THE EVOLUTION OF LANGUAGE 215 



How full all Languages are of these sound-words 

 is known to the philologist, though multitudes of 

 words in every Language have had their pedigree 

 effaced or obscured by time. " An Englishman 

 would hardly guess from the present pronunciation 

 and meaning of the word pipe what its origin 

 was ; yet when he compares it with the Low Latin 

 pipa, French pipe, pronounced more like our word 

 peep, to chirp, and meaning such a reed-pipe as 

 shepherds played on, he then sees how cleverly 

 the very sound of the musical pipe has been made 

 into a word for all kinds of tubes, such as tobacco- 

 pipes and water-pipes. Words like this travel like 

 Indians on the war-path, wiping out their foot- 

 marks as they go. For all we know multitudes 

 of our ordinary words may have thus been made 

 from real sounds, but have now lost beyond re- 

 covery the traces of their first expressiveness." ^ 

 In the Chinuk language of the West Coast of 

 America, to cite a few more of Tylor's instances, 

 a tavern is called a " heehee-house" that is a laughter 

 house, or an amusement house, the word for 



of modern onomatopoeia. These convicts, freed or escaped, 

 find their way over the Pacific group ; and the natives, seizing 

 at once upon their characteristic sound, know them as Oui-ouVs 

 — a name which has now become general for all Frenchmen in 

 the Southern Pacific. 



^Tylor A7ithropology , p. 127. 



