134 STUDIES, SCIENTIFIC AND SOCIAL chap. 



examples of how words come to be used in ways quite 

 remote from their original meanings, and how several 

 quite distinct words grow out of a common root — as when 

 canvon, a great gun, and canon, meaning either a dignitary 

 of the church or a body of ecclesiastical or other laws, are 

 alike derived from canna, a cane or reed, used either as a 

 tube, or as a ruler, while from canistmm, a reed basket, we 

 get canister, now used chiefly for metal cases of a particu- 

 lar form. 



The late Mr. Hyde Clarke has shown how very widely 

 the primitive terms for mouth, tooth, tongue, &c., are 

 applied to other things of like form or motions, or having 

 a supposed or real analogy to them ; thus, languages can 

 be found in which the words for head, face, eye, ear, sun, 

 moon, egg, ring, blood, and mother, are derived from mouth, 

 for reasons which we can, in most cases, perceive or guess 

 at. It follows that, whenever people use any form of 

 written symbol for words or things, the growth of language 

 goes on more rapidly, because symbols, which were at first 

 actual representations of the object, for convenience 

 become conventionalised, and then other objects which 

 resemble the modified symbol are given either the same 

 or an allied name. With us, door is named after the 

 opening used for entering a house, and is allied to through ; 

 but, according to Mr. Hyde Clarke, in some languages the 

 door-way or opening is derived from mouth — as we our- 

 selves say the mouth of a pit or cavern — while the door 

 itself is formed from a word meaning tooth} The words 

 hill and mountain have no light thrown upon their real 

 origin by a reference of the former to the Latin collis, and 

 the latter to mons and inontamts ; but, on the principles 

 here set forth, both of them, as well as the German herg, 

 owe their characteristic form of open-mouthed aspirated 

 words to the natural panting ejaculations of those who 

 ascend them. Yet in many languages they have been 

 named from their form -resemblances, as in the well-known 

 terms dent, siero^a, peak /pap, hen, &c. 



^ See letter in Nature, vol. xxvi., p. 419, and vol. xxiv., j). 380. 



