Science is an immense gainer by words which thus say singly, what whole sentences might with difficulty have succeeded in saying. Thus "isothermal" is quite a modern invention; but how much is summed up by the word; what a long story is saved, as often as we speak of "isothermal" lines. Physiologists have given the name of "atavism" to the emerging again of a face in a family after its disappearance during two or three generations. What would have else needed a sentence is here accomplished by a word. Lord Bacon somewhere describes a certain candidate for the Chair of St. Peter as being "papable." There met, that is, in him all the conditions, and they were many, which would admit the choice of the Conclave falling upon him. When Bacon wrote, one to be "papable" must have been born in lawful wedlock; must have no children nor grandchildren living; must not have a kinsman already in the Conclave; must be already a Cardinal; all which facts this single word sums up. When Aristotle, in the opening sentences of his _Rhetoric_, declares that rhetoric and logic are antistrophic," what a wonderful insight into both, and above all into their relations to one another, does the word impart to those who have any such special training as enables them to take in all which hereby he intends. Or take a word so familiar as "circle," and imagine how it would fare with us, if, as often as in some long and difficult mathematical problem we needed to refer to this figure, we were obliged to introduce its entire definition, no single word representing it; and not this only, but the definition of each term employed in the definition;--how well nigh impossible it would prove to carry the whole process in the mind, or to take oversight of all its steps. Imagine a few more words struck out of the vocabulary of the mathematician, and if all activity and advance in his proper domain was not altogether arrested, yet would it be as effectually restrained and hampered as commercial intercourse would be, if in all its transactions iron or copper were the sole medium of exchange. Wherever any science is progressive, there will be progress in its nomenclature as well. Words will keep pace with things, and with more or less felicity resuming in themselves the labours of the past, will at once a.s.sist and abridge the labours of the future; like tools which, themselves the result of the finest mechanical skill, do at the same time render other and further triumphs of art possible, oftentimes such as would prove quite unattainable without them. [Footnote: See Mill, _System of Logic_, iv. 6, 3.]
It is not merely the widening of men"s intellectual horizon, which, bringing new thoughts within the range of their vision, compels the origination of corresponding words; but as often as regions of this outward world hitherto closed are laid open, the novel objects of interest which these contain will demand to find their names, and not merely to be catalogued in the nomenclature of science, but, so far as they present themselves to the popular eye, will require to be popularly named. When a new thing, a plant, or fruit, or animal, or whatever else it may be, is imported from some foreign land, or so comes within the sphere of knowledge that it needs to be thus named, there are various ways by which this may be done. The first and commonest way is to import the name and the thing together, incorporating the former, unchanged, or with slight modification, into the language. Thus we did with the potato, which is only another form of "batata," in which shape the original Indian word appears in our earlier voyagers. But this is not the only way of naming; and the example on which I have just lighted affords good ill.u.s.tration of various other methods which may be adopted. Thus a name belonging to something else, which the new object nearly resembles, may be transferred to it, and the confusion arising from calling different things by the same name disregarded. It was thus in German, "kartoffel"
being only a corruption, which found place in the last century, of "tartuffel" from the Italian "tartiiffolo"(Florio), properly the name of the truffle; but which not the less was transferred to the potato, on the ground of the many resemblances between them. [Footnote: [See Kluge, _Etym. Dict_. (s. v. _Kartoffel_).]] Or again this same transfer may take place, but with some qualifying or distinguishing addition.
Thus in Italy also men called the potato "tartufo," but added "bianco,"
the white truffle; a name now giving way to "patata." Thus was it, too, with the French; who called it apple, but "apple of the earth"; even as in many of the provincial dialects of Germany it bears the name of "erdapfel" or earth-apple to this day.
It will sometimes happen that a language, having thus to provide a new name for a new thing, will seem for a season not to have made up its mind by which of these methods it shall do it. Two names will exist side by side, and only after a time will one gain the upper hand of the other. Thus when the pineapple was introduced into England, it brought with it the name of "ananas" erroneously "anana" under which last form it is celebrated by Thomson in his _Seasons_. [Footnote: [The word ananas is from a native Peruvian name _nanas_. The pineapple was first seen by Europeans in Peru; see the _New English Dictionary_ (s. v.).]]
This name has been nearly or quite superseded by "pineapple" manifestly suggested by the likeness of the new fruit to the cone of the pine. It is not a very happy formation; for it is not _likeness_, but _ident.i.ty_, which "pineapple" suggests, and it gives some excuse to an error, which up to a very late day ran through all German-English and French-English dictionaries; I know not whether even now it has disappeared. In all of these "pineapple" is rendered as though it signified not the anana, but this cone of the pine; and not very long ago, the _Journal des Debats_ made some uncomplimentary observations on the voracity of the English, who could wind up a Lord Mayor"s banquet with fir-cones for dessert.
Sometimes the name adopted will be one drawn from an intermediate language, through which we first became acquainted with the object requiring to be named. "Alligator" is an example of this. When that ugly crocodile of the New World was first seen by the Spanish discoverers, they called it, with a true insight into its species, "el lagarto," _the_ lizard, as being the largest of that lizard species to which it belonged, or sometimes "el lagarto de las Indias," the Indian lizard. In Sir Walter Raleigh"s _Discovery of Guiana_ the word still retains its Spanish form. Sailing up the Orinoco, "we saw in it," he says, "divers sorts of strange fishes of marvellous bigness, but for _lagartos_ it exceeded; for there were thousands of these ugly serpents, and the people call it, for the abundance of them, the river of _lagartos_, in their language." We can explain the shape which with us the word gradually a.s.sumed, by supposing that English sailors who brought it home, and had continually heard, but may have never seen it written, blended, as in similar instances has often happened, the Spanish article "el" with the name. In Ben Jonson"s "alligarta," we note the word in process of transformation. [Footnote: "Alcoran"
supplies another example of this curious annexation of the article.
Examples of a like absorption or incorporation of it are to be found in many languages; in our own, when we write "a newt," and not an ewt, or when our fathers wrote "a nydiot" (Sir T. More), and not an idiot; in the Italian, which has "lonza" for onza; but they are still more numerous in French. Thus "lierre," ivy, was written by Ronsard, "l"hierre," which is correct, being the Latin "hedera." "Lingot" is our "ingot," but with fusion of the article; in "larigot" and "loriot" the word and the article have in the same manner grown together. In old French it was l"endemain," or, le jour en demain: "le lendemain," as now written, is a barbarous excess of expression. "La Pouille," a name given to the southern extremity of Italy, and in which we recognize "Apulia," is another variety of error, but moving in the same sphere (Genin, _Recreations Philologiques_, vol. i. pp. 102-105); of the same variety is "La Natolie," which was written "L"Anatolie" once. An Irish scholar has observed that in modern Irish "an" (="the") is frequently thus absorbed in the names of places, as in "Nenagh, "Naul"; while sometimes an error exactly the reverse of this is committed, and a letter supposed to be the article, but in fact a part of the word, dropt: thus "Oughaval," instead of "Noughhaval" or New Habitation. [See Joyce, _Irish Local Names_.]]
Less honourable causes than some which I have mentioned, give birth to new words; which will sometimes reflect back a very fearful light on the moral condition of that epoch in which first they saw the light. Of the Roman emperor, Tiberius, one of those "inventors of evil things,"
of whom St. Paul speaks (Rom. i. 30), Tacitus informs us that under his hateful dominion words, unknown before, emerged in the Latin tongue, for the setting out of wickednesses, happily also previously unknown, which he had invented. It was the same frightful time which gave birth to "delator," alike to the thing and to the word.
The atrocious attempt of Lewis XIV. to convert the Protestants in his dominions to the Roman Catholic faith by quartering dragoons upon them, with license to misuse to the uttermost those who refused to conform, this "booted mission" (mission bottee), as it was facetiously called at the time, has bequeathed "dragonnade" to the French language. "Refugee"
had at the same time its rise, and owed it to the same event. They were called "refugies" or "refugees" who took refuge in some land less inhospitable than their own, so as to escape the tender mercies of these missionaries. "Convertisseur" belongs to the same period. The spiritual factor was so named who undertook to convert the Protestants on a large scale, receiving so much a head for the converts whom he made.
Our present use of "roue" throws light on another curious and shameful page of French history. The "roue," by which word now is meant a man of profligate character and conduct, is properly and primarily one broken on the wheel. Its present and secondary meaning it derived from that Duke of Orleans who was Regent of France after the death of Lewis XIV.
It was his miserable ambition to gather round him companions worse, if possible, and wickeder than himself. These, as the Duke of St. Simon a.s.sures us, he was wont to call his "roues"; every one of them abundantly deserving to be broken on the wheel,--which was the punishment then reserved in France for the worst malefactors.
[Footnote: The "roues" themselves declared that the word expressed rather their readiness to give any proof of their affection, even to the being broken upon the wheel, to their protector and friend.] When we have learned the pedigree of the word, the man and the age rise up before us, glorying in their shame, and not caring to pay to virtue even that hypocritical homage which vice finds it sometimes convenient to render.
The great French Revolution made, as might be expected, characteristic contributions to the French language. It gives us some insight into its ugliest side to know that, among other words, it produced the following: "guillotine," "incivisme," "lanterner," "noyade,"
"sansculotte," "terrorisme." Still later, the French conquests in North Africa, and the pitiless severities with which every attempt at resistance on the part of the free tribes of the interior was put down and punished, have left their mark on it as well; "razzia" which is properly an Arabic word, having been added to it, to express the swift and sudden sweeping away of a tribe, with its herds, its crops, and all that belongs to it. The Communist insurrection of 1871 bequeathed one contribution almost as hideous as itself, namely "petroleuse," to the language. It is quite recently that we have made any acquaintance with "recidivist"--one, that is, who falls back once more on criminal courses.
But it would ill become us to look only abroad for examples in this kind, when perhaps an equal abundance might be found much nearer home.
Words of our own keep record of pa.s.sages in our history in which we have little reason to glory. Thus "mob" and "sham" had their birth in that most disgraceful period of English history, the interval between the Restoration and the Revolution. "I may note," says one writing towards the end of the reign of Charles II., "that the rabble first changed their t.i.tle, and were called "the mob" in the a.s.semblies of this [The Green Ribbon] Club. It was their beast of burden, and called first "mobile vulgus," but fell naturally into the contraction of one syllable, and ever since is become proper English." [Footnote: North, _Examen_, p. 574; for the origin of "sham" see p. 231. Compare Swift in _The Tatler_, No. ccx.x.x. "I have done the utmost," he there says, "for some years past to stop the progress of "mob" and "banter"; but have been plainly borne down by numbers, and betrayed by those who promised to a.s.sist me."] At a much later date a writer in _The Spectator_ speaks of "mob" as still only struggling into existence. "I dare not answer,"
he says, "that mob, rap, pos, incog., and the like, will not in time be looked at as part of our tongue." In regard of "mob," the mobile mult.i.tude, swayed hither and thither by each gust of pa.s.sion or caprice, this, which _The Spectator_ hardly expected, while he confessed it possible, has actually come to pa.s.s. "It is one of the many words formerly slang, which are now used by our best writers, and received, like pardoned outlaws, into the body of respectable citizens." Again, though the murdering of poor helpless lodgers, afterwards to sell their bodies for dissection, can only be regarded as the monstrous wickedness of one or two, yet the verb "to burke," drawn from the name of a wretch who long pursued this hideous traffic, will be evidence in all after times, unless indeed its origin should be forgotten, to how strange a crime this age of ours could give birth. Nor less must it be acknowledged that "to ratten" is no pleasant acquisition which the language within the last few years has made; and as little "to boycott," which is of still later birth. [Footnote: This word has found its way into most European languages, see the New English Dictionary (s.
v.)]
We must not count as new words properly so called, although they may delay us for a minute, those comic words, most often comic combinations formed at will, wherein, as plays and displays of power, writers ancient and modern have delighted. These for the most part are meant to do service for the moment, and, this done, to pa.s.s into oblivion; the inventors of them themselves having no intention of fastening them permanently on the language. Thus Aristophanes coined [Greek: mellonikiao], to loiter like Nicias, with allusion to the delays by whose aid this prudent commander sought to put off the disastrous Sicilian expedition, with other words not a few, familiar to every scholar. The humour will sometimes consist in their enormous length, [Footnote: As in the [Greek: amphiptolemopedesistratos] of Eupolis; the [Greek: spermagoraiolekitholachanopolis] of Aristophanes.
There are others a good deal longer than these.] sometimes in their mingled observance and transgression of the laws of the language, as in the [Greek: danaotatos], in the [Greek: autotatos] of the Greek comic poet, the "patruissimus" and "oculissimus," comic superlatives of patruus and oculus, "occisissimus" of occisus; "dominissimus" of dominus; "asinissimo" (Italian) of asino; or in superlative piled on superlative, as in the "minimissimus" and "pessimissimus" of Seneca, the "ottimissimo" of the modern Italian; so too in the "dosones,"
"dabones," which in Greek and in medieval Latin were names given to those who were ever promising, ever saying "I will give," but never crowning promise with performance. Plautus, with his exuberant wit, and exulting in his mastery of the Latin language, is rich in these, "fust.i.tudinus," "ferricrepinus" and the like; will put together four or five lines consisting wholly of comic combinations thrown off for the occasion. [Footnote: _Persa_, iv. 6, 20-23.] Of the same character is Chaucer"s "octogamy," or eighth marriage; Butler"s "cynarctomachy," or battle of a dog and bear; Southey"s "matriarch," for by this name he calls the wife of the Patriarch Job; but Southey"s fun in this line of things is commonly poor enough; his want of finer scholarship making itself felt here. What humour for example can any one find in "philofelist" or lover of cats? Fuller, when he used "to avunculize,"
meaning to tread in the footsteps of one"s uncle, scarcely proposed it as a lasting addition to the language; as little did Pope intend more than a very brief existence for "vaticide," or Cowper for "extra- foraneous," or Carlyle for "gigmanity," for "tolpatchery," or the like.
Such are some of the sources of increase in the wealth of a language; some of the quarters from which its vocabulary is augmented. There have been, from time to time, those who have so little understood what a language is, and what are the laws which it obeys, that they have sought by arbitrary decrees of their own to arrest its growth, have p.r.o.nounced that it has reached the limits of its growth, and must not henceforward presume to develop itself further. Even Bentley with all his vigorous insight into things is here at fault. "It were no difficult contrivance," he says, "if the public had any regard to it, to make the English tongue immutable, unless hereafter some foreign nation shall invade and overrun us." [Footnote: Works, vol. II. p. 13.]
But a language has a life, as truly as a man, or as a tree. As a man, it must grow to its full stature; unless indeed its life is prematurely abridged by violence from without; even as it is also submitted to his conditions of decay. As a forest tree, it will defy any feeble bands which should attempt to control its expansion, so long as the principle of growth is in it; as a tree too it will continually, while it casts off some leaves, be putting forth others. And thus all such attempts to arrest have utterly failed, even when made under conditions the most favourable for success. The French Academy, numbering all or nearly all the most distinguished writers of France, once sought to exercise such a domination over their own language, and might have hoped to succeed, if success had been possible for any. But the language heeded their decrees as little as the advancing tide heeded those of Canute. Could they hope to keep out of men"s speech, or even out of their books, however they excluded from their own _Dictionary_, such words as "blague," "blaguer," "blagueur," because, being born of the people, they had the people"s mark upon them? After fruitless resistance for a time, they have in cases innumerable been compelled to give way--though in favour of the words just cited they have not yielded yet--and in each successive edition of their _Dictionary_ have thrown open its doors to words which had established themselves in the language, and would hold their ground there, altogether indifferent whether they received the Academy"s seal of allowance or not. [Footnote: Nisard (_Curiosites de l"Etym. Franc._ p. 195) has an article on these words, where with the epigrammatic neatness which distinguishes French prose, he says, Je regrette que l"Academie repousse de son Dictionnaire les mots _blague, blagueur_, laissant gronder a sa porte ces fils effrontes du peuple, qui finiront par l"enfoncer. On this futility of struggling against popular usage in language Montaigne has said, "They that will fight custom with grammar are fools"; and, we may add, not less fools, as engaged in as hopeless a conflict, they that will fight it with dictionary.]
Littre, the French scholar who single-handed has given to the world a far better Dictionary than that on which the Academy had bestowed the collective labour of more than two hundred years, shows a much juster estimate of the actual facts of language. If ever there was a word born in the streets, and bearing about it tokens of the place of its birth, it is "gamin"; moreover it cannot be traced farther back than the year 1835; when first it appeared in a book, though it may have lived some while before on the lips of the people. All this did not hinder his finding room for it in the pages of his _Dictionary_. He did the same for "flaneur," and for "rococo," and for many more, bearing similar marks of a popular origin. [Footnote: A work by Darmesteter, _De la Creation actuelle de Mots nouveaux dans la Langue Francaise_, Paris, 1877, is well worth consulting here.] And with good right; for though fashions may descend from the upper cla.s.ses to the lower, words, such I mean as const.i.tute real additions to the wealth of a language, ascend from the lower to the higher; and of these not a few, let fastidious scholars oppose or ignore them for a while as they may, will a.s.sert a place for themselves therein, from which they will not be driven by the protests of all the scholars and all the academicians in the world. The world is ever moving, and language has no choice but to move with it.
[Footnote: One has well said, "The subject of language, the instrument, but also the restraint, of thought, is endless. The history of language, the mouth speaking from the fulness of the heart, is the history of human action, faith, art, policy, government, virtue, and crime. When society progresses, the language of the people necessarily runs even with the line of society. You cannot unite past and present, still less can you bring back the past; moreover, the law of progress is the law of storms, it is impossible to inscribe an immutable statute of language on the periphery of a vortex, whirling as it advances. Every political development induces a concurrent alteration or expansion in conversation and composition. New principles are generated, new authorities introduced; new terms for the purpose of explaining or concealing the conduct of public men must be created: new responsibilities arise. The evolution of new ideas renders the change as easy as it is irresistible, being a natural change indeed, like our own voice under varying emotions or in different periods of life: the boy cannot speak like the baby, nor the man like the boy, the wooer speaks otherwise than the husband, and every alteration in circ.u.mstances, fortune or misfortune, health or sickness, prosperity or adversity, produces some corresponding change of speech or inflection of tone."]
Those who make attempts to close the door against all new comers are strangely forgetful of the steps whereby that vocabulary of the language, with which they are so entirely satisfied that they resent every endeavour to enlarge it, had itself been gotten together--namely by that very process which they are now seeking by an arbitrary decree to arrest. We so take for granted that words with which we have been always familiar, whose right to a place in the language no one dreams now of challenging or disputing, have always formed part of it, that it is oftentimes a surprise to discover of how very late introduction many of these actually are; what an amount, it may be, of remonstrance and resistance some of them encountered at the first. To take two or three Latin examples: Cicero, in employing "favor," a word soon after used by everybody, does it with an apology, evidently feels that he is introducing a questionable novelty, being probably first applied to applause in the theatre; "urba.n.u.s," too, in our sense of urbane, had in his time only just come up; "obsequium" he believes Terence to have been the first to employ. [Footnote: On the new words in cla.s.sical Latin, see Quintilian, Inst. viii. 3. 30-37.] "Soliloquium" seems to us so natural, indeed so necessary, a word, this "soliloquy," or talking of a man with himself alone, something which would so inevitably demand and obtain its adequate expression, that we learn with surprise that no one spoke of a "soliloquy" before Augustine; the word having been coined, as he distinctly informs us, by himself. [Footnote: Solil. 2.
7.]
Where a word has proved an unquestionable gain, it is interesting to watch it as it first emerges, timid, and doubtful of the reception it will meet with; and the interest is much enhanced if it has thus come forth on some memorable occasion, or from some memorable man. Both these interests meet in the word "essay." Were we asked what is the most remarkable volume of essays which the world has seen, few, capable of replying, would fail to answer, Lord Bacon"s. But they were also the first collection of these, which bore that name; for we gather from the following pa.s.sage in the (intended) dedication of the volume to Prince Henry, that "essay" was itself a recent word in the language, and, in the use to which he put it, perfectly novel: he says--"To write just treatises requireth leisure in the writer, and leisure in the reader; ... which is the cause which hath made me choose to write certain brief notes set down rather significantly than curiously, which I have called _Essays_. The word is late, but the thing is ancient."
From this dedication we gather that, little as "essays" now can be considered a word of modesty, deprecating too large expectations on the part of the reader, it had, as "sketches" perhaps would have now, as "commentary" had in the Latin, that intention in its earliest use. In this deprecation of higher pretensions it resembled the "philosopher"
of Pythagoras. Others had styled themselves, or had been willing to be styled, "wise men." "Lover of wisdom" a name at once so modest arid so beautiful, was of his devising. [Footnote: Diogenes Laertius, Prooem.
Section 12.] But while thus some words surprise us that they are so new, others surprise us that they are so old. Few, I should imagine, are aware that "rationalist," and this in a theological, and not merely a philosophical sense, is of such early date as it is; or that we have not imported quite in these later times both the name and the thing from Germany. Yet this is very far from the case. There were "rationalists" in the time of the Commonwealth; and these challenging the name exactly on the same grounds as those who in later times have claimed it for their own. Thus, the author of a newsletter from London, of date October 14, 1646, among other things mentions: "There is a new sect sprung up among them [the Presbyterians and Independents], and these are the _Rationalists_, and what their reason dictates them in Church or State stands for good, until they be convinced with better;"
[Footnote: _Clarendon State Papers_, vol. ii. p. 40 of the _Appendix._]
with more to the same effect. "Christology" has been lately characterized as a monstrous importation from Germany. I am quite of the remonstrant"s mind that English theology does not need, and can do excellently well without it; yet this novelty it is not; for in the _Preface_ to the works of that ill.u.s.trious Arminian divine of the seventeenth century, Thomas Jackson, written by Benjamin Oley, his friend and pupil, the following pa.s.sage occurs: "The reader will find in this author an eminent excellence in that part of divinity which I make bold to call _Christology_, in displaying the great mystery of G.o.dliness, G.o.d the Son manifested in human flesh." [Footnote: _Preface to Dr. Jackson"s Works_, vol. i. p. xxvii. A work of Fleming"s, published in 1700, bears the t.i.tle, _Christology_.] In their power of taking up foreign words into healthy circulation and making them truly their own, languages differ much from one another, and the same language from itself at different periods of its life. There are languages of which the appet.i.te and digestive power, the a.s.similative energy, is at some periods almost unlimited. Nothing is too hard for them; everything turns to good with them; they will shape and mould to their own uses and habits almost any material offered to them. This, however, is in their youth; as age advances, the a.s.similative energy diminishes. Words are still adopted; for this process of adoption can never wholly cease; but a chemical amalgamation of the new with the old does not any longer find place; or only in some instances, and very partially even in them. The new comers lie upon the surface of the language; their sharp corners are not worn or rounded off; they remain foreign still in their aspect and outline, and, having missed their opportunity of becoming otherwise, will remain so to the end. Those who adopt, as with an inward misgiving about their own gift and power of stamping them afresh, make a conscience of keeping them in exactly the same form in which they have received them; instead of conforming them to the laws of that new community into which they are now received.
Nothing will ill.u.s.trate this so well as a comparison of different words of the same family, which have at different periods been introduced into our language. We shall find that those of an earlier introduction have become English through and through, while the later introduced, belonging to the same group, have been very far from undergoing the same transforming process. Thus "bishop" [A.S. biscop], a word as old as the introduction of Christianity into England, though derived from "episcopus," is thoroughly English; while "episcopal," which has supplanted "bishoply," is only a Latin word in an English dress.
"Alms," too, is thoroughly English, and English which has descended to us from far; the very shape in which we have the word, one syllable for "eleemosyna" of six, sufficiently testifying this; "letters," as Horne Tooke observes," like soldiers, being apt to desert and drop off in a long march." The seven-syllabled and awkward "eleemosynary" is of far more recent date. Or sometimes this comparison is still more striking, when it is not merely words of the same family, but the very same word which has been twice adopted, at an earlier period and a later--the earlier form will be thoroughly English, as "palsy"; the later will be only a Greek or Latin word spelt with English letters, as "paralysis."
"Dropsy," "quinsy," "megrim," "squirrel," "rickets," "surgeon,"
"tansy," "dittany," "daffodil," and many more words that one might name, have nothing of strangers or foreigners about them, have made themselves quite at home in English. So entirely is their physiognomy native, that it would be difficult even to suspect them to be of Greek descent, as they all are. Nor has "kickshaws" anything about it now which would compel us at once to recognize in it the French "quelques choses" [Footnote: "These cooks have persuaded us their coa.r.s.e fare is the best, and all other but what they dress to be mere _quelques choses_, made dishes of no nourishing" (Whitlock, _Zootomia_, p.
147).]--"French _kickshose_," as with allusion to the quarter from which it came, and while the memory of that was yet fresh in men"s minds, it was often called by our early writers. A very notable fact about new words, and a very signal testimony of their popular origin, of their birth from the bosom of the people, is the difficulty so often found in tracing their pedigree. When the _causae voc.u.m_ are sought, as they very fitly are, and out of much better than mere curiosity, for the _causae rerum_ are very often wrapt up in them, those continually elude our research. Nor does it fare thus merely with words to which attention was called, and interest about their etymology awakened, only after they had been long in popular use--for that such should often give scope to idle guesses, should altogether refuse to give up their secret, is nothing strange--but words will not seldom perplex and baffle the inquirer even where an investigation of their origin has been undertaken almost as soon as they have come into existence. Their rise is mysterious; like almost all acts of _becoming_, it veils itself in deepest obscurity. They emerge, they are in everybody"s mouth; but when it is inquired from whence they are, n.o.body can tell. They are but of yesterday, and yet with inexplicable rapidity they have already lost all traces of the precise circ.u.mstances under which they were born.
The rapidity with which this comes to pa.s.s is nowhere more striking than in the names of political or religious parties, and above all in names of slight or of contempt. Thus Baxter tells us that when he wrote there already existed two explanations of "Roundhead," [Footnote: _Narrative of my Life and Times_, p. 34; "The original of which name is not certainly known. Some say it was because the Puritans then commonly wore short hair, and the King"s party long hair; some say, it was because the Queen at Stafford"s trial asked who that _round-headed_ man was, meaning Mr. Pym, because he spake so strongly."] a word not nearly so old as himself. How much has been written about the origin of the German "ketzer" (= our "heretic"), though there can scarcely be a doubt that the Cathari make their presence felt in this word. [Footnote: See on this word Kluge"s _Etym. Dict_.] Hardly less has been disputed about the French "cagot." [Footnote: The word meant in old times "a leper"; see Cotgrave"s _Dictionary_, also _Athenceum_, No. 2726.] Is "Lollard,"
or "Loller" as we read it in Chaucer, from "lollen," to chaunt? that is, does it mean the chaunting or canting people? or had the Lollards their t.i.tle from a princ.i.p.al person among them of this name, who suffered at the stake?--to say nothing of "lolium," found by some in the name, these men being as _tares_ among the wholesome wheat. [Footnote: Hahn, _Ketzer im Mittelalter_ vol. ii. p. 534.] The origin of "Huguenot" as applied to the French Protestants, was already a matter of doubt and discussion in the lifetime of those who first bore it. A distinguished German scholar has lately enumerated fifteen explanations which have been offered of the word. [Footnote: Mahn, _Etymol. Untersuch_. p. 92.
Littre, who has found the word in use as a Christian name two centuries before the Reformation, has no doubt that here is the explanation of it.
At any rate there is here what explodes a large number of the proposed explanations, as for instance that Huguenot is another and popular shape of "Eidgenossen."] [How did the lay sisters in the Low Countries, the "Beguines" get their name? Many derivations have been suggested, but the most probable account is that given in Ducange, that the appellative was derived from "le Begue" the Stammerer, the nickname of Lambert, a priest of Liege in the twelfth century, the founder of the order. (See the doc.u.ment quoted in Ducange, and the "New English Dictionary" (s. v.).)] Were the "Waldenses" so called from one Waldus, to whom these "Poor Men of Lyons" as they were at first called, owed their origin? [Footnote: [It is not doubted now that the Waldenses got their name from Peter Waldez or Valdo, a native of Lyons in the twelfth century. Waldez was a rich merchant who sold his goods and devoted his wealth to furthering translations of the Bible, and to the support of a set of poor preachers. For an interesting account of the Waldenses see in the _Guardian_, Aug. 18, 1886, a learned review by W. A. B. C. of _Histoire Litteraire des Vaudois_, par E. Montet.]] As little can any one tell us with any certainty why the "Paulicians" and the "Paterines"
were severally named as they are; or, to go much further back, why the "Essenes" were so called. [Footnote: Lightfoot, _On the Colossians_, p.
114 sqq.] From whence had Johannes Scotus, who antic.i.p.ated so much of the profoundest thinking of later times, his t.i.tle of "Erigena," and did that t.i.tle mean Irish-born, or what? [Footnote: [There is no doubt whatever that _Erigena_ in this case means "Irish-born."]] "Prester John" was a name given in the Middle Ages to a priest-king, real or imaginary, of wide dominion in Central Asia. But whether there was ever actually such a person, and what was intended by his name, is all involved in the deepest obscurity. How perplexing are many of the Church"s most familiar terms, and terms the oftenest in the mouth of her children; thus her "Ember" days; her "Collects"; [Footnote: Freeman, _Principles of Divine Service_, vol. i. p. 145.] her "Breviary"; her "Whitsunday"; [Footnote: See Skeat, s. v.] the derivation of "Ma.s.s"
itself not being lifted above all question. [Footnote: Two at least of the ecclesiastical terms above mentioned are no longer perplexing, and are quite lifted above dispute: _ember_ in "Ember Days" represents Anglo-Saxon _ymb-ryne_, literally "a running round, circuit, revolution, anniversary"; see Skeat (s. v.); and _Whitsunday_ means simply "White Sunday," Anglo-Saxon _hwita Sunnan-daeg_.] As little can any one inform us why the Roman military standard on which Constantine inscribed the symbols of the Christian faith should have been called "Labarum." And yet the inquiry began early. A father of the Greek Church, almost a contemporary of Constantine, can do no better than suggest that "labarum" is equivalent to "laborum," and that it was so called because in that victorious standard was the end of _labour_ and toil (finis laborum)! [Footnote: Mahn, _Elym. Untersuch_. p. 65; cf. Kurtz, _Kirchen-geschichte_, 3rd edit. p. 115.] The "ciborium" of the early Church is an equal perplexity; [Footnote: The word is first met in Chrysostom, who calls the silver models of the temple at Ephesus (Acts xix, 24) [Greek: mikra kiboria]. [A primary meaning of the Greek [Greek: kiborion] was the cup-like seed-vessel of the Egyptian water- lily, see _Dict. of Christian Antiquities_, p. 65.]] and "chapel"
(capella) not less. All later investigations have failed effectually to dissipate the mystery of the "Sangraal." So too, after all that has been written upon it, the true etymology of "mosaic" remains a question still.
And not in Church matters only, but everywhere, we meet with the same oblivion resting on the origin of words. The Romans, one might beforehand have a.s.sumed, must have known very well why they called themselves "Quirites," but it is manifest that this knowledge was not theirs. Why they were addressed as Patres Conscripti is a matter unsettled still. They could have given, one would think, an explanation of their naming an outlying conquered region a "province."
Unfortunately they offer half a dozen explanations, among which we may make our choice. "German" and "Germany" were names comparatively recent when Tacitus wrote; but he owns that he has nothing trustworthy to say of their history; [Footnote: _Germania_, 2.] later inquirers have not mended the matter, [Footnote: Pott, _Etymol. Forsch._ vol. ii. pt. 2, pp. 860-872.]
The derivation of words which are the very key to the understanding of the Middle Ages, is often itself wrapt in obscurity. On "fief" and "feudal" how much has been disputed. [Footnote: Stubbs, _Const.i.tutional History of England_, vol. i. p. 251.] "Morganatic" marriages are recognized by the public law of Germany, but why called "morganatic" is unsettled still. [Footnote: [There is no mystery about this word; see a good account of the term in Skeat"s _Diet_. (s. v.).]] Gypsies in German are "zigeuner"; but when this is resolved into "zichgauner," or roaming thieves, the explanation has about as much scientific value as the not less ingenious explanation of "Saturnus" as satur annis, [Footnote: Cicero, _Nat. Deor._ ii. 25.] of "severitas" as saeva veritas (Augustine); of "cadaver" as composed of the first syllables of _ca_ro _da_ta, _ver_mibus. [Footnote: Dwight, _Modern Philology_, lst series, p. 288.] Littre has evidently little confidence in the explanation commonly offered of the "Salic" law, namely, that it was the law which prevailed on the banks of the Saal. [Footnote: For a full and learned treatment of the various derivations of "Mephistopheles"
which have been proposed, and for the first appearance of the name in books, see Ward"s _Marlowe"s Doctor Faustus_, p. 117.]
And the modern world has unsolved riddles innumerable of like kind. Why was "Canada" so named? And whence is "Yankee" a t.i.tle little more than a century old? having made its first appearance in a book printed at Boston, U.S., 1765. Is "Hottentot" an African word, or, more probably, a Dutch or Low Frisian; and which, if any, of the current explanations of it should be accepted? [Footnote: See _Transactions of the Philological Society_, 1866, pp. 6-25.] Shall we allow Humboldt"s derivation of "cannibal," and find "Carib" in it? [Footnote: See Skeat, s. v.] Whence did the "Chouans," the insurgent royalists of Brittany, obtain their t.i.tle? When did California obtain its name, and why?
Questions such as these, to which we can give no answer or a very doubtful one, might be multiplied without end. Littre somewhere in his great Dictionary expresses the misgiving with which what he calls "anecdotal etymology" fills him; while yet it is to this that we are continually tempted here to have recourse.
But consider now one or two words which have _not_ lost the secret of their origin, and note how easily they might have done this, and having once lost, how unlikely it is that any searching would have recovered it. The traveller Burton tells us that the coa.r.s.e cloth which is the medium of exchange, in fact the money of Eastern Africa, is called "merkani." The word is a native corruption of "American," the cloth being manufactured in America and sold under this name. But suppose a change should take place in the country from which this cloth was brought, men little by little forgetting that it ever had been imported from America, who then would divine the secret of the word? So too, if the tradition of the derivation of "paraffin" were once let go and lost, it would, I imagine, scarcely be recovered. Mere ingenuity would scarcely divine the fact that a certain oil was so named because "parum affinis," having little affinity which chemistry could detect, with any other substance.
So, too, it is not very probable that the derivation of "licorice,"
once lost, would again be recovered. It would exist, at the best, but as one guess among many. There can be no difficulty about it when we find it spelt, as we do in Fuller, "glycyrize or liquoris."
Those which I cite are but a handful of examples of the way in which words forget, or under predisposing conditions might forget, the circ.u.mstances of their birth. Now if we could believe in any merely _arbitrary_ words, standing in connexion with nothing but the mere lawless caprice of some inventor, the impossibility of tracing their derivation would be nothing strange. Indeed it would be lost labour to seek for the parentage of all words, when many probably had none. But there is no such thing; there is no word which is not, as the Spanish gentleman loves to call himself, an "hidalgo," or son of something.
[Footnote: The Spanish _hijo dalgo_, a gentleman, means a son of wealth, or an estate; see Stevens" _Dict_. (s. v.)] All are embodiments, more or less successful, of a sensation, a thought, or a fact; or if of more fortuitous birth, still they attach themselves somewhere to the already subsisting world of words and things, [Footnote: J. Grimm, in an interesting review of a little volume dealing with what the Spaniards call "Germania" with no reference to Germany, the French "argot," and we "Thieves" Language," finds in this language the most decisive evidence of this fact (_Kleine Schrift_. vol. iv. p. 165): Der nothwendige Zusammenhang aller Sprache mit Ueberlieferung zeigt sich auch hier; kaum ein Wort dieser Gaunermundart scheint leer erfunden, und Menschen eines Gelichters, das sich sonst kein Gewissen aus Lugen macht, beschamen manchen Sprachphilosophen, der von Erdichtung einer allgemeinen Sprache getraumt hat. Van Helmont indeed, a sort of modern Paracelsus, is said to have _invented_ the word "gas"; but it is difficult to think that there was not a feeling here after "geest" or "geist," whether he was conscious of this or not.] and have their point of contact with it and departure from it, not always discoverable, as we see, but yet always existing. [Footnote: Some will remember here the old dispute--Greek I was tempted to call it, but in one shape or another it emerges everywhere--whether words were imposed on things [Greek: thesei] or [Greek: physei], by arbitrary arrangement or by nature. We may boldly say with Bacon, Vestigia certe rationis verba sunt, and decide in favour of nature. If only they knew their own history, they could always explain, and in most cases justify, their existence. See some excellent remarks on this subject by Renan, _De l"Origine du Langage_, pp. 146-149; and an admirable article on "Slang"
in the _Times_, Oct. 18, 1864.] And thus, when a word entirely refuses to tell us anything about itself, it must be regarded as a riddle which no one has succeeded in solving, a lock of which no man has found the key--but still a riddle which has a solution, a lock for which there is a key, though now, it may be, irrecoverably lost. And this difficulty-- it is oftentimes an impossibility--of tracing the genealogy even of words of a very recent formation, is, as I observed, a strong argument for the birth of the most notable of these out of the heart and from the lips of the people. Had they first appeared in books, something in the context would most probably explain them. Had they issued from the schools of the learned, these would not have failed to leave a recognizable stamp and mark upon them.
There is, indeed, another way in which obscurity may rest on a new word, or a word employed in a new sense. It may tell the story of its birth, of the word or words which compose it, may so bear these on its front, that there can be no question here, while yet its purpose and intention may be hopelessly hidden from our eyes. The secret once lost, is not again to be recovered. Thus no one has called, or could call, in question the derivation of "apocryphal" that it means "hidden away."
When, however, we begin to inquire why certain books which the Church either set below the canonical Scriptures, or rejected altogether, were called "apocryphal" then a long and doubtful discussion commences. Was it because their origin was _hidden_ to the early Fathers of the Church, and thus reasonable suspicions of their authenticity entertained?
[Footnote: Augustine (_De Civ. Dei_, xv. 23): Apocrypha nuncupantur eo quod eorum occulta origo non claruit Patribus. Cf. _Con. Faust_, xi.
2.] Or was it because they were mysteriously kept out of sight and _hidden_ by the heretical sects which boasted themselves in their exclusive possession? Or was it that they were books not laid up in the Church chest, but _hidden away_ in obscure corners? Or were they books _worthier to be hidden_ than to be brought forward and read to the faithful? [Footnote: For still another reason for the epithet "apocryphal" see Skeat"s _Etym. Dict_.]--for all these explanations have been offered, and none with such superiority of proof on its side as to have deprived others of all right to be heard. In the same way there is no question that "tragedy" is the song of the goat; but why this, whether because a goat was the prize for the best performers of that song in which the germs of Greek tragedy lay, or because the first actors were dressed like satyrs in goatskins, is a question which will now remain unsettled to the end. [Footnote: See Bentley, _Works_, vol.
i. p. 337.] You know what "leonine" verses are; or, if you do not, it is very easy to explain. They are Latin hexameters into which an internal rhyme has forced its way. The following, for example, are all "leonine":
Qui pingit _florem_ non pingit floris _odorem_: Si quis det _mannos_, ne quaere in dentibus _annos_.
Una avis in _dextra_ melior quam quattuor _extra_.
The word has plainly to do with "leo" in some shape or other; but are these verses leonine from one Leo or Leolinus, who first composed them?
or because, as the lion is king of beasts, so this, in monkish estimation, was the king of metres? or from some other cause which none have so much as guessed at? [Footnote: See my _Sacred Latin Poetry_, 3rd edit. p. 32.] It is a mystery which none has solved. That frightful system of f.a.gging which made in the seventeenth century the German Universities a sort of h.e.l.l upon earth, and which was known by the name of "pennalism," we can scarcely disconnect from "penna"; while yet this does not help us to any effectual scattering of the mystery which rests upon the term. [Footnote: See my _Gustavus Adolphus in Germany_, p. 131.
[_Pennal_ meant "a freshman," a term given by the elder students in mockery, because the student in his first year was generally more industrious, and might be often seen with his _pennal_ or pen-case about him.]] The connexion of "dictator" with "dicere", "dictare," is obvious; not so the reason why the "dictator" obtained his name.
"Sycophant" and "superst.i.tion" are words, one Greek and one Latin, of the same character. No one doubts of what elements they are composed; and yet their secret has been so lost, that, except as a more or less plausible guess, it can never now be recovered. [Footnote: For a good recapitulation of what best has been written on "superst.i.tio" see Pott, _Etym. Forschungen_, vol. ii. p. 921.]