The Century Vocabulary Builder Part 10

Upon this _hint_ I spake. (From the account of the wooing of Desdemona. Shakespeare: _Oth.e.l.lo_)

This Lodovico is a _proper_ man. A very handsome man.

(Shakespeare: _Oth.e.l.lo_)

Mice and rats and such small _deer_. (Shakespeare: _King Lear_)

This is no sound That the earth _owes_. (Shakespeare: _The Tempest_)

Every shepherd _tells_ his _tale_. (Milton: _L'Allegro_) Bring the _rathe_ primrose that forsaken dies. (_Rathe_ survives only in the comparative form _rather_. Milton: _Lycidas_)

Can honor's voice _provoke_ the silent dust? (Gray: _Elegy_)

The _silly_ buckets on the deck. (Coleridge: _The Ancient Mariner_)

4. In technical usage or particular phrases a former sense of a word may be embedded like a fossil. The italicized words in the following list retain special senses of this kind. What do these words as thus used mean?

Can you add to the list?

To _wit_ Might and _main_ Time and _tide_ Christmas_tide_ _Sad_ bread A bank _teller_ To _tell_ one's _beads_ Aid and _abet_ _Meat_ and drink Shop_lifter_ Fishing-_tackle_ Getting off _scot_-free An _earnest_ of future favors A _brave_ old hearthstone _Confusion_ to the enemy!

Giving aid and _comfort_ to the enemy Without _let_ or hindrance A _let_ in tennis _Quick_lime Cut to _the quick_ _Neat_-foot oil To _sound in_ tort (Legal phrase) To bid one G.o.d_speed_ I had as _lief_ as not The child _favors_ its parents On _pain_ of death Widow's _weeds_ I am _bound_ for the Promised Land To _carry_ a girl to a party (Used only in the South) To give a person so much _to boot_

5. Each of the subjoined phrases contradicts itself or repeats its idea clumsily. The key to the difficulty lies in the italicized words. What is their true meaning?

A weekly _journal_ _Ultimate_ end Final _ultimatum_ _Final_ completion Previous _preconceptions_ _Nauseating_ seasickness _Join_ together _Descend_ down _Prefer_ better _Argent_ silver Completely _annihilate_ _Unanimously_ by all Most _unique_ of all The other _alternative_ _Endorse_ on the back _Incredible_ to believe A _criterion_ to go by An _appet.i.te_ to eat _A panacea_ for all ills _Popular_ with the people _Biography_ of his life _Autobiography_ of his own life _Vitally_ alive A new, _novel_, and ingenious explanation _Mutual_ dislike for each other _Omniscient_ knowledge of all subjects A _material_ growth in mental power _Peculiar_ faults of his own Fly into an _ebullient_ pa.s.sion To _saturate_ oneself with gold and silver Elected by _acclamation on_ a secret ballot.

V.

INDIVIDUAL WORDS: AS MEMBERS OF VERBAL FAMILIES

Our investigation into the nature, qualities, and fortunes of single words must now merge into a study of their family connections. We do not go far into this new phase of our researches before we perceive that the career of a word may be very complicated. Most people, if you asked them, would tell you that an individual word is a causeless ent.i.ty--a thing that was never begotten and lacks power to propagate. They would deny the possibility that its course through the world could be other than colorless, humdrum. Now words thus immaculately conceived and fatefully impotent, words that shamble thus listlessly through life, there are. But many words are born in an entirely normal way; have a grubby boyhood, a vigorous youth, and a sober maturity; marry, beget sons and daughters, become old, enfeebled, even senile; and suffer neglect, if not death. In their advanced age they are exempted by the discerning from enterprises that call for a l.u.s.ty agility, but are drafted into service by those to whom all levies are alike. Indeed in their very prime of manhood their vicissitudes are such as to make them seem human. Some rise in the world some sink; some start along the road of grandeur or obliquity, and then backslide or reform. Some are social climbers, and mingle in company where verbal dress coats are worn; some are social degenerates, and consort with the ragam.u.f.fins and guttersnipes of language. Some marry at their own social level, some above them, some beneath; some go down in childless bachelorhood or leave an unkempt and illegitimate progeny. And if you trace their own lineage, you will find for some that it is but decent and middle-cla.s.s, for some that it is mongrelized and miscegenetic, for some that it is proud, ancient, yea perhaps patriarchal.

It is contrary to nature for a word, as for a man, to live the life of a hermit. Through external compulsion or internal characteristics a word has contacts with its fellows. And its most intimate, most spontaneous a.s.sociations are normally with its own kindred.

In our work hitherto we have had nothing to say of verbal consanguinity.

But we have not wholly ignored its existence, for the very good reason that we could not. For example, in the latter portions of Chapter IV we proceeded on the hypothesis that at least some words have ancestors. Also in the a.n.a.lysis of the dictionary definition of _tension_ we learned that the word has, not only a Latin forebear, but French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian kinsmen as well. One thing omitted from that a.n.a.lysis would have revealed something further--namely, that the word has its English kinfolks too. For the bracketed part of the dictionary definition mentions two other English words, _tend_ and _tense_, which from their origin involve the same idea as that of _tension_-- the idea of stretching.

Now words may be akin in either of two ways. They may be related in blood.

Or they may be related by marriage. Let us consider these two kinds of connection more fully.

As an ill.u.s.tration of blood kinships enjoyed by a native English word take the adjective _good_. We can easily call to mind other members of its family: goodly, goodish, goody-goody, good-hearted, good-natured, good- humored, good-tempered, goods, goodness, goodliness, gospel (good story), goodby, goodwill, goodman, goodwife, good-for-nothing, good den (good evening), the Good Book. The connection between these words is obvious.

Next consider a group of words that have been naturalized: scribe, prescribe, ascribe, proscribe, transcribe, circ.u.mscribe, subscriber, indescribable, scribble, script, scripture, postscript, conscript, rescript, ma.n.u.script, nondescript, inscription, superscription, description. It is clear that these words are each other's kith and kin in blood, and that the strain or stock common to all is _scribe_ or (as sometimes modified) _script_. What does this strain signify? The idea of writing. The _scribes_ are a writing clan. Some of them, to be sure, have strayed somewhat from the ancestral calling, for words are as wilful--or as independent--as men. _Ascribe_, for example, does not act like a member of the household of writers, whatever it may look like.

We should have to scrutinize it carefully or consult the record for it in that verbal Who's Who, the dictionary, before we could understand how it came by its scribal affiliations honestly. But once we begin to reflect or to probe, we find we have not mistaken its ident.i.ty. _Ascribe_ is the offspring of _ad_ (to) and _scribo_ (write), both Latin terms.

It originally meant writing to a person's name or after it (that is, imputing to the person by means of written words) some quality or happening of which he was regarded as the embodiment, source, or cause.

Nowadays we may saddle the matter on him through oral rather than written speech. That is, _ascribe_ has largely lost the writing traits. But all the same it is manifestly of the writing blood.

The _scribes_ are of undivided racial stock, Latin. Consider now the _manu_, or _man_, words which sprang from the Latin _ma.n.u.s_, meaning "hand." Here are some of them: manual, manoeuver, mandate, manacle, manicure, manciple, emanc.i.p.ate, manage, manner, manipulate, manufacture, manumission, ma.n.u.script, amanuensis. These too are children of the same father; they are brothers and sisters to each other. But what shall we say of legerdemain (light, or sleight, of hand), maintain, coup de main, and the like? They bear a resemblance to the _man's_ and _manu's_, yet one that casual observers would not notice. Is there kinship between the two sets of words? There is. But not the full fraternal or sororal relation. The _mains_ are children of _ma.n.u.s_ by a French marriage he contracted. With this French blood in their veins, they are only half-brothers, half-sisters of the _manu's_ and the _man's_.

Your examination of the family trees of words will be practical, rather than highly scholastic, in nature. You need not track every word in the dictionary to the den of its remote parentage. Nor need you bother your head with the name of the distant ancestor. But in the case of the large number of words that have a numerous kindred you should learn to detect the inherited strain. You will then know that the word is the brother or cousin of certain other words of your acquaintance, and this knowledge will apprise you of qualities in it with which you should reckon. To this extent only must you make yourself a student of verbal genealogy.

EXERCISE - Blood

(Simple exercises in tracing blood relationships among words are given at the end of the chapter. Therefore the exercises a.s.signed here are of a special character.)

1. Each of the following groups is made up of related words, but the relationship is somewhat disguised. Consult the dictionary for each word, and learn all you can as to (a) its source, (b) the influence (as pa.s.sing through an intermediate language) that gave it its present form, (c) the course of its development into its present meaning.

Captain Cathedral Governor Capital Chaise Gubernatorial Decapitate Chair Chef Shay Guardian Chieftain Ward Camp Cavalry Campaign Guarantee Chivalry Champion Warrant

Camera Inept Incipient Chamber Apt Receive

Serrated Inimical Poor Sierra Enemy Pauper

Influence Espionage Work Influenza Spy Wrought Playwright Isolate Insular

2. The variety of sources for modern English is indicated by the following list. Do not seek for blood kinsmen of these particular words, but think of all the additional words you can that have come into English from Indian, Spanish, French, any other language spoken today.

Alphabet (Greek) Piano (Italian) Folio (Latin) Car (Norman) Boudoir (French) Rush (German) Binnacle (Portuguese) Sky (Icelandic) Anger (Old Norse) Yacht (Dutch) Isingla.s.s (Low German) Hussar (Hungarian) Slogan (Celtic) Samovar (Russian) Polka (Polish) Chess (Persian) Shekel (Hebrew) Tea (Chinese) Algebra (Arabic) Kimono (j.a.panese) Puttee (Hindoo) Tattoo (Tahitian) Boomerang (Australian) Voodoo (African) Potato (Haytian) Skunk (American Indian) Guano (Peruvian) Buncombe (American) Renegade (Spanish)

That words marry and are given in marriage, is too generally overlooked.

Any student of a foreign language, German for instance, can recall the thrill of discovery and the lift of reawakened hope that came to him when first he suspected, aye perceived, the existence of verbal matrimony. For weeks he had struggled with words that apparently were made up of fortuitous collocations of letters. Then in some beatific moment these huddles of letters took meaning; in instance after instance they represented, not a word, but words--a linguistic household. Let them be what they might--a harem, the domestic establishment of a Mormon, the dwelling-place of verbal polygamists,--he could at last see order in their relationships. To their morals he was indifferent, absorbed as he was in his joy of understanding.

In English likewise are thousands of these verbal marriages. We may not be aware of them; from our very familiarity with words we may overlook the fact that in instances uncounted their oneness has been welded by a linguistic minister or justice of the peace. But to read a single page or harken for thirty seconds to oral discourse with our minds intent on such states of wedlock is to convince ourselves that they abound. Consider this list of everyday words: somebody, already, disease, vineyard, unskilled, outlet, nevertheless, holiday, insane, resell, schoolboy, helpmate, uphold, withstand, rainfall, deadlock, typewrite, football, motorman, thoroughfare, snowflake, b.u.t.tercup, landlord, overturn. Every term except one yokes a verbal husband with his wife, and the one exception (_nevertheless_) joins a uxorious man with two wives.

These marriages are of a simple kind. But the nuptial interlinkings between families of words may be many and complicated. Thus there is a family of _graph_ (or write) words: graphic, lithograph, cerograph, cinematograph, stylograph, telegraph, multigraph, seismograph, dictograph, monograph, holograph, logograph, digraph, autograph, paragraph, stenographer, photographer, biographer, lexicographer, bibliography, typography, pyrography, orthography, chirography, calligraphy, cosmography, geography. There is also a family of _phone_ (or sound) words: telephone, dictaphone, megaphone, audiphone, phonology, symphony, antiphony, euphonious, cacophonous, phonetic spelling. It chances that both families are of Greek extraction. Related to the _graphs_--their cousins in fact--are the _grams_: telegram, radiogram, cryptogram, anagram, monogram, diagram, logogram, program, epigram, kilogram, ungrammatical. Now a representative of the _graphs_ married into the _phone_ family, and we have graphophone. A representative of the _phones_ married into the _graph_ family, and we have phonograph. A representative of the _grams_ married into the _phone_ family, and we have gramophone. A representative of the _phones_ married into the _gram_ family, and we have phonogram.

Of such unions children may be born. For example, from the marriage of Mr.

Phone with Miss Graph were born phonography, phonographer, phonographist (a rather frail child), phonographic, phonographical, and phonographically.

Intermarriage between the _phones_ and the _graphs_ or _grams_ is a wedding of equals. Some families of words, however, are of inferior social standing to other families, and may seek but not hope to be sought in marriage. Compare the _ex's_ with the _ports_.

An _ex_, as a preposition, belongs to a prolific family but not one of established and unimpeachable dignity. Hence the _ex's_, though they marry right and left, lead the other words to the altar and are never led thither themselves. Witness exclude, excommunicate, excrescence, excursion, exhale, exit, expel, expunge, expense, extirpate, extract; in no instance does _ex_ fellow its connubial mate--it invariably precedes. The _ports_, on the other hand, are the peers of anybody.

Some of them choose to remain single: port, porch, portal, portly, porter, portage. Here and there one marries into another family: portfolio, portmanteau, portable, port arms. More often, however, they are wooed than themselves do the pleading: comport, purport, report, disport, transport, pa.s.sport, deportment, importance, opportunity, importunate, inopportune, insupportable. From our knowledge of the two families, therefore, we should surmise that if any marriage is to take place between them; an _ex_ must be the suitor. The surmise would be sound. There is such a term as _export_, but not as _portex_.

Now it is oftentimes possible to do business with a man without knowing whether he is a man or a bridal couple. And so with a word. But the knowledge of his domestic state and circ.u.mstances will not come amiss, and it may prove invaluable. You may find that you can handle him to best advantage through a sagacious use of the influence of his wife.

EXERCISE - Marriage

1. For each word in the lists of EXERCISE - Dictionary and Activity 1 for EXERCISE - Past, determine (a) whether it is single or married; (b) if it is married, whether the wedding is one between equals.

2. Make a list of the married words in the first three paragraphs of the selection from Burke (Appendix 2). For each of these words determine the exact nature and extent of the dowry brought by each of the contracting parties to the wedding.