A VOCABULARY TEST 163 



A large proportion of words, however, come indirectly from experience 

 through the medium of words that have already become familiar. 

 These new words are sometimes received as equivalents of other words, 

 because of synonyms and definitions or of special descriptions. The 

 greater part of them, however, gain their significance from their 

 association with familiar words in various situations, just as the 

 original words were gained from association with various real situa- 

 tions. 



These truths may be illustrated by the definitions of gourd given 

 by college students. e A drinking cup made from the gourd vine.' ' A 

 vegetable which grows in the ground having a hard shell and many 

 seeds.' ' A vessel for holding water or other liquid.' ' A receptacle 

 for carrying water about, usually of skin.' ' A water bottle made 

 from a pumpkin or squash.' ' Vessel sometimes made by scooping out, 

 for example, making a vessel by scooping out a pumpkin.' Evidently 

 most of these definitions represent ideas gained from sentences in 

 which the word, ' gourd ' is used, though those who speak of them as 

 1 pumpkins ' or as a ' summer squash,' may have seen the real thing 

 without the discriminating eye of the gardener or botanist. The idea 

 that it is a vessel of some kind evidently predominates and this idea 

 is sufficient for interpreting most sentences in which the word occurs. 



It is interesting to notice the various forms of the subordinate idea 

 of the object itself as the various persons picture it under the stimulus 

 of the context. ' A shell of certain nuts, fruits and vegetables, or of 

 the cocoanut, squash, cucumber, etc' l In many countries it is used 

 as a receptacle for food and drink.' ( A fruit on a tree whose shell 

 is used for carrying water.' ' The dry fruit of some sort of tropical 

 tree.' ' It is hard and round, and some are the size of an apple and 

 rattle when you shake them.' ' A species of dried melon.' i An old 

 style wooden drinking vessel.' ' A hollow piece of cane.' ' A fruit 

 characterized by the fibrous outer shell similar to the cocoanut.' Few 

 of the writers of the above had a sufficiently correct idea of the article 

 to be able to identify it if it were shown them. They react satis- 

 factorily (to themselves) to the book situation though they would be 

 laughed at by the gardener and botanist. It is an interesting fact 

 that in a prominent college for women the word e decemvirate,' which 

 only readers of Eoman history would be likely to encounter, was cor- 

 rectly defined by most of the young ladies, while some could give no 

 definition for gourd, and many others gave such definitions as have been 

 quoted. This is a striking illustration of the difference between the 

 word environment of scholastic halls and that of the industries and the 

 literature of to-day. 



The following definitions of gourd are inexplicable until one 

 realizes that one word form has been mistaken for another. ' To spur 



