Page:EB1911 - Volume 21.djvu/459

 come to mean first a pearl and then by extension of the meaning any precious stone. From the concentric coats which appear in both, the Latin word for a pearl (unio, acc. unionem) appears in English as onien. Examples where the characteristics are not of external appearance are such as the German kaiser and the Russian tsar, which are descended from Julius Caesar, while the Lithuanian word for king—karālius—is Carolus, i.e. Charlemagne. So in modern Persian, Xusrev, "Lord, " comes from the Zend proper name Husravah (Chosroes). As already pointed out, the resemblances which have established a connexion between pert and impertinent (properly irrelevant) are in sound only. The same is true of the supposed relation of the verb cut to cutlass, cutler and cutlet. While train oil really means oil in drops like tears (cf. German Thrane), most people connect it with railway trains. The resemblance in some cases is merely in function. Thus, though the hr and the oak have no resemblance one to the other, the word fir is now generally identified with the Latin quercus in etymology (cf. four and qualtuor), in the same way as the Latin fagus, “beech,” is with the Greek dzrryés, “oak,” the users of the word having, in the course of their migrations, passed from a land with oaks to a land with firs in the one case, and from a land of beeches to a land of oaks in the other. Resemblance as the basis of metaphor has a very widely extended influence on language.

The most numerous and most varied forms of change in meaning depend, however, upon the law of contiguity. Perhaps the commonest of all forms of contiguity is that where the word indicating some accompanying feature or condition replaces the word for the object referred to. In the countries that border the Mediterranean the heat of midday is accompanied and intensified by the dying away of the wind, a characteristic remarked upon by Aeschylus (Agam. 565): “ What time upon his noonday couch, windless and waveless sank the sea to rest.” From the Greek word, “burning heat,” arises through Late Latin the English calm, where the absence of wind is the only idea present, that of heat having altogether disappeared. Again, in bugle, which is abbreviated for buglehorn, the word which survives properly means wild ox, and the originally more important element is lost. In a combination like silver bugle the word has gone a stage further; the original meaning of horn has also disappeared. There is no longer any thought of an animal's horn, the only idea that survives is that of a musical instrument. From the cope or cloak (capella) of St Martin, which was preserved as a sacred relic by the Frankish kings, comes the word chapel. The word was first transferred from the cloak to the holy place.wherein it was kept, and thence to similar shrines, and ultimately to any place, not being a. church, where prayers were said. A jig was originally not the dance, but the fiddle which supplied the music for the dance. The names of liquors are often replaced by some accompaniment as of the place, port, sherry, champagne, or by a qualifying adjective as in brandy, properly “burnt,” from the Dutch brandewijn, or, again, only the less important element of the word is retained as in whisky, literally “water,” for the older usquebaugh, a corruption of Gaelic words meaning the “water of life” (aqua zitae). Replacement of substantives by their accompanying adjectives is common in most languages. One of the most commcn methods of coining a name for a new article is to give 1t the name of the place or people whence it comes. Thus we have arras, lawn (from Laon), cravat (Croat), coach from Kocs in Hungary, bilboes (both fetters and swords) from the iron mines of Bilboa in Spain. Equally common are the names of inventors-pinch beck, tontine, silhouette, guillotine, derrick. In the word cash, which comes indirectly from Latin capsa, “a box,” the thing contained has taken its name from the container. Similarly mortar, “cement,” derives its name from the mortar in which it was mixed, while in box the material (boxwood, Lat. buxus, Greek, rriréos) has usurped the place of the article made. In leper the disease (Lat. lepra, the rough disease, from Greek, Xen-pd véoos) has been made into the name of the sufferer, who was earlier called a leprous man. As a consequence, a new substantive leprosy has to be taken from the adjective to

indicate the disease. The various changes in meaning, which are classed together as synecdoche, have their origin in contiguity. Thus we have the species for the genus; the butcher, who properly kills goats only (Old French boc), has ousted the flesher. (But we have also the genus for the species; corn, as a rule, means in England wheat; in Scotland oats; in America, maize. The individual becomes collective as in corps, navy, body (of men); the collective becomes individual when Latin racemus, “ bunch of grapes, ” passes into English “ raisin.” Here would come the so-called meliorative and pejorative developments in word-meaning, whereby, e g steward, “ the sty-ward, ” becomes the title of a great officer of the realm and the name of a line of kings; or, on the other side, sou (Latin solidus) passes from the name of a gold coin to that of one of proverbially insignificant value. Here, too, would come many euphemistic uses which are, for the most part, applications of more general terms to avoid the mention of some specific act or object which is unpleasant, as death, murder, bankruptcy, debt, &c., while metaphorical terms for the same things come under resemblance. These examples do not exhaust the forms of contiguity which appear in language, but they are enough to show how far-reaching the effect of this type of association of ideas is upon language, and how extensive the field is which still calls for investigation before the study of meaning attains the same development as the investigation of the other branches of the history of language.

In addition to the genetic classification of languages given above (on pp. 426–429), some further guidance as to the actual headings under which the philological section is arranged may be of service to the student.

The pivot of the whole section is the article , which traces the history of language and writing to the earliest stages, embodying the results of archaeological studies in all countries, together with the general conclusions based thereon. In this article (with further details under ) will be found an account of the controversy regarding the Cretan discoveries of Dr A. J. Evans. Supplementary to this comparative survey are the articles, , and . The first two deal with ancient documents of all kinds: with those specimens of ancient writing, literary, economic or legal, which were committed to codices, tablets or rolls by the use of the stilus, the reed or the pen; with documents engraved on stone or metal.