prearranged purpose or plan. The working genius of the language
accomplishes its own objects, causes these synonymous words insensibly
to fall off from one another, and to acquire separate and peculiar
meanings. The most that any single writer can do, save indeed in the
terminology of science, is to assist an already existing inclination,
to bring to the clear consciousness of all that which already has been
obscurely felt by many, and thus to hasten the process of this
disengagement, or, as it has been well expressed, 'to regulate and
ordinate the evident nisus and tendency of the popular usage into a
severe definition'; and establish on a firm basis the distinction, so
that it shall not be lost sight of or brought into question again. Thus
long before Wordsworth wrote, it was obscurely felt by many that in
'imagination' there was more of the earnest, in 'fancy' of the play, of
the spirit, that the first was a loftier faculty and power than the
second. The tendency of the language was all in this direction. None
would for some time back have employed 'fancy' as Milton employs
it, [Footnote: _Paradise Lost_, v. 102-105 5 so too Longinus, _De
Subl._ 15.] ascribing to it operations which we have learned to reserve
for 'imagination' alone, and indeed subordinating 'imaginations' to
fancy, as a part of the materials with which it deals. Yet for all this
the words were continually, and not without injury, confounded.
Wordsworth first, in the _Preface_ to his _Lyrical Ballads_, rendered
it impossible for any, who had read and mastered what he had written
on the matter, to remain unconscious any longer of the essential
difference between them. [Footnote: Thus De Quincey (_Letters to a
Young Man whose Education has been neglected_): 'All languages tend to
clear themselves of synonyms, as intellectual culture advances; the
superfluous words being taken up and appropriated by new shades and
combinations of thought evolved in the progress of society. And long
before this appropriation is fixed and petrified, as it were, into the
acknowledged vocabulary of the language, an insensible _clinamen_ (to
borrow a Lucretian word) prepares the way for it. Thus, for instance,
before Mr. Wordsworth had unveiled the great philosophic distinction
between the powers of _fancy_ and _imagination_, the two words had
begun to diverge from each other, the first being used to express a
faculty somewhat capricious and exempted from law, the other to express
a faculty more self-determined. When, therefore, it was at length
perceived, that under an apparent unity of meaning there lurked a real
dualism, and for philosophic purposes it was necessary that this
distinction should have its appropriate expression, this necessity was
met half way by the _clinamen_ which had already affected the popular
usage of the words.' Compare what Coleridge had before said on the same
matter, _Biogr. Lit_. vol. i. p. 90; and what Ruskin, _Modern Painters_
part 3, Section 2, ch. 3, has said since. It is to Coleridge that we
owe the word 'to desynonymize' (_Biogr. Lit_. p. 87)--which is
certainly preferable to Professor Grote's 'despecificate.' Purists
indeed will object that it is of hybrid formation, the prefix Latin,
the body of the word Greek; but for all this it may very well stand
till a better is offered. Coleridge's own contributions, direct and
indirect, in this province are perhaps more in number and in value than
those of any other English writer; thus to him we owe the
disentanglement of 'fanaticism' and 'enthusiasm' (_Lit. Rem_. vol. ii.
p. 365); of 'keenness' and 'subtlety' (_Table-Talk_, p. 140); of
'poetry' and 'poesy' (_Lit. Rem_. vol. i. p. 219); of 'analogy' and
'metaphor' (_Aids to Reflection_, 1825, p. 198); and that on which he
himself laid so great a stress, of 'reason' and 'understanding.'] This
is but one example, an illustrious one indeed, of what has been going
forward in innumerable pairs of words. Thus in Wiclif's time and long
after, there seems to have been no difference recognized between a
'famine' and a 'hunger'; they both expressed the outward fact of a
scarcity of food. It was a genuine gain when, leaving to 'famine' this
meaning, by 'hunger' was expressed no longer the outward fact, but the
inward sense of the fact. Other pairs of words between which a
distinction is recognized now which was not recognized some centuries
ago, are the following: 'to clarify' and 'to glorify'; 'to admire' and
'to wonder'; 'to convince' and 'to convict'; 'reign' and 'kingdom';
'ghost' and 'spirit'; 'merit' and 'demerit'; 'mutton' and 'sheep';
'feminine' and 'effeminate'; 'mortal' and 'deadly'; 'ingenious' and
'ingenuous'; 'needful' and 'needy'; 'voluntary' and 'wilful.'
[footnote: For the exact difference between these, and other pairs or
larger groups of words, see my _Select Glossary_.]
A multitude of words in English are still waiting for a similar
discrimination. Many in due time will obtain it, and the language prove
so much the richer thereby; for certainly if Coleridge had right when
he affirmed that 'every new term expressing a fact or a difference not
precisely or adequately expressed by any other word in the same
language, is a new organ of thought for the mind that has learned
it.' [footnote: _Church and State_, p. 200.] we are justified in
regarding these distinctions which are still waiting to be made as so
much reversionary wealth in our mother tongue. Thus how real an ethical
gain would it be, how much clearness would it bring into men's thoughts
and actions, if the distinction which exists in Latin between
'vindicta' and 'ultio,' that the first is a moral act, the just
punishment of the sinner by his God, of the criminal by the judge, the
other an act in which the self-gratification of one who counts himself
injured or offended is sought, could in like manner be fully
established (vaguely felt it already is) between our 'vengeance' and
'revenge'; so that 'vengeance' (with the verb 'to avenge') should never
be ascribed except to God, or to men acting as the executors of his
righteous doom; while all retaliation to which not zeal for his
righteousness, but men's own sinful passions have given the impulse and
the motive, should be termed 'revenge.' As it now is, the moral
disapprobation which cleaves, and cleaves justly, to 'revenge,' is
oftentimes transferred almost unconsciously to 'vengeance'; while yet
without vengeance it is impossible to conceive in a world so full of
evil-doing any effectual assertion of righteousness, any moral
government whatever.
The causes mentioned above, namely that our modern English, Teutonic in
its main structure, yet draws so large a portion of its verbal wealth
from the Latin, and has further welcomed, and found place for, many
later accessions, these causes have together effected that we possess a
great many duplicates, not to speak of triplicates, or of such a
quintuplicate as that which I adduced just now, where the Teutonic,
French, Italian, Latin, and Greek had each yielded us a word. Let me
mention a few duplicate substantives, Old-English and Latin: thus we
have 'shepherd' and 'pastor'; 'feeling' and 'sentiment'; 'handbook' and
'manual'; 'ship' and 'nave'; 'anger' and 'ire'; 'grief' and 'sorrow';
'kingdom,' 'reign,' and 'realm'; 'love' and 'charity'; 'feather' and
'plume'; 'forerunner' and 'precursor'; 'foresight' and 'providence';
'freedom' and 'liberty'; 'bitterness' and 'acerbity'; 'murder' and
'homicide'; 'moons' and 'lunes.' Sometimes, in theology and science
especially, we have gone both to the Latin and to the Greek, and drawn
the same word from them both: thus 'deist' and 'theist'; 'numeration'
and 'arithmetic'; 'revelation' and 'apocalypse'; 'temporal' and
'chronic'; 'compassion' and 'sympathy'; 'supposition' and 'hypothesis';
'transparent' and 'diaphanous'; 'digit' and 'dactyle.' But to return to
the Old-English and Latin, the main factors of our tongue. Besides
duplicate substantives, we have duplicate verbs, such as 'to whiten'
and 'to blanch'; 'to soften' and 'to mollify'; 'to unload' and 'to
exonerate'; 'to hide' and 'to conceal'; with many more. Duplicate
adjectives also are numerous, as 'shady' and 'umbrageous'; 'unreadable'
and 'illegible'; 'unfriendly' and 'inimical'; 'almighty' and
'omnipotent'; 'wholesome' and 'salubrious'; 'unshunnable' and
'inevitable.' Occasionally our modern English, not adopting the Latin
substantive, has admitted duplicate adjectives; thus 'burden' has not
merely 'burdensome' but also 'onerous,' while yet 'onus' has found no
place with us; 'priest' has 'priestly' and 'sacerdotal'; 'king' has
'kingly,' 'regal,' which is purely Latin, and 'royal,' which is Latin
distilled through the French. 'Bodily' and 'corporal,' 'boyish' and
'puerile,' 'fiery' and 'igneous,' 'wooden' and 'ligneous,' 'worldly'
and 'mundane,' 'bloody' and 'sanguine,' 'watery' and 'aqueous,'
'fearful' and 'timid,' 'manly' and 'virile,' 'womanly' and 'feminine,'
'sunny' and 'solar,' 'starry' and 'stellar,' 'yearly' and 'annual,'
'weighty' and 'ponderous,' may all be placed in the same list. Nor are
these more than a handful of words out of the number which might be
adduced. You would find both pleasure and profit in enlarging these
lists, and, as far as you are able, making them gradually complete.
If we look closely at words which have succeeded in thus maintaining
their ground side by side, and one no less than the other, we shall
note that in almost every instance they have little by little asserted
for themselves separate spheres of meaning, have in usage become more
or less distinct. Thus we use 'shepherd' almost always in its primary
meaning, keeper of sheep; while 'pastor' is exclusively used in the
tropical sense, one that feeds the flock of God; at the same time the
language having only the one adjective, 'pastoral,' that is of
necessity common to both. 'Love' and 'charity' are used in our
Authorized Version of Scripture promiscuously, and out of the sense of
their equivalence are made to represent one and the same Greek word;
but in modern use 'charity' has come predominantly to signify one
particular manifestation of love, the ministry to the bodily needs of
others, 'love' continuing to express the affection of the soul. 'Ship'
remains in its literal meaning, while 'nave' has become a symbolic term
used in sacred architecture alone. 'Kingdom' is concrete, as the
'kingdom' of Great Britain; 'reign' is abstract, the 'reign' of Queen
Victoria. An 'auditor' and a 'hearer' are now, though they were not
once, altogether different from one another. 'Illegible' is applied to
the handwriting, 'unreadable' to the subject-matter written; a man
writes an 'illegible' hand; he has published an 'unreadable' book.
'Foresight' is ascribed to men, but' providence' for the most part
designates, as _pronoia_ also came to do, the far-looking wisdom of God,
by which He governs and graciously cares for his people. It becomes
boys to be 'boyish,' but not men to be 'puerile.' 'To blanch' is to
withdraw colouring matter: we 'blanch' almonds or linen; or the cheek
by the withdrawing of the blood is 'blanched' with fear; but we
'whiten' a wall, not by withdrawing some other colour, but by the
superinducing of white; thus 'whited sepulchres.' When we 'palliate'
our own or other people's faults, we do not seek 'to cloke' them
altogether, but only to extenuate the guilt of them in part.
It might be urged that there was a certain preparedness in these words
to separate off in their meaning from one another, inasmuch as they
originally belonged to different stocks; and this may very well have
assisted; but we find the same process at work where original
difference of stock can have supplied no such assistance. 'Astronomy'
and 'astrology' are both words drawn from the Greek, nor is there any
reason beforehand why the second should not be in as honourable use as
the first; for it is the _reason_, as 'astronomy' the _law_, of the
stars. [footnote: So entirely was any determining reason wanting, that
for some while it was a question _which_ word should obtain the
honourable employment, and it seemed as if 'astrology' and 'astrologer'
would have done so, as this extract from Bishop Hooper makes abundantly
plain (_Early Writings_, Parker Society, p. 331): 'The _astrologer_ is
he that knoweth the course and motions of the heavens and teacheth the
same; which is a virtue if it pass not its bounds, and become of an
astrologer an _astronomer_, who taketh upon him to give judgment and
censure of these motions and courses of the heavens, what they
prognosticate and destiny unto the creature.'] But seeing there is a
true and a false science of the stars, both needing words to utter them,
it has come to pass that in our later use, 'astrology' designates
always that pretended science of imposture, which affecting to submit
the moral freedom of men to the influences of the heavenly bodies,
prognosticates future events from the position of these, as contrasted
with 'astronomy' that true science which investigates the laws of the
heavenly bodies in their relations to one another and to the planet
upon which we dwell.
As these are both from the Greek, so 'despair' and 'diffidence' are
both, though the second more directly than the first, from the Latin.
At a period not very long past the difference between them was hardly
appreciable; one was hardly stronger than the other. If in one the
absence of all _hope_, in the other that of all faith, was implied. In
_The Pilgrim's Progress_, a book with which every English schoolmaster
should be familiar, 'Mistress _Diffidence_' is 'Giant _Despair's_' wife,
and not a whit behind him in deadly enmity to the pilgrims; even as
Jeremy Taylor speaks of the impenitent sinner's '_diffidence_ in the
hour of death,' meaning, as the context plainly shows, his despair. But
to what end two words for one and the same thing? And thus 'diffidence'
did not retain that energy of meaning which it had at the first, but
little by little assumed a more mitigated sense, (Hobbes speaks of
'men's diffidence,' meaning their distrust 'of one another,') till it
has come now to signify a becoming distrust of ourselves, a humble
estimate of our own powers, with only a slight intimation, as in the
later use of the Latin 'verecundia,' that perhaps this distrust is
carried too far.
Again, 'interference' and 'interposition' are both from the Latin; and
here too there is no anterior necessity that they should possess those
different shades of meaning which actually they have obtained among
us;--the Latin verbs which form their latter halves being about as
strong one as the other. [Footnote: The word _interference_ is a
derivative from the verb _ferire_ to strike, which is certainly
stronger in meaning than _ponere_, to place.] And yet in our practical
use, 'interference' is something offensive; it is the pushing in of
himself between two parties on the part of a third, who was not asked,
and is not thanked for his pains, and who, as the feeling of the word
implies, had no business there; while 'interposition' is employed to
express the friendly peace-making mediation of one whom the act well
became, and who even if he was not specially invited thereunto, is
still thanked for what he has done. How real an increase is it in the
wealth and efficiency of a language thus to have discriminated such
words as these; and to be able to express acts outwardly the same by
different words, according as we would praise or blame the temper and
spirit out of which they sprung. [Footnote: If in the course of time
distinctions are thus created, and if this is the tendency of language,
yet they are also sometimes, though far less often, obliterated. Thus
the fine distinction between 'yea' and 'yes,' 'nay' and 'no,' once
existing in English, has quite disappeared. 'Yea' and 'Nay,' in Wiclif
s time, and a good deal later, were the answers to questions framed in
the affirmative. 'Will he come?' To this it would have been replied,
'Yea' or 'Nay,' as the case might be. But 'Will he not come?'--to this
the answer would have been, 'Yes,' or 'No.' Sir Thomas More finds fault
with Tyndale, that in his translation of the Bible he had not observed
this distinction, which was evidently therefore going out even then,
that is in the reign of Henry VIII., and shortly after it was quite
forgotten.]
Take now some words not thus desynonymized by usage only, but having a
fundamental etymological distinction,--one, however, which it would be
easy to overlook, and which, so long as we dwell on the surface of the
word, we shall overlook; and try whether we shall not be gainers by
bringing out the distinction into clear consciousness. Here are
'arrogant,' 'presumptuous,' and 'insolent'; we often use them
promiscuously; yet let us examine them a little more closely, and ask
ourselves, as soon as we have traced the lines of demarcation between
them, whether we are not now in possession of three distinct thoughts,
instead of a single confused one. He is 'arrogant' who claims the
observance and homage of others as his due (ad rogo); who does not wait
for them to offer, but himself demands all this; or who, having right
to one sort of observance, claims another to which he has no right.
Thus, it was 'arrogance' in Nebuchadnezzar, when he required that all
men should fall down before the image which he had reared. He, a man,
was claiming for man's work the homage which belonged only to God. But
one is 'presumptuous' who _takes_ things to himself _before_ he has
acquired any title to them (prae sumo); as the young man who already
usurps the place of the old, the learner who speaks with the authority
of the teacher. By and by all this may very justly be his, but it is
'presumption' to anticipate it now. 'Insolent' means properly no more
than unusual; to act 'insolently' is to act unusually. The offensive
meaning which 'insolent' has acquired rests upon the sense that there
is a certain well-understood rule of society, a recognized standard of
moral and social behaviour, to which each of its members should conform.
The 'insolent' man is one who violates this rule, who breaks through
this order, acting in an _unaccustomed_ manner. The same sense of the
orderly being also the moral, is implied in 'irregular'; a man of
'irregular' is for us a man of immoral life; and yet more strongly in
Latin, which has but one word (mores) for customs and morals.
Or consider the following words: 'to hate,' 'to loathe,' 'to detest,'
'to abhor'. It would be safe to say that our blessed Lord 'hated' to
see his Father's house profaned, when, the zeal of that house consuming
Him, He drove forth in anger the profaners from it (John ii. 15); He
'loathed' the lukewarmness of the Laodiceans, when He threatened to
spue them out of his mouth (Rev. iii. 16); He 'detested' the hypocrisy
of the Pharisees and Scribes, when He affirmed and proclaimed their sin,
and uttered those eight woes against them (Matt, xxiii.); He 'abhorred'
the evil suggestions of Satan, when He bade the Tempter to get behind
Him, shrinking from him as one would shrink from a hissing serpent in
his path.
Sometimes words have no right at all to be considered synonyms, and yet
are continually used one for the other; having through this constant
misemployment more need than synonyms themselves to be discriminated.
Thus, what confusion is often made between 'genuine' and 'authentic';
what inaccuracy exists in their employment. And yet the distinction is
a very plain one. A 'genuine' work is one written by the author whose
name it bears; an 'authentic' work is one which relates truthfully the
matters of which it treats. For example, the apocryphal _Gospel of St.
Thomas_ is neither 'genuine' nor 'authentic.' It is not 'genuine' for
St. Thomas did not write it; it is not 'authentic,' for its contents
are mainly fables and lies. _The History of the Alexandrian War_, which
passes under Caesar's name, is not 'genuine,' for he did not write it;
it is 'authentic,' being in the main a truthful record of the events
which it professes to relate. Thiers' _History of the French Empire_,
on the contrary, is 'genuine,' for he is certainly the author, but very
far indeed from 'authentic '; while Thucydides' _History of the
Peloponnesian War_ is both 'authentic' and 'genuine.' [Footnote: On
this matter see the _New English Dictionary_ (s. v. _authentic_). It
will there be found that the prevailing sense of 'authentic' is
reliable, trustworthy, of established credit; it being often used by
writers on Christian Evidences in contradistinction to 'genuine.'
However, the Dictionary shows us that careful writers use the word in
the sense of 'genuine,' of undisputed origin, not forged, or
apocryphal: there is a citation bearing witness to this meaning from
Paley. The Greek [Greek: authentikos] meant 'of firsthand authority,
original.']
You will observe that in most of the words just adduced, I have sought
to refer their usage to their etymologies, to follow the guidance of
these, and by the same aid to trace the lines of demarcation which
divide them. For I cannot but think it an omission in a very
instructive little volume upon synonyms edited by the late Archbishop
Whately, and a partial diminution of its usefulness, that in the
valuation of words reference is so seldom made to their etymologies,
the writer relying almost entirely on present usage and the tact and
instinct of a cultivated mind for the appreciation of them aright. The
accomplished author (or authoress) of this book indeed justifies this
omission on the ground that a work on synonyms has to do with the
present relative value of words, not with their roots and derivations;
and, further, that a reference to these often brings in what is only a
disturbing force in the process, tending to confuse rather than to
clear. But while it is quite true that words will often ride very
slackly at anchor on their etymologies, will be borne hither and
thither by the shifting tides and currents of usage, yet are they for
the most part still holden by them. Very few have broken away and
drifted from their moorings altogether. A 'novelist,' or writer of
_new_ tales in the present day, is very different from a 'novelist' or
upholder of _new_ theories in politics and religion, of two hundred
years ago; yet the idea of _newness_ is common to them both. A
'naturalist' was once a denier of revealed truth, of any but _natural_
religion; he is now an investigator, often a devout one, of _nature_
and of her laws; yet the word has remained true to its etymology all
the while. A 'methodist' was formerly a follower of a certain 'method'
of philosophical induction, now of a 'method' in the fulfilment of
religious duties; but in either case 'method' or orderly progression,
is the central idea of the word. Take other words which have changed or
modified their meaning--'plantations,' for instance, which were once
colonies of men (and indeed we still 'plant' a colony), but are now
nurseries of trees, and you will find the same to hold good. 'Ecstasy'
_was_ madness; it _is_ intense delight; but has in no wise thereby
broken with the meaning from which it started, since it is the nature
alike of madness and of joy to set men out of and beside themselves.
And even when the fact is not so obvious as in these cases, the
etymology of a word exercises an unconscious influence upon its uses,
oftentimes makes itself felt when least expected, so that a word, after
seeming quite to have forgotten, will after longest wanderings return
to it again. And one main device of great artists in language, such as
would fain evoke the latent forces of their native tongue, will very
often consist in reconnecting words by their use of them with their
original derivation, in not suffering them to forget themselves and
their origin, though they would. How often and with what signal effect
does Milton compel a word to return to its original source, 'antiquam
exquirere matrem'; while yet how often the fact that he is doing this
passes even by scholars unobserved. [Footnote: Everyone who desires, as
he reads Milton, thoroughly to understand him, will do well to be ever
on the watch for such recalling, upon his part, of words to their
primitive sense; and as often as he detects, to make accurate note of
it for his own use, and, so far as he is a teacher, for the use of
others. Take a few examples out of many: 'afflicted' (_P. L._ i. 186);
'alarmed' (_P. L._ iv. 985); 'ambition' (_P. L._ i. 262; _S. A._ 247);
'astonished' (_P. L._ i. 266); 'chaos' (_P. L._ vi. 55); 'diamond' (_P.
L._ vi. 364); 'emblem' (_P. L._ iv. 703); 'empiric' (_P. L._ v. 440);
'engine' (_P. L._ i. 750); 'entire' (= integer, _P. L._ ix. 292);
'extenuate' (_P. L._ x. 645); 'illustrate' (_P. L._ v. 739); 'implicit'
(_P. L._ vii. 323); 'indorse' (_P. R._ iii. 329); 'infringe' (_P. R._ i.
62); 'mansion' (_Com_. 2); 'moment' (_P. L._ x. 45); 'oblige' (_P. L._
ix. 980); 'person' (_P. L._ x. 156); 'pomp' (_P. L._ viii. 61);
'sagacious' (_P. L._ x. 28l); 'savage' (_P. L._ iv. l72); 'scene' (_P.
L._ iv. 140;) 'secular' (_S. A._ 1707); 'secure' (_P. L._ vi. 638);
'seditious' (_P. L._ vi. 152); 'transact' (_P. L._ vi. 286); 'voluble'
(_P. L._ ix. 436). We may note in Jeremy Taylor a similar reduction of
words to their origins; thus, 'insolent' for unusual, 'metal' for mine,
'irritation' for a making vain, 'extant' for standing out (applied to a
bas-relief), 'contrition' for bruising ('the _contrition_ of the
serpent'), 'probable' for worthy of approval ('a _probable_ doctor').
The author of the excellent _Lexique de la Langue de Corneille_ claims
the same merit for him and for his great contemporaries or immediate
successors: Faire rendre aux mots tout ce qu'ils peuvent donner, en
varier habilement les acceptions et les nuances, les ramener à leur
origine, les retremper fréquemment à leur source étymologique,
constituait un des secrets principaux des grands écrivains du dix-
septième siècle. It is this putting of old words in a new light, and to
a new use, though that will be often the oldest of all, on which Horace
sets so high a store:
Dixeris egregie, notum si callida verbum
Reddiderit junctura novum; and not less Montaigne: 'The
handling and utterance of fine wits is that which sets off a language;
not so much by innovating it, as by putting it to more vigorous and
various service, and by straining, bending, and adapting it to this.
They do not create words, but they enrich their own, and give them
weight and signification by the uses they put them to.']
Moreover, even if all this were not so, yet the past history of a word,
a history that must needs _start_ from its derivation, how soon soever
this may be left behind, can hardly be disregarded, when we are seeking
to ascertain its present value. What Barrow says is quite true, that
'knowing the primitive meaning of words can seldom or never _determine_
their meaning anywhere, they often in common use declining from it';
but though it cannot 'determine,' it can as little be omitted or
forgotten, when this determination is being sought. A man may be wholly
different now from what once he was; yet not the less to know his
antecedents is needful, before we can ever perfectly understand his
present self; and the same holds good with words.