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* * * * *
ENGLISH
PAST AND PRESENT
BY
RICHARD CHENEVIX TRENCH, D.D.
_Edited with Emendations_
BY
A. SMYTHE PALMER, D.D.
_Author of ‘The Folk and their Word-lore,’ ‘Folk-Etymology,’
‘Babylonian Influence on the Bible,’ etc._
{Illustration: Printer’s Mark}
LONDON
GEORGE ROUTLEDGE & SONS, LIMITED
NEW YORK: E. P. DUTTON & CO.
1905
EDITOR’S PREFACE
In editing the present volume I have thought it well to follow the same
rule which I laid down for myself in editing _The Study of Words_, and
have made no alteration in the text of Dr. Trench’s work (the fifth
edition). Any corrections or additions that seemed to be demanded owing
to the progress of lexicographical knowledge have been reserved for the
foot-notes, and these can always be distinguished from those in the
original by the square brackets [thus] within which they are placed.
On the whole more corrections have been required in _English Past and
Present_ than in _The Study of Words_ owing to the sweeping statements
which involve universal negatives--statements, e.g. that certain words
either first came into use, or ceased to be employed, at a specific date.
Nothing short of the combined researches of an army of co-operative
workers, such as the _New English Dictionary_ commanded, could warrant
the correctness of assertions of this kind, which imply an exhaustive
acquaintance with a subject so immense as the entire range of English
literature.
Even the mistakes of a learned man are instructive to those who essay to
follow in his steps, and it is not without use to point them out instead
of ignoring or expunging them. Thus, when the Archbishop falls into the
error (venial when he wrote) of assuming an etymological connexion
between certain words which have a specious air of kinship--such as
‘care’ and ‘cura,’ ‘bloom’ and ‘blossom,’ ‘ghastly’ and ‘ghostly,’
‘brat’ and ‘brood,’ ‘slow’ and ‘slough’--he makes just the mistakes
which we would be tempted to make ourselves had not Professor Skeat and
Dr. Murray and the great German School of philologists taught us to know
better. Our plan, therefore, has been to leave such errors in the text
and point out the better way in the notes. In other words, we have
treated the Archbishop’s work as a classic, and the occasional
emendations in the notes serve to mark the progress of half a century of
etymological investigation. It is hardly necessary to point out that the
chronological landmarks occurring here and there need an obvious
equation of time to make them correct for the present year of grace,
e.g. ‘lately,’ when it occurs, must be understood to mean at least fifty
years ago, and a similar addition must be made to other time-points when
they present themselves.
A. SMYTHE PALMER.
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION
A series of four lectures which I delivered last spring to the pupils of
the King’s College School, London, supplied the foundation to this
present volume. These lectures, which I was obliged to prepare in haste,
on a brief invitation, and under the pressure of other engagements,
being subsequently enlarged and recast, were delivered in the autumn
somewhat more nearly in their present shape to the pupils of the
Training School, Winchester; with only those alterations, omissions and
additions, which the difference in my hearers suggested as necessary or
desirable. I have found it convenient to keep the lectures, as regards
the persons presumed to be addressed, in that earlier form which I had
sketched out at the first; and, inasmuch as it helps much to keep
lectures vivid and real that one should have some well defined audience,
if not actually before one, yet before the mind’s eye, to suppose myself
throughout addressing my first hearers. I have supposed myself, that is,
addressing a body of young Englishmen, all with a fair amount of
classical knowledge (in my explanations I have sometimes had others with
less than theirs in my eye), not wholly unacquainted with modern
languages; but not yet with any special designation as to their future
work; having only as yet marked out to them the duty in general of
living lives worthy of those who have England for their native country,
and English for their native tongue. To lead such through a more
intimate knowledge of this into a greater love of that, has been a
principal aim which I have set before myself throughout.
In a few places I have been obliged again to go over ground which I had
before gone over in a little book, _On the Study of Words_; but I
believe that I have never merely repeated myself, nor given to the
readers of my former work and now of this any right to complain that I
am compelling them to travel a second time by the same paths. At least
it has been my endeavour, whenever I have found myself at points where
the two books come necessarily into contact, that what was treated with
any fulness before, should be here touched on more lightly; and only
what there was slightly handled, should here be entered on at large.
CONTENTS
LECTURE I PAGE
ENGLISH A COMPOSITE LANGUAGE 1
LECTURE II
GAINS OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE 40
LECTURE III
DIMINUTIONS OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE 113
LECTURE IV
CHANGES IN THE MEANING OF ENGLISH WORDS 176
LECTURE V
CHANGES IN THE SPELLING OF ENGLISH WORDS 212
INDEX 257
ENGLISH PAST AND PRESENT
I
ENGLISH A COMPOSITE LANGUAGE
“A very slight acquaintance with the history of our own language will
teach us that the speech of Chaucer’s age is not the speech of
Skelton’s, that there is a great difference between the language under
Elizabeth and that under Charles the First, between that under Charles
the First and Charles the Second, between that under Charles the Second
and Queen Anne; that considerable changes had taken place between the
beginning and the middle of the last century, and that Johnson and
Fielding did not write altogether as we do now. For in the course of a
nation’s progress new ideas are evermore mounting above the horizon,
while others are lost sight of and sink below it: others again change
their form and aspect: others which seemed united, split into parts. And
as it is with ideas, so it is with their symbols, words. New ones are
perpetually coined to meet the demand of an advanced understanding, of
new feelings that have sprung out of the decay of old ones, of ideas
that have shot forth from the summit of the tree of our knowledge; old
words meanwhile fall into disuse and become obsolete; others have their
meaning narrowed and defined; synonyms diverge from each other and their
property is parted between them; nay, whole classes of words will now
and then be thrown overboard, as new feelings or perceptions of analogy
gain ground. A history of the language in which all these vicissitudes
should be pointed out, in which the introduction of every new word
should be noted, so far as it is possible--and much may be done in this
way by laborious and diligent and judicious research--in which such
words as have become obsolete should be followed down to their final
extinction, in which all the most remarkable words should be traced
through their successive phases of meaning, and in which moreover the
causes and occasions of these changes should be explained, such a work
would not only abound in entertainment, but would throw more light on
the development of the human mind than all the brainspun systems of
metaphysics that ever were written”.
* * * * *
These words, which thus far are not my own, but the words of a greatly
honoured friend and teacher, who, though we behold him now no more,
still teaches, and will teach, by the wisdom of his writings, and the
nobleness of his life (they are words of Archdeacon Hare), I have put in
the forefront of my lectures; seeing that they anticipate in the way of
masterly sketch all which I shall attempt to accomplish, and indeed draw
out the lines of much more, to which I shall not venture so much as to
put my hand. They are the more welcome to me, because they encourage me
to believe that if, in choosing the English language, its past and its
present, as the subject of that brief course of lectures which I am to
deliver in this place, I have chosen a subject which in many ways
transcends my powers, and lies beyond the range of my knowledge, it is
yet one in itself of deepest interest, and of fully recognized value.
Nor can I refrain from hoping that even with my imperfect handling, it
is an argument which will find an answer and an echo in the hearts of
all who hear me; which would have found this at any time; which will do
so especially at the present. For these are times which naturally rouse
into liveliest activity all our latent affections for the land of our
birth. It is one of the compensations, indeed the greatest of all, for
the wastefulness, the woe, the cruel losses of war{1}, that it causes
and indeed compels a people to know itself a people; leading each one to
esteem and prize most that which he has in common with his fellow
countrymen, and not now any longer those things which separate and
divide him from them.
{Sidenote: _Love of our own Tongue_}
And the love of our own language, what is it in fact, but the love of
our country expressing itself in one particular direction? If the great
acts of that nation to which we belong are precious to us, if we feel
ourselves made greater by their greatness, summoned to a nobler life by
the nobleness of Englishmen who have already lived and died, and have
bequeathed to us a name which must not by us be made less, what exploits
of theirs can well be nobler, what can more clearly point out their
native land and ours as having fulfilled a glorious past, as being
destined for a glorious future, than that they should have acquired for
themselves and for those who come after them a clear, a strong, an
harmonious, a noble language? For all this bears witness to
corresponding merits in those that speak it, to clearness of mental
vision, to strength, to harmony, to nobleness in them that have
gradually formed and shaped it to be the utterance of their inmost life
and being.
To know of this language, the stages which it has gone through, the
sources from which its riches have been derived, the gains which it is
now making, the perils which have threatened or are threatening it, the
losses which it has sustained, the capacities which may be yet latent in
it, waiting to be evoked, the points in which it transcends other
tongues, in which it comes short of them, all this may well be the
object of worthy ambition to every one of us. So may we hope to be
ourselves guardians of its purity, and not corrupters of it; to
introduce, it may be, others into an intelligent knowledge of that, with
which we shall have ourselves more than a merely superficial
acquaintance; to bequeath it to those who come after us not worse than
we received it ourselves. “Spartam nactus es; hanc exorna”,--this
should be our motto in respect at once of our country, and of our
country’s tongue.
{Sidenote: _Duty to our own Tongue_}
Nor shall we, I trust, any of us feel this subject to be alien or remote
from the purposes which have brought us to study within these walls. It
is true that we are mainly occupied here in studying other tongues than
our own. The time we bestow upon it is small as compared with that
bestowed on those others. And yet one of our main purposes in learning
them is that we may better understand this. Nor ought any other to
dispute with it the first and foremost place in our reverence, our
gratitude, and our love. It has been well and worthily said by an
illustrious German scholar: “The care of the national language I
consider as at all times a sacred trust and a most important privilege
of the higher orders of society. Every man of education should make it
the object of his unceasing concern, to preserve his language pure and
entire, to speak it, so far as is in his power, in all its beauty and
perfection.... A nation whose language becomes rude and barbarous, must
be on the brink of barbarism in regard to everything else. A nation
which allows her language to go to ruin, is parting with the last half
of her intellectual independence, and testifies her willingness to cease
to exist”{2}.
But this knowledge, like all other knowledge which is worth attaining,
is only to be attained at the price of labour and pains. The language
which at this day we speak is the result of processes which have been
going forward for hundreds and for thousands of years. Nay more, it is
not too much to affirm that processes modifying the English which at the
present day we write and speak have been at work from the first day that
man, being gifted with discourse of reason, projected his thought from
out himself, and embodied and contemplated it in his word. Which things
being so, if we would understand this language as it now is, we must
know something of it as it has been; we must be able to measure, however
roughly, the forces, which have been at work upon it, moulding and
shaping it into the forms which it now wears.
At the same time various prudential considerations must determine for us
how far up we will endeavour to trace the course of its history. There
are those who may seek to trace our language to the forests of Germany
and Scandinavia, to investigate its relation to all the kindred tongues
that were there spoken; again, to follow it up, till it and they are
seen descending from an elder stock; nor once to pause, till they have
assigned to it its place not merely in respect of that small group of
languages which are immediately round it, but in respect of all the
tongues and languages of the earth. I can imagine few studies of a more
surpassing interest than this. Others, however, must be content with
seeking such insight into their native language as may be within the
reach of all who, unable to make this the subject of especial research,
possessing neither that vast compass of knowledge, nor that immense
apparatus of books, not being at liberty to dedicate to it that
devotion almost of a life which, followed out to the full, it would
require, have yet an intelligent interest in their mother tongue, and
desire to learn as much of its growth and history and construction as
may be reasonably deemed within their reach. To such as these I shall
suppose myself to be speaking. It would be a piece of great presumption
in me to undertake to speak to any other, or to assume any other ground
than this for myself.
{Sidenote: _The Past explains the Present_}
I know there are some, who, when they are invited to enter at all upon
the past history of the language, are inclined to make answer--“To what
end such studies to us? Why cannot we leave them to a few antiquaries
and grammarians? Sufficient to us to know the laws of our present
English, to obtain an accurate acquaintance with the language as we now
find it, without concerning ourselves with the phases through which it
has previously past”. This may sound plausible enough; and I can quite
understand a real lover of his native tongue, who has not bestowed much
thought upon the subject, arguing in this manner. And yet indeed such
argument proceeds altogether on a mistake. One sufficient reason why we
should occupy ourselves with the past of our language is, because the
present is only intelligible in the light of the past, often of a very
remote past indeed. There are anomalies out of number now existing in
our language, which the pure logic of grammar is quite incapable of
explaining; which nothing but a knowledge of its historic evolutions,
and of the disturbing forces which have made themselves felt therein,
will ever enable us to understand. Even as, again, unless we possess
some knowledge of the past, it is impossible that we can ourselves
advance a single step in the unfolding of the latent capabilities of the
language, without the danger of committing some barbarous violation of
its very primary laws.
* * * * *
The plan which I have laid down for myself, and to which I shall adhere,
in this lecture and in those which will succeed it, is as follows. In
this my first lecture I will ask you to consider the language as now it
is, to decompose with me some specimens of it, to prove by these means,
of what elements it is compact, and what functions in it these elements
or component parts severally fulfil; nor shall I leave this subject
without asking you to admire the happy marriage in our tongue of the
languages of the north and south, an advantage which it alone among all
the languages of Europe enjoys. Having thus presented to ourselves the
body which we wish to submit to scrutiny, and having become acquainted,
however slightly, with its composition, I shall invite you to go back
with me, and trace some of the leading changes to which in time past it
has been submitted, and through which it has arrived at what it now is;
and these changes I shall contemplate under four aspects, dedicating a
lecture to each;--changes which have resulted from the birth of new, or
the reception of foreign, words;--changes consequent on the rejection or
extinction of words or powers once possessed by the language;--changes
through the altered meaning of words;--and lastly, as not unworthy of
our attention, but often growing out of very deep roots, changes in the
orthography of words.
{Sidenote: _Alterations unobserved_}
I shall everywhere seek to bring the subject down to our present time,
and not merely call your attention to the changes which have been, but
to those also which are now being, effected. I shall not account the
fact that some are going on, so to speak, before our own eyes, a
sufficient ground to excuse me from noticing them, but rather an
additional reason for doing this. For indeed changes which are actually
proceeding in our own time, and which we are ourselves helping to bring
about, are the very ones which we are most likely to fail in observing.
There is so much to hide the nature of them, and indeed their very
existence, that, except it may be by a very few, they will often pass
wholly unobserved. Loud and sudden revolutions attract and compel
notice; but silent and gradual, although with issues far vaster in
store, run their course, and it is only when their cycle is completed or
nearly so, that men perceive what mighty transforming forces have been
at work unnoticed in the very midst of themselves.
Thus, to apply what I have just affirmed to this matter of language--how
few aged persons, let them retain the fullest possession of their
faculties, are conscious of any difference between the spoken language
of their early youth, and that of their old age; that words and ways of
using words are obsolete now, which were usual then; that many words are
current now, which had no existence at that time. And yet it is certain
that so it must be. A man may fairly be supposed to remember clearly and
well for sixty years back; and it needs less than five of these sixties
to bring us to the period of Spenser, and not more than eight to set us
in the time of Chaucer and Wiclif. How great a change, what vast
modifications in our language, within eight memories. No one,
contemplating this whole term, will deny the immensity of the change.
For all this, we may be tolerably sure that, had it been possible to
interrogate a series of eight persons, such as together had filled up
this time, intelligent men, but men whose attention had not been
especially roused to this subject, each in his turn would have denied
that there had been any change worth speaking of, perhaps any change at
all, during his lifetime. And yet, having regard to the multitude of
words which have fallen into disuse during these four or five hundred
years, we are sure that there must have been some lives in this chain
which saw those words in use at their commencement, and out of use
before their close. And so too, of the multitude of words which have
sprung up in this period, some, nay, a vast number, must have come into
being within the limits of each of these lives. It cannot then be
superfluous to direct attention to that which is actually going forward
in our language. It is indeed that, which of all is most likely to be
unobserved by us.
* * * * *
With these preliminary remarks I proceed at once to the special subject
of my lecture of to-day. And first, starting from the recognized fact
that the English is not a simple but a composite language, made up of
several elements, as are the people who speak it, I would suggest to you
the profit and instruction which we might derive from seeking to
resolve it into its component parts--from taking, that is, any passage
of an English author, distributing the words of which it is made up
according to the languages from which they are drawn; estimating the
relative numbers and proportions, which these languages have severally
lent us; as well as the character of the words which they have thrown
into the common stock of our tongue.
{Sidenote: _Proportions in English_}
Thus, suppose the English language to be divided into a hundred parts;
of these, to make a rough distribution, sixty would be Saxon; thirty
would be Latin (including of course the Latin which has come to us
through the French); five would be Greek. We should thus have assigned
ninety-five parts, leaving the other five, perhaps too large a residue,
to be divided among all the other languages from which we have adopted
isolated words{3}. And yet these are not few; from our wide extended
colonial empire we come in contact with half the world; we have picked
up words in every quarter, and, the English language possessing a
singular power of incorporating foreign elements into itself, have not
scrupled to make many of these our own{4}.
{Sidenote: _Oriental Words_}
Thus we have a certain number of Hebrew words, mostly, if not entirely,
belonging to religious matters, as ‘amen’, ‘cabala’, ‘cherub’, ‘ephod’,
‘gehenna’, ‘hallelujah’, ‘hosanna’, ‘jubilee’, ‘leviathan’, ‘manna’,
‘Messiah’, ‘sabbath’, ‘Satan’, ‘seraph’, ‘shibboleth’, ‘talmud’. The
Arabic words in our language are more numerous; we have several
arithmetical and astronomical terms, as ‘algebra’, ‘almanack’,
‘azimuth’, ‘cypher’{5}, ‘nadir’, ‘talisman’, ‘zenith’, ‘zero’; and
chemical, for the Arabs were the chemists, no less than the astronomers
and arithmeticians of the middle ages; as ‘alcohol’, ‘alembic’,
‘alkali’, ‘elixir’. Add to these the names of animals, plants, fruits,
or articles of merchandize first introduced by them to the notice of
Western Europe; as ‘amber’, ‘artichoke’, ‘barragan’, ‘camphor’,
‘coffee’, ‘cotton’, ‘crimson’, ‘gazelle’, ‘giraffe’, ‘jar’, ‘jasmin’,
‘lake’ (lacca), ‘lemon’, ‘lime’, ‘lute’, ‘mattress’, ‘mummy’, ‘saffron’,
‘sherbet’, ‘shrub’, ‘sofa’, ‘sugar’, ‘syrup’, ‘tamarind’; and some
further terms, ‘admiral’, ‘amulet’, ‘arsenal’, ‘assassin’, ‘barbican’,
‘caliph’, ‘caffre’, ‘carat’, ‘divan’, ‘dragoman’{6}, ‘emir’, ‘fakir’,
‘firman’, ‘harem’, ‘hazard’, ‘houri’, ‘magazine’, ‘mamaluke’,
‘minaret’, ‘monsoon’, ‘mosque’, ‘nabob’, ‘razzia’, ‘sahara’, ‘simoom’,
‘sirocco’, ‘sultan’, ‘tarif’, ‘vizier’; and I believe we shall have
nearly completed the list. We have moreover a few Persian words, as
‘azure’, ‘bazaar’, ‘bezoar’, ‘caravan’, ‘caravanserai’, ‘chess’,
‘dervish’, ‘lilac’, ‘orange’, ‘saraband’, ‘taffeta’, ‘tambour’,
‘turban’; this last appearing in strange forms at its first introduction
into the language, thus ‘tolibant’ (Puttenham), ‘tulipant’ (Herbert’s
_Travels_), ‘turribant’ (Spenser), ‘turbat’, ‘turbant’, and at length
‘turban’. We have also a few Turkish, such as ‘chouse’, ‘janisary’,
‘odalisque’, ‘sash’, ‘tulip’{7}. Of ‘civet’{8} and ‘scimitar’{9} I
believe it can only be asserted that they are Eastern. The following are
Hindostanee, ‘avatar’, ‘bungalow’, ‘calico’, ‘chintz’, ‘cowrie’, ‘lac’,
‘muslin’, ‘punch’, ‘rupee’, ‘toddy’. ‘Tea’, or ‘tcha’, as it was spelt
at first, of course is Chinese, so too are ‘junk’ and ‘satin’{10}.
The New World has given us a certain number of words, Indian and
other--‘cacique’ (‘cassique’, in Ralegh’s _Guiana_), ‘canoo’,
‘chocolate’, ‘cocoa’{11}, ‘condor’, ‘hamoc’ (‘hamaca’ in Ralegh),
‘jalap’, ‘lama’, ‘maize’ (Haytian), ‘pampas’, ‘pemmican’, ‘potato’
(‘batata’ in our earlier voyagers), ‘raccoon’, ‘sachem’, ‘squaw’,
‘tobacco’, ‘tomahawk’, ‘tomata’ (Mexican), ‘wigwam’. If ‘hurricane’ is a
word which Europe originally obtained from the Caribbean islanders{12},
it should of course be included in this list{13}. A certain number of
words also we have received, one by one, from various languages, which
sometimes have not bestowed on us more than this single one. Thus
‘hussar’ is Hungarian; ‘caloyer’, Romaic; ‘mammoth’, of some Siberian
language;{14} ‘tattoo’, Polynesian; ‘steppe’, Tartarian; ‘sago’,
‘bamboo’, ‘rattan’, ‘ourang outang’, are all, I believe, Malay words;
‘assegai’{15} ‘zebra’, ‘chimpanzee’, ‘fetisch’, belong to different
African dialects; the last, however, having reached Europe through the
channel of the Portuguese{16}.
{Sidenote: _Italian Words_}
{Sidenote: _Spanish, Dutch and Celtic Words_}
To come nearer home--we have a certain number of Italian words, as
‘balcony’, ‘baldachin’, ‘balustrade’, ‘bandit’, ‘bravo’, ‘bust’ (it
was ‘busto’ as first used in English, and therefore from the Italian,
not from the French), ‘cameo’, ‘canto’, ‘caricature’, ‘carnival’,
‘cartoon’, ‘charlatan’, ‘concert’, ‘conversazione’, ‘cupola’, ‘ditto’,
‘doge’, ‘domino’{17}, ‘felucca’, ‘fresco’, ‘gazette’, ‘generalissimo’,
‘gondola’, ‘gonfalon’, ‘grotto’, (‘grotta’ is the earliest form in
which we have it in English), ‘gusto’, ‘harlequin’{18}, ‘imbroglio’,
‘inamorato’, ‘influenza’, ‘lava’, ‘malaria’, ‘manifesto’, ‘masquerade’
(‘mascarata’ in Hacket), ‘motto’, ‘nuncio’, ‘opera’, ‘oratorio’,
‘pantaloon’, ‘parapet’, ‘pedantry’, ‘pianoforte’, ‘piazza’, ‘portico’,
‘proviso’, ‘regatta’, ‘ruffian’, ‘scaramouch’, ‘sequin’, ‘seraglio’,
‘sirocco’, ‘sonnet’, ‘stanza’, ‘stiletto’, ‘stucco’, ‘studio’,
‘terra-cotta’, ‘umbrella’, ‘virtuoso’, ‘vista’, ‘volcano’, ‘zany’.
‘Becco’, and ‘cornuto’, ‘fantastico’, ‘magnifico’, ‘impress’ (the
armorial device upon shields, and appearing constantly in its Italian
form ‘impresa’), ‘saltimbanco’ (=mountebank), all once common enough,
are now obsolete. Sylvester uses often ‘farfalla’ for butterfly, but,
as far as I know, this use is peculiar to him. If these are at all the
whole number of our Italian words, and I cannot call to mind any
other, the Spanish in the language are nearly as numerous; nor indeed
would it be wonderful if they were more so; our points of contact with
Spain, friendly and hostile, have been much more real than with Italy.
Thus we have from the Spanish ‘albino’, ‘alligator’ (el lagarto),
‘alcove’{19}, ‘armada’, ‘armadillo’, ‘barricade’, ‘bastinado’,
‘bravado’, ‘caiman’, ‘cambist’, ‘camisado’, ‘carbonado’, ‘cargo’,
‘cigar’, ‘cochineal’, ‘Creole’, ‘desperado’, ‘don’, ‘duenna’,
‘eldorado’, ‘embargo’, ‘flotilla’, ‘gala’, ‘grandee’, ‘grenade’,
‘guerilla’, ‘hooker’{20}, ‘infanta’, ‘jennet’, ‘junto’, ‘merino’,
‘mosquito’, ‘mulatto’, ‘negro’, ‘olio’, ‘ombre’, ‘palaver’, ‘parade’,
‘parasol’, ‘parroquet’, ‘peccadillo’, ‘picaroon’, ‘platina’, ‘poncho’,
‘punctilio’, (for a long time spelt ‘puntillo’, in English books),
‘quinine’, ‘reformado’, ‘savannah’, ‘serenade’, ‘sherry’, ‘stampede’,
‘stoccado’, ‘strappado’, ‘tornado’, ‘vanilla’, ‘verandah’. ‘Buffalo’
also is Spanish; ‘buff’ or ‘buffle’ being the proper English word;
‘caprice’ too we probably obtained rather from Spain than Italy, as we
find it written ‘capricho’ by those who used it first. Other Spanish
words, once familiar, are now extinct. ‘Punctilio’ lives on, but not
‘punto’, which occurs in Bacon. ‘Privado’, signifying a prince’s
favourite, one admitted to his _privacy_ (no uncommon word in Jeremy
Taylor and Fuller), has quite disappeared; so too has ‘quirpo’
(cuerpo), the name given to a jacket fitting close to the _body_;
‘quellio’ (cuello), a ruff or _neck_-collar; and ‘matachin’, the title
of a sword-dance; these are all frequent in our early dramatists; and
‘flota’ was the constant name of the treasure-fleet from the Indies.
‘Intermess’ is employed by Evelyn, and is the Spanish ‘entremes’,
though not recognized as such in our dictionaries. ‘Mandarin’ and
‘marmalade’ are our only Portuguese words I can call to mind. A good
many of our sea-terms are Dutch, as ‘sloop’, ‘schooner’, ‘yacht’,
‘boom’, ‘skipper’, ‘tafferel’, ‘to smuggle’; ‘to wear’, in the sense
of veer, as when we say ‘_to wear_ a ship’; ‘skates’, too, and
‘stiver’, are Dutch. Celtic _things_ are for the most part designated
among us by Celtic words; such as ‘bard’, ‘kilt’, ‘clan’, ‘pibroch’,
‘plaid’, ‘reel’. Nor only such as these, which are all of them
comparatively of modern introduction, but a considerable number, how
large a number is yet a very unsettled question, of words which at a
much earlier date found admission into our tongue, are derived from
this quarter.
Now, of course, I have no right to presume that any among us are
equipped with that knowledge of other tongues, which shall enable us to
detect of ourselves and at once the nationality of all or most of the
words which we may meet--some of them greatly disguised, and having
undergone manifold transformations in the process of their adoption
among us; but only that we have such helps at command in the shape of
dictionaries and the like, and so much diligence in their use, as will
enable us to discover the quarter from which the words we may encounter
have reached us; and I will confidently say that few studies of the
kind will be more fruitful, will suggest more various matter of
reflection, will more lead you into the secrets of the English tongue,
than an analysis of a certain number of passages drawn from different
authors, such as I have just now proposed. For this analysis you will
take some passage of English verse or prose--say the first ten lines of
_Paradise Lost_--or the Lord’s Prayer--or the 23rd Psalm; you will
distribute the whole body of words contained in that passage, of course
not omitting the smallest, according to their nationalities--writing, it
may be, A over every Anglo-Saxon word, L over every Latin, and so on
with the others, if any other should occur in the portion which you have
submitted to this examination. When this is done, you will count up the
_number_ of those which each language contributes; again, you will note
the _character_ of the words derived from each quarter.
{Sidenote: _Two Shapes of Words_}
Yet here, before I pass further, I would observe in respect of those
which come from the Latin, that it will be desirable further to mark
whether they are directly from it, and such might be marked L¹, or only
mediately from it, and to us directly from the French, which would be
L², or L at second hand--our English word being only in the second
generation descended from the Latin, not the child, but the child’s
child. There is a rule that holds pretty constantly good, by which you
may determine this point. It is this,--that if a word be directly from
the Latin, it will not have undergone any alteration or modification in
its form and shape, save only in the termination--‘innocentia’ will
have become ‘innocency’, ‘natio’ will have become ‘nation’,
‘firmamentum’ ‘firmament’, but nothing more. On the other hand, if it
comes _through_ the French, it will generally be considerably altered in
its passage. It will have undergone a process of lubrication; its
sharply defined Latin outline will in good part have departed from it;
thus ‘crown’ is from ‘corona’, but though ‘couronne’, and itself a
dissyllable, ‘coroune’, in our earlier English; ‘treasure’ is from
‘thesaurus’, but through ‘trésor’; ‘emperor’ is the Latin ‘imperator’,
but it was first ‘empereur’. It will often happen that the substantive
has past through this process, having reached us through the
intervention of the French; while we have only felt at a later period
our want of the adjective also, which we have proceeded to borrow direct
from the Latin. Thus, ‘people’ is indeed ‘populus’, but it was ‘peuple’
first, while ‘popular’ is a direct transfer of a Latin vocable into our
English glossary. So too ‘enemy’ is ‘inimicus’, but it was first
softened in the French, and had its Latin physiognomy to a great degree
obliterated, while ‘inimical’ is Latin throughout; ‘parish’ is
‘paroisse’, but ‘parochial’ is ‘parochialis’; ‘chapter’ is ‘chapitre’,
but ‘capitular’ is ‘capitularis’.
{Sidenote: _Doublets_}
Sometimes you will find in English what I may call the double adoption
of a Latin word; which now makes part of our vocabulary in two shapes;
‘doppelgängers’ the Germans would call such words{21}. There is first
the elder word, which the French has given us; but which, before it
gave, it had fashioned and moulded, cutting it short, it may be, by a
syllable or more, for the French devours letters and syllables; and
there is the later word which we borrowed immediately from the Latin. I
will mention a few examples; ‘secure’ and ‘sure’, both from ‘securus’,
but one directly, the other through the French; ‘fidelity’ and ‘fealty’,
both from ‘fidelitas’, but one directly, the other at second-hand;
‘species’ and ‘spice’, both from ‘species’, spices being properly only
_kinds_ of aromatic drugs; ‘blaspheme’ and ‘blame’, both from
‘blasphemare’{22}, but ‘blame’ immediately from ‘blâmer’. Add to these
‘granary’ and ‘garner’; ‘captain’ (capitaneus) and ‘chieftain’;
‘tradition’ and ‘treason’; ‘abyss’ and ‘abysm’; ‘regal’ and ‘royal’;
‘legal’ and ‘loyal’; ‘cadence’ and ‘chance’; ‘balsam’ and ‘balm’;
‘hospital’ and ‘hotel’; ‘digit’ and ‘doit’{23}; ‘pagan’ and ‘paynim’;
‘captive’ and ‘caitiff’; ‘persecute’ and ‘pursue’; ‘superficies’ and
‘surface’; ‘faction’ and ‘fashion’; ‘particle’ and ‘parcel’;
‘redemption’ and ‘ransom’; ‘probe’ and ‘prove’; ‘abbreviate’ and
‘abridge’; ‘dormitory’ and ‘dortoir’ or ‘dorter’ (this last now
obsolete, but not uncommon in Jeremy Taylor); ‘desiderate’ and ‘desire’;
‘fact’ and ‘feat’; ‘major’ and ‘mayor’; ‘radius’ and ‘ray’; ‘pauper’
and ‘poor’; ‘potion’ and ‘poison’; ‘ration’ and ‘reason’; ‘oration’ and
‘orison’{24}. I have, in the instancing of these named always the Latin
form before the French; but the reverse I suppose in every instance is
the order in which the words were adopted by us; we had ‘pursue’ before
‘persecute’, ‘spice’ before ‘species’, ‘royalty’ before ‘regality’, and
so with the others{25}.
The explanation of this greater change which the earlier form of the
word has undergone, is not far to seek. Words which have been introduced
into a language at an early period, when as yet writing is rare, and
books are few or none, when therefore orthography is unfixed, or being
purely phonetic, cannot properly be said to exist at all, such words for
a long while live orally on the lips of men, before they are set down in
writing; and out of this fact it is that we shall for the most part find
them reshaped and remoulded by the people who have adopted them,
entirely assimilated to _their_ language in form and termination, so as
in a little while to be almost or quite indistinguishable from natives.
On the other hand a most effectual check to this process, a process
sometimes barbarizing and defacing, however it may be the only one which
will make the newly brought in entirely homogeneous with the old and
already existing, is imposed by the existence of a much written language
and a full formed literature. The foreign word, being once adopted into
these, can no longer undergo a thorough transformation. For the most
part the utmost which use and familiarity can do with it now, is to
cause the gradual dropping of the foreign termination. Yet this too is
not unimportant; it often goes far to making a home for a word, and
hindering it from wearing the appearance of a foreigner and
stranger{26}.
{Sidenote: _Analysis of English_}
But to return from this digression--I said just now that you would learn
very much from observing and calculating the proportions in which the
words of one descent and those of another occur in any passage which you
analyse. Thus examine the Lord’s Prayer. It consists of exactly seventy
words. You will find that only the following six claim the rights of
Latin citizenship--‘trespasses’, ‘trespass’, ‘temptation’, ‘deliver’,
‘power’, ‘glory’. Nor would it be very difficult to substitute for any
one of these a Saxon word. Thus for ‘trespasses’ might be substituted
‘sins’; for ‘deliver’ ‘free’; for ‘power’ ‘might’; for ‘glory’
‘brightness’; which would only leave ‘temptation’, about which there
could be the slightest difficulty, and ‘trials’, though we now ascribe
to the word a somewhat different sense, would in fact exactly correspond
to it. This is but a small percentage, six words in seventy, or less
than ten in the hundred; and we often light upon a still smaller
proportion. Thus take the first three verses of the 23rd Psalm:--“The
Lord is my Shepherd; therefore can I lack nothing; He shall feed me in a
green _pasture_, and lead me forth beside the waters of _comfort_; He
shall _convert_ my soul, and bring me forth in the paths of
righteousness for his Name’s sake”. Here are forty-five words, and only
the three in italics are Latin; and for every one of these too it would
be easy to substitute a word of Saxon origin; little more, that is, than
the proportion of seven in the hundred; while, still stronger than this,
in five verses out of Genesis, containing one hundred and thirty words,
there are only five not Saxon, less, that is, than four in the hundred.
Shall we therefore conclude that these are the proportions in which the
Anglo-Saxon and Latin elements of the language stand to one another? If
they are so, then my former proposal to express their relations by sixty
and thirty was greatly at fault; and seventy and twenty, or even eighty
and ten, would fall short of adequately representing the real
predominance of the Saxon over the Latin element of the language. But it
is not so; the Anglo-Saxon words by no means outnumber the Latin in the
degree which the analysis of those passages would seem to imply. It is
not that there are so many more Anglo-Saxon words, but that the words
which there are, being words of more primary necessity, do therefore so
much more frequently recur. The proportions which the analysis of the
_dictionary_ that is, of the language _at rest_, would furnish, are very
different from these which I have just instanced, and which the analysis
of _sentences_, or of the language _in motion_, gives. Thus if we
examine the total vocabulary of the English Bible, not more than sixty
per cent. of the words are native; such are the results which the
Concordance gives; but in the actual translation the native words are
from ninety in some passages to ninety-six in others per cent{27}.
{Sidenote: _Anglo-Saxon the Base of English_}
The notice of this fact will lead us to some very important conclusions
as to the _character_ of the words which the Saxon and the Latin
severally furnish; and principally to this:--that while the English
language is thus compact in the main of these two elements, we must not
for all this regard these two as making, one and the other, exactly the
same _kind_ of contributions to it. On the contrary their contributions
are of very different character. The Anglo-Saxon is not so much, as I
have just called it, one element of the English language, as the
foundation of it, the basis. All its joints, its whole _articulation_,
its sinews and its ligaments, the great body of articles, pronouns,
conjunctions, prepositions, numerals, auxiliary verbs, all smaller words
which serve to knit together and bind the larger into sentences, these,
not to speak of the grammatical structure of the language, are
exclusively Saxon. The Latin may contribute its tale of bricks, yea, of
goodly and polished hewn stones, to the spiritual building; but the
mortar, with all that holds and binds the different parts of it
together, and constitutes them into a house, is Saxon throughout. I
remember Selden in his _Table Talk_ using another comparison; but to the
same effect: “If you look upon the language spoken in the Saxon time,
and the language spoken now, you will find the difference to be just as
if a man had a cloak which he wore plain in Queen Elizabeth’s days, and
since, here has put in a piece of red, and there a piece of blue, and
here a piece of green, and there a piece of orange-tawny. We borrow
words from the French, Italian, Latin, as every pedantic man pleases”.
{Sidenote: _Composite Languages_}
I believe this to be the law which holds good in respect of all
composite languages. However composite they may be, yet they are only so
in regard of their words. There may be a medley in respect of these,
some coming from one quarter, some from another; but there is never a
mixture of grammatical forms and inflections. One or other language
entirely predominates here, and everything has to conform and
subordinate itself to the laws of this ruling and ascendant language.
The Anglo-Saxon is the ruling language in our present English. Thus
while it has thought good to drop its genders, even so the French
substantives which come among us, must also leave theirs behind them; as
in like manner the French verbs must renounce their own conjugations,
and adapt themselves to ours{28}. I believe that a remarkable parallel
to this might be found in the language of Persia, since the conquest of
that country by the Arabs. The ancient Persian religion fell with the
government, but the language remained totally unaffected by the
revolution, in its grammatical structure and character. Arabic vocables,
the only exotic words in Persian, are found in numbers varying with the
object and quality, style and taste of the writers, but pages of pure
idiomatic Persian may be written without employing a single word from
the Arabic.
At the same time the secondary or superinduced language, even while it
is quite unable to force any of its forms on the language which receives
its words, may yet compel that to renounce a portion of its own forms,
by the impossibility which is practically found to exist of making them
fit the new comers; and thus it may exert although not a positive, yet a
negative, influence on the grammar of the other tongue. It has been so,
as is generally admitted, in the instance of our own. “When the English
language was inundated by a vast influx of French words, few, if any,
French forms were received into its grammar; but the Saxon forms soon
dropped away, because they did not suit the new roots; and the genius of
the language, from having to deal with the newly imported words in a
rude state, was induced to neglect the inflections of the native ones.
This for instance led to the introduction of the _s_ as the universal
termination of all plural nouns, which agreed with the usage of the
French language, and was not alien from that of the Saxon, but was
merely an extension of the termination of the ancient masculine to other
classes of nouns”{29}.
{Sidenote: _The Anglo-Saxon Element_}
If you wish to convince yourselves by actual experience, of the fact
which I just now asserted, namely, that the radical constitution of the
language is Saxon, I would say, Try to compose a sentence, let it be
only of ten or a dozen words, and the subject entirely of your choice,
employing therein only words which are of a Latin derivation. I venture
to say you will find it impossible, or next to impossible to do it;
whichever way you turn, some obstacle will meet you in the face. And
while it is thus with the Latin, whole pages might be written, I do not
say in philosophy or theology or upon any abstruser subject, but on
familiar matters of common everyday life, in which every word should be
of Saxon extraction, not one of Latin; and these, pages in which, with
the exercise of a little patience and ingenuity, all appearance of
awkwardness and constraint should be avoided, so that it should never
occur to the reader, unless otherwise informed, that the writer had
submitted himself to this restraint and limitation in the words which he
employed, and was only drawing them from one section of the English
language. Sir Thomas Browne has given several long paragraphs so
constructed. Take for instance the following, which is only a little
fragment of one of them: “The first and foremost step to all good works
is the dread and fear of the Lord of heaven and earth, which through
the Holy Ghost enlighteneth the blindness of our sinful hearts to tread
the ways of wisdom, and lead our feet into the land of blessing”{30}.
This is not stiffer than the ordinary English of his time. I would
suggest to you at your leisure to make these two experiments; you will
find it, I think, exactly as I have here affirmed.
While thus I bring before you the fact that it would be quite possible
to write English, forgoing altogether the use of the Latin portion of
the language, I would not have you therefore to conclude that this
portion of the language is of little value, or that we could draw from
the resources of our Teutonic tongue efficient substitutes for all the
words which it has contributed to our glossary. I am persuaded that we
could not; and, if we could, that it would not be desirable. I mention
this, because there is sometimes a regret expressed that we have not
kept our language more free from the admixture of Latin, a suggestion
made that we should even now endeavour to keep under the Latin element
of it, and as little as possible avail ourselves of it. I remember Lord
Brougham urging upon the students at Glasgow as a help to writing good
English, that they should do their best to rid their diction of
long-tailed words in ‘osity’ and ‘ation’{31}. He plainly intended to
indicate by this phrase all learned Latin words, or words derived from
the Latin. This exhortation is by no means superfluous; for doubtless
there were writers of a former age, Samuel Johnson in the last century,
Henry More and Sir Thomas Browne in the century preceding, who gave
undue preponderance to the learned, or Latin, portion in our language;
and very much of its charm, of its homely strength and beauty, of its
most popular and truest idioms, would have perished from it, had they
succeeded in persuading others to write as they had written.
{Sidenote: _Anglo-Saxon Aboriginal_}