A SELECT GLOSSARY,
etc.

v

PREFACE.

This volume is intended to be a contribution, I am aware a very slight one, to a special branch of the study of our own language. It proposes to trace in a popular manner and for general readers the changes of meaning which so many of its words have undergone; words which, as current with us as they were with our forefathers, yet meant something different on their lips from what they mean on ours. Of my success in carrying out the scheme which I had set before myself, it does not become me to speak, except to say that I have fallen a good deal below my hopes, and infinitely below my desires. But of the scheme itself I have no doubts. I feel sure that, if only adequately carried out, few works of the same compass could embrace matter of more manifold instruction, or in a region of knowledge which it would be more desirable to occupy. In the present condition of education in England, above all with the pressure vi upon young men, which is ever increasing, to complete their educational course at the earliest possible date, the number of those enjoying the inestimable advantages, mental and moral, which more than any other languages the Latin and the Greek supply, must ever be growing smaller. It becomes therefore a duty to seek elsewhere the best substitutes within reach for that discipline of the faculties which these languages would better than any other have afforded. And I believe, when these two are set aside, our own language and literature will furnish the best substitutes; which, even though they may not satisfy perfectly, are not therefore to be rejected. I am persuaded that the decomposition, word by word, of small portions of our best poetry and prose,—Lycidas suggests itself to me as in verse offering more exactly what I seek than any other poem, perhaps some of Bacon’s Essays in prose,—the compensations which we look for are most capable of being found; even as I have little doubt that in many of our higher English schools compensations of the kind are already oftentimes obtained.

In such a decomposition, to be followed by a reconstruction, of some small portions of a great English Classic, matters almost innumerable, and pressing on the attention from every side, would claim to be noticed; but certainly not last nor least the changes which, on close examination, vii would be seen to have overcome many of the words employed. It is to point out some of these changes; to suggest how many more there may be, there certainly are, which have not been noticed in these pages; to show how slight and subtle, while yet most real, how easily therefore evading detection, unless constant vigilance is used, these changes often have been; to trace here and there the progressive steps by which the old meaning has been put off, and the new put on, the exact road which a word has travelled; this has been my purpose here; and I have desired by such means to render some small assistance to those who are disposed to regard this as a serviceable discipline in the training of their own minds or the minds of others.

The book is, as its name declares, a Select Glossary. There would have been no difficulty whatever in doubling or trebling the number of articles admitted into it. But my purpose being rather to arouse curiosity than fully to gratify it, to lead others themselves to take note of changes, and to account for them, rather than to take altogether this pleasant labour out of their hands and to do for them what they could more profitably do for themselves, I have consciously left much of the work undone, even as unconsciously no doubt I have left a great deal more. At the same time it has not been mere caprice which viii has induced the particular selection of words which has been actually made. Various motives, but in almost every case such as I could give account of to myself, have ruled this selection. Sometimes the past use of a word has been noted and compared with the present, as usefully exercising the mind in the tracing of minute differences and fine distinctions; or again, as helpful to the understanding of our earlier authors, and likely to deliver the readers of them from misapprehensions into which they might very easily fall; or, once more, as opening out a curious chapter in the history of manners, or as involving some interesting piece of history, or some singular superstition; or, again, as witnessing for the good or for the evil which have been unconsciously at work in the minds and hearts of those who insensibly have modified in part or changed altogether the meaning of some word; or, lastly and more generally, as illustrating well under one aspect or another those permanent laws which are every where affecting and modifying human speech.

And as the words brought forward have been selected with some care, and according to certain rules which have for the most part indicated their selection, so also has it been with the passages adduced in proof of the changes of meaning which they have undergone. The principal value which ix a volume of such humble pretensions as the present can possess, must consist in the happiness with which these have been chosen. Not every passage, which really contains evidence of the assertion made, will for all this serve to be adduced in proof, and this I presently discovered in the many which for one cause or another it was necessary to set aside. There are various excellencies which ought to meet in such passages, but which will not by any means be found in all.

In the first place they ought to be such passages as will tell their own story, will prove the point which they are cited to prove, quite independently of the uncited context, to which it will very often happen that many readers cannot, and of those who can, that the larger number will not, refer. They should bear too upon their front that amount of triumphant proof, which will carry conviction not merely to the student who by a careful observation of many like passages, and a previous knowledge of what was a word’s prevailing use in the time of the writer, is prepared to receive this conviction, but to him also, to whom all this is presented now for the first time, who has no predisposition to believe, but is disposed rather to be incredulous in the matter. Then again, they should, if possible, be passages capable of being detached from their context without the necessity of drawing a large amount of this context after x them to make them intelligible; like trees which will endure to be transplanted without carrying with them a huge and cumbrous bulk of earth, clinging to their roots. Once more, they should, if possible be such as have a certain intrinsic worth and value of their own, independent of their value as illustrative of the point in language directly to be proved—some weight of thought, or beauty of expression, or merit of some other kind, that so the reader may be making a second gain by the way. I can by no means claim this for all, or nearly all, of mine. Indeed it would have been absurd to seek it in a book of which the primary aim is quite other than that of the bringing together a collection of striking quotations; any merit of this kind must continually be subordinated, and, where needful, wholly sacrificed, to the purposes more immediately in view. Still there will be many citations found in these pages which, while they fulfil the primary intention with which they were quoted, are not wanting also in this secondary worth.

In my citations I have throughout acted on the principle that “Enough is as good as a feast;” and that this same “Enough,” as the proverb might well be completed, “is better than a surfeit.” So soon as that earlier meaning, from which our present is a departure, or which once subsisted side by side with our present, however xi it has now disappeared, has been sufficiently established, I have held my hand, and not brought further quotations in proof. In most cases indeed it has seemed desirable to adduce passages from two or three authors; without which a suspicion may always remain in the mind, that we are bringing forward the exceptional peculiarity of a single writer, who even in his day stood alone. I do not feel confident that in some, though rare, instances I have not brought forward exceptional uses of this kind.

Two words I will add in conclusion. Seeing that I have had some share, though a small one, in the suggestion of a new English Dictionary to be published by the Philological Society, I may state that I considered it became me to use no portion whatever of the materials which are being collected for it in the composition of this volume—of those contributions for a public object, to a private end. Indeed those materials have never so much as come under my eye, except some exceedingly small portions of them, which by accident passed through my hands on their way to those of the Editor; not to say that this little Glossary was in all essential parts completed two years ago, before that great work was so much as contemplated.

And as I owe nothing to these MS. collections, invaluable help as I have no doubt they would xii have rendered, so next to nothing in the way of citation to any other source. This value I may claim for my book, that it is with the very most trifling exceptions an entirely independent and original collection of passages illustrative of the history of our language. Of my citations, I believe about a thousand in all, I may owe some twenty at the most to existing Dictionaries or Glossaries, to Nares or Johnson or Todd or Richardson. In perhaps some twenty cases more I have lighted upon and selected a passage by one of them selected before, and have not thought it desirable, or have not found it possible, to dismiss this and choose some other in its room. These excepted, the collection is entirely independent of all those which have previously been made; and in a multitude of cases notes uses and meanings of words which have never been noted before.

Westminster, May 25, 1859.

1

a
SELECT GLOSSARY,
etc.

A.

Abandon. ‘Bann,’ a word common to all the Germanic languages, and surviving in our ‘banns of marriage,’ is open proclamation. In low Latin it takes the forms of ‘bannus,’ ‘bannum,’ edict or interdict; while in early French we have ‘bandon,’ almost always with the particle à prefixed, ‘à bandon;’ thus ‘vendre à bandon,’ to sell by outcry. From this we have the verb ‘abandonare,’ which has passed into all the Romance languages; it is to proclaim, announce, but more often denounce (a bandit, ‘bandetto,’ is a denounced man, a proclaimed outlaw). Here is the point of contact between the present use of ‘abandon’ and its past. What you denounce, you loosen all the ties which bind you to it, you detach yourself from it, you forsake, in our modern sense of the word, you ‘abandon’ it.

Achievement. I doubt whether this, the fuller form of the word, is ever used now, where ‘hatchment’ is intended.

Admire,
Admirable. It now always implies to wonder with approval; but was by no means restrained to this wonder in bonam partem of old.

Alchymy. By this we always understand now the pretended art of transmuting other metals into 3 gold; but it was often used to express itself a certain mixed metal, which having the appearance of gold, was yet mainly composed of brass. Thus the notion of falseness, of show and semblance not borne out by reality, frequently underlay the earlier uses of the word.

Allow,
Allowance,
Allowable. ‘To allow,’ from the French ‘allouer,’ and through it from the Latin ‘allaudare,’ had once a sense very often of praise or approval, which may now be said to have departed from it altogether. Thus in Cotgrave’s French and English Dictionary, an invaluable testimony of the force and meanings which words had two centuries ago, ‘allow’ is rendered 4 by ‘allouer,’ ‘gréer,’ ‘approuver,’ ‘accepter,’ and ‘allowable’ by ‘louable.’

Amuse,
Amusement. The attempt which Coleridge makes to bring ‘amuse’ into some connection with the Muses is certainly an error; from whence we have obtained the word is harder to say. For two suggestions about it, see Diez, Wört. d. Roman. Sprachen, p. 236, and Proceedings of the Philological Society, vol. v. p. 82. Sufficient here to observe that the notion of diversion, entertainment, is comparatively of recent introduction into the word. ‘To amuse’ was to cause to muse, to occupy or engage, and in this sense indeed to divert, the thoughts and attention. The 5 quotation from Phillips shows the word in transition to its present meaning.

Anatomy. Now the act of dissection, but it was often used by our elder writers for the thing or object dissected, and then, as this was stripped of its flesh, for what we now call a skeleton. ‘Skeleton’ (q.v.) had then another meaning.

Animosity. While ‘animosus’ belongs to the best period of Latin literature, ‘animositas’ is of quite the later silver age. It was used in two senses; in that, first, of spiritedness or courage (‘equi animositas,’ the courage of a horse), and then, secondly, as this spiritedness in one particular direction, in that, namely, of a vigorous and active enmity or hatred (Heb. xi. 27. Vulg.). Of these two meanings the latter is the only one which our ‘animosity’ has retained; yet there was a time when it also had the other as well.

Apparent,
Apparently. With the exception of the one phrase ‘heir apparent,’ meaning 7 heir evident, manifest, undoubted, we do not any longer employ ‘apparent’ for that which appears, because it is, but always either for that which appears and is not, or for that which appears, leaving in doubt whether it is or no. Thus we might say with truth in the modern sense of the word, that there are apparent contradictions in Scripture; we could not say it in the earlier sense without denying its inspiration.

Apprehensive. As there is nothing which persons lay hold of more readily than that aspect of a subject in which it presents matter for fear, ‘to apprehend’ has acquired the sense of to regard with fear; yet not so as that this use has excluded its earlier; but it has done so in respect of ‘apprehensive,’ which has now no other meaning than that of fearful, a meaning once quite foreign to it.

8

Artillery. Leaving the perplexed question of the derivation of this word, it will be sufficient to observe, that while it is now only applied to the heavy ordnance of modern warfare, in earlier use any engines for the projecting of missiles, even to the bow and arrows, would have been included under this term.

Artisan,
Artist. Both these words have partially changed their meaning. ‘Artisan’ is no longer used of him who cultivates one of the fine arts, but those of common life. The fine arts, 9 losing this word, have now claimed ‘artist’ for their exclusive property; which yet was far from belonging to them always. An ‘artist’ in its earlier acceptation was one who cultivated not the fine, but the liberal, arts. The classical scholar was eminently the ‘artist.’

Ascertain. Now to acquire a certain knowledge of a thing, but once to render the thing itself certain. Thus, when Swift wrote a pamphlet having 10 this title, “A Proposal for correcting, improving, and ascertaining the English Tongue,” he did not propose to obtain a subjective certainty of what the English language was, but to give to the language itself an objective certainty and fixedness.

Assassinate. Once used, by Milton at least, as is now the French ‘assassiner,’ the Italian ‘assassinare,’ in the sense of to assault treacherously and with murderous intent, even where the murderous purpose is not accomplished; and then secondly, to extremely maltreat.

Assure,
Assurance. Used often in our elder writers in the sense of to betroth or to affiance. See ‘Ensure,’ ‘Sure.’

Astonish. ‘To astonish’ has now loosened itself altogether from its etymology, ‘attonare’ and ‘attonitus.’ The man ‘astonished’ can now be hardly said to be ‘thunderstruck,’ either in a literal or a figurative sense. But in several passages of Paradise Lost we shall quite fall below the poet’s intention unless we read this meaning into the word; as no less in the prose quotation from Milton which follows.

Astrology. As ‘chemist’ only little by little disengaged itself from ‘alchemist,’ and that, whether we have respect to the thing itself, or the name of the thing, so ‘astronomer’ from ‘astrologer,’ ‘astronomy’ from ‘astrology.’ It was long 12 before the broad distinction between the lying art and the true science was recognized and fixed in words.

Astronomer. See ‘Astrology.’

Atone,
Atonement. The notion of satisfaction lies now in these words rather than that of reconciliation. An ‘atonement’ is the satisfaction of a wrong which one party has committed against another, not the reconciliation of two estranged parties. This last, however, was its earlier meaning; and if the word may be rightly divided ‘at-one-ment,’ as probably it may, is in harmony with its etymology. Possibly men’s sense of the great Atonement of all, as resting on a satisfaction, may have ruled the use of the word.

Attorney. Seldom used now except of the attorney at law; being one, according to Blackstone’s definition, “who is put in the place, stead, or turn of another to manage his matters of law;” and even in this sense it is going out of honour, and giving way to ‘solicitor.’ But formerly any who in any cause acted in the room, behalf, or turn of another would be called his ‘attorney:’ thus Phillips (New World of Words) defines attorney, “one appointed by another man to do any thing in his stead, or to take upon him the charge of his business in his absence;” and in proof of what honourable use the word might have, I need but refer to the quotation which immediately follows:

Authentic. A distinction drawn by Bishop Watson between ‘genuine’ and ‘authentic’ has been often quoted: “A genuine book is that which was written by the person whose name it bears as the author of it. An authentic book is that which relates matters of fact as they really happened.” Of ‘authentic’ he has certainly not seized the true force, neither do the uses of it by good writers bear him out. The true opposite to αὐθεντικός in Greek is ἀδέσποτος, and ‘authentic’ is properly having an author, and thus coming with authority, authoritative; the connexion of ‘author’ and ‘authority’ in our own language giving us the key to its successive meanings. Thus, an ‘authentic’ document is, in its first meaning, a document written by the proper hand of him from whom it professes to proceed. In all the passages which follow it will be observed that the word might be exchanged for ‘authoritative.’

Awful. This used once to be often employed of that which felt awe; it is only employed now of that which inspires it.

Awkward. In its present signification, unhandy, ungainly, maladroit; which yet is by no means its earlier. There is good reason to think that the same Anglo-Saxon ‘aweg’* appears equally in the first syllable of ‘awkward’ and ‘wayward;’ 16 that the two words, therefore, are identical in meaning, signifying alike, untoward, and that, whether morally or physically, perverse, contrary, sinister, unlucky;† all earlier uses of the word bearing out this view of it.

B.

Babe,
Baby. ‘Doll’ is of late introduction into the English language, is certainly later than Dryden. ‘Babe,’ ‘baby,’ or ‘puppet’ supplied its place.

17

Bacchanal. This would, I suppose, be used now only of the votaress of Bacchus; but it was once more accurately applied to the ‘bacchanalia,’ or orgies celebrated in his honour.

Baffle. Now to counterwork and to defeat; but once not this so much as to mock and put to shame, and, in the technical language of chivalry, it expressed a ceremony of open scorn with which a recreant or perjured knight was visited.

18

Banquet. At present the entire course of any solemn or splendid entertainment; but ‘banquet’ used generally to be restrained to the lighter and ornamental dessert or confection with wine, which followed the more substantial repast.

19

Base,
Baseness. The aristocratic tendencies of speech (tendencies illustrated by the word ‘aristocracy’ itself), which reappear in a thousand shapes, on the one side in such words, and their usages, as καλοκἀγαθός, ἐπιεικής, ‘noble,’ on the other in such as ‘villain,’ ‘boor,’ ‘knave,’ and in this ‘base,’ are well worthy of accurate observation. Thus ‘base’ always now implies moral unworthiness; but did not so once. ‘Base’ men were no more than men of humble birth and low degree.

Battle. Once used not as now of the hostile shock of armies; but often of the army itself; or sometimes in a more special sense, of the main body of the army, as distinguished from the van and rear.

Bawd. Not confined once to one sex only, but could have been applied to pandar and pandaress alike.

Beastly,
Beastliness. We translate σῶμα ψυχικόν (1 Cor. xv. 44) ‘a natural body;’ some have regretted that it was not rendered ‘an animal body.’ This is exactly what Wiclif meant when he translated the ‘corpus animale’ which he found in his Vulgate, ‘a beastly body.’ The word had then no ethical colouring; nor, when it first acquired such, had it exactly that which it now possesses; in it was rather implied the absence 21 of reason, the prerogative distinguishing man from beast.

Blackguard. The scullions and other meaner retainers in a great household, who, when progress was made from one residence to another, accompanied and protected the pots, pans, and other kitchen utensils, riding among them and being smutted by them, were contemptuously styled the ‘black guard.’ It is easy to trace the subsequent history of the word. With a slight forgetfulness of its origin, he is now called a ‘blackguard,’ who would have been once said to belong to the ‘black guard.’

Bleak. It is not often that ‘bleak’ (== the German ‘bleich,’ pale, white,) comes out so clearly in its original identity with ‘bleach’ as in the following quotation. I do not myself remember to have met another passage of the kind.

Bombast. Now inflated diction, words which, sounding lofty and big, have no real substance about them. This, which is now the sole meaning, was once only the secondary and the figurative, ‘bombast’ being literally the cotton wadding with which garments are stuffed out and lined, and often so used by our writers of the Elizabethan period, and then by a vigorous image transferred to what now it exclusively means.

Boot. I do not know the history of the word ‘boot’ as describing one part of a carriage; but it is plain that not the luggage, but the chief persons, used once to ride in the ‘boot.’

Bounty. The tendency to accept freedom of giving in lieu of all other virtues, or at least to regard it as the chiefest of all, the same which has brought ‘charity’ to be for many identical with almsgiving, displays itself in our present use of ‘bounty,’ which, like the French ‘bonté,’ meant goodness once.

24

Brat. the same word as ‘brood,’ is now used always in contempt, but was not so once.

Brave,
Bravery. The derivation of ‘brave’ is altogether uncertain (Diez, Wört. d. Roman. Sprachen, p. 67); we obtained it in the sixteenth century, the Germans in the seventeenth, (Grimm [s.v. ‘brav’] says during the Thirty Years’ War,) from one or other of the Romance languages. I do not very clearly trace by what steps it obtained the meaning of showy, gaudy, rich, which once it so frequently had, in addition to that meaning which it still retains.

Britain,
Britany. The distinction between these is perfectly established now: by the first we always intend Great Britain; by the second, the French duchy, corresponding to the ancient Armorica. But it was long before this usage was accurately settled and accepted by all. By ‘Britany’ Great Britain was frequently intended, and vice versâ. Thus, in each of the passages which follow, the other word than that which actually is used would be now employed.

Bullion. We are indebted to Mr. Wedgewood (Trans. of the Philolog. Soc. 1858, pp. 1-3) for the first accurate history of ‘bullion,’ and explanation of the fact that this, which was once equivalent to the French ‘billon’ (“toute matière d’or ou d’argent décriée, et qui se trouve à plus bas titre que celui d’ordonnance”), is now applied to the precious metals, uncoined indeed and unstamped, but with no suggestion, indeed the contrary rather, that this bullion is below the recognized standard of purity. The ‘bullion’ (“nostre bullione,” as it is called in a statute of Edward III.) was the Royal Mint, so called from the ‘bulla,’ the impress seal or die with which money was stamped. All gold and silver which had not the standard purity or weight was to be brought to this that it might be melted; ‘monnaie de billon’ it was called in French, and ‘bullion’ in the English of Elizabeth and James. Gradually, however, not the comparative inferiority which it had before it passed through the Mint, but the recognition which it obtained after, became the predominant idea; and here is the explanation of the present use of the word.

27

Buxom. The modern spelling of ‘buxom’ (it was somewhat, though not much better, when it was spelt ‘bucksome’) has quite hidden its identity with the German ‘biegsam,’ ‘beugsam,’ bendable, pliable, and so obedient. Ignorant of the history of the word, and trusting to the feeling and impression which it conveyed to their minds, men spoke of ‘buxom health’ and the like, meaning by this, having a cheerful comeliness. The epithet in this application is Gray’s, and Johnson justly finds fault with it. Milton, when he joins ‘buxom’ with ‘blithe and debonair,’ and Crashaw, in his otherwise beautiful line,

show that already for them the true meaning of the word, common enough in our earlier writers, had passed away.

By and by. Now a future more or less remote from the actual present; but when our Version of the Bible was made, the nearest possible future. 28 The inveterate procrastination of men has put ‘by and by’ farther and farther off. Already in Barrow’s time it had acquired its present meaning.

C.

Caitiff. The same word as ‘captive;’ the only difference being that ‘captive’ is derived directly from the Latin, ‘caitiff’ through the interposition of the Norman-French; it had once the same meaning with it. The deep-felt conviction of men that slavery breaks down the moral character, a chief argument against it, but unhappily also a chief difficulty in removing it, this, so grandly unfolded by Horace (Carm. iii. 5), and speaking out in the Italian ‘cattivo,’ in the French ‘chétif,’ speaks out with no less distinctness in the change of meaning 29 which ‘caitiff’ has undergone, signifying, as it now does, one of a base, abject disposition, while there was a time when it had nothing of this in it.

Capitulate. There is no reason why the reducing of any agreement to certain heads or ‘capitula’ should not be called ‘to capitulate,’ the victor thus ‘capitulating’ as well as the vanquished; and the present limitation of the word’s use, by which it means to surrender on certain specified terms, is quite of modern introduction.

Carpet. The covering only of floors at present, but once of tables as well. It was in this sense that a matter was “on the carpet.”

30

Carriage. Now, that which carries, or the act of carrying; but once, that which was carried, and thus baggage. From ignorance of this, the Authorized Translation, at Acts xxi. 15, has been often found fault with, but unjustly.

Cattle. This and ‘chattel’ are only different forms of the same word. At a time when wealth 31 mainly consisted in the number of heads of cattle (capita, capitalia), the word which designated them easily came to signify all other kinds of property as well. (Note the well-known parallel in ‘pecus’ and ‘pecunia,’ and in the fact that our English ‘fee’ is the German ‘Vieh.’) At a later day this was found to have its inconveniences; which some of the writers of the Elizabethan age sought to remedy by using the term ‘quick cattle,’ when they intended live stock; so Sir J. Harington (Epigrams, i. 91), and Puttenham (Art of English Poesy, b. i. c. 18). The distinction, however, was more effectually asserted by the appropriating of the several forms ‘cattle’ and ‘chattel,’ one to the living, the other to the dead.

Censure. It does not speak well for the charity of men’s judgments, that ‘censure,’ which designated once favourable and unfavourable judgments alike, is now restricted to unfavourable; for it must be that the latter, being by far the most frequent, have in this way appropriated the word exclusively to themselves.

Chaffer. Once, to buy, to make a bargain, to higgle or dispute about the making of a bargain, it has at length seen the buying or bargaining quite disappear from it; so that ‘to chaffer’ is now to talk much and idly.

Chaos. The earliest meaning of χάος in Greek, of ‘chaos’ in Latin, was empty infinite space, the yawning kingdom of darkness; only a secondary, that which we have now adopted, namely, the rude, confused, unorganized matter out of which the universe according to the heathen cosmogony was 33 formed. But there are evidences that the primary use of ‘chaos’ was not strange to the literature of the sixteenth century.

Cheer. Cicero, who loves to bring out superiorities, where he can find them, of the Latin language over the Greek, urges this as one, that the Greek has no equivalent to the Latin ‘vultus’ (Leg. i. 9, 27); the countenance, that is, as the ever-varying exponent of the sentiments and passions of the soul. Perhaps it may be charged on the English, that it too is now without such a word. But ‘cheer,’ in its earlier uses, of which certain vestiges still survive, was exactly such.

34

Chemist,
Chemistry. The distinction between the alchemist and the chemist, that the first is the dreamer, the insane searcher after the philosopher’s stone or the elixir vitæ, the other the follower of a true and scientific method in a particular region of nature, is of comparatively recent introduction into the language. ‘Chemist’ is == ‘alchemist’ in the quotations which follow.

Chest. I am not aware that ‘cista’ was ever used in the sense of a coffin, but ‘chest’ is continually so used in our early English; and ‘to chest,’ for to place in a coffin, occurs in the heading of a chapter in our Bibles, Gen. l. 26: “He [Joseph] dieth, and is chested.”

35

Chimney. This, which means now the gorge or vent of a furnace or fire, was once used often for the furnace itself; in this more true to its origin; being derived from the Greek κάμινος, as it passed into the Latin ‘caminus,’ and the French ‘cheminée.’ The fact that it is the ‘chimney,’ in the modern use of the word, which, creating a draught, alone gives fierceness or activity to the flame, probably explains the present limitation of the meaning of the word. In Scotland ‘chimney’ still is, or lately was, “the grate, or iron frame that holds the fire” (Scoticisms, Edinburgh, 1787).

Chivalry. It is a striking evidence of the extent to which in the feudal times the men-at-arms, the mounted knights, were esteemed as the army, while the footmen were regarded as little better 36 than a supernumerary rabble,—another record of this contempt probably surviving in the word ‘infantry,’—that ‘chivalry,’ which of course is but a different form of ‘cavalry,’ could once be used as convertible with army. It needed more than one Agincourt to teach that this was so no longer.

Christen,
Christendom. By ‘Christendom’ we now understand that portion of the world which makes profession of the faith of Christ, as contradistinguished from all heathen and Mahomedan lands. But it was often used by our early writers as itself the profession of Christ’s faith, or sometimes for baptism, inasmuch as in that this profession was made; which is also the explanation of the use of ‘christen’ as equivalent to ‘christianize’ below. In Shakespeare our present use of ‘Chris­tendom’ very much predominates, but once or twice he uses it in its earlier sense, as do authors much later than he.

Church. It is in general accounted a pure oversight on the part of our Translators that they have allowed “robbers of churches” to remain at Acts xix. 37, as the rendering of ἱεροσύλους, sounding, as it does, like an anachronism on the lips of the town-clerk of Ephesus. Doubtless “spoilers of temples,” or some such phrase, would have been preferable; yet was there not any oversight here. The title of ‘church,’ which we with a fit reverence restrain to a Christian place of worship, was in earlier English not refused to the Jewish, or, as in that place, even to a heathen, temple.

38

Civil,
Civility. The tendency which there is in the meaning of words to run to the surface, till they lose and leave behind all their deeper significance, is well exemplified in the words ‘civil’ and ‘civility’—words of how deep an import once, how slight and shallow now. A civil man now is one observant of slight external courtesies in the mutual intercourse between man and man; a civil man once was one who fulfilled all the duties and obligations flowing from his position as a ‘civis,’ and his relations to the other members of that ‘civitas’ to which he belonged, and ‘civility’ the condition in which those were recognized and observed. The gradual departure of all deeper significance from the word ‘civility’ has obliged the creation of another word, ‘civilization,’ which only came up toward the conclusion of the last century. Johnson does not know it in his Dictionary, except as a technical legal term to express the turning of a criminal process into a civil one; and, according to Boswell, altogether disallowed it in the sense which it has now acquired.

Clergy. The use of ‘clergy’ in the abstract for learning or for a learned profession, is, it needs hardly be said, the result of the same conditions which made ‘clerk’ equivalent to scholar.

Clumsy. A word about which little satisfactory has as yet found its way into our dictionaries; but although of no very frequent use in our early literature (it does not once occur in Shakespeare), 40 neither can it be said to be very rare; and where it occurs, it is in a sense going before its present, namely, in that of stiff, rigid, clumped and contracted with cold. It is familiar to all how ‘clumsy,’ in our modern use of the word, the fingers are when in this condition, and thus it is easy to trace the growing of the modern meaning out of the old. There are some observations on the probable etymology of the word in the Proceedings of the Philological Society, vol. v. p. 146.

Climate. At present the temperature of a region, but once the region itself, the region, however, contemplated in its slope or inclination from the equator toward the pole, and therefore, by involved consequence, in respect of its temperature; which circumstance is the point of contact between the present meaning of ‘climate’ and the past. We have derived the word from the mathematical 41 geographers of antiquity. They were wont to run imaginary parallel lines, or such at least as they intended should be parallel, to the equator; and the successive ‘climates’ (κλίματα) of the earth were the spaces and regions between these lines.

Comfort,
Comfortable. The verb ‘confortare,’ not found in classical Latin, but so frequent in the Vulgate, is first, as is plain from the ‘fortis’ which it embodies, to make strong, to corroborate, and only in a secondary sense, to console. We often find it in our early literature employed in that its proper sense.

Common-sense. The manner is very curious in which the metaphysical or theological speculations, to which the busy world was indifferent, or from which it was entirely averse, do yet in their results descend to it, and are adopted by it; while it remains quite unconscious of the source from which they spring, and counts that it has created them for itself and out of its own resources. Thus, probably most persons would almost wonder if asked the parentage of this phrase, ‘common-sense,’ would count it the most natural thing in the world that such a phrase should have been formed, that it demanded no ingenuity to form it, that the uses to which it is now put are the same which it has served from the first. Indeed, neither Reid, Beattie, nor Stewart seem to have assumed any thing else. But in truth this phrase, ‘common-sense,’ meant once something very different from that plain wisdom, the common heritage of men, which now we call by this name, having been bequeathed to us by a very complex theory of the senses, and of a sense which was the common bond of them all, and which passed its verdicts on the reports which they severally made to it. This theory of a κοινὸς νοῦς, familiar to the Greek metaphysicians, is sufficiently explained by the interesting quotation from Henry More. In Hawes’ Pastime of Pleasure 43 (cap. 24) the relation between the ‘common wit’ and the ‘five wits’ is at large set forth.

Companion. “The term ‘companion’ was formerly used contemptuously, in the same way in which we still use its synonyme ‘fellow.’ The notion originally involved in companionship, or accompaniment, would appear to have been rather that of inferiority than of equality. A companion (or comes) was an attendant.” Craik, English of Shakespeare, p. 255.

Conceited,
Conceitedly. ‘Conceit’ is so entirely and irrecoverably lost to the language of philosophy, that it would be well if ‘concept,’ used often by our earlier philosophical writers, were revived. Yet ‘conceit’ has not so totally forsaken all its former meanings (for there are still ‘happy conceits’ in poetry), as have ‘conceited,’ which once meant well conceived, and ‘conceitedly.’

45

Concubine. No notice is taken in our dictionaries that the male paramour as well as the female was sometimes called by this name; on the contrary, their definitions exclude this.

Copy. A more Latin use of ‘copy,’ as ‘copia’ or abundance, was at one time frequent in English. It is easy to trace the steps by which the word attained its present significance. The only way to obtain ‘copy’ (in this Latin sense) or abundance of any document, would be by taking ‘copies’ (in our present sense) of it.

Corpse. Now only used for the body abandoned by the spirit of life, but once for the body of the living man equally as of the dead; now only == ‘cadaver,’ but once ‘corpus’ as well.

Courtesan. The low Latin ‘cortesanus’ was once one haunting the court, a courtier, ‘aulicus,’ though already in Shakespeare we often meet the present application of the word.

Cunning. The fact that so many words implying knowledge, art, skill, obtain in course of time 47 a secondary meaning of crooked knowledge, art which has degenerated into artifice, skill used only to circumvent, which meanings partially or altogether put out of use their primary, is a mournful witness to the way in which intellectual gifts are too commonly misapplied. Thus there was a time when the Latin ‘dolus’ required the epithet ‘malus,’ as often as it signified a treacherous or fraudful device; but it was soon able to drop this as superfluous, and to stand by itself. Other words which have gone the same downward course are the following: τέχνη, ‘astutia,’ ‘calliditas,’ ‘List,’ ‘Kunst,’ and our English ‘cunning,’—the last, indeed, as early as Lord Bacon, who says, “We take cunning for a sinister or crooked wisdom,” had acquired what is now its only acceptation; but not then, nor till long after, to the exclusion of its more honourable use. How honourable that use sometimes was, my first quotation will testify.

Curate. Rector, vicar, every one having cure of souls, was a ‘curate’ once. Thus ‘bishops and curates’ in the Liturgy.

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D.

Danger,
Dangerous. A feudal term, beset with many difficulties in its passage to its present use. Du Cange has written upon it, and Diez, and there is a careful article in Richardson. It is a low Latin word, ‘dangerium,’ of which the etymology is uncertain, signifying the strict right of the suzerain in regard to the fief of the vassal; thus, ‘fief de danger,’ a fief held under strict and severe conditions, and therefore in danger of being forfeited (juri stricto atque adeo confiscationi obnoxium; Du Cange). There is no difficulty here; but there is another early use of ‘danger’ and ‘dangerous’ which is not thus explained, nor yet the connexion between it and the modern meaning of the words. I refer to that of ‘danger’ in the sense of ‘coyness,’ ‘sparingness,’ ‘niggardliness,’ 49 and of ‘dangerous’ with the adjectival uses corresponding.

Deadly. This and ‘mortal’ are often synonymes now; thus, ‘a deadly wound’ or ‘a mortal wound:’ but they are not invariably so; ‘deadly’ being always active, while ‘mortal’ is often passive, and signifying not that which inflicts death, but that which suffers death; thus, ‘a mortal body,’ or body subject to death, but not now ‘a deadly body.’ It was otherwise once. ‘Deadly’ is the constant word in Wiclif’s Bible, wherever in the later versions ‘mortal’ occurs.

Defalcation. A word at present of very slovenly and inaccurate use. We read in the newspapers of a ‘defalcation’ of the revenue, not meaning thereby an active lopping off (‘defalcatio’) of certain taxes with their proceeds, which would be the only correct use, but a passive falling short in its returns from what they previously were. Can it be that some confusion of ‘defalcation’ with ‘default,’ or at least a seeing of ‘fault’ and not ‘falx’ in its second syllable (there was once a verb ‘to defalk’), has led to this?

Defend. Now to protect, but once to protect 51 by prohibiting, or fencing round, to forbid, as ‘défendre’ is still in French.

Defy,
Defiance. This means now to dare to the uttermost hostility, and so, as a consequence which will often follow upon this, to challenge. But in earlier use ‘to defy’ is, according to its etymology, to pronounce all bonds of faith and fellowship which existed previously between the defier and the defied to be wholly dissolved, so that nothing of treaty or even of the natural faith of man to man shall henceforth hinder extremest hostility between them. But still, when we read of one potentate sending ‘defiance’ to another, the challenge to conflict did not lie necessarily in the word, however such a message might provoke and would often be the prelude to this: it meant but the releasing of himself from all which hitherto had mutually obliged; and thus it came often to mean simply to disclaim, or renounce.

Delay. Like the French ‘délayer,’ used often in old time where we should now employ ‘allay.’ Out of an ignorance of this, and assuming it a misprint, some modern editors of our earlier authors have not scrupled to change ‘delay’ into ‘allay.’

Delicacy,
Delicately,
Delicious,
Deliciously. In the same way as self-indulgence creeps over us by unmarked degrees, so there creeps over the words that designate it a subtle 53 change; they come to contain less and less of rebuke and blame; the thing itself being tolerated, nay allowed, it must needs be that the words which express it should be received into favour too. It has been thus, as I shall have occasion to note, with ‘luxury;’ it has been thus also with this whole group of words. See the quotation from Sir W. Raleigh, s.v. ‘Feminine.’

Demerit. It was plainly an inconvenient arrangement, a squandering of the wealth of the language, that ‘merit’ and ‘demerit’ should mean one and the same thing; however this might be justified by the fact that ‘mereor’ and ‘demereor,’ from which they were severally derived, were scarcely discriminated in meaning. It has thus come to pass, according to the desynonymizing 54 processes ever at work in a language, that ‘demerit’ has ended in being employed only of ill desert, while ‘merit’ is left free to good or ill, having predominantly the sense of the former.

Demure,
Demureness. Used by our earlier writers without the insinuation, which is now always latent in it, that the external shows of modesty and sobriety rest upon no corresponding realities. On the contrary the ‘demure’ was the truly modest and virtuous and the good. It is one of the many words to which the suspicious nature of man, with the warrants to a certain extent which these suspicions find, has given a turn for the worse.

Depart. Once used as equivalent with ‘to separate,’—a fact already forgotten, when, at the last revision of the Prayer-Book in 1661, the Puritan divines objected to the form as it then stood in the Marriage Service, ‘till death us depart;’ in condescension to whose objection the words, as we now have them, ‘till death us do part’ were introduced.

Deprave. As ‘pravus’ is literally crooked, we may say that ‘to deprave’ was formerly ‘untruly to present as crooked,’ to defame; while it is now 56 ‘wickedly to make crooked.’ See the quotation from Bacon, s.v. ‘Disable.’

Desire. ‘To desire’ is only to look forward with longing now; the word has lost the sense of regret or looking back upon the lost but still loved. This it once possessed in common with ‘desiderium’ and ‘desiderare,’ from which more remotely, and ‘désirer,’ from which more immediately, we derive it.

Diffidence,
Diffidently. ‘Diffidence’ expresses now a not unbecoming distrust of one’s own self, with only a slight intimation, such as ‘verecundia’ obtained in the silver age of Latin literature, that perhaps this distrust is carried too far; but it was once used for distrust of others, and sometimes for distrust pushed so far as to amount to an entire withholding of all faith from them, 57 being nearly allied to despair; as indeed in The Pilgrim’s Progress Mistress ‘Diffidence’ is Giant Despair’s wife.

Digested. Scholars of the seventeenth century often employ a word of their own language in the same latitude which its equivalent possessed in the Greek or the Latin; as though it entered into all the rights of its equivalent, and corresponded with it on all points, because it corresponded in 58 one. Thus ‘coctus’ meaning ‘digested,’ why should not ‘digested’ mean all which ‘coctus’ meant? but one of the meanings of ‘coctus’ is ‘ripened;’ ‘digested’ therefore might be employed in the same sense.

Disable. Our ancestors felt that to injure the character of another was the most effectual way of ‘disabling’ him; and out of a sense of this they often used ‘disable’ in the sense of to disparage, to speak slightingly of.

Discourse. It is very characteristic of the slight acquaintance with our elder literature—the most obvious source for elucidating Shakespeare’s text—which was possessed by many of his commentators down to a late day, that the phrase ‘discourse of reason,’ which he puts into Hamlet’s mouth, should have perplexed them so greatly. Gifford, a pitiless animadverter on the real or imaginary mistakes of others, and who tramples upon 59 Warburton for attempting to explain this phrase as though Shakespeare could have ever written it, declares “‘discourse of reason’ is so poor and perplexed a phrase that I should dismiss it at once for what I believe to be his genuine language;” and then proceeds to suggest the obvious but erroneous correction “discourse and reason” (see his Massinger, vol. i. p. 148); while yet, if there be a phrase of frequent recurrence among the writers of our Elizabethan age and down to Milton, it is this. I have little doubt that it occurs fifty times in Holland’s translation of Plutarch’s Moralia. What our fathers intended by ‘discourse’ and ‘discourse of reason,’ the following passages will abundantly declare.

Disease. Our present limitation of ‘disease’ is a very natural one, seeing that nothing so effectually wars against ease as a sick and suffering condition of body. Still the limitation is modern, and by ‘disease’ was once meant any malease, distress, or discomfort whatever.

Dismal. Minshew’s derivation of ‘dismal,’ that it is ‘dies malus,’ the unlucky, ill-omened day, is exactly one of those plausible etymologies to which one learns after a while to give no credit. Yet there can be no doubt that our fathers so understood the word, and that this assumed etymology often overrules their usage of it.

Disoblige. Release from obligation lies at the root of all uses, present and past, of this word; but it was formerly more the release from an oath or a duty, and now rather from the slighter debts of social life, to which kindness and courtesy on the 62 part of another would have held us bound or ‘obliged;’ while the contraries to these are ‘disobliging.’

Document. Now used only of the material, and not, as once, of the moral proof, evidence, or means of instruction.

Dole. This and ‘deal’ are of course one and the same word, and answer to the German ‘Theil,’ a part or portion. It has now always the subaudition of a scanty portion, as ‘to dole’ is to deal scantily and reluctantly forth (‘pittance’ has acquired the same); but Sanderson’s use of ‘dole’ is instructive, as showing that ‘distribution or division’ is all which once lay in the word.

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Dreadful. Now that which causes dread, but once that which felt it.

Drench. As ‘to fell’ is ‘to make to fall,’ and ‘to lay’ ‘to make to lie,’ so ‘to drench’ is ‘to make to drink,’ though with a sense now very short of ‘to drown;’ but ‘drench’ and ‘drown,’ though desynonymized in our later English, were once perfectly adequate to one another.

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Duke. One of Shakespeare’s commentators charges him with an anachronism, the incongruous transfer of a modern title to an ancient condition of society, when he styles Theseus ‘Duke of Athens.’ It would be of very little consequence if the charge were a true one; but it is not, as his English Bible might have sufficiently taught him; Gen. xxxvi. 15-18. ‘Duke’ has indeed since Shakespeare’s time become that which this objector supposed it to have been always; but all were ‘dukes’ once who were ‘duces,’ captains and leaders of their people.

Dunce. I have sought elsewhere (Study of Words, p. 83) to trace somewhat at large the very curious history of this word. Sufficient here to say that Duns Scotus, whom Hooker styles “the wittiest of the school divines,” has given us this name, which now ascribes hopeless ignorance, invincible stupidity, to him on whom it is affixed. The course by which this came to pass was as follows. 65 When at the Reformation and Revival of Learning the works of the Schoolmen fell into extreme disfavour, at once with all the Reformers and with all votaries of the new learning, Duns, a standard-bearer among those, was so often referred to with scorn and contempt by these, that his name gradually became that byeword which it since has been. See the quotation from Stanyhurst, s.v. ‘Trivial.’

Dutch,
Dutchman. Till late in the seventeenth century ‘Dutch’ (‘deutsch’ or ‘teutsch,’ ‘theotiscus’) meant generally ‘German,’ and a ‘Dutchman’ a native of Germany, while what we should now term a Dutchman would have been 66 named then a Hollander. I observe it stated in a recent volume of travels in America, that in many parts there, Germans are now called ‘Dutchmen,’ the retention of an old usage, even as we find so many examples of this in America.

E.

Eager,
Eagerness. The physical and literal sense of ‘eager,’ that is, sharp or acrid (aigre, acris), has quite departed from the word; which, however, occasionally retained this, long after it was employed in the secondary meaning which is its only one at present.

* Vinegar.

Ebb. Nothing ‘ebbs,’ unless it be figuratively, except water now. But ‘ebb,’ oftener an adjective than any thing else, was continually used in our earlier English with a general meaning of shallow. There is still a Lancashire proverb, Cross the stream, where it is ebbest.

Ecstasy. We still say of madmen that they are beside themselves; but ‘ecstasy,’ or a standing out of oneself, is no longer used as an equivalent to madness.

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Egregious. This has always now an ironical subaudition, which it was very far from having of old.

Elevate. There are two intentions with which any thing may be lifted from the place which it occupies; either with the intention of setting it in a more conspicuous position; or else of removing it out of the way, or, figuratively, of withdrawing all importance and significance from it. We employ ‘to elevate’ now in the former intention; our ancestors for the most part, especially those whose style was influenced by their Latin studies, in the latter.

Embezzle. A man can now only ‘embezzle’ another man’s property; he might once ‘embezzle’ his own. Thus while we might now say that the Unjust Steward ‘embezzled’ his lord’s goods (Luke xvi. 1), we could not say that the Prodigal Son ‘embezzled’ the substance which he had received from his father, and which had thus become his own (Luke xv. 13); but the one would have been as free to our early writers as the other.

Emulation. We usefully distinguish now between ‘emulation,’ or the desire for more and better in ourselves, kindled by the good which we behold in another; and envy, which has no such longing for self-improvement, but only the desire to see less and worse in our brother; we distinguish, that is, between that which may be a very worthy passion, and that which must always be a most unworthy one; but ‘emulation,’ though sometimes used in this nobler sense, was by no means always so once; it was often an exact equivalent to envy.

Enormous,
Enormity. Now only applied to that which is irregular in excess, in this way 71 transcending the established norm or rule. But departure from rule or irregularity in any direction might be characterised as ‘enormous’ once.

Ensure. None of our Dictionaries, as far as I can observe, have taken notice of an old use of this word, namely, to betroth, and thus to make sure the future husband and wife to each other. See ‘Assure,’ ‘Sure.’

Epicure. Now applied only to those who devote 72 themselves, yet with a certain elegance and refinement, to the pleasures of the table. We may trace two earlier stages in its meaning. By Lord Bacon and others, the followers of Epicurus, whom we should call Epicureans, are often called ‘Epicures,’ after the name of the founder of their sect. From them it was transferred to all who were, like them, deniers of a divine providence; and this is the common use of it by our elder divines. But inasmuch as those who have persuaded themselves that there is nothing above them, will seek their good, since men must seek it somewhere, in the things beneath them, in sensual delights, the name has been transferred, by that true moral instinct which is continually at work in speech, from the philosophical speculative atheist to the human swine, for whom the world is but a feeding-trough.

Equal. The ethical sense of ‘equal,’ as fair, 73 candid, just, has almost, if not altogether, departed from it.

Equivocal,
Equivocally,
Equivocation. The calling two or more different things by one and the same name (æque vocare) is the source of almost all error in human discourse. He who wishes to throw dust in the eyes of an opponent, to hinder his arriving at the real facts of a case, will often have recourse to this artifice, and thus ‘to equivocate’ and ‘equivocation’ have attained their present secondary meaning, very different from their original, which was simply the naming of two or more different things by one and the same word.

Essay. There is no particular modesty now in calling a treatise or dissertation an ‘essay;’ but from many passages it is plain that there was so once; which indeed is only agreeable to the proper meaning of the word, an ‘essay’ being a trial, proof, specimen, taste of a thing, rather than the very and completed thing itself.

Exemplary. A certain vagueness in our use of ‘exemplary’ makes it for us little more than a loose synonym for excellent. We plainly often 75 forget that ‘exemplary’ is strictly that which serves, or might serve, for an exemplar to others, while only through keeping this distinctly before us will passages like the following yield their exact meaning to us.

Exemplify. The use of ‘exemplify’ in the sense of the Greek παραδειγματίζειν (Matt. i. 19) has now passed away. Observe also in the passage quoted the curious use of ‘traduce.’

Explode. All our present uses of ‘explode,’ whether literal or figurative, have reference to bursting, and to bursting with noise; and it is for the most part forgotten, I should imagine, that these are all secondary and derived; that ‘to explode,’ originally an active verb, means to drive off the stage with loud clappings of the hands: 76 and that when one of our early writers speaks of an ‘exploded’ heresy or an ‘exploded’ opinion, his image is not drawn from something which, having burst, has perished so; but he would imply that it has been contemptuously driven off from the world’s stage—the fact that ‘explosion’ in this earlier sense was with a great noise being the connecting link between that sense and our present.

Exterminate,
Extermination. It now signifies to destroy, to abolish; but our fathers, more true to the etymology, understood by it to drive men out of and beyond their own borders.

F.

Facetious,
Facetiousness. It is certainly not a little remarkable that alike in Greek, Latin, and English, words expressive of witty festive conversation should have degenerated, though not all exactly in the same direction, and gradually acquired a worse signification than that with which they began; I mean εὐτραπελία, ‘urbanitas,’ and our own ‘facetiousness;’ this degeneracy of the words warning us how easily the thing itself degenerates; how sure it is to do so, to corrupt and spoil, if it be not seasoned with the only salt which will hinder this. ‘Facetiousness’ has already acquired the sense of buffoonery, of the making of ignoble mirth for others; there are plain indications that it will ere long acquire the sense of indecent buffoonery; while there was a time, as the examples given below will prove, when it could be ascribed in praise to high-bred ladies of the court and to grave prelates and divines.

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Fairy. In whatever latitude we may employ ‘fairy’ now, it is always restricted to the middle beings of the Gothic mythology; being in no case applied, as it used to be, to the δαίμονες of classical antiquity.

Fastidious. Persons are ‘fastidious’ now, as feeling disgust; things, and indeed persons too, were ‘fastidious’ once, as occasioning disgust. The 79 word has shifted from an objective to a subjective use. ‘Fastidiosus’ had both uses, but our modern quite predominated; indeed the other is very rare.

Feature. This, the Italian ‘fattura,’ is always the part now of a larger whole, a ‘feature’ of the landscape, the ‘features’ of the face; but there was no such limitation once; any thing made, any ‘fattura,’ was a ‘feature’ once.

Feminine. The distinction between ‘feminine’ and ‘effeminate,’ that the first is ‘womanly,’ the second ‘womanish,’ the first what becomes a woman, and may under certain limitations without reproach be affirmed of a man, while the 80 second is that which under all circumstances dishonours a man, as ‘mannish’ would dishonour a woman, is of comparatively modern growth.

Firmament. We now use ‘firmament’ only for that portion of the sky on all sides visible above the horizon, having gotten this application of the word from the Vulgate (Gen. i. 6), or at any rate from the Church Latin (‘firmamentum cœleste,’ Tertullian, De Bapt. 3), as that had derived it from the Septuagint. This by στερέωμα had sought to express the firmness and stability of the sky-tent, which phenomenally (and Scripture for the most part speaks phenomenally,) is drawn over the earth; and to reproduce the force of the original Hebrew word,—in which, however, there is rather the notion of expansion than of firmness (see H. More, Defence of Cabbala, p. 60). But besides this use of ‘firmament,’ totally strange to the 81 classical ‘firmamentum,’ being derived to us from the ecclesiastical employment of the word, there is also an occasional use of it by the scholarly writers of the seventeenth century in the original classical sense, as generally that which makes strong or confirms.

Flicker. This and ‘flutter’ are thoroughly desynonymized now: a flame ‘flickers,’ a bird ‘flutters;’ but it was not so once.

Flirt. Much more serious charges were implied once in this name than are at the present, as will be sufficiently clear from the quotations which follow.

Fondling. ‘Fond’ retains to this day, at least in poetry, not seldom the sense of foolish; but a ‘fondling’ is no longer a fool.

Forlorn Hope. There are two points of difference between the past use of ‘forlorn hope’ and the present. The first, that it was seldom used,—I cannot myself recall a single example,—in that which is now its only application, namely, of those who, being the first to mount the breach, thus set their lives upon a desperate hazard; but always of the skirmishers and others thrown out in front of an army about to engage. Here indeed the central notion of the word may be said to be the same as it is now. These first come to hand-strokes with the enemy; they bear the brunt of their onset; and there may therefore seem less likelihood that they will escape than those who come after. 83 This is quite true, and it comes remarkably out in my first quotation from Holland. But in passages innumerable this of the greater hazard to which the ‘forlorn hope’ are exposed, has noticeably enough quite disappeared from the phrase, and they are simply that part of the army which, being posted in the front, commences the engagement. In this sense it is often merely the ‘forlorn,’ ‘hope’ being omitted.* It would be curious to know when ‘forlorn hope’ first appeared in the language. The first example I find of it is in Gascoigne’s Fruits of War, st. 74.

Formality,
Formally. It has been observed already, s.v. ‘Common Sense,’ that a vast number of our words have descended to us from abstruse sciences and speculations, we accepting them often in a total unconsciousness of the quarter from which they come. Another proof of this assertion is here; only as it was metaphysics there, it is logic here which has given us the word. It is curious to trace the steps by which ‘formality,’ which meant in the language of the schools the essentiality, the innermost heart of a thing, the ‘forma formans,’ should now mean something not merely so different, but so opposite.

France,
Frenchman. We consider now, and consider rightly, that there was properly no ‘France’ before there were Franks; and, speaking of the land or people before the Frankish occupation, we use Gaul, Gauls, and Gaulish; just as we speak of Cæsar’s invasion of Britain, not his invasion of England. Our fathers had not these scruples.

Frightful. Now always active, that which 86 inspires fright; but formerly as often passive, that which is, or is liable to be, frightened.

Frippery. Now such trumpery, such odds and ends of cheap finery, as one might expect to meet at an old-clothes shop; but in our early dramatists and others of their time, the shop itself where old clothes were scoured, ‘interpolated,’ and presented anew for sale (officina vestium tritarum, Skinner); nor had ‘frippery’ then the contemptuous subaudition of worthlessness in the objects offered for sale which its present use would imply.

Fulsome,
Fulsomeness. I have seen it questioned whether in the first syllable of ‘fulsome’ we are to find ‘foul’ or ‘full.’ There should be no question on the matter; seeing that ‘fulsome’ is properly no more than ‘full,’ and then secondly 87 that which by its fulness and overfulness produces first satiety, and then loathing and disgust. This meaning of ‘fulsome’ is still retained in our only present application of the word, namely to compliments and flattery, which by their grossness produce this effect on him who is their object; but the word had once many more applications than this, see the quotation from Pope, s.v. ‘Bacchanal.’

G.

Garb. This is one of many words, whereof all the meaning has run to the surface. A man’s dress was once only a portion, and a very small 88 portion, of his ‘garb,’ which included his whole outward presentment to other men; now it is all.

Garble. Books only are ‘garbled’ now; and ‘garbled’ extracts are extracts which have been dishonestly made, which have been so shifted, mutilated, and otherwise dealt with, that, while they are presented as fair specimens, they convey a false impression. It is not difficult to trace the downward progress of the word. It is derived from the low Latin ‘garba,’ a wheatsheaf, and ‘garbellare,’ to sift or cleanse corn from any dust or rubbish which may have become mingled with it. It was then applied to any separation of the good from the bad, retaining that, rejecting this, and used thus especially of spices; then generally to picking and choosing, but without any intention to select the better and to dismiss the worse; and lastly, as at present, to picking and choosing with the distinct 89 purpose of selecting that which should convey the worst impression, and dismissing that which should convey a truer and a better. It is a very favourite word in its earlier uses with Fuller.

Garland. At present we know no other ‘garlands’ but of flowers; but ‘garland’ was at one time a technical name for the royal crown or diadem, and not a poetical one, as might at first sight appear; as witness these words of Matthew of Paris in his Life of Henry III.: Rex veste deauratâ, et 90 coronulâ aureâ, quæ vulgariter garlanda dicitur, redimitus.

Gazette. An Italian word, signifying originally, as is well known, a small piece of tin money current at Venice; which being the price at which the flying sheets of news, first published there, were sold, in this way gave to them their name; and they also were called ‘gazettes.’ We see the word in this its secondary sense, but not as yet thoroughly at home in English, for it still retains an Italian termination, in Ben Jonson’s Volpone (Act v. Sc. 2), of which the scene is laid at Venice. Curiously enough the same play gives also an example, quoted below, of the word in its earlier use.

Gelding. Restrained at present to horses which have ceased to be entire; but until ‘eunuch,’ which is of somewhat late adoption, had been introduced into the language, serving the needs which that serves now.

Generosity. We still use ‘generous’ occasionally in the sense of highly or nobly born; but ‘generosity’ has quite lost this its earlier sense, and acquired a purely ethical meaning.

Gestation. Now a technical word applied only to the period during which the females of animals carry their young; but acknowledging no such limitation once.

Gist. This is the French ‘gîte,’ from the old ‘gésir,’ and meant, as does the French word still, the place where one lodges for the night. But where is the point of contact and connexion between ‘gist’ in this sense, and ‘gist’ as we use it now?

93

Glory,
Glorious. ‘Glory’ is never employed now in the sense of ‘vain-glory,’ nor ‘glorious’ in that of ‘vain-glorious,’ as once they often were.

Good-nature,
Good-natured. As metaphysics have yielded us ‘common sense,’ and logic ‘formality,’ so we owe to theology ‘good-nature.’ By it our elder divines understood far more than we understand by it now; even all which it is possible for a man to have, without having the grace of God. The contrast between grace and nature was of course unknown to the Greeks; but, this being 94 kept in mind, we may say that the ‘good-nature’ of our old theology was as nearly as possible expressed by the εὐφυΐα of Aristotle (Eth. Nic. iii. 7), the genial preparedness for the reception of every high teaching. See ‘Ill-nature.’

Gospeller. Now seldom used save in ritual language, and there designating the priest or deacon who in the divine service reads the Gospel of the day; but once used as equivalent to Evangelist, and subsequently applied to adherents of the Reformed faith; both which meanings have since departed from it.

Gossip. It would be interesting to collect instances in which the humbler classes of society have retained the correct use of a word, which has been let go by those who would rather claim to be guardians of the purity of their native tongue. ‘Gossip’ is one, being still used by our peasantry in its first and etymological sense, namely as a sponsor in baptism—one sib or akin in God, according to the doctrine of the medieval Church, that sponsors contracted a spiritual affinity with one another, with the parents, and with the child itself. ‘Gossips,’ in this primary sense, would ordinarily 96 be intimate and familiar with one another—would have been so already, or through this affinity would have become so; and thus the word was next applied to all familiars and intimates. At a later day it obtained the meaning which is now predominant in it, namely the idle profitless talk, the ‘commérage’ (which word has exactly the same history) that too often finds place in the intercourse of such.

Gravel. This verb has lost now any but a secondary and figurative meaning. But the way in which ‘to be gravelled’ should mean to be utterly perplexed and brought to an intellectual standstill, the passage quoted below will show.

97

Grope. Now to feel for, and uncertainly, as does a blind man or one in the dark; but once simply to feel, to gripe or grasp.

Grudge. Now to repine at the good which others already have, or which we may be required to impart to them; but it formerly implied open utterances of discontent and displeasure with others, and did the work which ‘to murmur’ does now. Traces of this still survive in our English Bible.

Guard. Is ‘guard,’ in the sense of welt or border to a garment, nothing more than a special application of ‘guard,’ as it is familiar to us all? or is it altogether a different word with its own etymology, 98 and only by accident offering the same letters in the same sequence? I have assumed, though not with perfect confidence, the former; for indeed otherwise the word would have no right to a place here.

H.

Hag. One of the many words applied formerly to both sexes, but now restrained only to one.

Handsome,
Handsomeness. Now referred exclusively to comeliness, either literal or 99 figurative. It is of course closely connected with ‘handy,’ indeed differs from it only in termination, and in all early uses means having prompt and dexterous use of the hands, and then generally able, adroit. In Cotgrave’s Dictionary, ‘habile,’ ‘adroit,’ ‘maniable,’ take precedence of ‘beau,’ ‘belle,’ as French equivalents of it.

Harbinger. This word belongs at present to our poetical λέξις, and to that only; its original significance being nearly or quite forgotten; as is evident from the inaccurate ways in which it has come to be used; as though a ‘harbinger’ were 100 merely one who announced the coming, and not always one who prepared a place and lodging, a ‘harbour,’ for another. He did indeed announce the near approach, but only as an accidental consequence of his office. Our Lord, if we may reverently say it, assumed to Himself precisely the office of a ‘harbinger,’ when He said, “I go to prepare a place for you” (John xiv. 2).

Hardy,
Hardily. When used of persons, ‘hardy’ means always now enduring, indifferent to fatigue, hunger, thirst, heat, cold, and the like. But it had once a far more prevailing sense of bold, which now only remains to it in connexion with things, as we should still speak of a ‘hardy,’ meaning thereby a bold, assertion; though never now of a ‘hardy,’ if we intended a bold or daring person. In respect of the quotation from Lord Bacon, the reader must bear in mind that his 101 Charles the Hardy is Charles le Téméraire, or Charles the Bold, as we always style him now.

Harlot. I have no desire to entangle myself in the question of this word’s etymology; it is sufficient to observe that it was used of both sexes alike; and though for the most part a word of slight and contempt, implied nothing of that special form of sin to which it now exclusively refers.

* “Qui se harlotos appellant” are the important words in Henry the Third’s letter to the Sheriff of Oxfordshire, requiring their dispersion.

102

Harness. In French the difference between the ‘harness’ of a man and of a horse is expressed by a slight difference in the spelling, ‘harnois’ in one case, ‘harnais’ in the other. In English we only retain it now in the second of these applications.

Harvest. It is remarkable that while spring, summer, winter, have all their Anglo-Saxon names, we designate the other quarter of the year by its Latin title ‘autumn;’ the word which should have designated it, ‘harvest,’ ‘hearfest’ (== the German ‘Herbst’), having been appropriated to the ingathering of the fruits of this season, not to the season itself. In this indeed we are truer to the proper meaning of ‘harvest’ than the Germans, who have transferred the word from the former to the latter; for it is closely related with the Greek καρπός and the Latin ‘carpo.’ Occasionally, however, 103 as in the passage which follows, ‘harvest’ assumes with us also the signification of autumn.

Hear. Our scholars of the seventeenth century occasionally use the Latin idiom, ‘to hear well,’ or ‘to hear ill,’ i.e. concerning oneself (bene audire, male audire), instead of, to be praised, or to be blamed.

Hobby. The ‘hobby’ being the ambling nag ridden for pleasure, and then the child’s toy in 104 imitation of the same, had in these senses nearly passed out of use, when the word revived, by a very natural transfer, in the sense which it now has, of a favourite pursuit which carries a man easily and pleasantly forward.

Homely. The etymology of ‘homely’ which Milton puts into the mouth of Comus,

witnesses that in his time it had the same meaning which it has in ours. At an earlier day, however, it much more nearly corresponded to the German ‘heimlich,’ that is, secret, inward, familiar, as those may be presumed to be that share in a common home.

Hoyden. Now and for a long time since a clownish ill-bred girl; yet I cannot doubt that Skinner is right when he finds in it only another form of ‘heathen.’ Remote as the words appear at starting, it will not be hard to bring them close together. In the first place, it is only by a superinduced meaning that ‘heathen’ has its present sense of non-christian; it is properly, as Grimm has abundantly shown, a dweller on the heath; then any living a wild savage life; thus we have in Wiclif (Acts xxviii. 1), “And hethen men [barbari, Vulg.] dide unto us not litil curtesie;” and only afterwards was the word applied to those who resisted to the last the humanizing influences of the Christian faith. This ‘heathen’ is in Dutch ‘heyden;’ while less than two hundred years ago ‘hoyden’ was by no means confined, as it now is, to the female sex, the clownish ill-bred wench, but was oftener applied to men.

Humour,
Humourous,
Humourist. The four ‘humours’ in a man, according to the old physicians, were blood, choler, phlegm, and melancholy. So long as these were duly mixed, all would be well. But so soon as any of them unduly preponderated, the man became ‘humourous,’ one ‘humour’ or another bearing too great a sway in him. As such, his conduct would not be according to the received rule of other men, but have something peculiar, whimsical, self-willed in it. In this the self-asserting character of the ‘humourous’ man lay the point of contact, the middle term, between the modern use of ‘humour’ and the ancient. It was his ‘humour’ which would lead a man to take an original view and aspect of things, a ‘humourous’ aspect, first in the old sense, and then in that which we now employ.

I.

Idiot. A word with a very interesting and instructive history, which, however, is only fully intelligible by a reference to the Greek. The ἰδιώτης or ‘idiot’ is first the private man as distinguished 108 from the man sustaining a public office; then, inasmuch as public life was considered an absolutely necessary condition of man’s highest education, the untaught or mentally undeveloped, as distinguished from the educated; and only after it had run through these courses did ‘idiot’ come to signify what ἰδιώτης never did, the man whose mental powers are not merely unexercised but deficient, as distinguished from him in full possession of them. This is the only employment to which we now put the word; but examples of its earlier and more Greek uses are frequent in Jeremy Taylor and others.

Ill-nature,
Ill-natured. This is now rather one special evil quality, as κακία is often in Greek; it was once the complex of all, or more 109 properly the natural substratum on which they all were superinduced. See ‘Good-nature.’

Imp. Employed in nobler senses formerly than now. ‘To imp’ is properly to engraft, and an ‘imp’ a scion or engrafted shoot; and, even as we now speak of the ‘scions’ of a noble house, so there was in earlier English the same natural transfer of ‘imps’ from plants to persons.

Impotent,
Impotence. The inner connexion between weakness and violence is finely declared in Latin in the fact that ‘impotens’ implies both; so once did ‘impotent’ in English, though it now retains only the meaning of weak.

Incense. Now to kindle anger only; but once to kindle or inflame any passion, good or bad, in the breast. Anger, as the strongest passion, finally 111 appropriated the word, just as in Greek it made θυμός and ὀργή its own.

Incivility. See ‘Civil.’

Indifferent,
Indifference,
Indifferently. It is a striking testimony of the low general average which we have come to assume common to most things, that a thing which does not differ from others, is thereby qualified as poor; a sentence of depreciation is pronounced upon it when it is declared to be ‘indifferent.’ When in Greek διαφέρειν means ‘præstare,’ and τὰ διαφέροντα ‘præstantiora,’ we have exactly the same feeling embodying itself at the other end. But this use of these words is modern. ‘Indifferent’ was impartial once, not making differences, where none really were.

112

Indolence. ‘Indolentia’ was a word first invented by Cicero, when he was obliged to find some equivalent for the ἀπάθεια of certain Greek schools. That it was not counted one of his happiest coinages we may conclude from the seldom use of it by any other authors but himself, as also from the fact that Seneca a little later proposed ‘impatientia’ as the Latin equivalent for ἀπάθεια, implying that none such had hitherto been found. The word has taken firmer root in English than it ever did in Latin; at the same time, meaning as it does now a condition or temper of languid non-exertion, it has lost the accuracy of use which it had in the philosophical schools, where it signified a state of freedom from passion and pain; which signification it retained among our own writers of the Caroline period, and even later; to this day, indeed, surgeons call painless swellings ‘indolent tumours.’

113

Ingenious,
Ingenuous,
Ingenuity,
Ingenuousness. We are now pretty well agreed in respect of the use of these words; but there was a time when the uttermost confusion reigned amongst them. Thus, in the first and second quotations which follow, ‘ingenious’ is used where we should now use, and where oftentimes the writers of that time would have used, ‘ingenuous,’ and the converse in the third; while in like manner ‘ingenuity’ in each of the three succeeding quotations stands for our present ‘ingenuousness,’ and ‘ingenuousness’ in the last for ‘ingenuity.’ In respect of ‘ingenious’ and ‘ingenuous,’ the arrangement at which we have now arrived regarding 114 their several meanings, namely that the first indicates mental, the second moral qualities, is good; ‘ingenious’ being from ‘ingenium,’ and ‘ingenuous’ from ‘ingenuus.’ But ‘ingenuity,’ being from ‘ingenuous,’ should have kept the meaning, which it has now quite let go, of innate nobleness of disposition; while ‘ingeniousness,’ against which there could have been no objection to which ‘ingenuousness’ is not equally exposed, might have expressed what ‘ingenuity’ does now.

Insolent,
Insolence. The ‘insolent’ is properly no more than the unusual. This, as the violation of the fixed law and order of society, is commonly offensive, even as it indicates a mind willing to offend; and thus ‘insolent’ has acquired its present meaning. But for the poet, the fact that he is forsaking the beaten, track, that he can say,

in this way to be ‘insolent’ or original, as we should now say, may be his highest praise. The epithet ‘furious’ joined to ‘insolence’ in the second quotation is to be explained of that ‘fine madness’ which Spenser as a Platonist esteemed a necessary condition of the poet.

Institute,
Instituter,
Institution. These all had once in English meanings coextensive with those of the Latin words which they represent. 116 We now inform, instruct, (the images are nearly the same), but we do not ‘institute,’ children any more.

J.

Jacobin. The great French Revolution has stamped itself too deeply and terribly upon the mind of Europe for ‘Jacobin’ ever again to have any other meaning than that which the famous Club, assembling in the hall of the Jacobin convent, has given it; but it needs hardly to say that a ‘Jacobin’ was once a Dominican friar, though this name did not extend beyond France.

K.

Kindly. Nothing ethical was connoted in ‘kindly’ once; it was simply the adjective of ‘kind.’ But it is God’s ordinance that ‘kind’ should be ‘kindly,’ in our modern sense of the word as well; and thus the word has attained this meaning.

118

Knave. How many serving-lads must have been unfaithful and dishonest before ‘knave,’ which meant at first no more than boy, acquired the meaning which it has now! Note the same history in the German ‘Bube,’ ‘Dirne,’ ‘Schalk.’

Knuckle. The German ‘Knöchel’ is any joint whatsoever; nor was our ‘knuckle’ limited formerly, as now it well nigh exclusively is, at least in regard of the human body, to certain smaller joints of the hand.

119

L.

Lace. That which now commonly bears this name has it on the score of its curiously woven threads; but ‘lace,’ probably identical with the Latin ‘laqueus,’ though it has not reached us through the Latin, being the same word, only differently spelt, as ‘latch,’ is commonly used by our earlier writers in the more proper sense of a noose.

Landscape. The second syllable in ‘landscape’ or ‘landskip’ is only a solitary example of an earlier form of the same termination which we meet in ‘friendship’ ‘lordship,’ ‘fellowship,’ and the like. As these mean the manner or fashion of a friend, of a lord, and so on, so ‘landscape’ the manner or fashion of the land; and in our earlier English this rather as the pictured or otherwise imitated model, than in its very self. As this imitation would be necessarily in small, the word acquired the secondary meaning of a compendium or multum 120 in parvo; cf. Skinner, Etymologicon, s.v. Landskip: Tabula chorographica, primario autem terra, provincia, seu topographica σκιαγραφία.

Latch. Few things now are ‘latched’ or caught except a door or casement; but the word, the same as ‘lace,’ was once of much wider use.

Levy. Troops are now raised, or ‘levied,’ 121 indifferently; but a siege is only raised, and not ‘levied,’ as it too once might have been.

Lewd,
Lewdly,
Lewdness. There are three distinct stages in the meaning of the word ‘lewd;’ of these it has entirely overlived two, and survives only in the third, namely in that of wanton or lascivious. Without discussing here its etymology or its exact relation to ‘lay,’ it is sufficient to observe, that, as ‘lay,’ it was often used in the sense of ignorant, or rather unlearned. Next, according to the proud saying of the Pharisees, “This people who knoweth not the law are cursed” (John vii. 49), and on the assumption, which would have its truth, that those untaught in the doctrines, would be unexercised in the practices, of Christianity, it came to signify vicious, though without designating one vice more than others. While in its present and third stage, it has, like so many other words, retired from this general designation of all vices, to express one of the more frequent, alone.

Libertine. A striking evidence of the extreme likelihood that he who has no restraints on his belief will ere long have none upon his life, is given by this word ‘libertine.’ Applied at first to certain heretical sects, and intended to mark the licentious liberty of their creed, ‘libertine’ soon let go altogether its relation to what a man believed, and acquired the sense which it now has, a ‘libertine’ being one who has released himself from all moral 123 restraints, and especially in his relations with the other sex.

Litigious. This word has changed from an objective to a subjective sense. Things were ‘litigious’ once, which offered matter of litigation; persons are ‘litigious’ now, who are prone to litigation. Both meanings are to be found in the Latin ‘litigiosus,’ though predominantly that which we have now made the sole meaning.

Lively. This was once nearly, if not altogether, equipollent with ‘living.’ We have here the explanation of a circumstance which many probably have noted and regretted in the Authorized Version of the New Testament, namely that while λίθον ζῶντα at 1 Pet. ii. 4 is ‘a living stone,’ λίθοι ζῶντες, which follows immediately, ver. 5, is only ‘lively stones,’ ‘living’ being thus brought down to ‘lively,’ with no correspondent reduction in the original to warrant it. But when our Version was made, there was scarcely any distinction between the forces of the words. Still it would certainly have been better to adhere to one word or the other.

Livery. It need hardly be observed that the explanation of ‘livery’ which Spenser offers (see 125 below) is perfectly correct; but we do not any longer recognize the second of those uses of the word there mentioned by him. It is no longer applied to the ration, or stated portion of food, delivered at stated periods (the σιτομέτριον of Luke xii. 42), either to the members of a household, to soldiers, or to others.

Lucid interval. We limit this at present to the brief and transient season when a mind, ordinarily clouded and obscured by insanity, recovers for a while its clearness. It had no such limitation formerly, but was of very wide use, as the four passages quoted below, in each of which its application is different, will show.

Lumber. As the Lombards were the bankers, so also they were the pawnbrokers, of the middle ages; indeed, as they would often advance money upon pledges, the two businesses were very closely joined, would often run in, to one another. The ‘lumber’ room was originally the Lombard room, or room where the Lombard banker and broker stored his pledges; ‘lumber’ then, as in the passage from Butler, the pawns and pledges themselves. As these would naturally often accumulate here till they became out of date and unserviceable, 127 the steps are easy to be traced by which the word came to possess its present meaning.

Lurch. ‘To lurch’ is seldom used now except of a ship, which ‘lurches’ when it makes something of a headlong dip in the sea; the fact that by so doing it, partially at least, hides itself, and so ‘lurks,’ for ‘lurk’ and ‘lurch’ are identical, explains this employment of the word. But ‘to lurch,’ generally as an active verb, was of much more frequent use in early English; and soon superinduced on the sense of lying concealed that of lying in wait with the view of intercepting and seizing a prey. After a while this superadded notion of intercepting and seizing some booty quite thrust out that of lying concealed; as in all three of the quotations which follow.

Luxury,
Luxurious. ‘Luxuria’ in classical Latin was very much what our ‘luxury’ is now. The meaning which in our earlier English was its only one, namely indulgence in sins of the flesh, is derived from the use of ‘luxuria’ in the medieval ethics, where it never means any thing else but this. The weakening of the influence of the scholastic theology, joined to a more familiar acquaintance with classical Latinity, has probably caused its return to the classical meaning. In the definition given by Phillips (see below), the word may be noticed in the process of transition from its old meaning to its new, the old still remaining, but the new superinduced upon it.

M.

Magnificent,
Magnificence. Frequently used by our elder writers where we should employ munificent or generous. Yet there lay in the word something more than in these; something of the μεγαλοπρεπεία of Aristotle; a certain grandeur presiding over and ordering this large distribution of wealth. Behind both uses an earlier and a nobler than either may be traced, as is evident from my first quotation.

Make,
Maker. It would be curious to determine whether ‘maker,’ as equivalent to poet, and ‘to make’ as applied to the exercise of the poet’s art, are words of genuine home-growth, or mere imitations of the Greek ποιητής and ποιεῖν, a point which Sir Philip Sidney, as will be seen below, declines to determine. There are so many words and in so many languages which mark men’s sense that invention, and in a certain sense creation, is the essential character of the poet, such as the Saxon ‘song-smith,’ the French ‘trouvère,’ ‘troubadour,’ that one might be almost tempted to think of the words not as introduced from without, but as a spontaneous birth of our own tongue. At the same time it must be owned as against this is the fact, that the words are not found in any book anterior to the revival of the study of the Greek literature and language in England; and Sir J. 131 Harington affirms (Apology of Poetry, p. 2), though in this he is certainly mistaken, that Puttenham in his Art of English Poesy, 1589, was the first who gave ‘make’ and ‘maker’ this meaning. I believe Walter Scott somewhere claims them as Scotticisms; but exclusively such they certainly are not.

Manure. This is the same word as ‘manœuvre,’ to work with the hand; and thus, to till or cultivate the earth; this tillage being in earlier periods of society the great and predominant labour of the hands. We restrain the word now to one particular branch of this cultivation, but our ancestors made it to embrace the whole.

132

Measles. This has only been by later use restrained to one kind of spotted sickness; but ‘meazel’ (it is spelt in innumerable ways) was once leprosy, or more often the leper himself, and the disease, ‘meselry.’

Mechanic,
Mechanical. This now simply expresses a fact, and is altogether untinged with passion or sentiment; but in its early history it 133 ran exactly parallel to the Greek βάναυσος, which, expressing first the sitting by the stove, as one plying a handicraft might do, came afterwards, in obedience to certain constant tendencies of language, to imply the man ethically illiberal. See the quotation from Holland, s.v. ‘Fairy.’

Meddle. This had once no such offensive meaning of mixing oneself up in other people’s business as now it has. On the contrary, Barrow in one of his sermons draws expressly the distinction between ‘meddling’ and being meddlesome, and only condemns the latter.

Mediterranean. Only seas are ‘mediterranean’ now, and indeed we may say, only one Sea; but there is no reason why cities and countries should not be characterized as ‘mediterranean’ as well. We have preferred, however, to employ ‘inland.’

Medley. It is plain from the frequent use of the French ‘mêlée’ in the description of battles that we feel the want of a parallel English word. There have even been attempts, though hardly successful ones, to naturalize ‘mêlée,’ and as ‘volée’ has become in English ‘volley,’ that so ‘mêlée’ should become ‘melley.’ Perhaps, as Tennyson has sanctioned these, employing ‘mellay’ in his Princess, they may now succeed. But there would have been no need of this, nor yet of borrowing a foreign word, if ‘medley’ had been allowed to keep this more passionate use, which once it possessed.

Melancholy. This has now ceased, nearly or altogether, to designate a particular form of moody madness, the German ‘Tiefsinn,’ which was ascribed by the old physicians to a predominance of black bile mingling with the blood. It was not, it is true, always restrained to this peculiar form of mental unsoundness; thus Burton’s “Anatomy of Melancholy” has not to do with this one form of madness, but with all. This, however, was its prevailing use, and here is to be found the link of connexion between its present use, as a deep pensiveness or sadness, and its past.

136

Mere,
Merely. There is a good note on these words, and on the changes of meaning which they have undergone, in Craik’s English of Shakespeare, p. 80. He there says: “Merely (from the Latin merus and mere) means purely, only. It separates that which it designates and qualifies from every thing else. But in so doing the chief or most emphatic reference may be made either to that which is included, or to that which is excluded. In modern English it is always to the latter. In Shakespeare’s day the other reference was more common, that namely to what was included.”

* A recent editor of Bacon, I need hardly say not the most recent, has made a hopeless confusion by changing the ‘and’ into ‘but,’ evidently from not understanding the old use of ‘merely.’

137

Mess. This used continually to be applied to a quaternion, or group of four persons or things. Probably in the distribution of food to large numbers, it was found most convenient to arrange them in fours, and hence this application of the word. A ‘mess’ at the Inns of Court still consists of four.

* Edward, George, Richard, and Edmund.

Metal. The Latin ‘metallum’ signified a mine before it signified the metal which was found in the mine; and Jeremy Taylor uses ‘metal’ in this sense of mine. I am not certain whether this may not be a latinism peculiar to him, as he has of such not a few; in which case it would scarcely have a right to a place in this little volume, which does not propose to note the peculiarities of single writers, but the general course of the language. I, however, insert it, counting it more probable that my limited reading 138 hinders me from furnishing an example of this use from some other author, than that such does not somewhere exist.

Methodist. This term is restricted at present to the followers of John Wesley; but it was once applied to those who followed a certain ‘method’ in philosophical speculation, or in the ethical treatment of themselves or others.

Minute. ‘Minutes’ are now ‘minúte’ portions of time; they might once be ‘minúte’ portions of any thing. ‘Mite,’ as the quotation from Wiclif plainly shows, is contracted from ‘minute,’ being a ‘minute’ portion of money.

Miscreant. A settled conviction that to believe wrongly is the way to live wrongly has caused that in all languages words, which originally did but indicate the first, have gradually acquired a meaning of the second. There is no more illustrious example of this than ‘miscreant,’ which now charges him to whom it is applied not with religious error, but with extreme moral depravity; while yet, according to its etymology, it did but mean at the first misbeliever, and as such would have been as freely applied to the morally most blameless of these as to the vilest and the worst. In the quotation from Shakespeare York means to charge the Maid of Orleans, as a dealer in unlawful charms, with apostasy from the Christian faith, according to the low and unworthy estimate of her character, above which even Shakespeare himself has not risen.

Miser,
Misery,
Miserable. We may notice a curious shifting of parts in the words ‘miser,’ ‘misery,’ ‘miserable.’ There was a time when the ‘miser’ was the wretched man, he is now the covetous; at the same time ‘misery,’ which is now wretchedness, and ‘miserable,’ which is now wretched, were severally covetousness and covetous. They have in fact exactly reversed their uses. Men still express by some words of this group, although not by the same, by ‘miser’ (and ‘miserly’), not as once by ‘misery’ and ‘miserable,’ their deep moral conviction that the avaricious man is his own tormentor, and bears his punishment involved in his sin. I may mention here that a passage, too long to quote, in Gascoigne’s Fruits of War, st. 72-74, is very instructive on the different uses of the word ‘miser’ even in his time, and on the manner in which it was even then hovering between the two meanings.

Miss. Now to be conscious of the loss of, and nearly answering to the Latin ‘desiderare,’ but once to do without, to dispense with.

Model. It needs hardly to be observed that 142 ‘model’ is ‘module,’ or ‘modulus,’ a diminutive of ‘modus,’ but this diminutive sense which once went constantly with the word, and which will alone explain the quotations which follow, when it lies in the word now, lies in it only by accident.

Morose. It is very curious that while the classical ‘mōrosus’ expressed one given overmuch to his own manners, habits, ways (mores), the medieval ‘mŏrosus’ was commonly connected with ‘mora,’ a delay; and in treatises of Christian ethics the word was a technical one to express the sin of delaying upon impure unholy thoughts, instead of rejecting them on the instant. See, for instance, Gerson, Opp., tom. i. p. 377, for evidence constantly recurring of its connexion for him with ‘mora.’ So long as the scholastic theology exerted more or less influence on our own, ‘morose’ was often 143 employed in this latter sense; which, however, it has since entirely foregone. I owe the second quotation given below to Todd, who is so entirely unaware of this history of ‘morose,’ that he explains it there as ungovernable!

Mountebank. Now any antic fool; but once restrained to the quack-doctor who at fairs and such places of resort having mounted on a bank or bench, from thence proclaimed the virtue of his drugs; being described by Whitlock (Zootomia, p. 436) as “a fellow above the vulgar more by three planks and two empty hogsheads than by any true skill.”

Mutton. It is a refinement in the English language, one wanting in some other languages which count themselves as refined or more, that it has in so many cases one word to express the living animal, and another its flesh prepared for food; ox and beef, calf and veal, deer and venison, sheep and mutton. In respect of this last pair the refinement is of somewhat late introduction. At one time they were mere synonymes.

N.

Namely. Now only designates; but, like the German ‘namentlich,’ once designated as first and chief, as above all.

Naturalist. At present the scientific student of nature; but in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the name was often given to the deist, as one who denied Revelation and any but a religion of nature. “Natural religion men” such were sometimes called.

146

Nephew. Restrained in our present use to the son of a brother or a sister; but formerly of much laxer use, a grandson, or even a remoter lineal descendant. ‘Nephew’ in fact has undergone exactly the same change of meaning that ‘nepos’ in Latin underwent; which in the Augustan age meaning grandson, in the post Augustan acquired the signification of ‘nephew’ in our present acceptation of that word. See ‘Niece.’

Nice. The use of ‘nice’ in the sense of fastidious, difficult to please, still survives, indeed this is now, as in times past, the ruling notion of the word; only this ‘niceness’ is taken now much oftener in good part than in ill; nor, even when 147 taken in an ill sense, would the word be used exactly as in the passage which follows.

Niece. This word has undergone the same change and limitation of meaning as ‘nephew’ (q.v.), with indeed the further limitation that it is now applied to the female sex alone, to the daughter of a brother or a sister, being once used, as ‘neptis’ was at the first, for children’s children, male and female alike. See ‘Nephew.’

Noisome. At present offensive and moving disgust; but once noxious and actually hurtful. 148 In all passages of the Authorized Translation of the Bible where the word occurs, it is used not in the present meaning, but the past.

Novelist. He now is, or ought to be, the writer of new tales; he was once an innovator, a bringer-in of new fashions into the Church or State.

Nursery. We have but one use of ‘nursery’ 149 at this present, namely as the place of nursing; but it was once applied as well to the person nursed, or the act of nursing.

O.

Obelisk. The ‘obelus’ is properly a sharp-pointed spear or spit; with a sign resembling this, spurious or doubtful passages were marked in the books of antiquity, which sign bore therefore this name of ‘obelus,’ or sometimes of its diminutive ‘obeliscus.’ It is in this sense that we find ‘obelisk’ employed by the writers in the seventeenth century; while for us at the present a small pillar tapering toward the summit is the only ‘obelisk’ that we know.

Obnoxious. This, in its present lax and slovenly use a vague unserviceable synonym for offensive, is properly applied to one who on the ground of a mischief or wrong committed by him is justly liable to punishment (ob noxam pœnæ obligatus); and is used in this sense by South (see below). But there often falls out of the word the sense of a wrong committed; and that of liability to punishment, whether just or unjust, only remains; it does so very markedly in the quotation from Donne. But we punish, or wish to punish, those whom we dislike, and thus ‘obnoxious’ had obtained its present sense of offensive.

151

Obsequious,
Obsequiousness. There lies ever in ‘obsequious’ at the present the sense of an observance which is overdone, of an unmanly readiness to fall in with the will of another; there lay nothing of this in the Latin ‘obsequium,’ nor yet in our English word as employed two centuries ago. See the quotation from Feltham, s.v. ‘Garb.’

Occupy,
Occupier. He now ‘occupies,’ who has in present possession; but the word involved once the further signification of using, employing, laying out that which was thus possessed; and by an ‘occupier’ was meant a trader or retail dealer.

Offal. This, bearing its derivation on its front, namely that it is that which, as refuse and of little or no worth, is suffered or caused to fall off, we restrict at the present to the refuse of the butcher’s stall; but it was once employed in a much wider acceptation, an acceptation which here and there still survives. Thus, as one writes to me, “in all her Majesty’s dockyards there is a monthly sale by auction of ‘offal wood,’ being literally that which falls off from the log under the saw, axe, or adze.”

Officious,
Officiousness. Again and again we light on words used once in a good, but now in an unfavourable, sense. An ‘officious’ person is now a busy uninvited meddler in matters which do not belong to him; so late as Burke’s time he might be one prompt and forward in due offices of kindness. The more honourable use of ‘officious’ now only survives in the distinction 153 familiar to diplomacy between an ‘official’ and ‘officious’ communication.

Orient. There was once a beautiful use of ‘orient’ as clear, bright, shining, which has now wholly departed from it. So often applied to the pearl by our earlier poets, it does not in this connexion mean ‘oriental,’ but pellucid, white, shining. One would of course by no means deny that this meaning claimed for ‘orient’ accrued to it originally from the greater clearness and lightness of the east, as the quarter whence the day broke.

Ostler. Not formerly, as now, the servant of the inn, having care of the horses, but the innkeeper or host, the ‘hosteller’ himself.

P.

Painful,
Painfulness,
Painfully. ‘Painful’ is now feeling pain, or inflicting it; it was once taking pains. Many things would not be so ‘painful’ in the present sense of the word, if they had been more ‘painful’ in the earlier, as perhaps some sermons. See the quotation, s.v. ‘Voluble.’

Palliate,
Palliation. ‘To palliate’ is at this day to extenuate a fault through the setting out of whatever will best serve to diminish the estimate of its gravity; and does not imply any endeavour wholly to deny it; nay, implies rather a certain recognition and admission of the fault itself. Truer to its etymology once, it expressed the cloking of it, the attempt, successful or otherwise, entirely to conceal and cover it. Eve ‘palliates’ her fault in the modern sense of the word (Gen. iii. 13), Gehazi in the earlier (2 Kings v. 25).

156

Pantomime. Now the mimic show itself, but at the first introduction of the word (Bacon’s constant use of ‘pantomimus’ and ‘pantomimi’ testifies that it was new in his time), the player who presented the show.

Pathetic,
Pathetical,
Pathetically. The ‘pathetic’ is now only one kind of the passionate, that which, feeling pity, is itself capable of stirring it; but ‘pathetic’ or ‘pathetical’ and ‘passionate’ were once of an equal reach. When in a language like ours two words, derived from two different languages, as in this case from the Greek and from the Latin, exist side by side, being at the same time identical in signification, the desynonymizing process which we may note here, continually comes into play.

Peevish,
Peevishness. By ‘peevishness’ we now understand a small but constantly fretting ill-temper; yet no one can read our old authors, with whom ‘peevish’ and ‘peevishness’ are of constant recurrence, without feeling that their use of them is different from ours; although precisely to determine what their use was is any thing but easy. Gifford (Massinger, vol. i. p. 71) says confidently, “peevish is foolish;” but upon induction 158 from an insufficient number of passages. ‘Peevish’ is rather self-willed, obstinate. That in a world like ours those who refuse to give up their own wills should be continually crossed, and thus should become fretful, and ‘peevish’ in our modern sense of the word, is inevitable; and here is the history of the change of meaning which it has undergone.

159

Pencil. The distinction between ‘pencil’ and paint-brush, with the employment of ‘pencil’ in any other sense than that of brush, is quite of modern introduction. The older use of the word, it needs hardly to say, was etymologically more correct than the modern, ‘pencil’ being ‘penecillus,’ or little tail; and the brush was so called because it hung and drooped as this does.

Penitentiary. It is curious that this word has possessed three entirely independent meanings, penitent, ordainer of penances in the Church, and place for penitents; only the last is current now.

Penury. This expresses now no more than the objective fact of extreme poverty; an ethical subjective meaning not lying in it, as would sometimes of old. This is now retained only in ‘penurious,’ ‘penuriousness.’

Perseverance. It is difficult to connect the uses of ‘perseverance’ whereof examples are given below, and they might easily be multiplied, with its more frequent use of old, and its sole use at present. Indeed I have sometimes doubts whether it be the same word at all, and whether we are not to look to ‘separare,’ ‘sevrer,’ ‘severance’ (it might thus be the power of dividing and distinguishing,) for its root rather than to ‘perseverantia.’ None of our Dictionaries give any assistance in the matter; indeed they have not noted this use of the word; but there is a good collection of illustrative passages in Notes and Queries, No. 182.

161

Person. We have forfeited the full force of the statement, “God is no respecter of persons;” from the fact that ‘person’ does not mean for us now all that it once meant. ‘Person,’ from ‘persona,’ the mask constantly worn by the actor of antiquity, is by natural transfer the part or rôle in the play which each sustains, as πρόσωπον is in Greek. In the great tragi-comedy of life each sustains a ‘person;’ one that of a king, another that of a hind; one must play Dives, another Lazarus. This ‘person’ God, for whom the question is not, what ‘person’ each sustains, but how he sustains it, does not respect.

Perspective. ‘Telescope’ and ‘microscope’ are both as old as Milton; but for a long while ‘perspective’ (glass being sometimes understood, and sometimes expressed) did the work of these. It is sometimes written ‘prospective.’ Our present use of ‘perspective’ does not, I suppose, date farther back than Dryden.

Pester. There is no greater discomfort or annoyance than extreme straitness or narrowness of room; out of which in Greek στενοχωρία, signifying this, has come to have a secondary signification of trouble or anguish. In English, ‘to pester’ bears witness to the same fact, though it has travelled in exactly the opposite direction, and having first the meaning of to vex or annoy, which meaning it still retains, had also once a second meaning of painfully cooping-up in a narrow and confined space; which, however, it now has let go.

Placard. Formerly used often in the sense of a license or permission, the ‘placard’ being properly the broad tablet or board on which this, as well as other edicts and ordinances, was exposed.

164

Plantation. We still ‘plant’ a colony, but a ‘plantation’ is now of trees only; and not of men, as it was when ‘The Plantations’ was the standing name by which our transatlantic colonies were known.

Plausible,
Plausibly,
Plausibility. That is ‘plausible’ now which presents itself as worthy of applause; yet always with a subaudition, or at least a suggestion, that it is not so really; it was once that which obtained applause, with at least the primâ facie likelihood that the applause which it obtained it deserved.

165

Poach,
Poacher. It sounds strange to say that ‘poker’ and ‘poacher’ are in fact one and the same word; which doubtless they are. A ‘poacher’ is strictly speaking an intruder, the word means nothing more; one who intrudes, ‘pokes,’ or ‘poaches,’ into land where he has no business; the fact that he does so with intention of spoiling the game is superadded, not lying in the word.

Polite,
Politely. Between ‘polite’ and ‘polished’ this much of difference has now grown up and established itself, that ‘polite’ is always employed in a secondary and tropical sense, having reference to the polish of the mind, while it is free to use ‘polished’ in the literal and figurative sense alike.

Politics,
Politician. At the present ‘politics’ are always things, but were sometimes persons as well in times past. ‘Politician’ also had mostly an evil subaudition. One so named was a trickster or underhand self-seeker in politics, or it might be, as it is throughout in the sermon of South, quoted below, in the ordinary affairs of life.

167

Pomp,
Pompous,
Pompously. ‘Pomp’ is one of the many words which Milton employs with a strict classical accuracy, so that he is only to be perfectly understood when we keep in mind that a ‘pomp’ with him is always a πομπή, a procession. He is not, however, singular, as he often is, in the stricter and more rigorous use of this word. It is easy to perceive how ‘pomp’ obtained its wider application. There is no such favourable opportunity for the display of state and magnificence as a procession; this is almost the inevitable form which they take; and thus the word, which was first applied to the most frequent display of these, came afterwards to be transferred to every display. In respect of ‘pompous’ and ‘pompously’ there is something else to note. There is in them 168 always now the subaudition of that which is more in show than in substance, or, at any rate, of a magnificence which, if real, is yet vaingloriously and ostentatiously displayed. But they did not convey, and were not intended to convey, any such impression once.

* In heaven.

169

Popular,
Popularity. He was ‘popular’ once, not who had acquired, but who was laying himself out to acquire, the favour of the people. ‘Popularity’ was the wooing, not as now the having won, that favour, exactly the Latin ‘ambitio.’ The word, which is passive now, was active then.

Portly. There lies in ‘portly’ a certain sense of dignity of demeanour still, but always connoted with this a cumbrousness and weight, such as Spenser in his noble Epithalamion (see below) would never have ascribed to his bride, as little Shakespeare to the swift-footed Achilles (Troilus and Cressida, Act iv. Sc. 5), or to the youthful Romeo.

Pragmatical. This is always employed at the present in an ill sense; the ‘pragmatical’ man is not merely busy, but over-busy, officious, meddling; nay more than this, with an assumption of bustling self-importance. The word’s etymology does not require this ill sense, which is merely superinduced upon it, and from which it was not indeed always, but often, free in its earlier use.

Preposterous,
Preposterously. A word nearly or quite unserviceable now, being merely an 171 ungraceful and slipshod synonym for absurd. But restore and confine it to its old use and to one peculiar branch of absurdity, the reversing of the true order and method of things, the putting of the last first and the first last, and of what excellent service it would be capable!

Pretend,
Pretence,
Pretension. To charge one with ‘pretending’ any thing is now a much more serious charge than it was once. Indeed it was not necessarily, and only by accident, a charge at all. That was ‘pretended’ which one stretched out before himself and in face of others; but whether it was the thing it affirmed itself to be, or, as at present, only a deceitful resemblance of this, the word did not decide. While it was thus with ‘to pretend,’ there was as yet no distinction recognized between ‘pretence’ and ‘pretension;’ they both signified the act of ‘pretending,’ or the thing ‘pretended;’ but whether truly or falsely it 172 was left to the context, or to the judgment of the reader, to decide. ‘Pretence’ has since followed the fortunes of ‘pretend,’ and has fallen with it; while ‘pretension’ has disengaged itself from being a merely useless synonym of ‘pretence,’ and, retaining its relation to the earlier uses of the verb, now signifies a claim put forward which may be valid, or may be invalid, the word leaving this for other considerations to determine. Louis Napoleon assumed the dictatorship under the ‘pretence’ of resisting anarchy; the House of Orleans has ‘pretensions’ to the throne of France. But these distinctions are quite modern.

Prevaricate,
Prevarication. This verb, often now very loosely used, had once a very definite meaning of its own. ‘To prevaricate’ is to betray the cause which one affects to sustain, and, so far as I know, is always so used by our early writers. We have inherited the word from the Latin law-courts, which borrowed it from the life. The ‘prævaricator’ being one who halted on two unequal legs, the name was transferred to him who, affecting to prosecute a charge, was in secret collusion with the opposite party, and so managed the cause as to ensure his escape. Observe in the two following passages the accuracy of use which so habitually distinguishes our writers of the seventeenth century as compared with too many of the nineteenth.

Prevent. One may reach a point before another to help or to hinder him there; may anticipate his arrival either with the purpose of keeping it for him, or keeping it against him. ‘To prevent’ has slipped by very gradual degrees, which it would not be difficult to trace, from the sense of keeping for to that of keeping against, from the sense of arriving first with the intention of helping, to that of arriving first with the intention of hindering, and then generally from helping to hindering.

175

Prodigious. This notes little now but magnitude. Truer to its etymology once (‘prodigium’ == ‘prodicium,’ and that from ‘prodico’), it signified the ominous, or ominously prophetic.

Promote,
Promoter,
Promotion. ‘To promote,’ that is, to further or set forward, a ‘promoter,’ a furtherer, are now words of harmless, often of quite an honourable, signification. They were once terms of extremest scorn; a ‘promoter’ being a common informer, and so called because he ‘promoted’ charges and accusations against men (promotor litium: Skinner).

Propriety. All ‘propriety’ is now mental or moral; where material things are concerned, ‘property’ is the word which we use. It needs hardly to say that ‘propriety’ and ‘property’ were at the first no more than different spellings or slightly different forms of one and the same word; which now, however, have been thus usefully desynonymized.

177

Prose,
Proser. ‘To prose’ is now to talk or to write heavily, tediously, without spirit and without animation; but ‘to prose’ was once the antithesis of to versify, and a ‘proser’ of a writer in metre. In the tacit assumption that vigour, animation, rapid movement, with all the precipitation of the spirit, belong to verse rather than to prose lies the explanation of the changed uses of the words.

Prune. At present we only ‘prune’ trees; but our earlier authors use the word where we should use ‘preen,’ which indeed is but another form of the word; nay, with a wider signification; for with us only birds ‘preen’ their feathers, while women, as in the example which follows, might ‘prune’ themselves of old.

178

Punctual,
Punctually. Restricted now to the accurate observing of fixed points of time. It had once a wider use; a ‘punctual’ narration being a narration which entered into minuter points of detail.

Puny. The present use of ‘puny,’ as that which is at once weak and small, is only secondary and inferential. ‘Puny’ or ‘puisne’ (puis né) is born after another, therefore younger; and only by inference smaller and weaker.

Pursuer. ‘Pursue’ and ‘pursuer’ are older words in the language than ‘persecute’ and ‘persecutor’—earlier adoptions of ‘persequor’ and ‘persecutor,’ and not, as these last, immediately from the Latin. Beside the meaning which they still retain, they once also covered the meanings which these later words have, since their introduction, appropriated as exclusively their own. In Scotch law the prosecutor is the ‘pursuer,’ ὁ διώκων.

Q.

Quaint,
Quaintly. In ‘quaint,’ which is the Latin ‘comptus,’ there lies always now the notion of a certain curiosity and oddness, however these may be subordinated to ends of beauty and grace, and indeed may themselves be made to 180 contribute to these ends: but all this is of late introduction into the word, which had once simply the meaning of elegant, graceful, skilful, subtle.

Querulous. Not once, as now, complaining, but quarrelsome; perhaps through some confusion between ‘querulous’ and ‘quarrellous,’ though I do not remember to have met this latter form.

181

R.

Race. ‘Racy’ still exists as an epithet applied to that which, growing out of a strong and vigourous root, tastes of that root out of which it grows; but ‘race,’ in the sense of root imparting these qualities, is not any longer in use.

Raisin. It is conveniently agreed now that ‘raisin’ shall be employed only of the dried grape, but this does not lie in ‘racemus,’ from which it is descended, nor yet in its earlier uses; indeed, “raisins of the sun” (Sir J. Harington) was the phrase commonly employed when our dried fruit was intended.

Rather. This survives for us now only as an adverb, that part of speech to which so many others seem to tend; but meets us often in old English in its prior form, that is as an adjective; being properly 182 the comparative of ‘rathe,’ a synonym for early.

Recognize. This verb means now to revive our knowledge of a person or thing—and nothing more. But in earlier usage something further was imported into it. It was to revive this knowledge with a purpose—as in the passage below, with the purpose of revision.

Reduce. That which is ‘reduced’ now is brought back to narrower limits, or lower terms, 183 or more subject conditions, than those under which it subsisted before. But nothing of this lies of necessity in the word, nor yet in the earlier uses of it. According to these that was ‘reduced’ which was brought back to its former estate, an estate that might be, and in all the following examples is, an ampler, larger, or more prosperous one than that which it superseded.

Religion. Not, as too often now, used as equivalent for godliness; but like θρησκεία, for which it stands Jam. i. 27, it expressed the outer form and embodiment which the inward spirit of a true or a false devotion assumed.

Remonstrate,
Remonstrance. Its present sense, namely to expostulate, was only at a late date superinduced on the word. ‘To remonstrate’ is properly to make any show or representation in regard to some step that has been taken. It is now only such show or representation as protests against this step; and always assumes this step to have been distasteful; but this limitation lies not of necessity in the word; nor did it lie in its earlier uses.

Remorse. In the single phrase “without remorse,” as in ‘remorseless,’ we still retain a sense of ‘remorse’ which otherwise has quite passed away from it; employing it as equivalent with pity. It was thus, as I am inclined to think, that the word acquired this meaning. There is nothing which is followed in natures not absolutely devilish with so swift revulsion of mind as acts of cruelty. No where does the conscience so quickly remord, if one may use the word, the guilty actor as in and after these;* and thus ‘remorse,’ which is the 186 penitence of the natural man, the penitence not wrought by the spirit of grace, while it means the revulsion of the mind and conscience against any evil which has been done, came to mean predominantly revulsion against acts of cruelty, the pity which followed close on these; and thus pity in general, and not only as in this way called out.

Resent,
Resentment. When first introduced into the language (this was in the seventeenth century; ‘vox nova in nostrâ linguâ:’ Junius), ‘to resent’ meant to have a sense or feeling of that which had been done to us, but whether a sense of gratitude for the good, or of enmity for the evil, the word itself said nothing, and was employed in both meanings. Must we gather from the fact that the latter is now the exclusive employment of it, that our sense of injuries is much stronger and more lasting than our sense of benefits?

Restive,
Restiveness. Any one now invited to define a ‘restive’ horse would certainly put into his definition that it was one with too much motion; but in obedience to its etymology ‘restive’ would have once meant one with too little; determined to continue at rest when it ought to go forward. Immobile, lazy, stubborn, are the three stages of meaning which the word went through, before it reached the fourth and present.

Retaliate,
Retaliation. It has fared with ‘retaliate’ and ‘retaliation’ as it has with ‘resent’ and ‘resentment,’ that whereas men could once speak of the ‘retaliation’ of benefits as well as of wrongs, they only ‘retaliate’ injuries now.

Rig. A somewhat vulgar word, with the present use of which, however, we are probably all familiar from its occurrence in John Gilpin:

But a ‘rig’ in its earlier use was not so often a strange uncomely feat, as a wanton uncomely person.

Ripple. The same word as ‘wrimple,’ ‘rumple,’ to make wrinkles on. It is now a poetical word, and nothing is ‘rippled’ but the surface of the water; but once it was otherwise; and provincially is so still. Thus in a useful Glossary of Yorkshire Words and Phrases, edited at Whitby, 1855, p. 140: “To ripple, to scratch slightly as with a pin upon the skin;” which is precisely its use in the following citation.

190

Room. In certain connexions we still employ ‘room’ for place, but in many more, having this meaning once, it has it no longer. Thus the reader who accepts the words of our Authorized Version, “When thou art bidden of any man to a wedding, sit not down in the highest room” (Luke xiv. 8), according to the present use of ‘room’ may easily fall into a slight misunderstanding, and imagine to himself guests assembling in various apartments, some more honourable than other; and not, as indeed the meaning is, taking higher or lower places at one and the same table.

Ruffian,
Ruffianly. The Italian ‘ruffiano,’ the Spanish ‘rufian,’ the French ‘ruffien,’ all signify the setter-forward of an infamous traffic between the sexes; nor will the passages quoted below leave any doubt that this is the proper meaning of ‘ruffian’ in English, others being secondary and derived from it. At the same time the ‘ruffian’ is not merely the ‘leno,’ he is the ‘amasius’ as well; and the frequent allusions to long and elaborately curled hair which go along with the word make one suspect a connection with the Spanish ‘rufo,’ 191 not as it means red, but crisp or curled. On the possible derivations see Diez, Roman. Spr. p. 299.

Rummage. This means at present in the looking for one thing to overturn and unsettle a great many others. It is a sea-term, and signified at first to dispose with such orderly method goods in the hold of a ship that there should be the greatest possible room, or ‘roomage.’ The quotation from Phillips shows the word in the act of transition from its former use to its present.

S.

Sad,
Sadly,
Sadness. This had once the meaning of earnest, serious, sedate, ‘set,’ this last being only another form of the same word. The passage from Shakespeare quoted below marks ‘sadly’ and ‘sadness’ in their transitional state from the old meaning to the new; Benvolio using ‘sadness’ in the old sense, Romeo pretending to understand him in the new.

Sash. At present always a belt or girdle of the loins; not so, however, when first introduced from the East. By the ‘sash,’ or ‘shash’ as it was then always spelt, was understood the roll of silk, fine linen, or gauze, worn about the head; in fact a turban.

Secure,
Security. In our present English the difference between ‘safe’ and ‘secure’ is hardly 194 recognized, but once it was otherwise. ‘Secure’ (‘securus’ == sine curâ) was subjective; it was a man’s own sense, well grounded or not, of the absence of danger; safe was objective, the actual fact of such absence of danger. A man, therefore, might not be ‘safe,’ just because he was ‘secure’ (thus see Judges xviii. 7, 10, 27, Authorized Version). I may observe that our use of ‘secure’ at Matt. xxviii. 14, is in fact this early, though we may easily read the passage as though it were employed in the modern sense. “We will secure you” of our Version represents ἀμερίμνους ὑμᾶς ποιήσομεν of the original.

195

See. Not always confined as now to the seat or residence of a bishop; nor indeed did it necessarily involve the notion of a seat of authority at all.

Sensual,
Sensuality. ‘Sensual’ is employed now only in an ill meaning, and implies ever a predominance of sense in provinces where it ought not so to predominate. Milton, feeling that we wanted another word affirming this predominance where no such fault was implied by it, and that ‘sensual’ only imperfectly expressed this, employed, I know not whether he coined, ‘sensuous,’ a word which, if it had rooted itself in the language, might have proved of excellent service. ‘Sensuality’ has had always an ill meaning, but at the same time it was not once the ill meaning which it has now. Any walking by sense and sight rather than by faith was ‘sensuality’ of old.

Servility. The subjective abjectness and baseness of spirit of one who is a slave, or who acts as one, is always implied by this word at the present; while once it did but express the objective fact of an outwardly servile condition in him to whom it was ascribed, leaving it possible that in spirit he might be free notwithstanding.

Sheer. It is curious that Christopher Sly’s declaration that he was “fourteen pence on the score for sheer ale” [Taming of the Shrew, Induction, Sc. 2) should have given so much trouble to some of the early commentators upon Shakespeare. ‘Sheer,’ which is pure, unmixed, was used of things concrete once, but more of things abstract now.

Shelf. ‘To shelve’ as to shoal, still remains; but not so, except in mariners’ charts, ‘shelf’ as == shallow or sandbank.

Shrew. There are at the present no ‘shrews’ save female ones; but the word, like so many others which we have met with, now restrained to one sex, was formerly applied to both. It conveyed also of old a much deeper moral reprobation than now or than in the middle English it did. Thus Lucifer is a ‘shrew’ in Piers Ploughman, and two murderers are ‘shrews’ in the quotation from Chaucer which follows.

Shrewd,
Shrewdness. The weakness of the world’s moral indignation against evil causes a multitude of words which once conveyed intensest 199 moral reprobation gradually to convey none at all, or it may be even praise. ‘Shrewd’ and ‘shrewdness’ must be numbered among these.

Siege. We employ ‘siege’ now only of the sitting down of an army before a fortified place with the purpose of taking it; but it had once the double meaning, abstract and concrete, of the French ‘siége,’ a seat.

Silly. A deep conviction of men that he who departs from evil will make himself a prey, that 200 none will be a match for the world’s evil who is not himself evil, has brought to pass the fact that a number of words, signifying at first goodness, signify next well-meaning simplicity; the notions of goodness and foolishness, with a strong predominance of the last, for a while interpenetrating one another in them; till at length the latter quite expels the former, and remains as the sole possessor of the word. I need hardly mention the Greek εὐήθης, εὐήθεια: while the same has happened in regard of our own ‘silly,’ which (the same word as the German ‘selig,’) has successively meant, (1) blessed, (2) innocent, (3) harmless, (4) weakly foolish.

Sincere,
Sincerity. The etymology of ‘sincerus’ being uncertain, it is impossible to say what is the primary notion of our English ‘sincere.’ It and ‘sincerity’ no less belong now to 201 an ethical sphere exclusively; but the absence of foreign admixture which they predicate might be literal once.

Skeleton. Now the complex of bones as entirely denuded of the flesh; but in early English, and there in stricter agreement with its etymology, the dried mummy.

Soft,
Softness. It is not an honourable fact that ‘soft’ and ‘softness’ should now be terms of slight, almost of contempt, when ethically employed; although indeed it is only a repetition of what we find in χρηστός, εὐήθης, ‘gutig,’ ‘bonhomie,’ and other words not a few.

Sonnet. A ‘sonnet’ now must consist of exactly fourteen lines, neither more nor less; and these with a fixed arrangement, though admitting a certain relaxation, of the rhymes; but ‘sonnet’ used often to be applied to any shorter poem, especially of an amatory kind.

Sot,
Sottish,
Sottishness. He only is a ‘sot’ now whose stupor and folly is connected with, and the result of, excessive drink; but any fool would once bear this name.

Sparkle. Water ‘sparkles’ most when it is scattered. This must explain the transition of the word from its former meanings as indicated in the passages, given below, to its present.

Specious. Like the Latin ‘speciosus’ it simply signified beautiful once; it now means always, presenting a deceitful appearance of that beauty which is not really possessed, and is never used in any but an ethical sense.

Spice. We have in English a double adoption of the Latin ‘species,’ namely ‘spice’ and ‘species.’ ‘Spice,’ the earlier form in which we made the word our own, is now limited to aromatic drugs, which, as consisting of various kinds, have this name of ‘spices.’ But ‘spice’ was once employed as ‘species’ is now.

Spinster. A name that used to be not uncommonly applied to women of evil life, in that they were set to enforced labour of spinning in the spittle or House of Correction (it is still called “The Spinning House” at Cambridge), and thus 205 were ‘spinsters,’ None of our Dictionaries, so far as I have observed, take note of this use of the word.

Staple. A curious change has come over this word. We should now say, Cotton is the great ‘staple,’ that is, the established merchandize, of Manchester; our ancestors would have reversed this and said, Manchester is the great ‘staple,’ or established mart, of cotton. We make the goods prepared or sold the ‘staple’ of the place; they made the place the ‘staple’ of the goods.

206

Starve. The Anglo-Saxon ‘steorfan,’ the German ‘sterben,’ to die, it is only by comparatively modern use restricted to dying by cold or by hunger; in this restriction of use, resembling somewhat the French ‘noyer,’ to kill by drowning, while ‘necare,’ from which it descends, is to kill by any manner of death. But innumerable words are thus like rivers, which once pouring their waters through many channels, have now left dry and abandoned them all, save one, or, as in the present instance it happens, save two.

State. Used often by our old writers for a raised dais or platform, on which was placed a chair or throne with a canopy (the German ‘Thronhimmel’) above it; being the chiefest seat of honour; thus in Massinger’s Bondman, Act i. Sc. 3, according to the old stage-direction Archidamus “offers Timoleon the state.”

Stationer. There was a time when ‘stationer,’ meaning properly no more than one who had his station, that is, in the market-place or elsewhere, included the bookseller and the publisher, as well as the dealer in the raw material of books. But when, in the division of labour, these became separate businesses, the name was restrained to him who dealt in the latter articles alone.

Stickle,
Stickler. Now to stand with a certain pertinacity to one’s point, refusing to renounce or go back from it; but formerly equivalent 208 to the emphatic ‘décharpir,’ a word which the French language has now let go, to interpose between combatants and separate them, when they had sufficiently satisfied the laws of honour; some deriving it from the wands, sceptres, or sticks with which the heralds engaged in this office separated the combatants. Our present meaning of the word connects itself with the past in the fact that the ‘sticklers,’ or seconds, as we should call them now, often fulfilled another function, being ready to maintain in their own persons and by their own arms the quarrel of their principals, and thus to ‘stickle’ for it.

209

Stout,
Stoutness. The temptation to the strong to be also the proud is so natural, so difficult to resist, and resisted by so few, that it is nothing wonderful when words, first meaning the one, pass over into the sense of the other. ‘Stout,’ however, has not retained, except in some provincial use, the sense of proud, nor ‘stoutness’ of pride.

Stove. This word has much narrowed its meaning. Bath, hothouse, any room where air or water were artificially heated, was a ‘stove’ once.

210

Sublime. There is an occasional use of ‘sublime’ by our earlier poets, a use in which it bears much the meaning of the Greek ὑπερήφανος, or perhaps approaches still more closely to that of μετέωρος, high and lifted up, as with pride; which has now quite departed from it.

Sure. Used once in the sense of affianced, or, as it would be sometimes called, ‘hand-fasted.’ See ‘Assure,’ ‘Ensure.’

Suspect,
Suspicion. To ‘suspect’ is properly to look under, and out of this fact is derived our present use of the word; but in looking under you may also look up, and herein lies the explanation of an occasional use of ‘suspect’ and ‘suspicion’ which we find in our early writers.

Sycophant. The early meaning of ‘sycophant,’ when it was employed as equivalent to informer, delator, calumniater, ‘promoter,’ (q.v.) agreed better with its assumed derivation, and undoubted use, in the Greek, than does our present. Employing it as we now do in the sense of false and fawning flatterer, we might seem at first sight to employ it in a sense not merely altogether unconnected with, but quite opposite to, its former. Yet indeed there is a very deep inner connexion between the two uses. It is not for nothing that Jeremy Taylor treats of these two, namely “Of Slander and Flattery,” in one and the same course of sermons.

Symbol. The employment of ‘symbol’ in its proper Greek sense of contribution thrown into a common stock, as in a pic-nic or the like, is frequent in Jeremy Taylor, and examples of it may be found in other scholarly writers of the seventeenth century.

T.

Table. The Latin ‘tabula’ had for one of its meanings picture or painting; and this caused that 213 ‘table’ was by our early writers used often in the same meaning.

Tall. Our ancestors superinduced on the primary meaning of ‘tall’ a secondary, resting on the assumption that tall men would be also brave, and this often with a dropping of the notion of height altogether.

Tarpaulin. Not any longer used except in the shorter form of ‘tar’ for sailor. See the quotation from Smollett, s.v. ‘Companion.’

Temper. What has been said under the word ‘humour’ will also explain ‘temper,’ and the earlier uses of it which we meet. The happy ‘temper’ would be the happy mixture, the blending in due proportions, of the four principal ‘humours’ of the body.

215

Temperament. The Latin ‘temperamentum’ had sometimes very nearly the sense of our English ‘compromise’ or the French ‘transaction,’ and signified, as these do, a middle term reached by mutual concession, by a tempering of the extreme claims upon either side. This reappears from time to time in such of our writers as have allowed their style to be modified by their Latin studies.

Termagant. This would now be applied only to women of fierce temper and ungoverned tongue, but formerly to men and women alike; and indeed predominantly to the first.

Thews. It is a remarkable evidence of the influence of Shakespeare upon the English language, 216 that while, so far as yet has been observed, every other writer, one single instance excepted, employs ‘thews’ in the sense of manners, qualities of mind and disposition, the fact that, as often as he employs it, it is in the sense of nerves, muscular vigour, has quite overborne the other use; which, once so familiar in our literature, has now quite past away. See a valuable note in Craik’s English of Shakespeare, p. 117.

Thought,
Thoughtful. Many, as they read or hear in our English Bible these words of our Lord, “Take no thought for your life” (Matt. vi. 25), are perplexed, for they cannot help thinking that there is some exaggeration in them, that He is urging here something which is impossible, and which, if possible, would not be desirable, but a forfeiting of the true dignity of man. Or perhaps, if they are able to compare the English with the Greek, they blame our Translators for having given an emphasis to the precept which it did not possess in the original. But neither is the fact. ‘Thought’ 217 is constantly anxious care in our earlier English, as the examples which follow will abundantly prove.

Thrifty. The ‘thrifty’ is on the way to be the thriving; yet ‘thrifty’ does not mean thriving now, as once it did. It still indeed retains this meaning in provincial use, as I have heard a newly-transplanted tree which was doing well, described as ‘thrifty.’

Tinsel. This is always now cheap finery, glistering (étincelant) like silver and gold, but at the 218 same time pretending a value and a richness which it does not really possess. There lay no such insinuation of pretentious splendour in its earlier uses. A valuable note in Keightley’s Milton, vol. i. p. 126, makes it, I think, clear that by ‘tinsel’ was commonly meant “a silver texture, less dense and stout than cloth of silver;” yet not always, for see my first quotation.

Tobacconist. Now the seller, once the smoker, of tobacco.

219

Tory. It is curious how often political parties have ended by assuming to themselves names first fastened on them by their adversaries in reproach and scorn. The ‘Gueux’ or ‘Beggars’ of Holland are perhaps the most notable instance of all; so too ‘tories’ was a name properly belonging to the Irish bogtrotters, who during our Civil War robbed and plundered, professing to be in arms for the maintenance of the royal cause; and from them transferred, about the year 1680, to those who sought to maintain the extreme prerogatives of the Crown.

Treacle. At present it means only the sweet syrup of molasses, but a word once of far wider reach and far nobler significance, having come to us from afar, and by steps which are curious to be traced. They are these: the Greeks, in anticipation of modern homœopathy, called a supposed antidote to the viper’s bite, which was composed of the viper’s flesh, θηριακή, from θηρίον, a name often given to the viper (Acts xxviii. 5); of this came the Latin ‘theriaca,’ and our ‘theriac,’ of which, or rather of the Latin form, ‘treacle’ is but a popular corruption.

220

Triumph. A name often transferred by our early writers to any stately shows and pageantries whatever, not restricted, as now, to those which celebrate a victory. See Lord Bacon’s Essay, the 37th, with the heading, Of Masks and Triumphs, passim.

221

Trivial. A ‘trivial’ saying is at present a slight one; it was formerly a well-worn or often-repeated one, or, as we should now say, one that was trite; but this, it might be, on the ground of the weight and wisdom which it contained; as certainly the maxim quoted by Hacket is any thing but ‘trivial’ in our sense of the word. Gradually the notion of slightness was superadded to that of commonness, and thus an epithet once of honour has become one of dishonour rather.

Trumpery. That which is deceitful is without any worth; and ‘trumpery,’ which was at first deceit, fraud (tromperie), is now any thing which is worthless and of no account. Was Milton’s use of the word in his well-known line, “Black, white 222 and gray, with all their trumpery,” our present, or that earlier?

Tuition. One defends another most effectually who imparts to him those principles and that knowledge whereby he shall be able to defend himself; and therefore our modern use of ‘tuition’ as teaching is a deeper one than the earlier, which made it to mean external rather than this internal protection.

Turk. It is a remarkable evidence of the extent to which the Turks and the Turkish assault upon Chris­tendom had impressed themselves on 223 the minds of men, of the way in which they stood as representing the entire Mahometan world, that ‘Turk,’ being in fact a national, is constantly employed by the writers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as a religious, designation, as equivalent to, and coextensive with, Mahometan; exactly as Ἕλλην in the New Testament means continually not Greek, but Gentile.

U.

Umbrage,
Umbrageous. ‘To take umbrage’ is, I think, the only phrase in which the word ‘umbrage’ is still in use among us, the only one at least in which it is ethically employed; but ‘umbrage’ in its earlier use coincides in meaning with the old French ‘ombrage’ (see the quotation from Bacon), and signifies suspicion, or rather the disposition to suspect; and ‘umbrageous,’ as far as I know, is constantly employed in the sense of suspicious by our early authors; having now no other but a literal sense. Other uses of ‘umbrage,’ as those of Fuller and Jeremy Taylor which follow, 224 must be explained from the classical sympathies of these writers; out of which the Latin etymology of the word gradually made itself felt in the meaning which they ascribed to it, namely as any thing slight and shadowy.

225

Uncouth. Now unformed in manner, ungraceful in behaviour; but once simply unknown. The change in signification is to be traced to the same causes which made ‘barbarous,’ meaning at first only foreign, to have afterwards the sense of savage and wild. Almost all nations regard with disfavour and dislike that which is outlandish, and generally that with which they are unacquainted; so that words which at first did but express this fact of strangeness, easily acquire a further unfavourable sense.

Unequal. From the constant use made of ‘unequal’ by our early writers, for whom it was entirely equivalent to unjust, unfair, one might almost suppose they saw in it ‘iniquus’ rather than ‘inæqualis.’ At any rate they had no scruple in using it 226 in a sense, which ‘inæqualis’ never has, but ‘iniquus’ continually.

Unhandsome. See ‘Handsome.’

Unhappy,
Unhappiness. A very deep truth lies involved in the fact that so many words, and I suppose in all languages, unite the meanings of wicked and miserable, as the Greek σχέτλιος, our own ‘wretch’ and ‘wretched.’ So, too, it was once with ‘unhappy,’ although its use in the sense of ‘wicked’ has now passed away.

Union. The elder Pliny [H. N. ix. 59) tells us that the name ‘unio’ had not very long before his time begun to be given to a pearl in which all chiefest excellencies, size, roundness, smoothness, whiteness, weight met and, so to speak, were united; and as late as Jeremy Taylor the word ‘union’ was often employed by our best writers in this sense, namely that of a pearl of a rare and transcendent beauty.

Unkind,
Unkindness. ‘Unkind’ has quite forfeited now its primary meaning, namely that which violates the law of kind, thus “unkind abominations” (Chaucer), meaning incestuous unions and the like; and has taken up with the secondary, that which does not recognize the duties flowing out of this kinship. In its primary meaning it moves in a region where the physical and ethical meet; in its secondary in a purely ethical sphere. How soon it began to occupy this the passages which follow will show; for out of a sense that nothing was so unnatural or ‘unkind’ as ingratitude, it early obtained use as a special designation of this vice.

Unthrifty,
Unthriftiness. As the ‘thrifty’ will probably be the thriving, so the ‘unthrifty’ the unthriving; but the words are not synonymous any more, as once they were.

Unvalued. This and ‘invaluable’ have been usefully desynonymized; so that ‘invaluable’ means now having a value greater than can be estimated, ‘unvalued’ esteemed to have no value at all.

230

Usury,
Usurer. This, which is now the lending of money upon inordinate interest, was once the lending it upon any. The man who did not lend his money for nothing was then a ‘usurer,’ not he, as now, who makes unworthy profit by the necessities of the needy or the extravagance of the foolish. It is true that the word was as dishonourable then as it is now; and it could not be otherwise, so long as all receiving of interest was regarded as a violation at once of divine and of natural law. When at length the common sense of men overcame this strange but deep-rooted prejudice, the word was too deeply stained with dishonour to be employed to express the lawful receiving of a measurable interest; but ‘usury,’ taking up a portion only of its former meaning, was now restricted to that which still remained under a moral ban, namely the exacting of an excessive interest for money lent.

V.

Vermin. Now always noxious offensive animals of the smaller kind; but employed formerly with no such limitation.

Villain,
Villany. A word of which the story is so well known that one may be spared the necessity of repeating it. It was, I think, with ‘villany’ that there was first a transfer into an ethical sphere, though it is very noticeable how ‘villany’ till a very late day expressed words of infamy much oftener than deeds.

232

Vivacious,
Vivacity. ‘Longevity,’ as one might expect to find it, is a comparatively modern word in the language. ‘Vivacity,’ which has now acquired the mitigated sense of liveliness, served instead of it; keeping in English the original sense which ‘vivacitas’ had in the Latin.

233

Voluble. This epithet always insinuates of him to whom it is applied now that his speech is freer and faster than is meet; but it once occupied that region of meaning which ‘fluent’ does at present, without any suggestion of the kind.

W.

Wainscot. I transcribe a correction of the brief and inaccurate notice of this word in my first edition, which a correspondent, with the best opportunity of knowledge, has kindly sent me: “Wainscot is always in the building trade applied to oak only, but not to all kinds of oak. The wainscot oak grows abroad, chiefly, I think, in Holland, and is used for wainscoting, or wood lining, of walls of houses, because it works very freely under the tool, and is not liable to ‘cast’ or rend, as English oak will do. It is consequently used for all purposes where expense is no object. Formerly all panelling to walls was done in wainscot, and was called ‘wainscoting.’ It was never painted. In modern times it was imitated in deal, and was painted to represent real wainscot, or of any other colour, while the name of ‘wainscoting’ adhered to it, though the material was no longer 234 wainscot. At present, however, the word ‘wainscot’ is always used to designate the real wainscot oak.” It will be seen from this very interesting explanation that within the narrow limits of a particular trade, the old meaning of ‘wainscot,’ which has every where else disappeared, still survives. It would be curious to trace how much in this way of earlier English within limited technical circles lives on, having every where else died out.

Whirlpool. None of our Dictionaries, as far as I am aware, have noticed the use of ‘whirlpool’ to designate some huge sea-monster of the whale kind.

Wight. The best discussion on this interesting word is to be found in Grimm’s Deutsche Mythologie, 235 pp. 408-410, who has a chapter, On Wights and Elves. ‘Wight’ has lost altogether now with us its original sense of a preternatural or supernatural being, and is used, but always slightingly, of men. It is easy to see how, with the gradual contempt for the old mythology, the dying-out of the superstitions connected with it, the words of it, such as ‘elf’ and ‘wight,’ should have lost their weight and honour as well.

Wilful,
Wilfully. ‘Wilful’ and ‘willing,’ ‘wilfully’ and ‘willingly,’ have been conveniently desynonymized by later usage in our language; so that in ‘wilful’ and ‘wilfully’ there now lies ever the sense of will capriciously exerted, deriving its motives merely from itself; while the examples which follow show there was once no such implication of self-will in the words.

236

Wince. Now to shrink or start away as in pain from a stroke or touch; but, as far as I know, used always by our earlier authors in the sense of to kick.

Wit,
Witty. The present meaning of ‘wit’ as compared with the past, and the period when it was in the act of transition from one to the other, cannot be better marked than in the quotation from Bishop Reynolds which is given below.

237

Witch. This was not once restrained, as it now is, to the female exerciser of unlawful magical arts, but would have been as freely applied to Balaam or Simon Magus as to her whom we call the ‘Witch’ of Endor.

Womb. This is now only the ὑστέρα, but once had as wide a meaning as the κοιλία, of the Greeks.

Worm. This, which designates at present only the smaller and innoxious kinds of creeping and crawling things, once, as the German ‘Wurm’ to the present day, was employed of all the serpent kind. In ‘blindworm,’ ‘slowworm,’ the usage still survives.

Worship. At present we ‘worship’ none but God; there was a time when the word was employed in so much more general a sense that it was not profane to say that God ‘worshipped,’ that is honoured, man. This, of course, was the sense of the word when those words found place in the Marriage Service, “with my body I thee worship.”

Wretched. What has been observed on ‘unhappy’ explains and accounts also for the use of ‘wretched’ as == wicked. ‘Wretch’ still continues 240 to cover the two meanings of one miserable or one wicked, though ‘wretched’ does so no more.

THE END.

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