Metonymy

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In many instances indeed etymology will assist the learned in understanding the composition and true sense of a word; and it throws much light upon the progress of language. But the true sense of a complex term is not always, nor generally, to be learnt from the sense of the primitives or elementary words. The current meaning of a word depends on its use in a nation. This [Pg 401] true sense is to be obtained by attending to good authors, to dictionaries and to practice, rather than to derivation. ”

“ Many etymologies are true which appear improbable, and many appear probable which are not true. As Max Müller says: “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.” ”

“ For what is a metaphor or a simile but a mere paralogism—having nothing to do with the matter in hand, and not to be allowed for a moment to influence the reader’s judgment, unless there be some real and objective analogy—homology we should call it—between the physical phenomenon from which the symbol is taken, and the spiritual truth which it is meant to illustrate? ”

“ Now, the first general principle about the name for anything at all is to follow common use. We speak in order to be understood. A name is only a label; as long as there is no doubt as to the thing labelled, it does not much matter which it is. ”

“ In the realm of etymology, as everybody now knows, before Bopp and Grimm, and other great scholars, laid the sure foundation of comparative philology on the principles of a philosophy, as all true philosophy is, at once inductive and deductive, the license of conjecture played a mad part—a part, it is only too evident, not yet fully played out—and specially raised such a glamour of illusion about topographical etymology, that the theme became disgusting to all sober-minded thinkers, or ludicrous, as the humour might be. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In naming a child his individuality should, first of all, be recognized. Instead of being invested with the cast-off appellation of some dead ancestor, as musty as the clothes he wore,—a ghostly index-finger forever pointing to the past,—he should have a fresh name, free from all ridiculous or unpleasant associations, congruous with his probable destiny, and suggestive of a history to be filled, a life of usefulness to be lived. ”

“ An object, instead of being affirmed to be what it only resembles, is introduced by the name proper only to that resemblance. The literal name of the object and the affirmation to complete the figure are to be supplied.
To find the meaning of an elliptical metaphor, trace the word through the Bible, and find to what object such metaphorical term is applied. Example.—“And in that day there shall be a Root of Jesse, which shall stand for an ensign of the people.” Isa. 11:10. Explanation.—“I [Jesus] am the Root and the offspring of David.” ”

“ And the quite ordinary people, who do not write novels, incline to his conjectures. How else can they explain the fact that every name seems to fit its bearer so exactly, to sum him or her up in a flash? The true explanation, missed by them, is that a name derives its whole quality from its bearer, even as does a word from its meaning. ”

“ To the etymological eye every sentence is full of metaphor, of symbol, of images that, strictly and originally, express sensory impressions of one order, but, as we use them to-day, express impressions of a totally different order. Language is largely the utilisation of symbols. ”

“ We may realize more intimately the analogical potency of names by recalling their survivals from the solemn uses of curses and excommunications, to the charms carried about the person consisting of magic or cabalistic writing, to the playful or the serious German usage of saying unberufen, and rapping three times under the table if a word or thought "tempting Providence" has fallen from the lips. Clearly, if we follow analogy as a guide, there is much in a name. ”

“ A name is a mere empty sign, a meaningless symbol, without a mental image of the object which it represents, or an innate perception, or an abstract conception of the mind, of which the word is the sign. The mental image or the abstract conception must, therefore, precede the name; cognition must be anterior to, and give the meaning of language. 93 The child knows a thing even before it can speak its name. And, universally, we must know the thing in itself, or image it by analogies and resemblances to some other thing we do know, before the name can have any meaning for us. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ A philologist who undertakes to explain English place-names by the rigid rules of modern philology, without taking into account the human element connected with the subject, the tendency of people to modify names into more familiar forms, or to modify their sound for the sake of change and variety alone, will find himself in difficulties with a considerable number of them. ”

“ In looking at the long string of titles fastened like the tail of a kite to the name of some Don or other grandee, one is puzzled to tell whether it is the man that belongs to the name, or the name to the man. ”

“ A concrete name is a name which stands for a thing; an abstract name is a name which stands for an attribute of a thing. Thus, John, the sea, this table, are names of things. White, also, is a name of a thing, or rather of things. Whiteness, again, is the name of a quality or attribute of those things. Man is a name of many things; humanity is a name of an attribute of those things. Old is a name of things; old age is a name of one of their attributes. ”

“ The real distinction is between the distributive use and the collective use of a name; as a matter of grammatical usage, the same word may be used either way, but logically in any actual proposition it must be either one or the other.
Abstract Names are names for the common attributes or concepts on which classes are constituted. A concrete name is a name directly applicable to an individual in all his attributes, that is, as he exists in the concrete. ”

“ It being needless to illustrate at any greater length the subject of many-worded names, we proceed to the distinctions which have been established among names, not according to the words they are composed of, but according to their signification.
§ 3. All names are names of something, real or imaginary; but all things have not names appropriated to them individually. For some individual objects we require, and consequently have, separate distinguishing names; there is a name for every person, and for every remarkable place. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Any name which belongs in common to all things of a class we call a +Common Noun+; and any particular name of an individual, distinguishing this individual from others of its class, we call a +Proper Noun+. The "proper, or individual, names" which in Rule 1, Lesson 8, you were told to begin with capital letters are proper nouns.
Such a word as wheat, music, or architecture does not distinguish one thing from others of its class; there is but one thing in the class denoted by each, each thing forms a class by itself; and so we call these words common nouns. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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? ”

“ As the publication of a name without a character goes for nothing, why should the dubious proposal of a name with a hypothetical character go for more? And suppose the suggested character does not prove true, and a genus afterwards be founded well upon the same species with a good character, and under another name, must that give place to the conditional name, etc.? ”

“ The term folk-etymology is often applied in a narrower sense to the corruption of words through a mistaken idea of their etymology or origin. The tendency of the uneducated is to distort an unfamiliar or unintelligible word into some form which suggests a meaning. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Just as a Class is said to be Real, or Unreal, according as there is, or is not, an existing Thing in it, so also a Name is said to be Real, or Unreal, according as there is, or is not, an existing Thing represented by it.
[Thus, “Town lit with gas” is a Real Name: “Town paved with gold” is an Unreal Name.]
Every Name is either a Substantive only, or else a phrase consisting of a Substantive and one or more Adjectives (or phrases used as Adjectives) . ”

“ By a series of suffixes to the names of human beings, birds, fishes, trees, plants, stones, metals, and even actions, events, and feelings, diminutives are obtained, which by their form, present the names so made in different colors; they become more naïve, more childlike, eventually more roguish, or humorous, or pungent. ”

“ The only purpose of a name is that it shall furnish a key to a common understanding; where the BNA name does not furnish such a key to English readers, and where there is a term in established English usage that does serve this purpose and seems unlikely to be supplanted, we have used the latter. ”