Thesaurus

“ And although I cannot promise you that the study of synonyms, or the acquaintance with derivations, or any other knowledge but the very highest knowledge of all, will deliver you from the temptation to misuse this or any other gift of God—a temptation always lying so near us—yet I am sure that these studies rightly pursued will do much in leading us to stand in awe of this gift of speech, and to tremble at the thought of turning it to any other than those worthy ends for which God has endowed us with a faculty so divine. ”

“ And in order that the reader may find quickly what he seeks, whenever the first or second letter of a word is changed, we shall mark it with azure blue.' His preface ends with an appeal. 'This arrangement I have worked out with great labour; yet not I, but the grace of God with me. I entreat you therefore, reader, do not contemn my work as something rude and barbarous.'
The most striking feature of the dictionary is its etymology. Almost every word is supplied with a derivation, often very far-fetched. ”

“ He possessed it as every one who dabbles in poetry with us, possesses what may be called the poetical vocabulary, as distinguished from the vocabulary of common speech and of modern prose: I mean, such expressions as perchance for perhaps, spake for spoke, aye for ever, don for put on, charméd for charm’d, and thousands of others. ”

“ Could they hope to keep out of men's speech, or even out of their books, however they excluded from their own Dictionary, such words as 'blague,' 'blaguer,' 'blagueur,' because, being born of the people, they had the people's mark upon them? ”

“ Through lack of such discernment, gross faults are very often committed. For neither to all ranks, fortunes, and ages, nor to every time, place, and auditory, can the same style either of language or of sentiment be adapted. In every part of a discourse, as in every part of life, we must consider what is suitable and decent; and this must be determined with reference both to the matter in question, and to the personal character of those who speak and those who hear."—CICERO, Orator ad Brutum. ”

“ In recent times we often find such sentences as “Is é an maiġistir,” “Is é an fear,” &c., for “It is the master,” “It is the man,” in which the last é, the subject of the sentence, is omitted.
Translation of the English Secondary Tenses.
594. The English Present Perfect Tense is translated by means of the Present Tense of the verb tá, followed by d’ éis (or tar éis) and the verbal noun. ”

“ We begin to see now what an intricate affair is any perfect passage; how many faculties, whether of taste or pure reason, must be held upon the stretch to make it; and why, when it is made, it should afford us so complete a pleasure. From the arrangement of according letters, which is altogether arabesque and sensual, up to the architecture of the elegant and pregnant sentence, which is a vigorous act of the pure intellect, there is scarce a faculty in man but has been exercised. ”

“ As soon as the word is at hand, we instinctively feel, with something of a sigh of relief, that the concept is ours for the handling. Not until we own the symbol do we feel that we hold a key to the immediate knowledge or understanding of the concept. ”

“ Let us first consider what sort of object a word is when considered simply as a physical thing, apart from its meaning. To begin with, there are many instances of a word, namely all the different occasions when it is employed. Thus a word is not something unique and particular, but a set of occurrences. If we confine ourselves to spoken words, a word has two aspects, according as we regard it from the point of view of the speaker or from that of the hearer. ”

“ Again, of the arts which spring from the composition of language. Here the art of logic, aiming solely at conviction, addresses the understanding with cool deductions of unvarnished truth; rhetoric, designing to move, in some particular direction, both the judgement and the sympathies of men, applies itself to the affections in order to persuade; and poetry, various in its character and tendency, solicits the imagination, with a view to delight, and in general also to instruct. ”

“ To be compelled to shape the course of remark so as to suit a sentence which is by and by to come, or to introduce certain expressions which are waiting for their place, is a check to the natural current of thought. ”

“ Every common noun, verb, adjective, adverb, and preposition is the name of a concept; for example, horse, beauty, to steal, running, over, early, yellow, grape, ocean, etc. To understand these concepts there must be somewhere a progress from the individual to the abstract, an induction from particulars to a general concept. ”

“ When we are clear both as to what a word is in its physical aspect, and as to what sort of thing it can mean, we are in a better position to discover the relation of the two which is meaning.
The things that words mean differ more than words do. ”

“ Again, when we use a common noun, such as man, in a universal sense, as signifying all possible men, we are fully aware of this intention on our part, and distinguish it carefully from our intention when we mean a certain group of men, or a solitary individual before us. In the chapter on Conception we shall see how important this difference of intention is. It casts its influence over the whole of the sentence, both before and after the spot in which the word man is used. ”

“ There is a close connection between the noun ‘thing’ and the verb ‘to think.’ In fact, the one is derived from the other. For what is a thing? It is whatever causes us to think. There is the same connection between the Latin noun ‘res’ and the verb ‘reor.’ We may also observe that the Italian ‘cosa’ and the French ‘chose’ are formed by the same analogy. ”

“ CHAPTER VI VERBS § 72. The MHG. verb has the following independent forms:—one voice (active) , two numbers, three persons, two tenses (present and preterite) , two complete moods (indicative and subjunctive, the latter originally the optative) , besides an imperative which is only used in the present tense; two verbal nouns (the present infinitive, and the gerund, generally called the inflected infinitive) , a present participle with active meaning, and one verbal adjective (the past participle) . ”

“ The useful ways in which people ordinarily talk or seem to talk about meanings boil down to two: the having of meanings, which is significance, and sameness of meaning, or synonymy. What is called giving the meaning of an utterance is simply the uttering of a synonym, couched, ordinarily, in clearer language than the original. ”

“ But Man, by means of words, has widened the scope of his thinking, remembering, has created philosophy, literature, poetry, painting, has made possible civilization, the industrial era. Vocabulary—the ability to fix his reflex actions into coherent speech—has crowned him supreme among animals. ”

“ Any word is a verb before which you can place a noun, a pronoun, or the word to, as Mary talks, he works, to be. The different times when actions are performed are called tenses, there are properly only three, the present, as I am, the past as I was, and the future as I shall be ”

“ To verbs belong Number, Person, Mood, and Tense. These may be called the properties of a verb; and like those of opium, they are soporiferous properties. There are two very important objects which the writer of every book has, or ought to have in view, to get a reader who is wide awake, and to keep him so:—the latter of which, when Number, Person, Mood, and Tense are to be treated of, is no such easy matter ”

“ To amass gradually by readings in the Latin classics a collection of idioms and choice references, with a view to a Dictionary that should be an improvement even on that of Stephanus, was a side-labour to which a scholar, who was also a poet, might well dedicate a bit of each day or a week or two at intervals. ”

“ Possessed of an absolute belief that there exists but one way of expressing one thing, one word to call it by, one adjective to qualify, one verb to animate it, he gave himself to superhuman labour for the discovery, in every phrase, of that word, that verb, that epithet. ”

“ In a main sentence, the indicative present, future, and future perfect, and the imperative, are called Primary Tenses; the indicative imperfect, historical perfect, and pluperfect, and the infinitive of intimation, are called Secondary Tenses. The perfect definite and the present of vivid narration are sometimes regarded as primary tenses, oftener as secondary tenses. ”

“ It is remarkable that this philosopher, who had so sublime conceptions of the powers of the human mind, and who has displayed such extraordinary acuteness in his investigations, has represented the formation of words, or the utterance of language, as equalling in speed the progress of our very thoughts ”

“ If you study this lecture attentively, you will perceive, that when I say, I write, the verb is in the indicative mood; but when I say, if I write, or, unless I write, &c. the verb is in the subjunctive mood; write thou, or write ye or you, the imperative; I may write, I must write, I could write, &c. the potential; and to write, the infinitive. Any other verb (except the defective) may be employed in the same manner.
II. OF THE TENSES.
TENSE means time. ”

“ Prothesis, the noun-verb, or verb-substantive, I am, which is the previous form, and implies identity of being and act.
2. Thesis, the noun.
3. Antithesis, the verb.
Note, each of these may be converted; that is, they are only opposed to each other.
4. Mesothesis, the infinitive mood, or the indifference of the verb and noun, it being either the one or the other, or both at the same time, in different relations.
5. Synthesis, the participle, or the community of verb and noun; being and acting at once. ”

“ We propose to make declensions, conjugations, &c., a vehicle for imparting something more than the mere dry facts of the immediate subject. And if we can occasionally inculcate an original remark, a scientific principle, or a moral aphorism, we shall, of course, think ourselves sufficiently rewarded by the consciousness—et cætera, et cætera, et cætera. ”

“ Thus, in grammar, we often speak of nominatives, possessives, or objectives, meaning nouns or pronouns of the nominative, the possessive, or the objective case; of positives, comparatives, or superlatives, meaning adjectives of the positive, the comparative, or the superlative degree; of infinitives, subjunctives, or imperatives, meaning verbs of the infinitive, the subjunctive, or the imperative mood; and of singulars, plurals, and many other such things, in the same way. So a man's superiors or inferiors are persons superior or inferior to himself. His betters are persons better than he. ”

“ In adopting a phraseology at variance with that which so high an authority, and one which I am less likely than any other person to undervalue, has deliberately sanctioned, I have been influenced by the urgent necessity for a term exclusively appropriated to express the manner in which a concrete general name serves to mark the attributes which are involved in its signification. ”

“ Words are the custodiers of every product of mind less impressive than themselves. All extensions of human knowledge, all new generalizations, are fixed and spread, even unintentionally, by the use of words. ”

“ But as we have no words by which to recall those former sensations, except the very word which we seek to define, or some other which, being exactly synonymous with it, requires definition as much, words can not unfold the signification of this class of names; and we are obliged to make a direct appeal to the personal experience of the individual whom we address. ”

“ These substantial words, although they are likewise formal, since they are impressed upon the soul in a definitely formal way, differ, nevertheless, in that substantial words produce vivid and substantial effects upon the soul, whereas words which are merely formal do not. So that, although it is true that every substantial word is formal, every formal word is not therefore substantial, but only, as we said above, such a word as impresses substantially on the soul that which it signifies. ”

“ It is only position that determines in each case how the word is to be understood; thus traditional convention assigns to ta fu the meaning of “a great man,” and to fu ta that of “the man is great.” Being habituated to the constant use of the verb is in such a case as the latter, we are apt to suppose that the expression derives its predicative force from its suggesting the verb of existence, which the mind instinctively and necessarily supplies for itself. ”

“ You will understand, of course, that there is no magic or virtue in the words themselves—that is, in the grouping of the letters forming the words, or the sounds of the words—the virtue resting in the idea of which the words are the expression. ”

“ In philosophy especially the tyranny of traditional words is dangerous, and we have to be on our guard against assuming that grammar is the key to metaphysics, or that the structure of a sentence corresponds at all accurately with the structure of the fact that it asserts. ”

“ Tense expresses the time of the action or existence. The tenses are the present, the past, the future (employing the auxiliaries shall and will) , the perfect (employing have) , the past perfect (employing had) , and the future perfect (employing shall have and will have) . Verbals are certain forms of the verb used as other parts of speech (noun, adjective, adverb) . For the verbal forms, infinitive, gerund, and participle, see the separate headings. Adjective.An adjective is a word used to modify a noun or pronoun. ”