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On the Study of Words

R >> Richard C Trench >> On the Study of Words




How often in the translation of Holy Scripture from the language
wherein it was first delivered into some other which offers more words
than one whereby some all-important word in the original record may be
rendered, the perplexity has been great which of these should be
preferred. Not, indeed, that there was here an embarrassment of riches,
but rather an embarrassment of poverty. Each, it may be, has advantages
of its own, but each also its own drawbacks and shortcomings. There is
nothing but a choice of difficulties anyhow, and whichever is selected,
it will be found that the treasure of God's thought has been committed
to an earthen vessel, and one whose earthiness will not fail at this
point or at that to appear; while yet, with all this, of what far-
reaching importance it is that the best, that is, the least inadequate,
word should be chosen. Thus the missionary translator, if he be at all
aware of the awful implement which he is wielding, of the tremendous
crisis in a people's spiritual life which has arrived, when their
language is first made the vehicle of the truths of Revelation, will
often tremble at the work he has in hand; he will tremble lest he
should permanently lower or confuse the whole spiritual life of a
people, by choosing a meaner and letting go a nobler word for the
setting forth of some leading truth of redemption; and yet the choice
how difficult, the nobler itself falling how infinitely below his
desires, and below the truth of which he would make it the bearer.

Even those who are wholly ignorant of Chinese can yet perceive how vast
the spiritual interests which are at stake in China, how much will be
won or how much lost for the whole spiritual life of its people, it may
be for ages to come, according as the right or the wrong word is
selected by our missionaries there for designating the true and the
living God. As many of us indeed as are ignorant of the language can be
no judges in the controversy which on this matter is, or was lately,
carried on; but we can all feel how vital the question, how enormous
the interests at stake; while, not less, having heard the allegations
on the one side and on the other, we must own that there is only an
alternative of difficulties here. Nearer home there have been
difficulties of the same kind. At the Reformation, for example, when
Latin was still more or less the language of theology, how earnest a
controversy raged round the word in the Greek Testament which we have
rendered 'repentance'; whether 'poenitentia' should be allowed to stand,
hallowed by long usage as it was, or 'resipiscentia,' as many of the
Reformers preferred, should be substituted in its room; and how much on
either side could be urged. Not otherwise, at an earlier date, 'Sermo'
and 'Verbum' contended for the honour of rendering the 'Logos' of St.
John; though here there can be no serious doubt on which side the
advantage lay, and that in 'Verbum' the right word was chosen.

But this of the relation of words in one language to words in another,
and of all the questions which may thus be raised, is a sea too large
for me to launch upon now; and with thus much said to invite you to
have open eyes and ears for such questions, seeing that they are often
full of teaching, [Footnote: Pott in his _Etymol. Forschungen_, vol. v.
p. lxix, and elsewhere, has much interesting instruction on the subject.
There were four attempts to render [Greek: eironeia], itself, it is
true, a very subtle word. They are these: 'dissimulatio' (Cicero);
'illusio' (Quintilian); 'simulatio' and 'irrisio.'] I must leave this
subject, and limit myself in this Lecture to a comparison between words,
not in different languages, but in the same.

Synonyms then, as the term is generally understood, and as I shall use
it, are words in the same language with slight differences either
already established between them, or potentially subsisting in them.
They are not on the one side words absolutely identical, for such, as
has been said already, afford no room for discrimination; but neither
on the other side are they words only remotely similar to one another;
for the differences between these last will be self-evident, will so
lie on the surface and proclaim themselves to all, that it would be as
superfluous an office as holding a candle to the sun to attempt to make
this clearer than it already is. It may be desirable to trace and fix
the difference between scarlet and crimson, for these might easily be
confounded; but who would think of so doing between scarlet and green?
or between covetousness and avarice; while it would be idle and
superfluous to do the same for covetousness and pride. They must be
words more or less liable to confusion, but which yet ought not to be
confounded, as one has said; in which there originally inhered a
difference, or between which, though once absolutely identical, such
has gradually grown up, and so established itself in the use of the
best writers, and in the instinct of the best speakers of the tongue,
that it claims to be openly recognized by all.

But here an interesting question presents itself to us: How do
languages come to possess synonyms of this latter class, which are
differenced not by etymology, nor by any other deep-lying cause, but
only by usage? Now if languages had been made by agreement, of course
no such synonyms as these could exist; for when once a word had been
found which was the adequate representative of a thought, feeling, or
fact, no second one would have been sought. But languages are the
result of processes very different from this, and far less formal and
regular. Various tribes, each with its own dialect, kindred indeed, but
in many respects distinct, coalesce into one people, and cast their
contributions of language into a common stock. Thus the French possess
many synonyms from the _langue d'Oc_ and _langue d'Oil_, each having
contributed its word for one and the same thing; thus 'atre' and
'foyer,' both for hearth. Sometimes different tribes of the same people
have the same word, yet in forms sufficiently different to cause that
both remain, but as words distinct from one another; thus in Latin
'serpo' and 'repo' are dialectic variations of the same word; just as
in German, 'odem' and 'athem' were no more than dialectic differences
at the first. Or again, a conquering people have fixed themselves in
the midst of a conquered; they impose their dominion, but do not
succeed in imposing their language; nay, being few in number, they find
themselves at last compelled to adopt the language of the conquered;
yet not so but that a certain compromise between the two languages
finds place. One carries the day, but on the condition that it shall
admit as naturalized denizens a number of the words of the other; which
in some instances expel, but in many others subsist as synonyms side by
side with, the native words.

These are causes of the existence of synonyms which reach far back into
the history of a nation and a language; but other causes at a later
period are also at work. When a written literature springs up, authors
familiar with various foreign tongues import from one and another words
which are not absolutely required, which are oftentimes rather luxuries
than necessities. Sometimes, having a very sufficient word of their own,
they must needs go and look for a finer one, as they esteem it, from
abroad; as, for instance, the Latin having its own expressive
'succinum' (from 'succus'), for amber, some must import from the Greek
the ambiguous 'electrum.' Of these thus proposed as candidates for
admission, some fail to obtain the rights of citizenship, and after
longer or shorter probation are rejected; it may be, never advance
beyond their first proposer. Enough, however, receive the stamp of
popular allowance to create embarrassment for a while; until, that is,
their relations with the already existing words are adjusted. As a
single illustration of the various quarters from which the English has
thus been augmented and enriched, I would instance the words 'wile,'
'trick,' device,' finesse,' 'artifice,' and 'stratagem.' and remind you
of the various sources from which we have drawn them. Here 'wile,' is
Old-English, 'trick' is Dutch, 'devise' is Old-French, 'finesse' is
French, 'artificium' is Latin, and '[Greek: stratagema]' Greek.

By and by, however, as a language becomes itself an object of closer
attention, at the same time that society, advancing from a simpler to a
more complex condition, has more things to designate, more thoughts to
utter, and more distinctions to draw, it is felt as a waste of
resources to employ two or more words for the designating of one and
the same thing. Men feel, and rightly, that with a boundless world
lying around them and demanding to be catalogued and named, and which
they only make truly their own in the measure and to the extent that
they do name it, with infinite shades and varieties of thought and
feeling subsisting in their own minds, and claiming to find utterance
in words, it is a wanton extravagance to expend two or more signs on
that which could adequately be set forth by one--an extravagance in one
part of their expenditure, which will be almost sure to issue in, and
to be punished by, a corresponding scantness and straitness in another.
Some thought or feeling or fact will wholly want one adequate sign,
because another has two. [Footnote: We have a memorable example of this
in the history of the great controversy of the Church with the Arians,
In the earlier stages of this, the upholders of the orthodox faith used
[Greek: ousia] and [Greek: hypostasis] as identical in force and
meaning with one another, Athanasius, in as many words, affirming them
to be such. As, however, the controversy went forward, it was perceived
that doctrinal results of the highest importance might be fixed and
secured for the Church through the assigning severally to these words
distinct modifications of meaning. This, accordingly, in the Greek
Church, was done; while the Latin, desiring to move _pari passu_ did
yet find itself most seriously embarrassed and hindered in so doing by
the fact that it had, or assumed that it had, but the one word,
'substantia,' to correspond to the two Greek.] Hereupon that which has
been well called the process of 'desynonymizing' begins--that is, of
gradually discriminating in use between words which have hitherto been
accounted perfectly equivalent, and, as such, indifferently employed.
It is a positive enriching of a language when this process is at any
point felt to be accomplished; when two or more words, once
promiscuously used, have had each its own peculiar domain assigned to
it, which it shall not itself overstep, upon which others shall not
encroach. This may seem at first sight only as a better regulation of
old territory; for all practical purposes it is the acquisition of new.

This desynonymizing process is not carried out according to any
prearranged purpose or plan. The working genius of the language
accomplishes its own objects, causes these synonymous words insensibly
to fall off from one another, and to acquire separate and peculiar
meanings. The most that any single writer can do, save indeed in the
terminology of science, is to assist an already existing inclination,
to bring to the clear consciousness of all that which already has been
obscurely felt by many, and thus to hasten the process of this
disengagement, or, as it has been well expressed, 'to regulate and
ordinate the evident nisus and tendency of the popular usage into a
severe definition'; and establish on a firm basis the distinction, so
that it shall not be lost sight of or brought into question again. Thus
long before Wordsworth wrote, it was obscurely felt by many that in
'imagination' there was more of the earnest, in 'fancy' of the play, of
the spirit, that the first was a loftier faculty and power than the
second. The tendency of the language was all in this direction. None
would for some time back have employed 'fancy' as Milton employs
it, [Footnote: _Paradise Lost_, v. 102-105 5 so too Longinus, _De
Subl._ 15.] ascribing to it operations which we have learned to reserve
for 'imagination' alone, and indeed subordinating 'imaginations' to
fancy, as a part of the materials with which it deals. Yet for all this
the words were continually, and not without injury, confounded.
Wordsworth first, in the _Preface_ to his _Lyrical Ballads_, rendered
it impossible for any, who had read and mastered what he had written
on the matter, to remain unconscious any longer of the essential
difference between them. [Footnote: Thus De Quincey (_Letters to a
Young Man whose Education has been neglected_): 'All languages tend to
clear themselves of synonyms, as intellectual culture advances; the
superfluous words being taken up and appropriated by new shades and
combinations of thought evolved in the progress of society. And long
before this appropriation is fixed and petrified, as it were, into the
acknowledged vocabulary of the language, an insensible _clinamen_ (to
borrow a Lucretian word) prepares the way for it. Thus, for instance,
before Mr. Wordsworth had unveiled the great philosophic distinction
between the powers of _fancy_ and _imagination_, the two words had
begun to diverge from each other, the first being used to express a
faculty somewhat capricious and exempted from law, the other to express
a faculty more self-determined. When, therefore, it was at length
perceived, that under an apparent unity of meaning there lurked a real
dualism, and for philosophic purposes it was necessary that this
distinction should have its appropriate expression, this necessity was
met half way by the _clinamen_ which had already affected the popular
usage of the words.' Compare what Coleridge had before said on the same
matter, _Biogr. Lit_. vol. i. p. 90; and what Ruskin, _Modern Painters_
part 3, Section 2, ch. 3, has said since. It is to Coleridge that we
owe the word 'to desynonymize' (_Biogr. Lit_. p. 87)--which is
certainly preferable to Professor Grote's 'despecificate.' Purists
indeed will object that it is of hybrid formation, the prefix Latin,
the body of the word Greek; but for all this it may very well stand
till a better is offered. Coleridge's own contributions, direct and
indirect, in this province are perhaps more in number and in value than
those of any other English writer; thus to him we owe the
disentanglement of 'fanaticism' and 'enthusiasm' (_Lit. Rem_. vol. ii.
p. 365); of 'keenness' and 'subtlety' (_Table-Talk_, p. 140); of
'poetry' and 'poesy' (_Lit. Rem_. vol. i. p. 219); of 'analogy' and
'metaphor' (_Aids to Reflection_, 1825, p. 198); and that on which he
himself laid so great a stress, of 'reason' and 'understanding.'] This
is but one example, an illustrious one indeed, of what has been going
forward in innumerable pairs of words. Thus in Wiclif's time and long
after, there seems to have been no difference recognized between a
'famine' and a 'hunger'; they both expressed the outward fact of a
scarcity of food. It was a genuine gain when, leaving to 'famine' this
meaning, by 'hunger' was expressed no longer the outward fact, but the
inward sense of the fact. Other pairs of words between which a
distinction is recognized now which was not recognized some centuries
ago, are the following: 'to clarify' and 'to glorify'; 'to admire' and
'to wonder'; 'to convince' and 'to convict'; 'reign' and 'kingdom';
'ghost' and 'spirit'; 'merit' and 'demerit'; 'mutton' and 'sheep';
'feminine' and 'effeminate'; 'mortal' and 'deadly'; 'ingenious' and
'ingenuous'; 'needful' and 'needy'; 'voluntary' and 'wilful.'
[footnote: For the exact difference between these, and other pairs or
larger groups of words, see my _Select Glossary_.]

A multitude of words in English are still waiting for a similar
discrimination. Many in due time will obtain it, and the language prove
so much the richer thereby; for certainly if Coleridge had right when
he affirmed that 'every new term expressing a fact or a difference not
precisely or adequately expressed by any other word in the same
language, is a new organ of thought for the mind that has learned
it.' [footnote: _Church and State_, p. 200.] we are justified in
regarding these distinctions which are still waiting to be made as so
much reversionary wealth in our mother tongue. Thus how real an ethical
gain would it be, how much clearness would it bring into men's thoughts
and actions, if the distinction which exists in Latin between
'vindicta' and 'ultio,' that the first is a moral act, the just
punishment of the sinner by his God, of the criminal by the judge, the
other an act in which the self-gratification of one who counts himself
injured or offended is sought, could in like manner be fully
established (vaguely felt it already is) between our 'vengeance' and
'revenge'; so that 'vengeance' (with the verb 'to avenge') should never
be ascribed except to God, or to men acting as the executors of his
righteous doom; while all retaliation to which not zeal for his
righteousness, but men's own sinful passions have given the impulse and
the motive, should be termed 'revenge.' As it now is, the moral
disapprobation which cleaves, and cleaves justly, to 'revenge,' is
oftentimes transferred almost unconsciously to 'vengeance'; while yet
without vengeance it is impossible to conceive in a world so full of
evil-doing any effectual assertion of righteousness, any moral
government whatever.

The causes mentioned above, namely that our modern English, Teutonic in
its main structure, yet draws so large a portion of its verbal wealth
from the Latin, and has further welcomed, and found place for, many
later accessions, these causes have together effected that we possess a
great many duplicates, not to speak of triplicates, or of such a
quintuplicate as that which I adduced just now, where the Teutonic,
French, Italian, Latin, and Greek had each yielded us a word. Let me
mention a few duplicate substantives, Old-English and Latin: thus we
have 'shepherd' and 'pastor'; 'feeling' and 'sentiment'; 'handbook' and
'manual'; 'ship' and 'nave'; 'anger' and 'ire'; 'grief' and 'sorrow';
'kingdom,' 'reign,' and 'realm'; 'love' and 'charity'; 'feather' and
'plume'; 'forerunner' and 'precursor'; 'foresight' and 'providence';
'freedom' and 'liberty'; 'bitterness' and 'acerbity'; 'murder' and
'homicide'; 'moons' and 'lunes.' Sometimes, in theology and science
especially, we have gone both to the Latin and to the Greek, and drawn
the same word from them both: thus 'deist' and 'theist'; 'numeration'
and 'arithmetic'; 'revelation' and 'apocalypse'; 'temporal' and
'chronic'; 'compassion' and 'sympathy'; 'supposition' and 'hypothesis';
'transparent' and 'diaphanous'; 'digit' and 'dactyle.' But to return to
the Old-English and Latin, the main factors of our tongue. Besides
duplicate substantives, we have duplicate verbs, such as 'to whiten'
and 'to blanch'; 'to soften' and 'to mollify'; 'to unload' and 'to
exonerate'; 'to hide' and 'to conceal'; with many more. Duplicate
adjectives also are numerous, as 'shady' and 'umbrageous'; 'unreadable'
and 'illegible'; 'unfriendly' and 'inimical'; 'almighty' and
'omnipotent'; 'wholesome' and 'salubrious'; 'unshunnable' and
'inevitable.' Occasionally our modern English, not adopting the Latin
substantive, has admitted duplicate adjectives; thus 'burden' has not
merely 'burdensome' but also 'onerous,' while yet 'onus' has found no
place with us; 'priest' has 'priestly' and 'sacerdotal'; 'king' has
'kingly,' 'regal,' which is purely Latin, and 'royal,' which is Latin
distilled through the French. 'Bodily' and 'corporal,' 'boyish' and
'puerile,' 'fiery' and 'igneous,' 'wooden' and 'ligneous,' 'worldly'
and 'mundane,' 'bloody' and 'sanguine,' 'watery' and 'aqueous,'
'fearful' and 'timid,' 'manly' and 'virile,' 'womanly' and 'feminine,'
'sunny' and 'solar,' 'starry' and 'stellar,' 'yearly' and 'annual,'
'weighty' and 'ponderous,' may all be placed in the same list. Nor are
these more than a handful of words out of the number which might be
adduced. You would find both pleasure and profit in enlarging these
lists, and, as far as you are able, making them gradually complete.

If we look closely at words which have succeeded in thus maintaining
their ground side by side, and one no less than the other, we shall
note that in almost every instance they have little by little asserted
for themselves separate spheres of meaning, have in usage become more
or less distinct. Thus we use 'shepherd' almost always in its primary
meaning, keeper of sheep; while 'pastor' is exclusively used in the
tropical sense, one that feeds the flock of God; at the same time the
language having only the one adjective, 'pastoral,' that is of
necessity common to both. 'Love' and 'charity' are used in our
Authorized Version of Scripture promiscuously, and out of the sense of
their equivalence are made to represent one and the same Greek word;
but in modern use 'charity' has come predominantly to signify one
particular manifestation of love, the ministry to the bodily needs of
others, 'love' continuing to express the affection of the soul. 'Ship'
remains in its literal meaning, while 'nave' has become a symbolic term
used in sacred architecture alone. 'Kingdom' is concrete, as the
'kingdom' of Great Britain; 'reign' is abstract, the 'reign' of Queen
Victoria. An 'auditor' and a 'hearer' are now, though they were not
once, altogether different from one another. 'Illegible' is applied to
the handwriting, 'unreadable' to the subject-matter written; a man
writes an 'illegible' hand; he has published an 'unreadable' book.
'Foresight' is ascribed to men, but' providence' for the most part
designates, as _pronoia_ also came to do, the far-looking wisdom of God,
by which He governs and graciously cares for his people. It becomes
boys to be 'boyish,' but not men to be 'puerile.' 'To blanch' is to
withdraw colouring matter: we 'blanch' almonds or linen; or the cheek
by the withdrawing of the blood is 'blanched' with fear; but we
'whiten' a wall, not by withdrawing some other colour, but by the
superinducing of white; thus 'whited sepulchres.' When we 'palliate'
our own or other people's faults, we do not seek 'to cloke' them
altogether, but only to extenuate the guilt of them in part.

It might be urged that there was a certain preparedness in these words
to separate off in their meaning from one another, inasmuch as they
originally belonged to different stocks; and this may very well have
assisted; but we find the same process at work where original
difference of stock can have supplied no such assistance. 'Astronomy'
and 'astrology' are both words drawn from the Greek, nor is there any
reason beforehand why the second should not be in as honourable use as
the first; for it is the _reason_, as 'astronomy' the _law_, of the
stars. [footnote: So entirely was any determining reason wanting, that
for some while it was a question _which_ word should obtain the
honourable employment, and it seemed as if 'astrology' and 'astrologer'
would have done so, as this extract from Bishop Hooper makes abundantly
plain (_Early Writings_, Parker Society, p. 331): 'The _astrologer_ is
he that knoweth the course and motions of the heavens and teacheth the
same; which is a virtue if it pass not its bounds, and become of an
astrologer an _astronomer_, who taketh upon him to give judgment and
censure of these motions and courses of the heavens, what they
prognosticate and destiny unto the creature.'] But seeing there is a
true and a false science of the stars, both needing words to utter them,
it has come to pass that in our later use, 'astrology' designates
always that pretended science of imposture, which affecting to submit
the moral freedom of men to the influences of the heavenly bodies,
prognosticates future events from the position of these, as contrasted
with 'astronomy' that true science which investigates the laws of the
heavenly bodies in their relations to one another and to the planet
upon which we dwell.

As these are both from the Greek, so 'despair' and 'diffidence' are
both, though the second more directly than the first, from the Latin.
At a period not very long past the difference between them was hardly
appreciable; one was hardly stronger than the other. If in one the
absence of all _hope_, in the other that of all faith, was implied. In
_The Pilgrim's Progress_, a book with which every English schoolmaster
should be familiar, 'Mistress _Diffidence_' is 'Giant _Despair's_' wife,
and not a whit behind him in deadly enmity to the pilgrims; even as
Jeremy Taylor speaks of the impenitent sinner's '_diffidence_ in the
hour of death,' meaning, as the context plainly shows, his despair. But
to what end two words for one and the same thing? And thus 'diffidence'
did not retain that energy of meaning which it had at the first, but
little by little assumed a more mitigated sense, (Hobbes speaks of
'men's diffidence,' meaning their distrust 'of one another,') till it
has come now to signify a becoming distrust of ourselves, a humble
estimate of our own powers, with only a slight intimation, as in the
later use of the Latin 'verecundia,' that perhaps this distrust is
carried too far.

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