrument and not a 
 battle-cry. Browning took from him the word 
 "slug-horn," which is so expressive that it is a 
 pity there is not something real to base it on. 
 
 * Laitacilot. "This is my true-l^egotten father, who be- 
 ing more than sand-blind, high gravel-blind, knows me not." 
 — " Merchant of Venice," Act II., Scene ii., line 30.
 
 ERRONEOUS DERIVATIONS. 1 45 
 
 Some one says that legend is derived from ///- 
 gende, lying, because a legend has often so slight 
 a foundation. Legends are legenda, tales of the 
 martyrs or saints, read in the churches, "written 
 with a purpose." So untrustv.-orthy were they 
 that legend has now come to mean a tale pur- 
 porting to be history, but evidently not founded 
 on fact. A tradition, on the other hand — mean- 
 ing originally some statement handed down orally 
 from father to son — is regarded as having prob- 
 ably a nucleus of truth. Legends are frequently 
 invented to account for geographical names, and 
 frequently based on some etymological mistake. 
 
 Thus, there is a mountain in Switzerland called 
 Pilate's Mount, and a legend has been invented 
 to account for the name. There is a small lake 
 near the summit, and it is said that Pontius Pilate 
 committed suicide by drowning himself in it, im- 
 pelled by remorse for his part in the Crucifixion. 
 In reality, the name — Alons Pilatus^ or the hatted 
 hill — comes from the fact that the summit is fre- 
 quently surrounded by clouds, a phenomenon 
 which has given a name to many mountains. 
 
 Sometimes the legend is invented, as in the 
 above case, to fit the name, and sometimes the 
 name is given to suit the legend. The most com- 
 mon error, however, is the warping of the spelling 
 or pronunciation of a foreign name to render it 
 similar to some word in the vernacular. Atten- 
 10
 
 146 ENGLISH WORDS. 
 
 tion has already been called to the curious cor- 
 ruptions of some French geographical names in 
 our country. [Many other instances could be 
 given. The mountain near the head of the bay 
 of Fundy, called Chapeau Dicii, from tlie cap of 
 cloud which often overhangs it, is now known as 
 the Shcpody Mountain. In England, "' Chateau 
 Vert has become S/iotovcr, Beau C/uf, Bcec/iy, and 
 Burg Walter, the castle of Walter of Douay, who 
 came over with William the Conqueror, now ap- 
 pears in the form of Bridge-water. Leightoii beau 
 desert has been changed into Leighion Buzzard, 
 and the brazen eagle which forms the lecturn in 
 the parish church is exhibited by the sexton as 
 the original buzzard from which the place derived 
 its name." Cape Horn we naturally suppose to 
 be so called because it is the end or horn of the 
 Continent, whereas it is named from its discoverer. 
 In England the yeomen of the household guard 
 are called beef-eaters. The derivation of this word 
 is probably what the spelling indicates — at least 
 there is no evidence to the contrary. With an 
 excess of ingenuity, the etymologists of the last 
 generation conjectured the origin to be buffetier, 
 or waiter at a buffet, a sideboard. The derivation 
 of the American expression '" I don't care a Jioot- 
 er" from "don't care an i:>ta" is so plausible 
 tliat it would be a pity to have it disproved. In- 
 stances of the corruption of words by a popular de-
 
 ERRONEOUS DERIVATIONS. 1 47 
 
 sire to express the etymology are : sparro'w-grass 
 for asparagus, court-cards for coat- cards, shuttle- 
 cock for shuttlecork, maul -stick for viahlerstuck, 
 crayfish for ecrevisse, dormouse for dormeuse, dan- 
 delion for dent de lion, country- dance for contre- 
 danse. In Webster'' s Unabridged, haberdasher was 
 said to come from the German, '■'Ilabt Ihr dass, 
 HerrV The English sailors called the ship Belle- 
 rophon "Bully Ruffian," and the Hirondellc the 
 " Iron Devil ;"' and the English mob called Ibra- 
 him FasJia ''Abraham Parker." It will be seen 
 that the professionals are sometimes as ingenious 
 as the uninstructed. 
 
 In Scott's novel of The Pirate, Noma lived on 
 the Fitful Head — a not inappropriate name. It 
 comes from the old Xorse name Huit Fell, or white 
 headland. Cunning Garth, in Westmoreland, was 
 originally the King's (Koening's) Yard. A widely- 
 spread etymological error was the notion that 
 Kingwas originally Al7/;////^% the man who knows, 
 or, as Carlyle puts it, " the man who is able — who 
 can." In reality the ing is the Saxon patronymic 
 suffix. Koening is the son of the kin or tribe. 
 Devil was once supposed to be from do evil. The 
 name God, by a natural moral impulse, was sup- 
 posed to be connected with the same root as good, 
 though a little reflection would have made the 
 etymology suspected, for God is a very old Teu- 
 tonic word, and certainlv antedates Christianitv
 
 148 ENGLISH WORDS, 
 
 by many centuries. But an ante- Christian con- 
 ception of deity never refers to the attribute of 
 goodness. On the contrary, savage tribes are im- 
 pressed with the idea of a being of irresponsible 
 power, and therefore the root of the word God 
 means that which can be propitiated. If the Teu- 
 tonic race, or any other, could have worked out 
 by themselves the belief in universal goodness, 
 here would have been little need of a revelation. 
 The Greeks called Jerusalem Hicrosolyma, as 
 if it were the sacred city of Solomon. It is said 
 that the name Tatars was in the thirteenth cen- 
 tury changed into Tartars^ to carry the idea that 
 the hordes, whose invasion v/as thought to be a 
 fulfilment of the prediction of the opening of hell, 
 were direct from Tartarus. The tower of Saint 
 Verena, near Grenoble, is called Lc Tour Sans 
 Vcnin. and to fit the name the peasantry have orig- 
 inated the superstition that no poisonous animal 
 can live near it. In New York there is a square 
 called '• Grammercy Park," a name which might 
 readily be supposed to be of French origin. J]ut 
 on an old map the locality is marked as occupied 
 by a pond called Dc Krominc Zee, the crooked 
 pond. Eijuipagc has nothing to do with cqiiiis^ a 
 horse, but is from equip, to furnish. Hessians are 
 not the boots worn by Hessians, but the word 
 is probably connected with hose, since the shoe 
 and the lesf-coverinG; are united. Ilan'^nail is a
 
 ERROXEOUS DERIVATIONS. 1 49 
 
 nail that gives pain, or ,f?//^'-uisli, not one that hangs 
 loose. Gingerly does not refer to ginger, but is 
 from an old English root. Incentive is not that 
 which incenses or causes to burn, but comes from 
 incantare, to excite by singing, and is allied to 
 incantations. 
 
 Mr. Taylor calls attention to the insistence with 
 which Teutonic nations try to tvrist old Celtic 
 local names into a form in which they would be 
 susceptible of explanation from their ovv-n lan- 
 guages. The Celtic words alt niacn mean high 
 rock. In the Lake District this name has been 
 transformed into the "(?/'/ Man of Coniston." In 
 the Orkneys a peak or dome fifteen hundred feet 
 high is called the " 0!d Man of Hoy." The 
 Dead Man, another Cornish headland, is a cor- 
 ruption of the Celtic dod mean. Brown Willy, a 
 Cornish mountain ridge, is a corruption of Bryn 
 Huel, the tin -mine ridge. Abennaw,\X\Q. mouth 
 of the Maw, has become Barmouth. 
 
 Maidenhead was originally Mayden hithe, the 
 '•wharf mid.vay" between Marlow and Windsor, 
 Yrova this name arose the myth that the head of 
 one of the eleven thousand virgins of Cologne 
 was buried here. Again, Maidstone and Magde- 
 burg are not the maiden towns, but one is the 
 town on the Medv\-ay, and the other the town of 
 the plain. Anse de Cousins, the Musquito's bay, 
 has been transformed by English sailors into
 
 150 ENGLISH WORDS. 
 
 IVancy Cousin's bay. Ilagc/ies, the Norse name 
 of one of the Scilly isles, has become St. Agnes, 
 and Horace' s Mountain of Soracte is added to the 
 Ust of saints by the Italian peasantry as St. Oreste. 
 In New Brunswick, the river Qua/i-Ta/i- ]]'a/i-A;n- 
 Quah-Duavic, probably the most unmanageable 
 name in the Gazeteer, has been abbreviated into 
 the Petam Kediac, and transformed by the lum- 
 ber men into Tom Kedgioick. In nearly every lo- 
 cality are to be found Indian names thus changed. 
 No doubt Tonihigby is an instance, and there was 
 once a tendency to call Appalachian, Apple-acorn. 
 
 The following extract from the Critic \\\\\ show, 
 however, that it is not always the unlearned who 
 invent words : 
 
 "An amusing illustration of the mechanical way 
 in which dictionaries have been made, is furnished 
 by the word /'//(7;//'6';;/;/c?//<f;//, which appears in Web- 
 ster, Worcester, tlie Imperial, and Cass ell's Encyclo- 
 pedic Dictionary. Webster solemnly defines it thus : 
 ' Phantomnation ;/. Appearance as of a phantom ; 
 illusion. \^Obs. and rare?\ Fope.'' Worcester says 
 simply: 'Illusion. I^opee 'Y\\q I/nperial ■^.wd Cas- 
 sell's repeat this bit of lexicographic wisdom ; 
 but the latter omits the reference to Pope, appar- 
 ently suspecting that something is the matter 
 somewhere. Now the source of this word is a 
 book, entitled IPiilology on tJie EnglisJi Language, 
 published in 1S20, by Richard Paul Jodrell, as
 
 ERRONEOUS DERIVATIONS. 151 
 
 a sort of supplement to y.>/!/iso/i's Dictionary. 
 Jodrell had a curious way of writing phrases as 
 single words, w'ithout even a hyphen to indicate 
 their composite character ; thus, under his wonder- 
 working pen, city solicitor became ' citysolicitor,' 
 home acquaintance ' homeacquaintance ' — and so 
 on indefinitely. He remarks in his preface that 
 it 'was necessary to enact laws for myself,' and he 
 appears to have done so with great vigor. Of 
 course he foUov.-ed his ' law ' wlien he transcribed 
 the following passage from Pope : 
 
 Tlicse solemn vows and lioly ofFcrings paid 
 To all the phantom nations of the dead. 
 
 OJysst'v, X., 627. 
 
 P/iantoni nations became ' pliantomnations,' and 
 the ' great standards of the English language ' 
 were enriched with a ' new word !' There is a 
 difference, however, between Jodrell and his fol- 
 lowers : he knew what Pope meant. ]Vcbstcr s 
 definition is entirely original. Tliis appears to 
 have been the best instance of a 'ghost-word' on 
 record." 
 
 Upstart., the name applied to a person whose 
 antecedents do not justify his pretensions, is given 
 in Webster s Unabridi^ed as from up and start. The 
 verb undoubtedly has this derivation, but the noun 
 is from up and start, or steort, a tail, the same word 
 which appears in the name of the bird, redstart,
 
 152 ENGLISH WORDS. 
 
 and in siark-Jiakcd. Acorn was very naturally 
 supposed to be oak-corn; but ^Nlr. Skeat shows 
 that it meant originally wild fruit, and is based on 
 acker, a field — cognate with Latin ai^cr. There- 
 fore, Chaucer was right and not tautological when 
 he wrote, " acornes of okes." 
 
 Andiron is another word in which a false idea 
 of the etymology has changed the spelling. Its 
 real etymology is obscure, but it has nothing to 
 do with iron. But there v/as a term in Saxon — 
 Brand-iron — having nearly the same meaning, 
 v.'ith which the old word andcrnc became confused. 
 
 Apace is used very early to signify rapidly. 
 
 Gallop apace, yc ficry-footed stee^ls. — Marlozi'c. 
 
 But it meant in Chaucer's time, slowly. He writes 
 it a pas, signifying at a walk. 
 
 Condign is now applied to punishment alone, 
 but originally had the meaning of merited, con- 
 dignns, in a general way, so that it was proper to 
 say, "a condign reward"' as well as ''a condign 
 punishment." This is, however, not an instance 
 of an erroneous etymology, but of a limitation of 
 the original meaning of a word. 
 
 Sirioi/i is a well-known instance of an errone- 
 ous etymology, detected many years ago. It was 
 once said that Henry VIII. knighted jestingly a 
 noble loin of beef. It is really sur, or supra, loin. 
 
 Surly was supposed to be sourly, but the early
 
 ERRONEOUS DERIVATIONS. 153 
 
 spelling makes it highly probable that it is from 
 sir-like, having the meaning ii7ipcrious, from which 
 the transition to its present force is easy enough. 
 It would thus be analogous to lordly, which has re- 
 tained the original meaning of arrogant bearing. 
 
 Dog-cheap is an odd word, when we think of 
 it. It was explained by saying that dog's-meat 
 was of a poorer quality, but so is that of cats 
 and other carnivorous animals. There is a Swed- 
 ish dialect word, dog, meaning 7rry, and this dog 
 in dog-cheap is probably the same word, though 
 cheap is not Scandinavian. Cheap, meaning to buy, 
 is a very old word in English, though probably of 
 Latin origin. Dog-cheap, then, is very cheap. 
 
 The word cock illustrates as well as any other 
 the many sources from which English has sprung : 
 First, is cock, the male bird, from Latin through 
 French, and from this comes the use of iurn-cock, 
 on account of some fancied resemblance to the tail 
 of the fowl ; second, a cock of hay is Scandina- 
 vian ; third, ''to cock one's eye,"' or a cocked hat, 
 is Celtic ; fourth, the cock of a gun is Italian, 
 meaning the notch of an arrow, and probably the 
 retaining notch on a cross-bow. The Germans 
 have, by a natural etymological confusion, trans- 
 lated this cock by hahii — ^' den haJui spa/i/ien,'' to 
 cock the gun ; fifth, cock, in the sense of a small 
 boat, as used in "Lear," and as compounded in 
 cockswain, is a widel3--spread word, also from Latin
 
 154 ENGLISH WORDS. 
 
 through French, but not connected with the first 
 word, though from the same source. 
 
 Wormwood is given in Webster* as taking its 
 name from the fact that its bitter taste made it 
 fatal to worms. Tlie old spelling, ivermode, shows 
 that this is not the derivation. It was then con- 
 jectured that it meant 7i'arc-?not/i, something that 
 drives off insects. This hypothesis v/as found to 
 be equally untenable, and Mr. Skeat conjectures 
 that the original meaning was warc-iiioad, or mind- 
 preserver, from the "supposed curative properties 
 of the plant in mental affections," which is at least 
 equally ingenious and much more probable. 
 
 The above examples will suffice to sliow that 
 etymology is full of blind alleys, and that the only 
 safe method is the scientific one, of : First, gath- 
 ering facts patiently; secondly, classifying the 
 facts till a general principle can be enunciated ; 
 and, thirdly, using this general principle with great 
 care in examining the residual facts v/hich are not 
 readily explainable by the theory, but never forc- 
 ing the facts into the theory. 
 
 * //V/mViV- lit-re means the L'nal'!i(t^cd. All tlie errors arc 
 corrected in the Iiilcriialioiial, or last edition of IVcbsli:)-,
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 ODD AND DISGUISED DERIVATIONS. 
 
 The changes of pronunciation to which words 
 are subject are never abrupt. If they were so 
 the word would lose its identity. The phonetic 
 law governing the change works very slowly, 
 though much more rapidly at some periods than 
 at others ; but the result is a gradual change, a 
 growth, and the operation is largely an uncon- 
 scious one. Spelling, on the other hand, is arti- 
 ficial, and since the invention of printing has 
 developed very little. Originally it was largely 
 phonetic, and in some instances great pains were 
 taken to make the letters represent the sound of 
 the words as pronounced at the time. Our mod- 
 ern spelling is traditionary and made up of "un- 
 considered remnants." It is entirely arbitrary, 
 and must always remain so, because a group of 
 letters must represent a word, and a word is not 
 a definite sound but a changing sound. Early 
 spelling, however, indicates early pronunciation, 
 or at least comparative pronunciation, which is
 
 156 ENGLISH WORDS. 
 
 the most that we can hope to arrive at in reading 
 an unspoken or obsolete tongue. It is altogether 
 improbable that Chaucer or Shakspeare could 
 understand their own works as read by a modern, 
 especially by one who aims to reproduce the an- 
 cient pronunciation. Nevertheless, we can say 
 quite confidently that a certain combination of 
 letters represented a definite sound in a thirteenth 
 century book — in the Orviulum (a.d. 12 15), for 
 instance, -which is a great deal more than we can 
 say of any modern book, although it may be im- 
 possible to reproduce the sound vocally. It is 
 evident, then, that early spelling is very useful — 
 indeed indispensable — in tracing the pedigree of 
 words. Sometimes a single, apparently superflu- 
 ous, letter in a modern word betrays its origin. 
 Letters as the indications of ancient pronuncia- 
 tion are the main guides in seeking for derivatives. 
 The value for etymological researcli of the si- 
 lent, useless, and arbitrarily sounded letters in 
 English words is, of course, no argument against 
 phonetic spelling, and certainly none against such 
 a moderate reform as would greatly lessen the 
 number of letters we are forced to v/rite, and sub- 
 ject English orthograpliy to at least the outline 
 of a s}-stem. The v/ords in their antique gar- 
 ments would remain embalmed in old books and 
 dictionaries for the use of pliilologists. A spell- 
 ing reform is impossible for another reason.
 
 ODD AND DISGUISED DERIVATIONS. 1 57 
 
 Printers and proof-readers will never permit it to 
 be brought about. They have been forced to 
 learn a certain system before they could obtain 
 employment and cannot now learn another. Any 
 modification of our present absurd system of 
 spelling English words is hopeless, however de- 
 sirable, on account of the practical difficulty of 
 initiating changes in the memories of a great body 
 of adults. If it could be made fashionable to 
 spell lawlessly the hrst step would be taken, for 
 then perhaps a coherent system might grow out 
 of the ruins of the old one. 
 
 The changes in meaning through which a 
 word sometimes passes in succeeding generations, 
 though nearly always logical, are sometimes very 
 complex. Consequently, if a link of the historical 
 sequence is lost it is dangerous to attempt to 
 supply it by conjecture. An abstract word grows 
 out of a concrete word because we learn by ex- 
 perience to know concrete things first. But some- 
 times the meaning is boldly transferred in the 
 other direction by an exercise of the radical met- 
 aphor-building faculty. The word is compounded 
 with other words, and one of the words becomes 
 an inseparable prefix or suffix, modifying the pro- 
 nunciation or moving the accent. These changes, 
 too, are growths, but sometimes they are very 
 rapid, especially so during the formative period 
 of the language. They take place, too, largely
 
 158 ENGLISH WORDS. 
 
 in the oral lanfjuajre r.ncl mav not be recorded. 
 Usually every step of the changes in meaning 
 can be readily explained if it can be uncovered. 
 But the range of the metaphorical word-building 
 power is very great, and it works on individual 
 words. Its results are, therefore, much more dif- 
 ficult to follow than are those of the sound- 
 changing power, which works in uniform lines on 
 great bodies of words and within physical limits. 
 These points, especially the last, explain why 
 some derivations seem odd or unaccountable. 
 Some of the words mentioned in the last chapter 
 are illustrations of this, but there are others in 
 which the connection between origin and mean- 
 ing is even less obvious. How comes it that 
 the word /n?;//(', which probably meant a javelin, 
 should now mean outspoken ? The Franks of 
 history were originally a body of High Germans 
 — a colonizing army rather than a tribe — and one 
 of their arms was a spear. They called them- 
 selves spearmen or Franks. The territory they 
 conquered came to be known as France. The 
 members of the dominant people retained as the 
 inheritance of conquerors certain civic privileges 
 or immunities from civic burdens. It is easy to 
 see how Frank-rig/its became the origin of fran- 
 chise, and as a member of the ruling race can 
 safely speak his mind, how frank came to mean 
 outspoken.
 
 ODD AND DISGUISED DERIVATIONS. 1 59 
 
 Free is a word of ancient Teutonic root, mean- 
 ing not restrained by formal rule. It has had 
 two meanings simultaneously : courtesy and lib- 
 erty. Chaucer says of the Knight: 
 
 " He loved chivalrie, 
 Trouth and \\oxvo\\x, freedom and curte'sie." 
 
 Here, in an example of bilingualism, freedom 
 is employed in the sense of gentlemanly manners 
 resulting from a sense of not being constrained, 
 and therefore natural and genial. Shakspeare 
 also v/rites : i 
 
 "I ti^ank thee, Hector: 
 Thou art too gentle, and \.oq free a man." 
 
 The meaning is evidently lordly, noble, gentle. 
 This meaning is retained in the poetic phrase 
 " fair and free," and in the common expression 
 " free and easy," in which last case it is somewhat 
 degenerated. 
 
 Barbour, a Scottish contemporary of Chaucer, 
 
 writes : 
 
 ''Freedom is a noble thing; 
 Freedom makes man to have liking," 
 
 and contrasts freedom and thirldom, or thraldom. 
 Here we have the meaning of civil liberty as op- 
 posed to slavery, in which sense the word is used 
 to-day. Why do we call a tale, in inventing which 
 the imagination is allowed free play, a Romance^ 
 after the most practical-minded race of history.
 
 l6o ENGLISH WORDS. 
 
 instead of after the Greeks or the Arabs, people 
 of far more poetic power? The reason is that 
 Romans, or the Roman language, meant very 
 early the popular tongue of France, as distinguish- 
 ed from the Latin of books. In this popular 
 tongue tales were written, so that a romaimt be- 
 came the name for a certain style of poem or tale, 
 as the '■^Ivomancc of Richard Cctur de Lion," 
 and the '"'■ RoDiaunt of the Rose." The extrava- 
 gance of these tales /;/ Romance was so marked 
 that the term was extended in time to cover any 
 unbridled exercise of the imagination. 
 
 The connection between candidate and candid, 
 or white, is not at once evident. It arose from the 
 Roman fashion which dictated that those who 
 presented themselves for election should signify 
 their readiness by wearing white gowns. Ambi- 
 tion is derived from the practice of going about 
 {ambire) to solicit votes. Antic is derived from 
 ancient, or more properly from antique, ancient 
 being of course the Romance form of the Latin 
 antiquus. Anything old-fashioned is odd. .Any- 
 thing odd is meaningless. Then, by one of the 
 inexplicable whims of word- appropriation antic 
 was restricted to meaningless capers. 
 
 The humanities as applied to study now means 
 the liberal branches. Originally it was used in 
 distinction to theology, the one being regarded 
 as human wisdom, the other as divine.
 
 ODD AND DISGUISED DERIVATIONS. l6l 
 
 Trivial is supposed to be derived from trcs 
 7'ias, where three roads cross, therefore common, 
 that which may be picked up anywhere; as we 
 say of a sharp fellow Avho has not much depth, 
 ''he has been educated on the streets." Vet 
 schools which taught grammar, arithmetic, and 
 geometry were called trivial schools, or three- 
 branch schools. 
 
 Insult originally meant to jump on a man (/>/- 
 siilio), having previously knocked him down, " add- 
 ing insult to injury ;" but affront is to defy him 
 to his face (ad frontare). " Proud Cumberland 
 prances insulting the slain," is etymologically cor- 
 rect. We are very apt to confound this word with 
 insolent {in salens), w^hich means out of the com- 
 mon, and applies to indecorous conduct from one 
 inferior in age or station. 
 
 Surroutid is a word having a strange history. 
 It is sur {supra) and unda, a wave, and meant to 
 cover with water : " As streams if stopt, sur- 
 nnund,'' in Warner's Albion's England {circ. 1600). 
 The word is not found in Shakspeare at all, for 
 he uses round in the sense of encompass : " Our 
 little life is rounded with a sleep." Nor does it 
 appear in the Bible or Prayer-book. It was con- 
 fused with round in the seventeenth century, and 
 stole its meaning entirely, except in the usage of 
 herdsmen, and now means to encompass, not to 
 inundate. This word bases itself entirelv on false
 
 l62 ENGLISH WORDS. 
 
 pretences, but is firmly established in good stand- 
 ing. 
 
 Tarpaulin might more properly be noticed un- 
 der hybrid words, for tar is a good old English 
 word, and paiuling is from the Latin pallium, a 
 cloak or mantle, which gives also the word pall, 
 a covering for the dead. 
 
 Nice, originally ncsciiis (no science), ignorant, or 
 unskilful, has passed through a variety of mean- 
 ings, from ignorant to discriminating or exact, 
 which is the proper use now, as " a nice observa- 
 tion," " a nice distinction," etc. Nice, in the sense 
 of fitting, agreeable, is colloquial, and evidently 
 derived from the idea of exactness. The con- 
 nection between exactness and ignorance is not 
 so evident, and the transference of meaning may 
 probably have been influenced by the old English 
 word nesh, which meant '' delicate " as well as soft. 
 Mr. Earle gives the following account of the grad- 
 ual change of meaning : '" The word dates from the 
 great French period, and at first meant 'foolish, 
 absurd, ridiculous ;' then in course of time it came 
 to signify 'whimsical, fantastic, wanton, adroit;' 
 thence it slid into the meaning of subtle, delicate, 
 sensitive, which landed it on the threshold of its 
 modern meaning." Its use in social slang is too 
 unscientific to be traceable. Indeed, the change 
 of meaning is abnormal, at best. 
 
 Quaint is another word which has passed
 
 ODD AND DISGUISED DERIVATIONS. 163 
 
 through various vicissitudes of meaning. It is 
 derived from the Latin cognitns, known, and in 
 point of derivation is the same word as noble. It 
 now means old-fashioned with a slight implica- 
 tion of simplicity and dignity. Professor Earle 
 says : " We. may almost say that the word quaint 
 now signifies 'after the fashion of the seventeenth 
 century.' It means something that is pretty after 
 some by-gone standard of prettiness." In the four- 
 teenth century it was a "great social word, describ- 
 ing an indefinite sort of merit and approbation." 
 Chaucer calls the spear of Achilles a " quaint 
 spear," for it could both hurt and heal. Shak- 
 speare makes Prospero say " My quaint Ariel," 
 and in " Much Ado About Nothing " speaks of a 
 "fine, quaint, graceful, and excellent fashion." 
 
 Policy as applied to a written instrument, an in- 
 surance policy, is a word of ancient lineage and 
 quite distinct from /6'//n', line of public conduct, 
 which is from ttoXic, a city. The first comes from 
 TTfAi'yr, much, and -rvi,^ a fold, and means a long 
 register in many leaves. Why the meaning 
 should be limited as it is, is not known. 
 
 Average is a modern word in its present sense. 
 It was used as meaning a common ratio to a 
 number of dift'erent quantities by Adam Smith, 
 the economist (circ. 1820). Now we use it to sig- 
 nify a number such that the sum of the plus dif- 
 ferences between it and a cfiven set of numbers
 
 164 ENGLISH WORDS. 
 
 is equal to the sum of the minus differences. 
 This, though mathematically distinct from the 
 first meaning, is popularly the same thing. In 
 feudal times the word meant a contribution tow- 
 ards carrying the lord's Viheat ; then it came to 
 mean a freight charge, and lastly, a contribution 
 towards the loss of goods which were sacrificed 
 to save the rest of the ship's freight. This con- 
 tribution was proportioned or a-rcraged according 
 to the value of each shipper's goods. From this 
 to the sense of a mean — the modern sense — the 
 transition is easy. Each step of the change of 
 meaning is logical, though the entire change pre- 
 sents a seemingly irreconcilable divergence. 
 
 Belfry has nothing to do with bell, but v/as 
 originally ■■hcrcfrit, or watch-tower, and was ap- 
 plied to the movable tower on wheels used in 
 the Middle Ages to attack a walled town. It 
 now means a tower for bells. The change of 
 meaning is due to the sound of the lirst syllable. 
 
 Dirgi\ a funeral chant, comes from dirigc, 
 guide. In the Latin service for the dead, one 
 part began. '' Dirigc doniin: 7-itjin /iwaiur Dirige 
 was contracted into dirge, and extended into a 
 general word for any musical expression of grief. 
 
 Postiimoiis, meaning last, was first applied to a 
 child born after the father's deatli, though it 
 meant simply the last born. Then an // was 
 thrust into the word, as if it meant after burial
 
 ODD A\D DISGUISED DERIVATIONS. 1 65 
 
 in the ground. Finally, the meaning was re- 
 stricted to a child born after the father's death, 
 or to a work published after the author's death. 
 
 Spend, splay, and sport are an odd group of 
 words. They are all Latin, yet have a decided 
 appearance of belonging to old English stock. 
 Spend is dispendere, to weigh out ; splay is dis- 
 plicere, to unfold ; sport is disport ere, to carry 
 hither and thither. In all cases the first letters 
 of '' dis " have dropped out of sight, and the s. 
 in accordance with a phonetic law, has sur- 
 vived. Sport and spend have superseded the 
 old forms, but splay has secured a standing in 
 splay-footed only, display stubbornly holding its 
 place. 
 
 Allozu is a verb with a double root, or, rather, 
 there were originally two verbs, allo'iu from allau- 
 dar:, to praise, and alLno from allocare, to place, 
 to expend — hence, an allowance, or money given. 
 The first meaning can be found in the Bible and 
 in Shakspeare : "Ye allow the deeds of your 
 fathers."' — Luke xi., 48. The use of allow in the 
 sense of praise is obsolete, yet as there is a con- 
 nection between approval and permission, the 
 first meaning has colored the modern usage. 
 
 Amazement, as confusion of mind from what- 
 ever cause, and not, as nov.-, simply astonish- 
 ment; depart, in the sense of separate ("till death 
 us depart,'' corrupted in the marriage service
 
 1 66 ENGLISH WORDS. 
 
 into "do part"), and many other old usages can 
 be found in the Prayer-book. 
 
 Ampersand, the arbitrary character for the 
 word and, has an odd origin. In repeating the 
 alplrabet, children were taught to close by say- 
 ing, " X, Y, Z, and,/6'r sc, and " — that is, " and by 
 itself." This, shortened into ampersand, became 
 the name of the character. The character itself 
 grew out of the Latin ef, which the scribes wrote 
 in an ornamental fashion, curling backward the 
 tail of the / in a flourish. 
 
 As Dean Trench points out, a potent cause of 
 change of meaning in words is euphemism, or 
 a desire to avoid the direct name of something 
 disagreeable or obnoxious, by substituting some 
 term with pleasanter associations. Adventurer 
 meant originally a bold man with a " heart for 
 any fate " which might eonie to him or to which 
 he might come. lie took the chances in a legiti- 
 mate mercantile risk. ]5ut the word was ap- 
 plied to the half-merchants, half- pirates of the 
 seventeenth centur}^, instead of naming them 
 honestly after their profession. Since then ad- 
 renturer has come to mean one who preys on 
 society in a pretentious and dashing manner. 
 Singularly enough, adi'enturous retains the prim- 
 itive meaning of fearlessness based on self-re- 
 liance — readiness to meet danger half-waj^ 
 
 In much the same way a gambler meant origi-
 
 ODD AND DISGUISED DERIVATIONS. 1 67 
 
 nally a person who plays a game, but now is re- 
 stricted to one who plays unfairly for money. 
 We are continually inventing euphemisms for 
 drufik, like intoxicated, overcome, and a multi- 
 tude of other expressions, most of which carry 
 the idea that the condition was an accident, and 
 not the result of weakness of the will. Nor do 
 we hesitate to palliate breaches of the sexual ob- 
 ligation by some word or paraphrase which im- 
 plies an excuse. 
 
 Again, party-spirit^ the desire to cast contempt 
 or opprobrium upon opponents, operates to 
 change the force of words. Whig and Tory 
 were originally nicknames. Quaker, Puritan, 
 Malignant, Methodist, Roundhead, were names 
 given by opponents. Prime -niinister, or Pre- 
 mier, was a title sarcastically given to Walpole. 
 These, however, have all remained names, and 
 have not, with the possible exception of premier, 
 which designates the functions of a member of 
 the English Ministry, become real words. 
 
 Pigeon English is said to be " business English " 
 — that is, a jargon invented for the purposes of 
 trade with savages. 
 
 Business, Skeat gives as from the English ad- 
 jective busy, but Earle thought that there was 
 no connection between them, and that business 
 was from the French word besogne, as seen in the 
 modern French-, Faites voire besogne (" do your
 
 1 68 EXGLISH WORDS. 
 
 duty"). As this is so much less simple than the 
 other, it is not to be preferred without good evi- 
 dence from ancient usage, which has not been 
 found. 
 
 Canter^ the slow gallop of a horse, is derived 
 from Canterbury. The connection is. that the 
 pilgrims to Canterbury were accustomed to make 
 their horses take that gait. This is a very odd 
 derivation, but that it is the true one is evident 
 from early use. One of the latest examples is 
 from Dr. Johnson : " The Pegasus of Pope, like 
 a Kentish post-horse, is ahvays on the Canterbury."' 
 
 Calipers^ the instrument for measuring the 
 diameter of a cylinder, was first '■'caliper com- 
 passes."' Caliper is the same as caliber, which is 
 from a P'rench word, gualibre, meaning quality or 
 rank. Of this last the derivation is uncertain. 
 
 The forces which affect the significance of 
 words, and color the exact shade of meaning they 
 convey, are numberless. They cover all human 
 mental activity. Some words become more dig- 
 nified, their meanings grov," fuller and more ele- 
 vated , others sink and become degraded by asso- 
 ciation till they lose standing entirely, raramour^ 
 ringleader, traJucer, dunce, equivocate, imp, gloze, 
 silly, simple, prude, and many others, had once 
 nothing derogatory in tlicir signification. Sacra- 
 ment, Christian, eucliarist, humility, martyrs, regen- 
 eration, have been elevated by Christianity. In
 
 ODD AND DISGUISED DERIVATIONS. 1 69 
 
 fact, words record all the great movements of 
 thought, the changes in character that distin- 
 guish different ages of the world. Sometimes 
 language is affected and precise, sometimes free 
 and strong. The causes of growth or loss of 
 meaning are too broad and general to be classi- 
 fied. In fact, every word is a text for a chapter, 
 if its various senses be collated and the reasons 
 for the changes sought. An abstract word is but 
 a form for an idea, and concrete words are not 
 much more. As thought is in a perpetual flux, 
 so must the forms of thought be also. The fol- 
 lowing are suggested as illustrations : Knave, vil- 
 lain, boor, varied, valet, nienial, minion, pcda?it, 
 swi?idler, timescrver, conceit, carp, officious, demure, 
 crafty, artful, tinsel, specious, voluhle,J)lausibk, lewd, 
 atiimosity, prejudice, askance, fulsome, gaudy, gush, 
 hypocrite, monster, sad, zealot, brave, prude. 
 
 Two instructive modern books on the growth of the 
 English language are Modern English, by Fitzedward 
 Mall, and Standard English, by F. L. Kington Oliphant.
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 GEOGRAPHICAL NAMES. 
 
 Local names of the great features of the earth 
 — seas, rivers, lakes, mountains, and islands — are 
 not arbitrary sounds', they were originally given 
 with a purpose, and are frequently of great an- 
 tiquity. Local names of civil divisions — coun- 
 ties, towns, hamlets, even fields — often embody a 
 great deal of history. These names, too, gather 
 associations, and their interest depends greatly 
 on these associations. A knowledge of the deri- 
 vations frequently widens very greatly these asso- 
 ciations or connected ideas, for the liistory of the 
 successive races that have occupied the land is 
 impressed on the names of their old homes. Our 
 country is unfortunate in this respect. We have, 
 it is true, preserved many — too few — of the Indian 
 names of lakes, rivers, and mountains ; but the 
 American aborigines are not, like the Celts and the 
 Teutons, ancestors of modern civilization. Sen- 
 eca, Cayuga, Niagara, Ontario, are fine words, and 
 it is well that they have not been lost. It was a
 
 GEOGRAPHICAL NAMES. 171 
 
 sad confession of intellectual poverty to name the 
 townships of Western New York after the cities 
 or heroes of classical antiquity — Marcellus, Rome, 
 Pompey, Syracuse, etc., and it will be many years 
 before the incongruity ceases to be full of absurd 
 suggestions. Nor are the names of the Presiden- 
 tial range— Mount Washington, Jefferson, etc. — 
 to be commended. Even the cacophonous Indian 
 names of Maine are better than these, because 
 they are not artificial. A more modern instance 
 of the same bad taste is the attaching the names of 
 the Queen of England and her husband and son 
 to the great lakes of Africa. A civil geographical 
 division may take the name of its founder, and 
 there is reason in giving the name of the discov- 
 erer even to some great natural feature of the 
 earth. No one would wish to change the name of 
 Hudson's or of Baffin's Bay, because these words 
 are the records of perseverance and courage. The 
 value of the associations in a name which con- 
 nects the present with the past is greater than is 
 supposed. It is a continual suggestion of poetry. 
 Otherwise we might as well adopt numbers at 
 once, which, indeed, as in the streets of new cities, 
 is a convenient method of ticketing localities 
 which have no history and no individuality and 
 no distinction. 
 
 Nevertheless, many local names in our country, 
 though not relating to a distant past, have con-
 
 172 ENGLISH WORDS. 
 
 siderable historical interest. The rule that names 
 of rivers are permanent is exemplified by the fact 
 that all of our important rivers have retained their 
 Indian names, except the St. Lawrence and the 
 Hudson. The gulf into which the former of the 
 two rivers flows, was discovered on the day sacred 
 to St. Lawrence, and the gulf narrows l^y degrees 
 into the river. In the same way the Hudson has 
 in its lower course the character of an arm of the 
 sea, and lacks the life and individuality of a river.* 
 The civil names on the map of Xorth America 
 testify to the original colonization by English, 
 French, and Spaniards ; and the lines which mark- 
 ed the territory originally occupied by each can 
 be approximately determined by the character of 
 the old names. Thus, France held possession of 
 the valley of the Mississippi; and Louisiana, Xew 
 Orleans, St. Louis, St. Charles, Detroit — the nar- 
 row strait — still witness to tlie French occupation. 
 The names of the Jesuit missionaries, Pere Mar- 
 quette, Allouez, and Joliet, give a slight llavor 
 of the seventeenth century to towns which have 
 grown up in the country where their missions were 
 established. Lake Champlain takes its name 
 
 * In South America the Spaniards disregarded the real 
 names of the rivers in many cases, as I, a Plata, .Vmazon, 
 San Francisco, Madeira, etc. The Amazon was discovered 
 by Orellana, who said that a race of female warriors existed 
 on its banks. The name is therefore a double fraud.
 
 GEOGRAPHICAL NAMES. 1 73 
 
 from the bold Norman adventurer who, "delight- 
 ing marvellously in such enterprises," joined an 
 Indian war -party and explored the upper waters 
 of the St. Lawrence. The name of the State of 
 Vermont shows that it came v»ithin the French 
 dominion. Fort Du Quesne, the key to the Valley 
 of the Ohio, became Pittsburg, in honor of the 
 great war-minister under whom the empire of the 
 New World was wrested from France. 
 
 When one race settles in a country occupied by 
 a foreign population, it frequently modifies in imi- 
 tation of the words of its own speech the local 
 names of the country. Thus in Newfoundland — 
 now belonging to the English, but a country where 
 the French had fishing settlements — many of the 
 bays and capes bear the old French names, ludi- 
 crously corrupted into vulgar English. For in- 
 stance. Rencontre is changed into Round Counter ; 
 Baic dc Licvr: is Bay Dclitcr, and Bai: dcs Espoirs 
 has become the Bay of Despair. In Michigan, 
 too, the island Bois Blanc is written Boblo^ L Isle 
 Aigailee is the original of the well-known light- 
 liouse Skilagalce, and the Sault Stc. Marie is ha- 
 bitually spoken of and even written as the Soo. 
 The name Purgatoire is corrupted into Pickctivire 
 Ri\-er, and Prairie des Pcrdrix is said to be the 
 original of Dippertrce Prairie. 
 
 The Spanish names on the Paciiic Coast are 
 usuallv taken from the names of saints. Here
 
 174 ENGLISH WORDS. 
 
 the Spanish names again contradict the rule that 
 the " rivers and mountains receive their names 
 from the earliest races, villages and towns from 
 later colonists." They called the rivers Colorado 
 or Sacramento or Del Norte vv'ith a haughty in- 
 difference to their real names. As the occupa- 
 tion of the United States took place after the 
 general diffusion of printing, the spelling of the 
 Spanish names remains unchanged, though the 
 pronunciation is often ludicrously corrupted: and 
 it remains a disputed point — which v.ill soon set- 
 tle itself — whether or not (and, if at all, how far) 
 to anglicize the Spanish pronunciation. Thus 
 Santa Fe and San Diego are pronounced as they 
 are written and with the a as in Samuel. Sierra 
 and Nevada retain the Spanish vowel-sound. 
 However pronounced, these names are memorials, 
 in the early history of the extreme West, of the 
 attempt of a moribund civilization to rejuvenate 
 itself, and are in every respect superior to those 
 of modern manufacture, which embody either a 
 lamentable attempt at poetry or some common- 
 place reminiscence of early mining camps. About 
 the Spanish names lingers a romance and a flavor 
 of the past, in a country where romance and a 
 past are sadly needed. 
 
 In our country some names have been manu- 
 factured. Pomfret is derived from Foiitefract. A 
 very odd name of a village in one of our Western
 
 GEOGRAPHICAL NAMES. I 75 
 
 States is Yreka, which the future etymologist will 
 no doubt explain as a corruption of Eureka. In 
 reality, it was suggested by the sign of a bakery, 
 which, printed in large letters on a window-curtain, 
 was legible from the inside, but from the outside 
 appeared reversed, with the initial " 13 " concealed 
 behind the right-hand casing. This must rank as 
 the most singular origin of a geographical name 
 on record. Our Connecticut ancestors made up 
 some town names by an entirely original method. 
 When wild land that lay between two towns, or 
 was claimed as common land by two or more of 
 the old towns, was set off as the abode of a new 
 community, the name was made by amalgamating 
 syllables from the names of the old towns. Thus 
 Ha7-ivintou- is //<i'/'-tford- /^F///dsor town; Winton- 
 bury is rF///dsor-Farming/'6';/-Sims/v/'/-j',- Stratficld, 
 the old name of Bridgeport, is Sfratioxdi-Y'^iAxfield ; 
 Stamzuich is 6'/<^?;;/ford-Green7i://r// ,■ and Hadlyme 
 is Hixd\Q.y-Lymc. There is a self-conscious in- 
 genuity about this method which forbids our rec- 
 ognizing it as a genuine folk- name formative 
 process. 
 
 The names in the English settlements embody 
 certain facts of early history. Passing over the 
 Indian names which have survived, we note that 
 the local names in New England, New York, and 
 Virginia are colored by the characteristics of the 
 settlers. Plymouth, Boston, Worcester, Cambridge,
 
 176 ENGLISH WORDS. 
 
 Hartford, remind. us of the parts of England from 
 which the Puritans emigrated, and Salem was in- 
 tended to be an "earthly realization of the Xew 
 Jerusalem" which Calvinism was to inaugurate. 
 We find very few references to the aristocratic 
 forms of the country which they left. That Vir- 
 ginia — named from Queen Elizabeth, the A'irgin 
 Queen — was settled by loyal subjects of the King 
 of England, is evident as we enter Chesapeake 
 Bay. The river near the mouth is the James, so 
 called in honor of the sovereign, and on either 
 side are Capes Henry and Charles, bearing the 
 names of his two sons, the hopeful prince whose 
 succession to the throne might have changed the 
 entire course of English history, and his unfortu- 
 nate brother who became Charles f. Elizabeth 
 County is named from their sister, the mother of 
 Prince Rupert. The State of Delaware was found- 
 ed in 1610 by Lord De la Warr, and Maryland 
 commemorates lienrietta Maria, the (^ucen of 
 Charles I. Baltimore is the Celtic name of a vil- 
 lager in Ireland, from which Lord Baltimore de- 
 rived his title. Tlie city of Charleston, Albemarle 
 Sound, the rivers Ashley and Cooper, and tlie 
 States of Xorlh and South Carolina refer plainly 
 in their names to the Restoration and the worth- 
 less Charles II. Annapolis is named from Queen 
 .Anne ; Georgia, the youngest of the original thir- 
 teen States, from Georjre II.: Fredricksburtr from
 
 GEOGRAPHICAL NA:MES. 177 
 
 his son. These names indicate the original po- 
 litical character of the settlements and the con- 
 trast between them and New England. New 
 York dates from the reign of Charles II., as it 
 was granted to his brother, Duke of York and 
 Albany. Its chief cities, New Amsterdam and 
 Fort Orange, Avere rechristened, after the Dutch 
 were dispossessed. New York and Albany. Some 
 Dutch names survived — the Katskill Mountains, 
 Fishkill, Staten Island, Brooklyn, Haarlem, Wa- 
 tervliet, Haverstraw, and others, to testify to its 
 original colonization, but they are surrounded by 
 English names. New Rochelle was settled by 
 Huguenot refugees and named after their French 
 home. 
 
 The history which is exemplified in the local 
 nomenclature of our continent is comparatively 
 recent. But the names of rivers, States, mount- 
 ains, and cities in Europe belong in many in- 
 stances to a remote past. The migrations of pre- 
 historic races — Phoenicians, Celts, and Iberians — 
 can be dimly traced on the modern map by names, 
 which are the distorted survivals of those given 
 two or three thousand years ago. The study of 
 these linguistic relics has proved a valuable ad- 
 junct to ethnology, as the crushed and deformed 
 relics of animal life have to paleontology. Nine- 
 tenths of the geographical names of England are 
 fossil-words containing: some record of the life of
 
 178 ENGLISH WORDS. 
 
 forgotten tribes. This is a feature of interest 
 whicli a new country like America can never 
 possess. To give a few instances, tlie names of 
 tribes are preserved, as of tlie Parisii in Paris. 
 of the Uammonii in Devon, of the Boii in ]3ohe- 
 mia; of ancient families, like that of the yEscings, 
 the royal family of Kent, in Agincourt, France, 
 and in Essington, Staffordshire ; of individuals, as 
 Marlborough, Merlin's barrow, or hill, in Hamp- 
 shire ; and of battles, boundaries, dwellings, tem- 
 ples, sacred places, camps, in profusion, ^^'e 
 will confine ourselves to the consideration of a 
 few points referring to some of the fuller treat- 
 ises on this interesting branch of the study of 
 words.* 
 
 Nations or tribes very frequently have two 
 names, one by which they call themselves, and 
 another by v.'hich they are known to foreign na- 
 tions. The regular ethnic name frequently signi- 
 fies the ''■ speakers," or the " people," and the 
 name given by other nations frequently means the 
 foreigners, or the jabberers. Thus the people of 
 England call themselves the English, while the 
 Celtic peoples — the Welsh, the Manxmen, the 
 Gaels of Scotland — call them Sacso//, Siw::. Sas/^/i- 
 na/c/i, or SagsondLk. The natives of Wales call 
 
 * Much of this chapter is taken from Taylor's Barnes and 
 Places.
 
 GEOGRAPHICAL NAMES. I 79 
 
 themselves Cvmry ,- we call them Welshmen. The 
 root of this v.-ord IJWs/i appears in a large number 
 of ethnic names. All nations of Teutonic blood 
 have called the bordering tribes by the name 
 of 7«:'r/r//t7-j-— that is, foreigners. Waclschla)id is 
 the old German name of Italy. The Bernese 
 Oberlander calls the French-speaking district to 
 the south of him by the name of Canton- /[WZ/jt. 
 WallenstaJt and JVallcnsec, the foreign city and 
 the foreign lake, are on the frontier of the Ro- 
 mansch district. The Germans called the Bul- 
 garians Wallac/ii, and their country WaUacJiia^ and 
 the Celts of Flanders were called Walloons by 
 their Teutonic neighbors. 
 
 The roots gal and zi'a! have frequently been 
 confounded, and it is in some cases, no doubt, im- 
 possible to distinguish them. The Teutonic w 
 and the Celtic and Romance g are convertible 
 letters. The PTench Gnalticr and Gnillaumc are 
 the English Walter and Wiliiam. So guerre and 
 li'ar^ gard and 7C'arJ, guise and 7i'ise, guile and wile, 
 guarantee and icarranfy, are the same words. Ca- 
 lais was Galeys or Jf'alevs, and the name no doubt 
 indicates, whatever the root, the existence of a 
 Celtic remnant surrounded by Teutonic settlers. 
 The French to-day call the Prince of Wales "A' 
 prince de G a lies.'' 
 
 Gal, from Gadhael or Gael, is probably an inde- 
 pendent Celtic root, fgr it was used as a national
 
 I50 ENGLISH WORDS. 
 
 appellation l)y the Gaels of Ca/edonia* G^czAvay, 
 Donne^^a/, Ga/lowsLy, and AixrA', tlie Ga/atia.ns to 
 whom St. Paul wrote, and possibly by the inhabi- 
 tants of Portu,i,''(7/. Gallia, the word used by the 
 Romans, is not connected with Gael, but may 
 be from the root li'ah the Teutonic appellation, 
 stranger. This instance of the confusion between 
 the Teutonic root 7C'al and the Celtic root gal 
 shows how much study as well as care and acute- 
 ness is necessary in the examination of derivations. 
 It is beset with endless pitfalls for the unwary. 
 
 To return to the subject of double ethnic 
 names. The Germans call themselves Dentsilu\ 
 a word meaning the people ; the French call them 
 Lcs Allemaiids, from the name of the ancient fron- 
 tier tribe, which probably means the other men 
 or foreigners, outsiders.! The etymology of the 
 v.'ord German is doubtful ; possibly it comes from 
 the Celtic gairmean, one who cries or yells in try- 
 ing to talk. The Russians call the contiguous 
 Ugrian tribes Tsc/iiides, which means strangers. 
 The Egyptians, and afterwards the Greeks, called 
 
 * This word is usually derived from CoiLlooijt^, the men 
 of the woods. If it contains the rowt di/, it would mean the 
 daels of the dunes or hills. 
 
 •j- Orlando, in "As Vou Like It," when asserting; his claim 
 to social svm;iathy, says, "^'et am I in/aitdhYcX." lie uses 
 inland, not as opposed to scab )ard, hut as opposed to oiit- 
 land, just as we use (jutlandi.-!i for grotej([ue or uncultured.
 
 GEOGRAPHICAL NAMES. l8l 
 
 all who did not speak their own language bar- 
 baria/is, which may be traced to the Sanskrit root, 
 varvara, one who speaks confusedly. The Greeks 
 called themselves ethnically, Hellenes, but the Ro- 
 mans carelessly applied to them the name of the 
 Greeci, a small and unimportant tribe with whom 
 they first came into contact, who were probably 
 not Hellenes at all. This is but one of a number 
 of misnomers, just as we carelessly use ^ew, Israel- 
 ite, and Hebrew indifferently. ye7u is the name 
 from the point of view of their religion, Israelite 
 is the national name, and Hebrew is the ethnic 
 or race name. But the distinctions are rarely ob- 
 served in use, except by the most careful histori- 
 ans. A mediaeval error is perpetuated whenever 
 we speak of Gypsies, for the Gypsies did not come 
 from Egypt, but probably from India, and they 
 call themselves the Romany or else the Zincali — 
 the last being the true name. Numerous other 
 instances of this rule of double ethnic names 
 mi2;ht be gathered. 
 
 Another root which is frequently found in the 
 names of peoples is ar. This ancient word, which 
 is found in the vocabulary of all Indo-Germanic 
 peoples, seems to have referred primarily to the 
 occupation of agriculture. 
 
 Thus, in Greek, apow means to plough. 
 
 " " Latin, aro " "
 
 132 ENGLISH WORDS. 
 
 Thus, in Gothic, arjan means to plough. 
 
 " " Polish, ^r^r 
 
 " " old High German, i7/-cz;/ " " 
 
 " " Irish, ara'uii " " 
 
 " '•' old English, ear " ••' 
 
 " " Norse, ard '" a plough. 
 
 " " English, aroma means odor of freshly- 
 ploughed land. 
 " " English, harnnu means to pulverize the 
 
 surface. 
 " " Sanskrit, arya means a landholder, hence 
 a member of the dominant race, a man 
 as opposed to a slave. King Darius, 
 a Persian, proudly claimed to be an 
 ''Arya of the Aryans."' 
 
 The name of this Aryan race is to be found in 
 the names Iran, Herat, Aral, Armenia, and possi- 
 bly in Iberia and I^rin. In languages of the Teu- 
 tonic branch we find this root in the form icare, 
 inhabitants. BurJivare, or burghers, are citizens 
 of a burgh; skipveri, or shippers, are sailors. It 
 is Latinized into the forms 7'ari, nari, and bari, 
 as the Ini^icarii. the Ripiiarii, the Chattuarii, the 
 Ansibarii, etc. The Bulgarians were the men from 
 the Bolg or A'olga, and Boivarii is preserved in 
 the word Bavaria, v^hile the home of the Boii has 
 become BoJiemia. In England Worcester is a cor- 
 ruption of Hwie-wara-caster, the camp of the men
 
 GEOGRAPHICAL NAMES. 1 83 
 
 of the Huiccii. The men of Kent were Cant-n'are, 
 and their chief town is Cant-er-bury, the burgh 
 of the men of Kent. This term survives in the 
 Latin title of the archbishop, Episcopus Cantu- 
 ariensis. Carisbrookc, in the Isle of Wight, was 
 originally written Gtviti-gafa-burg, the fort of 
 the men of Wight. The first two syllables were 
 dropped, and the burg became bruk, then brooke. 
 The names Cant and Gioiti are still older Celtic 
 words — that is, were geographical names before 
 the archaic word 7^'are (or gara) was added to 
 them. 
 
 The syllable set is frequently found in the names 
 of places. It means the seat or place inhabit- 
 ed by settlers, thus Somer-j-t'/, Dor-xc// and Al- 
 sace is the other set, or the settlement west of the 
 Rhine. Holstein is not the forest stone, but 
 the forest settlement, Holtsaetan. These few in- 
 stances may serve to show that a great deal of 
 ancient history is embodied in words. The sub- 
 ject is a very broad one, and demands great care 
 and patience. 
 
 The traces of the Roman occupation are found 
 all over Europe in camps, roads, and in the Latin- 
 ized forms of the ancient names of cities, espe- 
 cially of cities v.hich from their situation had mil- 
 itary importance in controlling the Surrounding 
 districts. The character of the Romans as strate- 
 gists and intrusive administrators, not colonists,
 
 184 ENGLISH WORDS. 
 
 is as evident from the character of the local names 
 derived from their language which have been in- 
 corporated into English, as from the remnants of 
 their walls, military roads, villas, and camps which 
 have survived through fifteen centuries. 
 
 We will close this brief reference to the subject 
 of geographical names by calling attention to the 
 fact that nearly all of the great rivers of p]urope 
 contain a Celtic root in their names. When a 
 race enters a new country it is, of course, most 
 likely to follow the river valleys, which afford the 
 best land for settlement and the most convenient 
 road for penetrating the wilderness. Hence a river 
 is apt to have the same name for its entire course. 
 The first-comers would naturally call tlie stream 
 by a generic name, the river, or the water, or per- 
 haps distinguish it by some adjective, as the swift, 
 the crooked, the sandy, or the big river. Sup- 
 posing that it was called simply the neater. When 
 the first settlers are dispossessed by an intrusive 
 race, the new-comers, not being familiar with the 
 language, would take the word wafer ior a specific 
 or proper name, and would add to it the word 
 river in their own speech. This amalgamation is 
 evident in the names of many rivers in England 
 and on the Continent. 
 
 Almost all of the larger rivers of Europe con- 
 tain one or more of the following Celtic roots for 
 water or stream :
 
 GEOGRAPHICAL NAMES. 185 
 
 1. Avon or aon or men. 
 
 2. Vwr or tcr. 
 
 3. Uisge, or 7iiysk^ wye, is, cs, oisc, nsk, esk, ex, ax. 
 
 4. Ehe or Rhin, swift flowing. 
 
 5. Don or Z)^?//. 
 
 TIius it seems probable that the name 
 
 Danaster or Dniester contains roots 5, 3, 2 
 
 Rhadanau " " 4, 5, i 
 
 Rhodanus " " 4, 5 
 
 Danubius " " 5, i 
 
 Rhetius " " 4, I 
 
 Eridanus " " 4, 5 
 
 Exter " " 3,2 
 
 We have the Stratford Avon, the Bristol Avon, 
 and the Hampshire Avon ; the Ive in Cumber- 
 land, the Inn in Fife, and the Tyrol, the Auney, 
 the Eiuejiny, the Wye. the Eveneny, and the In- 
 ney — all from the first root. A great number of 
 the names of French rivers end in on, onie, or one. 
 
 The syllable Dur, Dcr, Stoiir, forms part of in- 
 numerable river names, as the Dcriuent, the Dar- 
 win, the Dart — there are four river Derwents in 
 England — and the Adar, the Adder, and the Adur. 
 
 The third root is in the EsJz, in Scotland ; the Iz, 
 the Isis, and the Thames or the Taniesis, the broad 
 Isis. 'Y\\qAxc and the O use wo. also the same word, 
 and the root appears in innumerable combinations. 
 
 The fourth root, the Rhe, Rhin, or Rhine ap- 
 pears in the English streams the Rye, the Ray, 
 the Rhee, the Wrey, the Rhoe, and several others.
 
 i86 
 
 ENGLISH WORDS, 
 
 The fifth appears very generally on the Conti- 
 nent and in the British Isles in the Don, the Dane, 
 the Dun, the To)ic, and the Tyne, Tcagn, and Teyn. 
 
 From the fact that the Celts named the rivers, 
 the inference is irresistible that they were the lirst- 
 comers, unless it can be shown that some of these 
 roots were common to the speech of other races. 
 That the English came later is evident from such 
 words as Tiwx-hcck, Is-bourne, Ash.-boiirnc, \\\ish- 
 bournc, OwiQ-bur/i, where the Teutonic words beck 
 and burn, or brook, have been added to the cor- 
 ruptions of the Celtic word for stream. In the 
 name Wans-bcck-watcr we find the Celtic Wan or 
 avon, the s probably a remnant of wysk, the Eng- 
 lish beck, and the modern water. Thus we have 
 the singular compound River-water-stream-water. 
 
 From the names of villages, fields, hills, woods, 
 valleys, inferences may be drawn as to the dis- 
 tribution of the races from whom the modern in- 
 habitants are descended. Mr. Taylor gives the 
 followinsf table : 
 
 I'ERCENTAr.E 
 
 1)1' 
 N'AMES FKOM : 
 
 Sj:ToIk. 
 
 Surrey. 
 
 Devon 
 
 Corn- 
 
 1 -■■'"■ 
 
 Mon- 
 mouth. 
 
 Isle of 
 M.in. 
 
 Ireland. 
 
 Celtic 
 
 2 
 
 s 
 
 3- 
 
 So 
 
 76 
 
 59 
 
 So 
 
 Anglo-Saxon. 
 
 90 
 
 91 
 
 65 
 
 20 
 
 24 
 
 20 
 
 19 
 
 Norse 
 
 s 
 
 I 
 
 3 
 
 
 
 1 
 
 
 
 21 
 
 I
 
 GEOGRAPHICAL NAMES. I 87 
 
 The derivations of the family names of any 
 locality would, with certain modifications, yield 
 evidence to the same point. 
 
 By far the greater part of the Celtic names in 
 England are Cymric, but a thin stream of Gad- 
 haelic names extends across the island from the 
 Thames to the Mersey, as if to indicate the route 
 by which the Gaels crossed and went to Ireland. 
 From the North of Ireland the Gaelic tribe, the 
 Scoti, crossed into Argyle, and in their turn par- 
 tially dispossessed the Cymry of the Lowlands, who 
 were probably the people known to history as the 
 Picts. To determine the territory occupied by the 
 Cymry and the Gaels, the words Pen and Ben — 
 both meaning mountain — are useful test-words ; 
 also the words invcr and abcr, both meaning the 
 mouth of a river, as Inverness and Aberdeen. In 
 Ireland we find only Invers, but in Scotland In- 
 vers and Abers^ both. Bally, a town, occurs 2000 
 times in Ireland and a few times in the Gaelic 
 part of Scotland. If we draw a line from a point 
 a little south of Inverary to a point a little south 
 of Aberdeen, the Invers lie to the north-west of 
 the line, and the Abcrs to the south-east of it, 
 with few exceptions. The Celtic names in the 
 Isle of Man are all Gaelic. There are ninety- six 
 beginning with Balla, for instance. The names 
 of the places connected with Christian worship 
 are all Norse, indicating that here the Celts re-
 
 1 88 ENGLISH WORDS. 
 
 mained heathen, though Christianized on the main- 
 land long before the Saxons or Danes. In the 
 Channel Islands all the names of the towns and 
 villages are derived from the names of saints, in- 
 dicating that before the introduction of Christian- 
 ity the islands were very sparsely populated, or, 
 at least, that no towns were built. 
 
 To determine the settlement by Saxons or 
 Danes the following syllables are test-words : For 
 the Saxons, Aw, Iiam, 7vort/i, stoke, fo/d, ya7-d, park, 
 bury, barroio,ford ; for the Northmen, by, tJiorpe, 
 tofL, ville, garth, ford (or frith), wick, ncss, scar, 
 and thioaite. Ton means a place enclosed by a 
 hedge — a family settlement — and is the origin of 
 our word toicn. In some parts of tlngland they 
 still call the stack-yard the barton, or enclosure 
 for what the land bears (or else the barley-yard), 
 and in a few cases isolated farm-houses bear the 
 name ton, as ShottingAw, Apple/t;//, and Wingle- 
 ton. The word yard had nearly the same original 
 signit'ication as ton, and the Norse equivalent 
 gartJi. Tine, a twig — surviving in the tyne of a 
 pitchfork — bears the same relation to ton and 
 toK'n that yard, a little stick — surviving in yard- 
 vieasiire — does to yard, an enclosure. Stoke 
 means a place enclosed by stakes, and fold, 
 an enclosure made by felled trees, or by felling 
 the trees — ■\fi:ld, a clearing. Worth is a place 
 warded or guarded. Park also meant an en-
 
 GEOGRAPHICAL NAMES. 1 89 
 
 closed field, and a hay is a place surrounded 
 by a hedge. 
 
 A very large number of towns and villages in 
 England and Scotland — certainly not less than 
 one thousand — have the termination borough. 
 bury, barrow, and burgh, as Gdimsbo>-ough, Edin- 
 burgh, Salis^//r)', and Barrow -xn-Ywxxv&'is. The 
 original meaning of this terminal, Anglo-Saxon 
 burh or burg, is earthwork, from a verb meaning 
 to protect, bcorgan. A funeral mound protects the 
 body, and is called a /;(7;7-.^7t;', whence the verbs to 
 bury and to burrow. Since the fort or protected 
 place would usually be an elevated ground, or 
 would be surrounded by an artificial mound of 
 earth, we have sometimes confounded the Anglo- 
 Saxon termination burgh with the v;ord meaning 
 hill, which we have in iceberg. In Scotland the 
 termination retains its orisiinal roughness, and is 
 spelled burgh. In the north of England it is soft- 
 ened into borough, and in the south and west into 
 b/ny. In many of the places in England ending 
 in borough or bury the remains of the ancient hill- 
 fort can be found near by, and, in some cases, it 
 is known by the name of Castle, as Marbury Cas- 
 tle and IVenisbury Castle. In many cases this 
 earthwork is of Celtic origin, though perhaps util- 
 ized by the Saxon conquerors, and given the Sax- 
 on name after it had been lost by the original 
 builders. The one best worth visitins; is the great
 
 I go ENGLISH WORDS. 
 
 mound at Matibofoiigh. in Wilts, where is now 
 one of the great modern schools. Marlborough 
 is Merlin's barrow, and the tradition is that the 
 mound is Merlin's grave. A part of London is 
 called the Borough. This is named from an an- 
 cient earthwork which once protected the city on 
 that side. 
 
 The suffix havi is distinctively Saxon. It is 
 the same word as home. Thus we have Xorthani. 
 Allingham, Buckingham, etc. Sometimes the ham 
 is united to ton. as Hampton, Southampton, indi- 
 cating, perhaps, that the home has developed into 
 a ton or town. In very many cases the syllable 
 ing is combined with tofi. Iiig is the patronymic 
 or tribal designation. Thus the Warings are the 
 tribe or family of JFacr, and their settlement was 
 Warington ; and Allingham was the home of the 
 tribe of Al ; Arlington the ton of the children of 
 Arl. This syllable ing is Saxon and Xorse both. 
 Thus the Vacringcr, or Xorse soldiers employed 
 by the Saracens were JVarings. The syllables 
 ham and ton and ing in the names of French 
 towns, as Aubingcs, Bcaubigny, Brantigny, de- 
 rived from settlements of the yEbing, the Bob- 
 bing., the Branting, determine the limits of the 
 Saxon settlements in France, and, when found in 
 German towns, indicate the original home of the 
 Saxons and their allied tribes. 
 
 The X'orse settlements are indicated by the syl-
 
 GEOGRAPHICAL NAMES. 191 
 
 lable by or bye, a home, which in Xormandy takes 
 the form btviif or bid:. Thus, in the Danish dis- 
 trict of England we find towns called Grimsby., 
 Derby, Whitby, Rugby, Kirby. 
 
 lliorpc means a village, as in AUhorpe, etc. 
 Toft, or, in Normandy, tot, as in Ivctot, Ivo's toft 
 or homestead, is Danish as distinguished from 
 Norwegian : but Thwait:, a field, is Norwegian. 
 
 Ville, in many cases, is Romance from villa, but 
 is also Norse, from xocilcr, a house. In Flngland it is 
 found sometimes as Ti'cII or w///, as in Kcttlauell. 
 
 Ford, in botli Saxon and Norse, is connected 
 with the word faran, to go, which we see in fare- 
 well and fare, cost of travelling. But the Saxon 
 ford is a place for passing a river for man and 
 beasts, while the ^oxsq ford \s ford, a navigable 
 arm of the sea. Thus Oxford is the place to 
 cross the river Ox, but Wexford, Deptford, and 
 Carl ing ford are named from bays or creeks, and 
 are Norse names. 
 
 Another Norse word which may be confounded 
 with a similar Saxon one is luic. With the Norse- 
 men it meant a harbor or bay, hence Wikings or 
 Vikings are baymen, or longshoremen. Sandwich 
 is Sandy bay, and Berwick, Wicklow, etc., names 
 given to places near the sea, are Norse. 
 
 Ness or Naze, a nose or rocky promontory, and 
 scar, a cliff, seen in Caithness, Scarborough, and 
 the Skerries, indicate Norse occupation.
 
 192 ENGLISH WORDS. 
 
 On comparing the Saxon and Norse geograph- 
 ical names* we note that the proportion of tons 
 and Jiams, compared to hycs, tJnuaitcs^ t/ior/^cs, 
 varies in different localities, and indicates the ter- 
 ritories where each race settled. Again, the /o/is 
 and /lams indicate tribal settlements, for they arc 
 generally united to zV/i,'', but the byes are preceded 
 by the name of an individual. Thus Grimsby is 
 the place where Grim, a captain of a band of sea- 
 rovers, settled with his men ; but Bicckiugham is a 
 tribal home, not named from one man. In both 
 cases the fact of the detached character of the 
 Teutonic settlements, referred to by Tacitus,! is 
 well brought out, for all the Saxon S3'llables /lajn, 
 ion, yard, etc., indicate an enclosed and guarded 
 place. This love for a fenced-off, private owner- 
 ship of land is still characteristic of Englishmen. 
 
 The study of the derivations of geographical 
 names adds very greatly to the interest of travel, 
 and gives reality to history. In particular, the 
 
 * The class of names rcsullini^ from the early Norse inva- 
 sions must not be confoundeil with the much later Normau- 
 Frencli names in EnLjIand. 
 
 \ Nullas (lermanorum jiopulis urhcs liabitari satis nntum 
 est, ne pati quidem inter se junctas sedes. Colunt discreti 
 ac diversi, ut fons, ut campus, ill nemus placuit. \'ivos lo- 
 cant non in nostrum morem connexis et coluvrcntibus ivdi- 
 iiciis ; suam fiuisipie donium sjiatio circumdat, sivc adversus 
 casus i<;nis remedium sive inscitia redificandi. — Tacttij;; 
 Cicniiania, 16.
 
 GEOGRAPHICAL NAMES. 1 93 
 
 names of the streets, houses, and places in Lon- 
 don embody, frequently in a very odd and strik- 
 ing way, a great many historical events. This is 
 true of Cheapside, Pall Mall, Temple Bar, Picca- 
 dilly, High Holborn, Southwark, the Savoy, Rotten 
 Row, and many other London names. 
 
 Besides Mr. Taylor's hook, N'a/)!es and Places, my acknowl- 
 edgments to which have already been made, Edmunds's 
 Traces of History in the A'a/nes of Places may also be read, 
 IVebsters Unabridged contained a list of geographical ety- 
 mologies unfortunately omitted in the International. The 
 popular etymologies of Indian names, as Alabama (here we 
 rest), Kentucky (dark and bloody ground), etc., are usually 
 pure inventions. Elakie's Etymological Dictionary of 2^ lace 
 jYames is useful for reference. 
 
 13
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 SURNAMES. 
 
 Logically, a proper name is a different kind of 
 word from a common noun, for it is a word appro- 
 priated to a single individual. Strictly speaking, 
 a proper name has no meaning, or at best but an 
 arbitrary and temporary one. We call a man 
 John, but the word is not exclusively appropriated 
 to him, and does not convey the slightest informa- 
 tion about him to a stranger. His surname indi- 
 cates that his father bears the same last name, 
 but affords no clew to the character of the nian 
 himself. But, philologically, surnames and Chris- 
 tian names do not differ from other words. They 
 are growths, and every syllable of them has or 
 once had a meaning. We conhne ourselves to the 
 consideration of surnames because they are com- 
 paratively modern in origin — not dating back be- 
 yond the tenth century. Given names, on tlie 
 contrary, are of extreme antiquity. Harold and 
 Albert and Edward and Edith were names borne 
 by our Saxon ancestors before the Conquest ;
 
 SURNAMES. 195 
 
 John, Elias, Abraham, Noah, and Adam antedate 
 English history itself. 
 
 The v.'ord surname is not, as might naturally 
 be supposed, derived from sire najus, or father 
 name, but from supra Jicwicn, or extra name. We 
 know this because it is spelled with a u, and not 
 with an /, and also from the fact that in the 
 Provencal language it is written souhretioin. The 
 question of early spelling is often of the greatest 
 importance in tracing derivations. If it is possi- 
 ble to follow a family name back through old 
 deeds, wills, tax -lists, court -records, etc., to the 
 fourteenth century, the early spelling will almost 
 invariably furnish a clew to the original meaning, 
 for names were rarely given arbitrarily, but usu- 
 ally for some evident reason. 
 
 The old spelling will also frequently determine 
 which of the possible derivations is the true one. 
 Thus the name IVoodjnan might originally mean a 
 forester, or it might possibly once have been writ- 
 ten Woadman, which means dyer, from •ccoad, the 
 native indigo used by both Britons and Saxons in 
 dying the rough woollen cloth they made. Cole- 
 man might be a maker of charcoal for the forges 
 of the primitive smiths, or it might be cunning 
 man, since co! meant cunning. This syllable col 
 is seen in the name Colfax, or tlie cunning fox. 
 The syllable fax might be originally fox, or it 
 might come from faccrc, to do, as in the name
 
 196 ENGLISH WORDS. 
 
 Fairfax, Vv'hich comes from the motto of the 
 family: " Fare, fac,'" or say. do. The other syl- 
 lable, yiz/r ox far, found in so many names, like 
 Fairman, Playfair, Fairchild, Farwell, Farnuni, 
 etc., is especially troublesome. It may be from 
 the Saxon /(7/r, meaning beautiful, clear, just; or 
 it may be from the Saxon farcn, to travel ; or 
 the German fern, distant ; or the English far or 
 fern; or the Norman Frere, brother ; or the Latin 
 facere, to do, ox far i, to speak. The ancient spell- 
 ing or some extraneous information will fre- 
 quently afford a clew in investigations of this sort, 
 but numerous insolvable cases remain. If it 
 were not for questions of this nature etymology 
 would be a comparatively simple matter, and 
 would possess an element of certainty which 
 would deprive it of much of its charm. 
 
 Surnames came into general use very slowly. 
 We may say, broadly, that the introduction of the 
 surname — as we understand the term, a name 
 common to all the children of a family — dates 
 from the tenth century, and was not general be- 
 fore the fourteenth century. Indeed, there were 
 districts in \'\'ales in the last generation where 
 individuals possessed but one name. Now it has 
 become difficult for a man to change his surname. 
 Tyrwhitt says in his edition of Chaucer : " It 
 is probable that the use of surnames was not in 
 Chaucer's time fully established among the lower
 
 SURNAMES. 197 
 
 class of people," and Lower, in his work on sur- 
 names, holds that hereditary surnames can scarce- 
 ly be said to have been permanently settled 
 among the lower class before the era of the Ref- 
 ormation. Among the upper classes the name 
 of the estate descended from father to son and 
 served as a distinctive appellation, but the pedi- 
 gree of the Fitz-Hugh family runs thus through 
 nine generations : 
 
 Eardolph. 
 
 Akaris P'itz-Bardolph. 
 Hervey Fitz-Akaris. 
 Henry Fitz-Hervey. 
 Randolph Fitz-Henry. 
 Henry Fitz-Randolph. 
 Randolph Fitz-FIenry. 
 Hugh Fitz-Randolph. 
 Henry Fitz-Hugh. 
 
 This last Henry assumed the name, Fitz-Hugh, 
 and gave it permanence as a family application 
 in the reign of Fdv/ard HI. In the same reign 
 (1340) v.'c find the following in a list of the com- 
 monalty : 
 
 Johannes over the Water. 
 
 William at Bishope Gate. 
 
 Johannes o' the Shephouse. 
 
 Agnes the Priest's Sister. 
 
 Johannes in the Lane.
 
 198 ENGLISH WORDS. 
 
 Johannes at Sec. 
 Johannes le Taillour. 
 Johannes of the Gutter. 
 
 This shows that surnames were not universal in 
 the fourteenth century. The growth of civiUza- 
 tion making it necessary to identify every person, 
 and confusion arising from tlae muhipUcation of 
 the baptismal names, men were forced to use 
 some sobriquet as a distinctive mark. I'^y de- 
 grees these became firmly attached surnames. 
 For a long period it was legal for a man to change 
 his surname, but not his baptismal name. Lord 
 Coke liolds this distinctly. While the oldest son 
 among the Xormans in England assumed the 
 name of the paternal estate, the younger sons not 
 infrequently assumed entirely different ones on 
 acquiring land in other counties. Thus Richard, 
 Earl of Brionnc, has five names in Domesday 
 Ijook (the list of knights who accompanied the 
 Conqueror). He is called : 
 
 1. Ricliard de Tourbridgc, from a lordship in 
 Kent. 
 
 2. Richard de Iknfeld. 
 
 3. Richard de Renefacta. 
 
 4. Richard de Clare, from a Suffolk lordship. 
 
 5. Richard Fitz - (jilbcrt, fronf his fatlier's 
 name.
 
 SURNAMES, 199 
 
 To go back a step further, we find that as a 
 rule our Saxon ancestors were content with but 
 one name, as Gurth, or Cedric, or Alfred. To 
 avoid confusion, they sometimes distinguished 
 two men of the same name by adding the tribal 
 name, usually ending in iug or the father's given 
 name. Sometimes a descriptive appellation was 
 used, as : Harold Harefoot, Edmund Ironsides, 
 Edward the Confessor, Edith Swansneck ; and 
 Bede tells us of two priests named • Hewald, 
 " whom," he says, " we distinguished as Hewald 
 Black and Hewald White, by reason of the differ- 
 ence in color of their hair." From this early 
 time when two names * were unusual, comes the 
 habit, still surviving, of calling sovereigns by 
 their single baptismal name. English bishops 
 still sign their Christian names and the names 
 of their sees to all documents. That the first 
 names of the contracting parties are used in the 
 marriage service is also an ancient survival. 
 
 A classification of surnames by their deriva- 
 tions gives us four principal classes :t 
 
 First; surnames derived from personal names. 
 
 *When a missionary baptized, as we are told was the 
 case, an entire company of men John, and an equal number 
 of women Catharine, some distinctive nicknames, or eke 
 names, v/ould be absolutely necessary. 
 
 f Thirty years ago the negroes in the south liad no real 
 surnames, and even now they change their names with great 
 readiness.
 
 200 ENGLISH WORDS. 
 
 These nearly always take the patronymic form, as 
 Henrickson or MacAdam. But in a few cases 
 the given name of the father has been adopted 
 as a family name ; thus we have Henry George, 
 Patrick Henry, Henry James, William Paul, and a 
 few others. 
 
 Second ; local surnames. These are derived 
 from an estate, manor, or village, or from some 
 natural feature of the earth, as Henry Hill, David 
 Dudley Field, William Wood, Henry Yorke, John 
 Worthington. 
 
 Third ; occupative surnames, drawn from some 
 trade or office. This is a very numerous class. 
 We find Carpenters, Taylors, Smiths, Websters, 
 Turners, and Wrights, or Stewarts, Butlers, and 
 Chamberlains everywhere. 
 
 Fourth ; surnames derived from personal pecu- 
 liarities, from nicknames, from some fancied re- 
 semblance to a bird or to an animal. Thus we 
 have White, Brown, Black or l^lake, Talman, 
 Armstrong, Crookshanks, Lamb, Cow, Fox, etc. 
 Into this class must come those names derived 
 from business signs, from heraldic animals pict- 
 ured on coats of arms, and from family mottoes. 
 Of such a name as Lion, or Bull, we cannot say 
 whether it was first given by reason of the strength 
 or courage of the man originally bearing it. or be- 
 cause he was the landlord of an inn having the 
 beast on its siun. Names of this derivation might
 
 SURNAMES, 201 
 
 properly come under class three ; but as this der- 
 ivation is rarely certain, we are obliged to put 
 them in class four. 
 
 From names formed in any of these four ways 
 patronymics might be formed. The son of Will- 
 iam the Clerk might be called John Clarkson ; of 
 George Brown, Henry Brownson or Branson. 
 John gives us Johnson, Johns, and Jones. Daw, 
 the short for David, gives us Dawson, and Lamb, 
 Lampson. The territorial appellative, Whitby, is 
 the source of the family name Whitbyson. Patro- 
 nymics formed from territorial names are rare, but 
 they are very generally formed from personal 
 names. Thus twenty-four forms come from Will- 
 iam : Williams, Williamson, Wills, Wilks, Wilkins, 
 Wilkinson, Wickens, Wickenson, Bill, Bilson, 
 Wilson, Woolson, Woolcock, Woolcot, Wooley, 
 Wilcoxe, Wilcoxson, Wilcoxon, Willet, Willy, 
 Willis, Wilsie, Wylie, Willott, and probably Wool- 
 sey. Most of these are patronymics, though 
 some are diminutives. Woolcot and W'illcox, for 
 instance, mean little Will, and might have been 
 applied to a diminutive person, as well as to a 
 child. 
 
 The Gaelic patronymic prefix is Mac or O; the 
 Cymric is O or Aj>. In Ireland O meant grand- 
 son, or, in a more enlarged sense, any male de- 
 scendant. Afac meant son. The O is supposed 
 in Ireland to be more ancient than the Mac,
 
 202 ENGLISH WORDS. 
 
 and is more common. With the exception of 
 O'Gowan,* it is not found attached to any indus- 
 trial name, which may account for the idea 
 that it is considered the more honorable prefix. 
 Both these prefixes designate not only the 
 children of a family, but the members of a clan. 
 CIa7i means children. In Gaelic Scotland the 
 Mac only was used. But the members of a clan 
 were only theoretically blood-relations, not neces- 
 sarily so. The Norman Fitz and the Danish Son 
 mean son of the blood. The Welsh also used 
 the genitive s, as in Williams, Davids, Jones, to 
 designate the son, though ap v/as their ancient 
 form. The Saxon sufiix ing was a tribal patro- 
 nymic. \\'e see it in Waring, Ailing, or Billings, 
 where it has the meaning of the "descendants 
 of." It is the oldest and rarest patronymic in 
 use, though the Celtic O may lay claim to equal 
 antiquity. The Cymric patronymic Ap is usually 
 amalgamated v.'ith the personal name. Thus 
 Price is Ap Rice, the son of Rhys ; Pugh is Ap 
 Hugh, Powell is Ap Hon'cll, Bowen is Ap 0:iun, 
 Pritchard is Ap Richard, Bethell is Ap lilicll, 
 Bevan is Ap Evan, and as Evan and Iran are 
 forms of John, Bevan is the same name as John- 
 son or Jones, which is really Johns. Most of the 
 names beginning in Ap are V»'elsh, like Apple- 
 
 * Gowan means a smitli.
 
 SURNAMES. 203 
 
 gate, Ap Legait ; Appleyard, Ap Ledyard, and 
 Apthorp*' The distinctively Welsh names are 
 Owens, Davis, Morgan, Howell, Jones, and Will- 
 iams. 
 
 To return to our first class of surnames, those 
 derived directly from personal names, one of the 
 first things that strikes us as peculiar about the 
 English is their inveterate habit of shortening 
 the given name of a man to, if possible, one syl- 
 lable. Thus, if a man were christened Bartholo- 
 mew they called him Bat, from whence come the 
 surnames Bates, Bartlette, and Babcock. The 
 suffixes cock, got, lot, and kin were diminutives of 
 good-fellowship or of endearment. The sylla- 
 bles appear in many of our surnames, as Wil- 
 kins, Wilcox, Simcox. Cock is seen also in the 
 expressions r^;rZ'-robin, ^^rZ'- sparrow. Cock-xohiVi 
 in the nursery song does not necessarily mean 
 male robin, but quite as much, dear little robin. 
 Matilda, shortened to Till, was made Tillot, and 
 Tillot and I'illotson are used as surnames, for 
 there are a few matronymics to be found in 
 English. Margaret was shortened to Margot, 
 and we find the rare name ^Margotson. Walter 
 v/as Wat, whence Watts and \\'atson. John was 
 Jack, whence Jackson. Robert was shortened 
 
 * Apthorpe, lifcwever, is tliought to be Atlliorpe, or of 
 the village ; Appleton and Applegarth are compounded of 
 Apple and tlie Saxon syllables, ton or garth.
 
 204 ENGLISH WORDS. 
 
 to Robin, Rob, Dob, and Dod, whence Robert- 
 son, Robinson, Robeson, Dobson, and Dodson. 
 David was Daw, whence Dawson, and Horace 
 was Hod, whence Hodson. From Isaac comes 
 Hick, hence Hicks and Hixson and Hitchcock ; 
 from Gilbert, Gib and Gibson. No other na- 
 tion exercises this unlicensed habit of deform- 
 ing given names. The Frenchman certainly pro- 
 nounces his name — Emile, Leon, or Adolphe — 
 in full. Xfcknames are given, it is true, by all 
 nations. A nickname is an eke naine, or an ad- 
 ditional name invented in a jesting spirit, and 
 must not be confounded with a shortened given 
 name. 
 
 A patronymic is pretty sure to date back to 
 the sixteenth century, ifiiot to a much earlier 
 period. The old ^Bibl^ Christian names, like 
 Samuel, Jacob, Daniel, Peter, John, and James, 
 have all given us patronymic derivatives. Joseph, 
 too, appears in Jessop. But the Bible names 
 adopted in the seventeenth century by the Puri- 
 tans, like Asa, Abijah, Seth, Eli, Jabez, have not 
 resulted in any patronymics, because they were 
 taken up after surnames were pretty well set- 
 tled. Some personal names that have disappeared 
 from use are preserved in patronymics. The Xor- 
 man names Ivo, Hugo, Hammet, once so com- 
 mon, are now never given to English-speaking 
 boys, but survive in the surnames Ives, Iveson,
 
 SURNAMES. 205 
 
 Hughes and ffamlifi* The very pretty girl-names, 
 ^oycQ, Joy euse, or merry; Lettice, Lciitia, or inno- 
 cent pleasure; and, best of all, Hilary, from the 
 root of hilarious or happy, now lost, might very 
 properly be revived in use. 
 
 The second division is local or territorial sur- 
 names. Barons to whom a grant of land was 
 made usually took the name of the town or es- 
 tate which was their foef. In French-English 
 names this is generally evidenced by the prefix 
 de, which we see in the names Devercux, Dchi- 
 ficld, Dclamcter, Delancy, Delancey, etc. Then, 
 again, nothing was more natural than to call a 
 man after the place of his abode, as John of the 
 Mill, William at the Brook or River. Attuood, 
 Atwaier, Woods and Waters, A^ash or Aten -Ash, 
 Nokes or Attcn - Oaks, Green, Lane, Townscnd, 
 Shaw, Lay, or Leigh, and Dean are local names. 
 A shaw was a small thick wood ; a dean or den 
 was a wooded valley, and a lay or lea was a pasture. 
 Dean, like Parsons, might also be derived from 
 an ecclesiastical title. Graves is the same as 
 Groves. Cliffe, Clifford, and Cleveland are of sub- 
 stantially the same meaning. Any name end- 
 ing in t/nvait, an enclosure ; to7i or by, a town ; 
 combe, a ridge ; throp or thorpe or ville, a village ; 
 
 * Hugo, however, appears in Hugh, and Hamelin, a 
 little town or hamlet, may be a duplicate source for Ham- 
 lin.
 
 206 ENGLISH WORDS. 
 
 ha7n, a home ; ly or <?;', an island ; ox ford, a path, 
 is pretty certain to be a territorial name. From 
 the cathedrals we have the names St. Outers, 
 or Sommers ; St. Denis, or Sidney ; St. Clair, 
 or Sinclair, etc., though names of this denom- 
 ination may have been (in some instances) de- 
 rived from the motto or family war-cry embody- 
 ing the name of the patron saint. From the 
 points of the compass we have North, Norris, 
 South, Southey, Surrey, West, Wesley, East, Easter- 
 ly, and Sterling. Wali'acc and E Estrange, mean- 
 ing a foreigner, evidently have reference to the 
 place of abode, though, strictly speaking, not local 
 names. 
 
 From the names of countries vve have Irish, 
 Scott, Erench, Brett and Br it ton from Brittany, 
 Burgoync from Burgundy, Gate from Gael, jfanc- 
 ivay from Genoese, Xorvian from Xormandy, 
 Saxon, Wales, and Morris.^ 
 
 Bottom is the old Sussex word for valley, and 
 is compounded in a number of English names, 
 as W\gg\nl)othe?n, \\\nie^rl>ottoin, etc. Burne is a 
 brook ; Cloug/i, a ravine ; Cobb, a harbor ; Crouch, 
 a cross, of which so many were erected in the 
 market-places of towns. Hatch is a gate : //vV is 
 a grove ; Lynch, a thicket ; Bi>ss. a heath ; Syhes, 
 a spring ; Sale, a hall. These are all territorial 
 
 * Morris and .M(K)re ila^■e several derivations : Moor, a 
 plain ; Moor, an Arab ; Mohr, great, etc.
 
 SURNAMES. 207 
 
 names, though Ross may be, in some instances, 
 from the word meaning red. 
 
 The names of places and persons not unfre- 
 quently end in /ia?n, ingham, or iiigtoii. These 
 are true Saxon territorial names. The termina- 
 tion iiig meant belonging to the tribe. Thus, 
 King is really son of the tribe. The Eppings 
 and Hastings are the descendants of Aes, the 
 Warings of JVacr, the Erpings of /^r/>, and so on 
 through some two hundred and fifty monosyllabic 
 given names. Very few of these words ending 
 in ing are found to-day in England as surnames, 
 because the custom of adopting transmissible 
 family appellations was not instituted in Saxon 
 England; but all of them have given names to 
 English villages, though usually the suffix /o/i, 
 town, or Aa;;i, home, is added. Thus Walsing- 
 Jiain is the home of the Walsing; IVorthington is 
 the town of the Worthing. Then, these towns 
 gave surnames to those who lived in them, and 
 v/e have the class of old Saxon names like Rem- 
 ington, Hoisington, Huntington, AUington, Erp- 
 ingham, Buckingham, Washington, and many oth- 
 ers. These are the finest names in our language. 
 Coffin, wdiich is seen in Covington, is the only 
 one not strong and euphonic. In addition to 
 these, there is hardly to be found a town or 
 county that has not given a surname to some 
 families. York, Bradford, Manchester, Winches-
 
 208 ENGLISH WORDS. 
 
 ter, Sheffield, Kent, Salisbury, Richmond, Chester, 
 we meet everywhere. 
 
 Of the third class, or occupative surnames, we 
 have a large number, and as a rule these sur- 
 names are represented by a larger number of in- 
 dividuals than are any others. The Smith was, 
 of course, represented in every village, though 
 he is sometimes called a Goicer or a Goivan in' 
 Celtic districts. Then vv'e have Bishops, Ckrhs, 
 Parsons, Leaches, Carters, Tailors, Turners, Coohs, 
 Fullers or cloth - v.'orkers, Carpenters, Wagners, 
 Millers, JVrights, etc., in abundance. We have 
 no doctors nor lawyers, though Councilman is 
 not unknown, nor is yuJge as a surname. Spenser 
 is dispensier, the man who had charge of the spence 
 or buttery. Stewart is the king's steward, and 
 Butler his '" boteler."' Many old forgotten trades 
 are represented in occupative surnames. Scud- 
 der is probably Scutelcr, the man who made the 
 wooden trenchers — scutcls — which served in- 
 stead of plates. Latimer, or Latiner, is an inter- 
 preter; Pullinger — boulatiger — is a baker; jfen- 
 ner is a joiner. In Yorkshire, Sack means a 
 ploughshare, and from this comes Sacksmith, or 
 Sixsmith. Kidder is an obsolete word for huck- 
 ster. No one can make anything of Lundhunter. 
 Brewer, Breiuster, Wea7xr, Webb, Webster, Baker, 
 and Baxter are plain enough. Walker was a 
 man who inspected the king's forest and guarded
 
 SURNAMES. 209 
 
 the game from poachers. Dexter appears to be 
 from daegsestre, a woman who works by the day, 
 or, possibly, from the word meaning a maker of 
 daggers. 
 
 A Pilgrim was one who had taken a journey to 
 any shrine, as to Canterbury. A -Palmer was one 
 who had gone to Palestine. There were so 
 many pilgrims that it was not used as a distinct- 
 ive name, but to be a " holy palmer " was an 
 honor. The porter " stood at the castle gate," 
 the wisher within. Now there are many Porters, 
 but few Ushers. The reason of this is that 
 Porter had an additional source — from the por- 
 ters who carried burdens. The Hayward — from 
 hay, a hedge — had charge of the animals belong- 
 ing to the town. Hoiuard is derived from this 
 word, unless it be from the Saxon Heretoard, or 
 general. Hogward gives us Haggard, a very rare 
 surname. M'irih and Ward are the terms for 
 Saxon officials often found in combination in 
 surnames, as \^ooA'i2uorth, \Noodtaard, etc. A 
 Barker is a tanner. 
 
 The fourth class comprises surnames derived 
 from nicknames. To call individuals by some 
 personal peculiarity is a very natural propensity. 
 The Romans and the modern Italians seem 
 especially fond of doing so. The English work- 
 ing-men in some districts still have two names — 
 one their regular legal name, which is seldom 
 14
 
 2IO ENGLISH WORDS. 
 
 heard, and another, the nickname by which they 
 are known among their mates. It was inevitable 
 that surnames should grow out of those sobri- 
 quets, which are often more firmly attached than 
 the baptismal name itself. Nicknames can be 
 conveniently divided into three groups : 
 
 1. Those from physical or external peculiar- 
 ities, relationship, age, size, shape, complexion, 
 dress, etc. 
 
 2. P>om mental and moral peculiarities. Some- 
 times these are complimentary, sometimes quite 
 the reverse. 
 
 3. Real nicknames, having no especial mean- 
 ing, or from some fancied resemblance to ani- 
 mals. 
 
 Under the first sub-head we have White, Bnru'n, 
 Black, Grey, Morrell or Moore — when it nieans 
 black; A'ott, which means crop-haired; Feel, which 
 means i^illed or bald; RusseU ox red. and a variety 
 of others. Frieze-mantle is the origin of the name 
 Freemantle. Bunker means Bon Coiileur. Big 
 and Small and Little and Fcttit explain tliem- 
 selves. The odd name lurebraees is derived 
 from Bras de fer {\xox\ arm) by inversion. We 
 have, too, Younger, Senior, Ames, from F.am (an 
 uncle). Kinsman, and Cozzens. 
 
 Under the second sub -head we have Good, 
 Fairspeech, Finclipenny, Sai'eall, Scrapcskin, etc. 
 
 The third sub-head, or nicknames proper, pre-
 
 SURNAMES. 211 
 
 sents considerable difficulties. The nickname may 
 have been meaningless, or it may have become 
 obsolete, and if the spelling has been changed 
 we have nothing to aid us in reconstructing it. 
 When we find a name that seems absolutely 
 unexplainable, it is convenient to be able to say 
 that the base is probably an unmeaning sobri- 
 quet. The names which sound like the names 
 of animals — as Bull, Lamb, Wolf, Lion, Crotu, 
 Swan, Hart, Stagg — may possibly have originated 
 in nicknames, and afterwards have developed into 
 surnames, but it is much more likely that they 
 originated in heraldic devices or business signs. 
 Every little manufactory had its device — a ship, 
 or an arrow, or a rudely- carved lion or bull's 
 head. The proprietor was spoken of as \^'illiam 
 of the Ship, or John o' the Lion. Inn signs were 
 generally double — a device on each side, or a 
 line divided the field, as in the shields of knights. 
 Thus we have the "Goat and Compasses," the 
 "Cat and Battledoor," the "Bull and Mouth," 
 "Pan and the Bacchanalians" — this last corrupt- 
 ed into " Pan and the Bag o' Nails." As a rule, 
 heraldic devices were borne by families who took 
 the name of an estate, and the names of animals 
 given as nicknames for fancied resemblance in 
 strength or swiftness are inextricably mixed up 
 with the same names drawn from business signs 
 in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.
 
 2 12 ENGLISH WORDS. 
 
 The number of names in each of the above 
 classes varies greatly. Taking a large number 
 of names in the Loudon Directory, it was com- 
 puted that about twenty-five per cent, were from 
 personal names, thirty-three per cent, were local, 
 twelve per cent, occupative, twenty-five per cent, 
 from nicknames, leaving five per cent, unac- 
 counted for and unaccountable. The number 
 of individuals in each class would differ greatly 
 from these ratios, if for no other reason, because 
 a disproportionate number of persons bear the 
 names of occupation. Smith, Taylor, Carpe/iter, 
 Webster, Baker, and the like, and the personal 
 derivatives, yohnson, Thompson, Jones, JVilliams, 
 are also very well represented. Xo one terri- 
 torial surname is borne by a great number of 
 persons. White and Brown are also very com- 
 mon. 
 
 The question arises — Is the number of surnames 
 increasing or diminishing ? We hear occasionally 
 of families becoming extinct by the death of the 
 "last of the name." On the other hand, a few 
 new surnames are formed even now by variations 
 in spelling or the anglicizing of foreign names. 
 The entire disappearance of a name is rarer than 
 we think, as it will generally be found that it is 
 preserved in the family of some remote and for- 
 gotten offshoot. The practice of hyphenating 
 names like "Floyd-Jones" may give rise to some
 
 SURNAMES. 
 
 213 
 
 new variants. The doctrine of chances proves 
 that it is extremely improbable that any name 
 that has lasted from the fourteenth century to the 
 present should become extinct hereafter. Fur- 
 thermore, observations on sixty names in Eng- 
 land go to show that the excess of births over 
 deaths in any group bearing the same name is 
 normal, or the same as that of the great bulk of 
 the population. 
 
 It has been computed from a careful tabula- 
 tion of the surnames beginning with "A" that 
 the entire number of surnames in England would 
 exceed thirty thousand. In our country the large 
 foreign element would make the number still 
 greater, even admitting that many rare English 
 names are unrepresented here, and that many for- 
 eign names have been assimilated in sound and 
 spelling to our American surnames. 
 
 The thirty names most common in England 
 are given in the following table from Fatronymica 
 Briiannica, in the order of their frequency: 
 
 I. Smith, one in every 73 of entire population. 
 
 2. Jones, 
 
 ' " 76 ' 
 
 3. Williams, 
 
 ' " 115 ' 
 
 4. Taylor, 
 
 ' " 148 
 
 5. Davies, 
 
 ' " 162 ' 
 
 6. Brown, 
 
 " 174 
 
 7. Thomas, 
 
 " 196 '
 
 214 
 
 EXGLISH WORDS. 
 
 8. 
 
 Evans, one in 
 
 every 198 
 
 9- 
 
 Roberts, 
 
 11 
 
 
 235 
 
 lO. 
 
 Johnson, 
 
 li 
 
 
 265 
 
 II. 
 
 Wilson, 
 
 a 
 
 
 275 
 
 12. 
 
 Robinson, 
 
 u 
 
 
 276 
 
 13- 
 
 Wright, 
 
 a 
 
 
 293 
 
 14. 
 
 Wood, 
 
 a 
 
 
 301 
 
 15- 
 
 Thompson 
 
 5 
 
 
 304 
 
 16. 
 
 Hall, 
 
 a 
 
 
 305 
 
 17- 
 
 Walker, 
 
 a 
 
 
 310 
 
 18. 
 
 Green, 
 
 li 
 
 
 310 
 
 19. 
 
 Hughes, 
 
 ii 
 
 
 312 
 
 20. 
 
 Edwards, 
 
 a 
 
 
 316 
 
 21. 
 
 Lewis, 
 
 (I 
 
 
 318 
 
 22. 
 
 White, 
 
 ii 
 
 
 323 
 
 23- 
 
 Turner, 
 
 a 
 
 
 327 
 
 24. 
 
 Jackson, 
 
 " 
 
 
 330 
 
 25- 
 
 Hill, 
 
 '• 
 
 
 352 
 
 26. 
 
 Harris, 
 
 u 
 
 
 355 
 
 27. 
 
 Clark, 
 
 li 
 
 
 3(^3 
 
 28. 
 
 Cooper, 
 
 ii 
 
 
 380 
 
 29. 
 
 Harrison, 
 
 li 
 
 
 390 
 
 30- 
 
 Ward, 
 
 a 
 
 
 402 
 
 ation. 
 
 These thirty names are applied to a little more 
 than one-sixth of the entire population of Eng- 
 land. The Welsh name Davics is distinct from 
 Davis, which has one representative in every four 
 hundred and twenty-one luiglishmen. This name,
 
 SURNAMES. 215 
 
 and yoncs, Willia7?is, Evans, Oivens, and Edwards 
 are common names, because there are so few 
 Welsh surnames. It is said that Eva?i Evans — 
 or its equivalent, jfohn Jones — is so common in 
 Wales that it does not individualize its owner in 
 the least. 
 
 Those who wish to look up this siil)ject more fully are 
 referred to Lower's Dictionary, the Patronyniica Britanuica, 
 to the Essay on English Sitrnaines, and to TJie Teiitonic 
 Name System, by the same author. These contain a great 
 deal of curious information. In the introduction to the 
 first-named is an account of the older authorities, many of 
 whom are very entertaining. Robert Ferguson's book, Sitr- 
 naiJies as a Science, is more modern (18S3), and, though 
 treating of Init a limited number of names, more systematic. 
 An earlier work by the same author, English Surnames, 
 may also be consulted. Bardsley's English Surnames is 
 entertaining, but limited. Bowditch's Suffolk Surnames 
 (third edition) contains a long list of peculiar names found 
 in this country, but the author seems more occupied with 
 the humors and oddities of the directories than with scien- 
 tific examination or classification. ¥ox given names Miss 
 Yonge's two volumes on Christian N^ames cover a good 
 deal of ground. Tlie Appendix to Webster s Dictionary 
 will also be found useful.
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 WORDS OF THE PROFESSIONS AND TRADES. 
 
 To the philologist the meanings of words are 
 of comparatively little importance except as a 
 means of identification. He follows the root 
 through its various fortunes, pointing out how it 
 has gathered suffixes and prefixes and amalga- 
 mated with them, or dropped them in the course 
 of centuries until the original sound is entirely 
 changed and the word becomes part of a new 
 language — becomes, in fact, a new word. But a 
 great deal of interesting information about the 
 early professions and trades can be gathered by 
 observing the peculiar vocabulary of each. Such 
 an examination carried but a little way will throw 
 incidentally a good deal of light on history, and 
 will show how men instinctively select a set of 
 words having a relation to the nature of their 
 employments. In all the mechanical trades tech- 
 nical terms are used which are interesting sur- 
 vivals of ancient usage, and others which show 
 when improvements in tools or methods were in-
 
 WORDS OF PROFESSIONS AND TRADES. 217 
 
 troduced. Let us consider first the ancient and 
 honorable trade of the smith. 
 
 The worker in iron was an important member 
 of society in the early village communities. He 
 forged the rude weapons and agricultural imple- 
 ments, shod the horses, and made the hasps, 
 hinges, and nails requisite to building a house. 
 In making armor great proficiency was required, 
 and in forging railings, screens, and ornamental 
 work a high degree of artistic skill was often 
 shown. There is nothing more satisfying to the 
 artistic sense than fmely- wrought iron-work, as 
 there is nothing more unsatisfying than cast-iron 
 ornaments. One is the product of human intel- 
 ligence, subduing an obdurate material directly 
 by strength, patience, and skill ; the other is me- 
 chanically produced after the pattern is made, 
 and has therefore a much less direct relation 
 to the human mind. For all these reasons the 
 workman in iron held in early days a unique posi- 
 tion. He was not called a smith because he was 
 a smiter, as was originally supposed. Smith is 
 one of the oldest Teutonic words, and is probably 
 connected with smooth. But his helper is called 
 a striker. To smith a piece of iron is to form it 
 v.'ith the hammer ; but to forge includes the idea 
 of heating in addition. The worker in brass is 
 not a smith, but a brass-founder., because brass 
 is melted, and if wrought is hammered with light
 
 2l8 ENGLISH WORDS. 
 
 blows. We have coj^per-smith, goldsmith, silver- 
 smith, and tin - sfiiith, because these metals are 
 ductile and require smithing. The word had 
 many metaphorical applications in early litera- 
 ture. Not only do v/e read of the armorer by the 
 name of zvacp.na-smith, but we have the promoter 
 of laughter called hlcahtor-smith, laughter-smith ; 
 we have the teacher called Idr-smith, lore-smith ; 
 and the warrior called wig -smith, war- smith.* 
 The scales which fell from the iron were called 
 slag, because they were slugged from under the 
 sledge. Nowadays we apply the term slag to 
 the impurities which float on molten iron, as 
 blast-furnace slag. Etymologically it would be 
 more correct to call this substance by the orig- 
 inal name, siiuicr or ciiuicr, a term which we are 
 inclined to confme to the calcined impurities in 
 coal-ashes. The old terms are correctly used by 
 the hands in a rolling-mill, where they speak of 
 hamfner-slag, and call refuse that is melted and 
 squeezed out, cinder, not cinders, even saying 
 " roller ciniler." 
 
 The following are some of the terms used by 
 
 * The fact that now the \vord sharp would l)e used in 
 folk-metaphor for many of the above meanings — the teach- 
 er, for instance, called the \)o6k-sharp; the musician, the 
 Y>\'^vto-s/iar/>; the geologist, the roQ\i-sharp — may be taken 
 as illustrative of the diflcrence between ancient and mod- 
 ern times, the days of honest blows and the days of shifty 
 devices.
 
 WORDS OF PROFESSIONS AND TRADES. 219 
 
 the smith : hclloivs, wind, tuyere, anvil, blast, ham- 
 mer, tap, screw, tongs, fire, sledge, swedge, file, horn, 
 upset, weld, flatter. He uses the word wind in. 
 the sense of air, and speaks of the tuind in the 
 bellows as he might speak of " knocking the 
 wind" out of an antagonist, not the atmosphere. 
 The moving or issuing air he calls the blast. 
 These v/ords are of Scandinavian or Anglo-Saxon 
 origin, and shov,' that the Germanic tribes were 
 skilful workers in iron before they came into con- 
 tact with the Latin races , and, further, that black- 
 smiths continued to use their trade-terms after 
 the Conquest, without much reference to the lan- 
 guage * of the XormanT'Yench. The wox^s former, 
 -I'ice, and die are Norman, but they are special 
 tools, adapted to produce certain shajoes more 
 readily than can the hammer. Chisel is Norman, 
 but even now a blacksmith calls the stationary 
 chisel fitted into a square hole in the anvil, pref- 
 erably, a cutter. The hole in the anvil has also 
 a peculiar name, used by some blacksmiths. It 
 
 * Tlie back of the hammer is called by mechanics the 
 p^nc, and to straighten a piece of iron by light blows with 
 the sharp back on the hollow side is said to be to pene it. 
 This word is given in Webster as pin, as if connected with 
 the Latin pinna, which seems impossible, whether we re- 
 gard pronunciation, meaning, or probable source. Monkey- 
 wrench is another very peculiar expression. None of the 
 explanations ofTered concerning its origin seem entirely sat- 
 isfactory.
 
 2 20 ENGLISH WORDS. 
 
 would be worth while to collect all the blacksmith's 
 words — many of which are not in the dictionary 
 — and also to ascertain whether some words are 
 not in use in this country that have been lost in 
 England. In general the smiths of England use 
 more archaic words than do those of America, as 
 so many new devices to save hand labor are in 
 use here. 
 
 The distinctive names of the parts of the 
 steam-engine were, for the most part, taken from 
 those of similar parts of a pump — an instrument 
 which was known to the Romans — so that we find 
 steam- chest, piston, cylhuler, valve, governor, coti- 
 necting-7-od, cratik, main- shaft, balance-wheel, ex- 
 haust-pipe, eccentric, cross- head, stuffing-box, gland, 
 parallel- motion, slides, representing a very large 
 proportion of words of Latin derivation, as might 
 be expected, since the steam-engine was invented 
 by men acquainted with the use of scientific in- 
 struments, and at a time when Latin terms had 
 been fully naturalized. Even English George 
 Stephenson's machine was called a locomotive, 
 though the starting- valve is still properly the 
 throttle. Many of the smaller parts of the con- 
 struction — key, cotters, gibs, well-known mechan- 
 ical devices of great antiquity, and adapted to 
 the new purpose by mechanics — have Saxon 
 names, but as far as the engine is a " thermody- 
 namic machine," its nomenclature is Latin. The
 
 WORDS OF PROFESSIONS AND TRADES. 221 
 
 compound name, steam-engine^ is half English and 
 half Latin. 
 
 As the art of printing was invented in Germany 
 and brought to England through Holland, we 
 might expect to find in its vocabulary a large 
 proportion of Teutonic words. So far is this 
 from being the case that there is no trade of 
 which the nomenclature is so distinctively Latin. 
 The man who arranges the types is called a com- 
 positor. He takes the types from a case, and 
 places them in a stick, brings his stickfuls to a gal- 
 ley, puts them on an imposing-stone, and takes an 
 impression, which he calls a proof; corrects the 
 proof, and locks the type in a form with quoins. 
 Then, the proof-reader's marks are all Latin ab- 
 breviations, and the different sizes of ty]}Q, pica, 
 primer, miriion, brevier, and agate, are all called by 
 Latin names, and the same is true of the element- 
 ary parts of the press except the bed. In fact, 
 so thoroughly Latin is the printer's vocabulary 
 that he must be conscious of falling below the 
 dignity of his trade when he asks for a take or 
 speaks of pulling a proof, or calls blank spaces 
 fat. He justifies his lines by spaces, the last be- 
 ing almost the only Saxon word he habitually 
 uses. Quad is quadrate, a square space. The 
 pages are collected into signatures, and the types 
 are finally distributed after the printing. Ink, too, 
 is a Romance word — en caustre — though adopted
 
 22 2 ENGLISH WORDS. 
 
 into old English. In fact, the technical vocabu- 
 lary of the printer is as Latin as that of the law- 
 yer. l"he reason of this is that the first printers 
 were learned men, and Latin was the language of 
 scholars in the fifteenth century. They were the 
 successors of the old scribes. Caxton personally 
 translated from Latin a number of the books he 
 published — and the best work of the early print- 
 ers was editions of the classics. Printing was 
 not supposed to be a people's art, nor could any 
 one have foreseen that it was to be one of the 
 great popular forces. So its language is scholas- 
 tic, and in the dialect of those for whose service 
 it was intended. 
 
 The trade of making and repairing coverings 
 for the feet is an old one in cold countries : so we 
 find that those following it are cobblers and sJioc- 
 makers, not chaussicrs, and may be pretty sure that 
 our Saxon ancestors did not go barefooted at all 
 times. Cobbler is given by Skeat as from couplare, 
 to join,* as if a cobbler were one who joins new 
 leather to old, and was a Xorman. This deriva- 
 tion does not seem consistent with the character 
 of the word nor with the fact that it contains two 
 b's, nor with the fact that the cobbler's tools have 
 all Celtic or Saxon names. There is a flavor 
 
 * See discussion df this word in Criitioy Diitiojiarv, and 
 in Dr. Murray's Dictioiary.
 
 WORDS OF PROFESSIONS AND TRADES, 223 
 
 about the word which does not belong to a Latin 
 derivative. It sounds like an old folk-word. It 
 is the same word as that found in cobble-stones, with 
 which we cobble or roughly mend a wall.* Skoc- 
 viaker, at all events, is above suspicion as to its 
 genuinely English source, and so are the shoe- 
 maker's terms. His kit is a small receptacle for 
 tools ; we have the same word in " kit of mackerel." 
 His last is from a Saxon word meaning a track, 
 connected in root with the word to last — to en- 
 dure ; to pursue is the same as to track, and to 
 pursue unceasingly implies endurance ; so there 
 is a distant connection between the two meanings 
 of last. Va7iip is said to be derived from avant- 
 pied, the front foot, but the uppers were first made 
 from a single piece, Latimer says. So vafnp is a 
 modern word. Welt may be of Celtic origin, and 
 lace may be descended from the Latin laqueus, a 
 snare, though this seems hardly probable in the 
 sense of boot- lace. Ath'I, Iapsio?ie, waxed ends, 
 leather, hide, pegs, patch, sole, are all of Teutonic 
 origin. 2\in, if not from an English root, has 
 been used so long that it may be regarded as an 
 original English word. Kip-skin and deacon'' s-skin 
 are undoubtedly English, though their derivations 
 
 * Why sliould it not be distantly connected with cobble, 
 a boat (Celtic) ? The wooden shoes of the French peasant- 
 ry are hollowed out like boats, and cobble, a boat, is based on 
 the word meanins: to excavate.
 
 2 24 ENGLISH WORDS. 
 
 are not known. Tap, so universally used for half- 
 sole, and seen in the old phrase, " standing on 
 his taps,'''' must mean either the ftp sole, or else a 
 sole that is fastened on with pegs which are driv- 
 en in by taps of the hammer. Foxing, or putting 
 a front on a boot, is an old English word. Boots 
 and gaiters are of course comparatively modern, 
 for our ancestors wore shoes. Many of these 
 words were not printed nor written, unless they 
 may have appeared in some of the Elizabethan 
 dramas, and as we do not know the original spell- 
 ing, the derivations may be lost. It is evident, 
 however, that the shoemaker has plied his trade 
 and used the same words for his implements and 
 materials since our ancestors emigrated from 
 Schleswig-Holstein. 
 
 The building trades^masons and wood-workers 
 — would evidently be much more affected by the 
 conquest of England by a people speaking a for- 
 eign language than would the folk- trades — vil- 
 lage smiths and cobblers and household-weavers. 
 The Normans were skilful architects, especially 
 in stone, and built feudal castles, extensive eccle- 
 siastical buildings — cathedrals and monasteries. 
 Most of the important buildings were erected 
 under a Xorman master, or in the cities where 
 French was spoken by the wealthy classes. The 
 old word Wright was dropped, except in some 
 special cases, like ivaiinvriglit, 7u/ieti~a'r!g/if. mill-
 
 WORDS OF PROFESSIONS AND TRADES. 225 
 
 Wright, playwright, and a few others. When Chau- 
 cer says of one of his pilgrims : 
 
 " lie was a well good ivrigJilc, a carpcntere," 
 
 he maybe using 7uright as we should use mechan- 
 ic — as a general term— or he may feel it necessary 
 to explain a Saxon word by the equivalent Nor- 
 man word. However this may be, we find all 
 through the vocabulary of these trades a mixture 
 of English and French words, the French being 
 usually applied to special tools and to work of a 
 higher grade, and the English to simpler and more 
 elementary operations. Carpenter, joiner, and 7na- 
 son are French words. Builder and stone-cutter 
 are English. House and home and cottage are 
 English, and so are the elementary parts of a 
 simple building : the doors, roof, nails, zvalls,* 
 sills, cares, beams, 7-afters, thatch, shingles, boards, 
 laths, scantling, timber, floor. On the other hand, the 
 joist, ixoxa. jacere, to lie, the studding, from sto, to 
 stand : the posts, from posita, the planks, the plates, 
 ihc ja?nbs, are all Xorman, and the Xorman man- 
 sion is divided into rooms and chambers. The 
 chi?>iney').s Xorman, and so is i\i^ flue. The Sax- 
 ons apparently built ti fireplace, a hearth, and a hob, 
 
 * Wall is from valliiiii, but is Latin of the first period, 
 not Xorman. Sleeper is another Teutonic word, connected 
 with slab. Sleeper from slapc — a smooth foundation — not 
 from lying still, as if sleeping. 
 
 IK
 
 2 26 ENGLISH WORDS. 
 
 and let the smoke escape from a hole in the roof, 
 or a window (jvind-cye). All the ornamental and 
 architectural parts of a house are Norman, and so 
 is any complicated construction, and so, of course, 
 are all the parts of a cathedral. Possibly some 
 of these architectural terms were introduced into 
 England by foreign workmen before the Conquest, 
 like toiaer, and a few of the oldest words connect- 
 ed with church architecture. On the whole, the 
 relations of the races are very strikingly illus- 
 trated in the names of the parts of a building. 
 
 There are three words in common use by car- 
 penters and woodsmen in America, which are no 
 doubt survivals of old words : brash, sfuuf, and 
 dozy. Brash is an adjective applied to wood 
 which is lacking in transverse strength and elastic- 
 ity. A '' hash stick '' differs from a brittle one 
 in that it will not spring or bend at all. This 
 word is referred to in Webster as being of Ar- 
 morican origin. The application of brash — also 
 ver)' common — to quick temper — giving away sud- 
 denly and unexpectedly — is possibly secondary. 
 Stunt means cut at an obtuse angle with the 
 grain, bluntly sharpened. It is connected with 
 stint, to make short, but retains the original 
 meaning of "making dull'' — as in "that post is 
 too stunt to drive " — rather than of cutting off a 
 definite portion, as in the expression, " a day's 
 stintr Dozy means affected by a peculiar kind
 
 WORDS OF PROFESSIONS AND TRADES. 227 
 
 of rot which destroys the grain. If so far gone 
 as to be ruined by the dry-rot, timber is said to 
 h^ pujiky, which is from the Gaelic spunky tinder. 
 Doz\ means in the incipient state of dry-rot 
 wlien the " Ufe of the timber is gone."' It is 
 probably connected with doz}\ sleepy. Skcat says 
 of dozy\ meaning sleepy, "cf. Sanscrit dhoas, to 
 crumble." Crumbling would almost exactly hit 
 the carpenter's use of dozy. 
 
 In the names of wood-workers' tools we find 
 that the simpler and more general tools have 
 English names, and that those adapted for some 
 special purpose are Norman. The axe is the 
 most important and primitive tool that man uses. 
 A skilful axeman can shape almost anything 
 from wood, as is seen to-day in Russia. The 
 axe is so archaic an implement that its name is 
 similar in all the Aryan languages, showing that 
 its use was understood even before the Germanic 
 and Italic stocks developed definitely different 
 languages. We retain the name of the tool that 
 was used to hew the timber for the ships that 
 brought Hengist and Horsa to Britain, and have 
 borrowed from the French only the diminutive 
 form, kafe/icf, and the verb to hatch — i.e., to mark 
 with cross-lines — corresponding to our English 
 verb, to score, and hash, anything chopped up. 
 The sazo is, of course, not nearly so old a tool as 
 the axe, which indeed dates from the Stone Age,
 
 2 28 ENGLISH WORDS. 
 
 but our Saxon ancestors possessed it and called 
 it a sage, and we use the same word. The primi- 
 ti\-e operations, chopping^ hc7uitig, cuttings splitting, 
 and riTi/tg are all indicated by Saxon words. It 
 is worth noticing that in many parts of the coun- 
 try the modern workman uses the word split whew 
 he separates a piece of irregular shape, and the 
 word rive when he separates a wide thin piece, 
 the taking special pains seeming to be the dis- 
 tinction. Thus he splits wood, but he 7-ives a bolt 
 to make shingles. The word l>oit in the above 
 sense is no doubt equivalent to I'illcf. Drmv- 
 s/iave, grindstone, 7C'/ietstonc, /lanuner, saui, adze, 
 and axe, are all English, but plane, cJiisel, gouge, 
 viortiee, and tenon, are all French. A carpenter 
 to-day calls a small plane used for cutting a 
 groove by the French name, ?-abot, or rabbet iiig- 
 plane, from the P^rench r abater, to plane. Adit re 
 is French, and means properly to cut at an angle 
 of forty -five degrees, a word derived from tlic 
 bishop's hat , but the Saxon word searf means 
 to hew at any sharp angle with an axe. dinger 
 and gitnlet are English, as might be expected, 
 since the simplest construction necessitates bor- 
 ing holes. We know that the F.nglisli built ships, 
 of which the framing and planking v.'ere se- 
 cured with pins called treenails, and with leathern 
 thongs. The long plane which is used for mak- 
 ing" the ed^es of boards straiHit is called a
 
 WORDS OF PROFESSIONS AND TRADES. 229 
 
 jomtei; from Joindre, to unite, since the edges 
 when brought together come in contact through- 
 out and can be firmly united with glue. The 
 word Joint refers to an inflexible union, though 
 we use it preferably for a flexible one, as the 
 joints of the body. 
 
 The mixed vocabulary of the carpenter's trade 
 goes to show that the Saxons were competent 
 wood-workers before the Conquest, but that the 
 Xorman workmen modifled their method by intro- 
 ducing better tools and a higher order of archi- 
 tecture. The same may be said of stone-masons 
 and plasterers, who have preserved some singular 
 words like kaick,* the board on which they carry 
 mortar; darby, a board for smoothing the face of a 
 wall : and putlog and ledger for parts of the scaffold. 
 
 Cast-iron was not invented till the seventeenth 
 century, but the art of casting brass was known 
 to the ancients. The technical name of the pot 
 in which brass is melted is crucible. The estab- 
 lishment for making iron castings is a foundery. 
 Both of those are French words, crucible being 
 probably of Celtic origin and connected with 
 
 * The derivation of Jui'i'k and darby I am unaljle to con- 
 jecture. I/aii'k, to carry about, seems to imply tlie idea 
 of offering for sale. Can darby be connected with daub? 
 '1 he carpenters pronounce jointer jiiitcr. As this is the 
 archaic pronunciation correctly handed down, have we any 
 right to cliange it ?
 
 230 ENGLISH WORDS. 
 
 crock. But many of the words used by men who 
 v.-ork in a foundery are English. Tiiey are called 
 moulders. The sand is rammed in a flask, of 
 which the top is called the cope or noiol (one word 
 being French, the other Saxon) and the bottom 
 the drag. The opening through which the metal 
 enters the mould is called a gate, and the metal 
 v.-hich hardens in the gate is called a sprue. The 
 division in the mould is called a parting, the ves- 
 sel in which the melted metal is received from 
 the furnace is called a ladle. The large sieve 
 used to separate lumps from the sand is called a 
 riddle, a small tool for smoothing the mould is a 
 slick, and the waste metal which runs into the 
 parting is a 7?//. The patterns are made with 
 draft that they may be readily drawn from the 
 sand, and a shrink-rulc is used by pattern-makers. 
 Here is a large proportion of Saxon words, all of 
 tljem, however, except sprue, used in secondary 
 senses — riddle, for instance, is originally a win- 
 nowing sieve. The art was developed among an 
 English - speaking people by practical men. not 
 by scientific men. These men natifrally took up 
 popular words, whereas the inventors of the steam- 
 engine used learned words. Mad iron-founding 
 developed from the casting of brass, more of the 
 technical words v/ould h.ave been of Latin origin. 
 Had it been an old hhigiish art, it would have 
 contained more old En:rlish words belonirins: ex-
 
 WORDS OF PROFESSIONS AND TRADES. 23 1 
 
 clusively to its peculiar operations. Sprue seems 
 to be the only special term. 
 
 The Saxons were seamen, but so were the 
 early Normans. What are usually called "sailor.- 
 man's words " are almost exclusively English or 
 Scandinavian or Dutch. Though the first Nor- 
 mans who settled in France gave up their own 
 langurge, and the third generation spoke only 
 French, many Norse words are found in the 
 French nautical language, relics of the ancestral 
 trade of RoUo and his fellows. It is safe to as- 
 sume, however, that the vocabulary of the Eng- 
 lish sailor v>as not recruited from the Norman 
 French, but is radically Anglo-Saxon or Danish. 
 It is very extensive and almost destitute of any 
 Latin element. The official terms of the navy, 
 on the contrary, embrace many words of Ro- 
 mance origin. Captain, lieutenant, commodore, co?n- 
 mandani, and admiral are not seamen's words. 
 They would say, preferably, skipper or mate if 
 they had invented the terms. The seamen's vo- 
 cabulary is large, because a ship is a home to 
 them in which they are isolated from the world 
 for long periods, and because they have gathered 
 words from foreign countries, like catamaran from 
 Ceylon, X'6'^4'''-' and jivrri'/ from the Dutch, and the 
 local names of boats from whatever port they 
 entered. The great body of their speech is Eng- 
 lish. To begin with, all parts of the ship and
 
 232 ENGLISH WORDS. 
 
 rigging — -111111, low, 7uaisf, stern, deck, mast, sails, 
 shrouds, ratlines, halyards, yards, sprit, hoo7ii, jib, 
 leech, hits, tops, l-:ecl, garboard, larboard, starboard, 
 scuppers, rudder, tiller, hehn, cockswain, gig, cutter, 
 launch. Jolly- boat, taffrail, belaying -pin, lunvser, 
 fathom, cabin, barge {'Zq\.\!\c), galley, mess, bunk, 
 wake, berth — are of Teutonic origin, and a great 
 many of them are used only by sailors. If we 
 use rudder, or helm, for instance, in any other 
 sense except as applied to a boat, we use the 
 words metaphorically. Their antiquity as sailors' 
 words is evident from this fact, and in this they 
 differ from the moulders' words heretofore alluded 
 to. The only words of Latin origin and of every- 
 day use by sailors ^xo. forecastle, compass, capstan, 
 cable, and binnacle; for though in realistic stories a 
 sailor m.ay talk about '"going on a long vyage,'' 
 a real sailor say^, preferably a cruise. Pro^v, too, 
 is a literary word never heard " on board ship." 
 A castle was* once built on the stern of war -ships 
 and ^fore castle in the bow. with the absurd idea 
 of imitating a fort, and the word fir castle is now 
 applied to the quarters of the crew. Quarters 
 has crept in, too, from the Latin quartarius, a 
 fourth part, hence a part set off for any detinite 
 purpose ; but this is originally a man-of-v/ar term. 
 A compass is a scientific instrument, and received a 
 Latin name, and chronometer — a later invention — 
 was siven a Greek name. The bo.x; in which the
 
 WORDS OF PROFESSIONS AND TRADES. 233 
 
 compass was kept was called a binnacle^ from 
 the Latin habitaculum, a little room. Gimbals is 
 also Latin, and is from gemini, meaning the twin 
 rings. Cable is a French word, but has never — 
 except for chains — superseded in common use 
 the regular English word, haivscr. Course is also 
 a Latin word and, strictly, means the angle which 
 the vessel's track makes with the meridian. The 
 application of the word courses to the main sails 
 cannot be explained. Davits is said to be de- 
 rived from davus, the Latin popular name for a 
 slave (used something like our word jfack), but 
 this derivation is purely conjectural. Capstan is 
 French and Spanish, from a Greek root, and an 
 anchor was used by the Romans. The Saxons 
 drew their small ships on the beach and must 
 have used the oars to keep off from a lee shore. 
 The words connected with handling the anchor, 
 however, are English, as the bars, the pawls, cat- 
 heads, to trip, or to fish. A small anchor, too, has 
 a Dutch name — a hedge. 
 
 The bo7o of a ship is connected with the Saxon 
 bog, the root meaning an a?-7?i, hence the shoulder. 
 The bow of a ship is its shoulder, and a bowline is 
 so called because it is fastened to the shoulder of 
 the sail. This word is from the same root as 
 bough — an arm of a tree, and is entirely distinct 
 from boiv, the archer's vreapon which comes from 
 bugen, to bend.
 
 234 ENGLISH WORDS. 
 
 The vocabulary of English seamen is therefore 
 radically Teutonic. Its racy individual character 
 and lack of formality testities to its antiquity and 
 independence of foreign terms, and to the original 
 sufficiency of English for practical matters. Its 
 phrases are strong and expressive, and would be 
 absurdly feeble if translated into Latin equiva- 
 lents. It embodies the maritime life and seafar- 
 ing character of a vigorous, out-door race, and is 
 well worth examining by any one who wishes to 
 appreciate the directness and force of spoken 
 English.* This brief sketch docs not even out- 
 line the subject. 
 
 Inductions similar in general character can be 
 drawn from the vocabulary of the still older occu- 
 pation, farming. Genuine farmers' words are of 
 the Teutonic stock. Many of them belong to the 
 class of words evidently related in all the Aryan 
 tongues, and were used in the remote past, when 
 the Proto-Aryans, the parent stock of Celt, Greek, 
 Latin, and Teuton, spoke the same language and 
 formed one tribe. Such are tlie names of the 
 domestic animals, and of the old implements and 
 operations. Ilorse^ marc, co7i>, hull, ram, ck'c, 
 
 * An admirable Chaucerian word, roU-, is iircserved Ijy 
 American sailors. It means the confused sound of the sea 
 breaking on a beach, lieard at a distance, and seems now 
 to be especially applicable to the sound heard inland. It 
 can liardlv be connected witli roar.
 
 WORDS OF PROFESSIONS AND TRADES. 235 
 
 plough^ sickle^ thresh, milk, are radical words. 
 Even the parts of the modern plough, the land- 
 side, the mould-board, the beam, the share, are old 
 English. The clevis and the coulter are Latin at- 
 tachments. A farmer to-day never calls himself 
 an agriculturist. He speaks of the plough's tail, 
 an expression which is a survival from the time 
 V\'hen the plough had but one handle, and is 
 strictly plough-stall. A stall is a handle, a word 
 allied to the root of still, a stall being that by 
 which the implement is held firm. The root ap- 
 pears also in the vrord headstall, that by which a 
 horse is held comparatively still. His stall in 
 which he stands is another English word, from a 
 different English root, but allied to the first and 
 to the Latin sto through common relationship to 
 the original root, STA. This Vsord stall in the 
 sense of handle is also used by farmers when 
 they say ^' stale of a pitchfork." The word flail 
 is given as from the Ij^iim, Jlagellum. If this be 
 true the Saxons must have threshed their grain 
 in some different way — by the feet of oxen, like 
 the Hebrews, for instance. At all events, there 
 is no stain on the lineage of thresh. The name 
 for the two parts of the flail — the swingle and the 
 staff-^-^xQ unmistakably Saxon. 
 
 The names of the grains, barley, corn, ivluat ; 
 of the trees, oak, beech, apple, are also old. Some 
 weeds and roots bear testimony in their names to
 
 236 ENGLISH WORDS. 
 
 the country from which they were introduced, 
 Uke beef, carrot, turnip, radish, potato, znd pumpkin, 
 and show that the Anglo-Saxons never lived in 
 a country where these were indigenous. In the 
 names of the products of the soil a great deal of 
 archaic history is embodied. The primitive oper- 
 ations are denoted by primitive words, or per- 
 haps we should say that the use of a primiiive 
 name proves the things or operations so designated 
 to be ancient. The soil of England has never been 
 cultivated by men who spoke French, and so the 
 rural dialect abounds in good, old Saxon words. 
 !Many survivals of the old stock of words can be 
 found in New England, some of which have been 
 lost in England. Modern inventions have so mod- 
 ified farming v/ork that many of the old terms are 
 passing out of use. This is notably the case with 
 words used in the household industries of spin- 
 ning and weaving, as practised fifty years ago. 
 
 I\Ianv handicraft words arc of obscure origin, 
 since they have but rarely been printed, and their 
 pronunciation has become so modified from the 
 primitive sounds that it is sometimes very dithcult 
 to conjecture the original derivation or connec- 
 tion. The technical language of the professions,, 
 on the other hand, was early committeil to writing 
 in many documents. All pleadings in law were 
 written in Xorman-Frcnch for a century after the 
 Conquest, and even after the issue was made and
 
 WORDS OF PROFESSION'S AND TRADES. 237 
 
 the trial conducted in the new English, the judg- 
 ment was entered in Latin. Law terms are, 
 therefore, universally Latin, though the common 
 law is an evolution of the English nation. Law 
 terms of Latin origin, though they are not so 
 barbarous as medical terms, have little force or 
 simplicity, except the short ones, like deed, judge, 
 arrest, jury, court, suit, 'icrit, luarrant, mortgage, and 
 su7nnio;is, which have become fully naturalized. 
 Such words as replevin, quo warranto, affidavit, 
 demurrer, certiorari, re'aitter, garnishee, mandamus, 
 cestui que trust, feine- covert, and their congeners, 
 which make up nine-tenths of the legal dialect, 
 betray their foreign origin too freely to allow 
 their admission into the society of the old Eng- 
 lish words which we recognize as part of our 
 mother-tongue. The artiiicial character of these 
 words has, no doubt, contributed to the artificial 
 and remote character of the science of the law, 
 which, at least in an old work on pleading, seems 
 to be concerned with a verbal system, and not to 
 refer to real things. It is worth noticing that the 
 officer with whom Englishmen come most in con- 
 tact retained his Saxon title — sheriff, or shire-reeve. 
 This retention of the English word for the legal 
 executive is somewhat analogous to the assump- 
 tion by the Duke of Normandy of the title, 
 "King of England," instead of the French style, 
 "m,'' or '■^suzerain."
 
 238 ENGLISH WORDS. 
 
 The class which may be designated as Church 
 words, or the ecclesiastical terminology, is also 
 exclusively classic — Latin or Greek — in origin, 
 with the exception of the Saxon derivatives, like 
 righteousness^ goodness, kindness, brotlierly iove, sin, 
 wiekedness, selfishness, meekness, and a few others, 
 which express the underlying elements of human 
 character as opposed to formal theological con- 
 ceptions like piety, devotion, regeneration, repentanee, 
 faith, and a host of other terms of Latin origin. 
 This is as might be expected. The Church of 
 Western Europe was originally a Latin Church. 
 Its sacred books were in Latin or Greek. Its 
 volumes of ecclesiastical law v/ere in Latin. 
 Words that refer to the organization are, of 
 course, Latin, as are also words that belong to 
 party differences in the Church. At the same 
 time religion deals with the ultimate facts of 
 human nature, and in the most corrupt periods 
 there were to be found in the Church some ear- 
 nest priests whose hearts yearned towards their 
 fellow- men; who, like their ^Master, '"had com- 
 passion on the multitude,"' and wished so to 
 speak that they— in good old phrase — "might be 
 understanded of the people." Chaucer's " poor 
 parson "' spoke P^nglish, though he is rather Lat- 
 inized in his story of Melibceus, as Harry 13ailey 
 notices. We owe much to ^^"ycli^fe, Tyndale, 
 Coverdale, and the seventeenth century revisers,
 
 WORDS OF PROFESSIONS AND TRADES. 239 
 
 that they translated the Bible into our mother- 
 tongue, and not into Latinized English, and 
 thereby gave their words a unique and radical 
 power. The watchwords of the human systems 
 over which men argue and fight, under the influ- 
 ence of that peculiarly Latin mental condition — 
 " odiufH iheologicuni''' — pass away and possess 
 only a historical interest after a century or two. 
 They are invariably Latin watchwords. The 
 word atonement — at-one-ment — with its Saxon 
 base and Latin suffix, is almost the only one of 
 the theologic war-cries that is an exception to 
 this rule, but this word embodies a concept as 
 deep and abiding as that expressed by its correla- 
 tive, sin, and is a word of an entirely different 
 class from such strictly doctrinal v/ords as tran- 
 subs tan tiation, predestination, election, eschatology, etc. 
 
 The relations of the Classic and Saxon deriva- 
 tives in theological nomenclature open too broad 
 a field to be gone into at present, but it is worth 
 while to consider the different effects of such 
 phrases as "(7// offended Deity '^ and ""an angry 
 Godr 
 
 Just as chemistry retains some words which 
 date back to the mediaeval quackeries, alchemy 
 and magic, and as astronomy retains some of 
 the words once peculiar to the pseudo- science, 
 astrology, so medicine shows traces of the ter- 
 minology of the ''learned leeches'' of the I\Iid-
 
 240 ENGLISH WORDS. 
 
 die Ages. All medical books were then in Latin, 
 and the mediaeval names were kept in use even 
 after Latin was discarded. They became a sort 
 of professional shibboleth which gave mystery 
 and dignity to simple matters. Even now the 
 names of drugs are translated, and dandelion is 
 mentioned as faraxicum, cind foxglove as digitalis. 
 For scientific classification ^special names are 
 necessary, and Latin still offers the most con- 
 venient storehouse of words which have the same 
 meaning in all countries. The doctors have an 
 hereditary fondness for '• words of learned length 
 and thimdering sound," and will hardly conde- 
 scend to speak of the backbone or the skull. 
 Like cooks, tirey arc fond of giving foreign names 
 to mysterious compounds. But the great object 
 of their efforts — health — and the important events 
 over which they preside — -childbirth and death, 
 which, indeed, concern the patient more than the 
 physician — remain radically Saxon. The vocab- 
 ulary peculiar to the profession testifies to the 
 cosmopolitan nature of diseases and remedies. 
 The world has been searched for the latter, and 
 the former are common to men of all nations. 
 Possibly it may testify to the fact that the wealthy 
 Normans were more frequently the objects of the 
 doctor's care than were the humbler Saxons. We 
 have dropped the expressive Saxon ivrith — con- 
 nected with writhe — and have retained the French
 
 WORDS OF PROFESSIONS AND TRADES. 24 1 
 
 equivalent, fever. Traces of the old medical 
 notions can be discovered in medical words. 
 Cholera., for instance, is derived through Latin 
 from the Greelv word meaning bile. Gangrene., 
 from the same source, means something which 
 gnaws. The fact that the Latins drew their 
 notions of medical science from the Greeks is 
 shown by the number of Greek - Latin and Greek 
 derivatives in use among doctors. Of these are : 
 antiseptic, asthma., artery., bronchitis, cranium, oesoph- 
 agus, epidermis, hirynx, spleen, pleurisy, pore, rheum, 
 surgeon. \\'e very early dropped the Saxon word 
 leech in fa\'or of the Latin doctor, or the Latin- 
 Greek ///j^vV/, 7//. 
 
 The vocabulary of mines is a curious jumble 
 of archaic words — Celtic and Saron — and mod- 
 ern scientific engineering terms. A classification 
 of miners' words would prove very interesting 
 and instructive. 
 
 That events could be foretold by an expert ex- 
 amination of the stars was a very general belief 
 from the earliest time. In the Middle Ages the 
 practice was reduced to rules, and gave rise to a 
 precise technical vocabulary, which has left some 
 curious traces in our language. We still use the 
 words horoscope and ill- starred \\\\\\ a conscious- 
 ness of their metaphorical force. Ikit considera- 
 tion, disaster, aspect, conternplate, and influence are 
 habitually spoken without any thought of their 
 16
 
 242 ENGLISH WORDS. 
 
 origin. They are all astrological words, and, nat- 
 urally, are of Greek or Latin derivation. Con- 
 sider is consiilcfare, to consult the stars. Dis- 
 aster is an unpropitious position of a star. The 
 sky was divided into temples or houses, _and to 
 contemplate was to examine what planets occu- 
 pied the different temples at a given time. Influ- 
 ence is the occult power supposed to floiu in from 
 the moon or planets. Aspect meant the general re- 
 lation of the planets and their distances from each 
 other. Two planets could assume nine '"'' aspects " — - 
 five good aspects and four bad ones — with which 
 they looked on the earth — a slight fraction in 
 favor of optimistic views. The planet which rose 
 above the horizon at tlie hour of birth was said 
 to be in the ascendant, and was supposed to exert 
 a peculiar influence on the future life. Conjunc- 
 tion signifies that two planets were in the same 
 temple, and v,-c still use conjunction not only to 
 mean a bond, but for two events happening 
 about the same time. Contemplate dates back to 
 Roman astrology, or even to Greek, since tempi um 
 is from refiyw, to cut, and is based on the idea of 
 a place set apart or cufe off. Auspicious, ares- 
 spectare, is from the Roman art of divination. 
 
 It is possible that some of these words, as 
 aspect and contemplate, might have come into the 
 language, even had they not formed a part of the 
 vocabulary of mediaeval astrology, but it is evident
 
 WORDS OF PROFESSIONS AND TRADES. 243 
 
 that their character has been affected by that 
 use. The force of a word is affected by all its 
 associations, and a knowledge of them enables 
 us to appreciate precise and delicate uses of the 
 word. 
 
 From the groups of folk-words, especially from 
 the maritime and agricultural groups, the liter- 
 ary language is recruited. They are the living 
 and vigorous roots-nf national speech, and prun- 
 ing the upper growth without allowing the vital 
 sap to circulate is futile ; fortunately so, for if it 
 were not, it would be criminal. The superiority 
 of the words of the working trades over the words 
 of the learned professions, in directness, force, 
 and power of vividly presenting the thing signi- 
 fied, proves that a language, to possess any of 
 these qualities, must be a growth, and not a 
 '• manufactured article."
 
 ADDITIOXAI. WORDS FOR ILLUSTRATION. 
 
 Find the meaning of the word in the language 
 from which it was taken into our modern Eng- 
 lish. Show the connection between the original 
 
 ig and the modern 
 
 meaning. Use a mod- 
 
 tionary. 
 
 
 Abbot. 
 
 Alms. 
 
 Abominate. 
 
 Ambergris. 
 
 Accord. 
 
 Ambidextrous. 
 
 Accost. 
 
 Amorphous. 
 
 Acid. 
 
 Appal. 
 
 Acorn. 
 
 Appraise. 
 
 Acquit. 
 
 Apprise. 
 
 Acute. 
 
 Apron. 
 
 Adequate. 
 
 Arch. 
 
 Adroit. 
 
 Ark. 
 
 Affidavit. 
 
 Arm. 
 
 Agate. 
 
 Attic. 
 
 Alarm. 
 
 Auction. 
 
 Alligator. 
 
 Aureole. 
 
 Allow. 
 
 Eallad. 
 
 Allv. 
 
 Ballet.
 
 ADDITIONAL WORDS FOR ILLUSTRATION. 245 
 
 Ballot. 
 
 Ban. 
 
 Battledoor, 
 
 Battlement. 
 
 Between. 
 
 Bitter-end. 
 
 Blaze. 
 
 Blindfold. 
 
 Blunderbuss. 
 
 Bondsman. 
 
 Bower. 
 
 Brattice. 
 
 Buttress. 
 
 Buxom. 
 
 Calculate. 
 
 Cancel. 
 
 Cant. 
 
 Capitulate. 
 
 Caprice. 
 
 Cardinal. 
 
 Carnival. 
 
 Casemate. 
 
 Cat's-cradle. 
 
 Causeway. 
 
 Centering. 
 
 Chancellor. 
 
 Chaperon. 
 
 Chatter. 
 
 Chivalry. 
 
 Clever. 
 
 Collaborator. 
 
 Colonel. 
 
 Combat. 
 
 Commence. 
 
 Comparison. 
 
 Craven. 
 
 Cutter. 
 
 Dad. 
 
 Dainty. 
 
 Damsel. 
 
 Date. 
 
 Debut. 
 
 Demure. 
 
 Deuce. 
 
 Dextrous. 
 
 Diamond. 
 
 Direct. 
 
 Ditty. 
 
 Dry (tedious). 
 
 Eagle. 
 
 Ear. 
 
 f^cstasy. 
 
 Elixir. 
 
 Ember-days. 
 
 Envelop. 
 
 Etch. 
 
 Expectorate. 
 
 Fanatic.
 
 »46 
 
 ENGLISH WORDS. 
 
 P^are. 
 
 Kindle. 
 
 February. 
 
 Laconic. 
 
 Fend. 
 
 Lasso. 
 
 Ferry. 
 
 Lawn. 
 
 Fit. 
 
 Left. 
 
 Founder. 
 
 Lieutenant. 
 
 P'riday. 
 
 Limb (of the Sun) 
 
 Fritter. 
 
 Linstock. 
 
 Frontispiece. 
 
 Listless. 
 
 Gantlet. 
 
 Loathsome. 
 
 Gingerly. 
 
 IManoiuvre. 
 
 Goggle-eyed. 
 
 Map. 
 
 Guinea. 
 
 March. 
 
 Gutta-percha. 
 
 IMartyr. 
 
 Halyard. 
 
 IMaundy-Thursday 
 
 Hammer-cloth. 
 
 ]\Ietre. 
 
 Hanger. 
 
 ^lildew. 
 
 Hematite. 
 
 Mob. 
 
 Hollyhock. 
 
 Mosaic. 
 
 Humble-pie 
 
 ■Muse (vb). 
 
 Husband. 
 
 Napkin. 
 
 Infantry. 
 
 Nation, 
 
 Instep. 
 
 Nightmare, 
 
 January. 
 
 Normal. 
 
 Jerked beef. 
 
 Observe. 
 
 Jet. 
 
 Obstinate. 
 
 Jot. 
 
 Old Nick. 
 
 Kernel. 
 
 Onion. 
 
 Kickshaw. 
 
 Oriole.
 
 ADDITIONAL WORDS FOR ILLUSTRATION. 247 
 
 Pale. 
 
 - Recount. 
 
 Palette. 
 
 Reindeer. 
 
 Pallid. 
 
 Remark. 
 
 Parboil.' 
 
 Restive. 
 
 Parson. 
 
 Rook ( in chess). 
 
 Patent. 
 
 Rote. 
 
 Pathos. 
 
 PvOUt. 
 
 Patient. 
 
 Route. 
 
 Pea-jacket. 
 
 Rut. 
 
 Pedant. 
 
 Sarcophagus. 
 
 Peer. 
 
 Seminary. 
 
 Pendulum. 
 
 Sentry. 
 
 Pew. 
 
 Sinister. 
 
 Plumb. 
 
 Skeleton. 
 
 Pope. 
 
 Smoke (to find out), 
 
 Posy. 
 
 Soldier. 
 
 Press-2:an<r. 
 
 Soprano. 
 
 Prophesy. 
 
 Steelyard. 
 
 I'rovender. 
 
 String (of jiorses). 
 
 Pulley. 
 
 Supplant. 
 
 Punch (vb). 
 
 Tangle ('sea-weed). 
 
 Purblind. 
 
 Tantalize. 
 
 Puree (a soup). 
 
 Termagant. 
 
 Purloin. 
 
 Testament. 
 
 Pusillanimous. 
 
 Thursday, 
 
 Pyramid. 
 
 Thwarts. 
 
 Queen (in chess). 
 
 Tontine. 
 
 (2uit. 
 
 Touchy. 
 
 Rant. 
 
 Train-oil.
 
 ENGLISH WORDS. 
 
 Traitor. 
 
 Tribulation. 
 
 Trick (at cards). 
 
 Trigger. 
 
 Tuesday. 
 
 Tureen. 
 
 Uncouth. 
 
 Vermilion. 
 
 \'inegar. 
 
 Volume. 
 
 Walnut. 
 
 Wardrobe. 
 
 Wednesday. 
 
 \\'elcome. 
 
 Welsh-ral5bit. 
 
 Whiskey. 
 
 Wiseacre. 
 
 Worsted. 
 
 Wound fa horn). 
 
 Vankee. 
 
 Zero. 
 
 Zodiac.
 
 INDEX OF SUBJECTS. 
 
 An'GI.O-Saxon terminations, 
 
 7S. 
 " Ar," tlie root, iSi. 
 Arnold, MaUhc\\-, quotation, 
 
 S3. 
 Ar)-an stock, 13. 
 Aryans, home of, 13. 
 
 ■ languages of, 31. 
 
 Astrologers' words, 241. 
 
 Berxers, Juliana, quotation, 
 66. 
 
 Bible, translations of, 60-83. 
 
 Blacksmiths' words, 217. 
 
 Book of St. Albans, 65. 
 
 Branching of words, 129, 
 
 Firitain abandoned by Ro- 
 mans, 37. 
 
 invaded by Saxons, 
 
 Browning, quotation, 144. 
 Brugmann's classification, 20. 
 Builders' words, 224. 
 
 Change from Anglo-Saxon 
 
 to English, 43. 
 Chivalry, language of, 63. 
 Collect, quotation from, 91. 
 Colloquial I'.nglish, 47. 
 
 Composite character of Eng- 
 lish, 91. 
 Concrete images in language, 
 
 Cntii\ quotation from, 150. 
 
 Danish invasion, 40. 
 Dialectic English, 48. 
 Dialects, 40. 
 I >octors' words, 239. 
 Double names, iSo. 
 Double rhymes, 85. 
 
 Earlc's Philology, quotation, 
 
 25- 
 
 Ecclesiastical words, 23S. 
 
 Effect of material surround- 
 ings, 123. 
 
 Emerson, quotation from, 94. 
 
 English, changes in, 37-49. 
 
 kinds of, 47. 
 
 Latin element in, 56. 
 
 Norse element in, gS. 
 
 number of words in, 92. 
 
 rhythm of, 44. 
 
 sources of, 36. 
 
 P-rroneous derivations, 140. 
 
 Etymologies promote good 
 use, 92.
 
 250 
 
 INDEX OF SUBJECTS. 
 
 Euphemism, iC6. 
 Euphuism, 63. 
 
 Farmers' words, 234. 
 Founders' words, 229. 
 Fourteenth century poem, 42. 
 Fuller, Dr. Thos., quotation, 
 140. 
 
 Grimm's Law, 25-28. 
 
 II.A,LE, Horatio, quotation, 
 
 33-. 
 Hunting, language of, 64. 
 Hybrid words, 93. 
 
 Imitative words, 123. 
 Invasion of Britain, 37. 
 Ivanhoe, quotation, 70. 
 
 Kinds of English, 47. 
 Kitchen words, 52. 
 
 Language, Albanian, 20. 
 a mark of humanity, 
 
 1-3- _ 
 
 Anglo-Saxon, 19. 
 
 Armenian, 20. 
 
 branches of study of, 9. 
 
 Celtic, 16-55. 
 
 ■ classification of, 13. 
 
 connection with thought, 
 
 4- . 
 
 Cornish, 16. 
 
 ■ Cymric, 16. 
 
 1 )utch, 19. 
 
 Friesic, 19. 
 
 (lallic, 20. 
 
 ( ierman, i3. 
 
 (lothic, 18. 
 
 Hellenic, 16. 
 
 High Cerman, iS. 
 
 how far an evf)lution, 7, 
 
 Language, Indian branch of, 
 15. 
 
 Indo-European, 13. 
 
 Iranian, 15. 
 
 Italic, 17. 
 
 Low German, 19. 
 
 Netherlandish, 19. 
 
 Xorse, iS. 
 
 Old English, 19. 
 
 ■ origin of, 113. 
 
 Platt-Deutsch, 19. 
 
 ■ Romance, group of, 17. 
 
 ■ Slavonic, 16. 
 
 ■ Teutonic, iS. 
 
 Welsh, 16. 
 
 Latin element in English, 56. 
 Law words, 237. 
 Literary English, 47. 
 London slang, 53. 
 
 Max Ml'I.i.er, quotation, 
 
 31-47, 92. 
 Miners' words, 241. 
 Modern scientific words, 126. 
 Monosyllables, French, Si. 
 Morte d' Arthur, 65. 
 
 Names, corrupted from 
 French, 173. 
 
 double ethnic, 17S-180. 
 
 • European place, 178. 
 
 history in, 170. 
 
 Indian, 171. 
 
 modified in sound, 173. 
 
 New England place, 
 
 175- 
 
 North American, 172. 
 
 ■ of birds. 122. 
 
 of Connecticut towns, 
 
 175- 
 ■ of rivers, 1S4. 
 
 Snutliern place, 176. 
 
 Spanish, 172-174.
 
 INDEX OF SUBJECTS. 25 1 
 
 Nicknames, 204. Surnames, occupalive, 20S. 
 
 Norman conquest, 61. percentage, 212. 
 
 invasion, 41. total number of, 213. 
 
 Norse element in English, gS. Synonyms, 74. 
 Number of words in English, 
 
 92. Words, Arabic, 102. 
 
 branching of, I2g. 
 
 OxoMATora-:iA, 124. builders', "^4. 
 
 Origin of language, 113. Celtic, 46-51. 
 
 changes in meaning, 
 
 Pairs of words, 73-76. 15S. 
 
 Periods of Latin introduc- character of Romance, 
 
 tion, 57. 87. 
 
 Poetic quality of words, S3. Dutch, 106. 
 
 Poetry in words, 118. expressing mental states, 
 
 Printers' words, 221. 120. 
 
 Pronunciation (note), 30. founded on metaphors, 
 
 Proportion of Latin, io3. 115. 
 
 Public, or ordinary English, Greek, 107. 
 
 47. ■ Hebrew, 105. 
 
 hunting, 66. 
 
 Rhymes, 84. hybrid, 93. 
 
 Root "ar," 181. imitative, 123. 
 
 kitchen, 52. 
 
 Sailors' words, 231. Latin, 56. 
 
 Sanskrit, 32. modern scientific, 126. 
 
 Set, 1S3. Norman-P'rench, 72. 
 
 Shakspeare, quotation, 89, Norse, gS. 
 
 go, 144. of astrology, 241. 
 
 Shoemakers' words, 222. of the trades, 222. 
 
 Sir Tristram, 65. pairs of, 77. 
 
 Skeui's Dictionary, 92. per cent, of Latin, 108. 
 
 Slang, 50-53. poetry in, 11 3. 
 
 Spelling, 29-155. printers', 221. 
 
 St. Albans, Book of, 65. professional, 237. 
 
 Steam-engine, 220. record changes of 
 
 Suffixes, 97. thought, i6g. 
 
 Surnames from personal rhythm of English, 44. 
 
 traits, 210. sailors', 231. 
 
 increase of, 2X2. society, 66. 
 
 local, 205. value of study of, 5.
 
 INDEX OF WORDS AND EXPRESSIONS 
 EXPLAINED. 
 
 Abominable, 141. 
 Acorn, 152. . 
 Admiral, 104. 
 Adventurer, 166. 
 Affront, 161. 
 Agere, 137. 
 Alchemy, 103. 
 AlcohoJ, 103. 
 Alembic, 103. 
 Algebra, 103. 
 Allvali, 103. 
 Allow, 165. 
 Alms, 5g. 
 Amazement, 165. 
 Amazon, 141. 
 Ambition, 160. 
 Ampersand, 166. 
 Andiron, 152. 
 Anse de Cou.sins, 149. 
 Antic, 160. 
 Apace, 152. 
 Apostle, 5g. 
 Ascendant, 242. 
 Aspect, 242. 
 Atonement, 239. 
 Attention, 119. 
 Auspicious, 242. 
 Average, 163. 
 Aye, 99. 
 
 Baggage, 51. 
 Baie de Lievre, 173. 
 15aie des Espoirs, 173. 
 Bailey, 59. 
 Barker, 2og. 
 Beak, 53. 
 Beatan, 13S. 
 
 Beefsteak, 133. 
 Belfry, 164. 
 Bellerophon, 147. 
 Beorgan, 13S. 
 Binnacle, 233. 
 Bishop, 59. 
 Blawan, 138. 
 Boblo, 173. 
 Bois Blanc, 173. 
 Bottom, 206, 
 Bound, 99. 
 Bow, 233. 
 Bowline, 233. 
 Brace, 64. 
 Brash, 226. 
 Brick, 53. 
 Brown Willy, 149, 
 Brynen, 13S. 
 Bud, 119. 
 r)unker, 210. 
 Burne, 206. 
 Business, 167. 
 Butler, 208. 
 Bye, 101. 
 
 Calc, 59. 
 Calipers, 168. 
 Candidate, 160. 
 Canter, 168. 
 Carmine, 73. 
 Carpenter, 51. 
 Castra, 57. 
 Ceapian, 138. 
 Cester, 57. 
 " Cheese it," 53. 
 Chester, 58. 
 Cliolcra, 241.
 
 WORDS AND EXPRESSIONS EXPLAINED. 253 
 
 Church, 60, 
 Cinder, 218. 
 Cipher, 104. 
 Clerc, 59. 
 Clough, 206. 
 Cobb, 206. 
 Cobbler, 222. 
 Cock, 153. 
 Colonia, 58. 
 Combe, 205. 
 Compassion, 120. 
 Compliment, 140. 
 Comprehension, 120. 
 Conception, 119. 
 Condign, 152. 
 Conjunction, 242 
 Consider, 242. 
 Contemi)late, 242. 
 Courage, 120. 
 Course, 233. 
 Court-cards, 147. 
 Crank, 128. 
 Crayfish, 147. 
 Credo, 137. 
 Crimson, 73. 
 Crouch, 206. 
 Crucible, 229. 
 Cunning garth, 147. 
 Curmudgeon, 143, 
 
 Daisy, iiS. 
 Dandelion, 147. 
 Davits, 233. 
 Dead Man, 149. 
 Defy, 137. 
 Den, 205. 
 Depart, 165. 
 Devil, 147. 
 Dico, 137. 
 Dila])idated, 11. 
 Dirge, 164. 
 Disaster, 242. 
 Do, 136. 
 
 Dog-cheap, 153. 
 Dozy, 226. 
 Drunk, 167. 
 Duco, 136. 
 
 Equipage, 143. 
 Ey, 206. 
 
 Fast, 99. 
 Fiery, 123. 
 Fiord, loi. 
 Fitful Head, 147, 
 Flag, 99. 
 Flail, 235. 
 Ford, 206. 
 Forecastle, 232, 
 Fork, 72. 
 Frank, 158. 
 Free, 159. 
 Freemantlc, 210. 
 Frontispiece, 137. 
 
 Gal, 179. 
 Gambler, 166. 
 Gangrene, 241. 
 Geranium, 118. 
 Ghost, 116. 
 Gibraltar, 104. 
 Gimbals, 233. 
 God, 147. 
 Grteci, 181. 
 Grammercy Park, 14B. 
 
 Haberdasher, 147. 
 liadlyme, 175. 
 Idagenes, 150. 
 Hale, 99. 
 Ham, 207. 
 Hangnail, 148. 
 Ilarwinton, 175. 
 Hash, 227. 
 Hatch, 227. 
 Hate, 120.
 
 254 WORDS AND EXPRESSIONS EXPLAINED. 
 
 Hay ward, 209. 
 Hessians, 14S. 
 Himalaya, 118. 
 Hirondelle, 147. 
 Holt, 206. 
 " Hook it," 53. 
 Howard, 20g. 
 Humanities, 160. 
 
 Ibrahim Pasha, 147. 
 Idea, 120. 
 Incentive, I4<). 
 Influence, 242. 
 Ink, 221. 
 Insult, 161. 
 
 Jerusalem, 14S. 
 Jointer, 22S. 
 
 " Kick tlie bucket," 53. 
 Kidder, 2o3. 
 King, 147. 
 
 Last, 223. 
 
 Latimer, 208. 
 
 Lea, 205. 
 
 Leash, 65. 
 
 Legend, 145. 
 
 Le Tour Sans \'enin, 14S. 
 
 Loony, 122. 
 
 Lunacv, 122. 
 
 Ly, 206. 
 
 Lynch, 206. 
 
 ^rAGDEI'.UKC, 149. 
 
 Maidenhead, 149. 
 Maidstone, 149. 
 ]\Iallo\v, ii3. 
 Marijjosa, 142. 
 Marquis, 69. 
 Marshall, 69. 
 Masher, 53. 
 Maul-stick, 147. 
 
 Memory, 121. 
 Modest, 120. 
 Much, 143. 
 
 Nasturtium, 119. 
 Nice, 162. 
 Noble, 69. 
 Nott, 210. 
 
 Old Man, 149. 
 
 Palmer, 209. 
 Panther, 144. 
 Passion, 120. 
 Peel, 210. 
 
 Phantomnation, 150. 
 Picketwire, 173. 
 Pie, 142. 
 
 Pigeon English, 167. 
 Pilatus, Mount, 145. 
 I'ilgrini, 209. 
 Pink, I iS. 
 Plaid, 52. 
 Plough's tail, 235. 
 Policy, 163. 
 Pomfret, 174. 
 Porter, 209. 
 Pose, 131. 
 Post, 131. 
 Posthumous, 164. 
 Prairie, Dippertree, 173 
 Precipitate, 10. 
 Preface, 137. 
 l'res!))tcr, 59. 
 Priest, 59. 
 
 Quad, 221. 
 Quadrangle, 131. 
 Quadrille, 131. 
 (,)uadroon, 131. 
 (^)uadruped, 131. 
 (^)uainl, 162. 
 (Jiuarry, 64, 131.
 
 WORDS AND EXPRESSIONS EXPLAINED. 255 
 
 Quart, 131. 
 Quarters, 232. 
 Quarto, 131. 
 
 Ren'contre, 173. 
 Rive, 223. 
 Romance, 160. 
 Rosemary, 118. 
 Ross, 206. 
 Russell, 210. 
 
 Sacksmith, 2o3. 
 Sale, 2:)6. 
 Salt-cellar, 143. 
 Score, T35. 
 Scudder, 208. 
 Scutcheon, 63. 
 Shaw, 2(J5. 
 Shear, 135. 
 Sheriff, 237. 
 Shirt, 135. 
 Shuttle-cock, 147. 
 Sirloiiv, 152. 
 Skilagalee, 173. 
 Slag, 218. 
 Slang, 127. 
 Slug-horn, 144. • 
 Smith, 217. 
 Soo, 173. 
 
 Sparrow-grass, 147 
 Spend, 165. 
 Spirit, 116. 
 Splay, 165. 
 Sport, 165. 
 Squad, 131. 
 Squadron, 131. 
 Stack, 133. 
 Stake, IT3. 
 Stall, 235. 
 Stamwick, 175. 
 Stick, 132. 
 Stock, 133. 
 Stoker, 133. 
 
 Stone-blind, 143. 
 St. Oreste, 150. 
 Strata, 58. 
 Stratfield, 175. 
 Street, 58. 
 Stunt, 226. 
 Surly, 152. 
 Surround, )6r. 
 Sutherland, 11 3. 
 Swell, 123. 
 Sykes, 206. 
 Sympathy, 120. 
 
 Talents, 121. 
 Tango, 136. 
 Tap, 224. 
 Tarpaulin, 162. 
 Tartars, 140, 148. 
 Temper, 121. 
 Temperature, 121. 
 Think, 121. 
 Thorp, 205. 
 Tick, 132. 
 Ticket, 132. 
 Ton, 207. 
 Trivial, 161. 
 'i^vig, 53. 
 
 Upstart, 151. 
 
 Vallum, 58. 
 Venison, 64. 
 Weal, ^3. 
 Welch, 53. 
 Welcher, 179. 
 Whole, 99. 
 Wintonbury, 175. 
 Wormwood, 154. 
 Writli, 240. 
 Writhe, 240. 
 Wylen, 53. 
 
 Zero, 104.
 
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