May 1, 1886.] 



♦ KNOWLEDGE ♦ 



219 



asparagus. The old Engli.sh word was sjwrage, prob;il)ly 

 from the Greek speira, a spire, owing to its long, narrow form. 

 About IGOO, the classical form asparagus was brought into 

 use, and within fifty years after tliat time the word had 

 been corrupted to spannjrii.'is and sparrowgrass, whicli form 

 prevailed so far that Walker, in 1791, remarked : " Sparnnu- 

 yrass is so general that cinparajtis has an air of stift'uess and 

 pedantry." 



Not only, however, may words, as I have shown, change 

 so much both in form and in meaning as to be unrecog- 

 nisable except to the trained eye or ear, but they may 

 also drop out of use altogether, or be retained only in 

 .special senses, as, for example, many are existent in juris- 

 prudence which were once words in general use. Thus, to 

 take a few examples at random : Forthrujht -was used by 

 Sidney to mean " in a straight direction ; " forthy (Saxon 

 forthi), meaning therefore, bj' Spen.ser ; to bemete with 

 Shakespeare meant to measure ; cest (Latin cesfus) was used 

 by Collins for a lady's girdle i mure (French murer) to 

 enclose in walls, wall up, is now only known in the form of 

 the verb to immure; the word pelt, skin of a beast (German 

 pelz, Spanish pelaJa, Latin pellis, u.sed also in the form ffll, 

 as irool-fell, itc), is known only to those engaged in the fur 

 or leather trades. Words fall into disuse through the loss 

 of tlie ideas they express : as, for example, numbers of 

 words in use in chivalry, which, if they survive at all, do so 

 only in the old-world science of heraldry ; words common in 

 the feudal state, now no longer required ; or those employed 

 in now-exploded theories of science. Words are also sup- 

 planted by others expressing the same ideas but of dif- 

 ferent origin. This latter cause of change in language is 

 mainly brought about by intercourse of dift'erent peoples. 

 Where nations, or even small communities, live shut out 

 from the rest of the world, their languages or dialects 

 remain unchanged proportionately to the degree of their 

 isolation. Among the French-Canadians words are now in 

 use which are quite obsolete in France ; and the same 

 phenomenon is observed in the English of New Euglanders, 

 foi-, writing about forty years ago, Mr. James Russell 

 Lowell remarked that the dialect of Massachusetts con- 

 tained many words " noted in English vocabularies as 

 archaic, the greater part of which were in common use 

 about the time of King Jame.s' translation of the Bible." 

 " Shakespeare," he said, " stands less in need of a glossary 

 to most New Englanders than to many a native of the old 

 country." Those cut off from immediate intercourse with 

 the Mother-counti-y are of necessity unacquainted witli the 

 changes which have taken place in the mother-tongue, 

 and although their own language will not have remained 

 stationary, its changes will have been peculiar to itself. 



Besides the loss of whole words, grammatical foi'ms and 

 distinctions tend to become obsolete. Thus Enflish has 

 lost the case-endings possessed by its ancestors, and the 

 same is true of the personal endings of verbs. A similar 

 tendency to do away with forms which are redundant or 

 not absolutely necessary for the expression of thought exists 

 in a more or less degree in all languages. The Semitic 

 noun originally possessed three cases — nominative, genitive, 

 and accusative, but these gradually died oif in some of its 

 branches, as in Hebrew,* and .symptoms of the similar decay 

 of case-endings are very apparent in modern Arabic, as com- 

 pared with the literary language. The reason for this decay 

 is obvious. Language is an instrument for the expression 

 of thought, and, in order to be perfectly adapted to its use, 

 it should express the thought in the clearest and briefest way 

 possible, and its parts should tend to uniformity of struc- 



* See "A Hebrew Grammar with E.\ercises," by Ma S. and 

 F. L. Ballin, page 22 (Kegan Paul, Trencli, & Co.). 



ture. Hence case-endings and other grammatical forms are 

 dropped, the context being usually sufficient to indicate the 

 relations of the various woi-ds in a sentence, or their place 

 is taken by particles, such as to, for, witlt, Idj, A-c, which 

 are applicable in all instances without further change. 

 Finnish has fifteen cases, and Hungarian more than twenty, 

 but this does not constitute them the better instruments 

 for expressing thought. The complications of case-endings, 

 such as are seen to the full in German, are not only un- 

 necessary but cumbrous to the niemoiy, and may, in fact, be 

 regarded as barbarous. There is little doubt that they will 

 eventually disappear, but probably not in our time. I liave 

 briefly referred to the losses of words and grammatical 

 forms, but, although it may seem paradoxical to say so, these 

 losses are in reality gains. They are a part of the natural 

 development of language, which tends to integration, unity, 

 and simplicity. 



The introduction of new words and forms into language 

 is always going on, and their origin is sometimes purely 

 accidental. A good example of the accidental origin of a 

 word is that of schooner. The first vessel of this sort was 

 built at Massachusetts, and, when launched, a bystander, 

 admiring her graceful movement, exclaimed, " Oh, how she 

 scoons." " A scooner let her be, then," said the builder, and 

 coined a new English word. 



The word furbelow, now commonly used to express a 

 fussy ai'rangement of ladies' drapery, is one which was 

 originally spontaneously coined out of relation to other 

 words. It is first found in De Caillferes, and, according to 

 Nodier, was invented by Marshal de Langlee, who, passing 

 a milliner's shop, determined to puzzle the assistant, and, 

 entering, asked for a fdbala. The fitness of the word was, 

 however, instantly acknowledged, and the girl brought him 

 the dress which was at that time called vohtiit, becavise of its 

 light, floating points. Other such words are od or odic 

 force, invented by Reichenbach, and sepol, invented by 

 Necker to express a division of the calyx of flowers. Pierre 

 Riviere, the murderer, invented the words ennepharer, to 

 express a certain form of torture to which when a boy he 

 used to subject frogs, and calibeiie for the instrument he 

 employed to kill birds. These words have not survived, 

 and their unfitness is very apparent. A curious word, which 

 seems to me unconnected with any other, is largely used in 

 my own family, both in the form of verb and noun. The 

 word is thoke, in the sense of to lie in bed late in the morn- 

 ing. (Jne of us will commonly say to the others, " I'm 

 going to thoke to-morrow morning," as an indication that 

 early breakfast is not required, or, " I had a good thoke this 

 morning," meaning " I got up late for a treat." The word is 

 a very useful one, as it embodies an idea which would other- 

 wise have to be expressed in a number of difierent words — • 

 the idea of staying in bed late for a treat. It was intro- 

 duced into the family about ten years ago, from a book 

 which I believe was called " The Winchester Boys," and in 

 which it is used in the same sense in which we employ it ; 

 but I am unable to say whether it oiiginated with the 

 author of that book. To indicate how dialectic variations 

 may arise, I may add that my brothers-in-law pronounce 

 the word tlwke, which they have picked up from their wives, 

 as soak, and maintain that this is correct, by a false deriva- 

 tion connecting it with the verb " to soak," meaning " to 

 immer.se." 



With regard to the origin of most new words, it may be 

 said that an idea is present in the mind which desires to 

 communicate it, and certain materials already in existence 

 are generally seized upon and combined to serve the purpose 

 of communication. The word ijas, connected with (jeist, 

 (jhont, and yeast, was invented by Van Helmont, the great 

 chemist, about 1600 a.d., to express a chemical di.scovery of 



