Chapter 3

beam, beam (_of light_). bit (_horse_), bit (_piece_), bit (fr. _bite_). brace, brace. diet, diet. deck (_cover_), deck (_adorn_). deal (_various_). dram (_drink_), drachm. drone (_insect_), drone (_sound_). jest, gest (_romance, and obs. senses_). jib (_sail_), jib (_of horses_). fine (_adj., v. senses_), fine (_mulct_). flower, flour. fleet (_s._), fleet (_adj._), Fleet (_stream_). grain (_corn_), grain (_fibre_). indite, indict. incense (_v. =cense_), incense (_incite_). kind (_adj._), kind (_s._). canvas, canvass. cuff (_sleeve_), cuff (_strife_). cousin, cozen. cord, chord (_music_). coin, coign. cotton (_s._), cotton (_v._). crank (_s._), crank (_adj._). quaver (_v._), quaver (_music_). levy, levee. litter (_brood_), litter (_straw_). mantle (_cloak_), mantle (_shelf_). mess (_confusion_), mess (_table_). mussel, muscle. nail (_unguis_), nail (_clavus_). patent (_open_), patent (_monopoly_). pommel (_s._), pummel (_v._). refrain (_v._), refrain (_s., in verse_). retort (_reply_), retort (_chemical vessel_). second (_number_), second (_of time_). squall (_v._), squall (_a gale_). slab (_s._), slab (_adj._). smart (_s. and v., sting_), smart (_adj._). stave (_of barrel_), stave (_of music_), [_stave in (v.)_]. stick (_s._), stick (_v._). stock (_stone_), stock (_in trade_), &c. strut (_a support_), strut (_to walk_). share (_division_), share (_plough_). sheet (_sail and clew_), sheet (_-anchor_). shear (_clip_), sheer (_clear_), sheer off (_deviate_). tack (_various_), tack (_naut._). ton, tun. wage (_earnings_), wage (_of war_).

IX. THE FOLLOWING WORDS WERE NOT ADMITTED INTO THE MAIN CLASS CHIEFLY ON ACCOUNT OF THEIR UNIMPORTANCE.

ah! are. arse, ass. ask, aske (_newt_) ayah, ire. bah! bar, baa. barb, barb (_horse_). bask, basque. barn, barne = bairn. budge, budge (_stuff_). buff, buff. buffer, buffer. berg, burgh (_suffixes_). bin, bin = been. broke (_v._ of _broke_), broke (fr. _break_). broom, brume (_fog_). darn, darn. fizz, phiz. few, feu. forty, forte. hay, heigh! hem (_sew_), hem (_v._, _haw_). hollow, hollo (_v._). inn, in. yawl (_boat_), yawl (_howl_). coup, coo. lamb, lam (_bang_). loaf, loaf (_v. laufen_). marry! marry (_v._). nag (_pony_), nag (_to gnaw_), knag. nap (_of cloth_), nap (_sleep_). nay, neigh. oh! owe. ode, owed. oxide, ox-eyed. pax, packs. pants, pants (fr. _pant_). prose, pros (_and cons_). sink (_var._), cinque. swayed, suede (_kid_). ternary, turnery. tea, tee (_starting point_). taw (_to dress skins_), taw (_game, marbles_), tore (fr. _tear_). cheap, cheep. tool, tulle, we! woe. ho! hoe.

The facts of the case being now sufficiently supplied by the above list, I will put my attitude towards those facts in a logical sequence under separate statements, which thus isolated will, if examined one by one, avoid the confusion that their interdependence might otherwise occasion. The sequence is thus:

1. Homophones are a nuisance.

2. They are exceptionally frequent in English.

3. They are self-destructive, and tend to become obsolete.

4. This loss impoverishes the language.

5. This impoverishment is now proceeding owing to the prevalence of the Southern English standard of speech.

6. The mischief is being worsened and propagated by the phoneticians.

7. The Southern English dialect has no claim to exclusive preference.

1. _THAT HOMOPHONES ARE A NUISANCE._

An objector who should plead that homophones are not a nuisance might allege the longevity of the Chinese language, composed, I believe, chiefly of homophones distinguished from each other by an accentuation which must be delicate difficult and precarious. I remember that Max Müller [1864] instanced a fictitious sentence

ba bà bâ bá,

'which (he wrote) is said to mean if properly accented _The three ladies gave a box on the ear to the favourite of the princess._' This suggests that the bleating of sheep may have a richer significance than we are accustomed to suppose; and it may perhaps illustrate the origin as well as the decay of human speech. The only question that it raises for us is the possibility of distinguishing our own homophones by accentuation or by slight differentiation of vowels; and this may prove to be in some cases the practical solution, but it is not now the point in discussion, for no one will deny that such delicate distinctions are both inconvenient and dangerous, and should only be adopted if forced upon us. I shall assume that common sense and universal experience exonerate me from wasting words on the proof that homophones are mischievous, and I will give my one example in a note[8]; but it is a fit place for some general remarks.

[Footnote 8: The homophones sun = son. There is a Greek epigram on Homer, wherein, among other fine things, he is styled,

[Greek: Ellanon biotae deuteron aelion]

which Mackail translates 'a second sun on the life of Greece'. But _second son_ in English means the second male child of its parents. It is plain that the Greek is untranslatable into English because of the homophone. _The thing cannot be said._

Donne would take this bull by the horns, pretending or thinking that genuine feeling can be worthily carried in a pun. So that in his impassioned 'hymn to God the Father', deploring his own sinfulness, his climax is

But swear by thyself that at my death Thy Sonne Shall shine as he shines now,

the only poetic force of which seems to lie in a covert plea of pitiable imbecility.

Dr. Henry Bradley in 1913 informed the International Historical Congress that the word _son_ had ceased to be vernacular in the dialects of many parts of England. 'I would not venture to assert (he adds) that the identity of sound with _sun_ is the only cause that has led to the widespread disuse of _son_ in dialect speech, but I think it has certainly contributed to the result.']

The objections to homophones are of two kinds, either scientific and utilitarian, or æsthetic. The utilitarian objections are manifest, and since confusion of words is not confined to homophones, the practical inconvenience that is sometimes occasioned by slight similarities may properly be alleged to illustrate and enforce the argument. I will give only one example.

[Sidenote: Utilitarian objections not confined to homophones.]

The telephone, which seems to lower the value of differentiating consonants, has revealed unsuspected likenesses. For instance the ciphers, if written somewhat phonetically as usually pronounced, are thus:

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 nawt wun too three fawr faiv six sev'n eit nain

by which it will be seen that the ten names contain eight but only eight different vowels, 0 and 4 having the same vowel _aw_, while 5 and 9 have _ai_. Both these pairs caused confusion; the first of them was cured by substituting the name of the letter O for the name of the zero cipher, which happens to be identical with it in form,[9] and this introduced a ninth vowel sound _ou_ (= owe), but the other pair remained such a constant source of error, that persons who had their house put on the general telephonic system would request the Post Office to give them a number that did not contain a 9 or a 5; and it is pretty certain that had not the system of automatic dialling, which was invented for quite another purpose, got rid of the trouble, one of these two ciphers would have changed its name at the Post Office.

[Footnote 9: There is a coincidence of accidents--that the Arabic sign for zero is the same with our letter O, and that the name of our letter O (= owe) is the same as the present tense of _ought_, which is the vulgar name (for nought) of the Arabic zero, and that its vowel does not occur in the name of any cipher.]

[Sidenote: Æsthetic objections.]

In the effect of uniformity it may be said that utilitarian and æsthetic considerations are generally at one; and this blank statement must here suffice, for the principle could not be briefly dealt with: but it follows from it that the proper æsthetic objections to homophones are never clearly separable from the scientific. I submit the following considerations. Any one who seriously attempts to write well-sounding English will be aware how delicately sensitive our ear is to the repetition of sounds. He will often have found it necessary to change some unimportant word because its accented vowel recalled and jarred with another which was perhaps as far as two or three lines removed from it: nor does there seem to be any rule for this, since apparently similar repetitions do not always offend, and may even be agreeable. The relation of the sound to the meaning is indefinable, but in homophones it is blatant; for instance the common expression _It is well_ could not be used in a paragraph where the word well (= well-spring) had occurred. Now, this being so, it is very inconvenient to find the omnipresent words _no_ and _know_ excluding each other: and the same is true of _sea_ and _see_; if you are writing of the _sea_ then the verb _to see_ is forbidden, or at least needs some handling.

I see the deep's untrampled floor With green and purple seaweeds strewn:

here _seaweeds_ is risky, but _I see the sea's untrampled floor_ would have been impossible: even the familiar

The sea saw that and fled

is almost comical, especially because 'sea saw' has a most compromising joint-tenant in the children's rocking game

See saw Margery daw.

The awkwardness of these English homophones is much increased by the absence of inflection, and I suppose it was the richness of their inflections which made the Greeks so indifferent (apparently) to syllabic recurrences that displease us: moreover, the likeness in sound between their similar syllables was much obscured by a verbal accent which respected the inflection and disregarded the stem, whereas our accent is generally faithful to the root.[10] This sensitiveness to the sound of syllables is of the essence of our best English, and where the effect is most magical in our great poets it is impossible to analyse.

[Footnote 10: Wherever this is not so--as in _rhétoric_, _rhetórical_, _rhetorícian_, _cómpany_, _compánion_, &c.--we have a greater freedom in the use of the words. Such words, as Dr. Bradley points out, giving _Cánada_, _Canádian_ as example, are often phonetic varieties due to an imported foreign syntax, and their pronunciation implies familiarity with literature and the written forms: but very often they are purely the result of our native syllabising, not only in displacement of accent (as in the first example above) but also by modification of the accented vowel according to its position in the word, the general tendency being to make long vowels in monosyllables and in penultimate accents, but short vowels in antepenultimate accents. Thus come such differences of sound between _opus_ and _opera_, _omen_ and _ominous_, _virus_ and _virulent_, _miser_ and _miserable_, _nation_ and _national_, _patron_ and _patronage_, _legal_ and _legislate_, _grave_ and _gravity_, _globe_ and _globular_, _grade_ and _gradual_, _genus_ and _general_, _female_ and _feminine_, _fable_ and _fabulous_, &c. In such disguising of the root-sound the main effect, as Dr. Bradley says, is the power to free the derivative from an intense meaning of the root; so that, to take his very forcible example, the adjective Christian, the derivative of Christ, has by virtue of its shortened vowel been enabled to carry a much looser signification than it could have acquired had it been phonetically indissociable from the intense signification of the name Christ. This freedom of the derivative from the root varies indefinitely in different words, and it very much complicates my present lesser statement of the literary advantage of phonetic variety in inflexions and derivatives.

The examples above are all Latin words, and since Latin words came into English through different channels, these particular vowels can have different histories.]

Once become sensible of such beauty, and of the force of sounds, a writer will find himself in trouble with _no_ and _know_. These omnipresent words are each of them essentially weakened by the existence of the other, while their proximity in a sentence is now damaging. It is a misfortune that our Southern dialect should have parted entirely with all the original differentiation between them; for after the distinctive _k_ of the verb was dropped, the negative still preserved (as it in some dialects still preserves) its broad open vowel, more like _law_ than _toe_ or _beau_, and unless that be restored I should judge that the verb _to know_ is doomed. The third person singular of its present tense is _nose_, and its past tense is _new_, and the whole inconvenience is too radical and perpetual to be received all over the world. We have an occasional escape by using _nay_ for _no_, since its homophone _neigh_ is an unlikely _neigh_bour; but that can serve only in one limited use of the word, and is no solution.

[Sidenote: Punnage.]

In talking with friends the common plea that I have heard for homophones is their usefulness to the punster. 'Why! would you have no puns?' I will not answer that question; but there is no fear of our being insufficiently catered for; whatever accidental benefit be derivable from homophones, we shall always command it fully and in excess; look again at the portentous list of them! And since the essential jocularity of a pun (at least when it makes me laugh) lies in a humorous incongruity, its farcical gaiety may be heightened by a queer pronunciation. I cannot pretend to judge a sophisticated taste; but, to give an example, if, as I should urge, the _o_ of the word _petrol_ should be preserved, as it is now universally spoken, not having yet degraded into _petr'l_, a future squire will not be disqualified from airing his wit to his visitors by saying, as he points to his old stables, 'that is where I store my petrel', and when the joke had been illustrated in _Punch_, its folly would sufficiently distract the patients in a dentist's waiting-room for years to come, in spite of gentlemen and chauffeurs continuing to say _petrol_, as they do now; nor would the two _petr'ls_ be more dissimilar than the two _mys_.

[Sidenote: Play on words.]

Puns must of course be distinguished from such a play on words as John of Gaunt makes with his own name in Shakespeare's _King Richard II_.

_K._ What comfort man? How is't with aged Gaunt?

_G._ O, how that name befits my composition! Old Gaunt indeed, and gaunt in being old, &c.

where, as he explains,

Misery makes sport to mock itself.

This is a humorous indulgence of fancy, led on by the associations of a word; a pun is led off by the _sound_ of a word in pursuit of nonsense; though the variety of its ingenuity may refuse so simple a definition.

[Sidenote: An indirect advantage of homophones.]

It is true that a real good may sometimes come indirectly from a word being a homophone, because its inconvenience in common parlance may help to drive it into a corner where it can be retained for a special signification: and since the special significance of any word is its first merit, and the coinage of new words for special differentiation is difficult and rare, we may rightly welcome any fortuitous means for their provision. Examples of words specialized thus from homophones are _brief_ (a lawyer's brief), _hose_ (water-pipe), _bolt_ (of door), _mail_ (postal), _poll_ (election), &c.[11]

[Footnote 11: It would follow that, supposing there were any expert academic control, it might be possible to save some of our perishing homophones by artificial specialization. Such words are needed, and if a homophone were thus specialized in some department of life or thought, then a slight differential pronunciation would be readily adopted. Both that and its defined meaning might be true to its history.]

2. _THAT ENGLISH IS EXCEPTIONALLY BURDENED WITH HOMOPHONES._

This is a reckless assertion; it may be that among the languages unknown to me there are some that are as much hampered with homophones as we are. I readily grant that with all our embarrassment of riches, we cannot compete with the Chinese nor pretend to have outbuilt their Babel; but I doubt whether the statement can be questioned if confined to European languages. I must rely on the evidence of my list, and I would here apologize for its incompleteness. After I had patiently extracted it from the dictionary a good many common words that were missing occurred to me now and again, and though I have added these, there must be still many omissions. Nor must it be forgotten that, had obsolete words been included, the total would have been far higher. That must plainly be the case if, as I contend, homophony causes obsolescence, and reference to the list from Shakespeare in my next section will provide examples of such words.

Otto Jespersen[12] seems to think that the inconvenience of homophones is so great that a language will naturally evolve some phonetic habit to guard itself against them, although it would otherwise neglect such distinction. I wish that this admirable instinct were more evident in English. He writes thus of the lists of words which he gives 'to show what pairs of homonyms [homophones] would be created if distinctions were abolished that are now maintained: they [the lists] thus demonstrate the force of resistance opposed to some of the sound-changes which one might imagine as happening in the future. A language can tolerate only a certain number of ambiguities arising from words of the same sound having different significations, and therefore the extent to which a language has utilized some phonetic distinction to keep words apart, has some influence in determining the direction of its sound-changes. In French, and still more in English, it is easy to enumerate long lists of pairs of words differing from each other only by the presence or absence of voice in the last sound; therefore final _b_ and _p_, _d_ and _t_, _g_ and _k_, are kept rigidly apart; in German, on the other hand, there are very few such pairs, and thus nothing counterbalances the natural tendency to unvoice final consonants.'

[Footnote 12: _A Modern English Grammar on Historical Principles_, by Otto Jespersen, Heidelberg, 1909. Streitberg's _Germanische Bibliothek_, vol. i, p. 441.]

3. _That homophones are self-destructive and tend to become obsolete._

For the contrary contention, namely, that homophones do _not_ destroy themselves, there is prima facie evidence in the long list of survivors, and in the fact that a vast number of words which have not this disadvantage are equally gone out of use.

[Sidenote: Causes of obsolescence.]

Words fall out of use for other reasons than homophony, therefore one cannot in any one case assume that ambiguity of meaning was the active cause: indeed the mere familiarity of the sound might prolong a word's life; and homophones are themselves frequently made just in this way, for uneducated speakers will more readily adapt a familiar sound to a new meaning (as when my gardener called his Pomeranian dog a Panorama) than take the trouble to observe and preserve the differentiation of a new sound. There is no rule except that any loss of distinction may be a first step towards total loss.[13]

[Footnote 13: To give an example of this. In old Greek _we_ and _you_ were [Greek: aemeis] and [Greek: umeis]: and those words became absolutely homophonous, so that one of them had to go. The first person naturally held on to its private property, and it invented _sets_ for outsiders. Now the first step towards this absurdest of all homophonies, the identity of _meum_ and _tuum_, was no doubt the modification of the true full _u_ to _ii_. The ultimate convenience of the result may in itself be applauded; but it is inconceivable that modern Greek should ever compensate itself for its inevitable estrangement from its ancient glories.]

It is probable that the working machinery of an average man's brain sets a practical limit to his convenient workable vocabulary; that is to say, a man who can easily command the spontaneous use of a certain number of words cannot much increase it without effort. If that is so, then, as he learns new words, there will be a tendency, if not a necessity, for him to lose hold of a corresponding number of his old words; and the words that will first drop out will be those with which he had hitherto been uncomfortable; and among those words will be the words of ambiguous meaning.

[Sidenote: No direct proof]

It is plain that only general considerations can be of value, unless there should be very special evidence in any special case; and thus the caution of Dr. Henry Bradley's remarks in note on page 19.

I remember how I first came to recognize this law; it was from hearing a friend advocating the freer use of certain old words which, though they were called obsolete and are now rarely heard, yet survive in local dialects. I was surprised to find how many of them were unfit for resuscitation because of their homophonic ambiguity, and when I spoke of my discovery to a philological friend, I found that he regarded it as a familiar and unquestioned rule.

But to prove this rule is difficult; and as it is an impossible task to collect all the obsolete words and classify them, I am proposing to take two independent indications; first to separate out the homophones from the other obsolete words in a Shakespearian glossary, and secondly, to put together a few words that seem to be actually going out of use in the present day, that is, strictly obsolescent words caught in the act of flitting.

[Sidenote: Obsolescence defined.]

Obsolescence in this connexion must be understood only of common educated speech, that is, the average speaker's vocabulary. Obsolescent words are old words which, when heard in talk, will sound literary or unusual: in literature they can seem at home, and will often give freshness without affectation; indeed, any word that has an honourable place in Shakespeare or the Bible can never quite die, and may perhaps some day recover its old vitality.

[Sidenote: Evidence of obsolescence.]

The best evidence of the obsolescence of any word is that it should still be frequently heard in some proverb or phrase, but never out of it. The homophonic condition is like that of _aural_ and _oral_, of which it is impossible to make practical use.[14] We speak of an _aural surgeon_ and of _oral teaching_, but out of such combinations the words have no sense. It happens that oral teaching must be aural on the pupil's side, but that only adds to the confusion.

[Footnote 14: The words _aural_ and _oral_ are distinguished in the pronunciation of the North Midlands and in Scotland, and the difference between the first syllables is shown in the Oxford dictionary. In Southern English no trace of differentiation remains.]

In deciding whether any obsolete homophone has been lost by its homophony, I should make much of the consideration whether the word had supplied a real need, by naming a conception that no other word so fitly represented; hence its survival in a proverb is of special value, because the words of proverbs are both apt and popular; so that for the disuse of such a word there would seem to be no other cause so likely and sufficient as damage to its signification.

The glossary is relied on to contain, besides its other items, all the obsolete words: the homophones separated out from these will show various grades of obsolescence, and very different values as examples bearing on the question at issue.

_Table of homophones taken from among the obsolete words in Cunliffe's 'A New Shakespearean Dictionary,' Blackie_, 1910.]