480 OrERATIONS SUBSIDIAEY TO INDUCTION. 



CHAPTER V. 



ON THE NATURAL HISTORY OF THE VARIATIONS IN THE MEANING OP 



TERMS. 



§ 1. It is not only in the mode which has now been pointed out, namely 

 by gi'adual inattention to a portion of the ideas conveyed, that words in 

 common use are liable to shift their connotation. The truth is, that the 

 connotation of such words is perpetually varying; as might be expected 

 from the manner in which words in common use acquire their connotation. 

 A technical term, invented for purposes of art or science, has, from the first, 

 the connotation given to it by its inventor ; but a name which is in every 

 one's mouth before any one thinks of defining it, derives its connotation 

 only from the circumstances which are habitually brought to mind when it 

 is pronounced. Among these circumstances, the properties common to the 

 things denoted by the name, have naturally a principal place ; and would 

 have the sole place, if language were regulated by convention rather than 

 by custom and accident. But besides these, common properties, which if 

 they exist are certainly present whenever the name is employed, any other 

 cii-cumstance may casually be found along with it, so frequently as to be- 

 come associated with it in the same manner, and as strongly, as the common 

 properties themselves. In proportion as this association forms itself, peo- 

 ple give up using the name in cases in which those casual circumstances do 

 not exist. They prefer using some other name, or the same name with 

 some adjunct, rather than employ an expression which will call up an idea 

 they do not want to excite. The circumstance originally casual, thus be- 

 comes regularly a part of the connotation of the word. 



It is this continual incorporation of circumstances originally accident- 

 al, into the permanent signification of words, which is the cause that there 

 are so few exact synonyms. 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 probaby includes all that was originally necessary for the correct 

 employment of the terra ; but in process of time so many collateral asso- 

 ciations adhere to words, that whoever should attempt to use them with 

 no other guide than the dictionary, would confound a thousand nice dis- 

 tinctions and subtle shades of meaning which dictionaries take no account 

 of; as we notice in the use of a language in conversation 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 dic- 

 tionary 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 ad- 

 ventitious circumstances as were usually found to belong to persons of that 

 rank. This consideration at once explains why in one of its vulgar accep- 

 tations it means any one who lives without labor, in another without man- 



