To understand a word, we need to learn where it was born, what paths it took to reach where it is today, and how it has changed along the way. The word 'nice' is a positive word today, but hundreds of years ago, it meant 'stupid.'
For, though the origin of most of our words is forgotten, each word was at first a stroke of genius, and obtained currency, because for the moment it symbolized the world to the first speaker and to the hearer. The etymologist finds the deadest word to have been once a brilliant picture.
The etymologist finds the deadest word to have been once a brilliant picture.
When a language advances and adds a third term to its lexicon for color, the third term is always red.
I believe that writers have a responsibility to evolve the language, whether by introducing new words or new usages. Shakespeare alone is responsible for something like 3400 words and phrases.
I believe every change any word has undergone probably originated in ignorance.
Middle English is an exciting field - almost uncharted, I begin to think, because as soon as one turns detailed personal attention on to any little corner of it, the received notions and ideas seem to crumple up and fall to pieces - as far as language goes, at any rate.
Going back into the history of a word, very often into Latin, we come back pretty commonly to pictures or models of how things happen or are done.
Today we speak, but first we spoke; faucets leak, but never loke. Today we write, but first we wrote; we bite our tongues, but never bote.
There is a satisfactory boniness about grammar which the flesh of sheer vocabulary requires before it can become a vertebrate and walk the earth.
