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Rh enough for the language-maker. It struck the Australians, when they saw a European book, that it opened and shut like a mussel-shell, and they began accordingly to call books 'mussels' (mūyūm). The sight of a steam engine may suggest a whole group of such transitions in our own language; the steam passes along 'fifes' or 'trumpets,' that is, pipes or tubes, and enters by 'folding-doors' or valves, to push a 'pestle' or piston up and down in a 'roller' or cylinder, while the light pours from the furnace in 'staves' or 'poles,' that is, in rays or beams. The dictionaries are full of cases compared with which such as these are plain and straightforward. Indeed, the processes by which words have really come into existence may often enough remind us of the game of 'What is my thought like?' When one knows the answer, it is easy enough to see what junketting and cathedral canons have to do with reeds; Latin juncus 'a reed,' Low Latin juncata, 'cheese made in a reed-basket,' Italian giuncata 'cream cheese in a rush frail,' French joncade and English junket, which are preparations of cream, and lastly junketting parties where such delicacies are eaten; Greek, 'reed, cane,' , 'measure, rule,' thence canonicus, 'a clerk under the ecclesiastical rule or canon.' But who could guess the history of these words, who did not happen to know these intermediate links?

Yet there is about this process of derivation a thoroughly human artificial character. When we know the whole facts of any case, we can generally understand it at once, and see that we might have done the same ourselves had it come in our way. And the same thing is true of the processes of making sound-words detailed in these chapters. Such a view is, however, in no way inconsistent with the attempt to generalize upon these processes, and to state them as phases of the development of language among mankind. If certain men under certain circumstances produce certain results, then we may at least expect that other men much resembling these and placed under roughly similar