VARIATIONS IN MEANING OF TERMS. 241 



cases in point.* Independently, however, of the generalization 

 of names through their ignorant misuse, there is a tendency 

 in the same direction, consistently with a perfect knowledge 

 of their meaning ; arising from the fact, that the number of 



* Such cases give a clear insight into the process of the degeneration of 

 languages in periods of history when literary culture was suspended ; and we 

 are now in danger of experiencing a similar evil through the superficial exten- 

 sion of the same culture. So many persons without anything deserving the 

 name of education have become writers by profession, that written language 

 may almost be said to be principally wielded by persons ignorant of the proper 

 use of the instrument, and who are spoiling it more and more for those who 

 understand it. Vulgarisms, which creep in nobody knows how, are daily 

 depriving the English language of valuable modes of expressing thought. To 

 take a present instance : the verb transpire formerly conveyed very expressively 

 its correct meaning, viz. to become known through unnoticed channels to exhale, 

 as it were, into publicity through invisible pores, like a vapour or gas disengag- 

 ing itself. But of late a practice has commenced of employing this word, for 

 the sake of finery, as a mere synonym of to happen : " the events which have 

 transpired in the Crimea," meaning the incidents of the war. This vile 

 specimen of bad English is already seen in the despatches of noblemen and 

 viceroys : and the time is apparently not far distant when nobody will under- 

 stand the word if used in its proper sense. It is a great error to think that 

 these corruptions of language do no harm. Those who are struggling with the 

 difficulty (and who know by experience how great it already is) of expressing 

 oneself clearly with precision, find their resources continually narrowed by 

 illiterate writers, who seize and twist from its purpose some form of speech 

 which once served to convey briefly and compactly an unambiguous meaning. 

 It would hardly be believed how often a writer is compelled to a circumlocution 

 by the single vulgarism, introduced during the last few years, of using the 

 word alone as an adverb, only not being fine enough for the rhetoric of ambi- 

 tious ignorance. A man will say " to which I am not alone bound by honour 

 but also by law," unaware that what he has unintentionally said is, that he is 

 not alone bound, some other person being bound with him. Formerly if any 

 one said, "I am not alone responsible for this," he was understood to mean, 

 (what alone his words mean in correct English,) that he is not the sole person 

 responsible ; but if he now used such an expression, the reader would be con- 

 fused between that and two other meanings ; that he is not only responsible but 

 something more ; or that he is responsible not only for this but for something 

 besides. The time is coming when Tennyson's CEnone could not say "I will 

 not die alone,'' lest she should be supposed to mean that she would not only die 

 but do something else. 



The blunder of writing predicate for predict has become so widely diffused 

 that it bids fair to render one of the most useful terms in the scientific vocabu- 

 lary of Logic unintelligible. The mathematical and logical term " to eliminate" 

 is undergoing a similar destruction. All who are acquainted either with the 

 proper use of the word or with its etymology, know that to eliminate a thing is 



VOL. II. 16 



