Corruption.
When a word is warped or distorted from its original form, either by a vicious pronunciation, or by a mistaken notion of its derivation, it is said to be a corruption. Though we must accept and adopt the usual spelling of such words, it may be useful and interesting to know what brought them into their present forms.
When a word is first pronounced in the hearing of those who do not know its meaning, its spelling naturally becomes with them, a mere imitation of the sound. It is remarkable how often these corruptions appear in the names of taverns and ships. Such words being most frequently in the mouths of the illiterate, will soon acquire a false pronunciation, which, after a time, leads to a false spelling, and hence many of their present forms. It was this rude attempt to imitate a sound that led the sailors to call their ship ‘Bellerophon’ the ‘Billy Ruffian.’ From the same cause, the sign of the ‘Boulogne Mouth’ was corrupted into ‘Bull and Mouth;’ and the ‘Bacchanals’ (a very appropriate name for an inn), was transformed into the ‘Bag of Nails.’ It is said that our soldiers in India could never be taught to pronounce properly ‘Surajah Dowlah,’ the name of that Bengal prince who figured in the affair of the Black Hole. They persisted in calling him ‘Sir Roger Dowlas!’
Some of these corrupt forms are so firmly rooted in the language, that they must now be recognised as correct, and adopted accordingly. We are told that the word ‘grocer’ was originally ‘grosser,’ and meant one who sold articles in the gross (en gros). This is probably the true explanation; but we must not, on that account, revert to the old spelling. It would be eccentric and pedantic in the extreme to write ‘rightwise’ for ‘righteous;’ ‘frontispice’ for ‘frontispiece,’ or ‘shamefast’ for ‘shamefaced;’ for though the first may have been the true and original form of these words, custom must here take precedence of derivation, and we must spell them according to the present usual practice.
[CHAPTER X.]
DIFFERENT VIEWS OF THE SAME IDEA.
It is worthy of observation that all nations do not express the same idea by the same form of word, i.e. that in different languages the same idea is often represented by a word of a distinctly different root. How comes it, we may ask, that the Romance languages of Europe, viz. French, Italian, Spanish, &c. all use forms of the originally same word to express their idea of ‘king,’ viz. roi, re, rey? These languages being off-shoots of Latin, the above words are all derived from the Latin ‘rex,’ from ‘rego,’ ‘I rule,’ or exert physical power. Now in the Teutonic languages of Europe—Dutch, German, English, etc.—we find this idea in a very different phase: ‘Konig,’ ‘König,’ ‘King.’ The root of these words may be found in ‘kennen,’ ‘to know.’ From this it would appear that the idea of a ruler in one class of nations was a physically strong man, who, by means of his bodily strength, could force his subjects to do his will. The Saxon for ‘king’ was ‘cyning,’ from ‘cnawan’ to know, i.e. one who ‘knew’ better than his subjects or followers—who was superior to them in knowledge. We may, perhaps, conclude from this that the Romance nations regarded strength or physical power as the distinguishing quality of a ruler; whereas the Germanic tribes saw in their leader one who was able to guide them aright by his superior thought and judgment. The Romans looked to the hand, the Germans to the head, in this matter. Is it not likely that attention to such differences may throw some light on national characteristics?
Another example of this difference of view of the same idea may be seen in the English word ‘finger,’ as compared with the French ‘doigt.’ ‘Finger’ is connected with the German ‘fangen,’ to take hold of, and is a relation of our word ‘fang,’ i.e. the tooth with which certain animals hold their prey. In the Germanic view of the word it is the instrument with which we ‘take hold.’ On the other hand, the Greek δάκτυλος, from δείκνυμι, I show or point out, appeared in Latin as ‘digitus;’ passed into Italian as ‘dito,’ and into French as ‘doigt.’ The Romance view of the word would then be ‘a pointer or indicator,’ and the Teutonic a holder or catcher.