Page:Language and the Study of Language.djvu/138

116 The corresponding verb in modern French is partly filled up (être, étais, été) from the Latin stare, 'to stand.'

Not only are certain words thus stripped by the users and makers of language of the substantial meaning with which they once were invested, but phrases are also formed, of two or more words, and applied to uses widely remote from those which their constituents more generally and properly subserve. An event, we say, takes place, or comes to pass; a young man turns out ill; his foibles are tellingly hit off, or taken off; though they had seriously fallen out, they made up their quarrel, and a good understanding was brought about between them; they gave up further attempts; at every new turn, he was headed off anew; I was put up to it, but woefully put upon, and shall put up with such treatment no longer; don't take on so, my good fellow—and so on indefinitely. Phrases such as these are abundant in every part of language, and are of every kind and degree of removal from literalness: in some, a moment's reflection points out the figure or the implication which has led the way to their establishment in current use; in others, the transfer has been so distant, and some of its steps so bold or so obscure, that even a careful investigation fails fully to show us how it has been accomplished. In phrases, as is well known, consists no small part of the idiom of a language; use determines, not merely the significance which each word shall bear, but how it shall be combined with other words, in order to something more than intelligibility—to expressiveness, to force, to elegance of style.

All word-making by combination, as illustrated in the last lecture, is closely analogous with phrase-making: it is but the external and formal unification of elements which usage has already made one in idea. The separate and distinctive meaning of the two words in take place is as wholly ignored by us who use the expression as is that of the two in breakfast; that we may allow ourselves to say he breakfasted, but not it takeplaced, is only an accident; it has no deeper ground than the arbitrariness of conventional usage. To hit off is as much one idea as doff (from do off), to take on as don (from do on), although we are not likely ever to fuse the