VARIATIONS IN MEANING OF TERMS. 481 



ual labor, 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 expect- 

 ed 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 that one of the words was used and not the other on a par- 

 ticular occasion or in a particular social circle, will be sufficient to produce 

 so strong an association between the word and some specialty of circum- 

 stances, that mankind abandon the use of it in any other case, and the 

 specialty becomes part of its signification. The tide of custom first drifts 

 the word on the shore of a particular meaning, then retires and leaves it 

 there. . 



An instance in point is the remarkable change which, in the English lan- 

 guage at least, has taken place in the signification of the word loyalty. 

 That word originally meant in English, as it still means in the language 

 from whence it came, fair, open dealing, and fidelity to engagements ; in 

 that sense the quality it expressed was part of the ideal chivalrous or 

 knightly character. By what process, in England, the term became re- 

 stricted to the single case of fidelity to the throne, I am not sufiiciently 

 versed in the history of courtly language to be able to pronounce. The 

 interval between a loyal chevalier and a loyal subject is certainly great. 

 I can only suppose that the word was, at some period, the favorite term at 

 court to express fidelity to the oath of allegiance ; until at length those who 

 wished to speak of any other, and as it was probably deemed, inferior sort 

 of fidelity, either did not venture to use so dignified a terra, or found it 

 convenient to employ some other in order to avoid being misunderstood. 



§ 2. Cases are not unfrequent in which a circumstance, at first casually 

 incorporated into the connotation of a word which originally had no refer- 

 ence to it, in time wholly supersedes the original meaning, and becomes 

 not merely a part of the connotation, but the whole of it. This is exem- 

 plified in the word pagan, /fai^a/iws/ which originally, as its etymology im- 

 ports, was equivalent to villager; the inhabitant of a pagus, or village. 

 At a particular era in the extension of Christianity over the Roman em- 

 pire, the adherents of the old i-eligion, and the villagers or country people, 

 were nearly the same body of individuals, the inhabitants of the towns hav- 

 ing been earliest converted ; as in our own day, and at all times, the great- 

 er activity of social intercourse renders them the earliest recipients of new 

 opinions and modes, while old habits and prejudices linger longest among 

 the country people; not to mention that the towns were more immediate- 

 ly under the direct influence of the Government, which at that time had 

 embraced Christianity. P^rom this casual coincidence, the word paganus 

 carried with it, and began more and more steadily to suggest, the idea of 

 a worshiper of the ancient divinities ; until at length it suggested that 

 idea so forcibly that people who did not desire to suggest the idea avoided 

 using the word. But when paganus had come to connote heathenism, the 

 very unimportant circumstance, with reference to that fact, of the place of 

 residence, was soon disregai'ded in the employment of the word. As there 

 was seldom any occasion for making separate assertions respecting hea- 

 thens who lived in the country, there was no need for a separate word to 



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