Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 10.djvu/325

 11 S. X. OCT. 17, 1914.]

NOTES AND QUERIES.

319

Jlofes 0n IBaoIis,

A. New English Dictionary on Historical Principles. Speech-Spring. Vol. IX. (First Half). By \V. A. Craigie. (Oxford University Press.)

THIS is decidedly one of the more interesting i sections. It contains words belonging to all the languages from which the principal elements oi English are drawn, including that shifting, in- I calculable, now fascinating and now repellent itself slang. Most examples of this to be found I here come we should say, hail from the j United States. But one or two can boast of a ! longish English antiquity. Thus " spiflicate " is \ explained by Grose in 1785 as signifying " to t confound, silence, or dumbfound " ; and " spree," I according to the quotations here, arose as long I ago as the earliest decade of the last century. " Spree " and " spoof " (an invention, we are I told, of Mr. A. Roberts's) seem to us instances of fortunate slang-words worthy to become per- I manent, whereas " spondulicks " and " splurge " I we would instance as words of which the dis- appearance need not be regretted.
 * language within a language commonly calling

The Greek words are numerous and rich in I significance. One of the best articles in all the section, alike for arrangement and illustration, I is that on " sphere." An interesting develop- ment of its use appears to have originated with I Lord Granville in 1885, when using " sphere of action " and " sphere of influence " to express the range of a nation's claims in a foreign con- tinent. It is a word that crops up relatively often in imaginative or poetical thought and writing, and, as " sphereless," the Dictionary ', gives, from two poets, a happy and a less happy I use of it : in Shelley's " sphereless stars " and James Thomson's " When the night its sphereless mantle wears " respectively.

Historically, " speed " has to be explained as first " abundance," then " success," only thirdly as " quickness." Clearly, there is nothing to be said against this ; but the case of " spot " is different. On the strength, evidently, of having I found a quotation a. 1200 from ' Vices and Virtues,' I where it signifies a moral stain, which is earlier than any other lighted upon, this meaning is given as the first. That it first appears in a figurative sense is assuredly the merest accident ; for "spotted" the first quotation (from 1250) gives the concrete and fundamental meaning. It seems absurd that any one looking up the word should be told, to begin with, that it means a "stigma or disgrace." We noticed a quaint mistake under " spouse," where, in Cleopatra's words from Tennyson's ' Dream of Fair Women ' '" A name for ever ! lying robed and crowned, Worthy a Iloman spouse" "spouse" is taken to refer to herself, and the quotation put with those illustrating " a wife " surely a misappre- hension of the syntax.

Under " spinning-jenny " it seems to be sug- gested that there is something recondite about the use of the personal name. But remembering how almost universally men who work, or have 1'1(, with, a machine speak of it as "she, "and how ready they are to add the effective touch of a personal name to a machine which inspires a mingling of admiration and repugnance, we

cannot think there is much to puzzle one here. Tne Black Marias " of the present day furnish another instance of the same kind of thing. The mention of these reminds us that under splay ' comes the rather apposite sentence from Matthew Arnold's ' Literature and Dogma ' In the German mind, as in the German lan- guage, there does seem to be something splay." The three "spencers" known to English the wig, the short jacket, and the lifebelt are duly attributed to the three gentlemen of that name who respectively invented them ; but it seems rather poor work not to have given con- temporary quotations accounting for the names. v\e noticed also one or two instances where definition is missing, as, for example, to explain spent " in the sense of a " spent ball." " Spent balls, it is quoted, " are frequently fatal in their effects. Again, under " spices," it seems odd to say that these are " various strongly flavoured or aromatic substances of vegetable origin " without giving a single example of one. Nor are wo allowed a ' spoonerism which famous colloquial- ism is dated back to the Oxford of 1885.

" Spirit," again, is an excellent article, though we observe that it nowhere refeia to the attempt ro establish a distinction between " spirit " and? "soul," which could be illustrated from a good deal of writing on the subject. The tendency i to identify soul strictly with \f,vx$ as the intellec- tual part of man, not identical with the irvev/jLa.

The columns dealing with this word and its derivatives put before us a medley of exalted ideas, and we turned a page and found " spirit- lamp " with something of the sense of homely comfort that the object so named has inspired when set busily burning to boil a kettle for tea in one's room in a Swiss hotel on returning from, an expedition. We confess that we were sur- prised to find that the word was in being so long ago as 1802.

Is it not curious to mention " Spitalfield weavers," and never a mention of silk ? " Spittle," sb. 1, is another article of unusual interest : we noted particularly the good collection of instances,, ranging from 1571 to 1702, in which it is dis- tinguished from " hospital " as being of a lower class. It seems likely that this aphctic form of the word is originally Levantine.

It is curious to observe how late " splendid " made its way into use. Under " splendour," v. r Francis Thompson's " many-splendoured " ought to have a place. Under " splinter-bar " the Dictionary makes a useful correction of Webster and other dictionaries which have followed Webster, which give the definition as " a cross- bar to support the springs," whereas the word is used for the cross-bar at the head of the shafts- which the traces are attached. Since under " speed " we have included as the ienth heading (a) an inflammatory disease of Battle, (6) a section of a cone-pulley, (c) a roving- frame, we do not see why " spike," " an ear of grain," should have been given a wholly separate article from " spike," a sharp-pointed piece of metal.

Among other highly satisfactory articles we noticed " spelt," " spill," " spoon," and "sponge." Among shorter ones " spindrift," " spinnaker," and "spinet" are noticeably interesting; and there are lucky fijra \ry6fuva or nearly so such as " epheterize," used by Sir William Jones, and