"NEWS," "NOISE," AND "PARLIAMENT."
1. News.—I regret that MR. HICKSON perseveres in his extravagant notion about news, and that the learning and ingenuity which your correspondent P.C.S.S., I have no doubt justly, gives him credit for, should be so unworthily employed.
Does MR. HICKSON really "very much doubt whether our word news contains the idea of new at all?" What then has it got to do with neues?
Does MR. HICKSON'S mind, "in its ordinary mechanical action," really think that the entry of "old newes, or stale newes" in an old dictionary is any proof of news having nothing to do with new? Does he then separate health from heal and hale, because we speak of "bad health" and "ill health"?
Will MR. HICKSON explain why news may not be treated as an elliptical expression for new things, as well as greens for green vegetables, and odds for odd chances?
When MR. HICKSON says dogmaticè, "For the adoption of words we have no rule, and we act just as our convenience or necessity dictates; but in their formation we must strictly conform to the laws we find established,"—does he deliberately mean to say that there are no exceptions and anomalies in the formation of language, except importations of foreign words? If he means this, I should like to hear some reasons for this wonderful simplification of grammar.
Why may not "convenience or necessity" sometimes lead us to swerve from the ordinary rules of the formulation of language, as well as to import words bodily, and, according to MR. HICKSON'S views of the origin of news, without reference to context, meaning, part of speech, or anything else?
Why may we not have the liberty of forming a plural noun news from the adjective new, though we have never used the singular new as a noun, when the French have indulged themselves with the plural noun of adjective formation, les nouvelles, without feeling themselves compelled to make une nouvelle a part of their language?
Why may we not form a plural noun news from new, to express the same idea which in Latin is expressed by nova, and in French by les nouvelles?
Why may not goods be a plural noun formed from the adjective good, exactly as the Romans formed bona and the Germans have formed Güter?
Why does MR. HICKSON compel us to treat goods as singular, and make us go back to the Gothic? Does he say that die Güter, the German for goods or possessions, is singular? Why too must riches be singular, and be the French word richesse imported into our language? Why may we not have a plural noun riches, as the Romans had divitæ, and the Germans have die Reichthumer? and what if riches be irregularly formed from the adjective rich? Are there, MR. HICKSON, no irregularities in the formation of a language? Is this really so?
If "from convenience or necessity" words are and may be imported from foreign languages bodily into our own, why might not our forefathers, feeling the convenience or necessity of having words corresponding to bona, nova, divitiæ, have formed goods, news, riches, from good, new, rich?
News must be singular, says MR. HICKSON; but means "is beyond all dispute plural," for Shakspeare talks of "a mean:" with news, however, there is the slight difficulty of the absence of the noun new to start from. Why is the absence of the singular an insuperable difficulty in the way of the formation of a plural noun from an adjective, any more than of plural nouns otherwise formed, which have no singulars, as clothes, measles, alms, &c. What says MR. HICKSON of these words? Are they all singular nouns and imported from other languages? for he admits no other irregularity in the formation of a language.
2. Noise.—I agree with MR. HICKSON that the old derivations of noise are unsatisfactory, but I continue to think his monstrous. I fear we cannot decide in your columns which of us has the right German pronunciation of neues; and I am sorry to find that you, Mr. Editor, are with MR. HICKSON in giving to the German eu the exact sound of oi in noise. I remain unconvinced, and shall continue to pronounce the eu with less fullness than oi in noise. However, this is a small matter, and I am quite content with MR. HICKSON to waive it. The derivation appears to me nonsensical, and I cannot but think would appear so to any one who was not bitten by a fancy.
I do not profess, as I said before, to give the root of noise. But it is probably the same as of noisome, annoy, the French nuire, Latin nocere, which brings us again to noxa; and the French word noise has probably the same root, though its specific meaning is different from that of our word noise. Without venturing to assert it dogmatically, I should expect the now usual meaning of noise to be its primary meaning, viz. "a loud sound" or "disturbance;" and this accords with my notion of its alliances. The French word bruit has both the meanings of our word noise; and to bruit and to noise are with us interchangeable terms. The French bruit also has the sense of a disturbance more definitely than our word noise. "Il y a du bruit" means "There is a row." I mention bruit and its meanings merely as a parallel case to noise, if it be, as I think, that "a loud sound" is its primary, and "a rumour" its secondary meaning.
I have no doubt there are many instances, and old ones, among our poets, and prose writers too, of the use of the noun annoy. I only remember at present Mr. Wordsworth's—
"There, at Blencatharn's rugged feet,
Sir Lancelot gave a safe retreat
To noble Clifford; from annoy
Concealed the persecuted boy."
3. Parliament.—FRANCISCUS's etymology of Parliament (Vol. ii., p. 85.) is, I think, fit companion for MR. HICKSON's derivations of news and noise. I take FRANCISCUS for a wag: but lest others of your readers may think him serious, and be seduced into a foolish explanation of the word Parliament by his joke, I hope you will allow me to mention that palam mente, literally translated, means before the mind, and that, if FRANCISCUS or any one else tries to get "freedom of thought or deliberation" out of this, or to get Parliament out of it, or even to get sense out of it, he will only follow the fortune which FRANCISCUS says has befallen all his predecessors, and stumble in limine. The presence of r, and the turning of mens into mentum, are minor difficulties. If FRANCISCUS be not a wag, he is perhaps an anti-ballot man, bent on finding an argument against the ballot in the etymology of Parliament: but whatever he be, I trust your readers generally will remain content with the old though humble explanation of parliament, that it is a modern Latinisation of the French word parlement, and that it literally means a talk-shop, and has nothing to do with open or secret voting, though it be doubtless true that Roman judges voted clam vel palam, and that palam and mens are two Latin words.
C.H.