SECTION 22. OBSERVATION. 299 



meanings. Thus such terms as box, get, good, have, point, 

 virtue, and scores of other words, especially such in common 

 use, bewilderingly differ in meaning according to a particular 

 context, and scarcely any word, in earlier ages, can be said to 

 have possessed a single, definite, and fixed connotation. 1 Note 

 affect (pretend), affected (unnatural), affecting (impressive), 

 affection (love, illness); or, charging the enemy, charging the 

 prisoner, charging a fee, charging some one with a mission, 

 charging a gun, charging a boat. In our schools the two 

 emphatic adjectives "ripping" and "rotten", and the adverb 

 "awfully", replace literally hundreds of words among our 

 budding writers of prose and poetry, and, likewise, the poverty- 

 stricken vocabulary of the uneducated does not by any means 

 argue that their store of ideas is correspondingly scanty. 

 Assuming, then, a vocabulary altering in form in consonance 

 with (a), we are further bound to take for granted that the 

 meaning is also subject to mutation, since it, too, is fluid, 

 mainly because of the fluidity of experience. 



(d) If (a) and (c) contained the whole truth, the vocabulary 

 of all languages would remain identical in magnitude, however 

 its form and meaning varied. Examining, however, by the 

 simplest practicable case, the vocabulary of the uneducated, 

 we reach the conclusion that a few hundred primary words 

 suffice in an undeveloped social state, as appears to be ap- 

 proximately the case among the Australian bushmen. We 

 further note, on analysing, that the primitive vocabulary refers 

 to the most common objects and to the commonest wants, and 

 that the names of uncommon objects and abstract objects and 

 wants are developed out of the primitive vocabulary. Thus 

 certain sentiments may be adverted to, as blazing, flaming, fiery, 

 incandescent, glowing, boiling, white hot, red hot, hot, warm, 

 tepid, lukewarm, cool, chilly, cold, frigid, freezing, glaciated, 

 arctic, icy, or we may alter concrete nouns to concrete and 

 other verbs, as in to screen, to mask, to veil, to cloak, to 

 disguise a person or thought. For this reason we are not 

 surprised to find that poetry and metaphor remind us of a 

 stage prior to cold prose which is almost void of imagery but 

 self-explanatory. We also perceive that words become impercep- 



1 "'Turn in' is from this point of view one of the most astonishing words 

 in a language exceptionally active in extracting the last ounce of utility from 

 a single word. The verb 'to turn' has, in this its latest analysis, 47 main 

 senses and 65 sub-senses. Then there are 25 senses on special phrases, 

 such as 'turn the scale', 'turn colour', 'turn tail', and so on, and 16 com- 

 binations with adverbs, as 'turn in', 'turn off, 'turn about', and these too 

 have their subdivisions 'turn up', is used in 27 distinct ways so that, in 

 all, the sense divisions of this busy little vocable number 286. And even 

 then we have not begun on the substantive Turn, which fills 36 columns 

 and, we are not surprised to hear, accounted for no less than three months 

 of Sir James Murray's valuable time.' " (From a review of Sir James A. H.Mur- 

 ray's English Dictionary, in The Times Literary Supplement, July 29, 1915.) 



