Wiktionary

“ Nay, further, truth itself contains a suffix, and is a derivative from the adjective true, as appears from its analogy with wealth from well, width from wide, strength from strong, and many other like words; and even true, did we trace its history to the beginning, we should find ending in a formative element, and deriving its origin from a verbal root meaning 'to be firm, strong, reliable.' The Latin part of our language, which includes most of our many-syllabled words, offers abundant instances of a similar complicated structure. ”

“ As we rise, too, in the scale of linguistic use, from that which is straightforward and unreflective to that which is elaborate, pregnant, artistic, etymological considerations in many cases rise in value, and constitute an important element in that suggestiveness which invests every word, giving it its delicacy of application, making it full of significance and dignity where another term, coarsely synonymous with it, would be tame and ineffective. A pregnant implication of etymologic meaning often adds strikingly to the force and impressiveness of an expression. ”

“ It is hardly necessary to make any farther reference to an objection, already once alluded to, which some minds may be tempted to raise against our whole construction of the course of linguistic history out of the evidences of composition, phonetic corruption, transfer of meaning, and the other processes of linguistic growth, which we find in all the material of human speech. ”

“ And most of our words are in the condition of candid, candidate, and understand; either, as in the case of the two last, the etymology is trivial or obscure, or, as in the case of the first, it is within reach only of the learned, and cannot aid the general speaker and hearer. On the whole, a word, both in its direct significance and in its suggestiveness, is just what our usage makes it. Hardly any two vocables that we employ are more instinct with deep meaning, more untranslatable into other tongues, than home and comfort ”

“ At the time and under the circumstances, then, when each term acquired its given significance, the possession of certain other resources of expression, combined with certain usages of speech and habits of thought, and influenced by external circumstances, caused men's choice to fall upon it rather than upon any other combination of sounds. Thus every word has its etymology or derivation, and to trace out its etymology is to follow up and exhibit its transfers of meaning and changes of form, as far back and as completely as the nature of the case allows. ”

“ The introduction of culture and knowledge, of art and science, may bring in a vocabulary of expressions for the knowledge communicated, the conceptions taught or prompted; but it cannot touch the most intimate fund of speech, the words significant of those ideas without whose designation no spoken tongue would be worthy of the name. ”

“ Language an institution, of historical growth; its study a moral science. Analogies of linguistic sciences with the physical sciences. Its methods historical. Etymology its foundation. Analysis of compound words. Genesis of affixes. Nature of all words as produced by actual composition. In the preceding lecture, after a very brief survey of the history and objects of linguistic science, we entered upon an inquiry into the means by which we had become possessed of our mother-tongue, an inquiry intended to bring out to our view the mode of transmission and preservation of language in general. ”

“ With conjugation and declension, the subject of grammatical structure is, in fact, as good as exhausted: everything in language is originally either verb or noun. To the other parts of speech, then, which have been developed out of these, we shall need to give but a brief consideration.
Adverbs, the most ancient and necessary class of indeclinable words, or particles, are by origin, in the earliest stage of language as in the latest, forms of declension, cases of substantives, or adjectives, or pronouns. ”

“ The science of language has large and close analogies in geological science, with its ceaseless evolution, its fossils, and its numberless submerged layers and hidden strata, the infinite go-before of the present. Or, perhaps Language is more like some vast living body, or perennial body of bodies. And slang not only brings the first feeders of it, but is afterward the start of fancy, imagination and humor, breathing into its nostrils the breath of life. ”

“ Philology, or the science of language, is the most seductive; and that branch of it known as Etymology, which traces the derivation and combination of the words of a language from its primary roots, possesses an interest—one might almost say a fascination—for all, when once the attention has been arrested by it. ”

“ Translation with a dictionary, which substitutes the fingers for the intelligence, and, scorning reason, proceeds from the sign to the idea, rests on the false principle of the identity of signification in the corresponding words of two languages. ”

“ The word, no doubt, offends some, and seems to others derogatory to the dignity of its subject; but I believe that the more the real nature and office of language are understood, and the more established and consistent the linguistic views of the educated become, the more its truth will be acknowledged. ”

“ Those learned Languages which have now ceased to be vulgar, and remain onely in Books, by which the purity of them is regulated, may, whilst those Books are extant and studied, continue the same without change. But all Languages that are vulgar, as those learned ones formerly were, are upon the fore-mentioned occasions, subject to so many alterations, that in tract of time they will appear to be quite another thing then what they were at first. ”

“ But we have seen that the final perfection of the noblest languages has been the result of a slow and gradual development, under the impulse of tendencies, and through the instrumentality of processes, which are even yet active in every living tongue; that all this wealth has grown by long accumulation out of an original poverty; and that the actual germs of language were a scanty list of formless roots, representing a few of the most obvious sensible acts and phenomena appearing in ourselves, our fellow-creatures, and the nature by which we are surrounded. ”

“ If language is a direct emanation of the mind, or an organic product, a sort of excretion, of the bodily organs, so that a word, in any one’s mouth, is an entity having a natural and necessary significance, and can even involve powers which may lie indefinitely dormant and finally come forth into action, then one set of opinions on all theoretic points in linguistics will follow; but another and a very different one, if words are only signs for ideas, instruments with which the mind works, and every language therefore an institution, of historic growth. ”

“ Thus, by a change of form in the words employed, we have from house a plural houses; and in like manner men from man. We give also a particular form to a noun in order to mark its value as indicating the possessor of anything: thus man’s, men’s, from man and men; and, in most pronouns, we make a change of form to signify the objective relation as distinguished from that of subject: thus, me, us, him, her, them, whom, as compared with I, we, he, she, they, who. ”

“ In every language grammatical correctness is obligatory. Here we see a distinction between mere conversation, which is loose, fragmentary and often, even in the lips of highly educated persons, slightly ungrammatical; and prose, which is bound to weed away whatever is slovenly and incorrect, and to watch very closely lest merely colloquial expressions, which cannot be defended, should slip into careful speech. ”

“ We shall never gain a clear apprehension of the phenomena of linguistic history, either in their individuality or in their totality, if we mistake the nature of the forces which are active in producing them. Language is, in fact, an institution—the word may seem an awkward one, but we can find none better or more truly descriptive—the work of those whose wants it subserves ”

“ No fact in regard to language is more palpable, and at the same time more fundamental, than its diversity. The varieties of human sentence-combination—that is to say, what parts of speech—if any, are distinguished from one another ”

“ The material and subject of linguistic science is language, in its entirety; all the accessible forms of human speech, in their infinite variety, whether still living in the minds and mouths of men, or preserved only in written documents, or carved on the scantier but more imperishable records of brass and stone. It has a field and scope limited to no age, and to no portion of mankind. ”

“ We shall strive, above all things, after clearness, and shall proceed always from that which is well-known or obvious to that which is more recondite and obscure, establishing principles by induction from facts which lie within the cognizance of every well-educated person. For this reason, our examples, whether typical or illustrative, will be especially sought among the phenomena of our own familiar idiom; since every living and growing language has that within it which exemplifies the essential facts and principles belonging to all human speech. ”

“ Words are the single witnesses from whom etymology draws out the testimony which they have to give respecting themselves, the tongue to which they belong, and all human speech.
How the study of words is made the means of bringing to light the processes of linguistic growth, and what those processes are, it will, accordingly, be our next duty to examine and set forth by suitable examples. Having only illustration in view, we will avoid all cases of a difficult or doubtful character, noticing only words whose history is well known ”

“ Language would be half spoiled for our use by the necessity of bearing in mind why and how its constituents have the value we give them. The internal development of a vocabulary, too, would be greatly checked and hampered by a too intrusive etymological consciousness. All significant transfer, growth of new meanings, form-making, is directly dependent upon our readiness to forget the derivation of our terms, to cut loose from historical connections, and to make the tie of conventional usage the sole one between the thing signified and its spoken sign. ”

“ To study the moral and intellectual vocabulary of any tongue is of high interest, and full of instruction as to the laws and phenomena of association which have led to its development out of the earlier signs for physical and sensible things: we are constantly brought to the recognition both of the unity of human nature, as shown by the general resemblances which such study brings to light, and of the diversity of human character and circumstance, as exhibited in the etymological variety of corresponding appellations. ”

“ If we know what a man means, and if his usage is in accordance with that of a large number of intelligent and educated people, it cannot justly be called incorrect. For language rests, at bottom, on convention or agreement, and what a large body of reputable people recognize as a proper word or a proper meaning [Pg 100] of a word cannot be denied its right to a place in the English vocabulary. ”

“ The plain man or gentlewoman may write a letter in his or her natural language, and then by turning up the simple words in the dictionary alter them into their learned equivalents. Thus ‘abound’ may be altered into exuperate, ‘too great plenty’ into uberty, ‘he and I are of one age’ into we are coetaneous, ‘youthful babbling’ into juvenile inaniloquence—a useful expression to hurl at an opponent in the Oxford Union. ”

“ We shall also avoid, as far as is practicable, the use of figurative, metaphysical, or technical phraseology, endeavouring to talk the language of plain and homely fact. Not a little of the mystery and obscurity which, in the minds of many, invest the whole subject of language, is due to the common employment respecting it of terms founded on analogies instead of facts, and calling up the things they represent surrounded and dimmed by a halo of fancy, instead of presenting sharply cut outlines and distinct lineaments. ”

“ A language in the condition in which ours is at present, when thousands of eyes are jealously watching its integrity, and a thousand pens are ready to be drawn, and dyed deep in ink, to challenge and oppose the introduction into it of any corrupt form, of any new and uncalled-for element, can, of course, undergo only the slowest and the least essential alteration. ”

“ We shall next pass in review the other great families into which the known forms of human speech are divided, noticing their most striking characteristics. Then will be taken up certain general questions, of prime interest and importance, suggested by such a review—as the relative value and authority of linguistic and of physical evidence of race, and the bearing of language upon the ultimate question of the unity or variety of the human species. Finally, we shall consider the origin of language, its relation to thought, and its value as an element in human progress. ”

“ That no one, upon the same grounds, can ever bear witness in favour of such descent is, as it appears to me, equally demonstrable, although not by so simple and direct an argument, and although the opinions of eminent authorities are at variance upon the point, and may fairly continue to be so for some time to come, until more of the fundamental facts and principles in linguistic science shall have been firmly established and universally accepted than is the case at present. ”