170 THE EVOLUTION OF LANGUAGE. 



hold " of some " sight." Even Max Midler who op- 

 poses the onomatopoetic theory with regard to the 

 origin of most words, agrees that the sounds of the 

 occupation of men, and especially of men working 

 together, and making special sounds at their task — 

 such as builders, soldiers, and sailors — are widely rep- 

 resented in modern speech. 



Though mimicry, sometimes exact, but probably 

 more often a mere echo or suggestion of the sound to 

 be recalled, is responsible for some of the material of 

 Language, multitudes of words appear to have no such 

 origin. There are infinitely more words than sounds 

 in the world ; and even things which have very dis- 

 tinct sounds have been named without any regard to 

 them. The inventors of the word watch, for instance, 

 did not call it tick- tick but watch, the idea being taken 

 from the watchman who walked about at night and 

 kept the time ; and when the steam-engine appeared, 

 instead of taking the obvious sound-name puff-puff, it 

 was called engine (Lat. ingenium), to signify that it 

 was a work of genius. These modern words, however, 

 are the coinages of an intellectual age, and it was to 

 be expected that the inventors should look deeper 

 below the surface. Plow those words which have no 

 apparent association with sound were formed in early 

 times remains a mystery. With some the original 

 sound-association has probably been lost ; in the case 

 of others, the association may hav^e been so indirect as 

 to be now untraceable. The sounds available in sav- 

 age life for word-making could never have been so 

 numerous as the things requiring names, and as civili- 

 zation advanced the old words would be used in new 

 connections, while wholly new terms must have been 



