[51] Thus we still describe certain sums of money as a duty on goods, or, in Scotland, as a feu duty on land.
[52] A Greek word; literally a mark “stamped” or “impressed” on some yielding material. Shakespeare used it of handwriting.
[55] Used once in 1632 of sea-waves.
[56] Its earliest appearance is in Homer’s Iliad, where it occurs twice, and is applied to divine phenomena, viz. the gates of heaven and the tripod of the god Hephaestus.
[57] The meaning of this metaphor has probably been affected by the other meaning of spring (as in well-spring), but this did not occur till later.
[58] Not only is the word pump constantly used to describe the heart’s action, but one must also consider its reaction on the meaning of older physiological terms such as valve. Pump, with the meaning ‘ship’s pump’, is found in English in the fifteenth century, but in the sense of ‘instrument for raising water’ it is unknown to the Teutonic languages before the sixteenth century, though instruments of some sort had been used for that purpose in classical times. An understanding of the underlying mechanical principle, however, only developed, as we should expect, in the seventeenth century, when the words suction and hydraulic appeared in, for instance, Bacon’s writings. Harvey published his treatise, De motu cordis e sanguinis, in 1628.
[59] Especially in conjunction with such epithets as primeval or primal, in which combination these words have frequently been made to bear a considerable part of the suggestiveness and meaning long ago worked into such words as creation, mystery, sacrament, the Word, ... (see previous chapters).