VARIATIONS IN MEANING OF TERMS. 267 



zation, by which words are perpetually losing portions 

 of their connotation and becoming of less meaning 

 and more general acceptation ; the other of Specializa- 

 tion, by which other, or even these same words, are 

 continually taking on fresh connotation; acquiring 

 additional meaning, by being restricted in their em- 

 ployment to a part only of the occasions on which they 

 might properly be used before. This double move- 

 ment is of sufficient importance in the natural history 

 of language (to which natural history, the artificial 

 modifications ought always to have some degree of 

 reference), to justify our dwelling for a little longer on 

 the nature of the two-fold phenomenon, and the causes 

 to which it owes its existence. 



3. To begin with the movement of generaliza- 

 tion. It is unnecessary to dwell upon the changes in 

 the meaning of names which take place merely from 

 their being used ignorantly, by persons who, not 

 having properly mastered the received connotation 

 of a word, apply it in a looser and wider sense 

 than belongs to it. This, however, is a real source of 

 alterations in the language; for when a word, from 

 being often employed in cases where one of the quali- 

 ties which it connotes does not exist, ceases to sug- 

 gest that quality with certainty, then even those 

 who are under no mistake as to the proper meaning 

 of the word, prefer expressing that meaning in some 

 other way, and leave the original word to its fate. 

 The word 'Squire, as standing for an owner of a landed 

 estate; Parson, as denoting not the rector of the 

 parish but clergymen in general; Artist, to denote 

 only a painter or sculptor ; are cases in point. Inde- 

 pendently, however, of the generalization of names 

 through their ignorant misuse, there is a tendency in 



