Chapter XV · CURIOSITIES OF LANGUAGE. (continued 2)
Reading edition
This opposition in the meanings of a word is a phenomenon not altogether peculiar to the English language. In Greek, θοάζειν has the seemingly contradictory meanings of “to move hastily,” and “to sit”; χρεία means both “use” and “need”; and λάω means both “to wish” and “to take.” In Latin, sacer means “set apart” or “tabooed,” and unicus implies singularity,—unitas, association. Many other examples might be cited to show that “as rays of light may be reflected and refracted in all possible ways from the primary direction, so the meaning of a word may be deflected from its original bearing in a variety of manners; and consequently we cannot well reach the primitive force of the term unless we know the precise gradations through which it has gone.”
Several writers on our language have noticed a singular tendency to limit or narrow the signification of certain words, whose etymology would suggest a far wider application. Why should we not “retaliate” (that is, pay back in kind, res, talis) kindnesses as well as injuries? Why should we “resent” (feel again) insults, and not affectionate words and deeds? Why should our hate, animosity, hostility, and other bad passions, be “inveterate” (that is, gain strength by age), but our better feelings, love, kindness, charity, never? Byron showed a true appreciation of the better uses to which the word might be put, when he subscribed a letter to a friend, “Yours inveterately, Byron.”
In some of our nouns there is a nice distinction of meaning between the singular and the plural. A “minute” is a fraction of time; “minutes” are notes of a speech, conversation, etc. The “manner” in which a man enters a drawing-room may be unexceptionable, while his “manners” are very bad. When the “Confederates” threatened to pull down the American “colors” at New Orleans, they did it under “color” of right. A person was once asked whether a certain lawyer had got rich by his practice. “No,” was the sarcastic reply, “but by his practices.”