Every shepherd tells his tale. (Milton: L'Allegro) Bring the rathe primrose that forsaken dies. (Rathe survives only in the comparative form rather. Milton: Lycidas)

Can honor's voice provoke the silent dust? (Gray: Elegy)

The silly buckets on the deck. (Coleridge: The Ancient
Mariner)

4. In technical usage or particular phrases a former sense of a word may
be embedded like a fossil. The italicized words in the following list
retain special senses of this kind. What do these words as thus used mean?
Can you add to the list?
To wit
Might and main
Time and tide
Christmas_tide_
Sad bread
A bank teller
To tell one's beads
Aid and abet
Meat and drink
Shop_lifter_
Fishing-tackle
Getting off scot-free
An earnest of future favors
A brave old hearthstone
Confusion to the enemy!
Giving aid and comfort to the enemy
Without let or hindrance
A let in tennis
_Quick_lime
Cut to the quick
Neat-foot oil
To sound in tort (Legal phrase)
To bid one God_speed_
I had as lief as not
The child favors its parents
On pain of death
Widow's weeds
I am bound for the Promised Land
To carry a girl to a party (Used only in the South)
To give a person so much to boot

5. Each of the subjoined phrases contradicts itself or repeats its idea clumsily. The key to the difficulty lies in the italicized words. What is their true meaning?

A weekly journal Ultimate end Final ultimatum Final completion Previous preconceptions Nauseating seasickness Join together Descend down Prefer better Argent silver Completely annihilate Unanimously by all Most unique of all The other alternative Endorse on the back Incredible to believe A criterion to go by An appetite to eat A panacea for all ills Popular with the people Biography of his life Autobiography of his own life Vitally alive A new, novel, and ingenious explanation Mutual dislike for each other Omniscient knowledge of all subjects A material growth in mental power Peculiar faults of his own Fly into an ebullient passion To saturate oneself with gold and silver Elected by acclamation on a secret ballot.

V.

INDIVIDUAL WORDS: AS MEMBERS OF VERBAL FAMILIES

Our investigation into the nature, qualities, and fortunes of single words must now merge into a study of their family connections. We do not go far into this new phase of our researches before we perceive that the career of a word may be very complicated. Most people, if you asked them, would tell you that an individual word is a causeless entity—a thing that was never begotten and lacks power to propagate. They would deny the possibility that its course through the world could be other than colorless, humdrum. Now words thus immaculately conceived and fatefully impotent, words that shamble thus listlessly through life, there are. But many words are born in an entirely normal way; have a grubby boyhood, a vigorous youth, and a sober maturity; marry, beget sons and daughters, become old, enfeebled, even senile; and suffer neglect, if not death. In their advanced age they are exempted by the discerning from enterprises that call for a lusty agility, but are drafted into service by those to whom all levies are alike. Indeed in their very prime of manhood their vicissitudes are such as to make them seem human. Some rise in the world some sink; some start along the road of grandeur or obliquity, and then backslide or reform. Some are social climbers, and mingle in company where verbal dress coats are worn; some are social degenerates, and consort with the ragamuffins and guttersnipes of language. Some marry at their own social level, some above them, some beneath; some go down in childless bachelorhood or leave an unkempt and illegitimate progeny. And if you trace their own lineage, you will find for some that it is but decent and middle-class, for some that it is mongrelized and miscegenetic, for some that it is proud, ancient, yea perhaps patriarchal.

It is contrary to nature for a word, as for a man, to live the life of a hermit. Through external compulsion or internal characteristics a word has contacts with its fellows. And its most intimate, most spontaneous associations are normally with its own kindred.