two, and sometimes even more than two, of the words which it already
has, and form out of them a new one. Much more is wanted here than
merely to attach two or more words to one another by a hyphen; this is
not to make a new word: they must really coalesce and grow together.
Different languages, and even the same language at different stages of
its existence, will possess this power of forming new words by the
combination of old in very different degrees. The eminent felicity of
the Greek in this respect has been always acknowledged. “The joints of
her compounded words”, says Fuller, “are so naturally oiled, that they
run nimbly on the tongue, which makes them though long, never tedious,
because significant”{77}. Sir Philip Sidney boasts of the capability of
our English language in this respect--that “it is particularly happy in
the composition of two or three words together, near equal to the Greek”.
No one has done more than Milton to justify this praise, or to make
manifest what may be effected by this marriage of words. Many of his
compound epithets, as ‘golden-tressed’, ‘tinsel-slippered’, ‘coral-paven’,
‘flowry-kirtled’, ‘violet-embroidered’, ‘vermeil-tinctured’, are
themselves poems in miniature. Not unworthy to be set beside these are
Sylvester’s “_opal-coloured_ morn”, Drayton’s “_silver-sanded_ shore”,
and perhaps Marlowe’s “_golden-fingered_ Ind”{78}.
Our modern inventions in the same kind are for the most part very
inferior: they could hardly fail to be so, seeing that the formative,
plastic powers of a language are always waning and diminishing more and
more. It may be, and indeed is, gaining in other respects, but in this
it is losing; and thus it is not strange if its later births in this
kind are less successful than its earlier. Among the poets of our own
time Shelley has done more than any other to assert for the language
that it has not quite renounced this power; while among writers of prose
in these later days Jeremy Bentham has been at once one of the boldest,
but at the same time one of the most unfortunate, of those who have
issued this money from their mint. Still we ought not to forget, while
we divert ourselves with the strange and formless progeny of his brain,
that we owe ‘international’ to him--a word at once so convenient and
supplying so real a need, that it was, and with manifest advantage, at
once adopted by all{79}.
{Sidenote: _Adjectives ending in al_}
Another way in which languages increase their stock of vocables is by
the forming of new words according to the analogy of formations, which
in seemingly parallel cases have been already allowed. Thus long since
upon certain substantives such as ‘congregation’, ‘convention’, were
formed their adjectives, ‘congregational’, ‘conventional’; yet these
also at a comparatively modern period; ‘congregational’ first rising up
in the Assembly of Divines, or during the time of the Commonwealth{80}.
These having found admission into the language, it is attempted to repeat
the process in the case of other words with the same ending. I confess
the effect is often exceedingly disagreeable. We are now pretty well used
to ‘educational’, and the word is sometimes serviceable enough; but I can
perfectly remember when some twenty years ago an “_Educational_ Magazine”
was started, the first impression on one’s mind was, that a work having
to do with education should not thus bear upon its front an offensive, or
to say the best, a very dubious novelty in the English language{81}.
These adjectives are now multiplying fast. We have ‘inflexional’,
‘seasonal’, ‘denominational’, and, not content with this, in dissenting
magazines at least, the monstrous birth, ‘denominationalism’; ‘emotional’
is creeping into books{82}, ‘sensational’, and others as well, so that
it is hard to say where this influx will stop, or whether all our words
with this termination will not finally generate an adjective. Convenient
as you may sometimes find these, I would yet certainly counsel you to
abstain from all but the perfectly well recognized formations of this
kind. There may be cases of exception; but for the most part Pope’s
advice is good, as certainly it is safe, that we be not among the last
to use a word which is going out, nor among the first to employ one that
is coming in.
‘Starvation’ is another word of comparatively recent introduction,
formed in like manner on the model of preceding formations of an
apparently similar character--its first formers, indeed, not observing
that they were putting a Latin termination to a Saxon word. Some have
supposed it to have reached us from America. It has not however
travelled from so great a distance, being a stranger indeed, yet not
from beyond the Atlantic, but only from beyond the Tweed. It is an old
Scottish word, but unknown in England, till used by Mr. Dundas, the
first Viscount Melville, in an American debate in 1775. That it then
jarred strangely on English ears is evident from the nickname,
“_Starvation_ Dundas”, which in consequence he obtained{83}.
{Sidenote: _Revival of Words_}
Again, languages enrich themselves, our own has done so, by recovering
treasures which for a while had been lost by them or forgone. I do not
mean that all which drops out of use _is_ loss; there are words which it
is gain to be rid of; which it would be folly to wish to revive; of
which Dryden, setting himself against an extravagant zeal in this
direction, says in an ungracious comparison--they do “not deserve this
redemption, any more than the crowds of men who daily die, or are slain
for sixpence in a battle, merit to be restored to life, if a wish could
revive them”{84}. There are others, however, which it is a real gain to
draw back again from the temporary oblivion which had overtaken them;
and this process of their setting and rising again, or of what, to use
another image, we might call their suspended animation, is not so
unfrequent as at first might be supposed.
You may perhaps remember that Horace, tracing in a few memorable lines
the history of words, while he notes that many once current have now
dropped out of use, does not therefore count that of necessity their
race is for ever run; on the contrary he confidently anticipates a
_palingenesy_ for many among them{85}; and I am convinced that there has
been such in the case of our English words to a far greater extent than
we are generally aware. Words slip almost or quite as imperceptibly back
into use as they once slipped out of it. Let me produce a few facts in
evidence of this. In the contemporary gloss which an anonymous friend of
Spenser’s furnished to his _Shepherd’s Calendar_, first published in
1579, “for the exposition of old words”, as he declares, he thinks it
expedient to include in his list, the following, ‘dapper’, ‘scathe’,
‘askance’, ‘sere’, ‘embellish’, ‘bevy’, ‘forestall’, ‘fain’, with not a
few others quite as familiar as these. In Speght’s _Chaucer_ (1667),
there is a long list of “old and obscure words in Chaucer explained”;
including ‘anthem’, ‘blithe’, ‘bland’, ‘chapelet’, ‘carol’, ‘deluge’,
‘franchise’, ‘illusion’, ‘problem’, ‘recreant’, ‘sphere’, ‘tissue’,
‘transcend’, with very many easier than these. In Skinner’s
_Etymologicon_ (1671), there is another list of obsolete, words{86}, and
among these he includes ‘to dovetail’, ‘to interlace’, ‘elvish’,
‘encombred’, ‘masquerade’ (mascarade), ‘oriental’, ‘plumage’, ‘pummel’
(pomell), and ‘stew’, that is, for fish. Who will say of the verb ‘to
hallow’ that it is now even obsolescent? and yet Wallis two hundred
years ago observed--“It has almost gone out of use” (fer. desuevit). It
would be difficult to find an example of the verb, ‘to advocate’,
between Milton and Burke{87}. Franklin, a close observer in such
matters, as he was himself an admirable master of English style,
considered the word to have sprung up during his own residence in
Europe. In this indeed he was mistaken; it had only during this period
revived{88}. Johnson says of ‘jeopardy’ that it is a “word not now in
use”; which certainly is not any longer true{89}.
{Sidenote: _Dryden and Chaucer’s English_}
I am persuaded that in facility of being understood, Chaucer is not
merely as near, but much nearer, to us than Dryden and his cotemporaries
felt him to be to them. He and the writers of his time make exactly the
same sort of complaints, only in still stronger language, about his
archaic phraseology and the obscurities which it involves, that are made
at the present day. Thus in the _Preface_ to his _Tales from Chaucer_,
having quoted some not very difficult lines from the earlier poet whom
he was modernizing, he proceeds: “You have here a specimen of Chaucer’s
language, which is so obsolete that his sense is scarce to be
understood”. Nor was it merely thus with respect of Chaucer. These wits
and poets of the Court of Charles the Second were conscious of a greater
gulf between themselves and the Elizabethan era, separated from them by
little more than fifty years, than any of which _we_ are aware,
separated from it by nearly two centuries more. I do not mean merely
that they felt themselves more removed from its tone and spirit; their
altered circumstances might explain this; but I am convinced that they
found a greater difficulty and strangeness in the language of Spenser
and Shakespeare than we find now; that it sounded in many ways more
uncouth, more old-fashioned, more abounding in obsolete terms than it
does in our ears at the present. Only in this way can I explain the
tone in which they are accustomed to speak of these worthies of the near
past. I must again cite Dryden, the truest representative of literary
England in its good and in its evil during the last half of the
seventeenth century. Of Spenser, whose death was separated from his own
birth by little more than thirty years, he speaks as of one belonging to
quite a different epoch, counting it much to say, “Notwithstanding his
obsolete language, he is still intelligible”{90}. Nay, hear what his
judgment is of Shakespeare himself, so far as language is concerned: “It
must be allowed to the present age that the tongue in general is so much
refined since Shakespeare’s time, that many of his words and more of his
phrases are scarce intelligible. And of those which we understand, some
are ungrammatical, others coarse; and his whole style is so pestered
with figurative expressions, that it is as affected as it is
obscure”{91}.
{Sidenote: _Nugget_, _Ingot_}
Sometimes a word will emerge anew from the undercurrent of society, not
indeed new, but yet to most seeming as new, its very existence having
been altogether forgotten by the larger number of those speaking the
language; although it must have somewhere lived on upon the lips of men.
Thus, for instance, since the Californian and Australian discoveries of
gold we hear often of a ‘nugget’ of gold; being a lump of the pure
metal; and there has been some discussion whether the word has been born
for the present necessity, or whether it be a recent malformation of
‘ingot’, I am inclined to think that it is neither one nor the other. I
would not indeed affirm that it may not be a popular recasting of
‘ingot’; but only that it is not a recent one; for ‘nugget’ very nearly
in its present form, occurs in our elder writers, being spelt ‘niggot’
by them{92}. There can be little doubt of the identity of ‘niggot’ and
‘nugget’; all the consonants, the _stamina_ of a word, being the same;
while this early form ‘niggot’ makes more plausible their suggestion
that ‘nugget’ is only ‘ingot’ disguised, seeing that there wants nothing
but the very common transposition of the first two letters to bring that
out of this{93}.
{Sidenote: _Words from Proper Names_}
New words are often formed from the names of persons, actual or
mythical. Some one has observed how interesting would be a complete
collection, or a collection approaching to completeness, in any language
of the names of _persons_ which have afterwards become names of
_things_, from ‘nomina _appellativa_’ have become ‘nomina _realia_’{94}.
Let me without confining myself to those of more recent introduction
endeavour to enumerate as many as I can remember of the words which have
by this method been introduced into our language. To begin with mythical
antiquity--the Chimæra has given us ‘chimerical’, Hermes ‘hermetic’,
Tantalus ‘to tantalize’, Hercules ‘herculean’, Proteus ‘protean’, Vulcan
‘volcano’ and ‘volcanic’, and Dædalus ‘dedal’, if this word may on
Spenser’s and Shelley’s authority be allowed. Gordius, the Phrygian king
who tied that famous ‘gordian’ knot which Alexander cut, will supply a
natural transition from mythical to historical. Here Mausolus, a king of
Caria, has left us ‘mausoleum’, Academus ‘academy’, Epicurus ‘epicure’,
Philip of Macedon a ‘philippic’, being such a discourse as Demosthenes
once launched against the enemy of Greece, and Cicero ‘cicerone’.
Mithridates, who had made himself poison-proof, gave us the now
forgotten word ‘mithridate’, for antidote; as from Hippocrates we
derived ‘hipocras’, or ‘ypocras’, a word often occurring in our early
poets, being a wine supposed to be mingled after his receipt. Gentius, a
king of Illyria, gave his name to the plant ‘gentian’, having been, it
is said, the first to discover its virtues. A grammar used to be called
a ‘donnat’, or ‘donet’ (Chaucer), from Donatus, a famous grammarian.
Lazarus, perhaps an actual person, has given us ‘lazar’ and ‘lazaretto’;
St. Veronica and the legend connected with her name, a ‘vernicle’;
being a napkin with the Saviour’s face portrayed on it; Simon Magus
‘simony’; Mahomet a ‘mammet’ or ‘maumet’, meaning an idol{95}, and
‘mammetry’ or idolatry; ‘dunce’ is from Duns Scotus; while there is a
legend that the ‘knot’ or sandpiper is named from Canute or Knute, with
whom this bird was a special favourite. To come to more modern times,
and not pausing at Ben Johnson’s ‘chaucerisms’, Bishop Hall’s
‘scoganisms’, from Scogan, Edward the Fourth’s jester, or his
‘aretinisms’, from an infamous writer, ‘a poisonous Italian ribald’ as
Gabriel Harvey calls him, named Aretine; these being probably not
intended even by their authors to endure; a Roman cobbler named Pasquin
has given us the ‘pasquil’ or ‘pasquinade’; ‘patch’ in the sense of
fool, and often so used by Shakespeare, was originally the proper name
of a favourite fool of Cardinal Wolsey{96}; Colonel Negus in Queen
Anne’s time first mixed the beverage which goes by his name; Lord Orrery
was the first for whom an ‘orrery’ was constructed; and Lord Spencer
first wore, or at least first brought into fashion, a ‘spencer’. Dahl, a
Swede, introduced the cultivation of the ‘dahlia’, and M. Tabinet, a
French Protestant refugee, the making of the stuff called ‘tabinet’ in
Dublin; in ‘_tram_-road’, the second syllable of the name of Ou_tram_,
the inventor, survives{97}. The ‘tontine’ was conceived by an Italian
named Tonti; and another Italian, Galvani, first noted the phenomena of
animal electricity or ‘galvanism’; while a third Italian, ‘Volta’, gave
a name to the ‘voltaic’ battery. ‘Martinet’, ‘mackintosh’, ‘doyly’,
‘brougham’, ‘to macadamize’, ‘to burke’, are all names of persons or
from persons, and then transferred to things, on the score of some
connection existing between the one and other{98}.
Again the names of popular characters in literature, such as have taken
strong hold on the national mind, give birth to a number of new words.
Thus from Homer we have ‘mentor’ for a monitor; ‘stentorian’, for
loud-voiced; and inasmuch as with all of Hector’s nobleness there is a
certain amount of big talking about him, he has given us ‘to
hector’{99}; while the medieval romances about the siege of Troy ascribe
to Pandarus that shameful ministry out of which his name has past into
the words ‘to pandar’ and ‘pandarism’. ‘Rodomontade’ is from Rodomont, a
blustering and boasting hero of Boiardo, adopted by Ariosto;
‘thrasonical’, from Thraso, the braggart of the Roman comedy. Cervantes
has given us ‘quixotic’; Swift ‘lilliputian’; to Molière the French
language owes ‘tartuffe’ and ‘tartufferie’. ‘Reynard’ too, which with us
is a duplicate for fox, while in the French ‘renard’ has quite excluded
the older ‘volpils’, was originally not the name of a kind, but the
proper name of the fox-hero, the vulpine Ulysses, in that famous
beast-epic of the middle ages, _Reineke Fuchs_; the immense popularity
of which we gather from many evidences, from none more clearly than from
this. ‘Chanticleer’ is in like manner the proper name of the cock, and
‘Bruin’ of the bear in the same poem{100}. These have not made fortune
to the same extent of actually putting out in any language the names
which before existed, but still have become quite familiar to us all.
We must not count as new words properly so called, although they may
delay us for a minute, those comic words, most often comic combinations
formed at will, and sometimes of enormous length, in which, as plays
and displays of power, great writers ancient and modern have delighted.
These for the most part are meant to do service for the moment, and
then to pass away{101}. The inventors of them had themselves no
intention of fastening them permanently on the language. Thus among
the Greeks Aristophanes coined μελλονικιάω, to loiter like Nicias, with
allusion to the delays with which this prudent commander sought to put
off the disastrous Sicilian expedition, with not a few other familiar
to every scholar. The humour of them sometimes consists in their
enormous length, as in the ἀμφιπτολεμοπηδησίστρατος of Eupolis; the
σπερμαγοραιολεκιθολαχανόπωλις of Aristophanes; sometimes in their
mingled observance and transgression of the laws of the language, as in
the ‘oculissimus’ of Plautus, a comic superlative of ‘oculus’;
‘occisissimus’ of ‘occisus’; as in the ‘dosones’, ‘dabones’, which in
Greek and in medieval Latin were names given to those who were ever
promising, ever saying “I will give” but never performing their promise.
Plautus with his exuberant wit, and exulting in his mastery and command
of the Latin language, will compose four or five lines consisting
entirely of comic combinations thrown off for the occasion{102}. Of the
same character is Butler’s ‘cynarctomachy’, or battle of a dog and bear.
Nor do I suppose that Fuller, when he used ‘to avunculize’, to imitate
or follow in the steps of one’s uncle, or Cowper, when he suggested
‘extraforaneous’ for out of doors, in the least intended them as lasting
additions to the language.
{Sidenote: ‘_To Chouse_’}
Sometimes a word springs up in a very curious way; here is one, not
having, I suppose, any great currency except among schoolboys; yet being
no invention of theirs, but a genuine English word, though of somewhat
late birth in the language, I mean ‘to chouse’. It has a singular
origin. The word is, as I have mentioned already, a Turkish one, and
signifies ‘interpreter’. Such an interpreter or ‘chiaous’ (written
‘chaus’ in Hackluyt, ‘chiaus’ in Massinger), being attached to the
Turkish embassy in England, committed in the year 1609 an enormous fraud
on the Turkish and Persian merchants resident in London. He succeeded in
cheating them of a sum amounting to £4000--a sum very much greater at
that day than at the present. From the vast dimensions of the fraud, and
the notoriety which attended it, any one who cheated or defrauded was
said ‘to chiaous’, ‘chause’, or ‘chouse’; to do, that is, as this
‘chiaous’ had done{103}.
{Sidenote: _Different Spelling of Words_}
There is another very fruitful source of new words in a language, or
perhaps rather another way in which it increases its vocabulary, for a
question might arise whether the words thus produced ought to be called
new. I mean through the splitting of single words into two or even more.
The impulse and suggestion to this is in general first given by
varieties in pronunciation, which are presently represented by varieties
in spelling; but the result very often is that what at first were only
precarious and arbitrary differences in this, come in the end to be
regarded as entirely different words; they detach themselves from one
another, not again to reunite; just as accidental varieties in fruits or
flowers, produced at hazard, have yet permanently separated off, and
settled into different kinds. They have each its own distinct domain of
meaning, as by general agreement assigned to it; dividing the
inheritance between them, which hitherto they held in common. No one who
has not had his attention called to this matter, who has not watched and
catalogued these words as they have come under his notice, would at all
believe how numerous they are.
{Sidenote: _Doublets_}