ODD CHANGES OF SIGNIFICATION.
The first verse of Dean Whittingham’s version of the 114th Psalm may be quoted as a curious instance of a phrase originally grave in its meaning become strangely incongruous:—
When Israel by God’s address
From Pharaoh’s land was bent,
And Jacob’s house the strangers left
And in the same train went.
Since the completion of the Pacific Railway, some introductory lines in Southey’s Thalaba require correction:—
Who at this untimely hour
Wander o’er the desert sands?
No station is in view.
If the author would revisit the earth, he would find numerous “stations” on the railway route across the Great American Desert.
Among funny instances of wresting from a text a meaning to suit a particular purpose, is that of the classical scholar who undertook to prove that the word “smile” was used as a euphemism for a drink in ancient times, by quoting from Horace’s Odes:—
Amara lento temperat risu.
Which is rendered by Martin:—
Meets life’s bitters with a jest,
And smiles them down.
By lento risu, it was argued, is clearly meant a slow smile, or one taken through a straw!
The meaning of the word Wretch is one not generally understood. It was originally, and is now, in some parts of England, used as a term of the softest and fondest tenderness. This is not the only instance in which words in their present general acceptation bear a very opposite meaning to what they did in Shakspeare’s time. The word Wench, formerly, was not used in the low and vulgar acceptation that it is at present. Damsel was the appellation of young ladies of quality, and Dame a title of distinction. Knave once signified a servant; and in an early translation of the New Testament, instead of “Paul, the Servant,” we read “Paul, the Knave of Jesus Christ,” or, Paul, a rascal of Jesus Christ. Varlet was formerly used in the same sense as valet. On the other hand, the word Companion, instead of being the honorable synonym of Associate, occurs in the play of Othello with the same contemptuous meaning which we now affix, in its abusive sense, to the word “Fellow;” for Emilia, perceiving that some secret villain had aspersed the character of the virtuous Desdemona, thus indignantly exclaims:—
O Heaven! that such Companions thou’dst unfold,
And put in every honest hand a whip,
To lash the rascal naked through the world.—iv. 2.
Villain formerly meant a bondman. In feudal law, according to Blackstone, the term was applied to those who held lands and tenements in villenage,—a tenure by base services.
Pedant formerly meant a schoolmaster. Shakspeare says in his Twelfth Night,—
A pedant that keeps a school in the church.—iii. 2.
Bacon, in his Pathway unto Prayer, thus uses the word Imp: “Let us pray for the preservation of the King’s most excellent Majesty, and for the prosperous success of his entirely beloved son Edward our Prince, that most angelic imp.”
The word brat is not considered very elegant now, but a few years ago it had a different signification from its present one. An old hymn or De profundis, by Gascoine, contains the lines,—
“O Israel, O household of the Lord,
O Abraham’s brats, O brood of blessed seed,
O chosen sheep that loved the Lord indeed.”
It is a somewhat noticeable fact, that the changes in the signification of words have generally been to their deterioration; that is, words that heretofore had no sinister meaning have acquired it. The word cunning, for example, formerly meant nothing sinister or underhanded; and in Thrope’s confession in Fox’s “Book of Martyrs” is the sentence, “I believe that all these three persons [in the Godhead] are even in power, and in cunning, and in might, full of grace and of all goodness.” Demure is another of this class. It was used by earlier writers without the insinuation which is now almost latent in it, that the external shows of modesty and sobriety rest on no corresponding realities. Explode formerly meant to drive off the stage with loud clappings of the hands, but gradually became exaggerated into its present signification. Facetious, too, originally meant urbane, but now has so degenerated as to have acquired the sense of buffoonery; and Mr. Trench sees indications that it will ere long acquire the sense of indecent buffoonery.
Frippery now means trumpery and odds and ends of cheap finery; but once it meant old clothes of value, and not worthless, as the term at present implies. The word Gossip formerly meant only a sponsor in baptism. Sponsors were supposed to become acquainted at the baptismal font, and by their sponsorial act to establish an indefinite affinity towards each other and the child. Thus the word was applied to all who were familiar and intimate, and finally obtained the meaning which is now predominant in it.
Homely once meant secret and familiar, though in the time of Milton it had acquired the same sense as at present. Idiot, from the Greek, originally signified only a private man as distinguished from one in public office, and from that it has degenerated till it has come to designate a person of defective mental powers. Incense once meant to kindle not only anger, but good passions as well; Fuller uses it in the sense of “to incite.” Indolence originally signified a freedom from passion or pain, but now implies a condition of languid non-exertion. Insolent was once only “unusual.”
The derivation of lumber is peculiar. As the Lombards were the bankers, so they were also the pawnbrokers, of the Middle Ages. The “lumber-room” was then the place where the Lombard banker and broker stored his pledges, and lumber gradually came to mean the pledges themselves. As these naturally accumulated till they got out of date or became unserviceable, it is easy to trace the steps by which the word descended to its present meaning.
Obsequious implies an unmanly readiness to fall in with the will of another; but in the original obsequium, or in the English word as employed two centuries ago, there was nothing of this: it rather meant obedience and mildness. Shakspeare, speaking of a deceased person, says,—
“How many a holy and obsequious tear
Hath dear religious love stolen from mine eye,
As interest of the dead.”
Property and propriety were once synonymous, both referring to material things, as the French word propriété does now. Foreigners do not often catch the distinction at present made in English between the two words; and we know a French gentleman who, recently meeting with some pecuniary reverses, astonished his friends by telling them that he had lost all his “propriety.”
A poet is a person who writes poetry, and, according to the good old customs, a proser was a person who wrote prose, and simply the antithesis of poet. The word has now a sadly different signification; and it would not be considered very respectable to term Addison, Irving, Bancroft, or Everett “prosers.”