LECTURE V.

ON THE RISE OF NEW WORDS.

F I do not much mistake, you will find it not

IF

a little interesting to follow great and significant words to the time and place of their birth. And not these alone. The same interest, though perhaps not in so high a degree, will cleave to the upcoming of words not a few that have never played a part so important in the world's story. A volume might be written, such as few would rival in curious interest, which should do no more than indicate the occasion upon which new words, or old words employed in a new sense-being such words as the world subsequently heard much of-first appeared; with quotation, where advisable, of the passages in proof. A great English poet, too early lost, the young Marcellus of our tongue,' as Dryden so finely calls him, has very grandly described the emotion of

" some watcher of the skies,

When a new planet swims into his ken.'

Not very different will be our feeling, as we watch, at the moment of its rising above the

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horizon, some word destined, it may be, to play its part in the world's story, to take its place for ever among the luminaries in the moral and intellectual firmament above us.

But a caution is necessary here. We must not regard as certain in every case, or indeed in most cases, that the first rise of a word will have exactly consented in time with its first appearance within the range of our vision. Such identity will sometimes exist; and we may watch the actual birth of some word, and may affirm with confidence that at such a time and on such an occasion it first saw the light-in this book, or from the lips of that man. Of another we can only say, About this time and near about this spot it first came into being, for we first meet it in such an author and under such and such conditions. So mere a fragment of ancient literature has come down to us, that, while the earliest appearance there of a word is still most instructive to note, it cannot in all or in nearly all cases be affirmed to mark the exact moment of its nativity. And even in the modern world we must in most instances be content to fix a period, we may perhaps add a local habitation, within the limits of which the term must have been born, either in legitimate scientific travail, or the child of some flash of genius, or the product of some generatio æquivoca, the necessary result of exciting predisposing causes; at the same time seeking by further research ever to narrow more

and more the limits within which this must have happened.

4

To speak first of words religious and ecclesiastical. Very noteworthy, and in some sort epoch-making, must be regarded the first appearance of the following:-'Christian';' 'Trinity'; 'Catholic,' as applied to the Church;3 canonical,' as a distinctive title of the received Scriptures; New Testament,' as describing the complex of the sacred books of the New Covenant; 'Gospels,' as applied to the four inspired records of the life and ministry of our Lord. We notice, too, with interest, the first coming up of 'monk' and 'nun,' marking as they do the beginnings of the monastic system ;of 'transubstantiation,' of 'concomitance,' expressing as does this word the grounds on which

5

1 Acts xi. 26.

8

2 Tertullian, Adv. Prax. 3.

3 Ignatius, Ad Smyrn. 8.

4 Origen, Opp. vol. iii. p. 36 (ed. De la Rue).

5 Tertullian, Adv. Marc. iv. 1 ; Adv. Prax. xv. 20.

7 'Nun' (nonna) first appears in Jerome (Ad Eustoch. Ep. 22); 'monk' (monachus) a little earlier: Rutilius, a Latin versifier of the fifth century, who still clung to the old Paganism, gives the derivation :

Ipsi se monachos Graio cognomine dicunt,

Quod soli nullo vivere teste volunt.

8 Hildebert, Archbishop of Tours († 1134), is the first to use it (Serm. 93).

• Thomas Aquinas is reported to have been the first to use this word.

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the medieval Church defended communion in one kind only for the laity; of 'limbo' in its theological sense; witnessing as these do to the consolidation of errors which had long been floating in the Church.

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5

Not of so profound an interest, but still very instructive to note, is the earliest apparition of names historical and geographical, above all of such as have since been often on the lips of men; as the first mention in books of 'Asia';2 of India'; of Europe';4 of Macedonia'; of 'Greeks'; of 'Germans' and 'Germany';7 of Alemanni'; of Franks';9 of Prussia and 'Prussians'; 10 of 'Normans'; the earliest notice by any Greek author of Rome; 12 the first use of 'Italy' as comprehending the entire

6

1 Thomas Aquinas first employs ‘limbus' in this sense. 2 Eschylus, Prometheus Vinctus, 412.

3 Id. Suppl. 282.

4 Herodotus, iv. 36.

5 Id. v. 17. • Aristotle, Meteor. i. 14. But his гpaîkoι are only an insignificant tribe, near Dodona. How it came to pass that Græci, or Graii, was the Latin name by which all the Hellenes were known, must always remain a mystery.

' Probably first in the Commentaries of Cæsar; see Grimm, Gesch. d. Deutschen Sprache, p. 773.

8 Spartian, Caracalla, c. 9.

9 Vopiscus, Aurel. 7; about A.D. 240.

10 Pruzia' and 'Pruzzi' first appear in the Life of S. Adalbert, written by his fellow-labourer Gaudentius, between 997-1006.

11 The Geographer of Ravenna.

12 Probably in Hellanicus, a contemporary of Herodotus.

Hesperian peninsula;* of Asia Minor' to designate Asia on this side Taurus.+ 'Madagascar' may hereafter have a history, which will make it interesting to know that this name was first given, so far as we can trace, by Marco Polo to the huge African island. Neither can we regard with indifference the first giving to the newlydiscovered continent in the West the name of 'America'; and still less should we Englishmen fail to take note of the date when this island exchanged its earlier name of Britain for 'England'; or, again, when it resumed 'Great Britain' as its official designation. So also, to confirm our assertion by examples from another quarter, it cannot be unprofitable to mark the exact moment at which 'tyrant' and' tyranny,' forming so distinct an epoch as this did in the political history of Greece, first appeared; ‡ or again,

+

*In the time of Augustus Cæsar; see Niebuhr, History of Rome, Engl. Translation, vol. i. p. 12.

† Orosius, i. 2: in the fifth century of our era.

In the writings of Archilochus, about 700 B.C.; τύραννος being probably a Doric sub-form of κοίρανος. Α 'tyrant' was not for Greeks a bad king, who abused a rightful position to purposes of lust or cruelty or other wrong. It was of the essence of a 'tyrant' that he had attained supreme dominion through a violation of the laws and liberties of the state; having done which, whatever the moderation of his after-rule, he would not escape the name. Thus the mild and bounteous Pisistratus was "tyrant' of Athens, while a Christian II. of Denmark, "the Nero of the North,' would not in Greek eyes have