Note 34 — Chapter I · THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE.
Reading edition
Thus words and phrases repeatedly acquire a conventional meaning for a generation, and then recur to their old sense. Almost every sect, every profession, and even every family, have certain words in use to which they attach a peculiar and special meaning, which is sometimes unintelligible to others. M. Cousin has been unable to discover the meaning which the Port-Royalists attached to the word “machine.” See Charma, p. 209.