REQUISITES OF LANGUAGE. 473 



another ; it continually happens that .a word is used in two or more senses 

 derived from each other, but yet radically distinct. So long as a term is 

 vague, that is, so long as its connotation is not ascertained and permanent- 

 ly fixed, it is constantly liable to be applied by extension from one thing to 

 another, until it reaches things which have little, or even no, resemblance 

 to those which were first designated by it. 



" Suppose," says Dugald Stewart, in his Philosophical Essays^ " that 

 the letters A, B, C, D, E, denote a series of objects ; that A possesses some 

 one quality in common with B ; B a quality in common with C ; C a qual- 

 ity in common with D ; D a quality in common with E; while at the same 

 time, no quality can be found which belongs in common to any three ob- 

 jects in the series. Is it not conceivable, that the affinity between A and B 

 may produce a transference of the name of the first to the second; and 

 that, in consequence of the other affinities which connect the remaining ob- 

 jects together, the same name may pass in succession from B to C ; from 

 C to D ; and from D to E ? In this manner, a common appellation will 

 arise between A and E, although the two objects may, in their nature and 

 properties, be so widely distant from each other, that no stretch of im- 

 agination can conceive how the thoughts were led from the former to the 

 latter. The transitions, nevertheless, may have been all so easy and grad- 

 ual, that, were they successfully detected by the fortunate ingenuity of a 

 theorist, we should instantly recognize, not only the verisimilitude, but the 

 truth of the conjecture : in the same Avay as we admit, with the confidence 

 of intuitive conviction, the certainty of the well-known etymological process 

 which connects the Latin preposition e or ex with the English substantive 

 stranger, the moment that the intermediate links of the chain are submitted 

 to our examination. "f 



The applications which a word acquires by this gradual extension of it 

 from one set of objects to another, Stewart, adopting an expression from 

 Mr. Payne Knight, calls its transitive applications ; and after briefly illustra- 

 ting such of them as are the result of local or casual associations, he pro- 

 ceeds as follows :| 



" But although by far the greater part of the transitive or derivative ap- 

 plications of words depend on casual and unaccountable caprices of the 

 feelings or the fancy, there ai'c certain cases in which they open a very in- 



* P. 217, 4to edition. 



t "E, ex, extra, extraneus, etrangei*, stranger." 



Another etymological example sometimes cited is tlie derivation of the English uncle from 

 the Latin avus. It is scarcely possible for two words to bear fewer outward marks of rela- 

 tionship, yet there is but one step between them, avtis, avunculus, uncle. So pilgrim, from 

 ager : per agrum, peragrinus, peregrinus, pellegrino, pilgrim. 



Professor Bain gives some apt examples of these transitions of meaning. "The word 

 ' damp ' primarily signified moist, humid, wet. But the property is often accompanied with 

 the feeling of cold or chilliness, and hence the idea of cold is strongly suggested by the word. 

 This is not all. Proceeding upon the superadded meaning, we speak of damping a man's 

 ardor, a metaphor where the cooling is the only circumstance concerned ; we go on still fur- 

 ther to designate the iron slide that shuts off the draft of a stove, 'the damper,' the primaiy 

 meaning being now entirely dropped. 'Dry,' in like manner, through signifying the absence 

 of moisture, water, or liquidity, is applied to sulphuric acid containing wafer, although not 

 thereby ceasing to be a moist, wet, or liquid substance." So in the phrases, dry sherry, or 

 Champagne. 



"'Street,' originally a paved way, with or without houses, has been extended to roads 

 lined with houses, whether paved or unpaved. 'Impertinent' signified at first irrelevant, 

 alien to the purpose in hand : through which it has come to mean, meddling, intrusive, un- 

 mannerly, insolent. " (Logic, ii. , 173, 174. ) 



t Pp. 226, 227. 



