Mary Magdalene Moi-Pweeps
The formal definition of a plutoid is of a celestial body in orbit around the sun at a distance greater than that of Neptune that has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a near-spherical shape and has not cleared the neighbourhood around its orbit. Which were you taught it was, a planet or a plutoid? Ron Graft, and Seymour Benjamins. No, seriously, are you ok?
I've already told you. Ah, you're not okay at all. Look, it's just a plysu thing. Sometimes you don't know whether to laugh or cry. Police forces were told to keep an eye out for people wearing bulky overcoats in the heat of summer, people with electric wires sticking out of their clothing, or people smelling of chemicals. Personally, if I see someone trailing electric wires, I am definitely calling the cops. Unfortunately, such bizarre warnings could be the first of many, because while we have not found any W.
According to news reports, Mr. Salim was in a five-car convoy of Nissan Patrols waiting in a line of cars to enter the Green Zone, the secure American complex in the heart of Baghdad. Suddenly, a Volkswagen Passat jumped out of the line of cars, raced toward Mr. Salim's vehicle and blew up next to it, incinerating everything in the area. It is worse than either by itself. She's ripping her hair out This includes forum, webpages, social etc.
It can also be written as pardonmyhashtag. When you've been stuck at the mall for way too long and you're in a really bad mood because of it. I had a terrible case of PMS by the time I got out of there. A varied group of physical and psychological symptoms, including nightly debilitating headaches, permanent irritability, chronic fatigue, anxiety, and depression which commence seconds following a signing a marriage certificate and cease shortly after divorce or death.
I turned to my friend and said, "How do you feel? Kennedy was such that many sensed when he was present in the room without actually seeing him there. A scientific term for the kinds of black holes that have a preference for eating gas clouds, such as the one in the center of the Milky Way. A pathological addiction to vapours, f. A similar addiction to unrealistic dreams and fantasies, often to an unsound degree.
When left open for extended periods, may cause others to get sick e. Why is this word so long when there are two other names for it, one as short as silicosis. I obsess about choking. To change a discussion to something unrelated to the current topic, especially referring to an online forum thread. The process of getting a discussion off-topic by posting unrelated information on a forum thread. Now that he's unemployed and po', I pay. After sitting around and being PO'd at the world for a year, Patty decided it was time to plant a garden in her backyard.
Also poerfectionist, a writer usually poet who won't change a line because "that's the way I dreamed it. A real word, one that fits particularly well with politician or preacher. Used by Michael Quinion on his site. You can blame it on Pobamacare. I just paid my health insurance premium and I'm flat broke. Don't darken my door again. And don't call me either. As far as I'm concerned you just wasted a lot of money on that device you bought to embiggenificate your The club is still in existence today, with a very select group of members.
A tiny fist appeared, and whacked me on the nose. That's Kitty, she's a baby just like you! I realized that this Anna was a baby human, just like I was a baby cat, and I wanted to be this baby human's friend. My rough, sandpaper tongue licked little Anna's cheek, and the small girl let out a happy gurgle. The mother laughed, "I think this is going to be a wonderful friendship! I slept with baby Anna at night, cuddling up with her whenever she cried. She couldn't talk yet, but we communicated in our own way, without uttering a word.
I would look into her innocent eyes and understand what she wanted. That wonderful feeling of understanding stayed with me throughout my life and hers. I would scamper off, my head darting around, searching for a suitable hiding place. Five-year-old Anna toddled behind me I let her dress me up in doll clothes that didn't fit, and I didn't even scratch or bite her!
I told myself, "It's out of pity," but what I really meant was, "It's out of love. When eight-year-old Anna came home from school, she immediately rushed inside the house to find me. Usually I was curled on the windowsill when I felt her chubby fingers pat my fur. When she came to a particularly frustrating problem, she would grab me and cuddle me for a minute while she calmed down.
A sigh of relief escaped her when her homework was done, and we would almost fly outside, to be pirates, birds, tigers, or explorers! I enjoyed those games, but what I adored most was sleeping with her at night, my fuzzy body curled up at her side. I liked that feeling of closeness and love more than romping around in the sun because I was near Anna, my best friend in the world. Lately, though, those scenes have changed. I never hear, "Be the baby, Kitty, I'll be the mommy" anymore, because year-old Anna has outgrown playing pretend.
All she does is gab on the phone or surf the Internet. I try to snuggle close to her, springing on her lap, but she pushes me off and hisses, "Go away, Kitty, I'm busy! I accept the fact that Anna isn't a little girl anymore, and that she isn't interested in playing as we used to. Some days, though, I see Anna stomp through the front door, a pained expression etched on her features.
Her mother tries to get her to eat a snack, but Anna just howls, "Mo-ther, leave me alone! I immediately sense she's unhappy about something, but I turn away, thinking she'll just brush me aside, as usual. Instead, she picks me up and holds me close, and I feel a tear dampen my fur. Kind shorthand for "I completely like and respect you, maybe even love you, but you must please leave me alone right now, no questions asked.
To leave immediately after hearing a "pock" request, without bearing the speaker any ill will. A quick game of pocket billiards soon solved the problem. Does not apply to children. So much so no one can tell or care the make and model. Buckley, in the words of Horace -- or was it Yogi Berra? I thought of this while contemplating "thons" at http: Figuratively, a podopod is a dull, boring, law-abiding person who never breaks the rules. For more on poecilonym take the link or check at A. This is also a type of poecilonym or hybrid word; cf. Bodacious Words , page xi: Maybe we could all use a few spanking old poecilonyms.
It's an old synonym for synonym that you'll find in these pages. But many words in this dictionary have no real counterparts in today's English. It's high time I looked for another job and got as far away from homonyms, synonyms, antonyms -- to say nothing of caconyms, eponyms, and poecilonyms. I didn't do much at work today. Jerry is such a poews person, maybe he needs to get some fresh air.
Duplicate, with few of the forms represented in the examples. The first three examples are all adjectival forms, while the fourth was changed. Perhaps it's time for a lesson on the parts of speech? Even though the prince thought the king was trying to make him do something wrong, the prince still did what the king said because the situation seemed to be very poews.
Even though the fox thought that the frog wasn't looking, the frog was a smart poews. Someone who believes she is far more important than she is. She's always trying to show me up but ends up looking dumb herself in the end. You'll find a good discussion of the term at the link provided.
Les châteaux du Pays Cathare
Always has questionable personality traits, and usually takes a liking to YOU. It was reported in June by J. Porter in Hamilton Literary Magazine. The report, with minor abbreviation, follows. Henry Ward Beecher appeared in the newspapers a short time ago, bearing the somewhat curious title of 'Mr. Whenever you call upon him, he recounts for your benefit all the happy turns which he has made in conversation, and the little repartees in which he always seems to himself the victor.
If he happens to be a literary character, you are sure of being treated to portions of his latest productions, over which he exults with almost childish glee. And yet you have not the heart to get angry at this innocent joy in every thing that he does. Did you ever see a creature more satisfied with itself than a hen? All day long she is immensely busy: Every speck that turns up is eyed with a most discerning look, and gobbled with a chuckle of complacency, which cannot but amuse the spectator.
But of all their doings, nothing fills them with so much wonder as the laying of an egg. She feels all the joy of a great discoverer; it is the beginning of a new era. Shall nothing celebrate it? It shall not die unknown! Off she flies with an exuberance of cackle, jumps down from the haymow, and goes proclaiming, "A new thing! Pogglethrope the hen of society? He would go on about how he had the best life in the world, and how he had contributed so much to society. He loved to tell me how grand his computers were, and why mine were never going to be as good as his.
He would constantly tell me that he loved the way I didn't mind what people thought of me, and how he admired my courage because I blatantly ignored the fashions of the time. So I listened to him go on about his new hard drive and the new motherboard he was getting which could completely destroy mine in a battle, not that they would ever come up against each other.
I smiled, nodded, and told him that I had to go -- and that it was nice catching up with him. He told me that we had to get together one day and catch up completely. I nodded and told him that, yeah, we should do that. I promptly walked away. I don't think it matters to him, though, because he'll always find somebody to listen to him. I'm glad that he's so happy with himself, because nobody else seems to care. Their claim that they were adjusting the lighting doesn't fool anyone. Russian President Vladimir Putin chipped in with beefcake of his own.
President Bush baring his washboard abs? How about Hillary Clinton's buns thighs of steel? Maybe we'll get so lucky as to see buff body? It was a Brigadoon moment. I've never seen anything more beautiful. Coined by Kiki of Sluggy Freelance. The action assumed upon seeing said shiny new thing. See also the exclamation "poing" ". Any small pointed object, such as a stick or unbent paperclip or a nut-pick makes a great poinker. I'm not sleeping, only resting my eyes. Can refer to an individual, group, or event. But God isn't a bad pun! She looked out the window and noticed the motorcycle travelling next to them.
The biker looked back at her, realized what she was doing, and promptly veered off the road into the guardrail. Raised to the level of an artform by the introduction of electronic communications, sp. One employing such a technique may be referred to as a 'pointilist'.
Especially those of the left-wing variety. Don't remember where I saw the example -- and can't find it by googling. Easy to spell -- check your keyboard. A fear of being poked. A fear of anime, esp. Since my brother pokes me a lot, and has since he was five, I have become pokeaphobic. You must be pokeaphobic then. A very slow person, act or action, including the mental attitude of not being at all concerned with either yours or anyone else's time.
Describing such a person or act. Usually results in the pokevoker being smacked. Sit still and stop pokevoking your sister or she's gonna smack you and you'll deserve it. I don't know who invented it. Can be a noun or an adjective. And, while he might be one, he disappointed when the showed he didn't know the difference between a pole and a poll -- and, perhaps, a P ole as well. Obama has shown a deep-seated contempt for the Jewish community in general and for Israel in particular, and still members of the Jewish community in the United States look away from his abrasive attitude and support him at the poles.
His heart is colder than the hearts of all those Muslims who want the Jews dead and the nation of Israel destroyed forever. Figuring out where Obama's heart is on this matter is not rocket science. How many more insults will the Jews endure before they come to the realization that their fate is sealed as far as Obama is concerned? It comes from the term for the pole position holder in Formula 1.
Usually to a pest or someone who did something stupid. Occasionally resulting in reproductive dysfunction. Especially on a football field. Of course, there's a more derogatory slang meaning, too. You guys suck and will be our beotches again this year. Get real lost, toad. Polesmoke, you're like a flea You will be MIA for months after your next beating. The seller is quite obviously making it clear that she is barely containing heself from going at said customer with an axe.
We just don't sell sport books or give discounts for no reason," the bookseller said policitly. The primary purpose of this practice is to force effective checks and balances to dysfunctional government without paying loyalty to any political party that is part of the dysfunctional political system. If unbiasedly executed by true policonomists, it can effectively restore or sustain economic progress and overall prosperity of a democracy. A policonomist is a true centralist who honestly advocates practical political and economic policies and solutions with a touch of reality and resistance to paying loyalty to any of the extreme views of any party involved in the failing political system.
Policonomistic wannabes have to resist the temptation of unwillingly inhibiting extreme ideologies exposed to prior to defecting their parties. Lack of such may shadow their good intentions and therefore result in further stagnation let alone ultimate demise of the democracy they wanted to save. The most significant role of policonomists is to put out all political power fires and awaken their representatives to the external incoming Tsunami that might catch the democracy off-guard such as to wipe the that government off the global economic map.
When political systems become dysfunctional, the failure of executing policonomism in a timely manner has one end result, that being the fall of a political system. The majority of the electorate became policonomists after getting fed up with both parties. Personally, I think her twitches came from her decision to vote a straight Democrat ticket. Having the appearance of a city or town. Indeed, any pattern of repeating rectangles, especially when lit up at night, is poliphane. Minimalist poliphane scenery requires only a set of continuous building silhouette with some properly spaced lights.
And even then, most of it is just variations on the casino theme. They must be getting ready to march on the Mall.
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A political epithet is frequently "an abusive or contemptuous word or phrase. It has also been applied to a broad range of people and groups, including people of many religious faiths, particularly fundamentalist groups. This makes those who seek to be reasonable and persuasive understandably reluctant to use the word.
There is nothing surprising about the visceral emotions conjured by the mention of its name. The history of fascism is written in the blood of innocents, on a scale that challenges the limits of human imagination. Ethnic and Political Epithets": In fact, Will Allen Dromgoole, the infamous author of several articles on Melungeons in the s, first heard the term used by late 19th century Tennessee politicians.
But from the newspaper articles cited above, we can see clearly that the term 'Melungeon' was in use as a political as well as ethnic slur well before the advent of the war. Through the 19th century, reactionism was used to refer to those who wished to preserve feudalism or aristocratic privilege against industrialism , republicanism , liberalism , and in some cases socialism. Later on in the early 20th century, the term also came to describe those favouring a stronger role of the Catholic Church in society.
A more in-depth amplification is once again found in Wikipedia: Reactionary or reactionist is a political epithet typically applied to extreme ideological conservatism, especially that which wishes to return to a real or imagined old order of things, and which is willing to use coercive means to do so. The term is primarily used as a term of opprobrium groups rarely identify themselves as reactionary , meant to assert the idea that the opposition is based in merely reflexive politics rather than responsive and informed views. More specifically, the term 'reactionary' is frequently used to refer to those who want to reverse or prevent some form of claimed 'progressive' change.
An equivalent term would be 'regressivism. The country needed massive federal spending to stimulate demand and keep people working. The government had an economic responsibility to borrow some money and get credit moving. Hoover picked that awesome time to balance the budget. Bush and his administration, associates, affiliates, and supporters.
The term especially applies to Bush haters who oppose all Bush administration initiatives solely because Bush supports [them]. Before then , it was not that unusual for Democrats themselves to refer to their political party as the Democrat party, with the word party lowercased. My personal favorite political epithet is Democrat Party. They're in the Senate. They're the political hacknostics with no faith in America and no desire in passing legislation that improves and benefits Democracy.
They blindly vote their party line, while currying favors to gain seats on more powerful committees. Their dedicated goal is to be reelected,for the power, prestige and personal benefits of office are great indeed. To that end, they keep a public image of constituent support and effectiveness, greeting all with hand shakes and smiles, while privately they wear their cynicism on their sleeves.
The beliefs they do own are for the two pillars of politics: They are the shame of America. Now, in the system's place stands a traffic circular roundabout -- one expensive to build, not ever wanted by our citizens, and one that has created more problems than existed before. During the lengthy construction, a large downtown section was closed off, severely hurting several businesses and restaurants.
Completion hasn't helped these local businesses. Many avoid the area -- the roundabout is too confusing, with yield signs covering three disparate directions. It's also too small -- large trucks regularly get hung up and block traffic for hours. There was much vocal opposition to the plans. Why didn't our elected officials listen? The money was already appropriated for the roundabout. A local politician was able to get legislative approval and funding. If it wasn't to be used to build it, we'd have to give the money back!
This is the story of one political pourk project in one small community. Can we talk about the real big ones? The People are stuck with the winner for at least four years, unless she resigns. You've got to be on the ball and have something going for you, like an abundance of valuable experience. Politicians can be very adept at not answering questions. One ploy em ploy ed often is that the politician dismisses the question as a hypothetical -- as if hypotheticals have no value. He could have denied both accusations, accepted one and denied the other, or accepted both.
Instead, using the ' politician's answer ,' he avoids answering the question and turns the criticism back against his accuser. This is a clear-cut tu quoque. A politician's curvature of stance on controversial issues. Those in favor cite the economic benefits the state's communities sorely need.
Those opposed have been fiercely vocal with their concerns for irreversible damage to our land and water. Tension in the room is almost unbearable. Will the Senator voice his approval and earn the enmity and bitter hatred of the environmentalist and "tree huggers? I don't have to tell you!
The good senator could speak and answer pointed questions all day, and never say one word of commitment, for or against. As with those who seek a career in elected government service, our polished, experienced senator, smiling and speaking glibly, has long maintained a severe case of politico scoliosis. Also known as "brown nosing the boss". Used as a way to distinguish items written about politics from those where the word is used incidentally, as in a long list of words. First used in the song "NO! It's just another politrick to slow down growth. Then, with the surprising opposite results, spent unending media hours "squawking" excuses.
Bill's indiscretions did it! The Russians got involved! But especially for politicians who are afraid to do the right thing because it may cost them votes. Closely related to the pollotician: One known to appear as a cowboy on horseback to enhance his manly image. He may or may not carry a long stick for hitting balls or use products designed by Ralph Lauren. Spanish "pollo" for "chicken. Let's take a poll. That is the pollotician's way, after all. What's the difference between a chicken and a pollotician? Ajith Kumar - www. However, your quiet and subtle persistence in feeding it special treats will be well rewarded.
In little time, your polly tician will become completely devoted and will soon be eating out of your hand. From the Indians' chant in Disney's Peter Pan , which also contains the infamous line, "The Indian is cunning, but not intelligent. Did Kerry ever play polo? The polo-playing champion, Lieutenant John Kerry, was from of an earlier generation -- and didn't serve in the Vietnam War. This nation is heading for an ugliness that will make Rwanda look like a birthday party".
I'm not at all afraid of failing the test. I can spew lie after lie at your poly and you'll swear I'm more truthful than George Washington was about the cherry tree. We were a happy polyAIMorous threesome. Is he continuing his polyamoric practices? Have the women caught on? The state of being in a meaningful relationship with more then one person at the same time.
A curious breed of fully-clothed exhibitionist who uses wireless surveillance detectors in an attempt to locate hidden video cameras equipped with the technology which renders polyester clothing invisible. Why's she wearing so much polyester clothing? Look at the way she's dancing to herself.
She must be a polybitionist. The noun form would be polycast, I suppose. Something offbeat or unusual, but still fun. Having a personality that is offbeat or unusual, but still fun. From the real word "polychromatic" which means "having or composed of many colors. That rainbow shirt is so polychromatix. Have you met Rainbow Woman? You'll like her; she's polychromatix. We'll define it here as polysyllabic policy that takes pages and pages and pages to present.
It's simple, boys and girls: Them with the gold make the rules. We own and run both sites and we'll do the same thing here if you push back. It's a bit derogatory, it seems to me, but it's evidently a valid word: I learned it from a friend at work who is driving home from Kansas this weekend with his quite traditional familyhis one wife and their childrenand their considerable luggage.
When I told him he should get a trailer, he said, "We already have a polygavan and an overhead cargo box. A toothless state in which a person must wear dentures. A person who wears dentures. An irrational fear of the statues on Easter Island. A hole in the ice at a natural skating rink ie, a pond ; 2. The hockey game went much longer than planned because this big polynya in the middle of the rink stopped the game for an hour.
When I eat beef wellington, I like to open up a polynya on the crust and eat out the pate, the duxelles, and the beef. Then I eat the pastry. That is, "a load of bollocks. Tricky fellows, off to make a buck, or fool you and the crowd, allowed, or tolerated, sometimes amusing, sometimes not. A whole slew of magic or slight of hand, or means to part you from your money -- it ain't funny. Polytrix in the magician's bag, fool you, leave you with a smile on your face, this is the place. It would be like leaving my entrails at home.
Trump is more than pompous; he's pom pom pompous. Pseudo-Spanish for "tasty pomade. I bet she's going to kiss Martin. Looks like an adjective, but we'll say it's a noun. Check out the googled links to find out more about "pizmotality" or "epismetology. The Straight Dope , by Cecil Adams: Pompatous of love, from Steve Miller's song "The Joker," Miller once said, "It doesn't mean anything -- it's just jive talk. Green had coined the word "pizmotality" to mean "words of such secrecy that they could only be spoken to the one you loved.
Vernon Green, the author of "The Letter," says, "You have to remember, I was a very lonely guy at the time. I was only fourteen years old, I had just run away from home, and I walked with crutches. Some call me the gangster of love. Some people call me Maurice, Cause I speak of the Pompatus of love. Come in a variety of colors.
An activity undertaken not for immediate gain, but as an end in itself. For more information, see my essay on ponarvs at http: Masculine word, not used around women. Conceived by brewers as a means of keeping beer cold when taken outside in a cooler. Can also be used as a verb. To present an unanswerable question for entertainment's sake. To hunt for the sake of the hunt itself. To take pleasure in or entertain with the unnecessary. Taken from the linked site. Ponkified questions have no place in a serious trivia game.
We're not gonna find any chicks there on a school night, but we can get ponkified looking. Of course I don't need to do it -- it's ponkified. To spend money on something. I paid for the beer last weekend, you can pony up the jing for the movie tickets! A Ponzi scheme, named after the swindler Charles Ponzi, is a fraudulent investment operation that pays abnormally high returns to investors out of money put into the scheme by subsequent investors, rather than from real profits generated by share trading.
Ponzi scheme organizers often solicit new investors by promising to invest funds in opportunities claimed to generate high returns with little or no risk. In many Ponzi schemes, the fraudsters focus on attracting new money to make promised payments to earlier-stage investors and to use for personal expenses, instead of engaging in any legitimate investment activity. Marty, do you think there's any way the pseudodictionary could be useful in implementing a Ponzi scheme?
Certainly not in any way that would make us rich -- not in terms of money, anyway. Given our nature as a completely free and non-commercial site, I have the sneaking suspicion that we don't get a lot of traffic from people with money to throw at us. All I'm looking for for myself is a pseudo-Ponzi-scheme that will make us rich in new entries.
You'll receive email and Feed alerts when new items arrive. Turn off email alerts. Skip to main content. Refine your search for mary magdalene book. Refine more Format Format. Best Match Best Match. Items in search results. Magazine Back Issues 3. Community of language is a stronger bond than identity of religion, government, or interests ; and nations of one speech, though separated by broad oceans, and by creeds yet more widely divorced, are one in culture, one in feeling.
To kill it effectually, its nalionality must be killed, and thi. When this is not done, the old language, slowly dying out, — if, indeed, it dies at all, — has time to convey the national traditions into the new language, thus perpetuating the enmities that keep the two nations asunder. We see this illustrated in the Irish language, which, with all the ideas and feelings of which that language is the representative and the vehicle, has been permitted by the English government to die a lingering death of seven or eight centuries.
The coexist- ence of two languages in a state is one of the greatest misfortunes that can befall it. The settlement of town- ships and counties in our country by distinct bodies of foreigners is, therefore, a great evil; and a daily news- jjaper, with an Irish, German, or French prefix, or in a foreign language, is a perpetual breeder of national ani- mosities, and an effectual bar to the Americanization of our foreign population.
The languages of conquered peoples, like the serfs of the middle ages, appear to be glehce adscriptitice, and to extirpate them, except by extirpating the native race itself, is an almost impossible task. Rome, though she conquered Greece, could not plant her language there.
The barba- rians who overran the Roman Empire adopted the lan- guages of their new subjects; the Avars and Slaves who settled in Greece became Hellenized in language; the Northmen in France adopted a Romanic tongue; and the Germans in France and northern Italy, as well as the Goths in Spain, conformed to the speech of the tribes they had vanquished. He might as well have ordered his new subjects to walk on their heads. Charles the Fifth, in all the plenitude of his power, could not have compelled all his subjects, Dutch, Flemish, German, Italian, Spanish, etc.
England has maintained her dominion in the East for more than a hundred and fifty years, yet the mass of Hindoos know no more of her language than of the Greek. In the last century, Joseph II, of Austria, issued an edict that all his subjects, German, Slavonic, or Magyar, should speak and write one language, — German; but the people recked his decree as little as did the sea that of Canute.
Many of the provinces broke out into open rebellion; and the project was finally abandoned. The Venetians were for a long period under the Austrian yoke; but they spoke as pure Italian as did any of their independent countrymen, and they never detested their rulers more heartily than at the time of their deliverance.
The strongest bond of union between the different States of this country is not the wisdom of our constitution, nor the geographical unity of our territory, but the one common language that is spoken throughout the Republic, from the great lakes to the Gulf of Mexico, and from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean.
Were different tongues spoken in the different sections of the realm, no wisdom of political structure or sagacity of political administration could hold so many States together amidst such diversities of culture and social customs, and interests so conflicting. Rut our unity of speech, — the common language in which we 50 words; their use and abuse.
Were the languages of our country as various as those of Europe, who does not see that the task of allaying the bitter feeling of hostility at the South, which led to the late outbreak, and of fusing the citizens of the North and of the South into one homogeneous peo- ple, would be almost liopelessV As a corollary from all that has been said, it is plain that nothing tends more to make a man just toward other nations than the exploration through their languages of their peculiar thought-world.
He who masters the speech of a foreign people will gain therefrom a profound knowl- edge of their modes of thought and feeling, more accurate in some respects than he could gain by personal inter- course with them. He will feel the pulse of their national life in their dictionary, and will detect in their phraseology many a noble and manly impulse, of which, while blinded by national prejudice, he had never dreamed.
A volume might be filled with illustrations of the power of words; but, great as is their power, and though, when nicely chosen, they have an intrinsic force, it is, after all, the Diroi who makes them potent. The same words, coming from one person, are as the idle wind that kisses the cheeks; coming from another, they are the cannon shot that pierces the target in the bull's-eye.
The thing said is the same in each case; the enormous difference lies in the man who says it.
The man fills out, crowds his woi'ds with meaning, and sends them out to do a giant's work; or he makes them void and nugatory, impotent to reach their destination, or to do any execution should they hit the mark. The weight and value of opinions and sentiments depend oftentimes less upon their intrinsic worth than upon the degree in which they have been organized into the nature of the person who utters them; their force, less upon their inherent power than upon the latent heat stored away in their formation, which is liberated in their pub- lication.
There is in character a force which is felt as deeply, and which is as irresistible, as the mightiest physical force, and which makes the plainest expressions of some men like consuming fire. Their woi'ds, instead of being the barren signs of abstract ideas, are the media through which the life of one mind is radiated into other minds. They inspire, as well as inform; electrify, as well as enlighten. Even truisms from their lips have the effect of original perceptions; and old saws and proverbs, worn to shreds by constant repetition, startle the ear like brilliant fancies.
Some of the greatest effects recorded in the history of elo- juence have been produced by words which, when read, strike us as tame and commonplace. The tradition that Whitefield could thrill an audience by saying " Mesopo- tamia! College sophomores, newly fledged lawyers, and representatives from Bunkum ville, often display more fluency than the New Hampshire giant; but his words are to theirs as the roll of thunder to the patter of rain. What makes his argument so ponderous and destructive to his opponents, is not its own weight alone, but in a great degree the added weight of his temper and constitution, the trip-hammer moniention with which he makes it fall upon the theory he means to crush.
Even the vast mass of the man helped, too, to make his words impressive. The majesty of the utterance, which is said to have quick- ened the pulse even of " the great NuUifier," Calhoun, is due to the fact that it came from a mighty nature, which had weighed and felt all the meaning which those three spots represent in the stormy history of the world.
It was this which gave such prodigious power to the words of Chatham, and made them smite his adversaries like an electric battery. The same words, issuing from other lips, would have been as harmless as pop- guns. In reading the quotations from Chalmers, which are reported to have so overwhelmingly oppressed those who heard them, almost every one is disappointed. It is the creative individuality projected into the words that makes the entire difference between Kean or Kembld and the poorest stroller that murders Shakespeare.
It is said that Macready never produced a more thrilling effect than by the simple words, " Who said that? Yet the only effect was to bring down upon the speaker's shoulders the staff of Ulysses. Pope well observes that, had Ulysses made the same speech, the troops would have sailed for Greece that very night. The world considers not merely what is said, but tvho speaks, and whence he says it.
Let two men of different education, tastes, and habits of thought, utter the word " grand," and our sense of the word is modified according to our knowledge of the men. The conceptions represented by the words a man uses, it is evident, are different from every other man's; and into this difference enter all his individuality of character, the depth or the shallowness of his knowledge, the quality of his education, the strength or feebleness of his feelings, everything that distinguishes him from another man.
Whipple says truly that " there are no more simple words than 'green,' 'sweetness,' and 'rest,' yet what depth and intensity of significance shine in Chaucer's 'gi-een'; what a still ecstasy of religious bliss irradiates 'sweetness,' as it drops from the pen of Jonathan Edwards; what celestial repose beams from 'rest' as it lies on the page of Barrow! The moods seem to transcend the resources of language; yet they are expressed in common words, trans- figured, sanctified, imparadised by the spiritual vitality which streams through them.
When the thought is so subtle, or the emo- tion so evanescent, or the imagination so remote, that it cannot be flashed upon the ' inward eye,' it is hinted to the inward ear by some exquisite variation of tone. An American essayist on Shakespeare, Mr. Emerson, in speak- ing of the impossibility of acting or reciting his plays, refers to this magical suggestiveness in a sentence almost as remarkable as the thing it describes.
He may have looked at the words, but has never looked into them. Fluent young men who wonder that the words which they utter with such glibness and emphasis have so little weight with their hearers, should ask themselves whether their char- acters are such as to give weight to their words. As in engineering it is a rule that a cannon should be at least one hundred times heavier than its shot, so a man's character should be a hundred times heavier than what he says.
When a La Place or a Humboldt talks of the "universe," the word has quite another meaning than when it is used by plain John Smith, whose ideas have never extended beyond the town of Hull. So, when a 5G words; thkir use and abuse. There is a hollow ring in the words of the cleverest man who talks of " trials and tribulations " which he has never felt. In its vocabulary, its forms, and its euphonic and other changes, it embodies the mental growth and modifi- cations of thousands of minds.
It enriches itself with all the intellectual spoils of the people that use it, and with the lapse of years is gradually deepened, mellowed, and refined.
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And yet it is no less true that, as Max Miiller has observed, since the beginning of the world no new addition has ever been made to the substantial ele- ments of speech, any more than to the substantial elements of nature. There is a constant change in language, a coming and going of words; but no man can ever invent an entirely new word. Equally true is it that when a vocable has dropped out of the language, — has become dead or obsolete, — it is almost as impossible to call it ] ack to life as it is to restore to life a deceased human being.
Pope, it is true, speaks of commanding " old words that have long slept to wake;" and Horace declares that many words will be born again that have seemingly dropped into their graves. But it is certain that, as Prof. Craik says, " very little i-evivification has ever taken place in human speech," and that one may more easily introduce into a language a dozen new words than restore to general use an old one that has been discarded. It is true, also, that in the first quarter of this century Coleridge, Byron, Keats, Scott, and other poets, enriched their vocab- ularies with words taken from the more archaic and obsolescent element of tlie language, and that we have in use many words that were more or less neglected during the eighteenth century.
But in nearly all these cases it is probable that the vocables thus recalled to a living and working condition, were never actually dead, but only in a state of suspended animation. It has been calculated that our English language, including the nomenclature of the arts and sciences, con- tains one hundred thousand words; yet of this immense number it is surprising how few are in common use. It is a common opinion that every Englishman and American 58 words; tiieiu use and aiuse. To the great majority even of educated men, three-fourths of these words are almost as unfamiliar as Greek or Choctaw.
Strike from the lexicon all the obso- lete or obsolescent words; all the words of special arts or professions; all the words confined in their usage to par- ticular localities; all the words of recent coinage which have not yet been naturalized; all the words which even the educated speaker uses only in homoeopathic doses, — and it is astonishing into what a manageable volume your plethoric Webster or Worcester will have shrunk.
It has been calculated that a child uses only about one hundred words; and, unless he belongs to the educated classes, he will never employ more than three or four hundred. A distinguished American scholar estimates that few speakers or writers use as many as ten thousand words; ordinary pei'sons, of fair intelligence, not over three or four thou- sand. Even the great orator, who is able to bring into the field, in the war of words, half the vast array of light and heavy troops which the vocabulary affords, 3'et contents himself with a far less imposing display of verbal force. Even the all-knowing Milton, whose wealth of words seems amazing, aiid whom Dr.
Each word, however, has a variety of meanings, Avith more or fewer of which every man is familiar, so that his knowledge of the language, which has practically over a million of words, is far greater than it appears. This may, or may not, be a merit; but it is certain that there is scarcely a page of Johnson that does not contain some word — obsolete, un-English, or purely scientific — that has no business there; while Webster and Worcester ci'am them in by hundreds and thousands at a time; each doing his best to load and deform his pages, and all the while triumphantly challenging the world to observe how prodigious an advantage he has gained over his rivals.
We are accustomed to go to the dictionary for the meaning of words; but it is life that discloses to us their significance in all the vivid realities of experience. It is the actual world, with its joys and sorrows, its pleasures and pains, that reveals to us their joyous or terrible mean- ings — meanings not to be found in Worcester or Webster.
Does the young and light-hearted maiden know the mean- ing of "sorrow," or the youth just entering on a business career understand the significance of the words " failure " and "protest"? Man is a dictionary, and human experience the great lexicogra- pher. Hundreds of human beings pass from their cradles to their graves who know not the force of the commonest terms; while to others their terrible significance comes home like an electric flash, and sends a thrill to the inner- most fibres of their being. To conclude, — it is one of the marvels of language, that out of the twenty plain elementary sounds of which the human voice is capable, have been formed all the articulate voices which, for six thousand or more years, have sufficed to express all the sentiments of the human race.
Few as are these sounds, it has been calculated that one thousand million writers, in one thousand mill- ion years, could not write out all the combinations of the twenty-four letters of the alphabet, if each writer were daily to write out forty pages of them, and if each page should contain different orders of the twenty-four letters. Another remarkable fact is that the vocal organs are so constructed as to be exactly adapted to the proper- ties of the atmosphere which conveys their sounds, while at the same time the organs of hearing are fitted to receive with pleasure the sounds conveyed.
Genus dicendi imitatur publicos mores. The world is satisfied with words; few care to dive beneath the surface.
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Words are the signs and symbols of things; and as in accounts, ciphers and symbols pass for real sums, so, in the course of human affairs, words and names pass for things themselves. Woe to them that call evil good, and good evil.
Nee sine causa Grceci jwodiderunt, ut vlvat, qiiemque etiam dicere. When a clock is foul and disordered, its wheels warped or cogs broken, the bell hammer and the hands will proclaim the fact; instead of being a guide, it will mislead, and, while the disorder continues, will continually betray its own infirmity. So when a man's mind is disordered or his heart corrupted, there will gather on his face and in his language an expression corresponding to the irregularities within. There is, indeed, a physiognomy in- the speech as well as in the face.
Except under peculiar circumstances, where prudence, shame, or delicacy seals the mouth, the objects dearest to the heart, — the pet words, phrases, or shibboleths, the terms expressing our strongest appetencies and antipathies, — will rise most frequently to the lips; and Ben Jonson, therefore, did not exaggerate in saying that no glass renders a man's form and likeness so true as his speech. The door keeper of an alien household said to Peter, "Thou art surely a Galilean; thy speech bewrayeth thee"; and so, in spite of all masks and professions, in spite of his reputation, the essential nature of every person will stamp itself on his language.
How often do the words and tones of a [irofessedly religious man, who gives lib- erally to the church, prays long and loud in public, and attends rigidly to every outward observance, betray in some mysterious way, — by some impalpable element which we instinctively detect, but cannot point out to others, — the utter worldliness of his character!
How frequently do words uttered volubly, and with a pleasing elocution, affect us as mere sounds, suggesting only the hollowness and unreality of the speaker's character! How often does the nsn of a single word flash more light upon a man's motives and [u-inciples of action, give a deeper insight into his hnbits of thought and fcoling, than an cnlii-t' biography! How often, when a secret sorrow preys upon the heart, 64 words; their use and abuse. Out of the immense magazine of words furnished by our English vocabulary, — embracing over a hundred thousand distinct terms, — each man selects his own favorite expres- sions, his own forms of syntax, by a peculiar law which is part of the essential difference between him and all other men; and in the verbal stock in trade of each individual we should find, could it once be laid open to us, a key that would unlock many of the deepest mysteries of his human- ity, — many of the profoundest secrets of his private history.
How often is a man's character revealed by the adjectives he uses! Like the inscriptions on a thermometer, these words of themselves reveal the temperament. The con- scientious man weighs his words as in a hair-balance; the boaster and the enthusiast employ extreme phrases, as if there were no degree but the superlative. The cautious man uses words as the rifleman does bullets; he utters but few words, but they go to the mark like a gunshot, and then he is silent again, as if he were reloading. The dog- matist is known by his sweeping, emphatic language, and the absence of all qualifying terms, such as " perhaps " and " it may be.
Men, with their physical and moral force, their bodily energies, and their passions, prejudices, delusions, and en- thusiasms, were to him but as fuel to swell the blaze on the altar of that ambition of which he was at once the priest and deity. Of duties to them he never for a moment dreamed; for, from the hot May-day of Lodi to the autum- nal night of Moscow, when he fled the flaming Kremlin, he seemed unconscious that he was himself a created and responsible being. An author's style is an open window through which we can look in upon him, and estimate his character.
The cunning reader reads between the lines, and finds out secrets about the writer, as if he were overhearing his soliloquies. He marks the pet phrase or epithet, draws conclusions from asseveration and emphasis, notes the half- perceptible sneer or insinuation, detects the secret misery that is veiled by a jest, and learns the writer's idiosyn- crasies even when he tries hardest to mask them.
Macaulay is betrayed by his antitheses, and Cicero by his esse videatur. Ai'nold has strikingly shown how we may judge of a historian by his style, his language being an infallible index to his character. If, on the other hand, it is always elegant, rich in illustrations, and without the relief of simple and great passages, we must admire the writer's genius in a very high degree, but we may fear that he is too continually excited to have attained to the highest wisdom, for that is necessarily calm.
In this manner the mere language of a historian will furnish us with something of a key to his mind, and will tell us, or at least give us cause to presume, in what his main strength lies, and in what he is deficient. A writer in the " Edinburgh Review "' observes that the statement that a man's language is part of his character, holds true, not only in regard to the usage of certain shibboleths of a party, whether in religion or politics, but also in regard to a general vocabularv. In this age of examinations, — army, navy, civil-service, and middle- class, — the verb ' to pluck' is well-nigh incorporated with the vernacular, and must take its place in dictionaries.
The sportsman Nimrod has his esoteric vocabulary, and so has likewise the angler Walton. Your favorite landscape may have 'tones' in it, as well as your violin. With shoulders that are 'broad,' and with cloth that is 'broad' covering those broad shoulders, you stand and observe that a painting is ' broad. The stock of words composing any language corresponds to the knowledge of the community that speaks it, and shows with what objects it is familiar, what generalizations it has made, what distinctions it has drawn, — all its cog- nitions and reasonings, in the worlds of matter and of mind.
Language is expanded and contracted in precise adaptation to the circumstances and needs of those 68 words; tiiimk rsi-: If a people is, as Milton said of the English, a noble and a puissant nation, of a quick, ingen- ious, and piercing spirit, acute to invent and subtle to discourse, its language will exhibit all these qualities; while, on the other hand, if it is frivolous and low- thougbted, — if it is morally bankrupt and dead to all lofty sentiments, — its mockery of virtue, its inability to comprehend the true dignity and meaning of life, Ihe feebleness of its moral indignation, will all inevitably betray themselves in its speech, as truly as would the opposite qualities of spirituality of thought and exaltation of soul.
These discreditable qualities will find an utter- ance "in the use of solemn and earnest words in senses comparatively trivial or even ridiculous; in the squander- ing of such as ought to have been reserved for the highest mysteries of the spiritual life, on slight and secular objects; and in the employment, almost in jest and play, of words implying the deepest moral guilt.
Let us not, however, infer the hopeless depravity of any people from the baseness of the tongue they have inherited, not chosen. It makes a vast difference, as Prof. Marsh justly observes, whether words expressive of noble thoughts and mighty truths do not exist in a language, or whether ages of soul-crushing tyranny have compelled their disuse, and the employment of the baser part of the national vocabulary.
The mighty events that have lately taken place in Italy " show that a tone of hypocrisy may cling to the tongue, long after the spirit of a nation is emancipated, and that where grand words are found in a speech, thei-e grand thoughts, noble purposes, high resolves exist also; or, at least, the spark slumbers which 70 words; their use and abuse. The English, it is argued, drink enough to need a special illustrative title for a man who has not drunk; but though the Parisians began to drink alcohol freely during the sieges, the French have never yet felt the necessity of forming any such curious subjective ap- pellation, consequently they do not possess it.
Again, the French boast that they have no such word as " bribe," as if this implied their exemption from that sin; and such, indeed, may be the fact. But may not the absence of this word from their vocabulary prove, on the contrary, their lack of sensibility to the heinous nature of the oflfense, just as the lack of the word " humility," in the language of the Greeks, usually so rich in terms, proves that they lacked the thing itself, or as the fact that the same people had no word corresponding to the Latin ineptus, argues, as Cicero thought, not that the character designated by the word was wanting among them, but that the fault was so universal with them that they failed to recognize it as such?
Is it not a great defect in a language that it lacks the words by which certain forms of baseness or sinfulness, in those who speak it, may be brought home to their consciousness? The pot-dc-vin, and other jesting phrases which the French have coined to denote bribery, can have no effect but to encourage this wrong.
What shall we think of the fact that the French lan- guage has no word equivalent to "listener"? Is it not a noteworthy circumstance, shedding light upon national character, that among thirty-seven millions of talkers, no provision, except the awkward paraphrase, celui qui ecoute, " he who hears,'' should have been made for hearers? Is there any other explanation of this blank than the supposition that every Frenchman talks from the pure love of talking, and not to be heard; that, reversing the proverb, he believes that silence is silver, but talking is golden; and that, not caring whether he is listened to or not, he has never recognized that he has no name for the person to whom he chatters?
Again, is it not remark- able that, among the French, honhoninte. It was in the latter half of the reign of Louis XIV that the word honnete exchanged its primitive for its present meaning. Till then, according to good authority, when a man's descent was said to be honnete, he was complimented on the virtuous- ness of his progenitors, not reminded of the mediocrity of their condition; and when the same term was applied to his family, it was an acknowledgment that they be- longed to the middle ranks of society, not a suggestion that they were plebeians.
Couple with these peculiarities of the language the circumstance that the French term spirituel means simply witty, with a certain quickness, delicacy, and versatility of mind, and have you not a real insight into the national character? It is said that the word oftenest on a Frenchman's lips is la gloire, and next to that, perhaps, is liriUant, " brilliant. It is said that Sir Astley Cooper, the great British surgeon, on visiting the French capital, was asked by the surgeon en chef of the empire how many times he had performed some feat of surgery that required a rare union of dexterity and nerve.
He replied that he had performed the operation thirteen times. Monsieur, I have performed him one hundred and sixty time. How many time did you save his life? How many did you save out of a hundred and sixty? Monsieur, I lose dem all; — but de operation was very hrUlcmtr' The author of " Pickwick " tells us that in America the sign vocal for starting a coach, steamer, railway train, etc.
Let us hope that the day may yet come when our "two-forty" people will exchange a little of their fiery activity for a bit of IJulTs caution, and when our Yankee Herald's College, if we ever have one, may declare " All Right! A volume might be filled with illustrations of the truth that the language of nations is a mirror, in which may be seen reflected with unerring accuracy all the elements of their intellectual as well as of their moral character.
What scholar that is familiar with Greek and Latin has failed to remark how indelibly the contrariety of character in the two most civilized nations of antiquity is impressed on their languages, distinguished as is the one by exuberant originality, the other by innate poverty of thought? In the Greek, that most flexible and perfect of all the Euro- pean tongues, — which surpasses every other alike in its metaphysical subtlety, its wealth of inflections, and its capacity for rendering the minutest and most delicate shades of meaning, — the thought controls and shapes the language; while the tyrannous objectivity of the Latin, rigid and almost cruel, like the nation whose voice it is, and whose words arc always Sic rolo, sic jnhio, sfcf pro 74 words; their use and abuse.
And Latin, — the voice of Empire and of Law, of War and of the State, — the best language for the meas- ured research of History, and the indignant declamation of moral satire; rigid in its constructions, parsimonious in its synonyms; yet majestic in its bareness, impressive in its conciseness; the true language of history, instinct with the spirit of nations, and not with the passions of individuals; breathing the maxims of the world, and not. It has been said truly that " in the pedantry of Statins, in the puerility of Martial, in the conceits of Seneca, in the poets who would go into emulous raptures on the beauty of a lap- dog and the apotheosis of a eunuch's hair, we read the hand-writing of an empire's condemnation.
The air men breathe, the temperature in which they live, and the natural scenery amid which they pass their lives, acting incessantly upon body and mind, and especially upon the organs of speech, impart to them a soft or a harsh expression. The languages of the South, as we should expect them to be, "are limpid, euphonic, and harmonious, as though they had received an impress from the transparency of their heaven, and the soft sweet sounds of the winds that sigh among the woods.
On the other hand, in tlie hirrients and gutturals, the burr and rough- ness of the Northern tongues, we catch an echo of the breakers bursting on their crags, and the crashing of tlie pine branch over the cataract. The Attic Greek was softer than the Doric, the dialect of the mountains; the Ionic, spoken in the voluptuous regions of Asia Minor, was softer and 76 words; their use and abuse. The Anglo-Saxon, the lan- guage of a people conversant chiefly with gloomy forests and stormy seas, and prone to silence, was naturally harsh and monosyllabic.
The roving sea-king of Scandinavia, cradled on the ocean and rocked by its storms, could no more speak in the soft and melting accents of a Southern tongue than the screaming eagle could utter the liquid melody of a nightingale's song. It is said that in the South Sea Islands version of the New Testament there are whole chapters with no words ending in consonants, except the proper names of the original.
Italian has been called the love-talk of the Roman without his armor. Fuller, contrasting the Italians and the Swiss, quaintly remarks that the former, " whose country is called ' the country of good words,' love the circuits of courtesy, that an ambassador should not, as a sparrow hawk, fly outright to his prey, and meddle pres- ently with the matter in hand; but, like the noble falcon, mount in language, soar high, fetch compasses of compli- ment, and then in due time stoop to game, and seize on the business propounded.
Clean contrary, the Switzers who sent word to the king of France not to send them an ambassador with stores of words, but a treasurer with plenty of money count all words quite out which are not straight on, have an antipathy against eloquent language, the flowei'S of rhetoric being as offensive to them as sweet perfume to such as are troubled with the mother; yea, generally, great soldiers have their stomachs sharp set to feed on the matter; loathing long speeches, as wherein they conceive themselves to lose time, in which they could conquer half a country; and, counting bluntness their best eloquence, love to be accosted in their own kind.
The forms of salutation used by different nations are saturated with their idiosyncrasies, and of themselves alone essentially reveal their respective characters. How clearly is the innermost distinction be- tween the Greek mind and the Hebrew brought out in their respective salutations, " Rejoice I " and " Peace! The formula of the robust, energetic, valiant Roman, — with whom virtue was manli- ness, and whose value was measured by his valor, — was Salve! In the hot, oppressive climate of Egypt persi iration is essential to health, and you are asked, " How do you perspire?
Some writei-s, how- ever, have regarded the word "stand" in this formula as meaning no mori! The 78 words; their use and aruse. The trading Hollander, who scours the world, asks. The thoughtful Swede inquires, " How do you think? Externals, the shapes and shows of things, — for what else could we expect a peo- ple to be solicitous, who are born actoi'S, and who live, to a great extent, for stage effect; who unite so much outward refinement with so much inward coarseness; who have an exquisite taste for the ornamental, and an almost savage ignorance of the comfortable; who invented, as Emerson says, the dickey, but left it to the English to add the shirt?
Not to think, to stand, to carry yourself, but to do; and this doing is so universal among the English, — its necessity is so completely recognized, — that no one dreams of asking whether you are doing, or what you are doing, but all demand, " How do you do? Michaelis, that "some virtues are more sed- ulously cultivated by moralists, when llie language has tit names for indicating them; whereas they arc but superficially treated of, or rather neglected, in nations where such virtues have not so much as a name.
Lan- guages may obviously do injury to morals and religion by their equivocation; by false accessories, inseparable from 80 words; TiivAK rsH and abuse, the principal idea; and by their poverty. One of the most formidable obstacles which Christian missionaries have encountered in teaching the doctrines and precepts of the Gospel to the heathen, has been the absence from their languages of a spiritual and ethical nomenclature.
It is in vain that the religious teachers of a people present to them a doctrinal or ethical system inculcating virtues and addressed to faculties, whose very existence their language, and consequently the conscious self-knowledge of the people, do not recog- nize. Equally vain is it to reprehend vices which have no name by Avhich they can be described and denounced, as things to be loathed and shunned.
Hence, in trans- lating the Bible into the languages of savage nations, the translators have been compelled to employ merely provis- ional phrases, until they could develop a dialect fitted to convey moral as well as intellectual truth. It is said that the Ethiopians, having but one word for " person "' and " nature," could not apprehend the doctrine of the union of Christ's two natures in one single person. There are languages of considerable cultivation in which it is not easy to find a term for the Supreme Being. Seneca wrote a treatise on " Providence," which had not even a name at Rome in the time of Cicero.
As De Maistre has strikingly observed, man knew well that he could "irritate" God or "a god," but not that he could " offend " him. The words "crime" and "criminal" belong to all languages: For a similar reason, man could always call God "Father," which expresses only a relation of creation and of power; but no man, of his own strength, could say " my Father "!
Again, the Greek language, as we have already seen, had no term for the Christian virtue of "humility"; and when the apostle Paul coined one for it, he had to em- ploy a root conveying the idea, not of self-abasement before a just and holy God, but of positive debasement and meanness of spirit. On the other liand, there is a word in our own tongue which, as De Quinccy observes, cannot be rendered adequately either by German or Greek, the two richest of human languages, and without which we shouM all be disarmed for one great case, continually G 82 words; their use and abuse.
It is the word " humbug. Cynicism is seldom shallower than when it sneers at what it contemptuously calls the power of words over the popu- lar imagination. If men are agreed about things, what, it is asked, can be more foolish than to dispute about names? But while it is true that in the physical world things dominate over names, and are not at the mercy of a shifting vocabulary, yet in the world of ideas, — of history, philosophy, ethics and poetry, — words triumph over things, are even equivalent to things, and are as truly the living organism of thought as the eyes, lips, and entire physiognomy of a man, are the media of the soul's expression.
Hence words are the only certain test of thought; so much so that we often stop in the midst of an assertion, an exclamation, or a request, startled by the form it assumes in words. Thus, in Shakespeare, King John says to Hubert, who pleaded his sovereign's order for putting the young prince to death, that if, instead of receiving the order in signs, "Thou Il.
Let a man go into a foreign country, give up his own language, and adopt another, and he will gradually and uncon- sciously change his opinions, too.