Miserable Rebuke Wise
Angrily Rapidly Boundless
Swim Paint Whiten
Haughtily Surly Causelessly
3. So define the following nouns as to prevent any possible confusion with
the nouns following them in parentheses:
Wages (salary) Ride (drive)
Planet (star) Truck (automobile)
Watch (clock) Reins (lines)
Jail (penitentiary) Iron (steel)
Vegetable (fruit) Timber (lumber)
Flower (weed) Rope (string)
Hail (sleet, snow) Stock (bond)
Newspaper (magazine) Street car (railway coach)
Cloud (fog) Revolver (rifle, pistol, etc.)
Mountain (hill) Creek (river)
Letter (postal card)
4. While remembering that the following words are of broad signification
and mean different things to different people, define them according to
their meaning to you:
Gentleman Courage
Honesty Beauty
Honor Good manners
Generosity A good while
Charity A little distance
Modesty Long ago
<How to Look Up a Word in the Dictionary>
So much for the words which are already yours, or which you can make yours
through your own unaided efforts. For convenience we have grouped with
them some words of a nature more baffling--words of which you know perhaps
but a single aspect rather than the totality, or upon which you can obtain
but a feeble and precarious grip. These slightly known words belong more
to the class now to be considered than to that just disposed of. For we
have now to deal with words over which you can establish no genuine
rulership unless you have outside help.
You must own a dictionary, have it by you, consult it carefully and often.
Do not select one for purchasing upon the basis of either mere bigness or
cheapness. If you do, you may make yourself the owner of an out-of-date
reprint from stereotyped plates. What to choose depends partly upon
personal preference, partly upon whether your need is for
comprehensiveness or compression.
If you are a scholar, _Murray's_ many-volumed _New English
Dictionary_ may be the publication for you; but if you are an ordinary
person, you will probably content yourself with something less expensive
and exhaustive. You will find the _Century Dictionary and
Cyclopedia_, in twelve volumes, or _Webster's New International
Dictionary_ an admirable compilation. The _New Standard
Dictionary_ will also prove useful. All in all, if you can afford it,
you should provide yourself with one or the other of these three large and
authoritative, but not too inclusive, works. Of the smaller lexicons
_Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, Webster's Secondary School
Dictionary_, the _Practical Standard Dictionary_, and the _Desk
Standard Dictionary_ answer most purposes well.
A dictionary is not for show. You must learn to use it. What ordinarily
passes for use is in fact abuse. Wherein? Let us say that you turn to your
lexicon for the meaning of a word. Of the various definitions given, you
disregard all save the one which enables the word to make sense in its
present context, or which fits your preconception of what the word should
stand for. Having engaged in this solemn mummery, you mentally record the
fact that you have been squandering your time, and enter into a compact
with yourself that no more will you so do. At best you have tided over a
transitory need, or have verified a surmise. You have not truly
_learned_ the word, brought it into a vassal's relationship with you,
so fixed it in memory that henceforth, night or day, you can take it up
like a familiar tool.
This procedure is blundering, farcical, futile, incorrect. To suppose you
have learned a word by so cursory a glance at its resources is like
supposing you have learned a man through having had him render you some
temporary and trivial service, as lending you a match or telling you the
time of day. To acquaint yourself thoroughly with a word--or a man--
involves effort, application. You must go about the work seriously,
intelligently.
One secret of consulting a dictionary properly lies in finding the
primary, the original meaning of the word. You must go to the source. If
the word is of recent formation, and is native rather than naturalized
English, you have only to look through the definitions given. Such a word
will not cause you much trouble. But if the word is derived from primitive
English or from a foreign language, you must seek its origin, not in one
of the numbered subheads of the definition, but in an etymological record
you will perceive within brackets or parentheses. Here you will find the
Anglo-Saxon (Old English), Latin, Greek, French, German, Italian,
Scandinavian, or other word from which sprang the word you are studying,
and along with this authentic original you may find cognate words in other
languages. These you may examine if you care to observe their resemblance
to your word, but the examination is not necessary. It could teach you
only the earlier or other _forms_ of your word, whereas what you are
after is the original _meaning_. This too is set down within the
brackets; if your search is in earnest, you cannot possible miss it. And
having discovered this original meaning, you must get it in mind; it is
one of the really significant things about the word. Your next step is to
find the present import of the word. Look, therefore, through the modern
definitions. Of these there may be too many, with too delicate shadings in
thought between them, for you to keep all clearly in mind. In fact you
need not try. Consider them of course, but out of them seek mainly the
drift, the central meaning. After a little practice you will be able to
disengage it from the others.
You now know the original sense of the word and its central signification
today. The two may be identical; they may be widely different; but through
reflection or study of the entire definition you will establish some sort
of connection between them. When you have done this, you have mastered the
word. From the two meanings you can surmise the others, wherever and
whenever encountered; for the others are but outgrowths and applications
of them.
One warning will not be amiss. You must not suppose that the terms used in
defining a word are its absolute synonyms, or may be substituted for it
indiscriminately. You must develop a feeling for _the limits_ of the
word, so that you may perceive where its likeness to the other terms
leaves off and its unlikeness begins. Thus if one of the terms employed in
defining _command_ is _control_, you must not assume that the
two words are interchangeable; you must not say, for instance, that the
captain controlled his men to present arms.
Such, abstractly stated, is the way to look up a word in the dictionary.
Let us now take a concrete illustration. Starting with the word
_tension_, let us ascertain what we can about it in the _Century
Dictionary and Cyclopedia_. Our first quest is the original meaning.
For this we consult the bracketed matter. There we meet the French,
Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian kinsmen of the word, and learn that they
are traceable to a common ancestor, the Latin _tensio(n)_, which
comes from the Latin verb _tendere_. The meaning of _tensio(n)_
is given as "stretching," that of _tendere_ as "stretch," "extend."
Thus we know of the original word that in form it closely resembles the
modern word, and that in meaning it involves the idea of stretching.
What is the central meaning of the word today? To acquaint ourselves with
this we must run through the definitions listed. Here (in condensed form)
they are. (1) The act of stretching. (2) In _mechanics_, stress or
the force by which something is pulled. (3) In _physics_, a
constrained condition of the particles of bodies. (4) In _statical
electricity_, surface-density. (5) Mental strain, stress, or
application. (6) A strained state of any kind, as political or social. (7)
An attachment to a sewing-machine for regulating the strain of the thread.
Now of these definitions (2), (3), (4), and (7) are too highly specialized
to conduct us, of themselves, into the highway of the word's meaning. They
bear out, however, the evidence of (1), (5), and (6), which have as their
core the idea of stretching, or of the strain which stretching produces.
We must now lay the original meaning alongside the central meaning today,
in order to draw our conclusions. We perceive that the two meanings
correspond. Yet by prying into them we make out one marked difference
between them. The original meaning is literal, the modern largely
figurative. To be sure, the figure has been so long used that it is now
scarcely felt as a figure; its force and definiteness have departed.
Consequently we may speak of being on a tension without having in mind at
all a comparison of our nervous system with a stretched garment, or with
an outreaching arm, or with a tightly strung musical instrument, or with a
taut rope.
What, then, is the net result of our investigation? Simply this, that
_tension_ means stretching, and that the stretching may be conceived
either literally or figuratively. With these two facts in mind, we need
not (unless we are experts in mechanics, physics, statical electricity, or
the sewing-machine) go to the trouble of committing the special senses of
_tension_; for should occasion bid, we can--from our position at the
heart of the word--easily grasp their rough purport. And from other
persons than specialists no more would be required.