'chimerical,' Hermes 'hermetic,' Pan 'panic,' Paean, being a name of
Apollo, the 'peony,' Tantalus 'to tantalize,' Hercules 'herculean,'
Proteus 'protean,' Vulcan 'volcano' and 'volcanic,' and Daedalus
'dedal,' if this word, for which Spenser, Wordsworth, and Shelley have
all stood godfathers, may find allowance with us. The demi-god Atlas
figures with a world upon his shoulders in the title-page of some early
works on geography; and has probably in this way lent to our map-books
their name. Gordius, the Phrygian king who tied the famous 'gordian'
knot which Alexander cut, will supply a natural transition from
mythical to historical. The 'daric,' a Persian gold coin, very much of
the same value as our own rose noble, had its name from Darius.
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 'mithridate' (Dryden) for antidote; as from
Hippocrates we derived 'hipocras,' or 'ypocras,' often occurring in our
early poets, being a wine supposed to be mingled after the great
physician's receipt. Gentius, a king of Illyria, gave his name to the
plant 'gentian,' having been, it is said, the first to discover its
virtues. [Footnote: Pliny, _H. N._ xxv. 34.] Glaubers, who has
bequeathed his salts to us, was a Dutch chemist of the seventeenth
century. A grammar used to be called a 'donat' or 'donet' (Chaucer),
from Donatus, a Roman grammarian of the fourth century, whose Latin
grammar held its place as a school-book during a large part of the
Middle Ages. Othman, more than any other the grounder of the Turkish
dominion in Europe, reappears in our 'Ottoman'; and Tertullian,
strangely enough, in the Spanish 'tertulia.' The beggar Lazarus has
given us 'lazar' and 'lazaretto'; Veronica and the legend connected
with her name, a 'vernicle,' being a napkin with the Saviour's face
impressed upon it. Simon Magus gave us 'simony'; this, however, as we
understand it now, is not a precise reproduction of his sin as recorded
in Scripture. A common fossil shell is called an 'ammonite' from the
fanciful resemblance to the twisted horns of Jupiter Ammon which was
traced in it; Ammon again appearing in 'ammonia.' Our 'pantaloons' are
from St. Pantaleone; he was the patron saint of the Venetians, who
therefore very commonly received Pantaleon as their Christian name; it
was from them transferred to a garment which they much affected.
'Dunce,' as we have seen, is derived from Duns Scotus. To come to more
modern times, and not pausing at Ben Jonson's 'chaucerisms,' Bishop
Hall's 'scoganisms,' from Scogan, Edward the Fourth's jester, or his
'aretinisms,' from Aretin; these being probably not intended even by
their authors to endure; a Roman cobbler named Pasquin has given us the
'pasquil' or 'pasquinade.' Derrick was the common hangman in the time
of Charles II.; he bequeathed his name to the crane used for the
lifting and moving of heavy weights. [Footnote: [But _derick_ in the
sense of 'gallows' occurs as early as 1606 in Dekker's _Seven Deadly
Sins of London_, ed. Arber, p. 17; see Skeat's _Etym. Dict._, ed. 2, p.
799.]] 'Patch,' a name of contempt not unfrequent in Shakespeare, was,
it is said, the proper name of a favourite fool of Cardinal Wolsey's.
[Footnote: [The Cardinal's two fools were occasionally called _patch_,
a term for a 'domestic fool,' from the patchy, parti-coloured dress;
see Skeat (s. v.).]] Colonel Negus in Queen Anne's time is reported to
have first mixed the beverage which goes by his name. Lord Orrery was
the first for whom an 'orrery' was constructed; Lord Spencer first wore,
or first brought into fashion, a 'spencer'; and the Duke of Roquelaure
the cloak which still bears his name. Dahl, a Swede, introduced from
Mexico the cultivation of the 'dahlia'; the 'fuchsia' is named after
Fuchs, a German botanist of the sixteenth century; the 'magnolia' after
Magnol, a distinguished French botanist of the beginning of the
eighteenth; while the 'camelia' was introduced into Europe from Japan
in 1731 by Camel, a member of the Society of Jesus; the 'shaddock' by
Captain Shaddock, who first transplanted this fruit from the West
Indies. In 'quassia' we have the name of a negro sorcerer of Surinam,
who in 1730 discovered its properties, and after whom it was called. An
unsavoury jest of Vespasian has attached his name in French to an
unsavoury spot. 'Nicotine,' the poison recently drawn from tobacco,
goes back for its designation to Nicot, a physician, who first
introduced the tobacco-plant to the general notice of Europe. The
Gobelins were a family so highly esteemed in France that the
manufactory of tapestry which they had established in Paris did not
drop their name, even after it had been purchased and was conducted by
the State. A French Protestant refugee, Tabinet, first made 'tabinet'
in Dublin; another Frenchman, Goulard, a physician of Montpellier, gave
his to the soothing lotion, not unknown in our nurseries. The 'tontine'
was conceived by Tonti, an Italian; another Italian, Galvani, first
noted the phenomena of animal electricity or 'galvanism'; while a third,
Volta, lent a title to the 'voltaic' battery. Dolomieu, a French
geologist, first called attention to a peculiar formation of rocks in
Eastern Tyrol, called 'dolomites' after him. Colonel Martinet was a
French officer appointed by Louvois as an army inspector; one who did
his work excellently well, but has left a name bestowed often since on
mere military pedants. 'Macintosh,' 'doyly,' 'brougham,' 'hansom,' 'to
mesmerize,' 'to macadamize,' 'to burke,' 'to boycott,' are all names of
persons or words formed from their names, and then transferred to
things or actions, on the ground of some sort of connexion between the
one and the other. [Footnote: Several other such words we have in
common with the French. Of their own they have 'sardanapalisme,' any
piece of profuse luxury, from Sardanapalus. For 'lambiner,' to dally or
loiter over a task, they are indebted to Denis Lambin, a worthy Greek
scholar of the sixteenth century, but accused of sluggish movement and
wearisome diffuseness in style. Every reader of Pascal's _Provincial
Letters_ will remember Escobar, the famous casuist of the Jesuits,
whose convenient devices for the relaxation of the moral law have there
been made famous. To the notoriety which he thus acquired, he owes his
introduction into the French language; where 'escobarder' is used in
the sense of to equivocate, and 'escobarderie' of subterfuge or
equivocation. A pale green colour is in French called 'céladon' from a
personage of this name, of a feeble and _fade_ tenderness, who figures
in _Astrée_, a popular romance of the seventeenth century. An unpopular
minister of finance, M. de Silhouette, unpopular because he sought to
cut down unnecessary expenses in the State, saw his name transferred to
the slight and thus cheap black outline portrait called a 'silhouette'
(Sismondi, _Hist, des Français_, vol. xix, pp. 94, 95). In the
'mansarde' roof we are reminded of Mansart, the architect who
introduced it. In 'marivaudage' the name of Marivaux is bound up, who
was noted for the affected euphuism which goes by this name; very much
as the sophist Gorgias gave [Greek: gorgiazein] to the Greek. The point
of contact between the 'fiacre' and St. Fiacre is well known: hackney
carriages, when first established in Paris, waited for their hiring in
the court of an hotel which was adorned with an image of the Scottish
saint.] To these I may add 'guillotine,' though Dr. Guillotin did not
invent this instrument of death, even as it is a baseless legend that
he died by it. Some improvements in it he made, and it thus happened
that it was called after him.
Nor less shall we find history, at all events literary history, in the
noting of the popular characters in books, who have supplied words that
have passed into common speech. 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 talk about him, he
has given us 'to hector'; [Footnote: See Col. Mure, _Language and
Literature of Ancient Greece_, vol. i. p. 350.] while the medieval
romances about the siege of Troy ascribe to Pandarus that shameful
traffic out of which his name has passed into the words 'to pander' and
'pandarism.' 'Rodomontade' is from Rodomonte, a hero of Boiardo; who
yet, it must be owned, does not bluster and boast, as the word founded
on his name seems to imply; adopted by Ariosto, it was by him changed
into Rodamonte. 'Thrasonical' is from Thraso, the braggart of Roman
comedy. Cervantes has given us 'quixotic'; Swift 'lilliputian'; to
Molière the French language owes 'tartuffe' and 'tartufferie.'
'Reynard' with us is a sort of duplicate for fox, while in French
'renard' has quite excluded the old 'volpils' being originally no more
than 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 this poem we gather from many evidences--from none more
clearly than from this. 'Chanticleer' is the name of the cock, and
'Bruin' of the bear in the same poem. [Footnote: See Génin, _Des
Variations du Langage Français_, p.12] These have not made fortune to
the same extent of actually putting out of use names which before
existed, but contest the right of existence with them.
Occasionally a name will embody and give permanence to an error; as
when in 'America' the discovery of the New World, which belonged to
Columbus, is ascribed to another eminent discoverer, but one who had no
title to this honour, even as he was entirely guiltless of any attempt
to usurp it for himself. [Footnote: Humboldt has abundantly shown this
(_Kosmos_, vol. ii. note 457). He ascribes its general reception to its
introduction into a popular work on geography, published in 1507. The
subject has also been very carefully treated by Major, _Life of Prince
Henry the Navigator_, 1868. pp. 382-388] Our 'turkeys' are not from
Turkey, as was assumed by those who so called them, but from that New
World where alone they are native. This error the French in another
shape repeat with their 'dinde' originally 'poulet _d'Inde_,' or Indian
fowl. There lies in 'gipsy' or Egyptian, the assumption that Egypt was
the original home of this strange people; as was widely believed when
they made their first appearance in Europe early in the fifteenth
century. That this, however, was a mistake, their language leaves no
doubt; proclaiming as it does that they are wanderers from a more
distant East, an outcast tribe from Hindostan. 'Bohemians' as they are
called by the French, testifies to a similar error, to the fact that at
their first apparition in Western Europe they were supposed by the
common people in France to be the expelled Hussites of Bohemia.
Where words have not embodied an error, it will yet sometimes happen
that the sound or spelling will _to us_ suggest one. Against such in
these studies it will be well to be on our guard. Thus many of us have
been tempted to put 'domus' and 'dominus' into a connexion which really
does not exist. There has been a stage in most boys' geographical
knowledge, when they have taken for granted that 'Jutland' was so
called, not because it was the land of the Jutes, but on account of its
_jutting_ out into the sea in so remarkable a manner. At a much later
period of their education, 'Aborigines,' being the proper name of an
Italian tribe, might very easily lead astray. [Footnote: See Pauly,
_Encyclop._ s. v. Latium.] Who is there that has not mentally put the
Gulf of Lyons in some connexion with the city of the same name? We may
be surprised that the Gulf should have drawn its title from a city so
remote and so far inland, but we accept the fact notwithstanding: the
river Rhone, flowing by the one, and disemboguing in the other, seems
to offer to us a certain link of connexion. There is indeed no true
connexion at all between the two. In old texts this Gulf is generally
called _Sinus Gallicus_; in the fourteenth century a few writers began
to call it _Sinus Leonis_, the Gulf of the Lion, possibly from the
fierceness of its winds and waves, but at any rate by a name having
nothing to do with Lyons on the Rhone. The oak, in Greek [Greek: drys],
plays no inconsiderable part in the Ritual of the Druids; it is not
therefore wonderful if most students at one time of their lives have
put the two in etymological relation. The Greeks, who with so
characteristic a vanity assumed that the key to the meaning of words in
all languages was to be found in their own, did this of course. So, too,
there have not been wanting those who have traced in the name 'Jove' a
heathen reminiscence of the awful name of Jehovah; while yet, however
specious this may seem, on closer scrutiny the words declare that they
have no connexion with one another, any more than 'Iapetus' and
'Japheth,' or, I may add, than 'God' and 'good,' which yet by an
honourable moral instinct men can hardly refrain from putting into an
etymological relation with each other.
Sometimes a falsely-assumed derivation of a word has reacted upon and
modified its spelling. Thus it may have been with 'hurricane.' In the
tearing up and _hurrying_ away of the _canes_ in the sugar plantations
by this West-Indian tornado, many have seen an explanation of the name;
just in the same way as the Latin 'calamitas' has been derived from
'calamus,' the stalk of the corn. In both cases the etymology is
faulty; 'hurricane,' originally a Carib word, is only a transplanting
into our tongue of the Spanish 'huracan.'
It is a signal evidence of the conservative powers of language, that we
may continually trace in speech the record of customs and states of
society which have now passed so entirely away as to survive in these
words alone. For example, a 'stipulation' or agreement is so called, as
many affirm, from 'stipula,' a straw; and tells of a Roman custom, that
when two persons would make a mutual engagement with one another,
[Footnote: See on this disputed point, and on the relation between the
Latin 'stipulatio' and the old German custom not altogether dissimilar,
J. Grimm, _Deutsche Rechtsalterthümer_, pp. 121, sqq. [This account of
the derivation of 'stipulatio' is generally given up now; for Greek
cognates of the word see Curtius, _Greek Etymology_, No. 224.]] they
would break a straw between them. We all know what fact of English
history is laid up in 'curfew,' or 'couvre-feu.' The 'limner,' or
'illuminer,' for so we find the word in Fuller, throws us back on a
time when the _illumination_ of manuscripts was a leading occupation of
the painter. By 'lumber,' we are reminded that Lombards were the first
pawnbrokers, even as they were the first bankers, in England: a
'lumber'-room being a 'lombard'-room, or a room where the pawnbroker
stored his pledges. [Footnote: See my _Select Glossary_, s. v. Lumber.]
Nor need I do more than remind you that in our common phrase of
'_signing_ our name,' we preserve a record of a time when such first
rudiments of education as the power of writing, were the portion of so
few, that it was not as now an exception, but the custom, of most
persons to make their mark or 'sign'; great barons and kings themselves
not being ashamed to set this _sign_ or cross to the weightiest
documents. To 'subscribe' the name would more accurately express what
now we do. As often as we term arithmetic the science of calculation,
we implicitly allude to that rudimental stage in this science, when
pebbles (calculi) were used, as now among savage tribes they often are,
to help the practice of counting; the Greeks made the same use of one
word of theirs ([Greek: psephizein]); while in another ([Greek:
pempazein]) they kept record of a period when the _five_ fingers were
so employed. 'Expend,' 'expense,' tell us that money was once weighed
out (Gen. xxiii. 16), not counted out as now; 'pecunia,' 'peculatus,'
'fee' (vieh) keep record all of a time when cattle were the main
circulating medium. In 'library' we preserve the fact that books were
once written on the bark (liber) of trees; in 'volume' that they were
mostly rolls; in 'paper,' that the Egyptian papyrus, 'the paper-reeds
by the brooks,' furnished at one time the ordinary material on which
they were written.
Names thus so often surviving things, we have no right to turn an
etymology into an argument. There was a notable attempt to do this in
the controversy so earnestly carried on between the Greek and Latin
Churches, concerning the bread, whether it should be leavened or
unleavened, that was used at the Table of the Lord. Those of the
Eastern Church constantly urged that the Greek word for bread (and in
Greek was the authoritative record of the first institution of this
sacrament), implied, according to its root, that which was raised or
lifted up; not, therefore, to use a modern term, 'sad' or set, or, in
other words, unleavened bread; such rather as had undergone the process
of fermentation. But even if the etymology on which they relied (artos
from airo, to raise) had been as certain as it is questionable, they
could draw no argument of the slightest worth from so remote an
etymology, and one which had so long fallen out of the consciousness of
those who employed the word.
Theories too, which long since were utterly renounced, have yet left
their traces behind them. Thus 'good humour.' 'bad humour.' 'humours,'
and, strangest contradiction of all, '_dry_ humour,' rest altogether on
a now exploded, but a very old and widely accepted, theory of medicine;
according to which there were four principal moistures or 'humours' in
the natural body, on the due proportion and combination of which the
disposition alike of body and mind depended. [Footnote: See the
_Prologue_ to Ben Jonson's _Every Man out of His Humour_.] Our present
use of 'temper' has its origin in the same theory; the due admixture,
or right tempering, of these humours gave what was called the happy
temper, or mixture, which, thus existing inwardly, manifested itself
also outwardly; while 'distemper,' which we still employ in the sense
of sickness, was that evil frame either of a man's body or his mind
(for it was used of both), which had its rise in an unsuitable mingling
of these humours. In these instances, as in many more, the great
streams of thought and feeling have changed their course, flowing now
in quite other channels from those which once they filled, but have
left these words as abiding memorials of the channels wherein once they
ran. Thus 'extremes,' 'golden mean,' 'category,' 'predicament,'
'axiom,' 'habit'--what are these but a deposit in our ethical
terminology which Aristotle has left behind him?
But we have not exhausted our examples of the way in which the record
of old errors, themselves dismissed long ago, will yet survive in
language--being bound up in words that grew into use when those errors
found credit, and that maintain their currency still. The mythology
which Saxon or Dane brought with them from their German or Scandinavian
homes is as much extinct for us as are the Lares, Larvae, and Lemures
of heathen Rome; yet the deposit it has permanently left behind it in
the English language is not inconsiderable. 'Lubber,' 'dwarf,' 'oaf,'
'droll,' 'wight,' 'puck,' 'urchin,' 'hag,' 'night-mare,' 'gramary,'
'Old Nick,' 'changeling' (wechselkind), suggest themselves, as all
bequeathed to us by that old Teutonic demonology. [Footnote: [But the
words _puck_, _urchin_, _gramary_, are not of Teutonic origin. The
etymology of _puck_ is unknown; _urchin_ means properly 'a hedgehog,'
being the old French _eriçon_ (in modern French _hérisson_), a
derivative from the Latin _ericius_, 'a hedgehog'; _gramary_ is simply
Old French _gramaire_, 'grammar' = Lat. _grammatica_ (_ars_), just as
Old French _mire_, 'a medical man' = Lat. _medicum_.]] Few now have
any faith in astrology, or count that the planet under which a man is
born will affect his temperament, make him for life of a disposition
grave or gay, lively or severe. Yet our language affirms as much; for
we speak of men as 'jovial' or 'saturnine,' or 'mercurial'--'jovial,'
as being born under the planet Jupiter or Jove, which was the
joyfullest star, and of happiest augury of all: [Footnote: 'Jovial' in
Shakespeare's time (see _Cymbeline_, act 5, sc. 4) had not forgotten
its connexion with Jove.] a gloomy severe person is said to be
'saturnine,' born, that is, under the planet Saturn, who makes those
that own his influence, having been born when he was in the ascendant,
grave and stern as himself: another we call 'mercurial,' or light-
hearted, as those born under the planet Mercury were accounted to be.
The same faith in the influence of the stars survives in 'disastrous,'
'ill-starred,' 'ascendancy,' 'lord of the ascendant,' and, indeed, in
'influence' itself. What a record of old speculations, old certainly as
Aristotle, and not yet exploded in the time of Milton, [Footnote: See
_Paradise Lost_, iii. 714-719.] does the word 'quintessence' contain;
and 'arsenic' the same; no other namely than this that metals are of
different sexes, some male ([Greek: arsenika]), and some female. Again,
what curious legends belong to the 'sardonic' [Footnote: See an
excellent history of this word, in Rost and Palm's _Greek Lexicon_, s.
v. [Greek: sardonios].] or Sardinian, laugh; a laugh caused, as was
supposed, by a plant growing in Sardinia, of which they who ate, died
laughing; to the 'barnacle' goose, [Footnote: For a full and most
interesting study on this very curious legend, see Max Müller's
_Lectures on Language_, vol. ii. pp. 533-551; [for the etymology of the
word _barnacle_ in this connexion see the _New English Dictionary_ (s.
v.).]] to the 'amethyst' esteemed, as the word implies, a preventive
or antidote of drunkenness; and to other words not a few, which are
employed by us still.
A question presents itself here, and one not merely speculative; for it
has before now become a veritable case of conscience with some whether
they ought to use words which originally rested on, and so seem still
to affirm, some superstition or untruth. This question has practically
settled itself; the words will keep their ground: but further, they
have a right to do this; for no word need be considered so to root
itself in its etymology, and to draw its sap and strength from thence,
that it cannot detach itself from this, and acquire the rights of an
independent existence. And thus our _weekly_ newspapers commit no
absurdity in calling themselves 'journals,' or 'diurnals'; and we as
little when we name that a 'journey' which occupies not one, but
several days. We involve ourselves in no real contradiction, speaking
of a 'quarantine' of five, ten, or any number of days more or fewer
than _forty_; or of a population 'decimated' by a plague, though
exactly a tenth of it has not perished. A stone coffin may be still a
'sarcophagus,' without thereby implying that it has any special
property of consuming the flesh of bodies which are laid within
it. [Footnote: See Pliny, _H. N._ ii. 96; xxxvi. 17.] In like manner the
wax of our 'candles' ('candela,' from 'candeo') is not necessarily
_white_; our 'rubrics' retain their name, though seldom printed in
_red_ ink; neither need our 'miniatures' abandon theirs, though no
longer painted with _minium_ or carmine; our 'surplice' is not usually
worn over an undergarment of skins; our 'stirrups' are not ropes by
whose aid we climb upon our horses; nor are 'haversacks' sacks for the
carrying of oats; it is not barley or bere only which we store up in
our 'barns,' nor hogs' fat in our 'larders'; a monody need not be sung
by a single voice; and our lucubrations are not always by candlelight;
a 'costermonger' or 'costardmonger' does not of necessity sell costards
or apples; there are 'palaces' which are not built on the Palatine
Hill; and 'nausea' [Footnote: [From _nausea_ through the French comes
our English _noise_; see Bartsch and Horning, Section 90.]] which is
not sea-sickness. I remember once asking a class of school-children,
whether an announcement which during one very hard winter appeared in
the papers, of a '_white_ _black_bird' having been shot, might be
possibly correct, or was on the face of it self-contradictory and
absurd. The less thoughtful members of the class instantly pronounced
against it; while after a little consideration, two or three made
answer that it might very well be, that, while without doubt the bird
had originally obtained this name from its blackness, yet 'blackbird'
was now the name of a species, and a name so cleaving to it, as not to
be forfeited, even when the blackness had quite disappeared. We do not
question the right of the '_New_ Forest' to retain this title of New,
though it has now stood for eight hundred years; nor of 'Naples' to be
_New_ City (Neapolis) still, after an existence three or four times as
long.