A special subdivision of particular interest comprises those names, or nicknames, which are sometimes popularly given to nations from words continually occurring in their speech. Thus the French used to call an Englishman a god-damn (godon), and in China an English soldier is called a-says or I-says. In Java a Frenchman is called orang-deedong (orang ‘man’), in America ding-dong, and during the Napoleonic wars the French were called in Spain didones, from dis-donc; another name for the same nation is wi-wi (Australia), man-a-wiwi (in Beach-la-mar), or oui-men (New Caledonia). In Eleonore Christine’s Jammersminde 83 I read, “Ich habe zwei parle mi franço gefangen,” and correspondingly Goldsmith writes (Globe ed. 624): “Damn the French, the parle vous, and all that belongs to them. What makes the bread rising? the parle vous that devour us.” In Rovigno the surrounding Slavs are called čuje from their exclamation čuje ‘listen, I say,’ and in Hungary German visitors are called vigéc (from wie geht’s?), and customs officers vartapiszli (from wart’ a bissl). Round Panama everything native is called spiggoty, because in the early days the Panamanians, when addressed, used to reply, “No spiggoty [speak] Inglis.” In Yokohama an English or American sailor is called Damuraïsu H’to from ‘Damn your eyes’ and Japanese H’to ‘people.’[102]
XX.—§ 5. Movement.
Thirdly, as sound is always produced by some movement and is nothing but the impression which that movement makes on the ear, it is quite natural that the movement itself may be expressed by the word for its sound: the two are, in fact, inseparable. Note, for instance, such verbs as bubble, splash, clash, crack, peck. Human actions may therefore be denoted by such words as to bang the door, or (with slighter sounds) to tap or rap at a door. Hence also the substantives a tap or a rap for the action, but the substantive may also come to stand for the implement, as when from the verb to hack, ‘to cut, chop off, break up hard earth,’ we have the noun hack, ‘a mattock or large pick.’
Then we have words expressive of such movements as are not to the same extent characterized by loud sounds; thus a great many words beginning with l-combinations, fl-: flow, flag (Dan. flagre), flake, flutter, flicker, fling, flit, flurry, flirt; sl-: slide, slip, slive; gl-: glide. Hence adjectives like fleet, slippery, glib. Sound and sight may have been originally combined in such expressions for an uncertain walk as totter, dodder, dialectical teeter, titter, dither, but in cases of this kind the audible element may be wanting, and the word may come to be felt as symbolic of the movement as such. This is also the case with many expressions for the sudden, rapid movement by which we take hold of something; as a short vowel, suddenly interrupted by a stopped consonant, serves to express the sound produced by a very rapid striking movement (pat, tap, knock, etc.), similar sound combinations occur frequently for the more or less noiseless seizing of a thing (with the teeth or with the hand): snap, snack, snatch, catch, Fr. happer, attraper, gripper, E. grip, Dan. hapse, nappe, Lat. capio, Gr. kaptō, Armenian kap ‘I seize,’ Turk kapmak (mak infin. ending), etc. (I shall only mention one derivative meaning that may develop from this group: E. snack ‘a hurried meal,’ in Swift’s time called a snap (Journ. to Stella 270); cf. G. schnapps, Dan. snaps ‘glass of spirits.’) E. chase and catch are both derived from two dialectically different French forms, ultimately going back to the same late Latin verb captiare, but it is no mere accident that it was the form ‘catch’ that acquired the meaning ‘to seize,’ not found in French, for it naturally associated itself with snatch, and especially with the now obsolete verb latch ‘to seize.’
There is also a natural connexion between action and sound in the word to tickle, G. kitzeln, ON. kitla, Dan. kilde (d mute), Nubian killi-killi, and similar forms (Schuchardt, Nubisch. u. Bask. 9), Lat. titillare; cp. also the word for the kind of laughter thus produced: titter, G. kichern.
XX.—§ 6. Things and Appearances.
Further, we have the extension of symbolical designation to things; here, too, there is some more or less obvious association of what is only visible with some sound or sounds. This has been specially studied by Hilmer, to whose book (Sch) the reader is referred for numerous examples, e.g. p. 237 ff., knap ‘a thick stick, a knot of wood, a bit of food, a protuberance, a small hill;’ knop ‘a boss, stud, button, knob, a wart, pimple, the bud of a flower, a promontory,’ with the variants knob, knup.... Hilmer’s word-lists from German and English comprise 170 pages!
There is also a natural association between high tones (sounds with very rapid vibrations) and light, and inversely between low tones and darkness, as is seen in the frequent use of adjectives like ‘light’ and ‘dark’ in speaking of notes. Hence the vowel is felt to be more appropriate for light, and for dark, as seen most clearly in the contrast between gleam, glimmer, glitter on the one hand and gloom on the other (Zangwill somewhere writes: “The gloom of night, relieved only by the gleam from the street-lamp”); the word light itself, which has now a diphthong which is not so adequate to the meaning, used to have the vowel like G. licht; for the opposite notions we have such words as G. dunkel, Dan. mulm, Gr. amolgós, skótos, Lat. obscurus, and with another ‘dark’ vowel E. murky, Dan. mörk.
XX.—§ 7. States of Mind.
From this it is no far cry to words for corresponding states of mind: to some extent the very same words are used, as gloom (Dowden writes: “The good news was needed to cast a gleam on the gloom that encompassed Shelley”); hence also glum, glumpy, glumpish, grumpy, the dumps, sulky. If E. moody and sullen have changed their significations (OE. modig ‘high-spirited,’ ME. solein ‘solitary’), sound symbolism, if I am not mistaken, counts for something in the change; the adjectives now mean exactly the same as Dan. mut, but.