142 



KNOW^LEDGE ♦ 



[Maech 1, 1886. 



first caused the adaptation of an old -word may, to an 

 analytical mind, often seem very faint, altliongh suffi- 

 ciently apparent to the mind of the child or uncultivated 

 man. By metaphor we speak of the eye of a needle ; 

 ness at the end of geographical names is derived from 

 nez, nose, for a promontory of land. Donhey is the 

 diminutive of dun, a horse ; daisy is by a poetical figure 

 day's eye (Saxon, dagges-ege) ; and the South Sea 

 Islanders used to speak of man as long pig — a name said 

 to be based on similarity of flavour. In like manner as 

 among the deaf and dumb* single characteristics are 

 tiiken to express the -whole idea, as snow for winter, 

 petticoat for woman, in Latin a scale for afisli, sail for a 

 ship. Thus -we speak of hile, meaning anger in the 

 sense that Horace used the -word siomachius. The -word 

 savage, in the sense of fierce, is derived from savage, 

 meaning a wild man or animal, from the Latin silvalico, 

 -woodland, in the original sense of being reared in the 

 ■wood in opposition to domestic, brought up in the house, 

 or cultivated. A jimhetting, or merrymaking, is derived 

 from the Latin jwictis, a reed, through the ItvdiAnj unhila, 

 a cream cheese put up in reeds, and originally meant a 

 j-jarty invited to partake of the comestible ca,\\ed junket. 

 Our word spirit has the various significations : — Alcoholic 

 liquor, courage, ardour, soul, ghost, and most immaterial 

 things. French esprit is derived directly from the Latin 

 spirittis, literally a blowing of the wind or breath ; the 

 word ghost, connected with our yeast, is also dei'ived from 

 a word meaning breath or blowing. The -word mail, 

 French malle, a trunk, means a bos or bag for the con- 

 veyance of letters, a'so the coach or carriage in which 

 the bags are conveyed ; and we now talk of catching the 

 inail when we mean being in time for the steamer or 

 the train, or receiving the 'inail when our foreign letters 

 arrive. The word Irim, which we use for the hrim of a 

 hat, the 5«'wi of a glass, the hrim of a fountain, and when 

 we speak of tears as hrimming over from the eyes, is 

 derived from a Sanscrit root, bhram, meaning to whirl 

 about, used in the sense of the surge of the sea, and 

 thence by a natural transition of the borderland between 

 the sea and the drj"- ground, the part where the waves 

 whirl about the most, the edge of the water, thus reaching 

 the sense in which we employ it. 



The power of seeing likeness in diversity, which is 

 the cause of words being used metaphorically, is strongest 

 in uncaltivated minds, such as those of savages and 

 children. Thus, the little boy Clifford, whose early 

 stages of development have been chronicled by Mr. Lully, 

 at seventeen months began to have abstract ideas of form, 

 and to express them. Having learned the word ho for 

 iniliarubber ball, he applied it to oranges, and afterwards 

 to bubbles on a glass of beer. He saw likeness to the 

 exclusion of difference, and formed a word for it, just as 

 the Tasmanian calls everything round, " like the sun," by 

 naming it after the round object most familiar to him. 

 At twenty-one and a half months, Clifford called all 

 triangular objects "ship," because the feature which had 

 most attracted him about a ship was the triangular sail. 

 He was so apt at observing similarities that when eighteen 

 months old he saw his sister dipping a crust in her tea, 

 he exclaimed ha ! (boat) with much delight ; seeing a 

 dog panting after a run, he said, " dat bow-wow like 

 puff-puff;" and of a ship he saw sailing, he said, "dat 

 ship go marjory daw " (indicating the rocking movement 

 by a simile from the poem, "See-saw, marjory daw "). 

 As a still more striking exaiaple of the tendency to see 



* See "Thought and Language" XL, Knowledge, vol. vii., 

 p. 510. - 



similarity above difference, he called the needle in his 

 father's compass " bir " (bird), detecting a resemblance in 

 its fliittering action, which our more analytic minds 

 would overlook. 



It is to the same mental process here illustrated in the 

 case of this child that language is mainly developed in 

 the race. We talk of an axle-tree or of a family tree by 

 a metaphor growing out of the idea of branches repre- 

 sented by the spokes of the wheel and the members of 

 the family. Again, we talk of the root of the tongue, 

 the uprooting of a siiperstition, the root of a figure in 

 mathematics, the root of a word, by metaphor from the 

 original meaning of the root of a tree or plant. In the 

 first case, the point of similarity is the idea of fixedness, 

 the second case that of destruction, by removing the 

 growth from the place where it is nourished ; in the 

 others the idea is that of fundamental element. 



The succession in the sense-changes of words is like a 

 chain of many links. If we have only the first and last 

 links we do not see how to connect them ; but a careful 

 search and fitting together will frequently reveal the 

 connection. The series of changes is not necessarily a 

 conscious one. Seeking to express an idea as yet un- 

 named, a word is chosen which has been used for some 

 idea similar to it. This word is adopted, and in its new 

 sense becomes a -pttvi of language, and gradually the old 

 sense is forgotten and drops out of view. Then the word 

 may be reapplied in another sense, and its second meaning 

 also drop into oblivion, and so on. In this way a word 

 may eventually come to possess a meaning totally opposed 

 to its original sense. Thus, for instance, the German word 

 schlecld originally meant good, ein schlecJiter Mann, a good 

 fellow ; then plain, simple, foolish, 'mean, base, bad. The 

 French hon has a somewhat similar history, for, besides 

 good, it means simple and silly ; honJiOimne means simple 

 ieWov, vulgarly old buffer or old codger, and la hii 

 garder honne is to owe any one a grudge. 

 When we speak of a pio7i -we now mean a steel 

 pen, ignoring the origin of the Latin word penna, a 

 feather, so far as to ask for a quill pen if we require that 

 kiud. When speaking of the salary of an employe we 

 mean a sum of money, and never for a moment imagine 

 that the word is derived from the original custom of 

 paying the Roman soldiers for their service in salt. Our 

 words romance and romantic have also a curious history. 

 In the Middle Ages, poems for pojiular recitation by 

 the tiMubadours were composed in the vulgar language, 

 which, at that time, was the Romance dialect. These 

 poems were mostly of an imaginative or fabulous 

 character, and by the 1 6th century a fabulous tale was 

 already called a Soman, thus we have Le Eom.nn de la 

 Bose. From this signification to that of u'ork of fiction 

 was but a step, and we now call some events in real life 

 romantic, because they resemble those which generations 

 of novelists have led us to associate with the offspring of 

 their brains. 



An amusing example of the diversity of meanings 

 which one word, by analogy and metaphor, may be made 

 to cover is given by Whitney, who says, " Not only an 

 animal has a head, but also a pin, a cabbage. A bed has 

 one, where the head of its occupant usually lies — and it 

 has a foot for the same reason, besides the four feet it 

 stands upon by another figure, and the six feet it 

 measures by yet another. More remarkable still, a river 

 has a head : its highest point — namely, where it heads 

 among the highlands — and so it has arms ; or, by another 

 figure, branches ; or, by another, feeders ; or, by another, 

 tributaries ; and it has a right and a left side ; and it has 

 a led, in which, by an unfortunate mixture of metajjhor.^, 



