414 OPERATIONS SUBSIDIARY TO INDUCTION. 



CHAPTER V. 



ON .THE NATURAL HISTORY OF THE VARIATIONS IN THE MEANING OF TERMS. 



§ 1. It is not only in the mode which has now been pointed out, 

 namely, by gradual inattention to a portion of the ideas conveyed, that 

 words in common use are liable to shift their connotation. The truth 

 is, that the connotation of such words is perpetually varying ; as might 

 be expected from the manner in which words in common use acquire 

 their connotation. A technical term, invented for purposes of art or 

 science, has, from the first, the connotation given to it by its inventor; 

 but a name which is in every one's mouth before any one thinks of de- 

 fining it, derives its connotation only fi'om the circumstances which are 

 habitually brought to mind when it is pronounced. Among these cir- 

 cumstances, the properties common to the things denoted by the name, 

 have naturally a principal place ; and would have the sole place, if 

 language were regulated by convention rather than by custom and ac- 

 cident. But besides these common properties, which if they exist are 

 necessarily present whenever the name is applied, any other circum- 

 stance may casually be found along with it, so frequently as to become 

 associated with it in the same manner, and as strongly as the common 

 properties themselves. In proportion as this association forms itself, 

 people give up using the name in cases in which those casual circum- 

 stances do not exist. They prefer using some other name, or the same 

 name with some adjunct, rather than employ an expression which will 

 necessarily call up an idea they do not want to excite. The circum- 

 stance originally casual, thus becomes regularly ji part of the connota- 

 tion of the word. . 



It is this continual incorporation of circumstances originally acci- 

 dental, into the permanent signification of words, which is the cause 

 that tliere are so few exact synonyms. It is this also which renders 

 the dictionary meaning of a word, by universal remark so imperfect an 

 exponent of its real meaning. The dictionary meaning is marked out 

 in a broad, blunt way, and probably includes all that was originally 

 necessary for the coiTect employment of the term ; but in process of 

 time so many collateral associations adhere to words, that whoever 

 should attempt to use them with no other guide than the dictionary 

 would confound a thousand nice distinctions and subtle shades of mean- 

 ing which dictionaries take no account of; as we notice in the use of 

 a language -in conversation or wr'iting by a foreigner not thoroughly 

 master of it. The history of a word, by showing the causes which de- 

 tennined its use, is in these cases a better guide to its employment 

 than any definition ; for definitions can only show its meaning at the 

 particular time, or at most the series of its successive meanings, but its 

 history may show the law by which the succession was produced. 

 The word gentleman, for instance, to the correct employment of which 

 a dictionary would be no guide, originally meant simply a man of 

 family. From this it came by degrees to connote all such qualities or ad- 

 ventitious circumstances as were usually found to belong to persons of 

 family. This consideration at once explains why in one of its vulgar 

 acceptations it means any one who lives without labor, in another with- 



