But Horace's canon for deciding on the legality of the new invention, or
the standard by which it is to be tried, will not serve to assist the
inventor of words:--
----licuit, semperque licebit,
Signatum praesente nota procudere nummum.[21]
This _praesens nota_, or public stamp, can never be affixed to any new
coinage of words: for many received at a season have perished with
it.[22] The privilege of stamping words is reserved for their greatest
enemy--Time itself! and the inventor of a new word must never flatter
himself that he has secured the public adoption, for he must lie in his
grave before he can enter the dictionary.
In Willes' address to the reader, prefixed to the collection of Voyages
published in 1577, he finds fault with Eden's translation from Peter
Martyr, for using words that "smelt too much of the Latine." We should
scarcely have expected to find among them _ponderouse_, _portentouse_,
_despicable_, _obsequious_, _homicide_, _imbibed_, _destructive_,
_prodigious_. The only words he quotes, not thoroughly naturalised, are
_dominators_, _ditionaries_, (subjects), _solicitute_ (careful).
The Tatler, No. 230, introduces several polysyllables introduced by
military narrations, "which (he says), if they attack us too frequently,
we shall certainly put them to flight, and cut off the rear;" every one
of them still keep their ground.
Half the French words used affectedly by Melantha, in Dryden's _Marriage
a-la-Mode_, as innovations in our language, are now in common use,
_naivete_, _foible_, _chagrin_, _grimace_, _embarras_, _double
entendre_, _equivoque_, _eclaircissement_, _ridicule_, all these words,
which she learns by heart to use occasionally, are now in common use. A
Dr. Russel called Psalm-singers _Ballad-singers_, having found the Song
of Solomon in an old translation, the _Ballad of Ballads_, for which he
is reproached by his antagonist for not knowing that the signification
of words alters with time; should I call him _knave_, he ought not to be
concerned at it, for the Apostle Paul is also called a _knave of Jesus
Christ_.[23]
Unquestionably, NEOLOGY opens a wide door to innovation; scarcely has a
century passed since our language was patched up with Gallic idioms, as
in the preceding century it was piebald with Spanish, and with Italian,
and even with Dutch. The political intercourse of islanders with their
neighbours has ever influenced their language. In Elizabeth's reign
Italian phrases[24] and Netherland words were imported; in James and
Charles the Spanish framed the style of courtesy; in Charles the Second
the nation and the language were equally Frenchified. Yet such are the
sources from whence we have often derived some of the wealth of our
language!
There are three foul corruptors of a language: caprice, affectation, and
ignorance! Such fashionable cant terms as "theatricals," and "musicals,"
invented by the flippant Topham, still survive among his confraternity
of frivolity. A lady eminent for the elegance of her taste, and of whom
one of the best judges, the celebrated Miss Edgeworth, observed to me,
that she spoke the purest and most idiomatic English she had ever heard,
threw out an observation which might be extended to a great deal of our
present fashionable vocabulary. She is now old enough, she said, to have
lived to hear the vulgarisms of her youth adopted in drawing-room
circles.[25] To _lunch_, now so familiar from the fairest lips, in her
youth was only known in the servants' hall. An expression very rife of
late among our young ladies, _a nice man_, whatever it may mean, whether
that the man resemble a pudding or something more nice, conveys the
offensive notion that they are ready to eat him up! When I was a boy, it
was an age of _bon ton_; this _good tone_ mysteriously conveyed a
sublime idea of fashion; the term, imported late in the eighteenth
century, closed with it. _Twaddle_ for a while succeeded _bore_; but
_bore_ has recovered the supremacy. We want another Swift to give a new
edition of his "Polite Conversation." A dictionary of barbarisms too
might be collected from some wretched neologists, whose pens are now at
work! Lord Chesterfield, in his exhortations to conform to Johnson's
Dictionary, was desirous, however, that the great lexicographer should
add as an appendix, "_A neological dictionary_, containing those polite,
though perhaps not strictly grammatical, words and phrases commonly
used, and sometimes understood by the _beau-monde_."[26] This last
phrase was doubtless a contribution! Such a dictionary had already
appeared in the French language, drawn up by two caustic critics, who in
the _Dictionnaire neologique a l'usage des beaux Esprits du Siecle_
collected together the numerous unlucky inventions of affectation, with
their modern authorities! A collection of the fine words and phrases,
culled from some very modern poetry, might show the real amount of the
favours bestowed on us.
The attempts of neologists are, however, not necessarily to be
condemned; and we may join with the commentators of Aulus Gellius, who
have lamented the loss of a chapter of which the title only has
descended to us. That chapter would have demonstrated what happens to
all languages, that some neologisms, which at first are considered
forced or inelegant, become sanctioned by use, and in time are quoted as
authority in the very language which, in their early stage, they were
imagined to have debased.
The true history of men's minds is found in their actions; their wants
are indicated by their contrivances; and certain it is that in highly
cultivated ages we discover the most refined intellects attempting
NEOLOGISMS.[27] It would be a subject of great curiosity to trace the
origin of many happy expressions, when, and by whom created. Plato
substituted the term _Providence_ for _fate_; and a new system of human
affairs arose from a single word. Cicero invented several; to this
philosopher we owe the term of _moral_ philosophy, which before his time
was called the philosophy of _manners_. But on this subject we are
perhaps more interested by the modern than by the ancient languages.
Richardson, the painter of the human heart, has coined some expressions
to indicate its little secret movements, which are admirable: that great
genius merited a higher education and more literary leisure than the
life of a printer could afford. Montaigne created some bold expressions,
many of which have not survived him; his _incuriosite_, so opposite to
curiosity, well describes that state of negligence where we will not
learn that of which we are ignorant. With us the word _incurious_ was
described by Heylin, 1656, as an unusual word; it has been appropriately
adopted by our best writers, although we still want _incuriosity_.
Charron invented _etrangete_ unsuccessfully, but which, says a French
critic, would be the true substantive of the word _etrange_; our Locke
is the solitary instance produced for "foreignness" for "remoteness or
want of relation to something." Malherbe borrowed from the Latin,
_insidieux_, _securite_, which have been received; but a bolder word,
_devouloir_, by which he proposed to express _cesser de vouloir_, has
not. A term, however, expressive and precise. Corneille happily
introduced _invaincu_ in a verse in the Cid,
Vous etes _invaincu_, mais non pas _invincible_.
Yet this created word by their great poet has not sanctioned this fine
distinction among the French, for we are told that it is almost a
solitary instance. Balzac was a great inventor of neologisms. _Urbanite_
and _feliciter_ were struck in his mint. "Si le mot _feliciter_ n'est
pas francaise, il le sera l'annee qui vient;" so confidently proud was
the neologist, and it prospered as well as _urbanite_, of which he says,
"Quand l'usage aura muri parmi nous un mot de si mauvais gout, et
corrige _l'amertume de la nouveaute_ qui s'y peut trouver, nous nous y
accoutumerons comme aux autres que nous avons emprunte de la meme
langue." Balzac was, however, too sanguine in some other words; for his
_delecter_, his _seriosite_, &c. still retain their "bitterness of
novelty."
Menage invented a term of which an equivalent is wanting in our
language; "J'ai fait _prosateur_ a l'imitation de l'italien _prosatore_,
pour dire un homme qui ecrit en prose." To distinguish a prose from a
verse writer, we _once_ had "a proser." Drayton uses it; but this useful
distinction has unluckily degenerated, and the current sense is so daily
urgent, that the purer sense is irrecoverable.
When D'Albancourt was translating Lucian, he invented in French the
words _indolence_ and _indolent_, to describe a momentary languor,
rather than that habitual indolence in which sense they are now
accepted; and in translating Tacitus, he created the word
_turbulemment_; but it did not prosper any more than that of
_temporisement_. Segrais invented the word _impardonnable_, which, after
having been rejected, was revived, and is equivalent to our expressive
_unpardonable_. Moliere ridiculed some neologisms of the _Precieuses_ of
his day; but we are too apt to ridicule that which is new, and which we
often adopt when it becomes old. Moliere laughed at the term
_s'encanailler_, to describe one who assumed the manners of a
blackguard; the expressive word has remained in the language. The
meaning is disputed as well as the origin is lost of some novel terms.
This has happened to a word in daily use--_Fudge_! It is a cant term not
in Grose, and only traced by Todd not higher than to Goldsmith. It is,
however, no invention of his. In a pamphlet, entitled "Remarks upon the
Navy," 1700, the term is declared to have been the name of a certain
nautical personage who had lived in the lifetime of the writer. "There
was, sir, in our time, one _Captain Fudge_, commander of a merchantman,
who upon his return from a voyage, how ill-fraught soever his ship was,
always brought home his owners a good cargo of lies; so much that now,
aboard ship, the sailors, when they hear a great lie told, cry out, 'You
_fudge_ it!'" It is singular that such an obscure byword among sailors
should have become one of the most popular in our familiar style; and
not less, that recently at the bar, in a court of law, its precise
meaning perplexed plaintiff and defendant and their counsel. I think it
does not signify mere lies, but bouncing lies, or rhodomontades.
There are two remarkable French words created by the Abbe de Saint
Pierre, who passed his meritorious life in the contemplation of
political morality and universal benevolence--_bienfaisance_ and
_gloriole_. He invented _gloriole_ as a contemptuous diminutive of
_glorie_; to describe that vanity of some egotists, so proud of the
small talents which they may have received from nature or from accident.
_Bienfaisance_ first appeared in this sentence: "L'Esprit de la vraie
religion et le principal but de l'evangile c'est _la bienfaisance_,
c'est-a-dire la pratique de la charite envers le prochain." This word
was so new, that in the moment of its creation this good man explained
its necessity and origin. Complaining that "the word 'charity' is abused
by all sorts of Christians in the persecution of their enemies, and even
heretics affirm that they are practising Christian charity in
persecuting other heretics, I have sought for a term which might convey
to us a precise idea of doing good to our neighbours, and I can form
none more proper to make myself understood than the term of
_bienfaisance_, good-doing. Let those who like, use it; I would only be
understood, and it is not equivocal." The happy word was at first
criticised, but at length every kind heart found it responded to its own
feeling. Some verses from Voltaire, alluding to the political reveries
of the good abbe, notice the critical opposition; yet the new word
answered to the great rule of Horace.
Certain legislateur, dont la plume feconde
Fit tant de vains projets pour le bien du monde,
Et qui depuis trente ans ecrit pour des ingrats,
Vient de creer un mot qui manque a Vaugelas:
Ce mot est BIENFAISANCE; il me plait, il rassemble
Si le coeur en est cru, bien des vertus ensemble.
Petits grammairiens, grands precepteurs de sots,
Qui pesez la parole et mesurez les mots,
Pareille expression vous semble hazardee,
Mais l'univers entier doit en cherir l'idee!
The French revolutionists, in their rage for innovation, almost
barbarised the pure French of the Augustan age of their literature, as
they did many things which never before occurred; and sometimes
experienced feelings as transitory as they were strange. Their
nomenclature was copious; but the revolutionary jargon often shows the
danger and the necessity of neologisms. They form an appendix to the
Academy Dictionary. Our plain English has served to enrich this odd
mixture of philology and politics: _Club_, _clubiste_, _comite_, _jure_,
_juge de paix_, blend with their _terrorisme_, _lanterner_, a verb
active, _levee en masse_, _noyades_, and the other verb active,
_septembriser_, &c. The barbarous term _demoralisation_ is said to have
been the invention of the horrid capuchin Chabot; and the remarkable
expression of _arriere pensee_ belonged exclusively in its birth to the
jesuitic astuteness of the Abbe Sieyes, that political actor, who, in
changing sides, never required prompting in his new part!
A new word, the result of much consideration with its author, or a term
which, though unknown to the language, conveys a collective assemblage
of ideas by a fortunate designation, is a precious contribution of
genius; new words should convey new ideas. Swift, living amidst a civil
war of pamphlets, when certain writers were regularly employed by one
party to draw up replies to the other, created a term not to be found in
our dictionaries, but which, by a single stroke, characterises these
hirelings; he called them _answer-jobbers_. We have not dropped the
fortunate expression from any want of its use, but of perception in our
lexicographers. The celebrated Marquis of Lansdowne introduced a useful
word, which has of late been warmly adopted in France as well as in
England--_to liberalise_; the noun has been drawn out of the verb--for
in the marquis's time that was only an abstract conception which is now
a sect; and to _liberalise_ was theoretically introduced before the
_liberals_ arose.[28] It is curious to observe that as an adjective it
had formerly in our language a very opposite meaning to its recent one.
It was synonymous with "libertine or licentious;" we have "a _liberal_
villain" and "a most profane and _liberal_ counsellor;" we find one
declaring "I have spoken _too liberally_." This is unlucky for the
_liberals_, who will not--
Give allowance to our _liberal_ jests
Upon their persons--