On the Study of Words

by Richard Chenevix Trench

After all which has thus been adduced, you will scarcely deny that we have a right to speak of a history in words. Now suppose that the pieces of money which in the intercourse and traffic of daily life are passing through our hands continually, had each one something of its own that made it more or less worthy of note; if on one was stamped some striking maxim, on another some important fact, on the third a memorable date; if others were works of finest art, graven with rare and beautiful devices, or bearing the head of some ancient sage or hero king; while others, again, were the sole surviving monuments of mighty nations that once filled the world with their fame; what a careless indifference to our own improvement—to all which men hitherto had felt or wrought—would it argue in us, if we were content that these should come and go, should stay by us or pass from us, without our vouchsafing to them so much as one serious regard. Such a currency there is, a currency intellectual and spiritual of no meaner worth, and one with which we have to transact so much of the higher business of our lives. Let us take care that we come not in this matter under the condemnation of any such incurious indifference as that which I have imagined.

LECTURE V.

ON THE RISE OF NEW WORDS.

If I do not much mistake, you will find it not a little interesting to follow great and significant words to the time and place of their birth. And not these alone. The same interest, though perhaps not in so high a degree, will cleave to the upcoming of words not a few that have never played a part so important in the world's story. A volume might be written such as few would rival in curious interest, which should do no more than indicate the occasion upon which new words, or old words employed in a new sense—being such words as the world subsequently heard much of—first appeared; with quotation, where advisable, of the passages in proof. A great English poet, too early lost, 'the young Marcellus of our tongue,' as Dryden so finely calls him, has very grandly described the emotion of

'some watcher of the skies, When a new planet swims into his ken.'

Not very different will be our feeling, as we watch, at the moment of its rising above the horizon, some word destined, it may be, to play its part in the world's story, to take its place for ever among the luminaries in the moral and intellectual firmament above us.

But a caution is necessary here. We must not regard as certain in every case, or indeed in most cases, that the first rise of a word will have exactly consented in time with its first appearance within the range of our vision. Such identity will sometimes exist; and we may watch i the actual birth of some word, and may affirm with confidence that at such a time and on such an occasion it first saw the light—in this book, or from the lips of that man. Of another we can only say, About this time and near about this spot it first came into being, for we first meet it in such an author and under such and such conditions. So mere a fragment of ancient literature has come down to us, that, while the earliest appearance there of a word is still most instructive to note, it cannot in all or in nearly all cases be affirmed to mark the exact moment of its nativity. And even in the modern world we must in most instances be content to fix a period, we may perhaps add a local habitation, within the limits of which the term must have been born, either in legitimate scientific travail, or the child of some flash of genius, or the product of some generatio aequivoca, the necessary result of exciting predisposing causes; at the same time seeking by further research ever to narrow more and more the limits within which this must have happened.

To speak first of words religious and ecclesiastical. Very noteworthy, and in some sort epoch-making, must be regarded the first appearance of the following:—'Christian'; [Footnote: Acts xi. 26.] 'Trinity'; [Footnote: Tertullian, Adv. Prax. 3.] 'Catholic,' as applied to the Church; [Footnote: Ignatius, Ad Smyrn. 8.] 'canonical,' as a distinctive title of the received Scriptures; [Footnote: Origen, Opp. vol. iii. p. 36 (ed. De la Rue).] 'New Testament,' as describing the complex of the sacred books of the New Covenant; [Footnote: Tertullian, Adv. Marc. iv. I; Adv. Prax. xv. 20.] 'Gospels,' as applied to the four inspired records of the life and ministry of our Lord. [Footnote: Justin Martyr, Apol. i. 66.] We notice, too, with interest, the first coming up of 'monk' and 'nun,' [Footnote: 'Nun' (nonna) first appears in Jerome (Ad Eustoch. Ep. 22); 'monk' (monachus) a little earlier: Rutilius, a Latin versifier of the fifth century, who still clung to the old Paganism, gives the derivation: Ipsi se monachos Graio cognomine dicunt, Quod soli nullo vivere teste volunt.] marking as they do the beginnings of the monastic system;—of 'transubstantiation,' [Footnote: Hildebert, Archbishop of Tours (d. 1134), is the first to use it (Serm. 93).] of 'concomitance,' [Footnote: Thomas Aquinas is reported to have been the first to use this word.] expressing as does this word the grounds on which the medieval Church defended communion in one kind only for the laity; of 'limbo' in its theological sense; [Footnote: Thomas Aquinas first employs 'limbus' in this sense.] witnessing as these do to the consolidation of errors which had long been floating in the Church.

Not of so profound an interest, but still very instructive to note, is the earliest apparition of names historical and geographical, above all of such as have since been often on the lips of men; as the first mention in books of 'Asia'; [Footnote: Aeschylus, Prometheus Vinctus, 412.] of 'India'; [Footnote: Id. Suppl. 282.] of 'Europe'; [Footnote: Herodotus, iv. 36.] of 'Macedonia'; [Footnote: Id. v. 17.] of 'Greeks'; [Footnote: Aristotle, Meteor, i. 14. But his Graikoi are only an insignificant tribe, near Dodona. How it came to pass that Graeci, or Graii, was the Latin name by which all the Hellenes were known, must always remain a mystery.] of 'Germans' and 'Germany'; [Footnote: Probably first in the Commentaries of Caesar; see Grimm, Gesch. d. Deutschen Sprache, p. 773.] of 'Alemanni'; [Footnote: Spartian, Caracalla, c. 9.] of 'Franks'; [Footnote: Vopiscus, Aurel. 7; about A.D. 240.] of 'Prussia' and 'Prussians'; [Footnote: 'Pruzia' and 'Pruzzi' first appear in the Life of S. Adalbert, written by his fellow-labourer Gaudentius, between 997-1006.] of 'Normans'; [Footnote: The Geographer of Ravenna.] the earliest notice by any Greek author of Rome; [Footnote: Probably in Hellanicus, a contemporary of Herodotus.] the first use of 'Italy' as comprehending the entire Hesperian peninsula; [Footnote: In the time of Augustus Caesar; see Niebuhr, History of Rome, Engl. Translation, vol. i. p. 12.] of 'Asia Minor' to designate Asia on this side Taurus. [Footnote: Orosius, i. 2: in the fifth century of our era.] 'Madagascar' may hereafter have a history, which will make it interesting to know that this name was first given, so far as we can trace, by Marco Polo to the huge African island. Neither can we regard with indifference the first giving to the newly-discovered continent in the West the name of 'America'; and still less should we Englishmen fail to take note of the date when this island exchanged its earlier name of Britain for 'England'; or again, when it resumed 'Great Britain' as its official designation. So also, to confirm our assertion by examples from another quarter, it cannot be unprofitable to mark the exact moment at which 'tyrant' and 'tyranny,' forming so distinct an epoch as this did in the political history of Greece, first appeared; [Footnote: In the writings of Archilochus, about 700 B.C. A 'tyrant' was not for Greeks a bad king, who abused a rightful position to purposes of lust or cruelty or other wrong. It was of the essence of a 'tyrant' that he had attained supreme dominion through a violation of the laws and liberties of the state; having done which, whatever the moderation of his after-rule, he would not escape the name. Thus the mild and bounteous Pisistratus was 'tyrant' of Athens, while a Christian II. of Denmark, 'the Nero of the North,' would not in Greek eyes have been one. It was to their honour that they did not allow the course of the word to be arrested or turned aside by occasional or partial exceptions in the manner of the exercise of this ill-gotten dominion; but in the hateful secondary sense which 'tyrant' with them acquired, and which has passed over to us, the moral conviction, justified by all experience, spake out, that the ill-gotten would be ill-kept; that the 'tyrant' in the earlier sense of the word, dogged by suspicion, fear, and an evil conscience, must, by an almost inevitable law, become a 'tyrant' in our later sense of the word.] or again, when, and from whom, the fabric of the external universe first received the title of 'cosmos,' or beautiful order; [ Footnote: Pythagoras, born B.C. 570, is said to have been the first who made this application of the word. For much of interest on its history see Humboldt, Kosmos, 1846, English edit., vol. i. p. 371.] a name not new in itself, but new in this application of it; with much more of the same kind.

Let us go back to one of the words just named, and inquire what may be learned from acquaintance with the time and place of its first appearance. It is one the coming up of which has found special record in the Book of life: 'The disciples,' as St. Luke expressly tells us, 'were called Christians first in Antioch' (Acts xi. 26). That we have here a notice which we would not willingly have missed all will acknowledge, even as nothing can be otherwise than curious which relates to the infancy of the Church. But there is here much more than an interesting notice. Question it a little closer, and how much it will be found to contain, how much which it is waiting to yield up. What light it throws on the whole story of the apostolic Church to know where and when this name of 'Christians' was first imposed on the faithful; for imposed by adversaries it certainly was, not devised by themselves, however afterwards they may have learned to glory in it as the name of highest dignity and honour. They did not call themselves, but, as is expressly recorded, they 'were called,' Christians first at Antioch; in agreement with which statement, the name occurs nowhere in Scripture, except on the lips of those alien from, or opposed to, the faith (Acts xxvi. 28; I Pet. iv. 16). And as it was a name imposed by adversaries, so among these adversaries it was plainly heathens, and not Jews, who were its authors; for Jews would never have called the followers of Jesus of Nazareth, 'Christians,' or those of Christ, the very point of their opposition to Him being, that He was not the Christ, but a false pretender to the name. [Footnote: Compare Tacitus (Annal, xv. 24): Quos vulgus … Christianos appellabat. It is curious too that, although a Greek word and coined in a Greek city, the termination is Latin. Christianos is formed on the model of Romanus, Albanus, Pompeianus, and the like.]