On the Study of Words by Richard C Trench

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Sometimes, indeed, they have not faded at all. Thus at Naples it is the
ordinary language to call the lesser storm-waves 'pecore,' or sheep;
the larger 'cavalloni,' or big horses. Who that has watched the foaming
crests, the white manes, as it were, of the larger billows as they
advance in measured order, and rank on rank, into the bay, but will own
not merely the fitness, but the grandeur, of this last image? Let me
illustrate my meaning more at length by the word 'tribulation.' We all
know in a general way that this word, which occurs not seldom in
Scripture and in the Liturgy, means affliction, sorrow, anguish; but it
is quite worth our while to know _how_ it means this, and to question
'tribulation' a little closer. It is derived from the Latin 'tribulum,'
which was the threshing instrument or harrow, whereby the Roman
husbandman separated the corn from the husks; and 'tribulatio' in its
primary signification was the act of this separation. But some Latin
writer of the Christian Church appropriated the word and image for the
setting forth of a higher truth; and sorrow, distress, and adversity
being the appointed means for the separating in men of whatever in them
was light, trivial, and poor from the solid and the true, their chaff
from their wheat, [Footnote: Triticum itself may be connected with tero,
tritus; [so Curtius, _Greek Etym._ No. 239].] he therefore called these
sorrows and trials 'tribulations,' threshings, that is, of the inner
spiritual man, without which there could be no fitting him for the
heavenly garner. Now in proof of my assertion that a single word is
often a concentrated poem, a little grain of pure gold capable of being
beaten out into a broad extent of gold-leaf, I will quote, in reference
to this very word 'tribulation,' a graceful composition by George
Wither, a prolific versifier, and occasionally a poet, of the
seventeenth century. You will at once perceive that it is all wrapped
up in this word, being from first to last only the explicit unfolding
of the image and thought which this word has implicitly given; it is as
follows:--

'Till from the straw the flail the corn doth beat,
Until the chaff be purged from the wheat,
Yea, till the mill the grains in pieces tear,
The richness of the flour will scarce appear.
So, till men's persons great afflictions touch,
If worth be found, their worth is not so much,
Because, like wheat in straw, they have not yet
That value which in threshing they may get.
For till the bruising flails of God's corrections
Have threshed out of us our vain affections;
Till those corruptions which do misbecome us
Are by Thy sacred Spirit winnowed from us;
Until from us the straw of worldly treasures,
Till all the dusty chaff of empty pleasures,
Yea, till His flail upon us He doth lay,
To thresh the husk of this our flesh away;
And leave the soul uncovered; nay, yet more,
Till God shall make our very spirit poor,
We shall not up to highest wealth aspire;
But then we shall; and that is my desire.'

This deeper religious use of the word 'tribulation' was unknown to
classical antiquity, belonging exclusively to the Christian writers;
and the fact that the same deepening and elevating of the use of words
recurs in a multitude of other, and many of them far more signal,
instances, is one well deserving to be followed up. Nothing, I am
persuaded, would more mightily convince us of the new power which
Christianity proved in the world than to compare the meaning which so
many words possessed before its rise, and the deeper meaning which they
obtained, so soon as they were assumed as the vehicles of its life, the
new thought and feeling enlarging, purifying, and ennobling the very
words which they employed. This is a subject which I shall have
occasion to touch on more than once in these lectures, but is itself
well worthy of, as it would afford ample material for, a volume.

On the suggestion of this word 'tribulation', I will quote two or three
words from Coleridge, bearing on the matter in hand. He has said, 'In
order to get the full sense of a word, we should first present to our
minds the visual image that forms its primary meaning.' What admirable
counsel is here! If we would but accustom ourselves to the doing of
this, what a vast increase of precision and force would all the
language which we speak, and which others speak to us, obtain; how
often would that which is now obscure at once become clear; how
distinct the limits and boundaries of that which is often now confused
and confounded! It is difficult to measure the amount of food for the
imagination, as well as gains for the intellect, which the observing of
this single rule would afford us. Let me illustrate this by one or two
examples. We say of such a man that he is 'desultory.' Do we attach any
very distinct meaning to the word? Perhaps not. But get at the image on
which 'desultory' rests; take the word to pieces; learn that it is from
'desultor,' [Footnote: Lat. _desultor_ is from _desult_-, the stem of
_desultus_, past part, of _desilire_, to leap down.] one who rides two
or three horses at once, leaps from one to the other, being never on
the back of any one of them long; take, I say, the word thus to pieces,
and put it together again, and what a firm and vigorous grasp will you
have now of its meaning! A 'desultory' man is one who jumps from one
study to another, and never continues for any length of time in one.
Again, you speak of a person as 'capricious,' or as full of 'caprices.'
But what exactly are caprices? 'Caprice' is from _capra_, a goat.
[Footnote: The etymology of _caprice_ has not been discovered yet; the
derivation from _capra_ is unsatisfactory, as it does not account for
the latter part of the word.] If ever you have watched a goat, you will
have observed how sudden, how unexpected, how unaccountable, are the
leaps and springs, now forward, now sideward, now upward, in which it
indulges. A 'caprice' then is a movement of the mind as unaccountable,
as little to be calculated on beforehand, as the springs and bounds of
a goat. Is not the word so understood a far more picturesque one than
it was before? and is there not some real gain in the vigour and
vividness of impression which is in this way obtained? 'Pavaner' is the
French equivalent for our verb 'to strut,' 'fourmiller' for our verb
'to swarm.' But is it not a real gain to know further that the one is
to strut _as the peacock does_, the other to swarm _as do ants_? There
are at the same time, as must be freely owned, investigations, moral no
less than material, in which the nearer the words employed approach to
an algebraic notation, and the less disturbed or coloured they are by
any reminiscences of the ultimate grounds on which they rest, the
better they are likely to fulfil the duties assigned to them; but these
are exceptions. [Footnote: A French writer, Adanson, in his _Natural
History of Senegal_ complains of the misleading character which names
so often have, and urges that the only safety is to give to things
names which have and can have no meaning at all. His words are worth
quoting as a curiosity, if nothing else: L'experience nous apprend, que
la plupart des noms significatifs qu'on a voulu donner a differens
objets d'histoire naturelle, sont devenus faux a mesure qu'on a
decouvert des qualites, des proprietes nouvelles ou contraires a celles
qui avaient fait donner ces noms: il faut donc, pour se mettre a l'abri
des contradictions, eviter les termes figures, et meme faire en sorte
qu'on ne puisse les rapporter a quelque etymologie, a fin que ceux, qui
ont la fureur des etymologies, ne soient pas tenus de leur attribuer
une idee fausse. II en doit etre des noms, comme des coups des jeux de
hazard, qui n'ont pour l'ordinaire aucune liaison entre eux: ils
seraient d'autant meilleurs qu'ils seraient moins significatifs, moins
relatifs a d'autres noms, ou a des choses connues, par ce que l'idee ne
se fixant qu'a un seul objet, le saisit beaucoup plus nettement, que
lorsqu'elle se lie avec d'autres objets qui y ont du rapport. There is
truth in what he says, but the remedy he proposes is worse than the
disease.]

The poetry which has been embodied in the names of places, in those
names which designate the leading features of outward nature,
promontories, mountains, capes, and the like, is very worthy of being
elicited and evoked anew, latent as it now has oftentimes become.
Nowhere do we so easily forget that names had once a peculiar fitness,
which was the occasion of their giving. Colour has often suggested the
name, as in the well-known instance of our own 'Albion,'--'the silver-
coasted isle,' as Tennyson so beautifully has called it,--which had
this name from the white line of cliffs presented by it to those
approaching it by the narrow seas. [Footnote: The derivation of the
name _Albion_ has not been discovered yet; it is even uncertain whether
the word is Indo-European; see Rhys, _Celtic Britain_, p. 200.]
'Himalaya' is 'the abode of snow.' Often, too, shape and configuiation
are incorporated in the name, as in 'Trinacria' or 'the three-
promontoried land,' which was the Greek name of Sicily; in 'Drepanum'
or 'the sickle,' the name which a town on the north-west promontory of
the island bore, from the sickle-shaped tongue of land on which it was
built. But more striking, as the embodiment of a poetical feeling, is
the modern name of the great southern peninsula of Greece. We are all
aware that it is called the 'Morea'; but we may not be so well aware
from whence that name is derived. It had long been the fashion among
ancient geographers to compare the shape of this region to a platane
leaf; [Footnote: Strabo, viii. 2; Pliny, H.N. iv. 5; Agathemerus, I.i.
p. 15; echein de omoion schaema phullps platanan] and a glance at the
map will show that the general outline of that leaf, with its sharply-
incised edges, justified the comparison. This, however, had remained
merely as a comparison; but at the shifting and changing of names, that
went with the breaking up of the old Greek and Roman civilization, the
resemblance of this region to a leaf, not now any longer a platane, but
a mulberry leaf, appeared so strong, that it exchanged its classic name
of Peloponnesus for 'Morea' which embodied men's sense of this
resemblance, _morus_ being a mulberry tree in Latin, and _morea_ in
Greek. This etymology of 'Morea' has been called in question;
[Footnote: By Fallmerayer, _Gesck. der Halbinsel Morea,_ p. 240, sqq.
The island of Ceylon, known to the Greeks as Taprobane, and to Milton
as well (_P. L._ iv. 75), owed this name to a resemblance which in
outline it bore to the leaf of the betel tree. [This is very
doubtful.]] but, as it seems to me, on no sufficient grounds. Deducing,
as one objector does, 'Morea' from a Slavonic word 'more,' the sea, he
finds in this derivation a support for his favourite notion that the
modern population of Greece is not descended from the ancient, but
consists in far the larger proportion of intrusive Slavonic races. Two
mountains near Dublin, which we, keeping in the grocery line, have
called the Great and the Little Sugarloaf, are named in Irish 'the
Golden Spears.'

In other ways also the names of places will oftentimes embody some
poetical aspect under which now or at some former period men learned to
regard them. Oftentimes when discoverers come upon a new land they will
seize with a firm grasp of the imagination the most striking feature
which it presents to their eyes, and permanently embody this in a word.
Thus the island of Madeira is now, I believe, nearly bare of wood; but
its sides were covered with forests at the time when it was first
discovered, and hence the name, 'madeira' in Portuguese having this
meaning of wood. [Footnote: [Port. _madeira,_ 'wood,' is the same word
as the Lat. _materia_.]] Some have said that the first Spanish
discoverers of Florida gave it this name from the rich carpeting of
flowers which, at the time when first their eyes beheld it, everywhere
covered the soil. [Footnote: The Spanish historian Herrera says that
Juan Ponce de Leon, the discoverer of Florida, gave that name to the
country for two reasons: first, because it was a land of flowers,
secondly, because it was discovered by him on March 27, 1513, Easter
Day, which festival was called by the Spaniards, 'Pascua Florida,' or
'Pascua de Flores,' see Herrera's _History_, tr. by Stevens, ii. p. 33,
and the _Discovery of Florida_ by R. Hakluyt, ed. by W. B. Rye for the
Hakluyt Soc., 1851, introd. p. x.; cp. Larousse (s.v.), and Pierer's
_Conversations Lexicon_. It is stated by some authorities that Florida
was so called because it was discovered on Palm Sunday; this is due to
a mistaken inference from the names for that Sunday--Pascha Florum,
Pascha Floridum (Ducange), Pasque Fleurie (Cotgrave); see _Dict. Geog.
Univ_., 1884, and Brockhaus.] Surely Florida, as the name passes under
our eye, or from our lips, is something more than it was before, when
we may thus think of it as the land of flowers. [Footnote: An Italian
poet, Fazio degli Uberti, tells us that Florence has its appellation
from the same cause:

Poiche era posta in un prato di fiori,
Le denno il nome bello, oude s' ingloria.

It would be instructive to draw together a collection of etymologies
which have been woven into verse. These are so little felt to be alien
to the spirit of poetry, that they exist in large numbers, and often
lend to the poem in which they find a place a charm and interest of
their own. In five lines of _Paradise Lost_ Milton introduces four such
etymologies, namely, those of the four fabled rivers of hell, though
this will sometimes escape the notice of the English reader:

'Abhorred Styx, the flood of deadly _hate_,
Sad Acheron of _sorrow_, black and deep,
Cocytus, named of _lamentation_ loud
Heard on the rueful stream; fierce Phlegethon,
Whose waves of torrent _fire_ inflame with rage.'

'Virgil, that great master of the proprieties,' as Bishop Pearson has
so happily called him, does not shun, but rather loves to introduce
them, as witness his etymology of 'Byrsa,' _Aen_. i. 367, 368; v. 59,
63 [but the etymology here is imaginative, the name _Byrsa_ being of
Punic, that is of Semitic, origin, and meaning 'a fortress'; compare
Heb. _Bozrah_]; of 'Silvius,' _Aen_. vi. 763, 765; of 'Argiletum,'
where he is certainly wrong (_Aen_. viii. 345); of 'Latium,' with
reference to Saturn having remained _latent_ there (_Aen_. viii. 322;
of. Ovid, _Fasti_, i. 238); of 'Laurens' (_Aen_. vii. 63):

Latiumque vocari
Maluit, his quoniam _latuisset_ tutus in oris:

and again of 'Avernus' (=[Greek: aornos], _Aen_. vi. 243); being indeed
in this anticipated by Lucretius (vi. 741):

quia sunt avibus contraria cunctis.

Ovid's taste is far from faultless, and his example cannot go for much;
but he is always a graceful versifier, and his _Fasti_ swarms with
etymologies, correct and incorrect; as of 'Agonalis' (i. 322), of
'Aprilis' (iv. 89), of 'Augustus' (i. 609-614), of 'Februarius' (ii.
19-22), of 'hostia' (i. 336), of 'Janus' (i. 120-127), of 'Junius' (vi.
26), of 'Lemures' (v. 479-484), of 'Lucina' (ii. 449), of 'majestas' (v.
26), of 'Orion' (v. 535), of 'pecunia' (v. 280, 281), of 'senatus' (v.
64), of 'Sulmo'(iv. 79; cf. Silius Italicus, ix. 70); of 'Vesta' (vi.
299), of 'victima' (i. 335); of 'Trinacris' (iv. 420). He has them also
elsewhere, as of 'Tomi' (_Trist._ iii. 9, 33). Lucilius, in like manner,
gives us the etymology of 'iners':
Ut perhibetur iners, _ars_ in quo non erit ulla; Propertius (iv. 2,
3) of 'Vertumnus'; and Lucretius of 'Magnes' (vi. 909).]

The name of Port Natal also embodies a fact which must be of interest
to its inhabitants, namely, that this port was discovered on Christmas
Day, the _dies natalis_ of our Lord.

Then again what poetry is there, as indeed there ought to be, in the
names of flowers! I do not speak of those, the exquisite grace and
beauty of whose names is so forced on us that we cannot miss it, such
as 'Aaron's rod,' 'angel's eyes,' 'bloody warrior,' 'blue-bell, 'crown
imperial,' 'cuckoo-flower,' blossoming as this orchis does when the
cuckoo is first heard, [Footnote: In a catalogue of _English Plant
Names_ I count thirty in which 'cuckoo' formed a component part.] 'eye-
bright,' 'forget-me-not,' 'gilt-cup' (a local name for the butter-cup,
drawn from the golden gloss of its petals), 'hearts-ease,' 'herb-of-
grace,' 'Jacob's ladder,' 'king-cup,' 'lady's fingers,' 'Lady's smock,'
'Lady's tresses,' 'larkspur,' 'Lent lily,' 'loose-strife,' 'love-in-
idleness,' 'Love lies bleeding,' 'maiden-blush,' 'maiden-hair,'
'meadow-sweet,' 'Our Lady's mantle,' 'Our Lady's slipper,' 'queen-of-
the-meadows,' 'reine-marguerite,' 'rosemary,' 'snow-flake,' 'Solomon's
seal,' 'star of Bethlehem,' 'sun-dew,' 'sweet Alison,' 'sweet Cicely,'
'sweet William,' 'Traveller's joy,' 'Venus' looking-glass,' 'Virgin's
bower,' and the like; but take 'daisy'; surely this charming little
English flower, which has stirred the peculiar affection of English
poets from Chaucer to Wordsworth, and received the tribute of their
song, [Footnote:
'Fair fall that gentle flower,
A golden tuft set in a silver crown,' as Brown exclaims, whose
singularly graceful _Pastorals_ should not be suffered to fall
altogether to oblivion. In Ward's recent _English Poets_, vol. ii. p.
65, justice has been done to them, and to their rare beauty.] becomes
more charming yet, when we know, as Chaucer long ago has told us, that
'daisy' is day's eye, or in its early spelling 'daieseighe,' the eye of
day; these are his words:

'That men by reson well it calle may
The _daisie_, or elles the ye of day.'
_Chaucer_, ed. Morris, vol. v. p. 281.

For only consider how much is implied here. To the sun in the heavens
this name, eye of day, was naturally first given, and those who
transferred the title to our little field flower meant no doubt to
liken its inner yellow disk, or shield, to the great golden orb of the
sun, and the white florets which encircle this disk to the rays which
the sun spreads on all sides around him. What imagination was here, to
suggest a comparison such as this, binding together as this does the
smallest and the greatest! what a travelling of the poet's eye, with
the power which is the privilege of that eye, from earth to heaven, and
from heaven to earth, and of linking both together. So too, call up
before your mind's eye the 'lavish gold' of the drooping laburnum when
in flower, and you will recognize the poetry of the title, 'the golden
rain,' which in German it bears. 'Celandine' does not so clearly tell
its own tale; and it is only when you have followed up the [Greek:
chelidonion], (swallow-wort), of which 'celandin' is the English
representative, that the word will yield up the poetry which is
concealed in it.

And then again, what poetry is there often in the names of birds and
beasts and fishes, and indeed of all the animated world around us; how
marvellously are these names adapted often to bring out the most
striking and characteristic features of the objects to which they are
given. Thus when the Romans became acquainted with the stately giraffe,
long concealed from them in the interior deserts of Africa, (which we
learn from Pliny they first did in the shows exhibited by Julius
Caesar,) it was happily imagined to designate a creature combining,
though with infinitely more grace, something of the height and even the
proportions of the _camel_ with the spotted skin of the _pard_, by a
name which should incorporate both these its most prominent
features, [Footnote: Varro: Quod erat figura ut camelus, maculis ut
panthera; and Horace (Ep. ii. I, 196): Diversum confusa genus panthera
camelo.] calling it the 'camelopard.' Nor can we, I think, hesitate to
accept that account as the true one, which describes the word as no
artificial creation of scientific naturalists, but as bursting
extempore from the lips of the common people, who after all are the
truest namers, at the first moment when the novel creature was
presented to their gaze. 'Cerf-volant,' a name which the French have so
happily given to the horned scarabeus, the same which we somewhat less
poetically call the 'stag-beetle,' is another example of what may be
effected with the old materials, by merely bringing them into new and
happy combinations.

You know the appearance of the lizard, and the _star_-like shape of the
spots which are sown over its back. Well, in Latin it is called
'stellio,' from _stella_, a star; just as the basilisk had in Greek
this name of 'little king' because of the shape as of a _kingly_ crown
which the spots on its head might be made by the fancy to assume.
Follow up the etymology of 'squirrel,' and you will find that the
graceful creature which bears this name has obtained it as being wont
to sit under the shadow of its own tail. [Footnote: [The word
_squirrel_ is a diminutive of the Greek word for squirrel, [Greek:
skiouros], literally 'shadow-tail.']] Need I remind you of our
'goldfinch,' evidently so called from that bright patch of yellow on
its wing; our 'kingfisher,' having its name from the royal beauty, the
kingly splendour of the plumage with which it is adorned? Some might
ask why the stormy petrel, a bird which just skims and floats on the
topmost wave, should bear this name? No doubt we have here the French
'petrel,' or little Peter, and the bird has in its name an allusion to
the Apostle Peter, who at his Master's bidding walked for a while on
the unquiet surface of an agitated sea. The 'lady-bird' or 'lady-cow'
is prettily named, as indeed the whole legend about it is full of grace
and fancy [Footnote: [For other names for the 'lady-bird,' and the
reference in many of them to God and the Virgin Mary, see Grimm,
_Teutonic Mythology_, p. 694.]]; but a common name which in many of our
country parts this creature bears, the 'golden knob,' is prettier still.
And indeed in our country dialects there is a wide poetical
nomenclature which is well worthy of recognition; thus the shooting
lights of the Aurora Borealis are in Lancashire 'the Merry Dancers';
clouds piled up in a particular fashion are in many parts of England
styled 'Noah's Ark'; the puff-ball is 'the Devil's snuff-box'; the
dragon-fly 'the Devil's darning-needle'; a large black beetle 'the
Devil's coach-horse.' Any one who has watched the kestrel hanging
poised in the air, before it swoops upon its prey, will acknowledge the
felicity of the name 'windhover,' or sometimes 'windfanner,' which it
popularly bears. [Footnote: In Wallace's _Tropical Nature_ there is a
beautiful chapter on humming birds, and the names which in various
languages these exquisite little creatures bear.] The amount is very
large of curious legendary lore which is everywhere bound up in words,
and which they, if duly solicited, will give back to us again. For
example, the Greek 'halcyon,' which we have adopted without change, has
reference, and wraps up in itself an allusion, to one of the most
beautiful and significant legends of heathen antiquity; according to
which the sea preserved a perfect calmness for all the period, the
fourteen 'halcyon days,' during which this bird was brooding over her
nest. The poetry of the name survives, whether the name suggested the
legend, or the legend the name. Take again the names of some of our
precious stones, as of the topaz, so called, as some said, because men
were only able to _conjecture_ ([Greek: topazein]) the position of the
cloud-concealed island from which it was brought. [Footnote: Pliny, _H.
N._ xxxvii. 32. [But this is only popular etymology: the word can
hardly be of Greek origin; see A. S. Palmer, _Folk-Etymology_, p.
589.]]

Very curious is the determination which some words, indeed many, seem
to manifest, that their poetry shall not die; or, if it dies in one
form, that it shall revive in another. Thus if there is danger that,
transferred from one language to another, they shall no longer speak to
the imagination of men as they did of old, they will make to themselves
a new life, they will acquire a new soul in the room of that which has
ceased to quicken and inform them any more. Let me make clear what I
mean by two or three examples. The Germans, knowing nothing of
carbuncles, had naturally no word of their own for them; and when they
first found it necessary to name them, as naturally borrowed the Latin
'carbunculus,' which originally had meant 'a little live coal,' to
designate these precious stones of a fiery red. But 'carbunculus,' word
full of poetry and life for Latin-speaking men, would have been only an
arbitrary sign for as many as were ignorant of that language. What then
did these, or what, rather, did the working genius of the language, do?
It adopted, but, in adopting, modified slightly yet effectually the
word, changing it into 'Karfunkel,' thus retaining the framework of the
original, yet at the same time, inasmuch as 'funkeln' signifies 'to
sparkle,' reproducing now in an entirely novel manner the image of the
bright sparkling of the stone, for every knower of the German tongue.
'Margarita,' or pearl, belongs to the earliest group of Latin words
adopted into English. The word, however, told nothing about itself to
those who adopted it. But the pearl might be poetically contemplated as
the sea-stone; and so our fathers presently transformed 'margarita'
into 'mere-grot,' which means nothing less. [Footnote: Such is the A.S.
form of _margarita_ in three versions of the parable of the Pearl of
Great Price, St. Matt. xiii. 45; _see Anglo-Saxon Gospels_, ed. Skeat,
1887.] Take another illustration of this from another quarter. The
French 'rossignol,' a nightingale, is undoubtedly the Latin
'lusciniola,' the diminutive of 'luscinia,' with the alteration, so
frequent in the Romance languages, of the commencing 'l' into 'r.'
Whatever may be the etymology of 'luscinia,' it is plain that for
Frenchmen in general the word would no longer suggest any meaning at
all, hardly even for French scholars, after the serious transformations
which it had undergone; while yet, at the same time, in the exquisitely
musical 'rossignol,' and still more perhaps in the Italian 'usignuolo,'
there is an evident intention and endeavour to express something of the
music of the bird's song in the liquid melody of the imitative name
which it bears; and thus to put a new soul into the word, in lieu of
that other which had escaped. Or again--whatever may be the meaning of
Senlac, the name of that field where the ever-memorable battle, now
better known as the Battle of Hastings, was fought, it certainly was
not 'Sanglac,' or Lake of Blood; the word only shaping itself into this
significant form subsequently to the battle, and in consequence of it.

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