Chapter I · THE SIGNIFICANCE OF WORDS. (continued 2)

The fact that words are never taken absolutely,—that they are expressions, not simply of thoughts or feelings, but of natures,—that they are media for the emission and transpiration of character,—is one that cannot be too deeply pondered by young speakers and writers. Fluent young men who wonder that the words which they utter with such glibness and emphasis have so little weight with their hearers, should ask themselves whether their characters are such as to give weight to their words. As in engineering it is a rule that a cannon should be at least one hundred times heavier than its shot, so a man’s character should be a hundred times heavier than what he says. When a La Place or a Humboldt talks of the “universe,” the word has quite another meaning than when it is used by plain John Smith, whose ideas have never extended beyond the town of Hull. So, when a man’s friend gives him religious advice, and talks of “the solemn responsibilities of life,” it makes a vast difference in the weight of the words whether they come from one who has been tried and proved in the world’s fiery furnace, and whose whole life has been a trip-hammer to drive home what he says, or from a callow youth who prates of that which he feels not, and testifies to things which are not realities to his own consciousness. There is a hollow ring in the words of the cleverest man who talks of “trials and tribulations” which he has never felt. “Words,” says the learned Selden, “must be fitted to a man’s mouth. ’Twas well said by the fellow that was to make a speech for my lord mayor, that he desired first to take measure of his lordship’s mouth.”

Few things are more interesting in the study of a language, than to note how much it gains by time and culture. In its vocabulary, its forms, and its euphonic and other changes, it embodies the mental growth and modifications of thousands of minds. It enriches itself with all the intellectual spoils of the people that use it, and with the lapse of years is gradually deepened, mellowed, and refined. The language of an old and highly civilized people differs from that of its infancy, as much as a broad and majestic river, bearing upon its bosom the commerce of the world, differs from the tiny streamlet in which it had its origin. And yet it is no less true that, as Max Müller has observed, since the beginning of the world no new addition has ever been made to the substantial elements of speech, any more than to the substantial elements of nature. There is a constant change in language, a coming and going of words; but no man can ever invent an entirely new word. Before a novel term can be introduced into use, there must be some connection with a former term,—a bridge to enable the mind to pass over to the new word. Equally true is it that when a vocable has dropped out of the language,—has become dead or obsolete,—it is almost as impossible to call it back to life as it is to restore to life a deceased human being. Pope, it is true, speaks of commanding “old words that have long slept to wake;” and Horace declares that many words will be born again that have seemingly dropped into their graves. But it is certain that, as Prof. Craik says, “very little revivification has ever taken place in human speech,” and that one may more easily introduce into a language a dozen new words than restore to general use an old one that has been discarded. It is true that when Thomson published his “Castle of Indolence,” he prefixed to the poem a list of so-called obsolete words, of which not a few, as “carol,” “glee,” “imp,” “appall,” “blazon,” “sere,” are in good standing to-day. It is true, also, that in the first quarter of this century Coleridge, Byron, Keats, Scott, and other poets, enriched their vocabularies with words taken from the more archaic and obsolescent element of the language, and that we have in use many words that were more or less neglected during the eighteenth century. But in nearly all these cases it is probable that the vocables thus recalled to a living and working condition, were never actually dead, but only in a state of suspended animation.

It has been calculated that our English language, including the nomenclature of the arts and sciences, contains one hundred thousand words; yet of this immense number it is surprising how few are in common use. It is a common opinion that every Englishman and American speaks English, every German German, and every Frenchman French. The truth is, that each person speaks only that limited portion of the language with which he is acquainted. To the great majority even of educated men, three-fourths of these words are almost as unfamiliar as Greek or Choctaw. Strike from the lexicon all the obsolete or obsolescent words; all the words of special arts or professions; all the words confined in their usage to particular localities; all the words of recent coinage which have not yet been naturalized; all the words which even the educated speaker uses only in homœopathic doses,—and it is astonishing into what a manageable volume your plethoric Webster or Worcester will have shrunk. It has been calculated that a child uses only about one hundred words; and, unless he belongs to the educated classes, he will never employ more than three or four hundred. A distinguished American scholar estimates that few speakers or writers use as many as ten thousand words; ordinary persons, of fair intelligence, not over three or four thousand. Even the great orator, who is able to bring into the field, in the war of words, half the vast array of light and heavy troops which the vocabulary affords, yet contents himself with a far less imposing display of verbal force. Even the all-knowing Milton, whose wealth of words seems amazing, and whom Dr. Johnson charges with using a “Babylonish dialect,” uses only eight thousand; and Shakespeare himself, “the myriad-minded,” only fifteen thousand. Each word, however, has a variety of meanings, with more or fewer of which every man is familiar, so that his knowledge of the language, which has practically over a million of words, is far greater than it appears. Still the facts we have stated show that the difficulty of mastering the vocabulary of a new tongue is greatly overrated; and they show, too, how absurd is the boast of every new dictionary-maker that his vocabulary contains so many thousand words more than those of his predecessors. This may, or may not, be a merit; but it is certain that there is scarcely a page of Johnson that does not contain some word—obsolete, un-English, or purely scientific—that has no business there; while Webster and Worcester cram them in by hundreds and thousands at a time; each doing his best to load and deform his pages, and all the while triumphantly challenging the world to observe how prodigious an advantage he has gained over his rivals.

We are accustomed to go to the dictionary for the meaning of words; but it is life that discloses to us their significance in all the vivid realities of experience. It is the actual world, with its joys and sorrows, its pleasures and pains, that reveals to us their joyous or terrible meanings—meanings not to be found in Worcester or Webster. Does the young and light-hearted maiden know the meaning of “sorrow,” or the youth just entering on a business career understand the significance of the words “failure” and “protest”? Go to the hod carrier, climbing the many-storied building under a July sun, for the meaning of “toil”; and, for a definition of “overwork,” go to the pale seamstress who

Ask the hoary-headed debauchee, bankrupt in purse, friends, and reputation,—with disease racking every limb,—for the definition of “remorse”; and go to the bedside of the invalid for the proper understanding of “health.” Life, with its inner experience, reveals to us the tremendous force of words, and writes upon our hearts the ineffaceable records of their meanings. Man is a dictionary, and human experience the great lexicographer. Hundreds of human beings pass from their cradles to their graves who know not the force of the commonest terms; while to others their terrible significance comes home like an electric flash, and sends a thrill to the innermost fibres of their being.

To conclude,—it is one of the marvels of language, that out of the twenty plain elementary sounds of which the human voice is capable, have been formed all the articulate voices which, for six thousand or more years, have sufficed to express all the sentiments of the human race. Few as are these sounds, it has been calculated that one thousand million writers, in one thousand million years, could not write out all the combinations of the twenty-four letters of the alphabet, if each writer were daily to write out forty pages of them, and if each page should contain different orders of the twenty-four letters. Another remarkable fact is that the vocal organs are so constructed as to be exactly adapted to the properties of the atmosphere which conveys their sounds, while at the same time the organs of hearing are fitted to receive with pleasure the sounds conveyed. Who can estimate the misery that man would experience were his sense of hearing so acute that the faintest whisper would give him pain, loud talking or laughter stun him, and a peal of thunder strike him deaf or dead?

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