(Vol. v., p. 317.)
"N. & Q." has from time to time done much good service by holding up to
reprobation modern and growing corruptions of the English language. I trust
that its columns may be open to one more attempt to rescue from abuse the
word which stands at the head of this article.
Its signification, whether sought from Latin usage and etymology, or from
the works of English mathematicians, is "to turn out of doors," "to oust,"
or, as we say in the midland counties, "to get shut of." In French it may
be rendered as well by _se défaire_ as by _éliminer_. Within the last seven
or eight years, however, this valuable spoil of dead Latinity has been
strangely perverted, and, through the ignorance or carelessness of writers,
it has bidden fair to take to itself two significations utterly distinct
from its derivation, viz. to "elicit," and to "evaluate." The former
signification, if less vicious, is more commonly used than the latter. I
append examples of both from three of the most elegant writers of the day.
In the third extract the word under consideration is used in the latter
sense; in the other extracts it carries the former.
_Lectures on the Philosophical Tendencies of the Age_, by J. D. Morrell,
London, 1848, p. 41.:
"Had the men of ancient times, when they peopled the universe with
deities, a deeper perception of the religious element in the mind, than
had Newton, when having _eliminated_ the great law of the natural
creation, his enraptured soul burst forth into the infinite and
adored?"
I take one more illustration (among many others) from pp. 145, 146. of this
work:
"It would not be strictly speaking correct to call them philosophical
methods, because a philosophical method only exists when any tendency
works itself clear, and gives rise to a formal, connected, and logical
system of rules, by which we are to proceed in the _elimination_ of
truth."
_The Eclipse of Faith_, by Professor Rogers, London, 1852, p. 392.:
"They are now at college, and have imbibed in different degrees that
curious theory which professedly recognises Christianity (as consigned
to the New Testament) as a truly _divine_ revelation, yet asserts that
it is intermingled with a large amount of error and absurdity, and
tells each man to _eliminate_ the divine 'element' for himself.
According to this theory, the problem of eliciting revealed truth may
be said to be indeterminate, the value of the unknown varies through
all degrees of magnitude; it is equal to any thing, equal to every
thing, equal to nothing, equal to infinity."
_Theological Essays_, by F. D. Maurice, Cambridge, 1853, p. 89.:
"Let us look, therefore, courageously at the popular dogma, that there
are certain great ideas floating in the vast ocean of traditions which
the old world exhibits to us, that the gospel appropriated some of
these, and that we are to detect them and _eliminate_ them from its own
traditions."
But for the fact that such writers have given the weight of their names to
so unparalleled a blunder, it would seem almost childish to occupy the
columns of a literary periodical with exposing it. It is, however, somewhat
singular that it should be principally men of _classical_ attainments who
perpetrate it. In my under-graduate days at Cambridge, the proneness of
"classical men" to commit the blunder in question was proverbial.
In conclusion, then, let it be remembered that the word "eliminate"
obtained general currency from the circumstance of its being originally
admitted into mathematical works. In such works _elimination_ signifies the
process of causing a function to disappear from an equation, the solution
of which would be embarrassed by its presence there. In other writings the
word "elimination" has but one correct signification, viz. "the extrusion
of that which is superfluous or irrelevant." As an example of this
legitimate use of the word, I will quote from Sir William Hamilton's
accurate, witty, and learned article on "Logic," published in the
_Edinburgh Review_, April, 1833:
"The preparatory step of the discussion was, therefore, an
_elimination_ of these less precise and appropriate significations,
which, as they could at best only afford a remote genus and difference,
were wholly incompetent for the purpose of a definition."