Page:Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases (1894).djvu/14

viii associations. Repetitions of these words have a tendency to spread themselves, as it were, in transitional films, around the clusters of expressions into which we may have attempted to marshal our vocabulary. Connecting links, thus formed, induce an approach between the categories; and a danger arises that the outlines of our classification may, by their means, become confused and eventually merged. Owing to the employment, in innumerable instances, of one and the same word in a variety of different bearings and relations, the fabric of our language has become a texture woven into one by the interlacing of countless branches, springing from separate stems; and these are further complicated by cross relations among themselves.

Were we to disengage these interwoven ramifications, and seek to confine every word to its main or original import, we should find that some secondary meaning has become so firmly associated with many words and phrases, that to sever the alliance would be to deprive our language of the richness due to an infinity of natural adaptations.

Were we, on the other hand, to attempt to include, in each category of the Thesaurus, every word and phrase which could by any possibility be appropriately used in relation to the leading idea for which that category was designed, we should impair, if not destroy, the whole use and value of the book. For, in the endeavour to enrich our treasury of expression, we might easily allow ourselves to be led imperceptibly onward by the natural association of one word with another, and to add word after word, until group after group would successively be absorbed under some single heading, and the fundamental divisions of the system be effaced. The presentation to the eye, at one view, of too large a medley of allied expressions would have a tendency to distract the mind of the inquirer, and he would feel the want of further classification. The small cluster of nearly synonymous words, which had formed the nucleus of a category, would be lost in a sea of phrases, and it would become difficult to recognize those which were peculiarly adapted to express the leading ideas.

Hence it is necessary for the compiler to steer a mean course between the dangers of being too concise on the one hand, and too diffuse on the other.

These considerations were material in dealing with the new and multitudinous store of words and phrases which the author had accumulated. Many of these were altogether new to the Thesaurus. Many were merely repetitions in new places of words already included in its pages. With reference to cases similar to the latter,