VARIATIONS IN MEANING OF TERMS. 237 



It is this continual incorporation of circumstances origi 

 nally accidental, into the permanent signification of words, 

 which is the cause that there are so few exact synonymes. It 

 is this also which renders the dictionary meaning of a word, 

 by universal remark so imperfect an exponent of its real 

 meaning. The dictionary meaning is marked out in a broad, 

 blunt way, and probably includes all that was originally neces 

 sary for the correct employment of the term ; but in process 

 of time so many collateral associations adhere to words, that 

 whoever should attempt to use them with no other guide than 

 the dictionary, would confound a thousand nice distinctions 

 and subtle shades of meaning which dictionaries take no 

 account of; as we notice in the use of a language in conver 

 sation or writing by a foreigner not thoroughly master of 

 it. The history of a word, by showing the causes which 

 determine its use, is in these cases a better guide to its 

 employment than any definition ; for definitions can only show 

 its meaning at the particular time, or at most the series of its 

 successive meanings, but its history may show the law by 

 which the succession was produced. The word gentleman, 

 for instance, to the correct employment of which a dictionary 

 would be no guide, originally meant simply a man born 

 in a certain rank. From this it came by degrees to connote 

 all such qualities or adventitious circumstances as were 

 usually found to belong to persons of that rank. This con 

 sideration at once explains why in one of its vulgar accepta 

 tions it means any one who lives without labour, in another 

 without manual labour, and in its more elevated signification 

 it has in every age signified the conduct, character, habits, 

 and outward appearance, in whomsoever found, which, 

 according to the ideas of that age, belonged or were expected 

 to belong to persons born and educated in a high social 

 position. 



It continually happens that of two words, whose dictionary 

 meanings are either the same or very slightly different, one 

 will be the proper word to use in one set of circumstances, 

 another in another, without its being possible to show how the 

 custom of so employing them originally grew up. The accident 



