Page:Transactions of the Linnean Society of London, Volume 1 (1791).djvu/200

150 most persons to use bell-shaped, funnel-shaped, and salver-shaped; or bell-form, funnel-form, and salver-form; our English tongue admitting compounds with great success and facility: especially since these terms convey immediately to the English botanist a familiar idea of the several forms of the corolla, which they are intended to express.

When words also have already an appropriate sense in English, it seems better to translate them than to use the originals themselves. Thus, although in Latin we say caulis strictus or exasperatus, and folium exasperatum; yet it has an absurd sound in English to talk of a strict or exasperated stalk, and of leaves being exasperated. On the contrary, it is still worse, although it has not so ridiculous a sound, to drop the original Latin term, in order to adopt an English one before appropriated to another sense, and therefore only tending to create confusion. What I mean may be exemplified in the terms lanceolate and. serrate, applied to leaves: these are become sufficiently familiar by use; but if not, the explanation must be referred to: whereas, if we use the words lanced and sawed, a novice might easily be misled; for having been accustomed to the ideas of a lanced gum and sawed wood, he will not readily apply the former to the shape of a lance's head; or the latter to the sharp notching round the edge of a leaf, resembling the teeth of a saw.

There are likewise some Latin words which do not perfectly assimilate to our language, and therefore are better translated. Such are teres and amplexicaulis. Now we cannot well say in English tere or amplexicaul; but the first may frequently be translated round: this however will sometimes create a confusion, and columnar gives the idea of teres most precisely; for when applied to a stem, or any of its subdivisions, it signifies, not a cylindric, but a tapering form, like the shaft of a column. The second of these terms may be rendered, significantly enough, embracing or stem-clasping. These