Let me take one more example to show that our present methods, or perhaps our present data, sometimes leave us completely in the lurch with regard to the most ordinary words. We have a series of words which may all, without any formal difficulties, be referred to a root-form seqw-. Their significations are, respectively—
(1) ‘say,’ E. say, OE. secgan, ON. segja, G. sagen, Lith. sakýti. To this is referred Gr. énnepe, eníspein, Lat. inseque and possibly inquam.
(2) ‘show, point out,’ OSlav. sočiti, Lat. signum.
(3) ‘see,’ E. see, OE. seon, Goth. saihwan, G. sehen, etc.
(4) ‘follow,’ Lat. sequor, Gr. hépomai, Skr. sácate. Here belongs Lat. socius, OE. secg ‘man,’ orig. ‘follower.’
Now, are these four groups ‘etymologically identical’? Opinions differ widely, as may be seen from C. D. Buck, “Words of Speaking and Saying” (Am. Journ. of Philol. 36. 128, 1915). They may be thus tabulated, a comma meaning supposed identity and a dash the opposite:
1, 2-3, 4 Kluge, Falk, Torp.
1, 2, 3-4 Brugmann.
1, 2, 3, 4 Wood, Buck.[73]
For the transition in meaning from ‘see’ to ‘say’ we are referred to such words as observe, notice, G. bemerkung, while in G. anweisen, and still more in Lat. dico, there is a similar transition from ‘show’ to ‘say.’ Wood derives the signification ‘follow’ from ‘point out,’ through ‘show, guide, attend.’ With regard to the relation between 3 and 4, it has often been said that to see is to follow with the eyes. In short, it is possible, if you take some little pains, to discover notional ties between all four groups which may not be so very much looser than those between other words which everybody thinks related. And yet? I cannot see that the knowledge we have at present enables us, or can enable us, to do more than leave the mutual relation of these groups an open question. One man’s guess is just as good as another’s, or one man’s yes as another man’s no—if the connexion of these words is ‘science,’ it is, if I may borrow an expression from the old archæologist Samuel Pegge, scientia ad libitum. Personal predilection and individual taste have not been ousted from etymological research to the extent many scholars would have us believe.
Or we may perhaps say that among the etymologies found in dictionaries and linguistic journals some are solid and firm as rocks, but others are liquid and fluctuate like the sea; and finally not a few are in a gaseous state and blow here and there as the wind listeth. Some of them are no better than poisonous gases, from which may Heaven preserve us![74]