The great French Revolution made, as might be expected, characteristic contributions to the French language. It gives us some insight into its ugliest side to know that, among other words, it produced the following: 'guillotine,' 'incivisme,' 'lanterner,' 'noyade,' 'sansculotte,' 'terrorisme.' Still later, the French conquests in North Africa, and the pitiless severities with which every attempt at resistance on the part of the free tribes of the interior was put down and punished, have left their mark on it as well; 'razzia' which is properly an Arabic word, having been added to it, to express the swift and sudden sweeping away of a tribe, with its herds, its crops, and all that belongs to it. The Communist insurrection of 1871 bequeathed one contribution almost as hideous as itself, namely 'pétroleuse,' to the language. It is quite recently that we have made any acquaintance with 'recidivist'—one, that is, who falls back once more on criminal courses.
But it would ill become us to look only abroad for examples in this kind, when perhaps an equal abundance might be found much nearer home. Words of our own keep record of passages in our history in which we have little reason to glory. Thus 'mob' and 'sham' had their birth in that most disgraceful period of English history, the interval between the Restoration and the Revolution. 'I may note,' says one writing towards the end of the reign of Charles II., 'that the rabble first changed their title, and were called "the mob" in the assemblies of this [The Green Ribbon] Club. It was their beast of burden, and called first "mobile vulgus," but fell naturally into the contraction of one syllable, and ever since is become proper English.' [Footnote: North, Examen, p. 574; for the origin of 'sham' see p. 231. Compare Swift in The Tatler, No. ccxxx. 'I have done the utmost,' he there says, 'for some years past to stop the progress of "mob" and "banter"; but have been plainly borne down by numbers, and betrayed by those who promised to assist me.'] At a much later date a writer in The Spectator speaks of 'mob' as still only struggling into existence. 'I dare not answer,' he says, 'that mob, rap, pos, incog., and the like, will not in time be looked at as part of our tongue.' In regard of 'mob,' the mobile multitude, swayed hither and thither by each gust of passion or caprice, this, which The Spectator hardly expected, while he confessed it possible, has actually come to pass. 'It is one of the many words formerly slang, which are now used by our best writers, and received, like pardoned outlaws, into the body of respectable citizens.' Again, though the murdering of poor helpless lodgers, afterwards to sell their bodies for dissection, can only be regarded as the monstrous wickedness of one or two, yet the verb 'to burke,' drawn from the name of a wretch who long pursued this hideous traffic, will be evidence in all after times, unless indeed its origin should be forgotten, to how strange a crime this age of ours could give birth. Nor less must it be acknowledged that 'to ratten' is no pleasant acquisition which the language within the last few years has made; and as little 'to boycott,' which is of still later birth. [Footnote: This word has found its way into most European languages, see the New English Dictionary (s. v.)]
We must not count as new words properly so called, although they may delay us for a minute, those comic words, most often comic combinations formed at will, wherein, as plays and displays of power, writers ancient and modern have delighted. These for the most part are meant to do service for the moment, and, this done, to pass into oblivion; the inventors of them themselves having no intention of fastening them permanently on the language. Thus Aristophanes coined [Greek: mellonikiao], to loiter like Nicias, with allusion to the delays by whose aid this prudent commander sought to put off the disastrous Sicilian expedition, with other words not a few, familiar to every scholar. The humour will sometimes consist in their enormous length, [Footnote: As in the [Greek: amphiptolemopedesistratos] of Eupolis; the [Greek: spermagoraiolekitholachanopolis] of Aristophanes. There are others a good deal longer than these.] sometimes in their mingled observance and transgression of the laws of the language, as in the [Greek: danaotatos], in the [Greek: autotatos] of the Greek comic poet, the 'patruissimus' and 'oculissimus,' comic superlatives of patruus and oculus, 'occisissimus' of occisus; 'dominissimus' of dominus; 'asinissimo' (Italian) of asino; or in superlative piled on superlative, as in the 'minimissimus' and 'pessimissimus' of Seneca, the 'ottimissimo' of the modern Italian; so too in the 'dosones,' 'dabones,' which in Greek and in medieval Latin were names given to those who were ever promising, ever saying 'I will give,' but never crowning promise with performance. Plautus, with his exuberant wit, and exulting in his mastery of the Latin language, is rich in these, 'fustitudinus,' 'ferricrepinus' and the like; will put together four or five lines consisting wholly of comic combinations thrown off for the occasion. [Footnote: Persa, iv. 6, 20-23.] Of the same character is Chaucer's 'octogamy,' or eighth marriage; Butler's 'cynarctomachy,' or battle of a dog and bear; Southey's 'matriarch,' for by this name he calls the wife of the Patriarch Job; but Southey's fun in this line of things is commonly poor enough; his want of finer scholarship making itself felt here. What humour for example can any one find in 'philofelist' or lover of cats? Fuller, when he used 'to avunculize,' meaning to tread in the footsteps of one's uncle, scarcely proposed it as a lasting addition to the language; as little did Pope intend more than a very brief existence for 'vaticide,' or Cowper for 'extra- foraneous,' or Carlyle for 'gigmanity,' for 'tolpatchery,' or the like.
Such are some of the sources of increase in the wealth of a language; some of the quarters from which its vocabulary is augmented. There have been, from time to time, those who have so little understood what a language is, and what are the laws which it obeys, that they have sought by arbitrary decrees of their own to arrest its growth, have pronounced that it has reached the limits of its growth, and must not henceforward presume to develop itself further. Even Bentley with all his vigorous insight into things is here at fault. 'It were no difficult contrivance,' he says, 'if the public had any regard to it, to make the English tongue immutable, unless hereafter some foreign nation shall invade and overrun us.' [Footnote: Works, vol. II. p. 13.] But a language has a life, as truly as a man, or as a tree. As a man, it must grow to its full stature; unless indeed its life is prematurely abridged by violence from without; even as it is also submitted to his conditions of decay. As a forest tree, it will defy any feeble bands which should attempt to control its expansion, so long as the principle of growth is in it; as a tree too it will continually, while it casts off some leaves, be putting forth others. And thus all such attempts to arrest have utterly failed, even when made under conditions the most favourable for success. The French Academy, numbering all or nearly all the most distinguished writers of France, once sought to exercise such a domination over their own language, and might have hoped to succeed, if success had been possible for any. But the language heeded their decrees as little as the advancing tide heeded those of Canute. Could they hope to keep out of men's speech, or even out of their books, however they excluded from their own Dictionary, such words as 'blague,' 'blaguer,' 'blagueur,' because, being born of the people, they had the people's mark upon them? After fruitless resistance for a time, they have in cases innumerable been compelled to give way—though in favour of the words just cited they have not yielded yet—and in each successive edition of their Dictionary have thrown open its doors to words which had established themselves in the language, and would hold their ground there, altogether indifferent whether they received the Academy's seal of allowance or not. [Footnote: Nisard (Curiosites de l'Etym. Franc. p. 195) has an article on these words, where with the epigrammatic neatness which distinguishes French prose, he says, Je regrette que l'Académie repousse de son Dictionnaire les mots blague, blagueur, laissant gronder à sa porte ces fils effrontés du peuple, qui finiront par l'enfoncer. On this futility of struggling against popular usage in language Montaigne has said, 'They that will fight custom with grammar are fools'; and, we may add, not less fools, as engaged in as hopeless a conflict, they that will fight it with dictionary.]
Littré, the French scholar who single-handed has given to the world a far better Dictionary than that on which the Academy had bestowed the collective labour of more than two hundred years, shows a much juster estimate of the actual facts of language. If ever there was a word born in the streets, and bearing about it tokens of the place of its birth, it is 'gamin'; moreover it cannot be traced farther back than the year 1835; when first it appeared in a book, though it may have lived some while before on the lips of the people. All this did not hinder his finding room for it in the pages of his Dictionary. He did the same for 'flâneur,' and for 'rococo,' and for many more, bearing similar marks of a popular origin. [Footnote: A work by Darmesteter, De la Création actuelle de Mots nouveaux dans la Langue Française, Paris, 1877, is well worth consulting here.] And with good right; for though fashions may descend from the upper classes to the lower, words, such I mean as constitute real additions to the wealth of a language, ascend from the lower to the higher; and of these not a few, let fastidious scholars oppose or ignore them for a while as they may, will assert a place for themselves therein, from which they will not be driven by the protests of all the scholars and all the academicians in the world. The world is ever moving, and language has no choice but to move with it. [Footnote: One has well said, 'The subject of language, the instrument, but also the restraint, of thought, is endless. The history of language, the mouth speaking from the fulness of the heart, is the history of human action, faith, art, policy, government, virtue, and crime. When society progresses, the language of the people necessarily runs even with the line of society. You cannot unite past and present, still less can you bring back the past; moreover, the law of progress is the law of storms, it is impossible to inscribe an immutable statute of language on the periphery of a vortex, whirling as it advances. Every political development induces a concurrent alteration or expansion in conversation and composition. New principles are generated, new authorities introduced; new terms for the purpose of explaining or concealing the conduct of public men must be created: new responsibilities arise. The evolution of new ideas renders the change as easy as it is irresistible, being a natural change indeed, like our own voice under varying emotions or in different periods of life: the boy cannot speak like the baby, nor the man like the boy, the wooer speaks otherwise than the husband, and every alteration in circumstances, fortune or misfortune, health or sickness, prosperity or adversity, produces some corresponding change of speech or inflection of tone.']
Those who make attempts to close the door against all new comers are strangely forgetful of the steps whereby that vocabulary of the language, with which they are so entirely satisfied that they resent every endeavour to enlarge it, had itself been gotten together—namely by that very process which they are now seeking by an arbitrary decree to arrest. We so take for granted that words with which we have been always familiar, whose right to a place in the language no one dreams now of challenging or disputing, have always formed part of it, that it is oftentimes a surprise to discover of how very late introduction many of these actually are; what an amount, it may be, of remonstrance and resistance some of them encountered at the first. To take two or three Latin examples: Cicero, in employing 'favor,' a word soon after used by everybody, does it with an apology, evidently feels that he is introducing a questionable novelty, being probably first applied to applause in the theatre; 'urbanus,' too, in our sense of urbane, had in his time only just come up; 'obsequium' he believes Terence to have been the first to employ. [Footnote: On the new words in classical Latin, see Quintilian, Inst. viii. 3. 30-37.] 'Soliloquium' seems to us so natural, indeed so necessary, a word, this 'soliloquy,' or talking of a man with himself alone, something which would so inevitably demand and obtain its adequate expression, that we learn with surprise that no one spoke of a 'soliloquy' before Augustine; the word having been coined, as he distinctly informs us, by himself. [Footnote: Solil. 2. 7.]
Where a word has proved an unquestionable gain, it is interesting to watch it as it first emerges, timid, and doubtful of the reception it will meet with; and the interest is much enhanced if it has thus come forth on some memorable occasion, or from some memorable man. Both these interests meet in the word 'essay.' Were we asked what is the most remarkable volume of essays which the world has seen, few, capable of replying, would fail to answer, Lord Bacon's. But they were also the first collection of these, which bore that name; for we gather from the following passage in the (intended) dedication of the volume to Prince Henry, that 'essay' was itself a recent word in the language, and, in the use to which he put it, perfectly novel: he says—'To write just treatises requireth leisure in the writer, and leisure in the reader; … which is the cause which hath made me choose to write certain brief notes set down rather significantly than curiously, which I have called Essays. The word is late, but the thing is ancient.' From this dedication we gather that, little as 'essays' now can be considered a word of modesty, deprecating too large expectations on the part of the reader, it had, as 'sketches' perhaps would have now, as 'commentary' had in the Latin, that intention in its earliest use. In this deprecation of higher pretensions it resembled the 'philosopher' of Pythagoras. Others had styled themselves, or had been willing to be styled, 'wise men.' 'Lover of wisdom' a name at once so modest arid so beautiful, was of his devising. [Footnote: Diogenes Laërtius, Prooem. Section 12.] But while thus some words surprise us that they are so new, others surprise us that they are so old. Few, I should imagine, are aware that 'rationalist,' and this in a theological, and not merely a philosophical sense, is of such early date as it is; or that we have not imported quite in these later times both the name and the thing from Germany. Yet this is very far from the case. There were 'rationalists' in the time of the Commonwealth; and these challenging the name exactly on the same grounds as those who in later times have claimed it for their own. Thus, the author of a newsletter from London, of date October 14, 1646, among other things mentions: 'There is a new sect sprung up among them [the Presbyterians and Independents], and these are the Rationalists, and what their reason dictates them in Church or State stands for good, until they be convinced with better;' [Footnote: Clarendon State Papers, vol. ii. p. 40 of the Appendix.] with more to the same effect. 'Christology' has been lately characterized as a monstrous importation from Germany. I am quite of the remonstrant's mind that English theology does not need, and can do excellently well without it; yet this novelty it is not; for in the Preface to the works of that illustrious Arminian divine of the seventeenth century, Thomas Jackson, written by Benjamin Oley, his friend and pupil, the following passage occurs: 'The reader will find in this author an eminent excellence in that part of divinity which I make bold to call Christology, in displaying the great mystery of godliness, God the Son manifested in human flesh.' [Footnote: Preface to Dr. Jackson's Works, vol. i. p. xxvii. A work of Fleming's, published in 1700, bears the title, Christology.] In their power of taking up foreign words into healthy circulation and making them truly their own, languages differ much from one another, and the same language from itself at different periods of its life. There are languages of which the appetite and digestive power, the assimilative energy, is at some periods almost unlimited. Nothing is too hard for them; everything turns to good with them; they will shape and mould to their own uses and habits almost any material offered to them. This, however, is in their youth; as age advances, the assimilative energy diminishes. Words are still adopted; for this process of adoption can never wholly cease; but a chemical amalgamation of the new with the old does not any longer find place; or only in some instances, and very partially even in them. The new comers lie upon the surface of the language; their sharp corners are not worn or rounded off; they remain foreign still in their aspect and outline, and, having missed their opportunity of becoming otherwise, will remain so to the end. Those who adopt, as with an inward misgiving about their own gift and power of stamping them afresh, make a conscience of keeping them in exactly the same form in which they have received them; instead of conforming them to the laws of that new community into which they are now received. Nothing will illustrate this so well as a comparison of different words of the same family, which have at different periods been introduced into our language. We shall find that those of an earlier introduction have become English through and through, while the later introduced, belonging to the same group, have been very far from undergoing the same transforming process. Thus 'bishop' [A.S. biscop], a word as old as the introduction of Christianity into England, though derived from 'episcopus,' is thoroughly English; while 'episcopal,' which has supplanted 'bishoply,' is only a Latin word in an English dress. 'Alms,' too, is thoroughly English, and English which has descended to us from far; the very shape in which we have the word, one syllable for 'eleëmosyna' of six, sufficiently testifying this; 'letters,' as Horne Tooke observes,' like soldiers, being apt to desert and drop off in a long march.' The seven-syllabled and awkward 'eleëmosynary' is of far more recent date. Or sometimes this comparison is still more striking, when it is not merely words of the same family, but the very same word which has been twice adopted, at an earlier period and a later—the earlier form will be thoroughly English, as 'palsy'; the later will be only a Greek or Latin word spelt with English letters, as 'paralysis.' 'Dropsy,' 'quinsy,' 'megrim,' 'squirrel,' 'rickets,' 'surgeon,' 'tansy,' 'dittany,' 'daffodil,' and many more words that one might name, have nothing of strangers or foreigners about them, have made themselves quite at home in English. So entirely is their physiognomy native, that it would be difficult even to suspect them to be of Greek descent, as they all are. Nor has 'kickshaws' anything about it now which would compel us at once to recognize in it the French 'quelques choses' [Footnote: 'These cooks have persuaded us their coarse fare is the best, and all other but what they dress to be mere quelques choses, made dishes of no nourishing' (Whitlock, Zootomia, p. 147).]—'French kickshose,' as with allusion to the quarter from which it came, and while the memory of that was yet fresh in men's minds, it was often called by our early writers. A very notable fact about new words, and a very signal testimony of their popular origin, of their birth from the bosom of the people, is the difficulty so often found in tracing their pedigree. When the causae vocum are sought, as they very fitly are, and out of much better than mere curiosity, for the causae rerum are very often wrapt up in them, those continually elude our research. Nor does it fare thus merely with words to which attention was called, and interest about their etymology awakened, only after they had been long in popular use—for that such should often give scope to idle guesses, should altogether refuse to give up their secret, is nothing strange—but words will not seldom perplex and baffle the inquirer even where an investigation of their origin has been undertaken almost as soon as they have come into existence. Their rise is mysterious; like almost all acts of becoming, it veils itself in deepest obscurity. They emerge, they are in everybody's mouth; but when it is inquired from whence they are, nobody can tell. They are but of yesterday, and yet with inexplicable rapidity they have already lost all traces of the precise circumstances under which they were born.
The rapidity with which this comes to pass is nowhere more striking than in the names of political or religious parties, and above all in names of slight or of contempt. Thus Baxter tells us that when he wrote there already existed two explanations of 'Roundhead,' [Footnote: Narrative of my Life and Times, p. 34; 'The original of which name is not certainly known. Some say it was because the Puritans then commonly wore short hair, and the King's party long hair; some say, it was because the Queen at Stafford's trial asked who that round-headed man was, meaning Mr. Pym, because he spake so strongly.'] a word not nearly so old as himself. How much has been written about the origin of the German 'ketzer' (= our 'heretic'), though there can scarcely be a doubt that the Cathari make their presence felt in this word. [Footnote: See on this word Kluge's Etym. Dict.] Hardly less has been disputed about the French 'cagot.' [Footnote: The word meant in old times 'a leper'; see Cotgrave's Dictionary, also Athenceum, No. 2726.] Is 'Lollard,' or 'Loller' as we read it in Chaucer, from 'lollen,' to chaunt? that is, does it mean the chaunting or canting people? or had the Lollards their title from a principal person among them of this name, who suffered at the stake?—to say nothing of 'lolium,' found by some in the name, these men being as tares among the wholesome wheat. [Footnote: Hahn, Ketzer im Mittelalter vol. ii. p. 534.] The origin of 'Huguenot' as applied to the French Protestants, was already a matter of doubt and discussion in the lifetime of those who first bore it. A distinguished German scholar has lately enumerated fifteen explanations which have been offered of the word. [Footnote: Mahn, Etymol. Untersuch. p. 92. Littré, who has found the word in use as a Christian name two centuries before the Reformation, has no doubt that here is the explanation of it. At any rate there is here what explodes a large number of the proposed explanations, as for instance that Huguenot is another and popular shape of 'Eidgenossen.'] [How did the lay sisters in the Low Countries, the 'Beguines' get their name? Many derivations have been suggested, but the most probable account is that given in Ducange, that the appellative was derived from 'le Bègue' the Stammerer, the nickname of Lambert, a priest of Liège in the twelfth century, the founder of the order. (See the document quoted in Ducange, and the 'New English Dictionary' (s. v.).)] Were the 'Waldenses' so called from one Waldus, to whom these 'Poor Men of Lyons' as they were at first called, owed their origin? [Footnote: [It is not doubted now that the Waldenses got their name from Peter Waldez or Valdo, a native of Lyons in the twelfth century. Waldez was a rich merchant who sold his goods and devoted his wealth to furthering translations of the Bible, and to the support of a set of poor preachers. For an interesting account of the Waldenses see in the Guardian, Aug. 18, 1886, a learned review by W. A. B. C. of Histoire Littéraire des Vaudois, par E. Montet.] As little can any one tell us with any certainty why the 'Paulicians' and the 'Paterines' were severally named as they are; or, to go much further back, why the 'Essenes' were so called. [Footnote: Lightfoot, On the Colossians, p. 114 sqq.] From whence had Johannes Scotus, who anticipated so much of the profoundest thinking of later times, his title of 'Erigena,' and did that title mean Irish-born, or what? [Footnote: [There is no doubt whatever that Erigena in this case means 'Irish-born.'] 'Prester John' was a name given in the Middle Ages to a priest-king, real or imaginary, of wide dominion in Central Asia. But whether there was ever actually such a person, and what was intended by his name, is all involved in the deepest obscurity. How perplexing are many of the Church's most familiar terms, and terms the oftenest in the mouth of her children; thus her 'Ember' days; her 'Collects'; [Footnote: Freeman, Principles of Divine Service, vol. i. p. 145.] her 'Breviary'; her 'Whitsunday'; [Footnote: See Skeat, s. v.] the derivation of 'Mass' itself not being lifted above all question. [Footnote: Two at least of the ecclesiastical terms above mentioned are no longer perplexing, and are quite lifted above dispute: ember in 'Ember Days' represents Anglo-Saxon ymb-ryne, literally 'a running round, circuit, revolution, anniversary'; see Skeat (s. v.); and Whitsunday means simply 'White Sunday,' Anglo-Saxon hwita Sunnan-daeg.] As little can any one inform us why the Roman military standard on which Constantine inscribed the symbols of the Christian faith should have been called 'Labarum.' And yet the inquiry began early. A father of the Greek Church, almost a contemporary of Constantine, can do no better than suggest that 'labarum' is equivalent to 'laborum,' and that it was so called because in that victorious standard was the end of labour and toil (finis laborum)! [Footnote: Mahn, Elym. Untersuch. p. 65; cf. Kurtz, Kirchen-geschichte, 3rd edit. p. 115.] The 'ciborium' of the early Church is an equal perplexity; [Footnote: The word is first met in Chrysostom, who calls the silver models of the temple at Ephesus (Acts xix, 24) [Greek: mikra kiboria]. [A primary meaning of the Greek [Greek: kiborion] was the cup-like seed-vessel of the Egyptian water- lily, see Dict. of Christian Antiquities, p. 65.] and 'chapel' (capella) not less. All later investigations have failed effectually to dissipate the mystery of the 'Sangraal.' So too, after all that has been written upon it, the true etymology of 'mosaic' remains a question still.
And not in Church matters only, but everywhere, we meet with the same oblivion resting on the origin of words. The Romans, one might beforehand have assumed, must have known very well why they called themselves 'Quirites,' but it is manifest that this knowledge was not theirs. Why they were addressed as Patres Conscripti is a matter unsettled still. They could have given, one would think, an explanation of their naming an outlying conquered region a 'province.' Unfortunately they offer half a dozen explanations, among which we may make our choice. 'German' and 'Germany' were names comparatively recent when Tacitus wrote; but he owns that he has nothing trustworthy to say of their history; [Footnote: Germania, 2.] later inquirers have not mended the matter, [Footnote: Pott, Etymol. Forsch. vol. ii. pt. 2, pp. 860-872.]
The derivation of words which are the very key to the understanding of the Middle Ages, is often itself wrapt in obscurity. On 'fief' and 'feudal' how much has been disputed. [Footnote: Stubbs, Constitutional History of England, vol. i. p. 251.] 'Morganatic' marriages are recognized by the public law of Germany, but why called 'morganatic' is unsettled still. [Footnote: [There is no mystery about this word; see a good account of the term in Skeat's Diet. (s. v.).] Gypsies in German are 'zigeuner'; but when this is resolved into 'zichgauner,' or roaming thieves, the explanation has about as much scientific value as the not less ingenious explanation of 'Saturnus' as satur annis, [Footnote: Cicero, Nat. Deor. ii. 25.] of 'severitas' as saeva veritas (Augustine); of 'cadaver' as composed of the first syllables of _ca_ro _da_ta, _ver_mibus. [Footnote: Dwight, Modern Philology, lst series, p. 288.] Littré has evidently little confidence in the explanation commonly offered of the 'Salic' law, namely, that it was the law which prevailed on the banks of the Saal. [Footnote: For a full and learned treatment of the various derivations of 'Mephistopheles' which have been proposed, and for the first appearance of the name in books, see Ward's Marlowe's Doctor Faustus, p. 117.]