On the Study of Words by Richard C Trench

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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 assumed, 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
assures 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 passages 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 title, and were called "the mob" in the assemblies 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. ccxxx. '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 assist 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
multitude, swayed hither and thither by each gust of passion or caprice,
this, which _The Spectator_ hardly expected, while he confessed it
possible, has actually come to pass. '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 pass 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,
'fustitudinus,' '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
pronounced 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 classes to the lower, words, such I
mean as constitute 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 assert 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
circumstances, 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; 'urbanus,' 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 classical
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 passage 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 illustrious Arminian divine of the
seventeenth century, Thomas Jackson, written by Benjamin Oley, his
friend and pupil, the following passage 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
godliness, God 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 title, _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 appetite and digestive power, the assimilative
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 assimilative 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 illustrate 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 coarse 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 vocum_ 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, nobody can tell. They are but
of yesterday, and yet with inexplicable rapidity they have already lost
all traces of the precise circumstances under which they were born.

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