“Mistaken souls that dream of heaven,”
in a popular hymn, the word is used, of course, in the former sense. The adjective “mortal” means both “deadly” and “liable to death.” Of the large number of adjectives ending in “able” or “ible,” some have a subjective and others an objective sense. A “terrible” sight is one that is able to inspire terror; but a “readable” book is one which you can read. It is said that the word “wit” is used in Pope’s “Essay on Criticism” with at least seven different meanings.
The prefixes “un” and “in” are equivocal. Commonly they have a negative force, as in “unnecessary,” “incomplete.” But sometimes, both in verbs and adjectives, they have a positive or intensive meaning, as in the words “intense,” “infatuated,” “invaluable.” To “invigorate” one’s physical system by exercise, is not to lessen, but to increase one’s energy. The verb “unloose” should, by analogy, signify “to tie,” just as “untie” means “to loose.” “Inhabitable” should signify “not habitable,” according to the most frequent use of “in.” To “unravel” means the same as “to ravel”; to “unrip” the same as “to rip.” Johnson sanctions the use of the negative prefix in these two words, but Richardson and Webster condemn it as superfluous. Walton, in his “Angler,” tells an amusing anecdote touching the two words. “We heard,” he says, “a high contention amongst the beggars, whether it was easiest to ‘rip’ a cloak or ‘unrip’ a cloak. One beggar affirmed it was all one; but that was denied, by asking her, if doing and undoing were all one. Then another said, ’twas easiest to unrip a cloak, for that was to let it alone; but she was answered by asking how she could unrip it, if she let it alone.”
This opposition in the meanings of a word is a phenomenon not altogether peculiar to the English language. In Greek, θοάζειν has the seemingly contradictory meanings of “to move hastily,” and “to sit”; χρεία means both “use” and “need”; and λάω means both “to wish” and “to take.” In Latin, sacer means “set apart” or “tabooed,” and unicus implies singularity,—unitas, association. Many other examples might be cited to show that “as rays of light may be reflected and refracted in all possible ways from the primary direction, so the meaning of a word may be deflected from its original bearing in a variety of manners; and consequently we cannot well reach the primitive force of the term unless we know the precise gradations through which it has gone.”
Several writers on our language have noticed a singular tendency to limit or narrow the signification of certain words, whose etymology would suggest a far wider application. Why should we not “retaliate” (that is, pay back in kind, res, talis) kindnesses as well as injuries? Why should we “resent” (feel again) insults, and not affectionate words and deeds? Why should our hate, animosity, hostility, and other bad passions, be “inveterate” (that is, gain strength by age), but our better feelings, love, kindness, charity, never? Byron showed a true appreciation of the better uses to which the word might be put, when he subscribed a letter to a friend, “Yours inveterately, Byron.”
In some of our nouns there is a nice distinction of meaning between the singular and the plural. A “minute” is a fraction of time; “minutes” are notes of a speech, conversation, etc. The “manner” in which a man enters a drawing-room may be unexceptionable, while his “manners” are very bad. When the “Confederates” threatened to pull down the American “colors” at New Orleans, they did it under “color” of right. A person was once asked whether a certain lawyer had got rich by his practice. “No,” was the sarcastic reply, “but by his practices.”