Etymologist

“ The history of LOCAL NAMES is one of the most capricious and fortuitous in the history of man; the etymologist must not be implicitly trusted, for it is necessary to be acquainted with the history of a people as much as the history of languages, to be certain of local derivations. We have recently been cautioned by a sojourner in the most ancient of kingdoms,5 not too confidently to rely on etymology, or to assign too positively any reason for the origin of LOCAL NAMES. No etymologist could have accounted for the name of our nation had he not had recourse to our annals. ”

“ An etymologist who can operate at will with the words of half a dozen languages, and has no inconvenient grammatical knowledge to hamper him in putting them together, is able to make a name mean almost anything he likes ”

“ In answer to the objection, that a change of orthography would obscure etymology, I would remark, that the etymology of most words is already lost, even to the learned; and to the unlearned, etymology is never known. Where is the man that can trace back our English words to the elementary radicals? In a few instances, the student has been able to reach the primitive roots of words; but I presume the radicals of one tenth of the words in our language, have never yet been discovered, even by Junius, Skinner, or any other etymologist. ”

“ He grabbed me at once and said he wanted me to do the civil thing to a Professor Bernstein who was coming down to this neighbourhood with two assistant etymologists. They're sent out by the Royal Society to make a scientific survey of this county."
"You're sure he said etymologists?"
"Quite." said the colonel. "Hosty always shouts so that you can't pretend not to hear what he's saying, even if you're quite a long way off. Now, what sort of civility would an etymologist expect, do you think?"
"Lunch, for one thing," said the doctor. "All scientific men eat largely, you know. ”

“ The majority of the so-called etymologists have contented themselves with merely assigning the language from which the English borrowed a word, but very few, and those only in very late times, and principally among our hard-working neighbours, the Germans, have raised themselves above this word-grubbing, which is, both in practice and result, tedious and worthless, and have looked at etymology in a new and more scientific light ”

“ But it is always a matter of reflection, of learned curiosity; it concerns, not the general users of speech, but him who would study its history. To the greatest etymologist who lives, not less than to the most ignorant and unreflective speaker, the reason why he calls a certain idea by a certain name is simply that the community in which he lives so call it, and will understand him when he does the same. It is quite worth while to know how candidate and candid came to mean as they do ”

“ It contains not the English language, but what somebody thought, at some time or other, would be a possible representative of what he considered to be the English language, by symbols which he knew to be inefficient. The English language—the true, existing, spoken English language, is as yet an unwritten language, and has, therefore, not yet become the subject of etymological investigation; it is reserved to later times, to etymologists who have the advantage of a phonetic alphabet, to inquire seriously and truly into the etymology of our spoken language. ”

“ The poets made all the words, and therefore language is the archives of history, and, if we must say it, a sort of tomb of the muses. For though the origin of most of our words is forgotten, each word was at first a stroke of genius, and obtained currency because for the moment it symbolized the world to the first speaker and to the hearer. The etymologist finds the deadest word to have been once a brilliant picture. Language is fossil poetry. ”

“ Such persons [2] have viewed etymology as nothing else than a dexterous play upon words, and have looked upon etymologists as little better than indifferent punsters. That the generality of writers upon this subject scarcely deserve any better appellation will hardly be denied by anyone who has studied etymology on true philological principles ”

“ In exhibiting the descent of our language, our etymologists seem to have been too lavish of their learning, having traced almost every word through various tongues, only to shew what was shewn sufficiently by the first derivation. ”

“ For modern scholars have learned, by laborious comparison, to know the laws according to which English sounds have changed from century to century. Hence, when we know how a name was pronounced at a certain epoch, we can often infer with certainty how it must have been pronounced some centuries earlier. The name, reduced to its prehistoric form, may be found to be obviously significant in the language of the earlier date. If not, we can only conclude that the etymology is with our present means insoluble, and wait for further light. ”

“ According to Max Müller, “etymology is indeed a science in which identity, or even similarity, whether of sound or meaning, is of no importance whatever. Sound etymology has nothing to do with sound. We know words to be of the same origin which have not a single letter in common, and which differ in meaning as much as black and white.” ”

“ Additional millions will become able to learn the thoughts of others by the introduction of a system of spelling which (apparently) sets etymology at nought; only a few hundreds will derive any pleasure from the prosecution of etymological studies, and those few may take upon themselves the trouble of learning the old as well as the new alphabet; while, if they have already learnt the old, ten minutes' study will be sufficient for them to acquire the new. ”

“ Assuming the argument to hold universally then, we assert it to be worthless, because of the very limited number to whom it could apply; but we utterly and entirely deny its universality; nay, we deny, in toto, that the present heterography of the English language is sufficient to lead us to its etymology, and that, if a phonetical orthography were substituted, the etymology would be obscured. ”

“ The origin and cognates of each word are given as concisely as possible, but "etymology" has been taken in its widest sense as a science dealing not only with the phonetic elements of which words are composed, but also with the adventures which they have met with during their life in the language and the strange paths that many of them have followed in reaching a current sense or use often widely remote from the original. ”

“ Thus we see that the u in honour suggests a false etymology; so does the ue in tongue, and the g in sovereign, and the c in scent, and the s in island, and the mp in comptroller, and the h in rhyme; and there are many more of our ordinary orthographies which are quite as misleading from a philological point of view. As Professor Hadley mildly put it, "our common spelling is often an untrustworthy guide to etymology." But why should we expect or desire spelling to be a guide to etymology? ”

“ We assert most advisedly and deliberately, that the most consummate knowledge of not only Latin and Greek, but of Anglo-Saxon, German, Danish, Swedish, Norman French, Modern French, Arabic, or any other language from which the English has borrowed words, would never assist the possessor of them to the knowledge of how a single English word was spelt or pronounced. ”

“ We grant, our present heterography may be useful in tracing the history of our language, but so is the heterography of Chaucer and of Shakspere, and so is the Scotch heterography, so is the gradual change of heterography from the coming in of the Normans, nay, from the first writing of Anglo-Saxon until the present day; but ⸮does any one advocate their present daily use? No; they lie in old volumes upon the shelves of public libraries—very useful to those who are studying the history of the English language, very useless to every body else. ”

“ If now we turn away from the purely philological results of the Science of Language, in order to glance at the advantages which other sciences have derived from it, we shall find that they consist mostly in the light that has been shed on obscure words and old customs. This advantage is greater than, at first sight, it might seem to be. Every word has its history, and the beginning of this history, which is brought to light by etymology, leads us back far beyond its first historical appearance. ”

“ II. The term "etymology" as used in grammar must be carefully distinguished from "etymology" in the sense of word-analysis. Grammatical etymology treats solely of the grammatical changes in words, and does not concern itself with their derivation; historical etymology treats of the structure, composition, and history of words. Thus the relation of loves, loving, loved to the verb love is a matter of grammatical etmology; but the relation of lover, lovely, or loveliness to love is a matter of historical etymology. ”

“ It has therefore fallen into the hands of unqualified persons, for many of whom it seems to have an unaccountable attraction. Their usual procedure is to ransack the dictionaries of Anglo-Saxon, Danish, Welsh, and other languages, and if they can find words in any of these which bear some resemblance to the syllables of the name to be explained, and which, when joined together without the slightest regard to grammatical rules, can be made to yield something like a plausible sense, they imagine that they have solved the problem of its etymology. ”

“ I will take one more instance of a name presumed to be common to the Germans and to the Celts as an illustration of the manner in which—men's names being handed down from generation to generation without, even in ancient times, any thought of their meaning—a name may survive, while the word from which it was originally derived has perished out of the language, or is retained in a sense so changed as hardly to be recognised. ”

“ For not only have the effective letters of our alphabet a variety of meanings, but they are used in such a capricious manner, so utterly disregardful of all analogy—all expectation, that it is, as we have seen, totally impossible for even a practised English reader to guess, with any approach to certainty, what may be meant for the pronunciation of any word which he has not previously seen, or how to write any word which he has only heard, and never seen written. ”

“ In its construction it is entirely a language of ever-varying prefixes, by which verbs, nouns, and pronouns, are conjugated, declined, and combined. Each of the twelve declensions of nouns has its own set of prefixes, which, also, by a singular and harmonious rule, govern the sound of the prefixes of the verb, or other words in the sentence connected with it, and which are thus assimilated into what is termed the euphonic concord, the third person of the pronoun, for instance, having 144 different prefixes to be used in combination with different words. ”

“ However, as the etymology that compares the forms fathers and father is different from the etymology that compares father and pater, we have, of etymology, two sorts: one dealing with the changes of form that words undergo in one and the same language (father, fathers) , the other dealing with the changes that words undergo in passing from one language to another (pater, father) .
The first of these sorts may be called etymology in the limited sense of the word, or the etymology of the grammarian. In this case it is opposed to orthoepy, orthography, syntax, and the other parts of grammar. ”

“ The characters of the first language were without doubt simple, requiring but few rules for their combination and construction; and yet must have been expressive of all the natural signs and sounds of things; for such certainly ought to be the construction of a language proposed for an universal assent; and such in my opinion is the English, whose vocables are hieroglyfic; and their meaning agreeing with the picturesque combination. These were the ancient characters, engravings, or γραμματα; and their sounds were the στοιχα, the chief sounds ”

“ Modern English contains some six or seven hundred pairs or sets of homonyms, i.e., of words identical in sound and spelling but differing in meaning and origin. The New English Dictionary recognises provisionally nine separate nouns rack. The subject is a difficult one to deal with, because one word sometimes develops such apparently different meanings that the original identity becomes obscured, and even, as we have seen in the case of flour and mettle (p. 144) , a difference of spelling may result. ”

“ Independently of those words which have a difference in heterography corresponding to a difference in meaning, there is an immense number of words which have totally different meanings, but are the same in orthography and in pronunciation; thus,
By the help of a dictionary, this list may be extended almost infinitely, as nearly every word in our language has one or two meanings, some being clearly derived from an original one, others barely traceable to obscure analogies, and others apparently derived from perfectly different roots. ”

“ Men have always been fascinated by word-lore. The Greeks and Romans played with etymology in a somewhat metaphysical fashion, a famous example of which is the derivation of lucus a non lucendo. Medieval writers delight in giving amazing information as to the origin of the words they use. Their method, which may be called learned folk-etymology, consists in attempting to resolve an unfamiliar word into elements which give a possible interpretation of its meaning. ”

“ Instead of exacting strict adherence to sound laws everywhere as the basis of any etymologizing, it seems therefore to be in better agreement with common sense to say: whenever an etymology is not palpably evident, whenever there is some difficulty because the compared words are either too remote in sound or in sense or belong to distant periods of the same language or to remotely related languages, your etymology cannot be reckoned as proved unless you have shown by other strictly parallel cases that the sound in question has been treated in exactly the same way in the same language. ”