MISNOMERS WHICH ARE COMMONLY USED.
WRONG IDEAS CONVEYED IN NAMES.
Some Are Unblushing Contradictions,
While Others Might be Classed With
the Milder White Lie.
Custom and usage have made the misapplication of some words so familiar that they have lost their original meaning and now signify quite the opposite. The word “slave,” for instance, is a striking example of this fact. The Slavi were a tribe which once dwelt on the banks of the Dneiper and derived their name from “slav,” which means noble or illustrious. In the later days of the Roman Empire vast numbers of them spread over Europe in the condition of captive servants, and the name of the tribe came to mean the lowest state of servitude—the very antithesis of its original sense.
Some of our commonest expressions are misnomers which seem to be absolutely unaccountable, yet we shall probably go on using them to the end of time.
Irish stew is a dish unknown in Ireland.
Kid gloves are not made of kid, but of lambskin or sheepskin.
German silver is not silver at all, nor of German origin, but has been used in China for centuries.
Dutch clocks are of German manufacture.
Baffin’s Bay is not a bay.
Turkish baths are unknown to the Turks.
There are no leaves in Vallombrosa, Milton to the contrary notwithstanding.
Turkey rhubarb should be called Russian rhubarb, as it is a Russian monopoly.
Why are turkeys so called? They do not come from Turkey.
Titmouse is a bird.
Sealing-wax contains no wax.
Shrew-mouse is no mouse.
Rice-paper is not made of rice or the rice plant.
Catgut should be sheepgut.
Blind worms have eyes and can see.
Cleopatra’s needles should be named after Thothmes III.
And so, I say it most confidently, the first intellectual task of our age is rightly to order and make serviceable the vast realm of printed material which four centuries have swept across our path. To organize our knowledge, to systematize our reading, to save, out of the relentless cataract of ink, the immortal thoughts of the greatest—this is a necessity unless the productive ingenuity of man is to lead us at last to a measureless and pathless chaos. To know anything that turns up is in the infinity of knowledge to know nothing. To read the first book we come across in the wilderness of books is to learn nothing. To turn over the pages of ten thousand volumes is to be practically indifferent to all that is good.—Frederic Harrison. (1831– .) Essay on the “Choice of Books.” 1886.