CHAPTER XVI

ETYMOLOGY

§ 1. Achievements. § 2. Doubtful Cases. § 3. Facts, not Fancies. § 4. Hope. § 5. Requirements. § 6. Blendings. § 7. Echo Words. § 8. Some Conjunctions. § 9. Object of Etymology. § 10. Reconstruction.

XVI.--§ 1. Achievements.

Few things have been more often quoted in works on linguistics than Voltaire’s _mot_ that in etymology vowels count for nothing and consonants for very little. But it is now said just as often that the satire might be justly levelled at the pseudo-scientific etymology of the eighteenth century, but has no application to our own times, in which etymology knows how to deal with both vowels and consonants, and--it should be added, though it is often forgotten--with the meanings of words. One often comes across outbursts of joy and pride in the achievements of modern etymological science, like the following, which is quoted here _instar omnium_: “Nowadays etymology has got past the period of more or less ‘happy thoughts’ (glücklichen einfälle) and has developed into a science in which, exactly as in any other science, serious persevering work must lead to reliable results” (H. Schröder, _Ablautstudien_, 1910, X; cf. above, Max Müller and Whitney, p. 89).

There is no denying that much has been achieved, but it is equally true that a skeptical mind cannot fail to be struck with the uncertainty of many proposed explanations: very often scholars have not got beyond ‘happy thoughts,’ many of which have not even been happy enough to have been accepted by anybody except their first perpetrators. From English alone, which for twelve hundred years has had an abundant written literature, and which has been studied by many eminent linguists, who have had many sister-languages with which to compare it, it would be an easy matter to compile a long list of words, well-known words of everyday occurrence, which etymologists have had to give up as beyond their powers of solution (_fit_, _put_, _pull_, _cut_, _rouse_, _pun_, _fun_, _job_). And equally perplexing are many words now current all over Europe, some of them comparatively recent and yet completely enigmatic: _race_, _baron_, _baroque_, _rococo_, _zinc_.

XVI.--§ 2. Doubtful Cases.

Or let us take a word of that class which forms the staple subject of etymological disquisitions, one in which the semantic side is literally as clear as sunshine, namely the word for ‘sun.’ Here we have, among others, the following forms: (1) _sun_, OE. _sunne_, Goth. _sunno_; (2) Dan., Lat. _sol_, Goth. _sauil_, Gr. _hḗlios_; (3) OE. _sigel_, _sægl_, Goth. _sugil_; (4) OSlav. _slǔnǐce_, Russ. _solnce_ (now with mute _l_). That these forms are related cannot be doubted, but their mutual relation, and their relation to Gr. _selḗnē_, which means ‘moon,’ and to OE. _swegel_ ‘sky,’ have never been cleared up. Holthausen derives _sunno_ from the verb _sinnan_ ‘go’ and OE. _sigel_ from the verb _sigan_ ‘descend, go down’--but is it really probable that our ancestors should have thought of the sun primarily as the one that goes, or that sets? The word _south_ (orig. *_sunþ_; the _n_ as in OHG. _sund_ is still kept in Dan. _sønden_) is generally explained as connected with _sun_, and the meaning ‘sunny side’ is perfectly natural; but now H. Schröder thinks that it is derived from a word meaning ‘right’ (OE. _swiðre_, orig. ‘stronger,’ a comparative of the adj. found in G. _geschwind_), and he says that the south is to the right when you look at the sun at sunrise--which is perfectly true, but why should people have thought of the south as being to the right when they wanted to speak of it in the afternoon or evening?

Let me take one more example to show that our present methods, or perhaps our present data, sometimes leave us completely in the lurch with regard to the most ordinary words. We have a series of words which may all, without any formal difficulties, be referred to a root-form _seqw-_. Their significations are, respectively--

(1) ‘say,’ E. _say_, OE. _secgan_, ON. _segja_, G. _sagen_, Lith. _sakýti_. To this is referred Gr. _énnepe_, _eníspein_, Lat. _inseque_ and possibly _inquam_.

(2) ‘show, point out,’ OSlav. _sočiti_, Lat. _signum_.

(3) ‘see,’ E. _see_, OE. _seon_, Goth. _saihwan_, G. _sehen_, etc.

(4) ‘follow,’ Lat. _sequor_, Gr. _hépomai_, Skr. _sácate_. Here belongs Lat. _socius_, OE. _secg_ ‘man,’ orig. ‘follower.’

Now, are these four groups ‘etymologically identical’? Opinions differ widely, as may be seen from C. D. Buck, “Words of Speaking and Saying” (_Am. Journ. of Philol._ 36. 128, 1915). They may be thus tabulated, a comma meaning supposed identity and a dash the opposite:

1, 2-3, 4 Kluge, Falk, Torp. 1, 2, 3-4 Brugmann. 1, 2, 3, 4 Wood, Buck.[73]

For the transition in meaning from ‘see’ to ‘say’ we are referred to such words as _observe_, _notice_, G. _bemerkung_, while in G. _anweisen_, and still more in Lat. _dico_, there is a similar transition from ‘show’ to ‘say.’ Wood derives the signification ‘follow’ from ‘point out,’ through ‘show, guide, attend.’ With regard to the relation between 3 and 4, it has often been said that to see is to follow with the eyes. In short, it is possible, if you take some little pains, to discover notional ties between all four groups which may not be so very much looser than those between other words which everybody thinks related. And yet? I cannot see that the knowledge we have at present enables us, or can enable us, to do more than leave the mutual relation of these groups an open question. One man’s guess is just as good as another’s, or one man’s yes as another man’s no--if the connexion of these words is ‘science,’ it is, if I may borrow an expression from the old archæologist Samuel Pegge, _scientia ad libitum_. Personal predilection and individual taste have not been ousted from etymological research to the extent many scholars would have us believe.

Or we may perhaps say that among the etymologies found in dictionaries and linguistic journals some are solid and firm as rocks, but others are liquid and fluctuate like the sea; and finally not a few are in a gaseous state and blow here and there as the wind listeth. Some of them are no better than poisonous gases, from which may Heaven preserve us![74]

XVI.--§ 3. Facts, not Fancies.

As early as 1867 Michel Bréal, in an excellent article (reprinted in M 267 ff.), called attention to the dangers resulting from the general tendency of comparative linguists to “jump intermediate steps in order at once to mount to the earliest stages of the language,” but his warning has not taken effect, so that etymologists in dealing with a word found only in comparatively recent times will often try to reconstruct what might have been its Proto-Aryan form and compare that with some word found in some other language. Thus, Falk and Torp refer G. _krieg_ to an Aryan primitive form *_grêigho-_, *_grîgho-_, which is compared with Irish _bríg_ ‘force.’ But the German word is not found in use till the middle period; it is peculiar to German and unknown in related languages (for the Scandinavian and probably also the Dutch words are later loans from Germany). These writers do not take into account how improbable it is that such a word, if it were really an old traditional word for this fundamental idea, should never once have been recorded in any of the old documents of the whole of our family of languages. What should we think of the man who would refer _boche_, the French nickname for ‘German’ which became current in 1914, and before that time had only been used for a few years and known to a few people only, to a Proto-Aryan root-form? Yet the method in both cases is identical; it presupposes what no one can guarantee, that the words in question are of those which trot along the royal road of language for century after century without a single side-jump, semantic or phonetic. Such words are the favourites of linguists because they have always behaved themselves since the days of Noah; but others are full of the most unexpected pranks, which no scientific ingenuity can discover if we do not happen to know the historical facts. Think of _grog_, for example. Admiral Vernon, known to sailors by the nickname of “Old Grog” because he wore a cloak of grogram (this, by the way, from Fr. _gros grain_), in 1740 ordered a mixture of rum and water to be served out instead of pure rum, and the name was transferred from the person to the drink. If it be objected that such leaps are found only in slang, the answer is that slang words very often become recognized after some time, and who knows but that may have been the case with _krieg_ just as well as with many a recent word?

At any rate, facts weigh more than fancies, and whoever wants to establish the etymology of a word must first ascertain all the historical facts available with regard to the place and time of its rise, its earliest signification and syntactic construction, its diffusion, the synonyms it has ousted, etc. Thus, and thus only, can he hope to rise above loose conjectures. Here the great historical dictionaries, above all the Oxford _New English Dictionary_, render invaluable service. And let me mention one model article outside these dictionaries, in which Hermann Möller has in my opinion given a satisfactory solution of the riddle of G. _ganz_: he explains it as a loan from Slav _konǐcǐ_ ‘end,’ used especially adverbially (perhaps with a preposition in the form _v-konec_ or _v-konc_) ‘to the end, completely’; Slav _c_ = G. _z_, Slav _k_ pronounced essentially as South G. _g_; the gradual spreading and various significations and derived forms are accounted for with very great learning (_Zs. f. D. Alt._ 36. 326 ff.). It is curious that this article should have been generally overlooked or neglected, though the writer seems to have met all the legitimate requirements of a scientific etymology.

XVI.--§ 4. Hope.

I have endeavoured to fulfil these requirements in the new explanation I have given of the word _hope_ (Dan. _håbe_, Swed. _hoppas_, G. _hoffen_), now used in all Gothonic tongues in exactly the same signification. Etymologists are at variance about this word. Kluge connects it with the OE. noun _hyht_, and from that form infers that Gothonic *_hopôn_ stands for *_huqôn_, from an Aryan root _kug_; he says that a connexion with Lat. _cupio_ is scarcely possible. Walde likewise rejects connexion between _cupio_ and either _hope_ or Goth. _hugjan_. To Falk and Torp _hope_ has probably nothing to do with _hyht_, but probably with _cupio_, which is derived from a root *_kup_ = _kvap_, found in Lat. _vapor_ ‘steam,’ and with a secondary form *_kub_, in _hope_, and *_kvab_ in Goth. _af-hwapjan_ ‘choke’--a wonderful medley of significations. H. Möller (_Indoeur.-Semit. sammenlignende Glossar._ 63), in accordance with his usual method, establishes an Aryo-Semitic root *_k̑-u̯-_, meaning ‘ardere’ and transferred to ‘ardere amore, cupiditate, desiderio,’ the root being extended with _b-_: _p-_ in _hope_ and _cupio_, with _gh-_ in Goth. _hugs_, and with _g̑-_ in OE. _hyht_. Surely a typical example of the perplexity of our etymologists, who disagree in everything except just in the one thing which seems to me extremely doubtful, that _hope_ with the present spiritual signification goes back to common Aryan. Now, what are the real facts of the matter? Simply these, that the word _hope_ turns up at a comparatively late date in historical times at one particular spot, and from there it gradually spreads to the neighbouring countries. In Denmark (_håb_, _håbe_) and in Sweden (_hopp_, _hoppas_) it is first found late in the Middle Ages as a religious loan from Low German _hope_, _hopen_. High German _hoffen_ is found very rarely about 1150, but does not become common till a hundred years later; it is undoubtedly taken (with sound substitution) from Low German and moves in Germany from north to south. Old Saxon has the subst. _tō-hopa_, which has probably come from OE., where we have the same form for the subst., _tō-hopa_. This is pretty common in religious prose, but in poetry it is found only once (Boet.)--a certain indication that the word is recent. The subst. without _tō_ is comparatively late (Ælfric, ab. 1000). The verb is found in rare instances about a hundred years earlier, but does not become common till later. Now, it is important to notice that the verb in the old period never takes a direct object, but is always connected with the preposition _tō_ (compare the subst.), even in modern usage we have _to hope to_, _for_, _in_. Similarly in G., where the phrase was _auf etwas hoffen_; later the verb took a genitive, then a pronoun in the accusative, and finally an ordinary object; in biblical language we find also _zu gott hoffen_. Now, I would connect our word with the form _hopu_, found twice as part of a compound in _Beowulf_ (450 and 764), where ‘refuge’ gives good sense: _hopan to_, then, is to ‘take one’s refuge to,’ and _to-hopa_ ‘refuge.’ This verb I take to be at first identical with _hop_ (the only OE. instance I know of this is Ælfric, _Hom._ 1. 202: _hoppode ongean his drihten_). We have also one instance of a verb _onhupian_ (_Cura Past._ 441) ‘draw back, recoil,’ which agrees with ON. _hopa_ ‘move backwards’ (to the quotations in Fritzner may be added Laxd. 49, 15, þeir Osvígssynir hopudu undan).[75] The original meaning seems to have been ‘bend, curb, bow, stoop,’ either in order to leap, or to flee, from something bad, or towards something good; cf. the subst. _hip_, OE. _hype_, Goth. _hups_, Dan. _hofte_, G. _hüfte_, Lat. _cubitus_, etc. (Holthausen, _Anglia Beibl._, 1904, 350, deals with these words, but does not connect them with _hop_, _-hopu_, or _hope_.) The transition from bodily movement to the spiritual ‘hope’ may have been favoured by the existence of the verb OE. _hogian_ ‘think,’ but is not in itself more difficult than with, e.g., Lat. _ex(s)ultare_ ‘leap up, rejoice,’ or Dan. _lide på_ ‘lean to, confide in, trust,’ _tillid_ ‘confidence, reliance’; and a new word for ‘hope’ was required because the old _wen_ (Goth. _wens_), vb. _wenan_, had at an early age acquired a more general meaning ‘opinion, probability,’ vb. ‘suppose, imagine.’ The difficulty that the word for ‘hope’ has single or short _p_ (in Swed., however, _pp_), while _hop_, OE. _hoppian_, has double or long _p_, is no serious hindrance to our etymology, because the gemination may easily be accounted for on the principle mentioned below (Ch. XX § 9), that is, as giving a more vivid expression of the rapid action.

XVI.--§ 5. Requirements.

It is, of course, impossible to determine once for all by hard-and-fast rules how great the correspondence must be for us to recognize two words as ‘etymologically identical,’ nor to say to which of the two sides, the phonetic and the semantic, we should attach the greater importance. With the rise of historical phonology the tendency has been to require exact correspondence in the former respect, and in semantics to be content with more or less easily found parallels. One example will show how particular many scholars are in matters of sound. The word _nut_ (OE. _hnutu_, G. _nuss_, ON. _hnot_, Dan. _nød_) is by Paul declared “not related to Lat. _nux_” and by Kluge “neither originally akin with nor borrowed from Lat. _nux_,” while the NED does not even mention _nux_ and thus must think it quite impossible to connect it with the English word. We have here in two related languages two words resembling each other not only in sound, but in stem-formation and gender, and possessing exactly the same signification, which is as concrete and definite as possible. And yet we are bidden to keep them asunder! Fortunately I am not the first to protest against such barbarity: H. Pedersen (KZ n.f. 12. 251) explains both words from *_dnuk-_, which by metathesis has become *_knud-_, while Falk and Torp as well as Walde think the latter form the original one, which in Latin has been shifted into *_dnuk-_. Which of these views is correct (both may be wrong) is of less importance than the victory of common sense over phonological pedantry.

There are two explanations which have had very often to do duty where the phonological correspondence is not exact, namely root-variation (root-expansion with determinatives) and apophony (ablaut). Of the former Uhlenbeck (PBB 30. 252) says: “The theory of root determinatives no doubt contains a kernel of truth, but it has only been fatal to etymological science, as it has drawn the attention from real correspondences between well-substantiated words to delusive similarities between hypothetical abstractions.” Apophony inspires more confidence, and in many cases offers fully reliable explanations; but this principle, too, has been often abused, and it is difficult to find its true limitations. Many special applications of it appear questionable; thus, when G. _stumm_, Dan. _stum_, is explained as an apophonic form of the adj. _stam_, Goth. _stamms_, from which we have the verb _stammer_, G. _stammeln_, Dan. _stamme_: is it really probable that the designation of muteness should be taken from the word for stammering? This appears especially improbable when we consider that at the time when the new word _stumm_ made its appearance there was already another word for ‘mute,’ namely _dumm_, _dumb_, the word which has been preserved in English. I therefore propose a new etymology: _stumm_ is a blending of the two synonyms _still(e)_ and _dum(b)_, made up of the beginning of the one and the ending of the other word; through adopting the initial _st-_ the word was also associated with _stump_, and we get an exact correspondence between _dumm_, _dum_, _stumm_, _stum_, applied to persons, and _dumpf_, _stumpf_, Dan. _dump_, _stump_, applied to things. Note that in those languages (G., Dan.) in which the new word _stum(m)_ was used, the unchanged _dum(m)_ was free to develop the new sense ‘stupid’ (or was the creation of _stum_ occasioned by the old word tending already to acquire this secondary meaning?), while _dumb_ in English stuck to the old signification.

XVI.--§ 6. Blendings.

Blendings of synonyms play a much greater rôle in the development of language than is generally recognized. Many instances may be heard in everyday life, most of them being immediately corrected by the speaker (see above, XV § 4), but these momentary lapses cannot be separated from other instances which are of more permanent value because they are so natural that they will occur over and over again until speakers will hardly feel the blend as anything else than an ordinary word. M. Bloomfield (IF 4. 71) says that he has been many years conscious of an irrepressible desire to assimilate the two verbs _quench_ and _squelch_ in both directions by forming _squench_ and _quelch_, and he has found the former word in a negro story by Page. The expression ‘irrepressible desire’ struck me on reading this, for I have myself in my Danish speech the same feeling whenever I am to speak of tending a patient, for I nearly always say _plasse_ as a result of wavering between _pleje_ [_plaiə_] and _passe_. Many examples may be found in G. A. Bergström, _On Blendings of Synonymous or Cognate Expressions in English_, Lund, 1906, and Louise Pound, _Blends, Their Relation to English Word Formation_, Heidelberg, 1914. But neither of these two writers has seen the full extent of this principle of formation, which explains many words of greater importance than those nonce words which are found so plentifully in Miss Pound’s paper. Let me give some examples, some of them new, some already found by others:

_blot_ = _bl_emish, _bl_ack + sp_ot_, p_lot_, d_ot_; there is also an obsolete sp_lot_.

_blunt_ = _bl_ind + st_unt_.

_crouch_ = _cr_inge, _cr_ook, _cr_awl, †_crou_k + _couch_.

_flush_ = _fl_a_sh_ + b_lush_.

_frush_ = _fr_og + th_rush_ (all three names of the same disease in a horse’s foot).

_glaze_ (Shakespeare) = _gla_re + _gaze_.

_good-bye_ = _good_-night, _good_-morning + _godbye_ (God be with ye).

_knoll_ = _kn_e_ll_ + t_oll_.

_scroll_ = _scrow_ + _roll_.

_slash_ = _sl_ay, _sl_ing, _sl_at + g_ash_, d_ash_.

_slender_ = _sl_ight (_sl_im) + t_ender_.

Such blends are especially frequent in words expressive of sounds or in some other way symbolical, as, for instance:

_flurry_ = _fl_ing, _fl_ow and many other _fl_-words + h_urry_ (note also sc_urry_).

_gruff_ = _gru_m, _gr_im + _rough_.

_slide_ = _sl_ip + g_lide_.

_troll_ = _tr_i_ll_ + _roll_ (in some senses perhaps rather from _tr_ead, _tr_undle + _roll_).

_twirl_ = _tw_ist + _whirl_.

In slang blends abound, e.g.:

_tosh_ (Harrow) = _t_ub + w_ash_. (Sometimes explained as _toe-wash_.)

_blarmed_ = _bl_a_med_, _bl_essed and other _bl_-words + d_arned_ (damned).

_be danged_ = _da_mned + h_anged_.

_I swow_ = _swe_ar + v_ow_.

_brunch_ = _br_eakfast + l_unch_ (so also, though more rarely _brupper_ (... + s_upper_), _tunch_ (_t_ea + l_unch_), _tupper_ = _t_ea + s_upper_).[76]

XVI.--§ 7. Echo-words.

Most etymologists are very reluctant to admit echoism; thus Diez rejects onomatopœic origin of It. _pisciare_, Fr. _pisser_--an echo-word if ever there was one--and says, “One can easily go too far in supposing onomatopœia: as a rule it is more advisable to build on existing words”; this he does by deriving this verb from a non-existing *_pipisare_, _pipsare_, from _pipa_ ‘pipe, tube.’ Falk and Torp refer _dump_ (Dan. _dumpe_) to Swed. _dimpa_, a Gothonic root _demp_, supposed to be an extension of an Aryan root _dhen_: thus they are too deaf to hear the sound of the heavy fall expressed by _um(p)_, cf. Dan. _bumpe_, _bums_, _plumpe_, _skumpe_, _jumpe_, and similar words in other languages.

It may be fancy, but I think I hear the same sound in Lat. _plumbum_, which I take to mean at first not the metal, but the plummet that was dumped or plumped into the water and was denominated from the sound; as this was generally made of lead, the word came to be used for the metal. Most etymologists take it for granted that _plumbum_ is a loan-word, some being honest enough to confess that they do not know from what language, while others without the least scruple or hesitation say that it was taken from Iberian: our ignorance of that language is so deep that no one can enter an expert’s protest against such a supposition.[77] But if my hypothesis is right, the words _plummet_ (from OFr. _plommet_, a diminutive of _plomb_) as well as the verb Fr. _plonger_, whence E. _plunge_, from Lat. *_plumbicare_, are not only derivatives from _plumbum_ (the only thing mentioned by other scholars), but also echo-words, and they, or at any rate the verb, must to a great extent owe their diffusion to their felicitously symbolic sound. In a novel I find: “Plump went the lead”--showing how this sound is still found adequate to express the falling of the lead in sounding. The NED says under the verb _plump_: “Some have compared L. _plumbare_ ... to throw the lead-line ... but the approach of form between _plombar_ and the LG. _plump-plomp_ group seems merely fortuitous” (!). I see sound symbolism in _all_ the words _plump_, while the NED will only allow it in the most obvious cases. From the sound of a body plumping into the water we have interesting developments in the adverb, as in the following quotations: I said, _plump_ out, that I couldn’t stand any more of it (Bernard Shaw) | The famous diatribe against Jesuitism points _plumb_ in the same direction (Morley) | fall _plum_ into the jaws of certain critics (Swift) | Nollie was a _plumb_ little idiot (Galsworthy). In the last sense ‘entirely’ it is especially frequent in America, e.g. They lost their senses, _plumb_ lost their senses (Churchill) | she’s _plum_ crazy, it’s _plum_ bad, etc. Related words for fall, etc., are _plop_, _plout_, _plunk_, _plounce_. Much might also be said in this connexion of various _pop_ and _bob_ words, but I shall refrain.

XVI.--§ 8. Some Conjunctions.

Sometimes obviously correct etymologies yet leave some psychological points unexplained. One of my pet theories concerns some adversative conjunctions. Lat. _sed_ has been supplanted by _magis_: It. _ma_, Sp. _mas_, Fr. _mais_. The transition is easily accounted for; from ‘more’ it is no far cry to ‘rather’ (cf. G. _vielmehr_), which can readily be employed to correct or gainsay what has just been said. The Scandinavian word for ‘but’ is _men_, which came into use in the fifteenth century and is explained as a blending of _meden_ in its shortened form _men_ (now _mens_) ‘while’ and Low German _men_ ‘but,’ which stands for older _niwan_, from the negative _ni_ and _wan_ ‘wanting’; the meaning has developed through that of ‘except’ and the sound is easily understood as an instance of assimilation. The same phonetic development is found in Dutch _maar_, OFris. _mar_, from _en ware_ ‘were not,’ the same combination which has yielded G. _nur_. Thus we have four different ways of getting to expressions for ‘but,’ none of which presents the least difficulty to those familiar with the semantic ways of words. But why did these various nations seize on new words? Weren’t the old ones good enough?

Here I must call attention to two features that are common to these new conjunctions, first their syntactic position, which is invariably in the beginning of the sentence, while such synonymous words as Lat. _autem_ and G. _aber_ may be placed after one or more words; then their phonetic agreement in one point: _magis_, _men_, _maar_ all begin with _m_. Now, both these features are found in two words for ‘but,’ about whose etymological origin I can find no information, Finnic _mutta_ and Santal _menkhan_, as well as in _me_, which is used in the _Ancrene Riwle_ and a few other early Middle English texts and has been dubiously connected with the Scandinavian (and French?) word. How are we to explain these curious coincidences? I think by the nature of the sound [m], which is produced when the lips are closed while the tongue rests passively and the soft palate is lowered so as to allow air to escape through the nostrils--in short, the position which is typical of anybody who is quietly thinking over matters without as yet saying anything, with the sole difference that in his case the vocal chords are passive, while they are made to vibrate to bring forth an _m_.

Now, it very often happens that a man wants to say something, but has not yet made up his mind as to _what_ to say; and in this moment of hesitation, while thoughts are in the process of conception, the lungs and vocal chords will often be prematurely set going, and the result is [m] (sometimes preceded by the corresponding voiceless sound), often written _hm_ or _h’m_, which thus becomes the interjection of an unshaped contradiction. Not infrequently this [m] precedes a real word; thus _M’yes_ (written in this way by Shaw, _Misalliance_ 154, and Merrick, _Conrad_ 179) and Dan. _mja_, to mark a hesitating consent.

This will make it clear why words beginning with _m_ are so often chosen as adversative conjunctions: people begin with this sound and go on with some word that gives good sense and which happens to begin with _m_: _mais_, _maar_. The Dan. _men_ in the mouth of some early speakers is probably this [m], sliding into the old conjunction _en_, just as _myes_ is _m_ + _yes_; while other original users of _men_ may have been thinking of _men_ = _meden_, and others again of Low German _men_: these three etymologies are not mutually destructive, for all three origins may have concurrently contributed to the popularity of _men_. Modern Greek and Serbian _ma_ are generally explained as direct loans from Italian, but may be indigenous, as may also dialectal Rumanian _ma_ in the same sense, for in the hesitating [m] as the initial sound of objections we have one of those touches of nature which make the whole world kin.[78]

XVI.--§ 9. Object of Etymology.

What is the object of etymological science? “To determine the true signification of a word,” answers one of the masters of etymological research (Walde, _Lat. et. Wörterb._ xi). But surely in most cases that can be achieved without the help of etymology. We know the true sense of hundreds of words about the etymology of which we are in complete ignorance, and we should know exactly what the word _grog_ means, even if the tradition of its origin had been accidentally lost. Many people still believe that an account of the origin of a name throws some light on the essence of the thing it stands for; when they want to define say ‘religion’ or ‘civilization,’ they start by stating the (real or supposed) origin of the name--but surely that is superstition, though the first framers of the name ‘etymology’ (from Gr. _etumon_ ‘true’) must have had the same idea in their heads. Etymology tells us nothing about the things, nor even about the present meaning of a word, but only about the way in which a word has come into existence. At best, it tells us not what _is_ true, but what _has been_ true.

The overestimation of etymology is largely attributable to the “conviction that there can be nothing in language that had not an intelligible purpose, that there is nothing that is now irregular that was not at first regular, nothing irrational that was not originally rational” (Max Müller)--a conviction which is still found to underlie many utterances about linguistic matters, but which readers of the present volume will have seen is erroneous in many ways. On the whole, Max Müller naïvely gives expression to what is unconsciously at the back of much that is said and believed about language; thus, when he says (L 1. 44): “I must ask you at present to take it for granted that everything in language had originally a meaning. As language can have no other object but to express our meaning, it might seem to follow almost by necessity that language should contain neither more nor less than what is required for that purpose.” Yes, so it would if language had been constructed by an omniscient and omnipotent being, but as it was developed by imperfect human beings, there is every possibility of their having failed to achieve their purpose and having done either more or less than was required to express their meaning. It would be wrong to say that language (i.e. speaking man) created first what was strictly necessary, and afterwards what might be considered superfluous; but it would be equally wrong to say that linguistic luxuries were always created before necessaries; yet that view would probably be nearer the truth than the former. Much of what in former ages was felt to be necessary to express thoughts was afterwards felt as pedantic crisscross and gradually eliminated; but at all times many things have been found in language that can never have been anything else but superfluous, exactly as many people use a great many superfluous gestures which are not in the least significant and in no way assist the comprehension of their intentions, but which they somehow feel an impulse to perform. In language, as in life generally, we have too little in some respects, and too much in others.

XVI.--§ 10. Reconstruction.

Kluge somewhere (PBB 37. 479, 1911) says that the establishment of the common Aryan language is the chief task of our modern science of linguistics (to my mind it can never be more than a fragment of that task, which must be to understand the nature of language), and he thinks optimistically that “reconstructions with their reliable methods have taken so firm root that we are convinced that we know the common Aryan _grundsprache_ just as thoroughly as any language that is more or less authenticated through literature.” This is a palpable exaggeration, for no one nowadays has the courage of Schleicher to print even the smallest fable in Proto-Aryan, and if by some miraculous accident we were to find a text written in that language we may be sure it would puzzle us just as much as Tokharian does.

Reconstruction has two sides, an outer and an inner. With regard to sounds, it seems to me that very often the masters of linguistics treat us to reconstructed forms that are little short of impossible. This is not the place to give a detailed criticism of the famous theory of ‘nasalis sonans,’ but I hope elsewhere to be able to state why I think this theory a disfiguring excrescence on linguistic science: no one has ever been able to find in any existing language such forms as _mnto_ with stressed syllabic [n], given as the old form of our word _mouth_ (Falk and Torp even give _stmnto_ in order to connect the word with Gr. _stóma_), or as _dkmtóm_ (whence Lat. _centum_, etc.) or _bhrghnti̯es_ or _gu̯mskete_ (Brugmann). Not only are these forms phonetically impossible, but the theory fails to explain the transitions to the forms actually existing in real languages, and everything is much easier if we assume forms like [ʌm, ʌn] with some vowel like that of E. _un-_. The use in Proto-Aryan reconstructions of non-syllabic _i_ and _u_ also in some respects invites criticism, but it will be better to treat these questions in a special paper.

Semantic reconstruction calls for little comment here. It is evident from the nature of the subject that no such strict rules can be given in this domain as in the domain of sound; but nowadays scholars are more realistic than formerly. Most of them will feel satisfied when _moon_ and _month_ are associated with words having the same two significations in related languages, without indulging in explanations of both from a root _me_ ‘to measure’; and when our _daughter_ has been connected with Gr. _thugáter_, Skt. _duhitár_ and corresponding words in other languages, no attempt is made to go beyond the meaning common to these words ‘daughter’ and to speculate what had induced our ancestors to bestow that word on that particular relation, as when Lassen derived it from the root _duh_ ‘to milk’ and pictured an idyllic family life, in which it was the business of the young girls to milk the cows, or when Fick derived the same word from the root _dheugh_ ‘to be useful’ (G. _taugen_: ‘wie die _magd_, _maid_ von _mögen_’), as if the daughters were the only, or the most, efficient members of the family. Unfortunately, such speculations are still found lingering in many recent handbooks of high standing: Kluge hesitates whether to assign the word _mutter_, _mother_, to the root _ma_ in the sense ‘mete out’ or in the sense found in Sanskrit ‘to form,’ used of the fœtus in the womb. A resigned acquiescence in inevitable ignorance and a sense of reality should certainly be characteristics of future etymologists.

FOOTNOTES:

[73] With regard to Lat. _signum_ it should be noted that it is by others explained as coming from Lat. _secare_ and as meaning a notch.

[74] It is, of course, impossible to say how great a proportion of the etymologies given in dictionaries should strictly be classed under each of the following heads: (1) certain, (2) probable, (3) possible, (4) improbable, (5) impossible--but I am afraid the first two classes would be the least numerous. Meillet (Gr 59) has some excellent remarks to the same effect; according to him, “pour une étymologie sûre, les dictionnaires en offrent plus de dix qui sont douteuses et dont, en appliquant une méthode rigoureuse, on ne saurait faire la preuve.”

[75] Westphalian also has _hoppen_ ‘zurückweichen,’ ESt. 54. 88.

[76] Lewis Carrol’s ‘portmanteau words’ are, of course, famous.

[77] Speculation has been rife, but without any generally accepted results, as to the relation between _plumbum_ and words for the same metal in cognate languages: Gr. _molibos_, _molubdos_ and similar forms, Ir. _luaide_, E. _lead_ (G. _lot_, ‘plummet, half an ounce’), Scand. _bly_, OSlav. _olovo_, OPruss. _alwis_; see Curtius, Prellwitz, Boisacq, Hirt Idg. 686, Schrader _Sprachvergl. u. Urgesch._, 3d. ed., ii. 1. 95; Herm. Möller, _Sml. Glossar_ 87, says that _molibos_ and _plumbum_ are extensions of the root _m-l_ ‘mollis esse’ and explains the difference between the initial sounds by referring to _multum_: comp. _plus_--certainly most ingenious, but not convincing. Some of these words may originally have been echo-words for the plumping plummet.

[78] I have discussed this more in detail and added other _m_-words of a somewhat related character in _Studier tillegnade E. Tegnér_, 1918, p. 49 ff.