Il6 BIOLOGICAL LECTURES. 



Such hesitation constitutes the only valid justification of pecil- 

 onymy. But the same end might be gained by a simple decla- 

 ration, without the risk of confusing or misleading the reader. 



Magnilogy. The employment of lengthy or ponderous 

 terms when briefer would suffice. This is simply one form of 

 what may be called anatomic esotery. Now that the choice is 

 offered, the anatomist who deliberately says aponeurosis for 

 fascia, anfractuosity for fissure, and convolution for gyre, there- 

 by arrays himself with the village orator, in whose turgid 

 discourse a fire is always a conflagration. 



Perissology. The following example of needless amplifica- 

 tion occurs in a special article by a distinguished neurologist in 

 a leading metropolitan medical journal : " The anterior column 

 of gray matter extends throughout the spinal cord, and the 

 upper enlarged intracranial end of the spinal cord, which is 

 known as the oblong cord or medulla (medulla oblongata)." As 

 shown in W. & G. ('89), 529, 76, the information contained in 

 these thirty-two words might have been given in fifteen. 



Equivalents, Synonyms, and Isonyms. Equivalents are 

 terms meaning the same thing, e.g., pons, pons Varolii, pont, 

 and Briicke. Strictly speaking, pons Varolii is a synonym, or 

 equivalent in the same language, while pont and Briicke are 

 isonyms or equivalents in other languages. But for simplicity 

 all may be here regarded as synonyms, just as, in biology, syn- 

 onymy embraces all the appellations of organisms, whatever 

 their nationality. Hence one may recognize two groups of 

 synonyms, viz., paronyms and heteronyms. 



Paronyms and Heteronyms. Excluding pons Varolii (the 

 dionymic, eponymic synonym of pons}, the other equivalents 

 are the French pont, the Italian ponte, the Spanish ptiente, the 

 German Briicke, and the English bridge. Of these the first 

 three are obviously related to the Latin pons, while the last two 

 have no such relationship. The former have been called by 

 me paronyms, 1 the latter, heteronyms. A familiar illustration 

 is the Latin canalis, of which canal is the English paronym, 

 while heteronyms are tube, passage, trough, and water-course. 



1 Paronymy or paronymization includes what has been called word-adoption, 

 word-appropriation, word-assumption, word-borrowing, etc. 



