On the Study of Words by Richard Chenevix Trench (great book club books .TXT) 📖

calls 'anecdotal etymology' fills him; while yet it is to this that we are continually tempted here to have recourse.

But consider now one or two words which have not lost the secret of their origin, and note how easily they might have done this, and having once lost, how unlikely it is that any searching would have recovered it. The traveller Burton tells us that the coarse cloth which is the medium of exchange, in fact the money of Eastern Africa, is called 'merkani.' The word is a native corruption of 'American,' the cloth being manufactured in America and sold under this name. But suppose a change should take place in the country from which this cloth was brought, men little by little forgetting that it ever had been imported from America, who then would divine the secret of the word? So too, if the tradition of the derivation of 'paraffin' were once let go and lost, it would, I imagine, scarcely be recovered. Mere ingenuity would scarcely divine the fact that a certain oil was so named because 'parum affinis,' having little affinity which chemistry could detect, with any other substance.

So, too, it is not very probable that the derivation of 'licorice,' once lost, would again be recovered. It would exist, at the best, but as one guess among many. There can be no difficulty about it when we find it spelt, as we do in Fuller, 'glycyrize or liquoris.'

Those which I cite are but a handful of examples of the way in which words forget, or under predisposing conditions might forget, the circumstances of their birth. Now if we could believe in any merely arbitrary words, standing in connexion with nothing but the mere lawless caprice of some inventor, the impossibility of tracing their derivation would be nothing strange. Indeed it would be lost labour to seek for the parentage of all words, when many probably had none. But there is no such thing; there is no word which is not, as the Spanish gentleman loves to call himself, an 'hidalgo,' or son of something. [Footnote: The Spanish hijo dalgo, a gentleman, means a son of wealth, or an estate; see Stevens' Dict. (s. v.)] All are embodiments, more or less successful, of a sensation, a thought, or a fact; or if of more fortuitous birth, still they attach themselves somewhere to the already subsisting world of words and things, [Footnote: J. Grimm, in an interesting review of a little volume dealing with what the Spaniards call 'Germanía' with no reference to Germany, the French 'argot,' and we 'Thieves' Language,' finds in this language the most decisive evidence of this fact (Kleine Schrift. vol. iv. p. 165): Der nothwendige Zusammenhang aller Sprache mit Ueberlieferung zeigt sich auch hier; kaum ein Wort dieser Gaunermundart scheint leer erfunden, und Menschen eines Gelichters, das sich sonst kein Gewissen aus Lügen macht, beschämen manchen Sprachphilosophen, der von Erdichtung einer allgemeinen Sprache geträumt hat. Van Helmont indeed, a sort of modern Paracelsus, is said to have invented the word 'gas'; but it is difficult to think that there was not a feeling here after 'geest' or 'geist,' whether he was conscious of this or not.] and have their point of contact with it and departure from it, not always discoverable, as we see, but yet always existing. [Footnote: Some will remember here the old dispute—Greek I was tempted to call it, but in one shape or another it emerges everywhere—whether words were imposed on things [Greek: thesei] or [Greek: physei], by arbitrary arrangement or by nature. We may boldly say with Bacon, Vestigia certe rationis verba sunt, and decide in favour of nature. If only they knew their own history, they could always explain, and in most cases justify, their existence. See some excellent remarks on this subject by Renan, De l'Origine du Langage, pp. 146-149; and an admirable article on 'Slang' in the Times, Oct. 18, 1864.] And thus, when a word entirely refuses to tell us anything about itself, it must be regarded as a riddle which no one has succeeded in solving, a lock of which no man has found the key—but still a riddle which has a solution, a lock for which there is a key, though now, it may be, irrecoverably lost. And this difficulty— it is oftentimes an impossibility—of tracing the genealogy even of words of a very recent formation, is, as I observed, a strong argument for the birth of the most notable of these out of the heart and from the lips of the people. Had they first appeared in books, something in the context would most probably explain them. Had they issued from the schools of the learned, these would not have failed to leave a recognizable stamp and mark upon them.

There is, indeed, another way in which obscurity may rest on a new word, or a word employed in a new sense. It may tell the story of its birth, of the word or words which compose it, may so bear these on its front, that there can be no question here, while yet its purpose and intention may be hopelessly hidden from our eyes. The secret once lost, is not again to be recovered. Thus no one has called, or could call, in question the derivation of 'apocryphal' that it means 'hidden away.' When, however, we begin to inquire why certain books which the Church either set below the canonical Scriptures, or rejected altogether, were called 'apocryphal' then a long and doubtful discussion commences. Was it because their origin was hidden to the early Fathers of the Church, and thus reasonable suspicions of their authenticity entertained? [Footnote: Augustine (De Civ. Dei, xv. 23): Apocrypha nuncupantur eo quod eorum occulta origo non claruit Patribus. Cf. Con. Faust, xi. 2.] Or was it because they were mysteriously kept out of sight and hidden by the heretical sects which boasted themselves in their exclusive possession? Or was it that they were books not laid up in the Church chest, but hidden away in obscure corners? Or were they books worthier to be hidden than to be brought forward and read to the faithful? [Footnote: For still another reason for the epithet 'apocryphal' see Skeat's Etym. Dict.]—for all these explanations have been offered, and none with such superiority of proof on its side as to have deprived others of all right to be heard. In the same way there is no question that 'tragedy' is the song of the goat; but why this, whether because a goat was the prize for the best performers of that song in which the germs of Greek tragedy lay, or because the first actors were dressed like satyrs in goatskins, is a question which will now remain unsettled to the end. [Footnote: See Bentley, Works, vol. i. p. 337.] You know what 'leonine' verses are; or, if you do not, it is very easy to explain. They are Latin hexameters into which an internal rhyme has forced its way. The following, for example, are all 'leonine':

     Qui pingit florem non pingit floris odorem:
     Si quis det mannos, ne quaere in dentibus annos.
     Una avis in dextra melior quam quattuor extra.

The word has plainly to do with 'leo' in some shape or other; but are these verses leonine from one Leo or Leolinus, who first composed them? or because, as the lion is king of beasts, so this, in monkish estimation, was the king of metres? or from some other cause which none have so much as guessed at? [Footnote: See my Sacred Latin Poetry, 3rd edit. p. 32.] It is a mystery which none has solved. That frightful system of fagging which made in the seventeenth century the German Universities a sort of hell upon earth, and which was known by the name of 'pennalism,' we can scarcely disconnect from 'penna'; while yet this does not help us to any effectual scattering of the mystery which rests upon the term. [Footnote: See my Gustavus Adolphus in Germany, p. 131. [Pennal meant 'a freshman,' a term given by the elder students in mockery, because the student in his first year was generally more industrious, and might be often seen with his pennal or pen-case about him.]] The connexion of 'dictator' with 'dicere', 'dictare,' is obvious; not so the reason why the 'dictator' obtained his name. 'Sycophant' and 'superstition' are words, one Greek and one Latin, of the same character. No one doubts of what elements they are composed; and yet their secret has been so lost, that, except as a more or less plausible guess, it can never now be recovered. [Footnote: For a good recapitulation of what best has been written on 'superstitio' see Pott, Etym. Forschungen, vol. ii. p. 921.]

But I must conclude. I may seem in this present lecture a little to have outrun your needs, and to have sometimes moved in a sphere too remote from that in which your future work will lie. And yet it is in truth very difficult to affirm of any words, that they do not touch us, do not in some way bear upon our studies, on what we shall hereafter have to teach, or shall desire to learn; that there are any conquests which language makes that concern only a select few, and may be regarded indifferently by all others. For it is here as with many inventions in the arts and luxuries of life; which, being at the first the exclusive privilege and possession of the wealthy and refined, gradually descend into lower strata of society, until at length what were once the elegancies and luxuries of a few, have become the decencies, well-nigh the necessities, of all. Not otherwise there are words, once only on the lips of philosophers or theologians, of the deeper thinkers of their time, or of those directly interested in their speculations, which step by step have come down, not debasing themselves in this act of becoming popular, but training and elevating an ever-increasing number of persons to enter into their meaning, till at length they have become truly a part of the nation's common stock, 'household words,' used easily and intelligently by nearly all.

I cannot better conclude this lecture than by quoting a passage, one among many, which expresses with a rare eloquence all I have been labouring to utter; for this truth, which many have noticed, hardly any has set forth with the same fulness of illustration, or the same sense of its importance, as the author of The Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences. 'Language,' he observes, 'is often called an instrument of thought, but it is also the nutriment of thought; or rather, it is the atmosphere in which thought lives; a medium essential to the activity of our speculative powers, although invisible and imperceptible in its operation; and an element modifying, by its qualities and changes, the growth and complexion of the faculties which it feeds. In this way the influence of preceding discoveries upon subsequent ones, of the past upon the present, is most penetrating and universal, although most subtle and difficult to trace. The most familiar words and phrases are connected by imperceptible ties with the reasonings and discoveries of former men and distant times. Their knowledge is an inseparable part of ours: the present generation inherits and uses the scientific wealth of all the past. And this is the fortune, not only of the great and rich in the intellectual world, of those who have the key to the ancient storehouses, and who have accumulated treasures of their own, but the humblest inquirer, while he puts his reasonings into words, benefits by the labours of the greatest. When he counts his little wealth, he finds he has in his hands coins which bear the image and superscription of ancient and modern intellectual dynasties, and that in virtue of this possession acquisitions are in his power, solid knowledge within his reach, which none could ever have attained to, if it were not that the gold of truth once dug out of the mine circulates more and more widely among mankind.'

LECTURE VI. ON THE DISTINCTION OF WORDS.

Synonyms, and the study of synonyms, with the advantages to be derived from a careful noting of the distinction between them, constitute the subject with which in my present Lecture I shall deal. But what, you may ask, is meant when, comparing certain words with one another, we affirm of them that they are synonyms? We imply that, with great and essential resemblances of meaning, they have at the same time small, subordinate, and partial differences—these differences being such as either originally, and on the strength of their etymology, were born with them; or differences which they have by usage acquired; or such as, though nearly or altogether latent now, they are capable of receiving at the hands of wise and discreet masters of language. Synonyms are thus words of like significance in the main; with a