spelling; that I have bestowed on them so much of my own attention,
that I have claimed for them so much of yours; yet in truth I cannot
regard them as unworthy of our very closest heed. For indeed of how much
beyond itself is accurate or inaccurate spelling the certain indication.
Thus when we meet ‘s_y_ren’, for ‘s_i_ren’, as so strangely often we do,
almost always in newspapers, and often where we should hardly have
expected (I met it lately in the _Quarterly Review_, and again in
Gifford’s _Massinger_), how difficult it is not to be “judges of evil
thoughts”, and to take this slovenly misspelling as the specimen and
evidence of an inaccuracy and ignorance which reaches very far wider
than the single word which is before us. But why is it that so much
significance is ascribed to a wrong spelling? Because ignorance of a
word’s spelling at once argues ignorance of its origin and derivation. I
do not mean that one who spells rightly may not be ignorant of it too,
but he who spells wrongly is certainly so. Thus, to recur to the example
I have just adduced, he who for ‘s_i_ren’ writes ‘s_y_ren’, certainly
knows nothing of the magic _cords_ (σειραί) of song, by which those fair
enchantresses were supposed to draw those that heard them to their
ruin{276}.
Correct or incorrect orthography being, then, this note of accurate or
inaccurate knowledge, we may confidently conclude where two spellings
of a word exist, and are both employed by persons who generally write
with precision and scholarship, that there must be something to account
for this. It will generally be worth your while to inquire into the
causes which enable both spellings to hold their ground and to find
their supporters, not ascribing either one or the other to mere
carelessness or error. It will in these cases often be found that two
spellings exist, because two views of the word’s origin exist, and each
of those spellings is the correct expression of one of these. The
question therefore which way of spelling should continue, and wholly
supersede the other, and which, while the alternative remains, we should
ourselves employ, can only be settled by settling which of these
etymologies deserves the preference. So is it, for example, with
‘ch_y_mist’ and ‘ch_e_mist’, neither of which has obtained in our common
use the complete mastery over the other{277}. It is not here, as in some
other cases, that one is certainly right, the other as certainly wrong:
but they severally represent two different etymologies of the word, and
each is correct according to its own. If we are to spell ‘ch_y_mist’ and
‘ch_y_mistry’, it is because these words are considered to be derived
from the Greek word, χυμός, sap; and the chymic art will then have
occupied itself first with distilling the juice and sap of plants, and
will from this have derived its name. I have little doubt, however, that
the other spelling, ‘ch_e_mist’, not ‘ch_y_mist’, is the correct one. It
was not with the distillation of herbs, but with the amalgamation of
metals, that chemistry occupied itself at its rise, and the word
embodies a reference to Egypt, the land of Ham or ‘Cham’{278}, in which
this art was first practised with success.
{Sidenote: ‘_Satyr_’, ‘_Satire_’}
Of how much confusion the spelling which used to be so common, ‘satyr’
for ‘satire’, is at once the consequence, the expression, and again the
cause; not indeed that this confusion first began with us{279}; for the
same already found place in the Latin, where ‘satyricus’ was continually
written for ‘satiricus’ out of a false assumption of the identity
between the Roman _satire_ and the Greek _satyric_ drama. The Roman
‘satira’,--I speak of things familiar to many of my hearers,--is
properly a _full_ dish (lanx being understood)--a dish heaped up with
various ingredients, a ‘farce’ (according to the original signification
of that word), or hodge-podge; and the word was transferred from this to
a form of poetry which at first admitted the utmost variety in the
materials of which it was composed, and the shapes into which these
materials were wrought up; being the only form of poetry which the
Romans did _not_ borrow from the Greeks. Wholly different from this,
having no one point of contact with it in its form, its history, or its
intention, is the ‘satyric’ drama of Greece, so called because Silenus
and the ‘Satyrs’ supplied the chorus; and in their naïve selfishness,
and mere animal instincts, held up before men a mirror of what they
would be, if only the divine, which is also the truly human, element of
humanity, were withdrawn; what man, all that properly made him man being
withdrawn, would prove.
{Sidenote: ‘_Mid-wife_’, ‘_Nostril_’}
And then what light, as we have already seen, does the older spelling of
a word often cast upon its etymology; how often does it clear up the
mystery, which would otherwise have hung about it, or which _had_ hung
about it till some one had noticed and turned to profit this its earlier
spelling. Thus ‘dirge’ is always spelt ‘dirige’ in early English. This
‘dirige’ may be the first word in a Latin psalm or prayer once used at
funerals; there is a reasonable probability that the explanation of the
word is here; at any rate, if it is not here, it is nowhere{280}. The
derivation of ‘mid-wife’ is uncertain, and has been the subject of
discussion; but when we find it spelt ‘medewife’ and ‘meadwife’, in
Wiclif’s Bible, this leaves hardly a doubt that it is the _wife_ or
woman who acts for a _mead_ or reward{281}. In cases too where there
was no mystery hanging about a word, how often does the early spelling
make clear to all that which was before only known to those who had made
the language their study. For example, if an early edition of Spenser
should come into your hands, or a modern one in which the early spelling
is retained, what continual lessons in English might you derive from it.
Thus ‘nostril’ is always spelt by him and his cotemporaries
‘nosethrill’; a little earlier it was ‘nosethirle’. Now ‘to thrill’ is
the same as to drill or pierce; it is plain then here at once that the
word signifies the orifice or opening with which the _nose_ is
_thrilled_, drilled, or pierced. We might have read the word for ever in
our modern spelling without being taught this. ‘Ell’ tells us nothing
about itself; but in ‘eln’ used in Holland’s translation of Camden, we
recognize ‘ulna’ at once.
Again, the ‘morris’ or ‘morrice-dance’, which is alluded to so often by
our early poets, as it is now spelt informs us nothing about itself; but
read ‘_moriske_ dance’, as it is generally spelt by Holland and his
cotemporaries, and you will scarcely fail to perceive that of which
indeed there is no manner of doubt; namely, that it was so called either
because it was really, or was supposed to be, a dance in use among the
_moriscoes_ of Spain, and from thence introduced into England{282}.
Again, philologers tell us, and no doubt rightly, that our ‘cray-fish’,
or ‘craw-fish’, is the French ‘écrevisse’. This is true, but certainly
it is not self-evident. Trace however the word through these successive
spellings, ‘krevys’ (Lydgate), ‘crevish’ (Gascoigne), ‘craifish’
(Holland), and the chasm between ‘cray-fish’ or ‘craw-fish’ and
‘écrevisse’ is by aid of these three intermediate spellings bridged over
at once; and in the fact of our Gothic ‘fish’ finding its way into this
French word we see only another example of a law, which has been already
abundantly illustrated in this lecture{283}.
{Sidenote: ‘_Emmet_’, ‘_Ant_’}
In other ways also an accurate taking note of the spelling of words, and
of the successive changes which it has undergone, will often throw light
upon them. Thus we may know, others having assured us of the fact, that
‘ant’ and ‘emmet’ were originally only two different spellings of one
and the same word; but we may be perplexed to understand how two forms
of a word, now so different, could ever have diverged from a single
root. When however we find the different spellings, ‘emmet’, ‘emet’,
‘amet’, ‘amt’, ‘ant’, the gulf which appeared to separate ‘emmet’ from
‘ant’ is bridged over at once, and we do not merely know on the
assurance of others that these two are in fact identical, their
differences being only superficial, but we perceive clearly in what
manner they are so{284}.
Even before any close examination of the matter, it is hard not to
suspect that ‘runagate’ is in fact another form of ‘renegade’, slightly
transformed, as so many words, to put an English signification into its
first syllable; and then the meaning gradually modified in obedience to
the new derivation which was assumed to be its original and true one.
Our suspicion of this is very greatly strengthened (for we see how very
closely the words approach one another), by the fact that ‘renega_d_e’
is constantly spelt ‘renega_t_e’ in our old authors, while at the same
time the denial of _faith_, which is now a necessary element in
‘renegade’, and one differencing it inwardly from ‘runagate’, is
altogether wanting in early use--the denial of _country_ and of the
duties thereto owing being all that is implied in it. Thus it is
constantly employed in Holland’s _Livy_ as a rendering of ‘perfuga’{285};
while in the one passage where ‘runagate’ occurs in the Prayer Book
Version of the Psalms (Ps. lxviii. 6), a reference to the original will
show that the translators could only have employed it there on the
ground that it also expressed rebel, revolter, and not runaway
merely{286}.
{Sidenote: _Assimilating Power of English_}
I might easily occupy your attention much longer, so little barren or
unfruitful does this subject of spelling appear likely to prove; but all
things must have an end; and as I concluded my first lecture with a
remarkable testimony borne by an illustrious German scholar to the
merits of our English tongue, I will conclude my last with the words of
another, not indeed a German, but still of the great Germanic stock;
words resuming in themselves much of which we have been speaking upon
this and upon former occasions: “As our bodies”, he says, “have hidden
resources and expedients, to remove the obstacles which the very art of
the physician puts in its way, so language, ruled by an indomitable
inward principle, triumphs in some degree over the folly of grammarians.
Look at the English, polluted by Danish and Norman conquests, distorted
in its genuine and noble features by old and recent endeavours to mould
it after the French fashion, invaded by a hostile entrance of Greek and
Latin words, threatening by increasing hosts to overwhelm the indigenous
terms. In these long contests against the combined power of so many
forcible enemies, the language, it is true, has lost some of its power
of inversion in the structure of sentences, the means of denoting the
difference of gender, and the nice distinctions by inflection and
termination--almost every word is attacked by the spasm of the accent
and the drawing of consonants to wrong positions; yet the old English
principle is not overpowered. Trampled down by the ignoble feet of
strangers, its springs still retain force enough to restore itself. It
lives and plays through all the veins of the language; it impregnates
the innumerable strangers entering its dominions with its temper, and
stains them with its colour, not unlike the Greek which in taking up
oriental words, stripped them of their foreign costume, and bid them to
appear as native Greeks”{287}.
{FOOTNOTES}
{228} In proof that it need not be so, I would only refer to a paper,
_On Orthographical Expedients_, by Edwin Guest, Esq., in the
_Transactions of the Philological Society_, vol. iii. p. 1.
{229} [The scientific treatises on Phonetics of Mr. Alexander J. Ellis
and Dr. Henry Sweet have surmounted the difficulty of registering
sounds with great accuracy.]
{230} I have not observed this noticed in our dictionaries as the
original form of the phrase. There is no doubt however of the
fact; see _Stanihurst’s Ireland_, p. 33, in Holinshed’s
_Chronicles_. [Rather from _torvien_, to throw,--Skeat].
{231} _Notes and Queries_, No. 147.
{232} See Boswell’s _Life of Johnson_, Croker’s edit. 1848, p. 233.
{233} [The _b_ was purposely foisted into these words by bookmen to
suggest their Latin derivation; it did not belong to them in
earlier English. The same may be said of the _g_, intruded into
‘deign’ and ‘feign’.]
{234} A chief phonographer writes to me to deny that this is the present
spelling (1856) of ‘Europe’. It was so when this paragraph was
written. [Most people would now consider [Yeuroap] as American
pronunciation.]
{235} Quintilian has expressed himself with the true dignity of a
scholar on this matter (_Inst._ 1, 6, 45): Consuetudinem sermonis
vocabo _consensum eruditorum_; sicut vivendi consensum
bonorum.--How different from innovations like this the changes in
the spelling of German which J. Grimm, so far as his own example
may reach, _has_ introduced; and the still bolder and more
extensive ones which in the _Preface_ to his _Deutsches
Wörterbuch_, pp. liv.-lxii., he avows his desire to see
introduced;--as the employment of _f_, not merely where it is at
present used, but also wherever _v_ is now employed; the
substituting of the _v_, which would be thus disengaged, for _w_,
and the entire dismissal of _w_. They may be advisable, or they
may not; it is not for strangers to offer an opinion; but at any
rate they are not a seizing of the fluctuating, superficial
accidents of the present, and a seeking to give permanent
authority to these, but they all rest on a deep historic study of
the language, and of the true genius of the language.
{236} Croker’s edit. 1848, pp. 57, 61, 233.
{237} [An incorrect conclusion. Almost all ‘ea’ words were pronounced
‘ai’ down to the eighteenth century. Thus ‘great’ was a true rhyme
to ‘cheat’ and ‘complete’, their ordinary pronunciation being
‘grait’, ‘chait’, ‘complait’.]
{238} [i.e. ‘Lunnun’.]
{239} _A proposal for correcting, improving and ascertaining the English
Tongue_, 1711, Works, vol. ix, pp. 139-59.
{240} [‘Devest’ was still in use till the end of the eighteenth century,
but ‘divest’ is already found in _King Lear_, 1605, i, 1, 50.]
{241} Pygmæi, quasi _cubitales_ (Augustine).
{242} First so used by Theophrastus in Greek, and by Pliny in
Latin.--The real identity of the two words explains Milton’s use
of ‘diamond’ in _Paradise Lost_, b. 7; and also in that sublime
passage in his _Apology for Smectymnuus_: “Then zeal, whose
substance is ethereal, arming in complete _diamond_”.--Diez
(_Wörterbuch d. Roman. Sprachen_, p. 123) supposes, not very
probably, that it was under a certain influence of ‘_dia_fano’,
the translucent, that ‘adamante’ was in the Italian, whence we
have derived the word, changed into ‘_dia_mante’.
{243} [Similarly _jowl_ for _chowl_ or _chavel_.]
{244} _Richard III_, Act iv, Sc. 4.
{245} [For another account of this word, approved by Dr. Murray, see
_The Folk and their Word-Lore_, p. 156.]
{246} [‘Bliss’ representing the old English _bliths_ or _blidhs_,
blitheness, is really a quite distinct word from ‘bless’, standing
for _blets_, old English _blétsian_ (=_blóedsian_, to consecrate
with blood, _blód_), although the latter was by a folk-etymology
very frequently spelt ‘bliss’.]
{247} [But ‘afraied’ is the earliest form of the word (1350), the verb
itself being at first spelt ‘afray’ (1325). N.E.D.]
{248} How close this relationship was once, not merely in respect of
etymology, but also of significance, a passage like this will
prove: “Perchance, as vultures are said to smell the earthiness of
a dying corpse; so this bird of prey [the evil spirit which
personated Samuel, 1 Sam. xxviii. 41] _resented_ a worse than
earthly savor in the soul of Saul, as evidence of his death at
hand”. (Fuller, _The Profane State_, b. 5, c. 4.)
{249} [There is an unfortunate confusion here between ‘heal’ to make
‘hale’ or ‘[w]hole’ (Anglo-Saxon _hælan_) and the old (and
Provincial) English _hill_, to cover, _hilling_, covering,
_hellier_, a slater, akin to ‘hell’, the covered place, ‘helm’;
Icelandic _hylja_, to cover.]
{250} [By a curious slip Dr. Trench here confounds ‘recover’, to
recuperate or regain health (derived through old French _recovrer_
from Latin _recuperare_), with a totally distinct word _re-cover_,
to cover or clothe over again, which comes from old French
_covrir_, Latin _co-operire_. It is just the difference between
‘recovering’ a lost umbrella through the police and ‘recovering’ a
torn one at a shop. I pointed this out to the author in 1869, and
I think he altered the passage in his later editions.]
{251} [‘Island’, though cognate with Anglo-Saxon _eá-land_ “water-land”
(German _ei-land_), is really identical with Anglo-Saxon
_íg-land_, i.e. “isle-land”, from _íg_, an island, the diminutive
of which survives in _eyot_ or _ait_.]
{252} [The editor essayed to make a complete collection of this class of
words in his _Folk-etymology, a Dictionary of Words corrupted by
False Derivation or Mistaken Analogy_, 1882, and more recently in
a condensed form in _The Folk and their Word-Lore_, 1904.]
{253} Diez looks with much favour on this process, and calls it, ein
sinnreiches mittel fremdlinge ganz heimisch zu machen.
{254} Ammianus Marcellinus, xxii, 15, 28.
{255} [The Greek _pyramis_ probably represents the Egyptian
_piri-m-ûisi_ (Maspero, _Dawn of Civilization_, 358), or
_pir-am-us_ (Brugsch, _Egypt under the Pharaohs_, i, 73), rather
than _pi-ram_, ‘the height’ (Birch, _Bunsen’s Egypt_, v, 763).]
{256} Tacitus, _Hist._ v. 2.
{257} Let me illustrate this by further instances in a note. Thus
βούτυρον, from which, through the Latin, our ‘butter’ has
descended to us, is borrowed (Pliny, _H.N._ xxviii. 9) from a
Scythian word, now to us unknown: yet it is sufficiently plain
that the Greeks so shaped and spelt it as to contain apparent
allusion to _cow_ and _cheese_; there is in βούτυρον an evident
feeling after βοῦς and τυρόν. Bozra, meaning citadel in Hebrew and
Phœnician, and the name, no doubt, which the citadel of Carthage
bore, becomes Βύρσα on Greek lips; and then the well known legend
of the ox-hide was invented upon the name; not having suggested
it, but being itself suggested by it. Herodian (v. 6) reproduces
the name of the Syrian goddess Astarte in a shape that is
significant also for Greek ears--Ἀστροάρχη, The Star-ruler, or
Star-queen. When the apostate and hellenizing Jews assumed Greek
names, ‘Eliakim’ or “Whom God has set”, became ‘Alcimus’ (ἄλκιμος)
or The Strong (1 Macc. vii. 5). Latin examples in like kind are
‘com_i_ssatio’, spelt continually ‘com_e_ssatio’, and
‘com_e_ssation’ by those who sought to naturalize it in England,
as though it were connected with ‘cŏmedo’, to eat, being indeed
the substantive from the verb ‘cōmissari’ (--κωμάζειν), to revel,
as Plutarch, whose Latin is in general not very accurate, long ago
correctly observed; and ‘orichalcum’, spelt often ‘_au_richalcum’,
as though it were a composite metal of mingled _gold_ and brass;
being indeed the _mountain_ brass (ὀρείχαλκος). The miracle play,
which is ‘mystère’, in French, whence our English ‘mystery’ was
originally written ‘mistère’, being properly derived from
‘ministère’, and having its name because the clergy, the
_ministri_ Ecclesiæ, conducted it. This was forgotten, and it then
took its present form of ‘mystery’, as though so called because
the mysteries of the faith were in it set out.
{258} We have here, in this bringing of the words by their supposed
etymology together, the explanation of the fact that Spenser
(_Fairy Queen_, i, 7, 44), Middleton (_Works_, vol. 5, pp. 524,
528, 538), and others employ ‘Tartary’ as equivalent to ‘Tartarus’
or hell.
{259} For a full discussion of this matter and fixing of the period at
which ‘sinfluot’ became ‘sündflut’, see the _Theol. Stud. u.
Krit._ vol. ii, p. 613; and Delitzsch, _Genesis_, 2nd ed. vol. ii,
p. 210.
{260} [The name of the small grape, originally _raisins de Corauntz_,
was transferred to the _ribes_ in the sixteenth century.]
{261} Ben Jonson, _The New Inn_, Act i, Sc. i.
{262} [On the contrary, it is the modern “Welsh _rarebit_” which has
been mistakenly evolved out of the older “Welsh _rabbit_” as I
have shown in _Folk-Etymology_, p. 431. Grose has both forms in
his _Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue_, 1785.]
{263} ‘Leghorn’ is sometimes quoted as an example of this; but
erroneously; for, as Admiral Smyth has shown (_The Mediterranean_,
p. 409) ‘Livorno’ is itself rather the modern corruption, and
‘Ligorno’ the name found on the earlier charts.
{264} Exactly the same happens in other languages; thus ‘armbrust’, a
crossbow, _looks_ German enough, and yet has nothing to do with
‘arm’ or ‘brust’, being a contraction of ‘arcubalista’, but a
contraction under these influences. As little has ‘abenteuer’
anything to do with ‘abend’ or ‘theuer’, however it may seem to be
connected with them, being indeed the Provençal ‘adventura’. And
‘weissagen’ in its earlier forms had nothing in common with
‘sagen’.
{265} [So Diez. But Prof. Skeat and Scheler see no reason why it should
not be direct from French _refuser_ and Low Latin _refusare_, from
_refusus_, rejected.]
{266} It is upon this word that De Quincey (_Life and Manners_, p. 70,
American Ed.) says excellently well: “It is in fact by such
corruptions, by off-sets upon an old stock, arising through
ignorance or mispronunciation originally, that every language is
frequently enriched; and new modifications of thought, unfolding
themselves in the progress of society, generate for themselves
concurrently appropriate expressions.... It must not be allowed to
weigh against a word once fairly naturalized by all, that
originally it crept in upon an abuse or a corruption. Prescription
is as strong a ground of legitimation in a case of this nature, as
it is in law. And the old axiom is applicable--Fieri non debuit,
factum valet. Were it otherwise, languages would be robbed of much
of their wealth”. [_Works_, vol. xiv., p. 201.]
{267} [The direct opposite is the fact. The French _contredanse_ was
borrowed from the English ‘country-dance’. See _The Folk and their
Word-Lore_, p. 153.]
{268} [These words are not identical. They were in use as distinct words
in the fifteenth century. See N.E.D.]
{269} [Dr. Murray has shown that ‘causeway’ is not a corruption of
‘causey’ but a compound of that word with ‘way’.]
{270} [Prof. Skeat has demonstrated that the supposed Greek ‘rachitis’,
inflammation of the back, is an ætiological invention to serve as
etymon of ‘rickets’, the condition of being rickety, a purely
native word. See also _Folk-Etymology_, 312.]
{271} [See _The Folk and their Word-Lore_, p. 124.]
{272} _Phars._ vi. 720-830.
{273} Thus in a _Vocabulary_, 1475: Nigromansia dicitur divinatio facta
_per nigros_.
{274} [Dyce believed that it was really thus derived and distinct from
_pleurisy_, but it was evidently modelled upon that word (_Remarks
on Editions of Shakespeare_, p. 218).]