Words; Their Use and Abuse

CHAPTER XV.

CURIOSITIES OF LANGUAGE.

A thoughtful English writer tells us that, when about nine years old, he learned with much surprise that the word “sincere” was derived from the practice of filling up flaws in furniture with wax, whence sine cera came to mean pure, not vamped up or adulterated. This explanation gave him great pleasure, and abode in his memory as having first shown him that there is a reason in words as well as things. There are few cultivated persons who have not felt, at some time in their lives, a thrill of surprise and delight like that of this writer. Throughout our whole lives, from the cradle to the grave, the stream of our history, inner and outer, runs wonderfully blended with the texture of the words we use. Dive into what subject we will, we never touch the bottom. The simplest prattle of a child is but the light surface of a deep sea containing many treasures. It would be hard, therefore, to find in the whole range of inquiry another study which at once is so fascinating, and so richly repays the labor, as that of the etymology or primitive significations of words.

It is an epoch in one’s intellectual history when he first learns that words are living and not dead things,—that in these children of the mind are incarnated the wit and wisdom, the poetic fancies and the deep intuitions, the passionate longings and the happy or sad experiences of many generations. The discovery is “like the dropping of scales from his eyes, like the acquiring of another sense, or the introduction into a new world;” he never ceases wondering at the moral marvels that everywhere reveal themselves to his gaze. To eyes thus opened, dictionaries, instead of seeming huge masses of word-lumber, become vast storehouses of historical memorials, than which none are more vital in spirit or more pregnant with meaning. It is not in oriental fairy-tales only that persons drop pearls every time they open their mouths; like Molière’s Bourgeois Gentilhomme, who had been speaking prose all his life without knowing it, we are dropping gems from our lips in almost every hour of the day. Not a thought, or feeling, or wish can we utter without recalling, by an unconscious sign or symbol, some historic fact, some memory of “auld lang syne,” some bygone custom, some vanished superstition, some exploded prejudice, or some ethical divination that has lost its charm. Even the homeliest and most familiar words, the most hackneyed phrases, are connected by imperceptible ties with the hopes and fears, the reasonings and reflections, of bygone men and times.

Every generation of men inherits and uses all the scientific wealth of the past. “It is not merely the great and rich in the intellectual world who are thus blessed, but the humblest inquirer, while he puts his reasonings into words, benefits by the labors of the greatest. When he counts his little wealth, he finds he has in his hands coins which bear the image and superscription of ancient and modern intellectual dynasties, and that in virtue of this possession acquisitions are in his power, solid knowledge within his reach, which none could ever have attained to, if it were not that the gold of truth once dug out of the mine circulates more and more widely among mankind.” Emerson beautifully calls language “fossil poetry.” The etymologist, he adds, finds the deadest word to have been once a brilliant picture. “As the limestone of the continent consists of infinite masses of the shells of animalcules, so language is made up of images or tropes, which now, in their secondary use, have long since ceased to remind us of their poetic origin.”

Not only is this true, but many a single word, as Archbishop Trench remarks, is itself a concentrated poem, in which are treasured stores of poetical thought and imagery. Examine it closely, and it will be found to rest upon some palpable or subtle analogy of things material and spiritual, showing that, however trite the image now, the man who first coined the word was a poet. The older the word, the profounder and more beautiful the meanings it will often be found to inclose; for words of late growth speak to the head, not to the heart; thoughts and feelings are too subtle for new words, and are conveyed only by those about which cluster many associations. It is the use of words when new and fresh from the lips of their inventors, before their vivid and picturesque meanings have faded out or been obscured by their many secondary significations, that gives such pictorial beauty, pith, and raciness, to the early writers; “and hence to recall language, to restore its early meanings, to re-mint it in novel forms, is the secret of all effective writing and speaking,—of all verbal expression which is to leave, as was said of the eloquence of Pericles, stings in the minds and memories of the hearers.”

Language is not only “fossil poetry,” but it is also fossil philosophy, fossil ethics, and fossil history. As in the pre-Adamite rock are bound up and preserved the vegetable and animal forms of ages long gone by, so in words are locked up truths once known but now forgotten,—the thoughts and feelings, the habits, customs, opinions, virtues and vices of men long since in their graves. Language is, in short, “the depository of the accumulated body of experience, to which all former ages have contributed their part, and which is the inheritance of all yet to come.”[43] It is “like amber, circulating the electric spirit of truth, and preserving the relics of ancient wisdom.”[44] Compared with this memorial of the past, these records of ancient and modern intellectual dynasties, how poor are all other monuments of human power, perseverance, skill, or genius! Unlike the works of individual genius, or the cuneiform inscriptions which are found in oriental countries on the crumbling fragments of half-calcined stone, language gives us the history not only of individuals, but of nations; not only of nations, but of mankind. It is, indeed, “an admirable poem on the history of all ages; a living monument on which is written the genesis of human thought. Thus ‘the ground on which our civilization stands is a sacred one, for it is the deposit of thought. For language, as it is the mirror, so it is the product of reason, and, as it embodies thought, so it is the child of thought. In it are embodied the sparks of that celestial fire which from a once bright centre of civilization has streamed forth over the inhabited earth, and which now already, after less than three myriads of years, forms a galaxy round the globe, a chain of light from pole to pole.’”

How pregnant with instruction is often the history of a single word! Coleridge, who keenly appreciated the significance of words, says that there are cases where more knowledge of more value may be conveyed by the history of a word than by the history of a campaign. Sometimes the germ of a nation’s life,—the philosophy of some political, moral, or intellectual movement in a country,—will be found coiled up in a single word, just as the oak is found in an acorn. The word “ostracize” gives us a vivid picture of the Athenian democracy, and of the period when oyster-shells were used for ballots. It calls up the barbarity which held an election of candidates for banishment; the arbitrary power which enabled the vilest of the citizens, from mere envy of the reputation of the best man in the city, to make him an exile; and the utter lack and desecration of liberty, while its forms were fetiches for the popular worship. The fact that the Arabs were the arithmeticians, the astronomers, the chemists, and the merchants of the Middle Ages, is shown by the words we have borrowed from them,—“algebra,” “almanac,” “cypher,” “zero,” “zenith,” “alkali,” “alcohol,” “alchemy,” “alembic,” “magazine,” “tariff,” “cotton,” “elixir”; and so that the monastic system originated in the Greek, and not in the Latin church, is shown by the fact that the words expressing the chief elements of the system, as “monk,” “monastery,” “anchorite,” “cenobite,” “ascetic,” “hermit,” are Greek, not Latin. What an amount of history is wrapped up in the word “Pagan”! The term, we learn from Gibbon, is remotely derived from Πάγη, in the Doric dialect, signifying a fountain; and the rural neighborhood which frequented the same derived the common appellation of Pagus and “Pagans.” Soon “Pagan” and “rural” became nearly synonymous, and the meaner peasants acquired that name which has been corrupted into “peasant” in the modern languages of Europe. All non-military people soon came to be branded as Pagans. The Christians were the soldiers of Christ; their adversaries, who refused the “sacrament,” or military oath of baptism, might deserve the metaphorical name of Pagans. Christianity gradually filled the cities of the empire; the old religion retired and languished, in the time of Prudentius, in obscure villages. From Pagus, as a root, comes pagius, first a villager, then a rural laborer, then a servant, lastly a “page.” Pagina, first the inclosed square of cultivated land near a village, graduated into the “page” of a book. Pagare, from denoting the “field service” that compensated the provider of food and raiment, was applied eventually to every form in which the changes of society required the benefited to “pay” for what they received. Again, when a Scotchman speaks of his “shacklebone,” he not only conveys an idea of his wrist, but discovers by this very term that slavery, or vassalage, continued so long in Scotland as to impress itself indelibly on the language of the country.

Often where history is utterly dumb concerning the past, language speaks. The discovery of the foot-print on the sand did not more certainly prove to Robinson Crusoe that the island of which he had fancied himself the sole inhabitant contained a brother man, than the similarity of the inflections in the speech of different peoples proves their brotherhood. Were all the histories of England swept from existence, the study of its language,—developing the fact that the basis of the language is Saxon, that the names of the prominent objects of nature are Celtic, the terms of war and government Norman-French, the ecclesiastical terms Latin,—would enable us to reconstruct a large part of the story of the past, as it even now enables us to verify many of the statements of the chroniclers. Humboldt, in his “Cosmos,” eulogizes the study of words as one of the richest sources of historical knowledge; and it is probable that what comparative philology, yet in its infancy, has already discovered, will compel a rewriting of the history of the world. Even now it has thrown light on many of the most perplexing problems of religion, history, and ethnography; and it seems destined to triumphs of which we can but dimly apprehend the consequences. On the stone tablets of the universe God’s own finger has written the changes which millions of years have wrought on the mountain and the plain; and in the fluid air, which he coins into spoken words, man has preserved forever the grand facts of his past history and the grand processes of his inmost soul. “Nations and languages against dynasties and treaties,” is the cry which is remodelling the map of Europe; and in our country, comparative philologists,—to their shame be it said,—have labored with Satanic zeal to prove the impossibility of a common origin of languages and races, in order to justify, by scientific arguments, the theory of slavery. It has been said that the interpretation of one word in the Vedas fifty years earlier would have saved many Hindoo widows from being burned alive; and now that the philologists of Germany and England have shown that the iron network of caste, which for centuries has hindered the development of India, is not a religious institution, and has no authority in their sacred writings, but is the invention of an arrogant and usurping priesthood,—or, at best, an erroneous tradition, due to the half-knowledge or to the imposture of the native pundits,—the British government will be able to inflict penalties for the observance of the rules of caste, and thus to relieve India from the greatest clog on its progress.

CHANGES IN THE MEANING OF WORDS.

Language, as it daguerreotypes human thought, shares, as we have seen, in all the vicissitudes of man. It mirrors all the changes in the character, tastes, customs, and opinions of a people, and shows with unerring faithfulness whether, and in what degree, they advance or recede in culture or morality. As new ideas germinate in the mind of a nation, it will demand new forms of expression; on the other hand, a petrified and mechanical national mind will as surely betray itself in a petrified and mechanical language. It is by no accident or caprice that

Often with the lapse of time the meaning of a word changes imperceptibly, until after some centuries it becomes the very opposite of what it once was. To disinter these old meanings out of the alluvium and drift of ages affords as much pleasure to the linguist as to disinter a fossil does to the geologist.

An exact knowledge of the changes of signification which words have undergone is not merely a source of pleasure; it is absolutely indispensable to the full understanding of old authors. Thus, for example, Milton and Thomson use “horrent” and “horrid” for bristling, e.g.,

Milton speaks of a “savage” (meaning woody, silva) hill, and of “amiable” (meaning lovely) fruit. Again, in the well known lines of the “Allegro,” where, Milton says, amongst the cheerful sights of rural morn,

the words “tells his tale” do not mean that he is romancing or making love to the milkmaid, but that he is counting his sheep as they pass the hawthorn,—a natural and familiar occupation of shepherds on a summer’s morning. The primary meaning of “tale” is to count or number, as in the German zahlen. It is thus used in the Book of Exodus, which states that the Israelites were compelled to deliver their “tale of bricks.” In the English “tale” and in the French conte the secondary meaning has supplanted the first, though we still speak of “keeping tally,” of “untold gold,” and say, “Here is the sum twice-told.”

Again, Milton’s use of the word “jolly” in the following lines from his “Sonnet to the Nightingale,” strikingly illustrates the disadvantages under which poetry in a living, and consequently ever-changing, language, labors:

Though we may know the meaning which the word bore a little more than two and a half centuries ago, yet it is impossible entirely to banish from the mind the vulgar associations which have gathered round it since.

It has been said that one of the arts of a great poet or prose-writer, who wishes to add emphasis to his style,—to bring out all the latent forces of his native tongue,—will often consist in reconnecting a word with its original derivation, in not suffering it to forget itself and its father’s house, though it would. This Milton does sometimes with signal effect; but in the great majority of cases his meaning becomes obscure to the unlearned reader. In a great number of cases we must interpret his words rather by their classical meanings than by their English use. Thus in “Paradise Lost,” when Satan speaks of his having been pursued by “Heaven’s afflicting thunder,” the poet uses the word “afflicting” in its original primary sense of striking down bodily. Properly the word denotes a state of mind or feeling only, and is not used to-day in a concrete sense. So when Milton, at the opening of the same poem, speaks of

the meaning of the word “secret” is not that of the English adjective, but is remote, apart, lonely, as in Virgil’s secretosque pios. The absurdity of supposing the word to be the same as our ordinary adjective led Bentley, among many ridiculous “improvements” of Milton’s language, to change it to “sacred.” Again, the word “recollect” is used in its etymological sense in these lines from “Paradise Lost”:

So Milton uses the word “astonished” in its etymological sense of “thunderstruck,” attonitus, as when he makes Satan say that his associates

Holland, in his translation of Livy, speaks of a knave who threw some heavy stones upon a certain king, “whereof the one smote the king upon his head, the other astonished his shoulder.”

Shakespeare, also, not unfrequently uses words in their classical sense. Thus when Cleopatra speaks of

“modern” is used in the sense of “modal” (from modus, a fashion or manner); a modern friend, compared with a true friend, being what the fashion of a thing is, compared with the substance. So,—as De Quincey, to whom we owe this explanation, has shown,—when in the famous picture of life, “All the World’s a Stage,” the justice is described as

the meaning is not “full of wise sayings and modern illustrations,” but full of proverbial maxims of conduct and of trivial arguments; i.e., of petty distinctions that never touch the point at issue. “Instances” is from instantia, which the monkish and scholastic writers always used in the sense of an argument. When in “Julius Cæsar” we read,—

we must not attach to “bravery” its modern sense; and the same remark applies to the word “extravagant” in the following passage from “Hamlet”:

“Courage” is “good heart.” “Anecdote,”—from the Greek ἀν (not), ἐκ (out), and δότα (given),—meant once a fact not given out or published; now it means a short, amusing story. Procopius, a Greek historian in the reign of Justinian, is said to have coined the word. Not daring, for fear of torture and death, to speak of some living persons as they deserved, he wrote a work which he called “Anecdotes,” or a “Secret History.” The instant an anecdote is published, it belies its title; it is no longer an anecdote. “Allowance” formerly was used to denote praise or approval; as when Shakespeare says in “Troilus and Cressida,”

“To prevent,” which now means to hinder or obstruct, signified, in its Latin etymology, to anticipate, to get the start of, and is thus used in the Old Testament. “Girl” once designated a young person of either sex. “Widow” was applied to men as well as women. “Sagacious” once meant quick-smelling, as in the line

“Rascal,” according to Verstegan, primarily meant an “il-favoured, lean, and worthelesse deer.” Thus Shakespeare:

Afterward it denoted the common people, the plebs as distinguished from the populus. A “naturalist” was once a person who rejected revealed truth, and believed only in natural religion. He is now an investigator of nature and her laws, and often a believer in Christianity. “Blackguards” were formerly the scullions, turnspits, and other meaner retainers in a great household, who, when a change was made from one residence to another, accompanied and took care of the pots, pans, and other kitchen utensils, by which they were smutted. Webster, in his play of “The White Devil,” speaks of “a lousy knave, that within these twenty years rode with the ‘black guard’ in the Duke’s carriage, amongst spits and dripping-pans.” “Artillery,” which to-day means the heavy ordnance of modern warfare, was two or three centuries ago applied to any engines for throwing missiles, even to the bow and arrow. “Punctual,” which now denotes exactness in keeping engagements, formerly applied to space as well as to time. Sir Thomas Browne speaks of “a ‘punctual’ truth”; and we read in other writers of “a ‘punctual’ relation,” or “description,” meaning a particular or circumstantial relation or description.

“Bombast,” now swelling talk, inflated diction without substance, was originally cotton padding. It is derived from the Low Latin, bombax, cotton. “Chemist” once meant the same as alchemist. “Polite” originally meant polished. Cudworth speaks of “polite bodies, as looking-glasses.” “Tidy,” which now means neat, well arranged, is derived from the old English word “tide,” meaning time, as in eventide. “Tidy” (German, zeitig) is timely, seasonable. As things in right time are apt to be in the right place, the transition in the meaning of the word is a natural one. “Caitiff” formerly meant captive, being derived from captivus through the Norman-French. The change of signification points to the tendency of slavery utterly to debase the character,—to transform the man into a cowardly miscreant. In like manner “miscreant,” once simply a misbeliever, and applied to the most virtuous as well as to the vilest, points to the deep-felt conviction that a wrong belief leads to wrong living. Thus Gibbon: “The emperor’s generosity to the ‘miscreant’ [Soliman] was interpreted as treason to the Christian cause.” “Thought,” in early English, was anxious care; e.g., “Take no ‘thought’ for your life” (Matt, vi, 25). “Thing” primarily meant discourse, then solemn discussion, council, court of justice, cause, matter or subject of discourse. The “husting” was originally the house-thing, or domestic court.

“Coquets” were once male as well as female. “Usury,” which now means taking illegal or excessive interest, denoted, at first, the taking of any interest, however small. A “tobacconist” was formerly a smoker, not a seller, of tobacco. “Corpse,” now a body from which the breath of life has departed, once denoted the body of the living also; as in Surrey,

We have already spoken of the striking change which the word “incomprehensible” has undergone within the last three centuries.

“Wit,” now used in a more limited sense, at first signified the mental powers collectively; e.g., “Will puts in practice what the wit deviseth.” Later it came to denote quickness of apprehension, beauty or elegance in composition, and Pope defined it as

Another meaning was a man of talents or genius. The word “parts,” a hundred years ago, was used to denote genius or talents. Horace Walpole, in one of his letters, says of Goldsmith that “he was an idiot, with once or twice a fit of ‘parts.’” The word “loyalty” has undergone a marked change within a few centuries. Originally it meant in English, as in French, fair dealing, fidelity to engagements; now it means, in England, fidelity to the throne, and, in the United States, to the Union or the Constitution. “Relevant,” which formerly meant relieving or assisting, is now used in the sense of “relative” or “relating” to, with which, from a similarity of sound, though without the least etymological connection, it appears to have been confounded. The word “exorbitant” once meant deviating from a track or orbit; it is now used exclusively in the sense of excessive.

The word “coincide” was primarily a mathematical term. If one mathematical point be superposed upon another, or one straight line upon another between the same two points, the two points in the first case and the two lines in the latter are said to coincide. The word was soon applied figuratively to identity of opinion, but, according to Prof. Marsh, was not fully popularized, at least in America, till 1826. On the Fourth of July in that year, the semi-centennial jubilee of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson, the author of that manifesto, and John Adams, its principal champion on the floor of Congress, both also Ex-Presidents, died; and this fact was noticed all over the world, and especially in the United States, as a remarkable “coincidence.” The death of Ex-President Monroe, also, on the Fourth of July five years after, gave increased currency to the word. Our late civil war has led to some striking mutations in the meaning of words. “Contraband,” from its general signification of any article whose importation or exportation is prohibited by law, became limited to a fugitive slave within the United States’ military lines. “Secede” and “secession,” “confederate” and “confederacy,” have also acquired new special meanings.

DEGRADATION OF WORDS.

Another striking characteristic of words is their tendency to contract in form and degenerate in meaning. Sometimes they are ennobled and purified in signification; but more frequently they deteriorate, and from an honorable fall into a dishonorable meaning. I will first note a few examples of the former:—“Humility,” with the Greeks and Romans, meant meanness of spirit; “Paradise,” in oriental tongues, meant only a royal park; “regeneration” was spoken by the Greeks only of the earth in the springtime, and of the recollection of forgotten knowledge; “sacrament” and “mystery” are words “fetched from the very dregs of paganism” to set forth the great truths of our redemption. On the other hand, “thief” (Anglo-Saxon, theow) formerly signified only one of the servile classes; and “villain” or “villein,” meant peasant,—the serf who, under the feudal system, was adscriptus glebæ. The scorn of the landholders, the half-barbarous aristocracy, for these persons, led them to ascribe to them the most hateful qualities, some of which their degrading situation doubtless tended to foster. Thus the word “villein” became gradually associated with ideas of crime and guilt, till at length it became a synonym for knaves of every class in society. A “menial” was one of the many; “insolent” meant unusual; “silly,” blessed,—the infant Jesus being termed by an old English poet “that harmless ‘silly’ babe”; “officious” signified ready to do kindly offices. “Demure” was used once in a good sense, without the insinuation which is now almost latent in it, that the external shows of modesty and sobriety rest on no corresponding realities. “Facetious,” which now has the sense of buffoonish, originally meant urbane. “Idiot,” from the Greek, originally signified only a private man, as distinguished from an office-holder. “Homely” formerly meant secret and familiar; and “brat,” now a vulgar and contemptuous word, had anciently a very different signification, as in the following lines from an old hymn by Gascoigne:

“Imp” once meant graft; Bacon speaks of “those most virtuous and goodly young imps, the Duke of Sussex and his brother.” A “boor” was once only a farmer; a “scamp” a camp deserter. “Speculation” first meant the sense of sight; as in Shakespeare:

Next it was metaphorically transferred to mental vision, and finally denoted, without a metaphor, the reflections and theories of philosophers. From the domain of philosophy it has finally travelled downward to the offices of stock-jobbers, share-brokers, and all men who get their living by their wits, instead of by the sweat of their brows. So “craft” at first meant ability, skill, or dexterity. The origin of the term, according to Wedgewood, is seen in the notion of seizing, expressed by the Italian, graffiare, Welsh, craff, a hook, brace, holdfast. The term is then applied to seizing with the mind, as in the Latin term “apprehend,” “comprehend,” from prehendere, to seize in a material way. “Cunning” once conveyed no idea of sinister or crooked wisdom. “The three Persons of the Trinity,” says a reverent writer of the fifteenth century, “are of equal cunning.” Bacon, a century later, uses the word in its present sense of fox-like wisdom; and Locke calls it “the ape of wisdom.” “Vagabond” is a word whose etymology conveys no reproach. It denoted at first only a wanderer. But as men who have no homes are apt to become loose, unsteady, and reckless in their habits, the term has degenerated into its present signification.

“Paramour” meant originally only lover; a “minion” was a favorite; and “knave,” the lowest and most contemptuous term we can use when insulting another, signified originally, as knabe still does in German, a boy. Subsequently, it meant servant; thus Paul, in Wicliffe’s version of the New Testament, reverently terms himself “a ‘knave’ of Jesus Christ.” A similar parallel to this is the word “varlet,” which is the same as “valet.” “Retaliate,” from the Latin re (back) and talis (such), naturally means to pay back in kind, or such as we have received. But as, according to Sir Thomas More, men write their injuries in marble, the kindnesses done them in sand, the word “retaliate” is applied only to offences or indignities, and never to favors. The word “resent,” to feel in return, has undergone a similar deterioration. A Frenchman would say, “Il ‘ressentit’ une vive douleur,” for “He felt acute pain”; whereas we use the word only to express the sentiment of anger.

So “animosity,” which etymologically means only spiritedness, is now applied to only one kind of vigor and activity, that displayed in enmity and hate. “Defalcation,” from the Latin, falx, a sickle or scythe, is properly a cutting off or down, a pruning or retrenchment. Thus Addison: “the tea-table is set forth with its usual bill of fare, and without any defalcation.” To-day we read of a “defalcation in the revenue,” or “in a treasurer’s accounts,” by which is meant a decrease in the amount of the revenue, or in the moneys accounted for, irrespective of the cause,—a falling off. This erroneous use of the word is probably due to a confusion of it with the expression “fall away,” and with the noun “defaulter.” Between the first word and either of the last two, however, there is not the slightest etymological relationship. “Chaffer,” to talk much and idly, primarily meant to buy, to make a bargain, to higgle or dispute about a bargain. “Gossip” (God-akin) once meant a sponsor in baptism. “Simple” and “simplicity” have sadly degenerated in meaning. A “simple” fellow, once a man sine plica (without fold, free from duplicity), is now one who lacks shrewdness, and is easily cheated or duped.

There are some words which, though not used in an absolutely unfavorable sense, yet require a qualifying adjective to be understood favorably. Thus, if a man is said to be noted for his “curiosity,” a prying, impertinent, not a legitimate, curiosity is supposed to be meant. So “critic” and “criticise” are commonly associated with a carping, fault-finding spirit. “Lust” has undergone a signal deterioration. In Chaucer it is used both as a noun and a verb, and signifies wish, desire, pleasure, enjoyment, without any evil connotation. “Parson” (persona ecclesiæ) had originally no undertone of contempt. In the eighteenth century it had become a nickname of scorn; and it was at a party of a dozen parsons that the Earl of Sandwich won his wager, that no one among them had brought his prayer-book or forgotten his corkscrew. “Fellow” was originally a term of respect,—at least, there was in it no subaudition of contempt; now it is suggestive of worthlessness, if not of positively bad morals. Shakespeare did not mean to disparage Yorick, the jester, when he said that “he was a ‘fellow’ of infinite jest”; Pope, on the other hand, tells us, a century or more later, that

“By a ‘fast’ man, I presume you mean a ‘loose’ one,” said Sir Robert Inglis to one who was describing a rake. Of all the words which have degenerated from their original meaning, the most remarkable is the term “dunce,” of the history of which Archbishop Trench has given a striking account in his work on “The Study of Words.” In the Middle Ages certain theologians, educated in the cathedral and cloister schools founded by Charlemagne and his successors, were called Schoolmen. Though they were men of great acuteness and subtlety of intellect, their works, at the revival of learning, ceased to be popular, and it was considered a mark of intellectual progress and advance to have thrown off their yoke. Some persons, however, still clung to these Schoolmen, especially to Duns Scotus, the great teacher of the Franciscan order; and many times an adherent of the old learning would seek to strengthen his position by an appeal to its great doctor, familiarly called Duns; while his opponents would contemptuously rejoin, “Oh, you are a ‘Duns-man,’” or, more briefly, “You are a ‘Duns.’” As the new learning was enlisting more and more of the scholarship of the age on its side, the title became more and more a term of scorn; and thus, from that long extinct conflict between the old and the new learning, the mediæval and the modern theology, we inherit the words “dunce” and “duncery.” The lot of poor Duns, as the Archbishop observes, was certainly a hard one. That the name of “the Subtle Doctor,” as he was called, one of the keenest and most subtle-witted of men,—according to Hooker, “the wittiest of the school divines,”—should become a synonym for stupidity and obstinate dulness, was a fate of which even his bitterest enemies could never have dreamed.

COMMON WORDS WITH CURIOUS DERIVATIONS.

“Bit” is that which has been bit off, and exactly corresponds to the word “morsel,” used in the same sense, and derived from the Latin, mordere, to bite. “Bankrupt” means literally broken bench. It was the custom in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries for the Lombard merchants to expose their wares for sale in the market-place on benches. When one of their number failed, all the other merchants set upon him, drove him from the market, and “broke” his “bench” to pieces. Banco rotto, the Italian for bench-broken, becomes banqueroute in French, and in English “bankrupt.” To the Lombard merchants, who flocked to England in the thirteenth century, we owe also the words “bank,” “debtor,” “creditor,” “usance” (the old word for interest), “journal,” “diary,” “ledger,” “ditto,” and “£. s. d.,” which derives its origin from Lire, Soldi, and Denari. “Alligator” is from the Spanish el lagarto, the lizard, being the largest of the lizard species. “Stipulation” is from stipulum, a straw, which the Romans broke when they made a mutual engagement. “Dexterity” is simply righthandedness. “Mountebank” means a quack-medicine vendor,—from the Italian montare, to mount, and banco, a bench; literally, one who mounts a bench to boast of his infallible skill in curing diseases. “Quandary” is a corruption of the French, qu’en dirai (je)? “what shall I say of it?”—and expresses that feeling of uncertainty which would naturally prompt such a question. “Faint” is from the French, se feindre, to pretend; so that originally fainting was a pretended weakness or inability. We have an example of the thing originally indicated by the word, in the French theatres, where professional fainters are employed, whose business it is to be overcome and to sink to the floor under the powerful acting of the tragedians.

“Topsy-turvy” is said to be a contraction or corruption of “top-side t’other way.” “Helter-skelter” is either from hilariter et celeriter, “gaily and quickly,” or, more probably, from helter, to hang, and skelter, order, i.e., “hang order.” “Hip! hip! hurrah!” is said to have been originally a war-cry adopted by the stormers of a German town, wherein a great many Jews had taken refuge. The place being sacked, the Jews were all put to the sword, amid the shouts of “Hierosolyma est perdita!” From the first letters of these words (h. e. p.) an exclamation was contrived. When the wine sparkles in the cup, and patriotic or other soul-thrilling sentiments are greeted with a “Hip! hip! hurrah!” it is well enough to remember the origin of a cry which reminds us of the cruelty of Christians toward God’s chosen people. “Sexton” is a corruption of “sacristan,” which is from sacra, the sacred things of a church. The sacristan’s office was to take care of the vessels of the service and the vestments of the clergy. Since the Reformation, his duties in this respect have been greatly lessened, and he has dug the graves,—so that the term now commonly means grave-digger, though it still retains somewhat of its old meaning.

“Toad-eater” is a metaphor supposed to be taken from a mountebank’s boy eating toads, in order to show his master’s skill in expelling poison. It is more probable, however, that the phrase is a version of the French, avaler des couleuvres, which means putting up with all sorts of indignities without showing resentment. The propriety of the term rests on the fact that dependent persons are often forced to do the most nauseous things to please their patrons. The same trick of pretending to eat reptiles, such as toads, is held by some etymologists to be the origin of the terms “buffoon,” “buffoonery,” from the Latin, bufo, a toad. Wedgwood derives it from the French, bouffon, a jester, from the Italian, buffa, a puff, a blast or a blurt with the mouth made at one in scorn. A puff with the mouth indicates contempt; it is emblematically making light of an object. In “David Copperfield” we read: “‘And who minds Dick? Dick’s nobody! Whoo!’ He blew a slight, contemptuous breath, as if he blew himself away.”

“Cant” (Gaelic, cainnt, speech) is properly the language spoken by thieves and beggars among themselves, when they do not wish to be understood by bystanders. Subsequently it came to mean the peculiar terms used by any other profession or community. Some etymologists derive the word from the Latin, cantare, to sing, and suppose it to signify the whining cry of professional beggars, though it may have obtained its beggar sense from some instinctive notion of the quasi-religious one. It has been noted that the whole class of words comprising “enchant,” “incantation,” etc., were primarily referable to religious ceremonies of some kind; and as once an important part of a beggar’s daily labor was invoking, or seeming to invoke, blessings on those who gave him alms, this, with the natural tendency to utter any oft-repeated phrases in a sing-song, rhythmical tone, gave to the word “cant” its present signification. In Scotland the word has a peculiar meaning. About the middle of the seventeenth century, Andrew and Alexander Cant, of Edinburgh, maintained that all refusers of the covenant ought to be excommunicated, and that all excommunicated might lawfully be killed; and in their grace after meat they “praid for those phanaticques and seditious ministers” who had been arrested and imprisoned, that the Lord would pity and deliver them. From these two Cants, Andrew and Alexander, it is said, all seditious praying and preaching in Scotland is called “Canting.”

The tendency to regard money as the source of true happiness is strikingly illustrated in the word “wealth,” which is connected with “weal,” just as in Latin beatus meant both blessed and rich, and ὄλβιος the same in Greek. “Property” and “propriety” come from the same French word, propriété; so that the Frenchman in New York was not far out of the way, when in the panic of 1857 he said he “should lose all his propriety.” The term “blue-stocking,” applied to literary ladies, has a curious origin. Originally, in England in 1760, it was conferred on a society of literary persons of both sexes. The society derived its name from the blue worsted stockings always worn by Benjamin Stillingfleet, a distinguished writer, who was one of the most active promoters of this association. This term was subsequently conferred on literary ladies, from the fact that the accomplished and fascinating Mrs. Jerningham wore blue stockings at the social and literary entertainments given by Lady Montague. “Woman” is the wif or web-man, who stays at home to spin, as distinguished from the weap-man, who goes abroad to use the weapon of war. The term “man” is, of course, generic, including both male and female. “Lady” primarily signifies bread keeper. It is derived from the Anglo-Saxon, hlæfdige, i.e., she who looks after the loaf; or else is a corruption of hlâfweardige, from hlâf, bread, loaf, and weardian, to keep, look after. “Waist” is the same as waste; that part of the figure which wastes,—that is, diminishes.

“Canard” has a very curious origin. M. Quêtelet, a French writer, in the “Annuaire de l’Académie Française,” attributes the first application of this term to Norbert Cornelïssen, who, to give a sly hit at the ridiculous pieces of intelligence in the public journals, stated that an interesting experiment had just been made calculated to prove the voracity of ducks. Twenty were placed together; and one of them having been killed and cut up into the smallest possible pieces, feathers and all, was thrown to the other nineteen, and most gluttonously gobbled up. Another was then taken from the nineteen, and, being chopped small like its predecessor, was served up to the eighteen, and at once devoured like the other; and so on to the last, who thus was placed in the position of having eaten his nineteen companions. This story, most pleasantly narrated, ran the round of all the journals of Europe. It then became almost forgotten for about a score of years, when it went back from America with amplifications; but the word remained in its novel signification.

“Abominable” was once supposed to have been derived from the Latin words ab, from, and homo, a man, meaning repugnant to humanity. It really comes from abominor, which again is from ab and omen; and it conveys the idea of what is in a religious sense profane and detestable,—in short, of evil omen. Milton always applies it to devilish, profane, or idolatrous objects. “Poltroon” is pollice truncus, i.e., with the thumb cut off,—pollex, Latin, meaning thumb, and truncus, maimed or mutilated. When the Roman empire was about falling in pieces, the valor of the citizens had so degenerated, that, to escape fighting, many cut off their right thumbs, thus disabling themselves from using the pike. “Farce” is derived from farcire, a Latin word meaning to stuff, as with flour, herbs, and other ingredients in cooking. A farce is a comedy with little plot, stuffed with ludicrous incidents and expressions. “Racy” is from “race,” meaning family, breed, and signifies having the characteristic flavor of origin, savoring of the source.

“Trivial” may be from trivium, in the sense of tres viæ, a place where three roads meet, and thus indicate that which is commonplace, or of daily occurrence. But it is more probably from trivium, in the sense in which the word was used in the Middle Ages, when it meant the course of three arts, grammar, logic, and rhetoric, which formed the common curriculum of the universities, as distinguished from the quadrivium, which embraced four more, namely, music, arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy. Trivial things in this sense may mean things that occur ordinarily, as distinguished from higher or more abstruse things. The word “quiz” has a remarkable origin, unless the etymologists who give its derivation are themselves quizzing their readers. It is said that many years ago, when one Daly was patentee of the Irish theatres, he spent the evening of a Saturday in company with many of the wits and men of fashion of the day. Gambling was introduced, when the manager staked a large sum that he would have spoken, all through the principal streets of Dublin, by a certain hour next day, Sunday, a word having no meaning, and being derived from no known language. Wagers were laid, and stakes deposited. Daly repaired to the theatre, and dispatched all the servants and supernumeraries with the word “Quiz,” which they chalked on every door and every shop window in town. Shops being all shut next day, everybody going to and coming from the different places of worship saw the word, and everybody repeated it, so that “Quiz” was heard all through Dublin; the circumstance of so strange a word being on every door and window caused much surprise, and ever since, should a strange story be attempted to be passed current, it draws forth the expression “You are ‘quizzing’ me.” Some person who has a just aversion to practical jokes, wittily defines a “quizzer” as “one who believes me to be a fool because I will not believe him to be a liar.”

“Huguenot” is a word whose origin is still a vexata quæstio of etymology. Of the many derivations given, some of which are ridiculously fanciful, Eignots, which Voltaire and others give from the German, Eidgenossen, confederates, is the one generally received. A plausible derivation is from Huguenot, a small piece of money, which, in the time of Hugo Capet, was worth less than a denier. At the time of Amboisi’s conspiracy, some of the petitioners fled through fear; whereupon some of the countrymen said they were poor fellows, not worth a Huguenot,—whence the nickname in question. “Pensive” is a picturesque word, from pensare, the frequentative of pendere, to weigh. The French have pensée, a thought, the result of mental weighing. A pensive figure is that in which a person appears to be holding an invisible balance of reflection. “Bumper” is a corruption of le bon père, meaning “the Holy Father,” or Pope, who was once the great toast of every feast. As this was commonly the first toast, it was considered that the glasses would be desecrated by being again used.

“Nice” is derived by some etymologists from the Anglo-Saxon, hnesc, soft, effeminate; but there is good reason for believing that it is from the Latin, nescius, ignorant, “Wise, and nothing nice,” says Chaucer; that is, no wise ignorant. If so, it is a curious instance of the extraordinary changes of meaning which words undergo, that “nice” should come to signify accurate or fastidious, which implies knowledge and taste rather than ignorance. The explanation is, that the diffidence of ignorance resembles the fastidious slowness of discernment. “Gibberish” is from a famous sage, Giber, an Arab, who sought for the philosopher’s stone, and used, perhaps, senseless incantations. “Alert” is a picturesque word from the Italian, all’ erte,—on the mound or rampart. The “alert” man is one who is wide-awake and watchful, like the warder on the watch-tower, or the sentinel upon the rampart. “By-laws” are not, etymologically, laws of inferior importance, but the laws of “byes” or towns, as distinguished from the general laws of a kingdom. “By” is Danish for town or village; as “Whitby,” White Town, “Derby,” Deer Town, etc.

A writer in “Notes and Queries” suggests that the word “snobs” may be of classical origin, derived from sine obola, without a penny. It is not probable, however, that it was meant as a sneer at poverty only. A more ingenious suggestion is that, as the higher classes were called “nobs,”—i.e., nobilitas, the nobility,—the “s-nobs” were those sine nobilitate, without any blue blood in their veins, or pure aristocratic breeding. “Humbug” is an expressive word, about the origin of which etymologists are disagreed. An ingenious explanation, not given in the dictionaries, is, that it is derived from “Hume of the Bog,” a Scotch laird, so called from his estate, who lived during the reign of William and Anne. He was celebrated in Edinburgh circles for his marvellous stories, which, in the exhausting draughts they made on his hearer’s credulity, out-Munchausened Munchausen. Hence, any tough story was called “a regular Hume of the Bog,” or, by contraction, “Humbug.” Another etymology of “humbug” is a piece of Hamburg news; i.e., a Stock Exchange canard. Webster derives the word from “hum,” to impose on, deceive, and “bug” a frightful object, a bugbear. Wedgwood thinks it may come from the union of “hum” and “buzz,” signifying sound without sense. He cites a catch, set by Dr. Arne in “Notes and Queries”: