PREFACE. (HE origin of this book is as follows:- Some THE twenty years ago, the author, having considerable leisure, wrote a lecture on "Words, their Sig nificance, Use and Abuse," which he delivered before a number of Literary Societies and Lecture Associations. Being very much interested in the subject, he continued from time to time to make notes of his thoughts and readings upon it, till at length the lecture grew into a volume. The author is well aware that in his criticisms on the misuses and abuses of words, he has exposed himself to criticism; and it may be that he has been guilty of some of the very sins which he has condemned. If so, he sins in good company, since nearly all of his predecessors, who have written on the same theme, have been found guilty of a similar inconsistency, from Lindley Murray down to Dean Alford, Moon, Marsh, and Fowler. If the public is to hear no philological sermons till the preachers are faultless, it will have to wait forever. "The only impeccable authors," says Hazlitt, "are those that never wrote." Any just, well-meant criticism, however severe, the author will gratefully welcome; to that which springs from an instinctive love of fault-finding, he is apt to be thickskinned. In the words of Erasmus: "Nos ad utrumque juxta parati sumus, ut vel rationem reddamus, si quid rectè monuimus, vel ingenuè confiteamur errorem, sicubi lapsi deprehendimur." It is hardly necessary to add that the work is designed for popular reading, rather than for scholars. How much the author is indebted to others, he cannot say. He has been traveling, in his own way, over old and well-worn ground, and has picked up his materials freely from all the sources within his reach. Non nova, sed nové, has been his aim; he regrets that he has not accomplished it more to his satisfaction. The world, it has been truly said, does not need new thoughts so much as it needs that old thoughts be recast. There are some writers, however, to whom he has been particularly indebted; and therefore a list of their names, with the books consulted, has been appended at the end of the volume. WORDS; THEIR USE AND ABUSE. CHAPTER I. THE SIGNIFICANCE OF WORDS. "Speech is morning to the mind; It spreads the beauteous images abroad, La parole, cette main de l'esprit.-CHARRON. 10 the thoughtful man, who has reflected on the common operations of life, which, but for their commonness, would be deemed full of marvel, few things are more wonderful than the origin, structure, history and significance of words. The tongue is the glory of man; for though animals have memory, will and intellect, yet language, which gives us a duplicate and multipliable existence, enabling mind to communicate with mind, is the Rubicon which they never have dared to cross. The dog barks as it barked at the creation, and the crow of the cock is the same to-day as when it startled the ear of repentant Peter. The song of the lark and the howl of the leopard have continued as unchangeable as the concentric circles of the spider and the waxen hexagon of the bee; and even the stoutest champion of the ourang-outang theory of man's origin will admit that no process of natu |