Derision

“ Words assume a different meaning as they are extensively used, or they become too general in their use and newer terms are invented. Many of the names by which types are designated were at first terms of derision, but terms seem to lose their stigma by continued use. ”

“ Derivation, like etymology, is a word used in a wide and in a limited sense. In the wide sense of the term every word, except it be in the simple form of a root, is a derived word. In this sense the cases, numbers, and genders of nouns, the persons, moods, and tenses of verbs, the ordinal numbers, the diminutives, and even the compound words, are alike matters of derivation. In the wide sense of the term the word fathers, from father, is equally in a state of derivation with the word strength, from strong. ”

“ In the investigation both of the orthography and signification of words, their ETYMOLOGY was necessarily to be considered, and they were, therefore, to be divided into primitives and derivatives. A primitive word is that which can be traced no further to any English root; thus circumspect, circumvent, circumstance, delude, concave, and complicate, though compounds in the Latin, are to us primitives. Derivatives are all those that can be referred to any word in English of greater simplicity. ”

“ You may find examples everywhere, even as the lexicons now are. Strike at the first radical form that occurs, as the primitive ‘he is gone,’ and observe the easy gradation of its derivatives. A series of expressions signifying loss, disappearance, and death, vain purposes, and fruitless toil and trouble, go on in soft transitions; and, if you place yourself in the circumstances of the ancient herdsmen, in their wandering, unsettled mode of life, the most distant derivative will still give back in its tones something of the original sound of the word, and of the original feeling. ”

“ For the fault and the cause of the dissension must in no case be ascribed to the thing itself, but invariably either to a dead, imperfectly enlightened, and untelligent faith, on the one hand, or on the other, to the arbitrary assumptions or one-sided conclusions of a science, which in this respect and degree at least is false and erroneous. ”

“ The treatment of the Latin derivatives in Part II. presents a new and important feature, to wit: the systematic analysis of the structure and organism of derivative words, together with the statement of their primary meaning in such form that the pupil inevitably perceives its relation with the root, and in fact makes its primary meaning by the very process of analyzing the word into its primitive and its modifying prefix or suffix. ”

“ Cry is a more household, domestic word, but ‘acclaim,’ ‘declaim,’ ‘proclaim’ are used on more important occasions.
The principle of derivation by the change of an internal vowel-sound prevailed in ancient Latin as well as in Saxon. Thus, from the Latin verb ‘facĕre’ (to make or do) was formed ‘efficere’ (to effect or bring about) , the a in the root being changed into an i in the derivative; and we have English words from both these sources:—fact, faculty, facility, &c., from ‘facĕre’ ”

“ Now people once used to suppose that such changes came quite by haphazard; but we know now that in each language at any given time the different sounds were being changed in certain definite ways, and in no others. By finding out these ways of change we can often discover the earlier form of a word, and its earlier meaning also; and when we have done this, we say we have found its Derivation.
§ 2. School-boys and others often wonder what means there are of finding out the derivations of words. ”

“ The first sign, then, from which a law of causation, though hitherto unresolved, may be inferred to be a derivative law, is any indication of the existence of an intermediate link or links between the antecedent and the consequent. The second is, when the antecedent is an extremely complex phenomenon, and its effects, therefore, probably in part at least, compounded of the effects of its different elements; since we know that the case in which the effect of the whole is not made up of the effects of its parts is exceptional, the Composition of Causes being by far the more ordinary case. ”

“ We are disposed to rank the derivative hypothesis in its fullness with the nebular hypothesis, and to regard both as allowable, as not unlikely to prove tenable in spite of some strong objections, but as not therefore demonstrably true. Those, if any there be, who regard the derivative hypothesis as satisfactorily proved, must have loose notions as to what proof is. Those who imagine it can be easily refuted and cast aside, must, we think, have imperfect or very prejudiced conceptions of the facts concerned and of the questions at issue. ”

“ Derivation, as a topic to be treated by the grammarian, is a species of Etymology, which explains the various methods by which those derivative words which are not formed by mere grammatical inflections, are deduced from their primitives. Most of those words which are regarded as primitives in English, may be traced to ulterior sources, and many of them are found to be compounds or derivatives in the other languages from which they have come to us. ”

“ But derivation is really not a very sure guide to signification. For example, what do I learn of the meaning of ‘desultory’ by knowing that it is from the Latin ‘desultor,’ a circus performer that leaps from horse to horse? In many instances the origin of a word is misleading, as in ‘miscreant,’ which, etymologically, means nothing worse than ‘unbeliever.’ Of course it is interesting to hear in it a lingering echo of an ecclesiastic damning in a time when nothing worse than an unbeliever was thought to exist. ”

“ Ye should command her to raise the dead for proof—to raise the dead in your presence. You are consulting together; I see that you pity me. Nevertheless, I say again, that if these people are what they say they are, they should be made to prove it by such awful and irresistible proof—ah!—what are ye afraid of, judges? ”

“ Personally, I am one who believes that as yet we have not scratched the surface of underlying fact and law. I once believed, for instance, that nature was a blind, stumbling force or combination of forces which knew not what or whither. ”

“ The next step in our analysis must be the consideration of how the derivative parts of our common knowledge arise. Here we become involved in a somewhat puzzling entanglement of logic and psychology. Psychologically, a belief may be called derivative whenever it is caused by one or more other beliefs, or by some fact of sense which is not simply what the belief asserts. Derivative beliefs in this sense constantly arise without any process of logical inference, merely by association of ideas or some equally extra-logical process. ”

“ To him nowhere in nature was there any serene and directive and thoughtful conception which brought about, and was still bringing about continually, all the marvels of structure and form and movement that so arrest and startle our intelligence at every turn. ”

“ The reason for the presence of so many people rather above than under the average in intellect lay, as I came to believe later, in their ability or that of some one connected with them to sincerely appreciate or to at least be amused and benefited by the somewhat different theory of physical repair which the lord of the manor had invented, or for which at least he had become famous. ”

“ But taken all together and considered as a connected whole, they make such convincing proof of guilt that we are not able to escape from its force by any justifiable process of reasoning and we are compelled to say that not only is the verdict not opposed to the weight of evidence, and to the proper inference to be drawn from it, but that it is abundantly justified thereby. ”

“ On incompletion of the radical.—Let there be in a given language a series of roots ending in -t, as sæmat. Let a euphonic influence eject the -t, as often as the word occurs in the nominative case. Let the nominative case be erroneously considered to represent the root, or radical, of the word. Let a derivative word be formed accordingly, i.e., on the notion that the nominative form and the radical form coincide. Such a derivative will exhibit only a part of the root; in other words, the radical will be incomplete. ”

“ He should question the things he sees—not some things, but everything—stand, as it were, in the center of this whirling storm of contradiction which we know as life, and ask of it its source and its import. ”

“ The languages of the third period of evolution, Latin for example, present a considerable number of these secondary and tertiary derivatives. The Latin word pater, father, is a primary derivative, of which the full or radical element is pa and the limiting element is ter. Paternus, whence our paternal, is a secondary, and paternitas, corresponding with our paternity, is a tertiary derivative. But our languages have not the extraordinary facility in derivation possessed by some simply agglutinative idioms. ”

“ Besides its ordinary application to simple facts or to simple judgments, where the word truth only means absence of illusion or no false statement, truth can be claimed for a philosophical doctrine or for a system of such doctrines only in the sense that there are no contradictions amongst the parts of the doctrine or of the system themselves, and that there are no features in them which impel our categorical Ego to further analysis. ”

“ The phrase, "derived from the existent," means nothing at all unless it means that the existent in question is before the thing derived. To say it is the thing derived, is to reduce the words to nothing. ”

“ This example is a striking instance of the fact that the termination óg is losing (if it has not already lost) its diminutive force.
All derived nouns in óg are feminine.
Derived Nouns.
461. Words are of three classes—Simple, Derivative, and Compound. All simple words are, as a general rule, monosyllables; they are the roots from which derivative and compound words spring. Derivative words are made up of two or more parts. These parts undergo slight changes when they are united to form words, and thus the component parts are somewhat disguised. ”

“ Any argument which deceives us, by seeming to prove what it does not really prove, may be called a ‘Fallacy’ (derived from the Latin verb fallo “I deceive”) : but the particular kind, to be now discussed, consists of a Pair of Propositions, which are proposed as the Premisses of a Syllogism, but yield no Conclusion. ”

“ Even in the age of experimental science, the area which reason commands is not extensive, and history, by further contracting it, sacrifices itself. We go to historians for the sake of what is reasonable : passion, and folly, and sin, we find better in the poets. The cool reception of Thiers, or the sale of arms to the French, is the declamation, not the real complaint. ”

“ For every property, therefore, in facts, or in our mode of considering facts, which leads us to believe that they are habitually conjoined when they are not, or that they are not when in reality they are, there is a corresponding kind of Fallacy; and an enumeration of fallacies would consist in a specification of those properties in facts, and those peculiarities in our mode of considering them, which give rise to this erroneous opinion. ”

“ It was interesting and even astonishing to find that we were not only being dominated mentally by a theory that had no relationship to life whatsoever, but that large, forceful brains were even then plotting the downfall of the republic. ”

“ The general theory of descent claims full and lasting value, because it is an inductive law, based upon all the whole series of biological phenomena and their inner causal connection. Every special hypothesis of descent, on the other hand, has its special value determined by the existing condition of our biological knowledge, and by the extent of the objective empirical basis upon which we deductively establish this particular hypothesis. ”

“ Such is the exuberance of signification which many words have obtained, that it was scarcely possible to collect all their senses; sometimes the meaning of derivatives must be sought in the mother term, and sometimes deficient explanations of the primitive may be supplied in the train of derivation. In any case of doubt or difficulty, it will be always proper to examine all the words of the same race ”

“ Indeed the rough balance or equation every{158}where seen and struck between element and element, impulse and impulse, need and need, while they might seem to lend color to the existence of absolute right, justice, truth, honor, etc., really indicates nothing more than this rough approximation to equation in everything—force with matter, element with element—as an offset to incomprehensible and, to mortal mind, even horrible and ghastly extremes and disorder ”

“ The honest man, having made this purchase, put on a dervise’s or monk’s habit, to lead a retired life, and caused several cells to be made in the house, where, in a short time, he established a numerous society of dervises ”

“ The preceding considerations have led us to recognize a distinction between two kinds of laws, or observed uniformities in nature: ultimate laws, and what may be termed derivative laws. Derivative laws are such as are deducible from, and may, in any of the modes which we have pointed out, be resolved into, other and more general ones. ”

“ As experience increases the regularity of the action of the derivative force is more and more observable, and then arises the notion of a law or rule regulating the action of every such force. And a perpetually increasing number of phenomena are brought under this head, and are shown to be, not the immediate results of self-originating action, but the more or less remote results of derivative action governed by laws. ”

“ They are intellectual people.
§ 853. As the possibility of this sort of ambiguity is not confined to the middle term, it seems desirable to add that when either the major or minor term is used distributively in the premiss and collectively in the conclusion, we have the fallacy of composition, and in the converse case the fallacy of division. ”

“ The fallacy of accident, we have learned, occurs when one reasons from a general truth to an accidental case; whereas the fallacy of division obtains when one reasons from a collective use of a term to a distributive use; in both cases the procedure is from a larger unit to a smaller unit. Moreover, with converse accident and composition, the movement is from the smaller unit to the larger. ”