Birmingham.
* * * * *
Minor Notes.
"_Garble._"--MR. C. MANSFIELD INGLEBY has called attention to a growing
corruption in the use of the word "eliminate," and I trust he may be able
to check its progress. The word _garble_ has met with very similar usage,
but the corrupt meaning is now the only one in which it is ever used, and
it would be hopeless to try and restore it to its original sense.
The original sense of "to _garble_" was a good one, not a bad one; it meant
a selection of the good, and a discarding of the bad parts of anything: its
present meaning is exactly the reverse of this. By the statute 1 Rich. III.
c. 11., it is provided that no bow-staves shall be sold "ungarbled:" that
is (as Sir E. Coke explains it), until the good and sufficient be severed
from the bad and insufficient. By statute 1 Jac. I. c. 19., a penalty is
imposed on the sale of spices and drugs not "garbled;" and an officer
called the _garbler_ of spices is authorised to enter shops, and view the
spices and drugs, "and to _garble_ and make clean the same." Coke derives
the word either from the French _garber_, to make fine, neat, clean; or
from _cribler_, and that from _cribrare_, to sift, &c. (4 Inst. 264.)
It is easy to see how the corruption of this word has taken place; but it
is not the less curious to compare the opposite meanings given to it at
different times.