: A select glossary of English words used formerly in senses different from their present by Trench Richard Chenevix Mayhew A L Anthony Lawson Editor - English language Semantics

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Contributor: Anthony Lawson Mayhew

A SELECT GLOSSARY

SELECT GLOSSARY

ENGLISH WORDS USED FORMERLY IN SENSES DIFFERENT FROM THEIR PRESENT

ARCHBISHOP

'Res fugiunt, vocabula manent'

LONDON KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, & CO., 1 PATERNOSTER SQUARE 1890

PREFACE TO

THE FIRST EDITION.

In such a decomposition, to be followed by a reconstruction, of some small portions of a great English Classic, matters almost innumerable, and pressing on the attention from every side, would claim to be noticed; but certainly not last nor least the changes in meaning which, on close examination, would be seen to have passed on many of the words employed. It is to point out some of these changes; to suggest how many more there may be, there certainly are, which have not been noticed in these pages; to show how slight and subtle, while yet most real, how easily therefore evading detection, unless constant vigilance is used, these changes often have been; to trace here and there the progressive steps by which the old meaning has been put off, and the new put on, the exact road which a word has travelled; this has been my purpose here; and I have desired by such means to render some small assistance to those who are disposed to regard this as a serviceable discipline in the training of their own minds or the minds of others.

And as the words brought forward have been selected with some care, and according to certain rules which have for the most part suggested their selection, so also has it been with the passages adduced in proof of the changes of meaning which they have undergone. A principal value which such a volume as the present can possess, must consist in the happiness with which these have been chosen. Not every passage, which really contains evidence of the assertion made, will for all this serve to be adduced in proof; and this I presently discovered in the many which for one cause or another it was necessary to set aside. There are various excellencies which ought to meet in such passages, but which will not by any means be found in all.

In the first place they ought to be such passages as will tell their own story, will prove the point which they are cited to prove, quite independently of the uncited context, to which it will very often happen that many readers cannot, and of those who can, that the larger number will not, refer. They should bear too upon their front that amount of triumphant proof, which will carry conviction not merely to the student who by a careful observation of many like passages, and a previous knowledge of what was a word's prevailing use in the time of the writer, is prepared to receive this conviction, but to him also, to whom all this is presented now for the first time, who has no predisposition to believe, but is disposed rather to be incredulous in the matter. Then, again, they should, if possible, be passages capable of being detached from their context without the necessity of drawing a large amount of this context after them to make them intelligible; like trees which will endure to be transplanted without carrying with them a huge and cumbrous bulk of earth, clinging to their roots. Once more, they should, if possible, be such as have a certain intrinsic worth and value of their own, independent of their value as illustrative of the point in language directly to be proved--some weight of thought, or beauty of expression, merit in short of one kind or other, that so the reader may be making a second gain by the way. I can by no means claim this for all, or nearly all, of mine. Indeed, it would have been absurd to seek it in a book of which the primary aim is quite other than that of bringing together a collection of striking quotations; any merit of this kind must continually be subordinated, and, where needful, wholly sacrificed, to the purposes more immediately in view. Still there will be many citations found in these pages which, while they fulfil the primary intention with which they were quoted, are not wanting also in this secondary worth.

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