1. For each word in the lists of EXERCISE - Dictionary and Activity 1 for
EXERCISE - Past, determine (a) whether it is single or married; (b) if it
is married, whether the wedding is one between equals.
2. Make a list of the married words in the first three paragraphs of the
selection from Burke (Appendix 2). For each of these words determine the
exact nature and extent of the dowry brought by each of the contracting
parties to the wedding.
<Prying Into a Word's Relationships>
Hitherto in our study of verbal relationships we have usually started with
the family. Having strayed (as by good luck) into an assembly of kinsmen,
we have observed the common strain and the general characteristics, and
have then "placed" the individual with reference to these. But we do not
normally meet words, any more than we meet men, in the domestic circle. We
meet them and greet them hastily as they hurry through the tasks of the
day, with no other associates about them than such as chance or momentary
need may dictate. If we are to see anything of their family life, it must
be through effort we ourselves put forth. We must be inquisitive about
their conjugal and blood relationships.
How, then, starting with the individual word, can you come into a
knowledge of it, not in its public capacity, but in what is even more
important, its personal connections? You must form the habit of asking two
questions about it: (1) Is it married? (2) Of what family or families was
it born? If you can get an understanding answer to these two questions, an
answer that will tell you what its relations stand for as well as what
their name is, your inquiries will be anything but bootless.
Let us illustrate your procedure concretely. Suppose you read or hear the
word _conchology_. It is a somewhat unusual word, but see what you
can do with it yourself before calling on the dictionary to help you.
Observe the word closely, and you will obtain the answer to your first
question. _Conchology_ is no bachelor, no verbal old maid; it is a
married pair.
Your second and more difficult task awaits you; you must ascertain the
meaning of the family connections. With Mr. Conch you are on speaking
terms; you know him as one of the shells. But the utmost you can recall
about his wife is that she is one of a whole flock of _ologies_. What
significance does this relationship possess? You are uncertain. But do not
thumb the dictionary yet. Pass in mental review all the _ologies_ you
can assemble. Wait also for the others that through the unconscious
operations of memory will tardily straggle in. Be on the lookout for
_ologies_ as you read, as you listen. In time you will muster a
sizable company of them. And you will draw a conclusion as to the meaning
of the blood that flows through their veins. _Ology_ implies speech
or study. _Conchology_, then, must be the study of conches.
Your investigations thus far have done more than teach you the meaning of
the word you began with. They have brought you some of the by-products of
the study of verbal kinships. For you no longer pass the _ologies_ by
with face averted or bow timidly ventured. You have become so well
acquainted with them that even a new one, wherever encountered, would
flash upon you the face of a friend. But now your desires are whetted. You
wish to find out how much you _can_ learn. You at last consult the
dictionary.
Here a huge obstacle confronts you. The _ologies_, like the
_ports_ (above), are a haughty clan; they are the wooed, rather
than the wooing, members of most marital households that contain them. Now
the marriage licenses recorded in the dictionary are entered under the
name of the suitor, not of the person sought. Hence you labor under a
severe handicap as you take the census of the _ologies_. Let us
imagine the handicap the most severe possible. Let us suppose that no
_ology_ had ever been the suitor. Even so, you would not be entirely
baffled. For you could look up in the dictionary the _ologies_ you
your self had been able to recall. To what profit? First, you could verify
or correct your surmise as to what the _ological_ blood betokens.
Secondly, you could perhaps obtain cross-references to yet other
_ologies_ than those you remembered.
But you are not reduced to these extremities. The _ologies_, arrogant
as they are, sometimes are the applicants for matrimony, and the marriage
registry of the dictionary so indicates. To be sure, they do not, when
thus appearing at the beginning of words, take the form _ology_. They
take the form _log_. But you must be resourceful enough to keep after
your quarry in spite of the omission of a vowel or two. Also from some
lexicons you may obtain still further help. You may find _ology, logy,
logo_, or _log_ listed as a combining form, its meaning given, and
examples of its use in compounds cited.
By your zeal and persistence you have now brought together a goodly array
of the _ologies_--all or most, let us say, of the following:
conchology, biology, morphology, phrenology, physiology, osteology,
histology, zoology, entomology, bacteriology, ornithology, pathology,
psychology, cosmology, eschatology, demonology, mythology, theology,
astrology, archeology, geology, meteorology, mineralogy, chronology,
genealogy, ethnology, anthropology, criminology, technology, doxology,
anthology, trilogy, philology, etymology, terminology, neologism,
phraseology, tautology, analogy, eulogy, apology, apologue, eclogue,
monologue, dialogue, prologue, epilogue, decalogue, catalogue, travelogue,
logogram, logograph, logo-type, logarithms, logic, illogical. (Moreover
you may have perceived in some of these words the kinship which exists in
all for the _loquy_ group--see (1) Soliloquy below.) Of course you
will discard some items from this list as being too learned for your
purposes. But you will observe of the others that once you know the
meaning of _ology_, you are likely to know the whole word. Thus from
your study of _conchology_ you have mastered, not an individual term,
but a tribe.
In _conchology_ only one element, _ology_, was really dubious at
the outset. Let us take a word of which both elements give you pause.
Suppose your thought is arrested by the word _eugenics_. You perhaps
know the word as a whole, but not its components. For by looking at it and
thinking about it you decide that its state is married, that it comprises
the household of Mr. Eu and his wife, formerly Miss Gen. But you cannot
say offhand just what kind of person either Mr. Eu or the erstwhile Miss
Gen is likely to prove.
Have you met any of the _Eu's_ elsewhere? You think vaguely that you
have, but cannot lay claim to any real acquaintance. To the dictionary you
accordingly betake yourself. There you find that Mr. Eu is of a family
quite respectable but not prone to marriage. _Euphony, eupepsia,
euphemism, euthanasia_ are of his retiring kindred. The meaning of the
_eu_ blood, so the dictionary informs you, is well. The _gen_
blood, as you see exemplified in gentle, general, genital, engender,
carries with it the idea of begetting, of producing, of birth, or (by
extension) of kinship. _Eugenics_, then, is an alliance of well and
begotten (or born).
Your immediate purpose is fulfilled; but you resolve, let us say, to make
the acquaintance of more of the _gens_, whose number you have
perceived to be legion. You are duly introduced to the following: genus,
generic, genre, gender, genitive, genius, general, Gentile, gentle,
gentry, gentleman, genteel, generous, genuine, genial, congeniality,
congener, genital, congenital, engender, generation, progeny, progenitor,
genesis, genetics, eugenics, pathogenesis, biogenesis, ethnogeny,
palingenesis, unregenerate, degenerate, monogeny, indigenous, exogenous,
homogeneous, heterogeneous, genealogy, ingenuous, ingenious, ingenue,
engine, engineer, hygiene, hydrogen, oxygen, endogen, primogeniture,
philoprogeniture, miscegenation. Some of these are professional rather
than social; you decide not to leave your card at their doors. Others have
assumed a significance somewhat un_gen_-like, though the relationship
may be traced if you are not averse to trouble, Thus _engine_ in its
superficial aspects seems alien to the idea of born. But it is the child
of _ingenious_ (innate, inborn); _ingenious_ is the inborn power
to accomplish, and _engine_ is the result of the application of that
power. Whether you care to bother with such subtleties or not, enough
_gens_ are left to make the family one well worth your cultivation.
Thus by studying two words, _conchology_ and _eugenics_, you
have for the first time placed yourself on an intimate footing with three
verbal families--the _ologies_, the _eu's,_ and the _gens_.
Observe that though you studied the _ologies_ apart from the
_eu's_ and the _gens_, your knowledge--once you have acquired
it--cannot be kept pigeonholed, for the _ologies_ have intermarried
with both the other families. Hence you on meeting _eulogy_ can
exclaim: "How do you do, Mr. Eu? I am honored in making your acquaintance,
Mrs. Eu--I was about to call you by your maiden name; for I am a friend of
your sister, the Miss Ology who married Mr. Conch. And you too, Mr. Eu--I
cannot regard you as a stranger. I have looked in so often on the family
of your brother--the Euphony family, I mean. What a beautiful literary
household it is! Yet it has been neglected by the world-yea, even by the
people who write. Well, the loss is theirs who do the neglecting." And
_genealogy_ you can greet with an equal parade of family lore: "Don't
trouble to tell me who you are. I am hob and nob with your folks on both
sides of the family, and my word for it, the relationship is written all
over you. Mr. Gen, I envy you the pride you must feel in the prominence
given nowadays to the _eugenics_ household. And it must delight you,
Miss Ology-that-was, that connoisseurs are so keenly interested in
_conchology_. How are Grandfather Gen and Grandmother Ology? They
were keeping up remarkably the last time I saw them." Do you think words
will not respond to cordiality like this? They will work their flattered
heads off for you!