On the Study of Words

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and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
'Language is the armoury of the human mind, and at once contains the trophies of its past, and the weapons of its future, conquests' —COLERIDGE
'Out, idle words, servants to shallow fools!'—SHAKESPEARE
TWENTIETH EDITION revised by
Joint Author of 'The Concise Middle English Dictionary'
In all essential points this edition of The Study of Words is the same book as the last edition. The aim of the editor has been to alter as little of Archbishop Trench's work as possible. In the arrangement of the book, in the order of the chapters and paragraphs, in the style, in the general presentation of the matter, no change has been made. On the other hand, the work has been thoroughly revised and corrected. A great deal of thought and labour has of late been bestowed on English philology, and there has been a great advance in the knowledge of the laws regulating the development of the sounds of English words, and the result has been that many a derivation once generally accepted has had to be given up as phonetically impossible. An attempt has been made to purge the book of all erroneous etymologies, and to correct in the text small matters of detail. There have also been added some footnotes, in which difficult points are discussed and where reference is given to recent authorities. All editorial additions, whether in the text or in the notes, are enclosed in square brackets. It is hoped that the book as it now stands does not contain in its etymological details anything inconsistent with the latest discoveries of English scholars.
WADHAM COLLEGE, OXFORD: August , 1888.
These lectures will not, I trust, be found anywhere to have left out of sight seriously, or for long, the peculiar needs of those for whom they were originally intended, and to whom they were primarily addressed. I am conscious, indeed, here and there, of a certain departure from my first intention, having been in part seduced to this by a circumstance which I had not in the least contemplated when I obtained permission to deliver them, by finding, namely, that I should have other hearers besides the pupils of the Training-School. Some matter adapted for those rather than for these I was thus led to introduce—which afterwards I was unwilling, in preparing for the press, to remove; on the contrary adding to it rather, in the hope of obtaining thus a somewhat wider circle of readers than I could have hoped, had I more rigidly restricted myself in the choice of my materials. Yet I should greatly regret to have admitted so much of this as should deprive these lectures of their fitness for those whose profit in writing and in publishing I had mainly in view, namely schoolmasters, and those preparing to be such.