8 PROF. BLACKIE ON THE PRINCIPLE OF OXOMATOPCEIA IN LANGUAGE. 



action, and that the firmness which I exhibit in the muscles of my legs is not to 

 be accompanied with any looseness in the action of my jaws. And that this is 

 not a mere fancy will be obvious to any one who considers the wide application 

 which this combination of letters enjoys in words expressive of strength and deci- 

 sion in all languages. Thus in English, stop, strength, strike, stride, sturdy, start ; 

 in Greek, art>ayyu, tfrgspw, tfrgjjMis, argvpvos, gTiiZu, most of which have their Latin repre- 

 sentatives, as stringo, strenuus, stipo. So in German, starr, streng, stossig ; and 

 many others. There remains now, to complete the pictorial process by which 

 language is formed, the third fact mentioned above — according to which all ex- 

 ternal expressions necessarily affect in a certain way the whole nervous system 

 and mental economy, and through the motion in the vital spirits thereby produced, 

 modify in a corresponding way the articulation of human speech. Here we 

 have a different principle altogether, as it would appear at first sight, from mere 

 ovopurovroiia ; for to imitate an internal sound, and to express an internal feeling, 

 seem not only different, but quite contrary actions. Nevertheless, they are in 

 their effects, as in their origin, substantially one ; and Professor Muller has 

 accordingly put what he calls the Poon ! pooh ! theory as much under his ban as 

 the Bow-wow ! For the fact of the matter is, that an interjection, such as ah ! or 

 oifiu, or eheu, and all such vocal expressions of pleasure or pain, must, by the laws 

 of vitality, exhibit a certain correspondence with the sensations of which they are 

 the expression. Thus any oppressive, heavy feeling in the chest will naturally 

 cause a slow, protracted, dull flow of breath to proceed from the throat. The 

 vowels a and «, the diphthongs aiandoi, are exactly such a flow of breath. Hence 

 the interjections u, «/, 01, amplified into the verbs w^w, *«££«, h^Zp. 



There is here, therefore, a sort of natural drama enacted — a correspondence of 

 the within and without — which springs fundamentally out of the same root as the 

 ovofiaroKoila proper. When Aristotle called all poetry mimetic, he probably meant 

 something of this kind ; for while dramatic poetry only is strictly imitative of 

 outward objects, lyric poetry is dramatically expressive of inward feelings ; and 

 to this the Bow-wow and the Pooh ! pooh ! departments of early word-making 

 plainly correspond. 



If we now inquire what the objections are that are brought against these facts, 

 indicative of the operation of the pictorial principle in the world of vocal utterance, 

 we find that they require no very laboured refutation, but resolve themselves into a 

 few misunderstandings and prejudices, which a single touch can brush aside. In 

 the first place, if it ever was asserted by any writer that all the presently existing 

 roots in any language are onomatopcetic, and that all current words are to be 

 explained on this principle alone, with such assertion I have nothing to do. I 

 only maintain that the original stock of which language was made up consisted 

 of such roots, and that a great proportion of them, after the changes of thousands 

 of years, bear their origin distinctly on their face. I do not say, however, that 



