498 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



term "to ship." The verb came into use at a time when goods were 

 generally transported by water; then it was extended to include con- 

 veyance by land likewise. Now it is employed to designate the activi- 

 ties of any common carrier whether by land or water. The original 

 signification has been so completely lost that very few persons who use 

 the word think of it, or notice the incongruity between the term and its 

 primitive meaning. 



It is almost certain that a good many words — and there is no way 

 of discovering how large the number — are the spontaneous utterances 

 of persons who can give no reason why one form was chosen rather than 

 some other. To this class belong boom, skedaddle, hoodlum, hooligan, 

 spondulicks and a host more. I recall that several words were current 

 in our neighborhood in Pennsylvania to designate certain persons and 

 acts and were usually referred to their authors. As they never got into 

 print they may have since died out. It is easy to see how, in a primi- 

 tive state of society, a word uttered by some chief would be taken up by 

 his entourage and eventually become a part of the language of the 

 clan; for although language is developed by society, it does not owe its 

 origin to man's gregarious instinct. Every one knows that children 

 often invent names for things that have no relation to or connection 

 with words used by older persons. The theory that the hypothetical 

 pithecanthropus was the progenitor of man is no longer held by any 

 competent anthropologist. If we place the fossil remains discovered by 

 Dubois in the island of Java in this class the argument is not strength- 

 ened, the chief objection being its comparatively late date. Accord- 

 ing to the recent and very careful examinations of Klaatsch and 

 Hauser of all known fossil remains of man there were two primitive 

 types which they designate as the Aurignac and the Neanderthal races. 

 Of these the former stood considerably higher than the latter and un- 

 questionably possessed the faculty of speech. With regard to the latter 

 the evidence is not quite so convincing, but is sufficient to produce a 

 high degree of probability, especially in view of the fact that this race, 

 anatomically considered, bore a striking resemblance to the Australian 

 aborigines; and these display a large measure of linguistic capacity. 



Although words are often used eventually in a widely different 

 sense from that which they originally bore, the progress from one 

 meaning to another is not always gradual. The first man who used 

 ship to designate transportation by land doubtless did so with a clear 

 knowledge of its original signification; this was only forgotten in the 

 course of time. The man, probably a sailor, who invented the article 

 now considered indispensable by seamstresses named it a " thumb-bell " 

 for evident reasons. The Germans call it a Fingerhood. Yet it is safe 

 to say that very few English or Germans now think of the original 

 meaning of the word, though it was clearly evident when it first came 



