On the Study of Words by Richard C Trench

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One or two examples more of the perishing of the old life in a word,
and the birth of a new in its stead, may be added. The old name of
Athens, 'Athaevai,' was closely linked with the fact that the goddess
Pallas Athene was the guardian deity of the city. The reason of the
name, with other facts of the old mythology, faded away from the memory
of the peasantry of modern Greece; but Athens is a name which must
still mean something for them. Accordingly it is not 'Athaevai now, but
'Avthaevai, or the Blooming, on the lips of the peasantry round about;
so Mr. Sayce assures us. The same process everywhere meets us. Thus no
one who has visited Lucerne can fail to remember the rugged mountain
called 'Pilatus' or 'Mont Pilate,' which stands opposite to him; while
if he has been among the few who have cared to climb it, he will have
been shown by his guide the lake at its summit in which Pontius Pilate
in his despair drowned himself, with an assurance that from this
suicide of his the mountain obtained its name. Nothing of the kind.
'Mont Pilate' stands for 'Mons _Pileatus_,' the '_capped_ hill'; the
clouds, as one so often sees, gathering round its summit, and forming
the shape or appearance of a cap or hat. When this true derivation was
forgotten or misunderstood, the other explanation was invented and
imposed. [Footnote: [The old name of Pilatus was _Fractus Mons_,
'broken mountain' from its rugged cliffs and precipices. _Pilatus_ did
not become general till the close of the last century.]] An instructive
example this, let me observe by the way, of that which has happened
continually in the case of far older legends; I mean that the name has
suggested the legend, and not the legend the name. We have an apt
illustration of this in the old notion that the crocodile ([Greek:
krokodeilos]) could not endure saffron.

I have said that poetry and imagination seek to penetrate everywhere;
and this is literally true; for even the hardest, austerest studies
cannot escape their influence; they will put something of their own
life into the dry bones of a nomenclature which seems the remotest from
them, the most opposed to them. Thus in Danish the male and female
lines of descent and inheritance are called respectively the sword-side
and the spindle-side. [Footnote: [In the same way the Germans used to
employ _schwert_ and _kunkel_; compare the use of the phrases _on etha
sperehealfe_, and _on etha spinlhealfe_ in King Alfred's will; see Kemble,
_Codex Diplomaticus_, No. 314 (ii. 116), Pauli's _Life of Alfred_, p.
225, Lappenberg's _Anglo-Saxon Kings_, ii. 99 (1881).]] He who in
prosody called a metrical foot consisting of one long syllable followed
by two short (-..) a 'dactyle' or a finger, with allusion to the long
first joint of the finger, and the two shorter which follow, whoever he
may have been, and some one was the first to do it, must be allowed to
have brought a certain amount of imagination into a study so alien to
it as prosody very well might appear.

He did the same in another not very poetical region who invented the
Latin law-term, 'stellionatus.' The word includes all such legally
punishable acts of swindling or injurious fraud committed on the
property of another as are not specified in any more precise enactment;
being drawn and derived from a practice attributed, I suppose without
any foundation, to the lizard or 'stellio' we spoke of just now. Having
cast its winter skin, it is reported to swallow it at once, and this
out of a malignant grudge lest any should profit by that which, if not
now, was of old accounted a specific in certain diseases. The term was
then transferred to any malicious wrong whatever done by one person to
another.

In other regions it was only to be expected that we should find poetry.
Thus it is nothing strange that architecture, which has been called
frozen music, and which is poetry embodied in material forms, should
have a language of its own, not dry nor hard, not of the mere intellect
alone, but one in the forming of which it is evident that the
imaginative faculties were at work. To take only one example--this,
however, from Gothic art, which naturally yields the most remarkable--
what exquisite poetry in the name of 'the rose window' or better still,
'the rose,' given to the rich circular aperture of stained glass, with
its leaf-like compartments, in the transepts of a Gothic cathedral!
Here indeed we may note an exception from that which usually finds
place; for usually art borrows beauty from nature, and very faintly, if
at all, reflects back beauty upon her. In this present instance,
however, art is so beautiful, has reached so glorious and perfect a
development, that if the associations which the rose supplies lend to
that window some hues of beauty and a glory which otherwise it would
not have, the latter abundantly repays the obligation; and even the
rose itself may become lovelier still, associated with those shapes of
grace, those rich gorgeous tints, and all the religious symbolism of
that in art which has borrowed and bears its name. After this it were
little to note the imagination, although that was most real, which
dictated the term 'flamboyant' to express the wavy flame-like outline,
which, at a particular period of art, the tracery in the Gothic window
assumed.

'Godsacre' or 'Godsfield,' is the German name for a burial-ground, and
once was our own, though we unfortunately have nearly, if not quite,
let it go. What a hope full of immortality does this little word
proclaim! how rich is it in all the highest elements of poetry, and of
poetry in its noblest alliance, that is, in its alliance with faith--
able as it is to cause all loathsome images of death and decay to
disappear, not denying them, but suspending, losing, absorbing them in
the sublimer thought of the victory over death, of that harvest of life
which God shall one day so gloriously reap even there where now seems
the very triumphing place of death. Many will not need to be reminded
how fine a poem in Longfellow's hands unfolds itself out of this word.

Lastly let me note the pathos of poetry which lies often in the mere
tracing of the succession of changes in meaning which certain words
have undergone. Thus 'elend' in German, a beautiful word, now signifies
wretchedness, but at first it signified exile or banishment. [Footnote:
On this word there is an interesting discussion in Weigand's _Etym.
Dict._, and compare Pott, _Etym. Forsch._ i. 302. _Ellinge_, an English
provincial word of infinite pathos, still common in the south of
England, and signifying at once lonely and sad, is not connected, as
has been sometimes supposed, with the German _elend_, but represents
Anglo-Saxon _ae-lenge_, protracted, tedious; see the _New English
Dictionary_ (s.v. _alange_)] The sense of this separation from the
native land and from all home delights, as being the woe of all woes,
the crown of all sorrows, little by little so penetrated the word, that
what at first expressed only one form of misery, has ended by
signifying all. It is not a little notable, as showing the same feeling
elsewhere at work, that 'essil' (= exilium) in old French signified,
not only banishment, but ruin, destruction, misery. In the same manner
[Greek: nostimos] meaning at first no more than having to do with a
return, comes in the end to signify almost anything which is favourable
and auspicious.

Let us then acknowledge man a born poet; if not every man himself a
'maker' yet every one able to rejoice in what others have made,
adopting it freely, moving gladly in it as his own most congenial
element and sphere. For indeed, as man does not live by bread alone, as
little is he content to find in language merely the instrument which
shall enable him to buy and sell and get gain, or otherwise make
provision for the lower necessities of his animal life. He demands to
find in it as well what shall stand in a real relation and
correspondence to the higher faculties of his being, shall feed,
nourish, and sustain these, shall stir him with images of beauty and
suggestions of greatness. Neither here nor anywhere else could he
become the mere utilitarian, even if he would. Despite his utmost
efforts, were he so far at enmity with his own good as to put them
forth, he could not succeed in exhausting his language of the poetical
element with which it is penetrated through and through; he could not
succeed in stripping it of blossom, flower, and fruit, and leaving it
nothing but a bare and naked stem. He may fancy for a moment that he
has succeeded in doing this; but it will only need for him to become a
little better philologer, to go a little deeper into the story of the
words which he is using, and he will discover that he is as remote as
ever from such an unhappy consummation, from so disastrous a success.

For ourselves, let us desire and attempt nothing of the kind. Our life
is not in other ways so full of imagination and poetry that we need
give any diligence to empty it of that which it may possess of these.
It will always have for us all enough of dull and prosaic and
commonplace. What profit can there be in seeking to extend the region
of these? Profit there will be none, but on the contrary infinite loss.
It is _stagnant_ waters which corrupt themselves; not those in
agitation and on which the winds are freely blowing. Words of passion
and imagination are, as one so grandly called them of old, 'winds of
the soul' ([Greek: psyches anemoi]), to keep it in healthful motion and
agitation, to lift it upward and to drive it onward, to preserve it
from that unwholesome stagnation which constitutes the fatal
preparedness for so many other and worse evils.

LECTURE III.

ON THE MORALITY IN WORDS.

Is man of a divine birth and of the stock of heaven? coming from God,
and, when he fulfils the law of his being, and the intention of his
creation, returning to Him again? We need no more than the words he
speaks to prove it; so much is there in them which could never have
existed on any other supposition. How else could all those words which
testify of his relation to God, and of his consciousness of this
relation, and which ground themselves thereon, have found their way
into his language, being as that is the veritable transcript of his
innermost life, the genuine utterance of the faith and hope which is in
him? In what other way can we explain that vast and preponderating
weight thrown into the scale of goodness and truth, which, despite of
all in the other scale, we must thankfully acknowledge that his
language never is without? How else shall we account for that sympathy
with the right, that testimony against the wrong, which, despite of all
aberrations and perversions, is yet the prevailing ground-tone of all?

But has man fallen, and deeply fallen, from the heights of his original
creation? We need no more than his language to prove it. Like
everything else about him, it bears at once the stamp of his greatness
and of his degradation, of his glory and of his shame. What dark and
sombre threads he must have woven into the tissue of his life, before
we could trace those threads of darkness which run through the tissue
of his language! What facts of wickedness and woe must have existed in
the one, ere such words could exist to designate these as are found in
the other! There have never wanted those who would make light of the
moral hurts which man has inflicted on himself, of the sickness with
which he is sick; who would persuade themselves and others that
moralists and divines, if they have not quite invented, have yet
enormously exaggerated, these. But are statements of the depth of his
fall, the malignity of the disease with which he is sick, found only in
Scripture and in sermons? Are those who bring forward these statements
libellers of human nature? Or are not mournful corroborations of the
truth of these assertions imprinted deeply upon every province of man's
natural and spiritual life, and on none more deeply than on his
language? It needs but to open a dictionary, and to cast our eye
thoughtfully down a few columns, and we shall find abundant
confirmation of this sadder and sterner estimate of man's moral and
spiritual condition. How else shall we explain this long catalogue of
words, having all to do with sin or with sorrow, or with both? How came
they there? We may be quite sure that they were not invented without
being needed, and they have each a correlative in the world of
realities. I open the first letter of the alphabet; what means this
'Ah,' this 'Alas,' these deep and long-drawn sighs of humanity, which
at once encounter me there? And then presently there meet me such words
as these, 'Affliction,' 'Agony,' 'Anguish,' 'Assassin,' 'Atheist,'
'Avarice,' and a hundred more--words, you will observe, not laid up in
the recesses of the language, to be drawn forth on rare occasions, but
many of them such as must be continually on the lips of men. And indeed,
in the matter of abundance, it is sad to note how much richer our
vocabularies are in words that set forth sins, than in those that set
forth graces. When St. Paul (Gal. v. 19-23) would range these over
against those, 'the works of the flesh' against 'the fruit of the
Spirit,' those are seventeen, these only nine; and where do we find in
Scripture such lists of graces, as we do at 2 Tim. iii. 2, Rom. i. 29-
31, of their contraries? [Footnote: Of these last the most exhaustive
collection which I know is in Philo, _De Merced. Meret._ Section 4.
There are here one hundred and forty-six epithets brought together,
each of them indicating a sinful moral habit of mind. It was not
without reason that Aristotle wrote: 'It is possible to err in many
ways, for evil belongs to the infinite; but to do right is possible
only in one way' (_Ethic. Nic._ ii. 6. 14).] Nor can I help noting, in
the oversight and muster from this point of view of the words which
constitute a language, the manner in which its utmost resources have
been taxed to express the infinite varieties, now of human suffering,
now of human sin. Thus, what a fearful thing is it that any language
should possess a word to express the pleasure which men feel at the
calamities of others; for the existence of the word bears testimony to
the existence of the thing. And yet such in more languages than one may
be found. [Footnote: In the Greek, [Greek: epichairekakia], in the
German, 'schadenfreude.' Cicero so strongly feels the want of such a
word, that he _gives_ to 'malevolentia' the significance, 'voluptas ex
malo alterius,' which lies not of necessity in it.] Nor are there
wanting, I suppose, in any language, words which are the mournful
record of the strange wickednesses which the genius of man, so fertile
in evil, has invented. What whole processes of cruelty are sometimes
wrapped up in a single word! Thus I have not travelled down the first
column of an Italian dictionary before I light upon the verb
'abbacinare' meaning to deprive of sight by holding a red-hot metal
basin close to the eyeballs. Travelling a little further in a Greek
lexicon, I should reach [Greek: akroteriazein] mutilate by cutting off
all the extremities, as hands, feet, nose, ears; or take our English
'to ganch.' And our dictionaries, while they tell us much, cannot tell
us all. How shamefully rich is everywhere the language of the vulgar in
words and phrases which, seldom allowed to find their way into books,
yet live as a sinful oral tradition on the lips of men, for the setting
forth of things unholy and impure. And of these words, as no less of
those dealing with the kindred sins of revelling and excess, how many
set the evil forth with an evident sympathy and approbation of it, and
as themselves taking part with the sin against Him who has forbidden it
under pain of his highest displeasure. How much ability, how much wit,
yes, and how much imagination must have stood in the service of sin,
before it could possess a nomenclature so rich, so varied, and often so
heaven-defying, as that which it actually owns.

Then further I would bid you to note the many words which men have
dragged downward with themselves, and made more or less partakers of
their own fall. Having once an honourable meaning, they have yet with
the deterioration and degeneration of those that used them, or of those
about whom they were used, deteriorated and degenerated too. How many,
harmless once, have assumed a harmful as their secondary meaning; how
many worthy have acquired an unworthy. Thus 'knave' meant once no more
than lad (nor does 'knabe' now in German mean more); 'villain' than
peasant; a 'boor' was a farmer, a 'varlet' a serving-man, which meaning
still survives in 'valet,' the other form of this word; [Footnote: Yet
this itself was an immense fall for the word (see _Ampere, La Langue
Francaise_, p. 219, and Littre, _Dict. de la Langue Francaise_, preface,
p. xxv.).] a 'menial' was one of the household; a 'paramour' was a
lover, an honourable one it might be; a 'leman' in like manner might be
a lover, and be used of either sex in a good sense; a 'beldam' was a
fair lady, and is used in this sense by Spenser; [Footnote: _F. Q._ iii.
2. 43.] a 'minion' was a favourite (man in Sylvester is 'God's dearest
_minion_'); a 'pedant' in the Italian from which we borrowed the word,
and for a while too with ourselves, was simply a tutor; a 'proser' was
one who wrote in prose; an 'adventurer' one who set before himself
perilous, but very often noble ventures, what the Germans call a
gluecksritter; a 'swindler,' in the German from which we got it, one who
entered into dangerous mercantile speculations, without implying that
this was done with any intention to defraud others. Christ, according
to Bishop Hall, was the 'ringleader' of our salvation. 'Time-server'
two hundred years ago quite as often designated one in an honourable as
in a dishonourable sense 'serving the time.' [Footnote: See in proof
Fuller, _Holy State_, b. iii. c. 19.] 'Conceits' had once nothing
conceited in them. An 'officious' man was one prompt in offices of
kindness, and not, as now, an uninvited meddler in things that concern
him not; something indeed of the older meaning still survives in the
diplomatic use of the word.

'Demure' conveyed no hint, as it does now, of an overdoing of the
outward demonstrations of modesty; a 'leer' was once a look with
nothing amiss in it (_Piers Plowman_). 'Daft' was modest or retiring;
'orgies' were religious ceremonies; the Blessed Virgin speaks of
herself in an early poem as 'God's wench.' In 'crafty' and 'cunning' no
_crooked wisdom_ was implied, but only knowledge and skill; 'craft,'
indeed, still retains very often its more honourable use, a man's
'craft' being his skill, and then the trade in which he is skilled.
'Artful' was skilful, and not tricky as now. [Footnote: Not otherwise
'leichtsinnig' in German meant cheerful once; it is frivolous now;
while in French a 'rapporteur' is now a bringer back of _malicious_
reports, the malicious having little by little found its way into the
word.] Could the Magdalen have ever bequeathed us 'maudlin' in its
present contemptuous application, if the tears of penitential sorrow
had been held in due honour by the world? 'Tinsel,' the French
'etincelle,' meant once anything that sparkled or glistened; thus,
'cloth of _tinsel_' would be cloth inwrought with silver and gold; but
the sad experience that 'all is not gold that glitters, that much
showing fair to the eye is worthless in reality, has caused that by
'tinsel,' literal or figurative, we ever mean now that which has no
realities of sterling worth underlying the specious shows which it
makes. 'Specious' itself, let me note, meant beautiful at one time, and
not, as now, presenting a deceitful appearance of beauty. 'Tawdry,' an
epithet applied once to lace or other finery bought at the fair of St.
Awdrey or St. Etheldreda, has run through the same course: it at one
time conveyed no suggestion of _mean_ finery or _shabby_ splendour, as
now it does. 'Voluble' was an epithet which had nothing of slight in it,
but meant what 'fluent' means now; 'dapper' _was_ what in German
'tapfer' _is_; not so much neat and spruce as brave and bold;
'plausible' was worthy of applause; 'pert' is now brisk and lively, but
with a very distinct subaudition, which once it had not, of sauciness
as well; 'lewd' meant no more than unlearned, as the lay or common
people might be supposed to be. [Footnote: Having in mind what 'dirne,'
connected with 'dienen,' 'dienst,' commonly means now in German, one
almost shrinks from mentioning that it was once a name of honour which
could be and was used of the Blessed Virgin Mary (see Grimm,
_Woerterbuch_, s. v.). 'Schalk' in like manner had no evil subaudition
in it at the first; nor did it ever obtain such during the time that it
survived in English; thus in _Sir Gawayne and the Green Knight_, the
peerless Gawayne is himself on more than one a 'schalk' (424, 1776).
The word survives in the last syllable of 'seneschal,' and indeed of
'marshal' as well.] 'To carp' is in Chaucer's language no more than to
converse; 'to mouth' in _Piers Plowman_ is simply to speak; 'to garble'
was once to sift and pick out the best; it is now to select and put
forward as a fair specimen the worst.

This same deterioration through use may be traced in the verb 'to
resent.' Barrow could speak of the good man as a faithful 'resenter'
and requiter of benefits, of the duty of testifying an affectionate
'resentment' of our obligations to God. But the memory of benefits
fades from us so much more quickly than that of injuries; we remember
and revolve in our minds so much more predominantly the wrongs, real or
imaginary, men have done us, than the favours we owe them, that
'resentment' has come in our modern English to be confined exclusively
to that deep reflective displeasure which men entertain against those
that have done, or whom they fancy to have done, them a wrong. And this
explains how it comes to pass that we do not speak of the 'retaliation'
of benefits at all so often as the 'retaliation' of injuries. 'To
retaliate' signifies no more than to render again as much as we have
received; but this is so much seldomer practised in the matter of
benefits than of wrongs, that 'retaliation' though not wholly strange
in this worthier sense, has yet, when so employed, an unusual sound in
our ears. 'To retaliate' kindnesses is a language which would not now
be intelligible to all. 'Animosity' as originally employed in that
later Latin which gave it birth, was spiritedness; men would speak of
the 'animosity' or fiery courage of a horse. In our early English it
meant nothing more; a divine of the seventeenth century speaks of 'due
Christian animosity.' Activity and vigour are still implied in the
word; but now only as displayed in enmity and hate. There is a Spanish
proverb which says, 'One foe is too many; a hundred friends are too
few.' The proverb and the course which this word 'animosity' has
travelled may be made mutually to illustrate one another. [Footnote: For
quotations from our earlier authors in proof of many of the assertions
made in the few last pages, see my _Select Glossary of English Words
used formerly in senses different from their present_, 5th edit. 1879.]

How mournful a witness for the hard and unrighteous judgments we
habitually form of one another lies in the word 'prejudice.' It is
itself absolutely neutral, meaning no more than a judgment formed
beforehand; which judgment may be favourable, or may be otherwise. Yet
so predominantly do we form harsh unfavourable judgments of others
before knowledge and experience, that a 'prejudice' or judgment before
knowledge and not grounded on evidence, is almost always taken in an
ill sense; 'prejudicial' having actually acquired mischievous or
injurious for its secondary meaning.

As these words bear testimony to the _sin_ of man, so others to his
_infirmity_, to the limitation of human faculties and human knowledge,
to the truth of the proverb, that 'to err is human.' Thus 'to retract'
means properly no more than to handle again, to reconsider. And yet, so
certain are we to find in a subject which we reconsider, or handle a
second time, that which was at first rashly, imperfectly, inaccurately,
stated, which needs therefore to be amended, modified, or withdrawn,
that 'to retract' could not tarry long in its primary meaning of
reconsidering; but has come to signify to withdraw. Thus the greatest
Father of the Latin Church, wishing toward the close of his life to
amend whatever he might then perceive in his various published works
incautiously or incorrectly stated, gave to the book in which he
carried out this intention (for authors had then no such opportunities
as later editions afford us now), this very name of '_Retractations_',
being literally 'rehandlings,' but in fact, as will be plain to any one
turning to the work, withdrawings of various statements by which he was
no longer prepared to abide.

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