Our investigation into the nature, qualities, and fortunes of single words
must now merge into a study of their family connections. We do not go far
into this new phase of our researches before we perceive that the career
of a word may be very complicated. Most people, if you asked them, would
tell you that an individual word is a causeless entity--a thing that was
never begotten and lacks power to propagate. They would deny the
possibility that its course through the world could be other than
colorless, humdrum. Now words thus immaculately conceived and fatefully
impotent, words that shamble thus listlessly through life, there are. But
many words are born in an entirely normal way; have a grubby boyhood, a
vigorous youth, and a sober maturity; marry, beget sons and daughters,
become old, enfeebled, even senile; and suffer neglect, if not death. In
their advanced age they are exempted by the discerning from enterprises
that call for a lusty agility, but are drafted into service by those to
whom all levies are alike. Indeed in their very prime of manhood their
vicissitudes are such as to make them seem human. Some rise in the world
some sink; some start along the road of grandeur or obliquity, and then
backslide or reform. Some are social climbers, and mingle in company where
verbal dress coats are worn; some are social degenerates, and consort with
the ragamuffins and guttersnipes of language. Some marry at their own
social level, some above them, some beneath; some go down in childless
bachelorhood or leave an unkempt and illegitimate progeny. And if you
trace their own lineage, you will find for some that it is but decent and
middle-class, for some that it is mongrelized and miscegenetic, for some
that it is proud, ancient, yea perhaps patriarchal.
It is contrary to nature for a word, as for a man, to live the life of a
hermit. Through external compulsion or internal characteristics a word has
contacts with its fellows. And its most intimate, most spontaneous
associations are normally with its own kindred.
In our work hitherto we have had nothing to say of verbal consanguinity.
But we have not wholly ignored its existence, for the very good reason
that we could not. For example, in the latter portions of Chapter IV we
proceeded on the hypothesis that at least some words have ancestors. Also
in the analysis of the dictionary definition of _tension_ we learned
that the word has, not only a Latin forebear, but French, Spanish,
Portuguese, and Italian kinsmen as well. One thing omitted from that
analysis would have revealed something further--namely, that the word has
its English kinfolks too. For the bracketed part of the dictionary
definition mentions two other English words, _tend_ and _tense_,
which from their origin involve the same idea as that of _tension_--
the idea of stretching.
Now words may be akin in either of two ways. They may be related in blood.
Or they may be related by marriage. Let us consider these two kinds of
connection more fully.
<Words Related in Blood>
As an illustration of blood kinships enjoyed by a native English word take
the adjective _good_. We can easily call to mind other members of its
family: goodly, goodish, goody-goody, good-hearted, good-natured, good-
humored, good-tempered, goods, goodness, goodliness, gospel (good story),
goodby, goodwill, goodman, goodwife, good-for-nothing, good den (good
evening), the Good Book. The connection between these words is obvious.
Next consider a group of words that have been naturalized: scribe,
prescribe, ascribe, proscribe, transcribe, circumscribe, subscriber,
indescribable, scribble, script, scripture, postscript, conscript,
rescript, manuscript, nondescript, inscription, superscription,
description. It is clear that these words are each other's kith and kin in
blood, and that the strain or stock common to all is _scribe_ or (as
sometimes modified) _script_. What does this strain signify? The idea
of writing. The _scribes_ are a writing clan. Some of them, to be
sure, have strayed somewhat from the ancestral calling, for words are as
wilful--or as independent--as men. _Ascribe_, for example, does not
act like a member of the household of writers, whatever it may look like.
We should have to scrutinize it carefully or consult the record for it in
that verbal Who's Who, the dictionary, before we could understand how it
came by its scribal affiliations honestly. But once we begin to reflect or
to probe, we find we have not mistaken its identity. _Ascribe_ is the
offspring of _ad_ (to) and _scribo_ (write), both Latin terms.
It originally meant writing to a person's name or after it (that is,
imputing to the person by means of written words) some quality or
happening of which he was regarded as the embodiment, source, or cause.
Nowadays we may saddle the matter on him through oral rather than written
speech. That is, _ascribe_ has largely lost the writing traits. But
all the same it is manifestly of the writing blood.
The _scribes_ are of undivided racial stock, Latin. Consider now the
_manu_, or _man_, words which sprang from the Latin
_manus_, meaning "hand." Here are some of them: manual, manoeuver,
mandate, manacle, manicure, manciple, emancipate, manage, manner,
manipulate, manufacture, manumission, manuscript, amanuensis. These too
are children of the same father; they are brothers and sisters to each
other. But what shall we say of legerdemain (light, or sleight, of hand),
maintain, coup de main, and the like? They bear a resemblance to the
_man's_ and _manu's_, yet one that casual observers would not
notice. Is there kinship between the two sets of words? There is. But not
the full fraternal or sororal relation. The _mains_ are children of
_manus_ by a French marriage he contracted. With this French blood in
their veins, they are only half-brothers, half-sisters of the
_manu's_ and the _man's_.
Your examination of the family trees of words will be practical, rather
than highly scholastic, in nature. You need not track every word in the
dictionary to the den of its remote parentage. Nor need you bother your
head with the name of the distant ancestor. But in the case of the large
number of words that have a numerous kindred you should learn to detect
the inherited strain. You will then know that the word is the brother or
cousin of certain other words of your acquaintance, and this knowledge
will apprise you of qualities in it with which you should reckon. To this
extent only must you make yourself a student of verbal genealogy.