Jane Austen censured one of her nieces for writing about a 'vortex of dissipation,' the expression was so intolerably hackneyed. arcana. 'They may not yet see the arcana of the temple, but they may see the road which leads to the temple.'-Thomas Chalmers, Sermons in Tron Church, Glasgow, 1819; p. 98. epitome. 'Paul's walk is the land's epitome, or you may call it the lesser isle of Great Britain. It is more than this, the whole world's map, which you may here discern in its perfectest motion, justling and turning.'-John Earle, Microcosmography, ed. Bliss, 1811; p. 116. interest. 'He hates our sacred Nation; and he railes interest (in another sense). ""Ye think," wrote Grange to Randolph, “ye think by the division that among us, ye will be judge and party; ye have wrecked Teviotdale, your mistress's honour is repaired, and I pray you seek to do us no more harm, for in the end you will lose more than you can gain. The Queen your mistress shall spend mickle silver, and tyne our hearts in the end; for whatever you do to any Scotchman the haill nation will think their own interest.' —J. A. Froude, History of England, April, 1570. medium. 'Madame de Staël said, and the general remark is true, "The English mind is in the middle between the German and the French, and is a medium of communication between them,"'-H. C. Robinson, Diary, vol. i. p. 175. There are a certain number of nouns which have come to us through the French, from the southern Romance languages. Such are those Spanish words in -ad, -ade, which represent the termination -atus of the Latin participle-esplanade, fusillade, lemonade, promenade, marmalade, masquerade, salad. Illustration: fusillade. Everybody acquainted with country life must be aware of the commotion created in some of our villages by the first fall of snow, especially if it happens on a Sunday. Old and young turn out, leaving the parson to edify women and empty pews, and high up on the hills and down in the valleys such a fusillade ensues on the day of rest as could hardly be justified by any event short of the landing of French invaders upon our shores.' Round by the Spanish peninsula have also come to us those English (or rather European) nouns which are derived from Arabic, as alchemy, alcohol, alcove, algebra, almanac, ammiral (Milton, Paradise Lost, i. 294), cipher, elixir, magazine, nadir, zenith. To these we must add a word, once celebrated, though now obsolete, algorithm, or more familiarly, augrim. Also sometimes, algorism, after the French form algorisme. This Arabic word was the universal term in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries to denote the science of calculation by nine figures and zero, which was gradually superseding the abacus with its counters. 'I shall reken it syxe times by aulgorisme, or you can caste it ones by counters.'-John Palsgrave, French Grammar, 15307. Coming now to Greek formations, the most conspicuous are the following :— Nouns in -y from Greek words in -a and -ea; as irony, tyranny. irony (εἰρώνεια). There was no mockery in Miss Austen's irony. However heartily we laugh at her pictures of human imbecility, we are never tempted to think that contempt or disgust for human nature suggested the satire.' Synonymy (συνωνυμία). As the synonomy is one of the most difficult and perhaps important parts of the subject, it has of course received particular attention. But I have 1 Mr. Albert Way's note in Promptorium Parvulorum, P. 18. rarely been very anxious about the synonyms of botanists of an earlier date than the time of Linnæus, on account of the extreme uncertainty of the precise plants which they intended.'-John Lindley, A Monograph of Roses, 1820; p. ix. threnody (θρηνωδία). 'We crave not a memorial stone For those who fell at Marathon : Their fame with every breeze is blent, The Three Fountains (1869), p. 100. In -ism from the Greek -σμos; as atheism, idolism (Milton), modernism (Sir A. Grant, The Ancient Stoics), propagandism, ventriloquism. catechism. The objection to catechisms in the abstract is simply an objection to systematic religious teaching.'-Feb. 16, 1870. Scotticism, Protestantism, Catholicism, Presbyterianism. For our part, we should say that the special habit or peculiarity which distinguishes the intellectual manifestations of Scotchmen—that, in short, in which the Scotticism of Scotchmen most intimately consists -is the habit of emphasis. All Scotchmen are emphatic. If a Scotchman is a fool, he gives such emphasis to the nonsense he utters, as to be infinitely more insufferable than a fool of any other country; if a Scotchman is a man of genius, he gives such emphasis to the good things he has to communicate, that they have a supremely good chance of being at once or very soon attended to. This habit of emphasis, we believe, is exactly that perfervidum ingenium Scotorum which used to be remarked some centuries ago, wherever Scotchmen were known. But emphasis is perhaps a better word than fervour. Many Scotchmen are fervid too, but not all; but all, absolutely all, are emphatic. No one will call Joseph Hume a fervid man, but he is certainly emphatic. And so with David Hume, or Reid, or Adam Smith, or any of those colder-natured Scotchmen of whom we have spoken; fervour cannot be predicated of them, but they had plenty of emphasis. In men like Burns, or Chalmers, or Irving, on the other hand, there was both emphasis and fervour; so also with Carlyle; and so, under a still more curious combination, with Sir William Hamilton. And as we distinguish emphasis from fervour, so would we distinguish it from perseverance. Scotchmen are said to be persevering, but the saying is not universally true; Scotchmen are or are not morally persevering, but all Scotchmen are intellectually emphatic. Emphasis, we repeat, intellectual emphasis, the habit of laying stress on certain things rather than co-ordinating all, in this consists what is essential in the Scotticism of Scotchmen. And, as this observation is empirically verified by the very manner in which Scotchmen enunciate their words in ordinary talk, so it might be deduced scientifically from what we have already said regarding the nature and effects of the feeling of nationality. The habit of thinking emphatically is a necessary result of thinking much in the presence of, and in resistance to, a negative; it is the habit of a people that has been accustomed to act on the defensive, rather than of a people peacefully self-evolved and accustomed to act positively; it is the habit of Protestantism rather than of Catholicism, of Presbyterianism rather than of Episcopacy, of Dissent rather than of Conformity.'-David Masson, Essays (1856); Scottish Influence in British Literature.' Stoicism. 'Stoicism was in fact the earliest offspring of the union between the religious consciousness of the East and the intellectual culture of the West.'Professor Lightfoot, St. Paul and Seneca. ventriloquism. 'Coleridge praised "Wallenstein," but censured Schiller for a sort of ventriloquism in poetry. By-the-by, a happy term to express that common fault of throwing the sentiments and feelings of the writer into the bodies of other persons, the characters of the poem.'-Henry Crabb Robinson, Diary, &c., vol. i. p. 396. truism. 'But after this explanation you will perhaps be disposed to think me guilty of a truism; for it now appears that when I said that the study of history is indispensable to the politician, all I meant was that a politician must needs study politics. But is it a truism to say this? Is it a truism to say that a politician must study politics? I fear not.'-Professor Seeley, Inaugural Lecture at Cambridge. How readily new words are builded on this model may be seen from the following instances: 'The three schools of geological speculation which I have termed Catastrophism, Uniformitarianism, and Evolutionism, are commonly supposed to be antagonistic to one another.'-Address of the President of the Geological Society, 1869. landlordism. 'The sum of the whole matter may be briefly stated :—If the tenant under the bill will enjoy security of tenure, is subject to the condition that he does his duty to the landlord and to the proprietor; if the landlord finds his powers nominally abridged, they are abridged only on the side of arbitrary authority-capricious eviction, all that in Ireland goes by the name of "landlordism"-while he remains master of his estate so far as to secure its due cultivation in a proper course of industry, and so far as to be entitled to receive the surplus profits after the farmer is repaid for his industry and the capital he sinks in its cultivation.'-(February 17, 1870.) These nouns are in fact now formed just as readily as the verbs in -ize, from which the noun-formative -ism is an outgrowth. And so is the formative -ist; as atheist, egotist, idolist (Milton), mesmerist, publicist, ritualist, Wykehamist, ministerialist (Sir Stafford Northcote, in Times, April 29, 1869; Letter to Editor.) publicist. 'The same evening I had an introduction to one who, in any place but Weimar, would have held the first rank, and who in his person and bearing impressed every one with the feeling that he belonged to the highest class of men. This was Herder. The interview was, if possible, more insignificant than that with Goethe-partly, perhaps, on account of my being introduced at the same time with a distinguished publicist, to use the German term, the eminent political writer and statesman, Friedrich Gentz, the translator of Burke on the French Revolution.'-H. C. Robinson, Diary, 1801. indifferentist. 'There are, it is true, men who, without any knowledge of history, are hot politicians, but it would be better for them not to meddle with politics at all: there are men who, knowing something of history, are indifferentists in politics; it is because they do not know history enough.'-Professor Seeley, Inaugural Lecture. dogmatist. In short, past history is a dogmatist, furnishing for every doubt readymade and hackneyed determinations. Present history is a Socrates, knowing nothing, but guiding others to knowledge by suggestive interrogations.'—ld. ibid. Infallibilist. 'The concluding words of this Schema appear to us to embody all that has ever been contended for by the most extreme advocates of the cause. "Hence we teach, with the approval of the Holy Council, and define as a dogma of faith, that, by the Divine assistance, the Roman Pontiff, of whom, in the person of St. Peter, it has likewise been said by our Lord Jesus Christ, I have prayed for thee,' &c., cannot err when, acting as the highest |
