The name of the famous London fish-market, Billingsgate, has long been used to mean very violent and abusive language supposed to resemble the scoldings of the fishwomen in the market.

Another word describing a certain kind of speaking, and which also comes from the name of a place, is bunkum. When a person tells a story which we feel sure is not true, or tells a long tale to excuse himself from doing something, we often say it is all "bunkum." This word comes from the name of the American town of Buncombe, in North Carolina, and came into use through the member for Buncombe in the House of Representatives insisting on making a speech just when every one else wanted to proceed with the voting on a bill. He knew that he had nothing of importance to say, but explained that he must make a speech "for Buncombe"—that is, so that the people of Buncombe, who had elected him, might know that he was doing his duty by them. And so the expression bunkum came into use.

Another word which may go with these, because it also begins with the letter b, is bedlam. We describe a scene of great noise and confusion, as when a number of children insist on talking all together, as a "perfect bedlam." The word bedlam comes from Bethlehem. In the Middle Ages there was a hospital in London kept by monks of the Order of St. Mary of Bethlehem. In time this house came to be known as "Bedlam," and as after a while the hospital came to be an asylum for mad people, this name came to be used for any lunatic asylum. From that it came to have its modern use of any great noise or confusion.

The sport of shooting pheasants is very English, and few people think that the pheasant is a foreign bird, introduced into England, just as in fact the turkey, which seems to belong especially to the English Christmas, came to us from America. The pheasant gets its name from the river Phasis, in the Eastern country of Pontus. It may seem peculiar that a bird coming from America should be called a turkey; but we saw in an earlier chapter how vague the people of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were about America. When Columbus reached the shore of that continent, people thought he had sailed round by another way to the "Indies." In nearly all European countries the turkey got names which show that most people thought it came from India, or at least from some part of the "Indies." Even in England it was called for a time "cok off Inde." In Italy it was gallina d'India (or "Indian hen"). The modern French words for male and female turkeys come from this mistake. In French the bird was at first known as pouille d'Inde (or "Indian fowl"). The name came to be shortened into the one word dinde, and then, as people thought this must mean the female turkey, they made a new word for the male, dindon.

But though so many words come from the names of places, and some of these would not seem to do so at first sight, there are other words which seem to come from place-names which do not do so at all. Brazil wood is found in large quantities in Brazil, but the wood is not called after the country. On the contrary, the country is called after the wood. This kind of wood was already used in Europe in the twelfth century, and its name is found in several European languages. When the Portuguese adventurers found such large quantities in this part of South America they gave it the name of Brazil from the wood. The island of Madeira got its name in the same way, this being the word for "timber," from the Latin word materia.

Again, guinea-pigs do not come from Guinea, on the west coast of Africa, though guinea-fowls do so. Guinea-pigs really come from Brazil. The name guinea-pig was given to these little animals because, when the sailors brought them home, people thought they had come from Africa. But in the seventeenth century a common voyage for ships was to sail from English or other European ports to the west coast of Africa, where bands of poor negroes were seized or bought, and carried over the Atlantic to be sold as slaves in the American "plantations." The ships naturally did not come home empty, but often people were not very clear as to whether the articles they brought back came from Africa or America.

Again, India ink comes, not from India, but from China. Indian corn comes from America. Sedan chairs had nothing to do with Sedan in France, but probably take their name from the Latin verb sedere, "to sit."

In these words, as in many others, we can see that it is never safe to guess the derivation of words. Many of the old philologists used to do this, and then write down their guesses as facts. This caused a great deal of extra work for modern scholars, who will not, of course, accept any "derivation" for a word until they have clear proof that it is true.



CHAPTER XI.

PICTURES IN WORDS.

Everybody who has thought at all about our ways of speech must have noticed that we are all constantly saying things in a way which is not literally true. We say a child is a "sunbeam in the house;" but, of course, we only mean that she is gay and happy, and cheers every one up by her merriment. Or we describe some one as a "pearl among women," meaning that by her splendid qualities she is superior to most women as a pearl is to common stones.

Or, again, we may read in the newspaper that a statesman "spoke with sudden fire;" by which, of course, we understand that in the course of a calm speech he suddenly broke out passionately into words which showed how keenly he felt on the subject of which he was speaking.

Our language is full of this kind of speaking and writing, which is called "metaphorical." The word metaphor comes from two Greek words meaning "to carry over." In "metaphorical" speech a name or description of one thing is transferred to another thing to which it could not apply in ordinary commonplace language.

By means of metaphors we express more vividly and strikingly our feelings on any subject. We draw our metaphors from many different sources. Many of them naturally come from Nature, for the facts of Nature are all around us. We speak of a "sea of trouble" when we feel that the spirit is overwhelmed by sadness so great that it suggests the vastness of the sea swallowing up all that it meets. Or we speak of a "storm of anger," because what takes place in a person's soul in such a state is similar in some way to the confusion and force of a storm in Nature. Again, an expression like a "torrent of words" is made possible by our familiarity with the quick pouring forth of water in a torrent. By this expression, of course, we wish to suggest a similar quick rushing of words. Other expressions of this kind are "a wave of anguish," the "sun of good fortune," and there are hundreds of which every one can think.

Another source from which many metaphors have come is war, which has given men some of the most vivid action possible to humankind. Thus we speak of "a war of words," of a person "plunging into the fray," when we mean that he or she joins in a keen argument or quarrel. Or we speak more generally of the "battle of life," picturing the troubles and difficulties of life as the obstacles against which soldiers have to fight in battle. Shakespeare has the expression, "the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune."

We have a great many metaphorical expressions taken from painting, sculpture, and other arts. Thus we speak of "moulding" one's own life, picturing ourselves as sculptors, with our lives as the clay to be shaped as we will. Shakespeare has a similar metaphor,—

"There's a divinity which shapes our ends, Rough-hew them how we will."

We may, he says, roughly arrange our way of life, but the final result belongs to a greater artist—God.

Again, we speak of "building our hopes" on a thing, of "moulding" a person's character, of the "canvas of history," imagining history as a picture of things past. We speak of a person describing something very enthusiastically as "painting it in glowing colours," and so on. We also describe the making of new words as "coining them."

But not only are the sentences we make full of metaphors, but most of our words—all, in fact, except the names of the simplest things—are really metaphors themselves. The first makers of such words were speaking "in metaphor," as we should say now; but when the words passed into general use this fact was not noticed.

A great many of the metaphors found in words are the same in many languages. Many of them are taken from agriculture, which is, of course, after hunting, the earliest occupation of all peoples. We can easily think of many words now used in a general sense which originally applied to some simple country practice. We speak of being "goaded" to do a thing when some one persuades or threatens or irritates us into doing it. But a goad was originally a spiked stick used to drive cattle forward. The word goad, then, as we use it now, is a real metaphor.

Again, we speak of our feelings being "harrowed." The word harrow first meant, and still means, the drawing of a frame with iron teeth (itself called a harrow) over ploughed land to break up the clods. From this meaning it has come to have the figurative meaning of wounding or ruffling the feelings.

Another word connected with agriculture which has passed into a general sense is glean. We may now speak of "gleaning" certain facts or news, but to glean was originally (and still means in its literal sense) to gather the ears of corn remaining after the reapers have got in the harvest.

We speak of a nation groaning under the "yoke" of a foreign tyrant, or again of the "yoke" of matrimony, and in the Bible we have the text, "My yoke is easy." In these and in many other cases the word yoke is used figuratively to denote something weighing on the spirit; but the original use of yoke, and again one which remains, was to name the wooden cross-piece fastened over the necks of two oxen, and attached to a plough or wagon which they have to draw.

The word earn reminds us of a time when the chief way of earning money or payment of any kind was field-labour; for this word, which means so many things now, comes from an old Teutonic word meaning field-labour. The same word became in German ernte, which means "harvest."

Another common word with somewhat the same meaning as earn is gain; and this, again, takes us back to a time when our early ancestors won their profits by the grazing of their flocks. The word gain came into English from an Old French word, but this word in its turn came from a Teutonic word meaning to graze or pasture. The first people who used the word earn for other ways of getting payment than field-labour, and the word gain in a general sense, were really making metaphors.

Some of our commonest words take us back to a time before our ancestors even settled down to cultivate the land, or perhaps even before the days when they had learned to tame and give pasturage to their flocks. Some of our simplest words contain the idea of travelling or wandering. The word fear, which would not seem to have anything to do with journeying, comes from the same root-word as fare, the Old English word for "travel." Probably it came to be used because people travelling through the wild forests and swamps of Europe in those far-off days found much to terrify them, and so the word fear was made, containing this idea of moving from place to place. But again this was a metaphor. Until after the Norman Conquest the word fear meant a sudden or terrible happening. Only later it came to mean the feeling which such an event or the expectation of it would cause.

We may become tired in mind or body from many causes; but when we say we are "weary" we are literally saying that we have travelled far over difficult ground, for the word weary comes from an Old English word meaning this.

Some of our words are really metaphors showing the effect which different aspects of Nature had on the men who made them. When we say we are astonished we do not mean that we are "struck by thunder," but that is what the word literally means. It comes from the Latin word attonare, which means this. The words astound and stun contain the same hidden metaphor, which we use in a plainer way when we say we are "thunder-struck," meaning that we are very much surprised.

In the Middle Ages people believed that the stars had a great effect on the lives of men. If the stars were in a certain position at the time of a person's birth, he would be lucky all his life; if in another, he was doomed to unhappiness. From this belief we still use the expression "born under a lucky star" to describe a person who seems always to be fortunate. But the same metaphor is contained in single words. We speak of an unfortunate enterprise as "ill-starred," and the metaphor is clear. But when the newspapers speak of a railway "disaster," very few people realize that they are speaking the language of the mediaeval astrologers, men who studied the fortunes of nations and individuals from the stars. Disaster literally means such a misfortune as would be caused by adverse stars, and comes from the Greek word for star, astron, and the Latin dis.

The words jovial and mercurial, used to describe people of merry and lively temper, are metaphors of the same kind. A person born under the planet Jupiter (the star called after the Roman god Jupiter or Jove) was supposed to be of a merry disposition, and a person born when the planet Mercury was visible in the heavens was expected to be lively and ready-witted. When we use these words now to describe people, we do not, of course, mean that they were born under any particular star, but the words are metaphors which literally do mean this.

The word auspicious comes from a similar source. We speak of an "inauspicious" undertaking, meaning one which seems destined to be unlucky. But really what the word inauspicious says is that the "auspices are against" the undertaking. And this takes us back to Roman times, when no important thing was done in the state without the magistrates "taking the auspices." This they did from observing the flight of certain birds. In war the commander-in-chief of the Roman armies alone had the right to "take the auspices." We should think such a proceeding very foolish now, but in the words auspicious and inauspicious we are literally saying that the auspices have been favourable or unfavourable.

One of the common practices of the scholars who studied astrology and other sciences in the Middle Ages was the search for the philosopher's stone, which they believed had the power of giving eternal youth. They would melt metals in pots for this purpose. These pots were called by the Old Latin name of test. From this word we now have the modern word test, used in the sense of trial—another metaphor from the Middle Ages.

Many common English words are really metaphors made from old English sports, such as hunting and hawking. It is curious to think how these words are chiefly used to-day by people who know nothing of these pastimes, while the people who made the words were so familiar with them that they naturally expressed themselves in this way. We speak of a person being in another's "toils," when we mean in his "power." The word toils comes from the French toiles, meaning "cloths," and also used for the nets put round part of a wood, in which birds are being preserved for shooting, to prevent their escaping. The expression to "turn" or be "at bay," by which we mean that there is no chance of escape, but that the person in such a situation must either give in or fight, comes from hunting. The hare or the fox is said to be "at bay" when it comes to a wall or other object which prevents its running farther, and so turns and faces its pursuers. Bay is the deep barking of the hounds.

The word crestfallen, by which we mean looking ashamed and depressed, comes from the old sport of cock-fighting. The bird whose crest (or tuft of hair on the head) drooped after the fight was naturally the one which had been beaten. The word pounce comes from hawking, pounces being the old word for a hawk's claws. The word haggard, which now generally means worn and sometimes a little wild-looking through grief or anxiety, was originally the name given to a hawk caught, not, like most hawks used for hawking, when it was quite young, but when it was already grown up. Such a hawk would naturally have a wild look, and would never become so tame as the birds caught young.

Several words meaning to entice a person come from fowling. We speak of persons being "decoyed" when we mean that they are deceived into going to some dangerous place. The person who entices them away is called a "decoy;" but the first use of the word was to describe a duck trained to induce other ducks to fly or walk into nets laid over ponds by trappers. Another word of this kind is allure, which means to persuade a person to do something by making it seem very attractive. This word really means to bring a person (originally an animal) to the "lure" or "bait" prepared to catch him.

The word trap, which may now mean to show a person to be guilty by a trick, or to put him in the wrong in some way, is a metaphorical use. The word literally means to catch an animal in a trap.

Many words contain metaphors drawn from the older and simpler trades. We speak of a thing being "brand-new"—that is, as new as though just stamped with a "brand" or iron stamp. Another expression which has changed its meaning a little with time used to have exactly the same meaning. We now say a person looks "spick and span" when he or she is very neatly dressed. Formerly the expression was "spick and span new"—that is, as new as a spike (or spoon) just made or a chip newly cut. We may safely say that very few people who now use the expression "spick and span" have any idea of what it means literally. The metaphor is well hidden, but it is there.

Another metaphor, connected with metals and coins, is contained in the word sterling. We speak of "sterling qualities" or a "sterling character" in praising people for being straightforward and truthful, and not boastful. But the expression originally applied only to metals and coins. Sterling gold or silver is gold or silver of a certain standard of purity and not mixed with too much of any base metal.

Even the art of the baker has given us a word with a hidden metaphor. We speak of sending out another "batch" of men to the front; but batch originally meant, and still means, the loaves of bread produced at one baking. It is now used generally to describe a number of things coming together or in a set.

The butcher's shop has given us the word shambles, by which we now mean a place of slaughter. Thus we speak of a terrible battlefield as a "shambles." This metaphor is really due to a mistake. People came to think that a shambles was a singular noun meaning slaughter-house, or place where cattle were killed; but really the shambles were the benches on which the meat was spread for sale.

We speak of a person being the "tool" of another, and this is a metaphor taken from the general idea of work. The "tool" is merely used by the other person for some purpose of his own, just as a workman uses his tools. The greatest poem, or book, or picture of a poet, writer, or painter is often described as a "masterpiece." This word now means a "splendid piece of work," but in the Middle Ages a "masterpiece" was a piece of work by which a person working at a trade showed himself sufficiently good to be allowed to be a "master." Before that he was a "journeyman," and worked for a master himself, and, earlier still, an apprentice merely learning his trade. We often now use the expression to try one's "'prentice hand" on a thing when we mean that we are going to do a thing for the first time.

The commonest actions have naturally given us most metaphorical words, for these were the actions of which the word-makers were most easily reminded. We speak of our passions or emotions being "kindled," taking the metaphor from the common action of lighting a fire.

The two words lord and lady contain very homely metaphors. The lord was the "loaf-keeper," in Old English hlaford, the person on whom the household depended for their food. The lady might even make the bread, and often did so; and the word lady comes from hlaefdige—dig being the Old English word for knead.

The common word maul may mean to beat and bruise a person, but it means more often merely to handle something carelessly and roughly. Literally it means "to hit with a hammer," and comes from maul or mall, the name of a certain very heavy kind of hammer; so that when a child is told not to "maul" a book, it is literally being told not to hit it with a heavy hammer.

We have made many metaphorical words from joining together two Latin words and making a new meaning. We speak of a person having an "obsession" about something when he is always thinking of one thing. But the word obsession comes from the Latin word obsidere, "to besiege;" and so in the word obsession the constant thought is pictured as continually trying to gain entrance into the mind. We use the word besiege in the same metaphorical sense. We speak of being "besieged" with questions, and so on.

Another word used now most often metaphorically comes also from this idea of siege warfare. In all fortified places there are holes at intervals along the walls of defence, through which the defenders may shoot at the attackers. These are called "loop-holes." This word is now used much oftener in a figurative sense than to describe the actual thing. When two persons are arguing and one has plainly shown the other to be wrong, we say he has "not a loophole" of escape from the other's reasoning. Or if a person objects very much to doing something, and makes many excuses, every one of which is shown to be worthless, we again say he has "no loophole for escape."

Every child has heard of the Crusades, in which the nobles and knights and soldiers of the Middle Ages went to fight against the Turks to win back the Holy Sepulchre. These wars were called "crusades," from the cross which the Crusaders wore as badges. The word was made from the Latin word crux, which means "cross." But crusade has now become a general word. We speak of a "temperance crusade," of a "peace crusade," and so on. The word has come to have the general meaning of efforts made by people for something which they believe to be good; but literally every person who works for such a "crusade" is a knight buckling on his armour, signed with the cross, and sallying forth to the East.

This word sally also comes from siege warfare. A "sally" means a rush of defenders from a besieged place, attempting to get past the besiegers by taking them by surprise. It also has the more general meaning of an excursion, such as the going forth to a crusade. It means literally a "leaping out," and comes from the Latin word salire, "to leap." The word sally is also used to mean a sudden lively remark generally rather against some person or thing. It is interesting to notice that the fish salmon also probably takes its name from this Latin word meaning "to leap."

Any child with a dictionary can find for himself many hidden metaphors in the commonest words; and he will learn a great deal and amuse himself at the same time.



CHAPTER XII.

WORDS FROM NATIONAL CHARACTER.

There is one group of metaphorical words which is specially interesting for the stories of the past which they tell us if we examine into their meaning. Many names of ancient tribes and nations, and some names of modern peoples, have come to be used as general words; but the new meanings they have now tell us what other peoples have thought of the nations bearing these names in history.

One of the best things that can be said about a boy or a girl is that he or she is "frank," by which we mean open and straightforward. The Franks were, of course, the Teutonic tribe which conquered Gaul (the country we now call France) in the sixth century. Unlike the English when they conquered the Britons, the Franks mixed with the Gauls and the Roman population which they conquered; but for a long time the Franks were the only people who were altogether free. From this fact the word frank came into use, meaning "free." A "frank" person is one who speaks out freely and without restraint.

The name Frank has given us a word with a very pleasant meaning, but this was not the case with all the Teutonic tribes which broke in upon the Roman Empire. A person who is very uncivilized in his manners is sometimes called a "Goth." The word is often especially used to describe a person who does not appreciate pictures and books and works of art. Sometimes architects will pull down beautiful old buildings to make place for new, and the people who appreciate beautiful things describe them as "Goths." More often, perhaps, the word Vandal is used to describe such people. The Goths and Vandals were two of the fiercest and most barbaric of the German tribes which overran the Roman Empire from the third to the fifth century. They showed no respect for the beautiful buildings and the great works of art which were spread over the empire. They robbed and burned like savages, and in a few years destroyed many of the beautiful things which had been made with so much care and skill by the Greek and Roman artists. So deep an impression did their destructiveness make on the world of that time that their names have been handed down through sixteen centuries, and are used to-day in the unpleasant sense of wilful destroyers of beautiful things.

The words barbarian and barbarous are used in the same way. We describe a child who behaves in a rough way as "a little barbarian," or a grown-up person without ordinary good manners as "a mere barbarian." And the word barbarous has an even worse meaning. It is used to describe very coarse, uncivilized behaviour; but most often it has also the sense of cruelty as well as coarseness. Thus we speak of the barbarous behaviour of the Germans in Belgium. But when the word barbarous was first used it meant merely "foreign."

To the Greeks there were only two classes of people—Greeks, and non-Greeks or "barbarians." The name barbarian meant a bearded man, and came from the Greek word barbaros. The Greeks were clean-shaven, and distinguished themselves from the "bearded" peoples who knew nothing of Greek civilization. The Romans conquered Greece, and learned much from its civilization. To them all who were not Greeks or Romans were "barbarians." Some Roman writers, like Cicero, use the word in the modern sense of unmannerly or even savage, but this was not a common use. St. Paul was a Roman citizen, for he belonged to Tarsus, a city in Asia Minor which had been given full Roman rights; but he was a Greek by birth, and he uses the word in the Greek way. He speaks of all men being equal according to the Christian religion, saying, "There is neither Greek nor ... barbarian, bond nor free."

The word slave, again, contains in itself whole chapters of European history. It comes from the word Slav. The Slavs are the race of people to which the Russians, Poles, and many other nations in the East of Europe belong. The Great War has been partly fought for the freedom of the small Slav nations, of which Serbia is one. The Slavs have a long history of oppression and tyranny behind them. They have been subject to stronger nations, such as the Turks, and, in Hungary, the Magyars. The first "slaves" in mediaeval Europe belonged to this race, and the word "slave" is only another form of Slav. The word gives us an idea of the impression which the misfortunes of the Slavs made on the people of the Middle Ages.

The words Turk and Tartar have almost the opposite meaning to slave when they are used in a general sense. We call an unmanageable baby a "young Turk," and in this expression we have the idea of all the trouble the Turks have given the people of Europe since they swarmed in from the East in the twelfth century. The word Turk in this sense is now generally used amusingly to describe a troublesome child; but a grown-up person with a very quick temper or very difficult to get on with is often described also, chiefly in fun, as a "Tartar." Tartar is the name of the race of people to which the Turks, Cossacks, and several other peoples belong. The name by which they called themselves was Tatar; but Europeans changed it to Tartar, from the Latin word Tartarus, which means "hell." This gives us some idea of the impression these fierce people made on mediaeval Europe—an impression which is kept in memory by the present humorous use of the word.

It is chiefly Eastern peoples whose names have passed into common words meaning fierce and cruel people. Our fairy tales are full of tales of "ogres." It is not quite certain, but it is probable that this word comes from Hungarian. The chief people of Hungary are the Magyars; but the first person who used the name Hungarian in the sense of "ogre" probably did not know this, but thought of them as Huns, or perhaps Tartars, and therefore as very fierce, cruel people. The first person who is known to have used it is Perrault, a French writer of fairy tales in the seventeenth century.

The Great War has given us another of these national names used in a new way. Many people referred to the Germans all through the war as the "Huns." The Huns were half-savage people, who in the early Middle Ages moved about in great hordes over Europe killing and burning. They were at last conquered in East and West, and finally disappeared from history. But their name remained as a synonym for cruelty. The Kaiser, in an unfortunate speech, exhorted his soldiers to make themselves as terrible as Huns; and when people heard of the ill-treatment of the Belgians when their country was invaded at the beginning of the war, they said that the Germans had indeed behaved like the Huns of long ago. The name clung to them, and during the war, when people spoke of the "Huns," they generally meant the Germans, and not the fierce, half-savage little men who followed their famous chief Attila, plundering and burning through Europe about fifteen centuries ago.

Another name with a somewhat similar meaning is assassin, which most people would not guess to have ever been the name of a collection of people. An assassin is a person who arranges beforehand to take some one by surprise and kill him. But the original assassins were an Eastern people who believed that the murder of people of a religion other than their own was pleasing to their God. The Arabs first called this sect by the name hashshash, which the scholars of the Middle Ages translated into the Latin assassinus. The Arab name was given because these people were great eaters of "hashish" or dry herbs.

The name Arab itself has come to be used with a special meaning which has nothing to do with the people whose name it is. A rough little boy who spends most of his time in the streets is described as a "street Arab," and this comes from the fact that we think of the Arabs as a wandering people. The "street Arab" is a wanderer also, of another sort.

Another name of a wandering people has also come to have a special meaning in English. The French word for gipsy is bohemien, and from this we have the English word Bohemian. When we say a person is "a Bohemian," we mean that he lives in the way he really likes, and does not care whether other people think he is quite respectable or not. It was the novelist Thackeray who first used the word Bohemian in this sense.

Bohemia is, of course, the name of a country in Germany, but it is also used figuratively to describe the region or community in which "Bohemian" or unconventional people live.

The word gipsy itself is used to describe a very dark person, or almost any kind of people travelling round the country in caravans. But gipsy really means "Egyptian." When the real gipsies first appeared in England, in the sixteenth century, people thought they came from Egypt, and so gave them this name.

Another name often given to very dark people is blackamoor, a name by which negroes are sometimes described. This really means "Black Moor," and shows us how confused the people who first used the word were about different races of people. The Moors were a quite different people from the negroes, being related to the Arabs. But to some people every one who is not white is a "nigger." Nigger comes, of course, from negro.

The Moors inhabited a part of North-west Africa. It was also a North African people, the Algerians, who gave us the word Zouave. Every one has seen since the Great War began pictures of the handsome and quaintly-dressed French soldiers called "Zouaves." Perhaps some children wondered why they wore such a strange Eastern dress. It is because the Zouave regiments, which are now chiefly composed of Frenchmen, were originally formed from an Algerian mountain tribe called the Zouaves—Algeria being a French possession. The name is almost forgotten as that of a foreign tribe, but has become instead the name of these light infantry French regiments.

The name of the most famous of Eastern nations now spread all over the world, the Jews, has become a term of reproach. For hundreds of years after the spread of Christianity over Europe the Jews were looked upon as a wicked and hateful people. In many countries they were not allowed to live at all; in others a portion of the towns was set apart for them, and they were allowed to live there because they were useful as money-lenders.

Naturally the Jews, persecuted and distrusted, made as much profit as they could out of the people who treated them in this way. Perhaps with the growth of their wealth they grew to love money for its own sake. In any case, before long the Jews were looked upon as people who were decidedly ungenerous in the matter of money. Everybody knows the story of the Jew Shylock in Shakespeare's great play "The Merchant of Venice." Nowadays a person who is not really a Jew is often described contemptuously as a "Jew" if he shows himself mean in money matters; and some people even use a slang expression, "to jew," meaning to cheat or be very mean over a money affair.

Another name of a nation which stands for dishonesty of another sort (and much more excusable) is Gascon. The Gascons are the natives of Gascony, a province in the south of France. It is proverbial among other Frenchmen that the Gascons are always boasting, and even in English we sometimes use the word Gascon to describe a great boaster, while gasconade is now a common term for a boastful story.

Another word which we use to describe this sort of thing is romance. We often hear the expression, "Oh, he is only romancing," by which we mean that a person is saying what is not true, inventing harmless details to improve his story. The word romance has now many meanings, generally containing the idea of imagination. A person is called "romantic" when he or she is full of imaginings of great deeds and events. Or we say a person is a "romantic figure" when we mean that from his looks or speech, or from some other qualities, he seems fit for adventures.

But romance, from which we get romantic, was at first merely an adjective used to describe the languages which are descended from the Latin language, like French, Italian, and Spanish. In the Middle Ages scholars wrote in Latin, but poets and taletellers began to write in the language of the people—the romance languages in France and Italy. The tales of adventure and things which we should now call "romantic" were written in the "romance" languages; and from being used to describe the language, the word came to be used to describe the kind of story contained in these poems and tales. Gradually the words romantic and romance got the meaning which they have to-day.

We have seen in another chapter that we have a number of words taken from the names of persons in ancient history. We have also a modern and special use of words formed from the names of some of the ancient nations. We saw that we use the word Spartan to describe any very severe discipline, or a person who willingly uses such discipline for himself.

There are several other such names used in a more or less complimentary way. We speak of "Roman" firmness, and every one who has read Roman history will agree that this is a good use of the word. On the other hand, we have the expression "Punic faith" to describe treachery. The Romans had had many reasons for mistrusting their great enemy, the Carthaginians, and they used this expression, Fides Punica, which we have simply borrowed from the Latin.

We use the expression "Attic (or Athenian) salt" to describe a very refined wit or humour. The Romans used the word sal, or "salt," in this sense of wit, and their expression sal Atticum shows the high opinion they had of the Athenians, from whom, indeed, they learned much in art and in literature. It is this same expression which we use to-day, having borrowed and translated it also from the Latin.

We speak of a "Parthian shot" when some one finishes a conversation or an argument with a sharp or witty remark, leaving no chance for an answer. This expression comes from the story of the Parthians, a people who lived on the shores of the Caspian Sea, and were famous as good archers among the ancient nations.

The way in which the names of nations and peoples have taken on more general meanings gives us many glimpses into history.



CHAPTER XIII.

WORDS MADE BY WAR.

Since the earliest ages men have made war on one another, and we have a great crowd of words, new and old, connected with war. Some of these are very simple words, especially the names of early weapons; some are more elaborate and more interesting in their derivation.

The chief of all weapons, the sword, has its simple name from the Old English language itself, and so has the spear. But it was after the Norman conquest of England that war became more elaborate, with armoured knights and fortified towers, and nearly all the names connected with war of this sort come to us from the French of that time. The word war itself comes from the Old French word werre. Battle, too, comes from the French of this time; and so do armour, arms, fortress, siege, conquer, pursue, tower, banner, and many other words. All of these words came into French originally from Latin. Knight, however, is an Old English word. The French word for knight, chevalier, never passed into English, but from it we got the word chivalry.

The great weapons of modern warfare are the gun and the bayonet. There are, of course, many kinds of guns, small and large. Formerly it was the fashion to call the big guns by the name of cannon, but in the great European war this word has hardly been used at all. They are all "guns," from the rifles carried by the foot soldiers to the Maxims and the great howitzers which each require a company of men to serve them. The word cannon comes from the French canon, and is sometimes spelt in this way in English too. It means "great tube."

The derivation of the word gun is more interesting. Gunpowder was not really discovered until the fifteenth century, but long before this a kind of machine, or gun, for hurling great stones, or sometimes arrows, had been used. These instruments were called by the Latin word ballista (for the Romans had also had machines of this sort), which comes from the Greek word ballo, meaning "throw." In the Middle Ages weapons of this sort were called by proper names, just as ships are now. A common name for them was the woman's name Gunhilda, which would be turned into Gunna for short. It is probably from this that we get the word gun. The most interesting of all the guns used in the Great War has only a number for its name. It is the famous French '75, and takes this name merely from a measurement.

The special weapon of the foot soldier, or infantryman, is the bayonet. This is a short blade which the foot soldier fixes on the muzzle of his rifle before he advances to an attack. In the trenches his weapon is the rifle; before the order is given to go "over the parapet"—that is, to climb out of the trenches, to run forward and attack the enemy at close quarters—he "fixes his bayonet." The word bayonet probably comes from Bayonne, the name of a town in France.

The word infantry itself, now used to describe regiments of foot soldiers armed with the ordinary weapons, comes to us, like most of our words connected with war, from the French. We have already seen that the words of this sort which we borrowed in the Middle Ages were Norman-French words descended from Latin. But after the use of gunpowder in war became general there were many new terms; and as at this time the Italians were the people who fought most, and wrote most about fighting, many words relating to the methods of war after the close of the Middle Ages were Italian words. It is true that we learned them from the French, for the great writers on military matters in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were Frenchmen. But they borrowed many words from the Italian writers of the fifteenth century. One of these words is infantry, which means a number of junior soldiers or "infants"—the regiments of foot soldiers being made up of young men, while the older and more experienced soldiers made up the cavalry.

This, again, is a word which we borrowed from the French, and which the French had borrowed from the Italians. Cavalry is, of course, the name for horse soldiers, and the Italian word cavalleria, from which it comes, was itself derived from the Latin word caballus, "a horse." The general weapon for a cavalryman is the "sabre," a sword with a curved blade. This, again, comes to us from the French, but was probably originally an Eastern word. It is quite common for officers, in reckoning the number of men in an army, to speak of so many "bayonets" and so many "sabres," instead of "infantry" and "cavalry."

Many of the words which people began to use familiarly during the great European war first came into English in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, a time when it seemed to be the ordinary state of affairs for some, at least, of the European countries to be at war with one another. Bivouac is a word which was used a good deal in descriptions of earlier wars. It is a German word, which came into English at the time of the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648) in Germany. It means an encampment for a short time only (often for the night), without tents. It plainly has not much connection with modern trench warfare.

Another word which came from the German at the same time may serve to remind us that the German soldier of to-day is not very much unlike his ancestors of three hundred years ago. The word plunder was originally a German word meaning "bed-clothes" or other household furnishing. From the fact that so much of this kind of thing was carried off in the fighting of this terrible war, the word came to have its present sense of anything taken violently from its rightful owner. It must be confessed that the word was also used a great deal in the English Civil War, which was, of course, fought at the same time as the end of the Thirty Years' War.

It was also in the English Civil War that we first find the word capitulation, which now generally means to surrender on certain conditions. Before this, capitulation had more the meaning which it still keeps in recapitulation. It meant an arrangement under headings, and the word probably was transferred from describing the terms of surrender to describing the surrender itself.

One of the many words connected with war which came into the English language from the French in the seventeenth century was parade, which means the showing off of troops, and came into French from an Italian word which itself came from the Latin word parare, "to prepare." Another of these words which has been much used in descriptions of the battles of the Great War, and especially in the "Battle of the Rivers" in the autumn of 1914, is pontoon. Pontoons are flat-bottomed boats by means of which soldiers make a temporary bridge across rivers, generally when the permanent bridges have been destroyed by the enemy. The word is ponton in French, and comes from the Latin pons, "a bridge." Most words of this sort in French ending in on take the ending oon in English. Thus ballon in French becomes balloon in English. Barracks also comes from the French baraque, and the French had it from the Spanish or Italian barraca or baraca; but no one knows whence these languages got the word.

The word bombard, also much used during the Great War, came into English at the end of the seventeenth century from the French word bombarder, which came from the Latin word bombarda, an engine for throwing stones, and which in its turn came from the Latin word bombus, meaning "hum." Even a stone hurled with great force through the air makes a humming noise, and the "singing" of the bombs and shells hurled through the air became a very familiar sound to the soldiers who fought in the Great War. The word bomb, too, comes from the French bombe.

The words brigade and brigadier also came from the French at this time. So, too, did the word fusilier, a name which some British regiments still keep (for example, the Royal Fusiliers), though they are no longer armed with the old-fashioned musket known as the fusil, the name of which also came from the French, which had it from the Latin word focus, "a hearth" or "fire." It is curious how the names of modern British regiments, not even carrying the weapons from which they have their names, should take us back in this way to the days of early Rome.

The word patrol, which was used very much especially in the early days of the Great War, has an interesting origin. It may mean a small body of soldiers or police sent out to go round a garrison, or camp, or town, to keep watch; or, again, it may mean a small body of troops sent on before an advancing army to "reconnoitre"—that is, to spy out the land, the position of the enemy, etc. The word patrol literally means to "paddle in mud," for the French word, patrouille, from which it came into English in the seventeenth century, came from an earlier word with this meaning.

The word campaign, by which we mean a number of battles fought within a certain time, and generally according to a plan arranged beforehand, also came from the French word campagne at the beginning of the eighteenth century—a century of great wars and many campaigns. The word was more used in those earlier wars than it is now, because in those days the armies used practically never to fight in the winter, and so each summer during a war had its "campaign." The earlier meaning of the French word campagne, and one which it still keeps besides this later meaning, is "open country," the kind of country over which battles were generally fought.

Recruit is another word which came into English from the French at this time. It, again, is a word which has been used a great deal in the European war. It came from the French word recrue, which also means a newly-enlisted soldier. The French word croitre, from which recrue came, was derived from the Latin word crescere, "to increase."

All these words, we should notice, have now a figurative use. We speak of "recruits" not only to the army, but to any society. Thus we may say a person is a valuable "recruit" to the cause of temperance, etc. A "campaign" can be fought not only on the field of battle, but through newspapers, meetings, etc. It is in this sense that we speak of the "campaign" for women's suffrage, etc.

Many words relating to the dress and habits of our soldiers have curious origins. We say now quite naturally that a man is "in khaki" when we mean that he is a soldier, because the peculiar yellow-brown colour which is known as "khaki" is now the regular colour of the uniform of the British soldier. In earlier days the British soldier was generally a "redcoat," but in modern trench warfare it is so important that the enemy should not be able to pick out easily the position of groups of men in order to "shell" them, that the armies of all nations use gray or brown or other dull shades. Khaki is a word which came into English through the South African War, when the policy of clothing the soldiers in this way was first begun on a large scale. It comes from a Hindu word, khak, which means "dust." The object of this kind of clothing for our soldiers is that they shall not be easily distinguished from the soil of the trenches and battle-fields.

When a soldier or officer or any other person who is generally in uniform wears ordinary clothes we say he is "in mufti." This, again, is an Arab word meaning "Mohammedan priest."

The soldiers in the Great War used many new words which became a regular part of their speech. They were chiefly "slang," but it is quite possible that some of them may pass into good English. We shall see something of them in a later chapter.



CHAPTER XIV.

PROVERBS.

Every child knows what a proverb is, though every child may not, perhaps, be able to say in its own words just what makes a proverb. A proverb has been defined as "a wise saying in a few words." At any rate, if it is not always wise, the person who first said it and the people who repeat it think it is. Most proverbs are very old, and take us back, just as we saw that words formed from the names of animals do, to the early days before the growth of large towns.

In those days life was simple, and people thought chiefly of simple things. When they thought children or young persons were going to do something foolish they gave them good advice, and tried to teach them a little lesson from their own experience of what happened among the common things around them.

A boy or a girl who was very enthusiastic about some new thing was warned that "new brooms sweep clean." When several people were anxious to help in doing one thing, they were pushed aside (just as they are now) with the remark that "too many cooks spoil the broth." The people who use this proverb now generally know very little about broth and still less about cooking. They say it because it expresses a certain truth in a striking way; but the first person who said it knew all about cooks and kitchens, and spoke out of the fullness of her (it must have been a woman) experience.

Again, a person who is discontented with the way in which he lives and is anxious to change it is warned lest he jump "out of the frying-pan into the fire." Again the wisdom comes from the kitchen. And we may remark that these sayings are difficult to contradict.

But there are other proverbs which contain statements about birds and animals and things connected with nature, and sometimes these seem only half true to the people who think about them. We sometimes hear it said of a person who is very quiet and does not speak much that "still waters run deep." This is true in Nature. A little shallow brook will babble along, while the surface of a deep pool will have hardly a ripple on it. But a quiet person is not necessarily a person of great character or lofty thoughts. Some people hardly speak at all, because, as a matter of fact, they find nothing to say. They are quiet, not because they are "deep," but because they are shallow. Still, the proverb is not altogether foolish, for when people use it about some one they generally mean that they think this particular quiet person is one with so much going on in his or her mind that there is no temptation to speak much. "Empty vessels make most sound" is another of these proverbs which is literally true, but is not always true when applied to people. A person who talks a great deal with very little to say quite deserves to have this proverb quoted about him or her. But there are some people who are great talkers just because they are so full of ideas, and to them the proverb does not apply.

Another of these nature proverbs, and one which has exasperated many a late riser, is, "The early bird catches the worm." Many people have inquired in their turn, "And what about the worm?" But the proverb is quite true, all the same.

Again, "A rolling stone gathers no moss" is a proverb which has been repeated over and over again with many a headshake when young people have refused to settle down, but have changed from one thing to another and roamed from place to place. And this is quite true. But we may ask, "Is it a good thing for stones to gather moss?" After all, the adventurous people sometimes win fortunes which they could never have won if they had been afraid to move about. And the adventurous people, too, win other things—knowledge and experience—which are better than money. Of course the proverb is wise to a certain degree, for mere foolish changing without any reason cannot benefit any one. But things can gather rust as well as moss by keeping still, and this is certainly not a good thing.

"Where there's a will there's a way." So the old proverb says, and this is probably nearly always true, except that no one can do what is impossible. "Look before you leap" is also good advice for impetuous people, who are apt to do a thing rashly and wonder afterwards whether they have done wisely.

The most interesting thing about proverbs to the student of words is that they are always made up of simple words such as early peoples always used. But we go on repeating them, using sometimes words which we should never choose in ordinary speech, and yet never noticing that they are old-fashioned and quaint.

It is true that there are some sayings which are so often quoted that they seem almost like proverbs. But a line of poetry or prose, however often it may be quoted, is not a proverb if it is taken from the writings of a person whom we know to have used it for the first time. These are merely quotations. No one can say who was the first person to use any particular proverb. Even so long ago as the days of the great Greek philosopher Aristotle many proverbs which are used in nearly every land to-day were ages old. Aristotle describes them as "fragments of an elder wisdom."

Clearly, then, however true some quotations from Shakespeare and Pope and Milton may be, and however often repeated, they are not proverbs.

"A little learning is a dangerous thing."

This line expresses a deep truth, and is as simply expressed as any proverb, but it is merely a quotation from Pope. Again,

"Fools rush in where angels fear to tread"

is true enough, and well enough expressed to bear frequent quotation, but it is not a "fragment of elder wisdom." It is merely Pope's excellent way of saying that foolish people will interfere in delicate matters in which wise people would never think of meddling. Here, again, the language is not particularly simple as in proverbs, and this will help us to remember that quotations are not proverbs. There is, however, a quotation from a poem by Patrick A. Chalmers, a present-day poet, which has become as common as a proverb:—

"What's lost upon the roundabouts We pulls up on the swings."

The fact that this is expressed simply and even ungrammatically does not, of course, turn it into a proverb.

Though many of the proverbs which are repeated in nearly all the languages of the world are without date, we know the times when a few of them were first quoted. In Greek writings we already find the half-true proverb, "Rolling stones gather no moss;" and, "There's many a slip 'twixt the cup and the lip," which warned the Greeks, as it still warns us, of the uncertainty of human things. We can never be sure of anything until it has actually happened. In Latin writings we find almost the same idea expressed in the familiar proverb, "A bird in hand is worth two in the bush"—a fact which no one will deny.

St. Jerome, who translated the Bible from Greek into Latin in the fourth century and wrote many wise books besides, quotes two proverbs which we know well: "It is not wise to look a gift horse in the mouth," and, "Liars must have good memories." The first again deals, like so many of the early proverbs, with the knowledge of animals. A person who knows about horses can tell from the state of their mouths much about their age, health, and general value. But, the proverb warns us, it is neither gracious nor wise to examine too closely what is given to us freely. It may not be quite to our liking, but after all it is a present.

The proverb, "Liars must have good memories," means, of course, that people who tell lies are liable to forget just what tale they have told on any particular occasion, and may easily contradict themselves, and so show that they have been untruthful. It is necessary, then, for such a person, unless he wishes to be found out, to remember exactly what lies he has told.

Many proverbs have remained in the English language, not so much for the wisdom they contain as for the way in which they express it. Some are in the form of a rhyme—as, "Birds of a feather flock together," and "East and west, home is best." These are always favourites.

Others catch the ear because of their alliteration; that is to say, two or three of their words begin with the same letter. Examples of this are: "Look before you leap." The proverb "A stitch in time saves nine" has something of both these attractions, though it is not exactly a rhyme. Other examples of alliteration in proverbs are: "Delays are dangerous," "Speech is silvern, silence is golden."

A few proverbs are witty as well as wise, and these are, perhaps, the best of all, since they do not, as a rule, exasperate the people to whom they are quoted, as many proverbs are apt to do. Usually these witty proverbs are metaphors.



CHAPTER XV.

SLANG.

Every child has some idea of what is meant by "slang," because most schoolboys and schoolgirls have been corrected for using it. By slang we mean words and expressions which are not the ordinary words for the ideas which they express, but which are invented as new names or phrases for these ideas, and are at first known and used only by a few people who use them just among themselves. There are all kinds of slang—slang used by schoolboys and schoolgirls in general, slang used by the pupils of each special school, slang used by soldiers, a different slang used by their officers, and even slang used by members of Parliament.

The chief value of slang to the people who use it is that at first, at any rate, it is only understood by the inventors and their friends. The slang of any public school is continually changing, because as soon as the expressions become known and used by other people the inventors begin to invent once more, and get a new set of slang terms. Sometimes a slang word will be used for years by one class of people without becoming common because it describes something of which ordinary people have no experience, and therefore do not mention.

The making of slang is really the making of language. Early men must have invented new words just as the slang-makers do to-day. The difference is that there are already words to describe the things which the slang words describe. It may seem curious, then, that people should trouble to find new words. The reason they do so is often that they want to be different from other people, and sometimes because the slang word is much more expressive than the ordinary word.

This is one reason that the slang of a small number of people spreads and becomes general. Sometimes the slang word is so much better in this way than the old word that it becomes more generally used than it, and finds its way into the ordinary dictionaries. When this happens it is no longer slang.

But, as a rule, slang is ugly or meaningless, and it is very often vulgar. However common its use may become, the best judges will not use such expressions, and they remain mere slang.

A writer on the subject of slang has given us two good examples of meaningless and expressive slang. The people who first called marmalade "swish" could have no reason for inventing the new name except to seem odd and different from other people. Swish is certainly not a more expressive or descriptive word than marmalade. The one means nothing, while the other has an interesting history coming to us through the French from two old Greek words meaning "apple" and "honey."

The expressive word which this writer quotes is swag, a slang word for "stolen goods." There is no doubt that swag is a much more expressive word than any of the ordinary words used to describe the same thing. One gets a much more vivid picture from the sentence, "The thieves got off with the swag," than he would had the word prize or even plunder or booty been used. Yet there is no sign that the word swag will become good English. Expressive as it is, there is a vulgar flavour about it which would make people who are at all fastidious in their language very unwilling to use it.

Yet many words and phrases which must have seemed equally vulgar when first used have come to be accepted as good English. And in fact much of our language, and especially metaphorical words and phrases, were once slang. It will be interesting to examine some examples of old slang which have now become good English.

One common form of slang is the use of expressions connected with sport as metaphors in speaking of other things. Thus it is slang to say that we were "in at the death" when we mean that we stayed to the end of a meeting or performance. This is, of course, a metaphor from hunting. People who follow the hounds until the fox is caught and killed are "in at the death." Another such expression is to "toe the mark." We say a person is made to "toe the line" or "toe the mark" when he or she is subjected to discipline; but it is a slang phrase, and only good English in its literal meaning of standing with the toes touching a line in starting a race, etc., so that all may have an equal chance.

We say a person has "hit below the belt" if we think he has done or said something unfair in an argument or quarrel. This is a real slang phrase, and is only good English in the literal sense in which it is used in boxing, where it is against the rules to "hit below the belt." The term "up to you," by which is expressed in a slang way that the person so addressed is expected to do something, is a slang expression borrowed from cards.

Even from these few examples we can see that there are various degrees in slang. A person who would be content to use the expression "toe the line" might easily think it rather coarse to accuse an opponent of "hitting below the belt." There comes a time when some slang almost ceases to be slang, and though good writers will not use it in writing, quite serious people will use it in merely speaking. It has passed out of the stage of mere slang to become a "colloquialism."

The phrases we have quoted from present-day sport when used in a general sense are still for the most part slang; but many phrases taken from old sports and games, and which must have been slang in their time, are now quite good English and even dignified style. We speak of "wrestling with a difficulty" or "parrying a thrust" (a metaphor taken, of course, from fencing), of "winning the palm," and so on, all of which are not only picturesque but quite dignified English.

A very common form of slang is what are called "clipped" words. Such words are gov for "governor," bike for "bicycle," flu for "influenza," indi for "indigestion," rec for "recreation," loony for "lunatic," pub for "public house," exam for "examination," maths for "mathematics." All of these words are real slang, and most of them are quite vulgar. There is no sign that any of them will become good English. The most likely to survive in ordinary speech is perhaps exam.

Yet we have numbers of short words which have now become the ordinary names for certain articles, and yet which are only short forms of the original names of those articles. The first man who said bus for "omnibus" must have seemed quite an adventurer. He probably struck those who heard him as a little vulgar; but hardly any one now uses the word omnibus (which is in itself an interesting word, being the Latin word meaning "for all"), except, perhaps, the omnibus companies in their posters. Again, very few people use the full phrase "Zoological Gardens" now. Children are taken to the Zoo. Cycle for "bicycle" is quite dignified and proper, though bike is certainly vulgar. In the hurry of life to-day people more frequently phone than "telephone" to each other, and we can send a wire instead of a "telegram" without any risk of vulgarity. The word cab replaced the more magnificent "cabriolet," and then with the progress of invention we got the "taxicab." It is now the turn of cab to be dropped, and when we are in haste we hail a taxi. No one nowadays, except the people who sell them, speaks of "pianofortes." They have all become pianos in ordinary speech.

The way in which good English becomes slang is well illustrated by an essay of the great English writer Dean Swift, in the famous paper called "The Tatler," in 1710. He, as a fastidious user of English, was much vexed by what he called the "continual corruption of the English tongue." He objected especially to the clipping of words—the use of the first syllable of a word instead of the whole word. "We cram one syllable and cut off the rest," he said, "as the owl fattened her mice after she had cut off their legs to prevent their running away." One word the Dean seemed especially to hate—mob, which, indeed, was richer by one letter in his day, for he sometimes wrote it mobb. Mob is, of course, quite good English now to describe a disorderly crowd of people, and we should think it very curious if any one used the full expression for which it stands. Mob is short for the Latin phrase mobile vulgus, which means "excitable crowd."

Other words to which Swift objected, though most of them are not the words of one syllable with which he declared we were "overloaded," and which he considered the "disgrace of our language," were banter, sham, bamboozle, bubble, bully, cutting, shuffling, and palming. We may notice that some of these words, such as banter and sham, are now quite good English, and most of the others have at least passed from the stage of slang into that of colloquialism.

The word bamboozle is still almost slang, though perhaps more common than it was two hundred years ago, when Swift attacked it. Even now we do not know where it came from. There was a slang word used at the time but now forgotten—bam, which meant a trick or practical joke; and some scholars have thought that bamboozle (which, of course, means "to deceive") came from this. On the other hand, it may have been the other way about, and that the shorter word came from the longer. The word bamboozle shows us how hard it is for meaningless slang to become good English even after a struggle of two hundred years.

We have seen how many slang words in English have become good English, so that people use with propriety expressions that would have seemed improper or vulgar fifty or ten or even five years ago. Other interesting words are some which are perfectly good English as now used, but which have been borrowed from other languages, and in those languages are or were mere slang. The word bizarre, which we borrowed from the French, and which means "curious," in a fantastic or half-savage way, is a perfectly dignified word in English; but it must have been a slang word at one time in French. It meant long ago in French "soldierly," and literally "bearded"—that is, if it came from the Spanish word bizarra, "beard."

Another word which we use in English has a much less dignified use in French. We can speak of the calibre of a person, meaning the quality of his character or intellect; but in French the word calibre is only in ordinary speech applied to things. To speak of a "person of a certain calibre" in French is very bad slang indeed.

Again, the word fiasco, which we borrowed from the Italian, and which means the complete failure of something from which we had hoped much, was at first slang in Italian. It was applied especially to the failure of a play in a theatre. To break down was far fiasco, which literally means "make a bottle." The phrase does not seem to have any very clear meaning, but at any rate it is far removed from the dignified word fiasco as used in English.

The word sack as used in describing the sack of a town in war is a picturesque and even poetic word; but as it comes from the French sac, meaning "pack" or "plunder," it is really a kind of slang.

On the other hand, words which belong to quite good and ordinary speech in their own languages often become slang when adopted into another. A slang word much used in America and sometimes in England (for American expressions are constantly finding their way into the English language) is vamoose, which means "depart." Vamoose comes from a quite ordinary Mexican word, vamos, which is Spanish for "let us go."

It is very interesting to find that many of our most respectable words borrowed from Latin have a slang origin. Sometimes these words were slang in Latin itself; sometimes they were used as slang only after they passed into English. The French word tete, which means "head," comes from the Latin testa, "a pot." (We have seen that this is the word from which we get our word test.) Some Romans, instead of using caput, the real Latin word for "head," would sometimes in slang fashion speak of some one's testa, or "pot," and from this slang word the French got their regular word for head.

The word insult comes from the Latin insultarc, which meant at first "to spring or leap at," and afterwards came to have the same meaning as it has with us. The persons who first used this expression in the second sense were really using slang, picturing a person who said something unpleasant to them as "jumping at them."

We have the same kind of slang in the expression "to jump down one's throat," when we mean "to complain violently of some one's behaviour." The word effrontery, which comes to us from the French effronterie, is really the same expression as the vulgar terms face and cheek, meaning "impudence." For the word comes from the Latin frons, "the forehead."

An example of a word which was quite good English, and then came to be used as slang in a special sense, and then in this same special sense became good English again, is grit. The word used to mean in English merely "sand" or "gravel," and it came to mean especially the texture or grain of stones used for grinding. Then in American slang it came to be used to mean all that we mean now when we say a person has "grit"—namely, courage, and strength, and firmness. This use of the word seemed so good that it rapidly became good English; but the American slang-makers soon found another word to replace it, and now talk of people having "sand," which is not by any means so expressive, and will probably never pass out of the realm of slang.

An example of a word which was at first used as slang not many years ago, and is now, if not the most elegant English, at least a quite respectable word for newspaper use, is maffick. This word means to make a noisy show of joy over news of a victory. It dates from the relief of Mafeking by the British in 1900. When news of its relief came people at home seemed to go mad with joy. They rushed into the streets shouting and cheering, and there was a great deal of noise and confusion. It was noticed over and over again that there was no "mafficking" over successes in the Great War. People felt it too seriously to make a great noise about it.

A slang word which has become common in England during the Great War is straefe. This is the German word for "punish," and became quite familiar to English people through the hope and prayer to which the Germans were always giving expression that God would "straefe" England. The soldiers caught hold of the word, and it was very much used in a humorous way both at home and abroad. But it is not at all likely to become a regular English word, and perhaps will not even remain as slang after the war.

Besides the fact that slang often becomes good English, we have to notice that good English often becomes slang. One of the most common forms of slang is to use words, and especially adjectives, which mean a great deal in themselves to describe quite small and ordinary things. To speak of a "splendid" or "magnificent" breakfast, for instance, is to use words out of proportion to the subject, though of course they are excellent words in themselves; but this is a mild form of slang.

There are many people now who fill their conversation with superlatives, although they speak of the most commonplace things. A theatrical performance will be "perfectly heavenly," an actress "perfectly divine." Apart from the fact that nothing and no one merely human can be "divine," divinity itself is perfection, and it is therefore not only unnecessary but actually incorrect to add "perfectly." A scene or landscape may very properly be described as "enchanting," but when the adjective is applied too easily it is a case of good English becoming slang.

Then, besides the use of superlative adjectives to describe things which do not deserve such descriptions, there is a crowd of rarer words used in a special sense to praise things.

Every one knows what a "stunning blow" is, but few people can ever have been stunned by the beauty of another's clothes. Yet the expression "stunning hat" or "stunning tie" is quite common. Expressions like a "ripping time" are even more objectionable, because they are even more meaningless.

Then, besides the slang use of terms of praise, there are also many superlatives expressing disgust which the slangmongers use instead of ordinary mild expressions of displeasure. To such people it is not simply "annoying" to have to wait for a lift on the underground railways; for them it is "perfectly sickening."

Horrid, a word which means so much if used properly, is applied to all sorts of slightly unpleasant things and people. When one thinks of the literal Latin meaning of this word ("so dreadful as to cause us to shudder"), the foolishness of using it so lightly is plain. People frequently now declare that they have a "shocking cold"—a description which, again, is too violent for the subject.

Another form of slang is to combine a word which generally expresses unpleasant with one which expresses pleasant ideas. So we get such expressions as "awfully nice" and "frightfully pleased," which are actually contradictions in terms.

This kind of slang is the worst kind of all. It soon loses any spice of novelty. It is not really expressive, like some of the quaint terms of school or university slang, and it does a great deal of harm by tending to spoil the full force of some of our best and finest words. It is very difficult to avoid the use of slang if one is constantly hearing it, but, at any rate, any one who feels the beauty of language must soon be disgusted by this particular kind of slang.



CHAPTER XVI.

WORDS WHICH HAVE CHANGED THEIR MEANING.

We have seen in the chapter on "slang" how people are continually using old words in new ways, and how, through this, slang often becomes good English and good English becomes slang. The same thing has been going on all through the history of language. Other words besides those used as slang have been constantly getting new uses. Many English words to-day have quite different meanings from those which they had in the Middle Ages; some even have exactly opposite meanings to their original sense. Sometimes words keep both the old meaning and the new.

In this matter the English language is very different from the German. The English language has many words which the Germans have too, but their meanings are different. The Germans have kept the original meanings which these words had hundreds of years ago; but the thousands of words which have come down to us from the English language of a thousand years ago have nearly all changed their meanings.

We have two of these old words which have now each two exactly opposite meanings. The word fast means sometimes "immovable," and sometimes it means the exact opposite—"moving rapidly." We say a key is "fast" in a lock when we cannot get it out, and we say a person runs "fast" when we mean that he runs quickly. The first meaning of steadiness is the original meaning; then the word came to be used to mean "moving steadily." A person who ran on, keeping up a steady movement, was said to run fast, and then it was easy to use the word for rapidity as well as steadiness in motion or position. This is how the word fast came to have two opposite meanings.

Another word, fine, has the same sort of history. We speak of a "fine needle" when we mean that it is thin, and a "fine baby" when we mean that it is fat. The first meaning is nearer to the original, which was "well finished off." Often a thing which had a great deal of "fine" workmanship spent on it would be delicate and "fine" in the first sense, and so the word came to have this meaning. On the other hand, the thing finished off in this way would generally be beautiful. People came to think of "fine" things as things to be admired, and as they like their babies to be fat, a fat baby will generally be considered a fine baby. It was in this kind of way that "fine" came to have its second meaning of "large."

The common adjectives glad and sad had quite different meanings in Old English from those they have now. In Old English glad meant "shining," or "bright," but in a very short time it came to mean "cheerful." Now it means something rather different from this, for though we may speak of a "glad heart" or "glad spirit," such expressions are chiefly used in poetry. Generally in ordinary speech when we say that we are "glad" we mean that we are pleased about some special thing, as "glad that you have come."

Sad in Old English meant to have as much as one wanted of anything. Then it came to mean "calm" and "serious," perhaps from the idea that people who have all they want are in a mood to settle down and attend to things seriously. Already in Shakespeare's writings we find the word with its present meaning of "sorrowful." It has quite lost its earlier meaning, but has several special new meanings besides the general one of "sorrowful." A "sad tint," or colour, is one which is dull. "Sad bread" in the north of England is "heavy" bread which has not risen properly. Again, we describe as "sad" some people who are not at all sorrowful. We say a person is a "sad" liar when we mean that he is a hopeless liar.

The word tide, which we now apply to the regular rise and fall of the sea, used to mean in Old English "time;" and it still keeps this meaning in the words Christmastide, Whitsuntide, etc.

One common way in which words change is in going from a general to a more special meaning. Thus in Old English the word chest meant "box" in general, but has come now to be used as the name of a special kind of box only, and also as the name of a part of the body. The first person who used the word in this sense must have thought of the "chest" as a box containing the lungs and the heart.

Glass is, of course, the name of the substance out of which we make our windows and some of our drinking vessels, etc., and this was at one time its only use; but we now use the name glass for several special articles—for example, a drinking-vessel, a telescope, a barometer, a mirror (or "looking-glass"), and so on. Copper is another word the meaning of which has become specialized in this way as time has gone on. From being merely the name of a metal it has come to be used for a copper coin and for a large cauldron especially used in laundry work. Another example of a rather different kind of this "specialization" which changes the meaning of words is the word congregation. Congregation used to mean "any gathering together of people in one place," and we still use the word congregate in this sense. Thus we might say "the people congregated in Trafalgar Square," but we should never think of speaking of a crowd listening to a lecturer there as a "congregation." The word has now come to mean an assembly for religious worship in a chapel or church.

Some words have changed their meaning in just the opposite way. From having one special meaning they have come by degrees to have a much more general sense. The word bureau, which came into English from the French, meant at first merely a "desk" in both languages. It still has this meaning in both languages, but a wider meaning as well. It can now be used to describe an office (a place associated with the idea of desks). Thus we have "employment bureau," and can get English money for foreign at a "bureau de change." From this use of the word we have the word bureaucracy, by which we describe a government which is carried on by a great number of officials.

A better example of how a word containing one special idea can extend its meaning is the word bend. This word originally meant to pull the string of a bow in order to let fly an arrow. The expression "bend a bow" was used, and as the result of pulling the string was to curve the wooden part of the arrow, people came in time to think that "bending the bow" was this making the wood to curve. From this came our general use of "bend" to mean forcing a thing which is straight into a curve or angle. We have, of course, also the metaphorical use of the word, as when we speak of bending our will to another's.

Another word which has had a similar history is carry. When this word was first borrowed from Old French it meant to move something from place to place in a cart or other wheeled vehicle. The general word for our modern carry was bear, which we still use, but chiefly in poetry. In time carry came to have its modern general sense of lifting a thing from one place and removing it to another. A well-known writer on the history of the English language has suggested that this came about first through people using the word in this sense half in fun, just as the word cart is now sometimes used. A person may say (a little vulgarly), "Do you expect me to cart all these things to another room?" instead of using the ordinary word carry. If history were to repeat itself in this case, cart might in time become the generally used word, and carry in its turn be relegated to the realm of poetry.

Words often come to have several meanings through being used to describe things which are connected in some way with the things for which they were originally used. The word house originally had one meaning, which it still keeps, but to which several others have been added. It was a building merely, but came in time to be used to mean the building and the people living in it. Thus we say one person "disturbs the whole house." From this sense it got the meaning of a royal family, and we speak of the House of York, Lancaster, Tudor, or Stuart. We also use the word in a large sense when we speak of the "House of Lords" and the "House of Commons," by which we hardly ever mean the actual buildings known generally as the "Houses of Parliament," but the members of the two Houses. The word world has had almost the opposite history to the word house. World originally applied only to persons and not to any place. It meant a "generation of men," and then came to mean men and the earth they live on, and then the earth itself; until it has a quite general sense, as when we speak of "other worlds than ours."

Many words which are used at present to describe bad or disagreeable things were used quite differently originally. The word villain is, perhaps, the most expressive we can use to show our opinion of the depths of a person's wickedness. Yet in the Middle Ages a villain, or "villein," was merely a serf or labourer bound to work on the land of a particular lord. The word in Saxon times would have been churl. As time went on both these words became terms of contempt. The lords in the Middle Ages were certainly often more wicked than the serfs, as we see in the stories of the days of Robin Hood; but by degrees the people of the higher classes began to use the word villain more and more contemptuously. Many of them imagined that only people of their own class were capable of high thoughts and noble conduct. Gradually "villainy" came to mean all that was low and vulgar, and by degrees it came to have the meaning it has now of "sheer wickedness." At the end of the Middle Ages there were practically no longer any serfs in England; but the word villain has remained in this new sense, and gives us a complete story of the misunderstanding and dislike which must have existed between "noble" and "simple" to cause such a change in the meaning of the word.

The word churl has a somewhat similar history. We say now that a sulky, ungracious person is a "mere churl," or behaves in a "churlish" manner, never thinking of the original meaning of the word. Here, again, is a little story of injustice. The present use of the word comes from the supposition that only the mere labourer could behave in a sulky or bad-tempered way.

Knave is another of those words which originally described persons of poor condition and have now come to mean a wicked or deceitful person. A knave, as we now understand the word, means a person who cheats in a particularly mean way, but formerly the word meant merely "boy." It then came to mean "servant," just as the word garcon ("boy") is used for all waiters in French restaurants. Another word which now means, as a rule, some one unutterably wicked, is wretch, though it is also used rather contemptuously to describe some one who is not wicked but unutterably miserable. Yet in Old English this word merely meant an "exile." An exile was a person to be pitied, and also sometimes a person who had done something wrong, and we get both these ideas in the modern uses of the word. The word blackguard, which now means a "scoundrel," was also once a word for "scullion;" but it does not go back as far as "knave" and "villain," being found chiefly in writings of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

Another word in which the "villeins" and "knaves" and "churls" seem to have their revenge on the "upper classes" is surly. This word used to be spelt sirly, and meant behaving as a "sire," or gentleman, behaves. Originally this meant "haughty" or "arrogant," but by degrees came to have the idea of sulkiness and ungraciousness, much like churlish.

Several adjectives which are now used as terms of blame were not only harmless descriptions originally, but were actually terms of praise. No one likes to be called "cunning," "sly," or "crafty" to-day; but these were all complimentary adjectives once. A cunning man was one who knew his work well, a sly person was wise and skilful, and a crafty person was one who could work well at his trade or "craft." Two words which we use to-day with a better sense than any of these, and yet which have a slightly uncomplimentary sense, are knowing and artful. It is surely good to "know" things, and to be full of art; but both words have already an idea of slyness, and may in time come to have quite as unpleasant a meaning as these three which have the same literal meaning.

Fellow, a word which has now nearly always a slightly contemptuous sense, had originally the quite good sense of partner. It came from an Old English word which meant the man who marked out his land next to yours. The word still has this good sense in fellowship, fellow-feeling, etc., and as used to describe a "fellow" of a college or society. But the more general use is as a less respectful word for man. One man may say of another that he is a "nice fellow" without any disrespect; but the word has no dignity, and people, even though they use it of an equal, would not think of using it to describe a superior, and the more general use is that of blame or contempt, as in the expressions, "a disagreeable fellow" or "a stupid fellow." The word bully was at one time a word which showed affection, and meant even "lover." In English now, of course, a bully is a person, especially a boy, who tyrannizes over people weaker than himself; but the Americans still use the word in a good sense when they say "bully for you," meaning "bravo."