Butler — Household Words: Their Etymology. 373 



the attendant banquet of good clieer, which of old consisted in 

 ■drinks more than in meats. Wedlock shows the pair inter- 

 locked by a wed which may mean a ring or any pledge or visible 

 sign of mutual vows. Espousals signify solemnizing the con- 

 jugal union (which is literally a yoking together) by joining 

 in pouring out a libation, or drink offering. Matrimonial terms 

 may lose something of glamour in the light of etymology. 

 Trousseau becomes nothing but a bundle or budget, and hride 

 is a breweress or broth-maker. Lady as we have seen is a 

 kneader of bread, but consort is a sharer altogether in another's 

 lot, a partnership which knows no limitations. Mate and match 

 were of one origin, a word meaning fit for something else so as 

 to complete it, but were afterwards differentiated so that we 

 hear of those who are mated but not matched, and matched but 

 not mated. 



Know thyself is a short maxim yet has proved too long for 

 m.an to learn. J^ames for som^e of the members of our bodies 

 ive are slow to analyze. Many elbow their way through the 

 world yet cannot tell why their ovvTi elbows are so named. They 

 forget that the syllable el- (or ell-) was once our name for arm, 

 and then for a measure of an arm's length, a sense that is plain 

 still in the proverb. Give an inch and he will take an ell. In the 

 light of this obsolete meaning elhoiv is clearly arm-bow, the 

 bend of the arm. Finger is allied to fang and so means a 

 grasper, and hand has a similar sense because from the same 

 root as hound, the game-grasper, and with apprehend. Nail 

 being from the same root with nag teaches that nagging is a 

 figurative scratching with the ends of the fingers. Wrist is 

 what wrests or turns the hand, and is plainer when we find that 

 foot-wrist was an old name for ankle. Vertebrae are also 

 turners, the bones on Avhioh the body turns round horizontally, 

 while haunches — literally bends, analogous to hinges — are what 

 it turns upon up and down. Instep, if still spelled as once it 

 was, instoop, w^ould describe itself as the foot's stoop or bend in- 

 ward to the ankle. Muscle, which means mouse, takes its name 

 from its shape, and the ends which stretch it are tendons which 

 is Latin for stretchers. Beginners in Latin are pleased to learn 

 that the uvula at the root of the tongue means a gTape-cluster, 

 that the clavicle which locks up the chest means key, that a 



