English Words and Forms of Expression.

Dictionary English is something very different not only from common colloquial English, but even from that of ordinary written composition. Instead of about forty thousand words, there is probably no single author in the language from whose works, however voluminous, so many as ten thousand words could be collected. Of the forty thousand words there are certainly many more than one-half that are only employed, if they are ever employed at all, on the rarest occasions. We should be surprised to find, if we counted them, with how small a number of words we manage to express all that we have to say, either with our lips or with the pen. Our common literary English probably hardly amounts to ten thousand words; our common spoken English hardly to five thousand.

Odd words are to be found in the dictionaries. Why they are kept there no one knows; but what man in his senses would use such words as zythepsary for a brewhouse, and zymologist for a brewer; would talk of a stormy day as procellous and himself as madefied; of his long-legged son as increasing in procerity but sadly marcid; of having met with such procacity from such a one; of a bore as a macrologist; of an aged horse as macrobiotic; of important business as moliminous, and his daughter’s necklace as moniliform; of some one’s talk as meracious, and lament his last night’s nimiety of wine at that dapatical feast, whence he was taken by ereption? Open the dictionary at any page, and you will find a host of these words.

By a too ready adoption of foreign words into the currency of the English language, we are in danger of losing much of its radical strength and historical significance. Marsh has compared the parable of the man who built his house upon the sand, as given by Matthew and Luke. Matthew uses the plain Saxon English. The learned Evangelist, Luke, employed a Latinized 183dictionary. “Now,” he says, “compare the two passages and say which to every English ear, is the most impressive:”

“And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it.”—Matthew.

“Against which the stream did beat vehemently, and immediately it fell; and the ruin of that house was great.”—Luke.

There can scarcely be a difference of opinion as to the relative force and beauty of the two versions, and consequently we find, that while that of Matthew has become proverbial, the narrative of Luke is seldom or never quoted.

Trench says that the Anglo-Saxon is not so much one element of the English language, as the foundation of it—the basis. All its joints, its whole articulation, its sinews and its ligaments, the great body of articles, pronouns, conjunctions, prepositions, numerals, auxiliary verbs, all smaller words which serve to knit together and bind the larger into sentences, these—not to speak of the grammatical structure of the language—are exclusively Saxon. The Latin may contribute its tale of bricks, yea, of goodly and polished hewn stones to the spiritual building, but the mortar, with all that holds and binds these together, and constitutes them into a house, is Saxon throughout. As proof positive of the soundness of the above affirmation, the test is submitted that—“you can write a sentence without Latin, but you cannot without Saxon.” The words of the Lord’s Prayer are almost all Saxon. Our good old family Bible is a capital standard of it, and has done more than any other book for the conservation of the purity of our language. Our best writers, particularly those of Queen Anne’s time,—Addison, Steele, Swift, &c.,—were distinguished by their use of simple Saxon.

SOURCES OF THE LANGUAGE.

Some years ago, a gentleman, after carefully examining the folio edition of Johnson’s Dictionary, formed the following table of English words derived from other languages:—

184

Latin 6,732

French 4,812

Saxon 1,665

Greek 1,148

Dutch 691

Italian 211

German 116

Welsh 95

Danish 75

Spanish 56

Icelandic 50

Swedish 34

Gothic 31

Hebrew 16

Teutonic 15

Arabic 13

Irish 6

Runic 4

Flemish 4

Erse 4

Syriac 3

Scottish 3

Irish and Erse 2

Turkish 2

Irish and Scottish 1

Portuguese 1

Persian 1

Frisi 1

Persic 1

Uncertain 1

Total 15,784

NOUNS OF MULTITUDE.

A foreigner looking at a picture of a number of vessels, said, “See what a flock of ships.” He was told that a flock of ships was called a fleet, and that a fleet of sheep was called a flock. And it was added, for his guidance, in mastering the intricacies of our language, that a flock of girls is called a bevy, that a bevy of wolves is called a pack, and a pack of thieves is called a gang, and that a gang of angels is called a host, and that a host of porpoises is called a shoal, and a shoal of buffaloes is called a herd, and a herd of children is called a troop, and a troop of partridges is called a covey, and a covey of beauties is called a galaxy, and a galaxy of ruffians is called a horde, and a horde of rubbish is called a heap, and a heap of oxen is called a drove, and a drove of blackguards is called a mob, and a mob of whales is called a school, and a school of worshippers is called a congregation, and a congregation of engineers is called a corps, and a corps of robbers is called a band, and a band of locusts is called a swarm, and a swarm of people is called a crowd.

DISRAELIAN ENGLISH.

Mr. Disraeli gives us some queer English in his novel of Lothair, as may be seen in the following examples:—“He guarded over Lothair’s vast inheritance;” “Lothair observed on” a lady’s singing; “of simple but distinguished mien, with a countenance naturally pale, though somewhat bronzed by a life of air and exercise, and a profusion of dark, auburn hair;” “he 185engaged a vehicle and ordered to be driven to Leicester Square;” “he pointed to an individual seated in the centre of the table;” “their mutual ancestors;” “Is there anything in the Tenebræ why I ought not to be present?”; “thoughts which made him unconscious how long had elapsed;” “with no companions than the wounded near them;” “The surgeon was sitting by her side, occasionally wiping the slight foam from her brow.” We have heard of people foaming at the mouth, but never before of a lady foaming at the brow.

“YE” FOR “THE.”

Ye is sometimes used for the in old books wherein the is the more usual form, on account of the difficulties experienced by the printers in “spacing out.” When pressed for room they put ye; when they had plenty of room they put the. Many people in reading old books pronounce the abbreviation ye. But the proper pronunciation is the, for the y is only a corruption of the old thorn-letter, or symbol for th.

ITS.

His is the genitive (or as we say, possessive) of he, (he’s,—his,) and it or hit, as it was long written, is the neuter of he, the final t being the sign of the neuter. The introduction of its, as the neuter genitive instead of his, arose from a misconception, similar to that which would have arisen had the Romans introduced illudius as the neuter genitive of ille, instead of illius. Its very rarely occurs in our authorized version of the Bible, his or her being used instead—occurs but a few times in all Shakspeare—was unknown to Ben Jonson—was not admitted into his poems by Milton—and did not come into common use until sanctioned by Dryden.

THAT.

The use of the word That in the following examples is strictly in accordance with grammatical rules:—

186The gentleman said, in speaking of the word that, that that that that that lady parsed, was not that that that that gentleman requested her to analyze.

Now, that is a word that may often be joined,

For that that may be doubled is clear to the mind;

And that that that is right, is as plain to the view,

As that that that that we use, is rightly used too,

And that that that that that line has in it, is right—

In accordance with grammar—is plain in our sight.

I SAY.

A gentleman who was in the habit of interlarding his discourse with the expression “I say,” having been informed by a friend that a certain individual had made some ill-natured remarks upon this peculiarity, took the opportunity of addressing him in the following amusing style of rebuke:—“I say, sir, I hear say you say I say ‘I say’ at every word I say. Now, sir, although I know I say ‘I say’ at every word I say, still I say, sir, it is not for you to say I say ‘I say’ at every word I say.”

PATH-OLOGY.

There once resided in Ayrshire a man who, like Leman, proposed to write an Etymological Dictionary of the English language. Being asked what he understood the word pathology to mean, he answered, with great readiness and confidence, “Why, the art of road-making, to be sure.”

THE PRONUNCIATION OF OUGH.

The difficulty of applying rules to the pronunciation of our language may be illustrated in two lines, where the combination of the letters ough is pronounced in no less than seven different ways, viz.: as o, uff, off, up, ow, oo, and ock:—

Though the TOUGH COUGH and HICCOUGH PLOUGH me THROUGH,

O’er life’s dark LOUGH my course I still pursue.

187The following attempts to show the sound of ough, final, are ingenious:—

Though from rough cough or hiccough free,

That man has pain enough

Whose wounds through plough, sunk in a slough,

Or lough begin to slough.

’Tis not an easy task to show,

How o, u, g, h, sound; since though,

An Irish lough, an English slough,

And cough, and hiccough, all allow

Differ as much as tough and through,

There seems no reason why they do.

“Husband,” says Joan, “’tis plain enough

That Roger loves our daughter;

And Betty loves him too, although

She treats his suit with laughter.

“For Roger always hems and coughs,

While on the field he’s ploughing;

Then strives to see between the boughs,

If Betty heeds his coughing.”

The following jeu d’esprit, entitled “A Literary Squabble on the pronunciation of Monckton Milnes’s Title,” is stated to have been the production of Lord Palmerston:—

The Alphabet rejoiced to hear,

That Monckton Milnes was made a peer;

For in the present world of letters,

But few, if any, were his betters.

So an address, by acclamation,

They voted, of congratulation.

And O U G H T and N

Were chosen to take up the pen,

Possessing each an interest vital

In the new Peer’s baronial title.

’Twas done in language terse and telling,

Perfect in grammar and in spelling.

But when ’twas read aloud—oh, mercy!

There sprung up such a controversy

188About the true pronunciation

Of said baronial appellation.

The vowels O and U averred

They were entitled to be heard.

The consonants denied the claim,

Insisting that they mute became.

Johnson and Walker were applied to,

Sheridan, Bailey, Webster, tried too;

But all in vain—for each picked out

A word that left the case in doubt.

O, looking round upon them all,

Cried, “If it be correct to call

T H R O U G H throo,

H O U G H must be Hoo;

Therefore there must be no dispute on

The question, we should say Lord Hooton.”

U then did speak, and sought to show

He should be doubled, and not O,

For sure if ought and awt, then nought on

Earth could the title be but Hawton.

H, on the other hand, said he,

In cough and trough, stood next to G,

And like an F was then looked oft on,

Which made him think it should be Hofton.

But G corrected H, and drew

Attention other cases to:

Lough, Rough and Chough, more than enough

To prove O U G H spelled uff,

And growled out in a sort of gruff tone

They must pronounce the title Hufton.

N said emphatically No;

For D O U G H is Doh,

And though (look there again) that stuff

At sea for fun, they nickname Duff,

He should propose they took a vote on

The question should it not be Hoton?

Besides, in French ’twould have such force,

A Lord must be haut ton, of course.

High and more high contention rose,

From words they almost came to blows,

Till S, as yet, who had not spoke,

And dearly loved a little joke,

Put in his word, and said, “Look here,

Plough in this row must have a share.”

At this atrocious pun, each page

189Of Johnson whiter grew with rage.

Bailey looked desperately cut up,

And Sheridan completely shut up.

Webster, who is no idle talker,

Made a sign signifying Walker.

While Walker, who had been used badly,

Shook his old dirty dog-ears sadly.

But as we find in prose or rhyme,

A joke, made happily in time,

However poor, will often tend

The hottest argument to end,

And smother anger in a laugh,

So S succeeded with his chaff,

Containing, as it did, some wheat,

In calming this fierce verbal heat.

Authorities were all conflicting,

And S there was no contradicting.

P L O U G H was Plow

Even enough was called enow,

And no one who preferred enough

Would dream of saying “Speed the Pluff.”

So they considered it was wise

With S to make a compromise,

To leave no loop to hang a doubt on

By giving three cheers for Lord Houghton (Howton).

EXCISE.

The following curious document gives the opinion of Lord Mansfield, when Attorney-General, upon Dr. Johnson’s definition of the word Excise:—

Case.

Mr. Samuel Johnson has lately published a book, entitled A Dictionary of the English Language, in which the words are deduced from their originals, and illustrated in their different significations by examples from the best writers. To which are prefixed a history of the Language, and an English grammar.

Under the title “Excise” are the following words:—

Excise, n. s. (accijs Dutch; excisum, Latin,) a hateful tax levied upon commodities and adjudged not by the common judges of property, but wretches hired by those to whom Excise is paid.

190The people should pay a ratable tax for their sheep, and an

Excise for every thing which they should eat.—Hayward.

Ambitious now to take excise

Of a more fragrant paradise.—Cleveland.

EXCISE.

With hundred rows of teeth the shark exceeds,

And on all trades, like Cassowar, she feeds.—Marvel.

Can hire large houses and oppress the poor

By farmed Excise.—Dryden, Juvenal, Sat. 3.

The author’s definition being observed by the Commissioners of Excise, they desire the favor of your opinion:

Qu.—Whether it will not be considered as a libel; and, if so, whether it is not proper to proceed against the author, printers, and publishers thereof, or any and which of them, by information or how otherwise?

Opinion.

I am of opinion that it is a libel; but, under all the circumstances, I should think it better to give him an opportunity of altering his definition; and, in case he don’t, threaten him with an information.

W. Murray.

29th Nov. 1755.

PONTIFF.

Mr. Longfellow, in his Golden Legend, thus refers to the derivation of this word from pons (a bridge) and facere (to make):—

Well has the name of Pontifex been given

Unto the Church’s head, as the chief builder

And architect of the invisible bridge

That leads from earth to heaven.

ROUGH.

Mr. Motley, in his History of the United Netherlands, IV. 138, thus ascribes the use of this word to Queen Elizabeth, of England, in her last illness:—

191The great queen, moody, despairing, dying, wrapt in profoundest thought, with eyes fixed upon the ground or already gazing into infinity was besought by the counsellors around her to name the man to whom she chose that the crown should devolve.

“Not to a Rough,” said Elizabeth, sententiously and grimly.

These particulars are apparently given on the authority of the Italian Secretary, Scaramelli, whose language is quoted in a foot-note, and who says that the word Rough “in lingua inglese significa persona bassa e vile.”

Charles Dickens said, “I entertain so strong an objection to the euphonious softening of ruffian into rough, which has lately become popular, that I restore the right word to the heading of this paper.” (The Ruffian, by the Uncommercial Traveler, All the Year Round.) “Lately popular” does not mean popular for two hundred and eighty years past. A word that has escaped the notice of the Glossarists cannot have been in use early in the seventeenth century. That it should have been used in its modern sense by Queen Elizabeth, passes all bounds of belief. With all her faults she did not make silly unmeaning remarks; and it would have been extremely silly in her to say she did not wish a low ruffian to succeed her on the throne. If she uttered a word having the same sound, it might possibly have been ruff. The “ruff,” though worn by men of the upper class, was in Queen Elizabeth’s time an especially female article of dress, and the queen might have said, “I will have no ruff to succeed me,” just as now-a-days one might say, “I will have no petticoat government.” We want better authority than that of Scaramelli before we can believe that Elizabeth used either the word rough or ruff, when consulted as to her wishes respecting her successor.

NOT AMERICANISMS.

In Bartlett’s Dictionary the term “stocking-feet” is given as an Americanism. But the following quotation from Thackeray’s Newcomes (vol. i. ch. viii.) shows that this is an error:—

192“Binnie found the Colonel in his sitting-room arrayed in what are called in Scotland his stocking-feet.”

Professor Tyndall, at the farewell banquet given in his honor by the citizens of New York, prior to his departure, in referring to his successful lecture-course in the United States, said he had had—to quote his words—“what you Americans call ‘a good time.’”

But this expression is not an Americanism. It is used by Dean Swift in his letter to Stella, (Feb. 24, 1710–11); “I hope Mrs. Wells had a good time.”

That not very elegant adjective bully, though found in Bartlett, and used by Washington Irving cannot be claimed as an Americanism. Friar Tuck sings, in Scott’s Ivanhoe:—

“Come troll the brown bowl to me, bully boy,

Come troll the brown bowl to me.”

But to go further back, we find it in the burden of an old three-part song, “We be three poor Mariners,” in Ravenscroft’s Deuteromelia, 1609:

“Shall we go dance the round, the round,

Shall we go dance the round;

And he that is a bully boy,

Come pledge me on the ground.”

One of the words which the English used to class among Americanisms—ignorant that it was older and better English than their own usage—was Fall, used as the name of the third of the seasons. The English, corrupted by the Johnsonese of the Hanoverian reigns, call it by the Latinism, Autumn. But the other term, in general use on this side of the Atlantic, is the word by which all the old writers of the language know it. “The hole yere,” says scholarly Roger Ascham in his Toxophilus, “is divided into iiii. partes, Spring tyme, Sommer, Faule of the leafe, & Winter, whereof the hole winter for the roughnesse of it, is cleane taken away from shoting: except it be one day amonges xx., or one yeare amonges xi.”

193This statement, by the way, that exceptionally mild winters were in the ratio of one to eleven, is worth noting with reference to the recent announcement of science that the spots on the sun have an eleven-year period of maximum frequency.

NO LOVE LOST BETWEEN THEM.

In the ordinary acceptation of the words, “No love was lost between the two,” we are led to infer that the two were on very unfriendly terms. But in the ballad of The Babes in the Wood, as given in Percy’s Reliques, occur the following lines, which convey the contrary idea:—

No love between this two was lost,

Each was to other kind:

In love they lived, in love they died,

And left two babes behind.

THE FORLORN HOPE.

Military and civil writers of the present day seem quite ignorant of the true meaning of the words forlorn hope. The adjective has nothing to do with despair, nor the substantive with the “charmer which lingers still behind;” there was no such poetical depth in the words as originally used. Every corps marching in an enemy’s country had a small body of men at the head (haupt or hope) of the advanced guard; and which was termed the forlorne hope (lorn being here but a termination similar to ward in forward,) while another small body at the head of the read-guard was called the rere-lorn hope. A reference to Johnson’s Dictionary shows that civilians were misled as early as the time of Dryden by the mere sound of a technical military phrase; and, in process of time, even military men forgot the true meaning of the words. And thus we easily trace the foundation of an error to which we are indebted for Byron’s beautiful line:—

The full of hope, misnamed forlorn.

194

QUIZ.

This word, which is only in vulgar or colloquial use, and which some of the lexicographers have attempted to trace to learned roots, originated in a joke. Daly, the manager of a Dublin play-house, wagered that a word of no meaning should be the common talk and puzzle of the city in twenty-four hours. In the course of that time the letters q u i z were chalked on all the walls of Dublin with an effect that won the wager.

TENNYSON’S ENGLISH.

Probably no poet ever more thoroughly comprehended the value of words in metrical composition than Mr. Tennyson, but he has issued a new coinage which is not pure. Compound epithets are modelled after the Greek or revived from the uncritical Elizabethan era. Thus, where we should naturally say “The bee is cradled in the lily,” Mr. Tennyson writes, “The bee is lily-cradled.” When a man’s nose is broken at the bridge or a lady’s turns up at the tip, the one is said to be “a nose bridge-broken,” and the other (with much gallantry) to be “tip-tilted, like the petal of a flower.”

The movement of the metre again is very peculiar. Discarding Milton’s long and complex periods, Mr. Tennyson has restored blank verse to an apparently simple rhythm. But this simplicity is in fact the result of artifice, and, under every variety of movement, the ear detects the recurrence of a set type. One of the poet’s favorite devices is to pause on a monosyllable at the beginning of a line, and this affect is repeated so often as to remind the reader of Euripides and his unhappy “oil flask” in The Frogs. Take the following instances:—

And the strange sound of an adulterous race,

Against the iron grating of her cell

Beat.

A sound

As of a silver horn across the hills

Blown.

And then the music faded, and the Grail

Passed.

His eyes became so like her own they seemed

Hers.

195

“THAT MINE ADVERSARY HAD WRITTEN A BOOK.”

This passage from Job xxxi. 35, is frequently misapplied, being interpreted as if it had reference to a book or writing as commonly understood. It means rather, according to Gesenius, a charge or accusation. Pierius makes it “libellum accusationis,” and Grotius, “scriptam accusationem” Scott expresses this in his Commentary:—

“Job challenged his adversary, or accuser, to produce a libel or written indictment against him: he was confident that it would prove no disgrace to him, but an honor; as every article would be disproved, and the reverse be manifested.”

Other commentators understand it as meaning a record of Job’s life, or of his sufferings. Coverdale translates:—“And let him that my contrary party sue me with a lybell.” In the Genevan version it is, “Though mine adversarie should write a book against me.” In the Bishop’s Bible, 1595, “Though mine adversarie write a book against me.” The meaning seems to have become obscured in our version by retaining the English book instead of the Latin libel, but omitting the words in italics, “against me.”

ECCENTRIC ETYMOLOGIES.

To trace the changes of form and meaning which many of the words of our language have undergone is no easy task. There are words as current with us as with our forefathers, the significance of which, as we use them, is very different from that of their primitive use. And, in many instances, they have wandered, by courses more or less tortuous, so far from their original meaning as to make it almost impossible to follow the track of divergence. Hence, it is easy to understand why it has been said that the etymologist, to be successful, must have “an instinct like the special capabilities of the pointer.” But there are derivations which are only revealed by accident, or stumbled upon in unexpected ways, and which, in the regular 196course of patient search, would never have been elicited. The following illustrative selections will interest the general reader.

Bombastic.—This adjective has an odd derivation. Originally bombast (from the Latin bombax, cotton) meant nothing but cotton wadding, used for filling or stuffing. Shakspeare employs it in this sense in Love’s Labor Lost, v. 2.

As bombast and as living to the time.

Decker, in his Satyromastix, says, “You shall swear not to bombast out a new play with the old linings of jests.” And Guazzo, Civile Conversation, 1591,—“Studie should rather make him leane and thinne, and pull out the bombast of his corpulent doublet.”

Hence, by easy transition from the falseness of padding or puffing out a figure, bombast came to signify swelling pretentiousness of speech and conduct as an adapted meaning; and gradually this became the primary and only sense.

Buxom.—This word is simply bow-some or bough-some, i.e., that which readily bows, or bends, or yields like the boughs of a tree. No longer ago than when Milton wrote boughsome, which as gh in English began to lose its guttural sound,—that of the letter chi in Greek,—came to be written buxom, meant simply yielding, and was of general application.

——“and, this once known, shall soon return,

And bring ye to the place where thou and Death

Shall dwell at ease, and up and down unseen

Wing silently the buxom air.”—Paradise Lost, II. 840.

But aided, doubtless, as Dr. Johnson suggests, by a too liberal construction of the bride’s promise in the old English marriage ceremony, to be “obedient and buxom in bed and board,” it came to be applied to women who were erroneously thought likely to be thus yielding; and hence it now means plump, rosy, alluring, and is applied only to women who combine those qualities of figure, face and expression.

197Cadaver.—An abbot of Cirencester, about 1216, conceived himself an etymologist, and, as a specimen of his powers, has left us the Latin word cadaver, a corpse, thus dissected:—“Ca,” quoth he, is abbreviated for caro; “da” for data; “ver” for vermibus. Hence we have “caro data vermibus,” flesh given to the worms.

Yet while the reader smiles at this curious absurdity, it is worth while to note that the word alms is constructed upon a similar principle, being formed (according to the best authority) of letters, taken from successive syllables of the cumbrous Latinized Greek word eleemosyna.

Canard.—This is the French for duck, and the origin of its application to hoaxing is said to be as follows:—To ridicule a growing extravagance in story-telling a clever journalist stated that an interesting experiment had just been made, calculated to prove the extraordinary voracity of ducks. Twenty of these animals had been placed together, and one of them having been killed and cut up into the smallest possible pieces, feathers and all, and thrown to the other nineteen, had been gluttonously gobbled up in an exceedingly brief space of time. Another was taken from the remaining 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, which was thus placed in the remarkable position of having eaten his nineteen companions in a wonderfully short space of time! All this, most pleasantly narrated, obtained a success which the writer was far from anticipating, for the story ran the rounds of all the journals in Europe. It then became almost forgotten for about a score of years, when it came back from America, with an amplification which it did not boast of at the commencement, and with a regular certificate of the autopsy of the body of the surviving animal, whose esophagus was declared to have been seriously injured! Since then fabrications of this character have been called canards.

198Chum.—A schoolboy’s letter, written two centuries ago, has lately revealed that chum is a contraction from “chamber-fellow.” Two students dwelling together found the word unwieldly, and, led by another universal law of language, they shortened it in the most obvious way.

Dandy.—Bishop Fleetwood says that “dandy” is derived from a silver coin of small value, circulated in the reign of Henry VIII., and called a “dandy-prat.”

Dunce.—This word comes to us from the celebrated Duns Scotus, chief of the Schoolmen of his time. He was “the subtle doctor by preëminence;” and it certainly is a strange perversion that a scholar of his great ability should give name to a class who hate all scholarship. When at the Reformation and revival of learning the works of the Schoolmen fell into extreme disfavor with the Reformers and the votaries of the new learning, Duns, the standard-bearer of the former, was so often referred to with scorn and contempt by the latter that his name gradually became the by-word it now is for hopeless ignorance and invincible stupidity. The errors and follies of a set were fastened upon their distinguished head. Says Tyndale, 1575,—

“Remember ye not how within this thirty years, and far less, and yet dureth unto this day, the old barking curs, Dunce’s disciples, and like draff called Scotists, the children of darkness, raged in every pulpit against Greek, Latin and Hebrew?”

Eating humble-pie.—The phrase “eating humble-pie” is traced to the obsolete French word “ombles,” entrails; pies for the household servants being formerly made of the entrails of animals. Hence, to take low or humble ground, to submit one’s self, came familiarly to be called eating “humble” or rather “umble” pie. The word “umbles” came to us from the Norman conquest, and though now obsolete, retains its place in 199the lexicons of Worcester and Webster, who, however, explain the entrails to be those of the deer only.

Fiasco.—A German, one day, seeing a glassblower at his occupation, thought nothing could be easier than glassblowing, and that he could soon learn to blow as well as the workman. He accordingly commenced operations by blowing vigorously, but could only produce a sort of pear-shaped balloon or little flask (fiasco). The second attempt had a similar result, and so on, until fiasco after fiasco had been made. Hence arose the expression which we not infrequently have occasion to use when describing the result of our undertakings.

Fudge.—This is a curious word, having a positive personality underlying it. Such at least it is, if Disraeli’s account thereof be authentic. He quotes from a very old pamphlet entitled Remarks upon the Navy, wherein the author says, “There was in our time one Captain Fudge, commander of a merchantman, who upon his return from a voyage, how ill fraught soever his ship was, always brought home his owners a good crop of lies; so much that now, aboard ship, the sailors when they hear a great lie told, cry out, ‘You fudge it’.” The ship was the Black Eagle, and the time, Charles II.; and thence the monosyllabic name of its untruthful captain comes to us for exclamation when we have reason to believe assertions ill-founded.

Gossip.—This is another of that class of words which by the system of moral decadence that Trench has so ably illustrated as influencing human language, has come to be a term of unpleasant reproach. In some parts of the country, by the “gossips” of a child are meant his god-parents, who take vows for him at his baptism. The connection between these two actual uses of the word is not so far to seek as one might suppose. Chaucer shows us that those who stood sponsors for an infant were considered “sib,” or kin, to each other in God: thus the double syllables were compounded. Verstigan says:—

200“Our Christian ancestors understanding a spirituall affinitie for to grow between the parents, and such as undertooke for the childe at baptisme, called each other by the name of God-sib, which is as much as to say as that they were sib together, i.e. of kin together, through God.”

The Roman church forbids marriage between persons so united in a common vow, as she believes they have contracted an essential spiritual relationship. But from their affinity in the interests of the child they were brought into much converse with one another; and as much talk almost always degenerates into idle talk, and personalities concerning one’s neighbors, and the like, so “gossips” finally came to signify the latter, when the former use of it was nearly forgotten. It is remarkable that the French “commérage” has passed through identically the same perversion.

Grog.—Admiral Vernon, whose ardent devotion to his profession had endeared him to the British naval service, was in the habit of walking the deck, in bad weather, in a rough grogram cloak, and thence had obtained the nickname of Old Grog. Whilst in command of the West India station, and at the height of his popularity on account of his reduction of Porto Bello with six men-of-war only, he introduced the use of rum and water among the ship’s company. When served out, the new beverage proved most palatable, and speedily grew into such favor that it became as popular as the brave admiral himself, and in honor of him was surnamed by acclamation “Grog.”

Hocus-pocus.—According to Tillotson, this singular expression is believed to be a corruption of the transubstantiating formula, Hoc est corpus meum, used by the priest on the elevation of the host. Turner, in his history of the Anglo-Saxons, traces it to Ochus Bochus, a magician and demon of the northern mythology. We should certainly prefer the latter as the source of this conjurer’s catch-word, which the usage of 201ordinary life connects with jugglery or unfair dealing, but preponderant evidence is in favor of the former.

Malingerer.—This word, brought much into use by the exigencies of our civil war, is from the French “malin gré,” and signifies a soldier who from “evil will” shirks his duty by feigning sickness, or otherwise rendering himself incapable: in plain words, a poltroon.

Mustard.—Etymologists have fought vigorously over the derivation of this word. “Multum ardet,” says one, or in old French, “moult arde,” it burns much. “Mustum ardens, hot must,” says another, referring to the former custom of preparing French mustard for the table with the sweet must of new wine. A picturesque story about the name is thus told:—Philip the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, granted to Dijon certain armorial bearings, with the motto “Moult me tarde”—I long or wish ardently. This was sculptured over the principal gate. In the course of years, by some accident, the central word was effaced. The manufacturers of sinapi or senévé (such were the former names of mustard), wishing to label their pots of condiment with the city arms, copied the mutilated motto; and the unlearned, seeing continually the inscription of “moult-tarde,” fell into the habit of calling the contents by this title.

Navvy.—Many persons have been puzzled by the application of this word, abbreviated from navigator, to laborers. Why should earth-workers be called navigators? They whose business is with an element antipodean to water, why receive a title as of seafaring men? At the period when inland navigation was the national rage, and canals were considered to involve the essentials of prosperity, as railways are now, the workmen employed on them were called “navigators,” as cutting the way for navigation. And when railways superseded canals, the name of the laborers, withdrawn from one work to the other, was unchanged, and merely contracted, according to the dislike 202of our Anglo-Saxon tongues to use four syllables where a less number will suffice.

Neighbor.—Formerly this familiar word was employed to signify “the boor who lives nigh to us.” And just here is another of those words which have been degraded from their original sense; for boor did not then represent a stupid, ignorant lout, but simply a farmer, as in Dutch now.

Poltroon.—In the olden days the Norman-French “poltroon” had a significance obsolete now: days when Strongbow was a noble surname, and the yew-trees of England were of importance as an arm of national defence; then the coward or malingerer had but to cut off the thumb (“pollice truncus” in Latin)—the thumb which drew the bow, and he was unfit for service, and must be discharged.

Porpoise.—The common creature of the sea, whose gambols have passed into a jest and a proverb, the porpoise, is so named because of his resemblance to a hog when in sportive mood. “Porc-poisson,” said somebody who watched a herd of them tumbling about, for all the world like swine, except for the sharp dorsal fin; and the epithet adhered.

Scrape.—Long ago roamed through the forests the red and fallow deer, which had a habit of scraping up the earth with their fore-feet to the depth of several inches, sometimes even of half a yard. A wayfaring man through the olden woods was frequently exposed to the danger of tumbling into one of these hollows, when he might truly be said to be “in a scrape.” Cambridge students in their little difficulties picked up and applied the phrase to other perplexing matters which had brought a man morally into a fix.

Sterling.—This word was originally applied to the metal rather than to a coin. The following extract from Camden points out its origin as applied to money:—

203In the time of his sonne King Richard the First, monie coined in the east parts of Germanie began to be of especiall request in England for the puritie thereof, and was called Easterling monie, as all the inhabitants of those parts were called Easterlings, and shortly after some of that countrie, skilful in mint matters and alloies, were sent for into this realme to bring the coins to perfection, which, since that time, was called of them sterling for Easterlings.

Surplice.—That scholastic and ministerial badge, the surplice, is said to derive its name from the Latin “superpelliceum,” because anciently worn over leathern coats made of hides of beasts; with the idea of representing how the sin of our first parents is now covered by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, so that we are entitled to wear the emblem of innocence.

Sycophant.—The original etymology of the word sycophant is curious. The word συχοφαντέω (from σῦχον, a fig, and φαίνω, to show,) in its primary signification, means to inform against or expose those who exported figs from Athens to other places without paying duty, hence it came to signify calumnior, to accuse falsely, to be a tale-bearer, an evil speaker of others. The word sycophanta means, in its first sense, no more than this. We now apply it to any flatterer, or other abject dependant, who, to serve his own purposes, slanders and detracts from others.

Tariff.—Because payment of a fixed scale of duties was demanded by the Moorish occupants of a fortress on Tarifa promontory, which overlooked the entrance to the Mediterranean, all taxes on imports came to be called a tariff.

Treacle.—A remarkable curiosity in the way of derivations is one traced by that indefatigable explorer, Archbishop Trench, which connects treacle with vipers. The syrup of molasses with the poison of snakes! Never was an odder relationship; yet it is a case of genuine fatherhood, and embodies a singular superstition. The ancients believed that the best antidote to 204the bite of the viper was a confection of its own flesh. The Greek word θηρταχή, flesh of the viper, was given first to such a sweetmeat, and then to any antidote of poison, and lastly to any syrup; and easily corrupted into our present word. Chaucer has a line—

Christ, which that is to every harm triacle.

Milton speaks of the “sovran treacle of sound doctrine.” A stuff called Venice Treacle was considered antidote to all poisons. “Vipers treacle yield,” says Edmund Waller, in a verse which has puzzled many a modern reader, and yet brings one close to the truth of the etymology, and shows that treacle is only a popular corruption of theriac.

Wig.—This word may be cited as a good example to show how interesting and profitable it is to trace words through their etymological windings to their original source. Wig is abridged from periwig, which comes from the Low Dutch peruik, which has the same meaning. When first introduced into the English language, it was written and pronounced perwick, the u being changed into w, as may still be seen in old English books. Afterwards the i was introduced for euphony, and it became periwick; and finally the ck was changed into g, making it periwig, and by contraction wig.

The Dutch word peruik was borrowed from the French perruque. The termination uik is a favorite one with that nation, and is generally substituted in borrowed words for the French uque and the German auch. The French word perruque comes from the Spanish peluca, and this last from pelo, hair, which is derived from the Latin pilus. Hence the Latin word pilus, hair, through successive transformations, has produced the English word wig.

Windfall.—Centuries ago a clause was extant in the tenure of many English estates, to the effect that the owners might not fell the trees, as the best timber was reserved for the Royal Navy; but any trees that came down without cutting were the 205property of the tenant. Hence was a storm a joyful and a lucrative event in proportion to its intensity, and the larger the number of forest patriarchs it laid low the richer was the lord of the land. He had received a veritable “windfall.” Ours in the nineteenth century come in the shape of any unexpected profit; and those of us who own estates rather quake in sympathy with our trembling trees on windy nights.

ODD CHANGES OF SIGNIFICATION.

The first verse of Dean Whittingham’s version of the 114th Psalm may be quoted as a curious instance of a phrase originally grave in its meaning become strangely incongruous:—

When Israel by God’s address

From Pharaoh’s land was bent,

And Jacob’s house the strangers left

And in the same train went.

Since the completion of the Pacific Railway, some introductory lines in Southey’s Thalaba require correction:—

Who at this untimely hour

Wander o’er the desert sands?

No station is in view.

If the author would revisit the earth, he would find numerous “stations” on the railway route across the Great American Desert.

Among funny instances of wresting from a text a meaning to suit a particular purpose, is that of the classical scholar who undertook to prove that the word “smile” was used as a euphemism for a drink in ancient times, by quoting from Horace’s Odes:—

Amara lento temperat risu.

Which is rendered by Martin:—

Meets life’s bitters with a jest,

And smiles them down.

206By lento risu, it was argued, is clearly meant a slow smile, or one taken through a straw!

The meaning of the word Wretch is one not generally understood. It was originally, and is now, in some parts of England, used as a term of the softest and fondest tenderness. This is not the only instance in which words in their present general acceptation bear a very opposite meaning to what they did in Shakspeare’s time. The word Wench, formerly, was not used in the low and vulgar acceptation that it is at present. Damsel was the appellation of young ladies of quality, and Dame a title of distinction. Knave once signified a servant; and in an early translation of the New Testament, instead of “Paul, the Servant,” we read “Paul, the Knave of Jesus Christ,” or, Paul, a rascal of Jesus Christ. Varlet was formerly used in the same sense as valet. On the other hand, the word Companion, instead of being the honorable synonym of Associate, occurs in the play of Othello with the same contemptuous meaning which we now affix, in its abusive sense, to the word “Fellow;” for Emilia, perceiving that some secret villain had aspersed the character of the virtuous Desdemona, thus indignantly exclaims:—

O Heaven! that such Companions thou’dst unfold,

And put in every honest hand a whip,

To lash the rascal naked through the world.—iv. 2.

Villain formerly meant a bondman. In feudal law, according to Blackstone, the term was applied to those who held lands and tenements in villenage,—a tenure by base services.

Pedant formerly meant a schoolmaster. Shakspeare says in his Twelfth Night,—

A pedant that keeps a school in the church.—iii. 2.

Bacon, in his Pathway unto Prayer, thus uses the word Imp: “Let us pray for the preservation of the King’s most excellent Majesty, and for the prosperous success of his entirely beloved son Edward our Prince, that most angelic imp.”

207The word brat is not considered very elegant now, but a few years ago it had a different signification from its present one. An old hymn or De profundis, by Gascoine, contains the lines,—

“O Israel, O household of the Lord,

O Abraham’s brats, O brood of blessed seed,

O chosen sheep that loved the Lord indeed.”

It is a somewhat noticeable fact, that the changes in the signification of words have generally been to their deterioration; that is, words that heretofore had no sinister meaning have acquired it. The word cunning, for example, formerly meant nothing sinister or underhanded; and in Thrope’s confession in Fox’s “Book of Martyrs” is the sentence, “I believe that all these three persons [in the Godhead] are even in power, and in cunning, and in might, full of grace and of all goodness.” Demure is another of this class. It was used by earlier writers without the insinuation which is now almost latent in it, that the external shows of modesty and sobriety rest on no corresponding realities. Explode formerly meant to drive off the stage with loud clappings of the hands, but gradually became exaggerated into its present signification. Facetious, too, originally meant urbane, but now has so degenerated as to have acquired the sense of buffoonery; and Mr. Trench sees indications that it will ere long acquire the sense of indecent buffoonery.

Frippery now means trumpery and odds and ends of cheap finery; but once it meant old clothes of value, and not worthless, as the term at present implies. The word Gossip formerly meant only a sponsor in baptism. Sponsors were supposed to become acquainted at the baptismal font, and by their sponsorial act to establish an indefinite affinity towards each other and the child. Thus the word was applied to all who were familiar and intimate, and finally obtained the meaning which is now predominant in it.

Homely once meant secret and familiar, though in the time of Milton it had acquired the same sense as at present. Idiot, 208from the Greek, originally signified only a private man as distinguished from one in public office, and from that it has degenerated till it has come to designate a person of defective mental powers. Incense once meant to kindle not only anger, but good passions as well; Fuller uses it in the sense of “to incite.” Indolence originally signified a freedom from passion or pain, but now implies a condition of languid non-exertion. Insolent was once only “unusual.”

The derivation of lumber is peculiar. As the Lombards were the bankers, so they were also the pawnbrokers, of the Middle Ages. The “lumber-room” was then the place where the Lombard banker and broker stored his pledges, and lumber gradually came to mean the pledges themselves. As these naturally accumulated till they got out of date or became unserviceable, it is easy to trace the steps by which the word descended to its present meaning.

Obsequious implies an unmanly readiness to fall in with the will of another; but in the original obsequium, or in the English word as employed two centuries ago, there was nothing of this: it rather meant obedience and mildness. Shakspeare, speaking of a deceased person, says,—

“How many a holy and obsequious tear

Hath dear religious love stolen from mine eye,

As interest of the dead.”

Property and propriety were once synonymous, both referring to material things, as the French word propriété does now. Foreigners do not often catch the distinction at present made in English between the two words; and we know a French gentleman who, recently meeting with some pecuniary reverses, astonished his friends by telling them that he had lost all his “propriety.”

A poet is a person who writes poetry, and, according to the good old customs, a proser was a person who wrote prose, and simply the antithesis of poet. The word has now a sadly different signification; and it would not be considered very respectable to term Addison, Irving, Bancroft, or Everett “prosers.”

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INFLUENCE OF NAMES.

The Romans, from the time they expelled their kings, could never endure the idea of being governed by a king. But they submitted to the most abject slavery under an emperor. And Oliver Cromwell did not venture to risk disgusting the republicans by calling himself king, though under the title of Protector he exercised regal functions.

The American colonies submitted to have their commerce and their manufactures crippled by restrictions avowedly for the benefit of the mother-country, and were thus virtually taxed to the amount of all that they in any instance lost by paying more for some article than it would cost to make it themselves, or to buy it of foreigners. But as soon as a tax was imposed under that name, they broke out into rebellion.

It is a marvel to many, and seems to them nearly incredible, that the Israelites should have gone after other gods; and yet the vulgar in most parts of Christendom are actually serving the gods of their heathen ancestors. But then they do not call them gods, but fairies or bogles, etc., and they do not apply the word worship to their veneration of them, nor sacrifice to their offerings. And this slight change of name keeps most people in ignorance of a fact that is before their eyes.

Others, professed Christians, are believed, both by others and by themselves, to be worshippers of the true God, though they invest him with the attributes of one of the evil demons worshipped by the heathen. There is hardly any professed Christian who would not be shocked at the application of the word caprice to the acts of the Most High. And yet his choosing to inflict suffering on his creatures “for no cause” (as some theologians maintain) “except that such is his will,” is the very definition of caprice.

But when Lord Byron published his poem of “Cain,” which contains substantially the very same doctrine, there was a great outcry among pious people, including, no doubt, many who were of the theological school which teaches the same, under other names.

210Why and how any evil comes to exist in the universe, reason cannot explain, and revelation does not tell us. But it does show us what is not the cause. That it cannot be from ill will or indifference, is proved by the sufferings undergone by the beloved Son.

Many probably would have hesitated if it had been proposed to them to join a new Church under that name, who yet eagerly enrolled themselves in the Evangelical Alliance,—which is in fact a church, with meetings for worship, and sermons under the name of speeches, and a creed consisting of sundry Articles of Faith to be subscribed; only not called by those names.

Mrs. B. expressed to a friend her great dread of such a medicine as tartar-emetic. She always, she said, gave her children antimonial wine. He explained to her that this is tartar-emetic dissolved in wine; but she remained unchanged.

Mrs. H. did not like that her daughters should be novel-readers; and all novels in prose were indiscriminately prohibited; but any thing in verse was as indiscriminately allowed.

Probably a Quaker would be startled at any one’s using the very words of the prophets, “Thus saith the Lord:” yet he says the same things in the words, “The Spirit moveth me to say so and so.” And some, again, who would be shocked at this, speak of a person,—adult or child,—who addresses a congregation in extempore prayers and discourses, as being under the influence of the Holy Spirit; though in neither case is there any miraculous proof given. And they abhor a claim to infallibility; only they are quite certain of being under the guidance of the Spirit in whatever they say or do.

Quakers, again, and some other dissenters, object to a hired ministry, (in reality, an unhired;) but their preachers are to be supplied with all they need; like the father of Molière’s Bourgeois, who was no shopkeeper, but kindly chose goods for his friends, which he let them have for money.

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COMPOUND EPITHETS.

The custom of using hard compounds furnished Ben Jonson opportunities of showing his learning as well as his satire. He used to call them “words un-in-one-breath-utterable.” Redi mentions an epigram against the sophists, made up of compounds “a mile long.” Joseph Scaliger left a curious example in Latin, part of which may be thus rendered into English:—

Loftybrowflourishers,

Noseinbeardwallowers,

Brigandbeardnourishers,

Dishandallswallowers,

Oldcloakinvestitors,

Barefootlookfashioners,

Nightprivatefeasteaters,

Craftlucubrationers;

Youthcheaters, Wordcatchers, Vaingloryosophers,

Such are your seekersofvirtue philosophers.

The old naturalist Lovell published a book at Oxford, in 1661, entitled Panzoologicomineralogia. Rabelais proposed the following title for a book:—Antipericatametaparhengedamphicribrationes. The reader of Shakspeare will remember Costard’s honorificabilitudinitatibus, in Love’s Labor Lost, v. 1. There was recently in the British army a major named Teyoninhokarawen. In the island of Mull, Scotland, is a locality named Drimtaidhorickhillichattan. The original Mexican for country curates is Notlazomahnitzteopixcatatzins. The longest Nipmuck word in Eliot’s Indian Bible is in St. Mark i. 40, Wutteppesittukqussunnoowehtunkquoh, and signifies “kneeling down to him.”

OUR VERNACULAR IN CHAUCER’S TIME.

But rede that boweth down for every blaste

Ful lyghtly cesse wynde, it wol aryse

But so nyle not an oke, when it is caste

It nedeth me nought longe the forvyse

Men shall reioysen of a great emprise

Atchewed wel and stant withouten dout

Al haue men ben the longer there about.—Troylus, ii.

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