Samuel Rogers too assures us that in his youth “everybody said
‘Lonnon’{238} not ‘London’; that Fox said ‘Lonnon’ to the last”.
The following quotation from Swift will prove to you that I have been
only employing here an argument, which he employed long ago against the
phonographers of his time. He exposes thus the futility of their
scheme{239}: “Another cause which has contributed not a little to the
maiming of our language, is a foolish opinion advanced of late years
that we ought to spell exactly as we speak: which, besides the obvious
inconvenience of utterly destroying our etymology, would be a thing we
should never see an end of. Not only the several towns and counties of
England have a different way of pronouncing, but even here in London
they clip their words after one manner about the court, another in the
city, and a third in the suburbs; and in a few years, it is probable,
will all differ from themselves, as fancy or fashion shall direct; all
which, reduced to writing, would entirely confound orthography”.
This much I have thought good to say in respect of that entire
revolution in English orthography, which some rash innovators have
proposed. Let me, dismissing them and their innovations, call your
attention now to those changes in spelling which are constantly going
forward, at some periods more rapidly than at others, but which never
wholly cease out of a language; while at the same time I endeavour to
trace, where this is possible, the motives and inducements which bring
them about. It is a subject which none can neglect, who desire to obtain
even a tolerably accurate acquaintance with their native tongue. Some
principles have been laid down in the course of what has been said
already, that may help us to judge whether the changes which have found
place in our own have been for better or for worse. We shall find, if I
am not mistaken, of both kinds.
{Sidenote: ‘_Grogram_’}
There are alterations in spelling which are for the worse. Thus an
altered spelling will sometimes obscure the origin of a word, concealing
it from those who, but for this, would at once have known whence and
what it was, and would have found both pleasure and profit in this
knowledge. I need not say that in all those cases where the earlier
spelling revealed the secret of the word, told its history, which the
latter defaces or conceals, the change has been injurious, and is to be
regretted; while, at the same time, where it has thoroughly established
itself, there is nothing to do but to acquiesce in it: the attempt to
undo it would be absurd. Thus, when ‘gro_c_er’ was spelt ‘gro_ss_er’, it
was comparatively easy to see that he first had his name, because he
sold his wares not by retail, but in the _gross_. ‘Co_x_comb’ tells us
nothing now; but it did when spelt, as it used to be, ‘co_cks_comb’, the
_comb_ of a _cock_ being then an ensign or token which the fool was
accustomed to wear. In ‘grogra_m_’ we are entirely to seek for the
derivation; but in ‘grogra_n_’ or ‘grogra_in_’, as earlier it was spelt,
one could scarcely miss ‘grosgrain’, the stuff of a _coarse grain_ or
woof. How many now understand ‘woodbin_e_’? but who could have helped
understanding ‘woodbin_d_’ (Ben Jonson)? What a mischievous alteration
in spelling is ‘d_i_vest’ instead of ‘d_e_vest’{240}. This change is so
recent that I am tempted to ask whether it would not here be possible to
return to the only intelligible spelling of this word.
{Sidenote: ‘_Pigmy_’}
‘P_i_gmy’ used formerly to be spelt ‘p_y_gmy’, and so long as it was so,
no Greek scholar could see the word, but at once he knew that by it
were indicated manikins whose measure in height was no greater than
that of a man’s arm from the elbow to the closed _fist_{241}. Now he may
know this in other ways; but the word itself, so long as he assumes it
to be rightly spelt, tells him nothing. Or again, the old spelling,
‘diam_ant_’, was preferable to the modern ‘diam_ond_’. It was
preferable, because it told more of the quarter whence the word had
reached us. ‘Diamant’ and ‘adamant’ are in fact only two different
adoptions on the part of the English tongue, of one and the same Greek,
which afterwards became a Latin word. The primary meaning of ‘adamant’
is, as you know, the indomitable, and it was a name given at first to
steel as the hardest of metals; but afterwards transferred{242} to the
most precious among all the precious stones, as that which in power of
resistance surpassed everything besides.
{Sidenote: ‘_Cozen_’, ‘_Bless_’}
Neither are new spellings to be commended, which obliterate or obscure
the relationship of a word with others to which it is really allied;
separating from one another, for those not thoroughly acquainted with
the subject, words of the same family. Thus when ‘_j_aw’ was spelt
‘_ch_aw’, no ne could miss its connexions with the verb ‘to chew’{243}.
Now probably ninety-nine out of a hundred who use both words, are
entirely unaware of any relationship between them. It is the same with
‘cousin’ (consanguineus), and ‘to cozen’ or to deceive. I do not propose
to determine which of these words should conform itself to the spelling
of the other. There was great irregularity in the spelling of both from
the first; yet for all this, it was then better than now, when a
permanent distinction has established itself between them, keeping out
of sight that ‘to cozen’ is in all likelihood to deceive under show of
kindred and affinity; which if it be so, Shakespeare’s words,
“_Cousins_ indeed, and by their uncle _cozened_
Of comfort”{244},
will be found to contain not a pun, but an etymology{245}. The real
relation between ‘bliss’ and ‘to bless’ is in like manner at present
obscured{246}.
The omission of a letter, or the addition of a letter, may each
effectually do its work in keeping out of sight the true character and
origin of a word. Thus the omission of a letter. When the first syllable
of ‘bran-new’ was spelt ‘bran_d_’ with a final ‘d’, ‘bran_d_-new’, how
vigorous an image did the word contain. The ‘brand’ is the fire, and
‘brand-new’ equivalent to ‘fire-new’ (Shakespeare), is that which is
fresh and bright, as being newly come from the forge and fire. As now
spelt, ‘bran-new’ conveys to us no image at all. Again, you have the
word ‘scrip’--as a ‘scrip’ of paper, government ‘scrip’. Is this the
same word with the Saxon ‘scrip’, a wallet, having in some strange
manner obtained these meanings so different and so remote? Have we here
only two different applications of one and the same word, or two
homonyms, wholly different words, though spelt alike? We have only to
note the way in which the first of these ‘scrips’ used to be written,
namely with a final ‘t’, not ‘scrip’ but ‘scrip_t_’, and we are at once
able to answer the question. This ‘script’ is a Latin, as the other is
an Anglo-Saxon, word, and meant at first simply a _written_ (scripta)
piece of paper--a circumstance which since the omission of the final ‘t’
may easily escape our knowledge. ‘Afraid’ was spelt much better in old
times with the double ‘ff’, than with the single ‘f’ as now. It was then
clear that it was not another form of ‘afeared’, but wholly separate
from it, the participle of the verb ‘to affray’, ‘affrayer’, or, as it
is now written, ‘effrayer’{247}.
{Sidenote: ‘_Whole_’, ‘_Hale_’, ‘_Heal_’}
In the cases hitherto adduced, it has been the omission of a letter
which has clouded and concealed the etymology. The intrusion of a letter
sometimes does the same. Thus in the early editions of _Paradise Lost_,
and in all writers of that time, you will find ‘scent’, an odour, spelt
‘sent’. It was better so; there is no other noun substantive ‘sent’,
with which it is in danger of being confounded; while its relation with
‘sentio’, with ‘re_sent_’{248}, ‘dis_sent_’, and the like, is put out of
sight by its novel spelling; the intrusive ‘_c_’, serves only to
mislead. The same thing was attempted with ‘site’, ‘situate’,
‘situation’, spelt for a time by many, ‘s_c_ite’, ‘s_c_ituate’,
‘s_c_ituation’; but it did not continue with these. Again, ‘whole’, in
Wiclif’s Bible, and indeed much later, occasionally as far down as
Spenser, is spelt ‘hole’, without the ‘w’ at the beginning. The present
orthography may have the advantage of at once distinguishing the word to
the eye from any other; but at the same time the initial ‘w’, now
prefixed, hides its relation to the verb ‘to heal’, with which it is
closely allied. The ‘whole’ man is he whose hurt is ‘healed’ or
covered{249} (we say of the convalescent that he ‘recovers’){250};
‘whole’ being closely allied to ‘hale’ (integer), from which also by
its modern spelling it is divided. ‘Wholesome’ has naturally followed
the fortunes of ‘whole’; it was spelt ‘holsome’ once.
Of ‘island’ too our present spelling is inferior to the old, inasmuch as
it suggests a hybrid formation, as though the word were made up of the
Latin ‘insula’, and the Saxon ‘land’. It is quite true that ‘isle’ _is_
in relation with, and descent from, ‘insula’, ‘isola’, ‘île’; and hence
probably the misspelling of ‘island’. This last however has nothing to
do with ‘insula’, being identical with the German ‘eiland’, the
Anglo-Saxon ‘ealand’{251} and signifying the sea-land, or land girt,
round with the sea. And it is worthy of note that this ‘s’ in the first
syllable of ‘island’ is quite of modern introduction. In all the earlier
versions of the Scriptures, and in the Authorized Version as at first
set forth, it is ‘iland’; while in proof that this is not accidental, it
may be observed that, while ‘iland’ has not the ‘s’, ‘isle’ has it (see
Rev. i. 9). ‘Iland’ indeed is the spelling which we meet with far down
into the seventeenth century.
{Sidenote: _Folk-etymologies_}
What has just been said of ‘island’ leads me as by a natural transition
to observe that one of the most frequent causes of alteration in the
spelling of a word is a wrongly assumed derivation. It is then sought to
bring the word into harmony with, and to make it by its spelling
suggest, this derivation, which has been erroneously thrust upon it.
Here is a subject which, followed out as it deserves, would form an
interesting and instructive chapter in the history of language{252}. Let
me offer one or two small contributions to it; noting first by the way
how remarkable an evidence we have in this fact, of the manner in which
not the learned only, but all persons learned and unlearned alike, crave
to have these words not body only, but body and soul. What an
attestation, I say, of this lies in the fact that where a word in its
proper derivation is unintelligible to them, they will shape and mould
it into some other form, not enduring that it should be a mere inert
sound without sense in their ears; and if they do not know its right
origin, will rather put into it a wrong one, than that it should have
for them no meaning, and suggest no derivation at all{253}.
There is probably no language in which such a process has not been going
forward; in which it is not the explanation, in a vast number of
instances, of changes in spelling and even in form, which words have
undergone. I will offer a few examples of it from foreign tongues,
before adducing any from our own. ‘Pyramid’ is a word, the spelling of
which was affected in the Greek by an erroneous assumption of its
derivation; the consequences of this error surviving in our own word to
the present day. It is spelt by us with a ‘y’ in the first syllable, as
it was spelt with the υ corresponding in the Greek. But why was this? It
was because the Greeks assumed that the pyramids were so named from
their having the appearance of _flame_ going up into a point{254}, and
so they spelt ‘pyramid’, that they might find πῦρ or ‘pyre’ in it; while
in fact ‘pyramid’ has nothing to do with flame or fire at all; being, as
those best qualified to speak on the matter declare to us, an Egyptian
word of quite a different signification{255}, and the Coptic letters
being much better represented by the diphthong ‘ei’ than by the letter
‘y’, as no doubt, but for this mistaken notion of what the word was
intended to mean, they would have been.
Once more--the form ‘Hierosolyma’, wherein the Greeks reproduced the
Hebrew ‘Jerusalem’, was intended in all probability to express that the
city so called was the _sacred_ city of the _Solymi_{256}. At all events
the intention not merely of reproducing the Hebrew word, but also of
making it significant in Greek, of finding ἱερόν in it, is plainly
discernible. For indeed the Greeks were exceedingly intolerant of
foreign words, till they had laid aside their foreign appearance--of
all words which they could not thus quicken with a Greek soul; and, with
a very characteristic vanity, an ignoring of all other tongues but their
own, assumed with no apparent misgivings that all words, from whatever
quarter derived, were to be explained by Greek etymologies{257}.
‘Tartar’ is another word, of which it is at least possible that a
wrongly assumed derivation has modified the spelling, and indeed not
the spelling only, but the very shape in which we now possess it. To
many among us it may be known that the people designated by this
appellation are not properly ‘Tartars’, but ‘Tatars’; and you sometimes
perhaps have noted the omission of the ‘r’ on the part of those who are
curious in their spelling. How, then, it may be asked, did the form
‘Tartar’ arise? When the terrible hordes of middle Asia burst in upon
civilized Europe in the thirteenth century, many beheld in the ravages
of their innumerable cavalry a fulfilment of that prophetic word in the
Revelation (chap. ix.) concerning the opening of the bottomless pit; and
from this belief ensued the change of their name from ‘Tatars’ to
‘Tartars’, which was thus put into closer relation with ‘Tartarus’ or
hell, out of which their multitudes were supposed to have proceeded{258}.
Another good example in the same kind is the German word ‘sündflut’, the
Deluge, which is now so spelt as to signify a ‘sinflood’, the plague or
_flood_ of waters brought on the world by the _sins_ of mankind; and
probably some of us have before this admired the pregnant significance
of the word. Yet the old High German word had originally no such
intention; it was spelt ‘sinfluot’, that is, the great flood; and as
late as Luther, indeed in Luther’s own translation of the Bible, is so
spelt as to make plain that the notion of a ‘_sin_-flood’ had not yet
found its way into, even as it had not affected the spelling of, the
word{259}.
{Sidenote: ‘_Currants_’}
But to look now nearer home for our examples. The little raisins brought
from Greece, which play so important a part in one of the national
dishes of England, the Christmas plum-pudding, used to be called
‘corinths’; and so you would find them in mercantile lists of a hundred
years ago: either that for the most part they were shipped from Corinth,
the principal commercial city in Greece, or because they grew in large
abundance in the immediate district round about it. Their likeness in
shape and size and general appearance to our own currants, working
together with the ignorance of the great majority of English people
about any such place as Corinth, soon brought the name ‘corinths’ into
‘currants’, which now with a certain unfitness they bear; being not
currants at all, but dried grapes, though grapes of diminutive
size{260}.
{Sidenote: ‘_Court-cards_’}
‘_Court_-cards’, that is, the king, queen, and knave in each suit, were
once ‘coat-cards’{261}; having their name from the long splendid ‘coat’
(vestis talaris) with which they were arrayed. Probably ‘coat’ after a
while did not perfectly convey its original meaning and intention; being
no more in common use for the long garment reaching down to the heels;
and then ‘coat’ was easily exchanged for ‘court’, as the word is now
both spelt and pronounced, seeing that nowhere so fitly as in a Court
should such splendidly arrayed personages be found. A public house in
the neighbourhood of London having a few years since for its sign “The
George _Canning_” is already “The George and _Cannon_”,--so rapidly do
these transformations proceed, so soon is that forgotten which we
suppose would never be forgotten. “Welsh _rarebit_” becomes “Welsh
_rabbit_”{262}; and ‘_farced_’ or stuffed ‘meat’ becomes “forced meat”.
Even the mere determination to make a word _look_ English, to put it
into an English shape, without thereby so much as seeming to attain any
result in the way of etymology, this is very often sufficient to bring
about a change in its spelling, and even in its form{263}. It is thus
that ‘sipahi’ has become ‘sepoy’; and only so could ‘weissager’ have
taken its present form of ‘wiseacre’{264}.
{Sidenote: _Transformation of Words_}
It is not very uncommon for a word, while it is derived from one word,
to receive a certain impulse and modification from another. This extends
sometimes beyond the spelling, and in cases where it does so, would
hardly belong to our present theme. Still I may notice an instance or
two. Thus our ‘obsequies’ is the Latin ‘exequiæ’, but formed under a
certain impulse of ‘obsequium’, and seeking to express and include the
observant honour of that word. ‘To refuse’ is ‘recusare’, while yet it
has derived the ‘f’ of its second syllable from ‘refutare’; it is a
medley of the two{265}. The French ‘rame’, an oar, is ‘remus’, but that
modified by an unconscious recollection of ‘ramus’. ‘Orange’ is no doubt
a Persian word, which has reached us through the Arabic, and which the
Spanish ‘naranja’ more nearly represents than any form of it existing in
the other languages of Europe. But what so natural as to think of the
orange as the _golden_ fruit, especially when the “_aurea_ mala” of the
Hesperides were familiar to all antiquity? There cannot be a doubt that
‘aurum’, ‘oro’, ‘or’, made themselves felt in the shapes which the word
assumed in the languages of the West, and that here we have the
explanation of the change in the first syllable, as in the low Latin
‘aurantium’, ‘orangia’, and in the French ‘orange’, which has given us
our own.
It is foreign words, or words adopted from foreign languages, as might
beforehand be expected, which are especially subjected to such
transformations as these. The soul which the word once had in its own
language, having, for as many as do not know that language, departed
from it, or at least not being now any more to be recognized by such as
employ the word, these are not satisfied till they have put another soul
into it, and it has thus become alive to them again. Thus--to take first
one or two very familiar instances, but which serve as well as any other
to illustrate my position--the Bellerophon becomes for our sailors the
‘Billy Ruffian’, for what can they know of the Greek mythology, or of
the slayer of Chimæra? an iron steamer, the Hirondelle, now or lately
plying on the Tyne, is the ‘Iron Devil’. ‘_Contre_ danse’, or dance in
which the parties stand _face to face_ with one another, and which ought
to have appeared in English as ‘_counter_ dance’, does become ‘_country_
dance’{266}, as though it were the dance of the country folk and rural
districts, as distinguished from the quadrille and waltz and more
artificial dances of the town{267}. A well known rose, the “rose _des
quatre saisons_”, or of the four seasons, becomes on the lips of some of
our gardeners, the “rose of the _quarter sessions_”, though here it is
probable that the eye has misled, rather than the ear. ‘Dent de lion’,
(it is spelt ‘dentdelyon’ in our early writers) becomes ‘dandylion’,
“_chaude_ melée”, or an affray in _hot_ blood, “_chance_-medley”{268},
‘causey’ (chaussée) becomes ‘causeway’{269}, ‘rachitis’ ‘rickets’{270},
and in French ‘mandragora’ ‘main de gloire’{271}.
{Sidenote: ‘_Necromancy_’}
‘Necromancy’ is another word which, if not now, yet for a long period
was erroneously spelt, and indeed assumed a different shape, under the
influence of an erroneous derivation; which, curiously enough, even now
that it has been dismissed, has left behind it the marks of its
presence, in our common phrase, “the _Black_ Art”. I need hardly remind
you that ‘necromancy’ is a Greek word, which signifies, according to its
proper meaning, a prophesying by aid of the dead, or that it rests on
the presumed power of raising up by potent spells the dead, and
compelling them to give answers about things to come. We all know that
it was supposed possible to exercise such power; we have a very awful
example of it in the story of the witch of Endor, and a very horrid one
in Lucan{272}. But the Latin medieval writers, whose Greek was either
little or none, spelt the word, ‘nigromantia’, as if its first syllables
had been Latin: at the same time, not wholly forgetting the original
meaning, but in fact getting round to it though by a wrong process, they
understood the dead by these ‘nigri’, or blacks, whom they had brought
into the word{273}. Down to a rather late period we find the forms,
‘_negro_mancer’ and ‘_negro_mancy’ frequent in English.
{Sidenote: _Words Misspelt_}
‘Pleurisy’ used often to be spelt, (I do not think it is so now,)
without an ‘e’ in the first syllable, evidently on the tacit assumption
that it was from _plus pluris_{274}. When Shakespeare falls into an
error, he “makes the offence gracious”; yet, I think, he would scarcely
have written,
“For goodness growing to a _plurisy_
Dies of his own _too much_”,
but that _he_ too derived ‘plurisy’ from _pluris_. This, even with the
“small Latin and less Greek”, which Ben Jonson allows him, he scarcely
would have done, had the word presented itself in that form, which by
right of its descent from πλευρά (being a pain, stitch, or sickness _in
the side_) it ought to have possessed. Those who for ‘crucible’ wrote
‘chrysoble’ (Jeremy Taylor does so) must evidently have done this under
the assumption that the Greek for _gold_, and not the Latin for _cross_,
lay at the foundation of this word. ‘Anthymn’ instead of ‘anthem’
(Barrow so spells the word), rests plainly on a wrong etymology, even as
this spelling clearly betrays what that wrong etymology is. ‘Rhyme’ with
a ‘y’ is a modern misspelling; and would never have been but for the
undue influence which the Greek ‘rhythm’ has exercised upon it. Spenser
and his cotemporaries spell it ‘rime’. ‘Abominable’ was by some
etymologists of the seventeenth century spelt ‘abhominable’, as though
it were that which departed from the human (ab homine) into the bestial
or devilish.
In all these words which I have adduced last, the correct spelling has
in the end resumed its sway. It is not so with ‘frontisp_ie_ce’, which
ought to be spelt ‘frontisp_i_ce’ (it was so by Milton and others),
being the low Latin ‘frontispicium’, from ‘frons’ and ‘aspicio’, the
forefront of the building, that part which presents itself to the view.
It was only the entirely ungrounded notion that the word ‘piece’
constitutes the last syllable, which has given rise to our present
orthography{275}.
{Sidenote: Wrong Spelling}