"On the road to Merthyr, we heard a drunken Welshman swear; oh for words to describe the effect! His mouth seemed full of consonants, which cracked and cracked, and ground and exploded, in an extraordinary way," &c.
Is this a true representation of the case?
J. M.
"Initiative" and "Psychology."—
" ... a previous act and conception of the mind, or what we have called an initiative, is indispensably necessary, even to the mere semblance of method."—Coleridge's Treatise on Method.
Am I to understand from this sentence that this word was an original adaptation of Coleridge's? If not, when was it first introduced, and by whom?
In the same treatise, Coleridge employs the word psychological, and apologises for using an insolens verbum. Was this the first occasion of the familiar use of this word? I find psychology in Bailey.
C. Mansfield Ingleby.
Birmingham.
Atonement.—Can you or any of your readers inform me when the word "atonement" first came into use, and when it was first applied to the work of reconciliation wrought by our Lord Jesus Christ? It is used once only in the New Testament (Romans v. 11.), and there the word does not quite convey the meaning of the original καταλλαγη. The etymology of it seems so purely English, that one would hardly expect to find the present use, or rather adaptation, of the word, so very modern as it appears to be.