VARIATIONS IN MEANING OF TERMS. 



449 



lated by convention rather than by 

 custom and accident. But besides 

 these common properties, which if 

 they exist are certainly present when- 

 ever the name is employed, any other 

 circumstance 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 cir- 

 cumstances do not exist. They pre- 

 fer using some other name, or the 

 same name with some adjunct, rather 

 than employ an expression which will 

 call up an idea they do not want to 

 excite. The circumstance originally 

 casual thus becomes regularly a part 

 of the connotation of the word. 



It is this continual incorporation 

 of circumstances originally accidental 

 into the permanent signification of 

 words which is the cause that there 

 are so few exact synonyms. It is 

 this also which renders the dictionary 

 meaning of a word, by universal re- 

 mark, so imperfect an exponent of its 

 real meaning. The dictionary mean- 

 ing is marked out in a broad, blunt 

 way, and probably includes all that 

 was originally necessary for the cor- 

 rect 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 dic- 

 tionary would confound a thousand 

 nice distinctions and subtle shades 

 of meaning which dictionaries take 

 no account of ; as we notice in the 

 use of a language in conversation or 

 writing by a foreigner not thoroughly 

 master of it. The history of a word, 

 by showing the causes which deter- 

 mine its use, is in these cases a better 

 guide to its employment than any defi- 

 nition ; 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 gmtleman, for 



instance, to the correct employment 

 of which a dictionary would be no 

 guide, originally meant simply a man 

 born in a certain rank. From this 

 it came by degrees to connote all 

 such qualities or adventitious circum- 

 stances as were usually found to be- 

 long to persons of that rank. This 

 consideration at once explains why in 

 one of its vulgar acceptations it means 

 any one who lives without labour, in 

 another without manual labour, and 

 in its more elevated signification it 

 has in every age signified the con- 

 duct, character, habits, and outward 

 appearance, in whomsoever found, 

 which, according to the ideas of that 

 age, belonged or were expected to 

 belong to persons born and educated 

 in a high social position. 



It continually happens that of two 

 words, whose dictionary meanings are 

 either the same or very slightly 

 different, one will be the proper 

 word to use in one set of circum- 

 stances, another in another, without 

 its being possible to show how the 

 custom of so employing them origi- 

 nally grew up. The accident that 

 one of the words was used and not 

 the other on a particular occasion 

 or in a particular social circle, will 

 be sufiicient to produce so strong an 

 association between the word and 

 some speciality of circumstances, 

 that mankind abandon the use of 

 it in any other case, and the specia- 

 lity becomes part of its signification. 

 The tide of custom first drifts the 

 word on the shore of a particular 

 meaning, then retires and leaves it 

 there. 



An instance in point is the remark- 

 able change which, in the English 

 language at least, has taken place in 

 the signification of the word loyalty. 

 That word originaftg, meant in Eng- 

 lish, as it still mea^ in the language 

 from whence it came, fair, open deal- 

 ing, and fidelity to engagements ; in 

 that sense the quality it expressed 

 was part of the ideal chivalrous or 

 knightly character. By what pro- 

 cess, in England, the term became re* 



2 F 



