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Updated: May 26, 2025
An old man observed that in this same place was formerly a source of thermal water, of which his great great grandfather had drunk. In short, in less time than it takes a fly to embrace its sweetheart, there had been a pocketful of etymologies, in which the truth of the matter had been less easily found than a louse in the filthy beard of a Capuchin friar.
By HENSLEIGH WEDGWOOD, M. A. Late Fellow of Chr. Coll. Cam. Vol. There is nothing more dangerously fascinating than etymologies.
The book is mainly a long string of etymologies, which readers of different tastes have found intolerably dull or an amusing collection of curiosities. Tooke held, and surely with reason, that an investigation of language, the great instrument of thought, may help to throw light upon the process of thinking. He professes to be a disciple of Locke in philosophy as in politics.
Indian writings countenance both etymologies of the word. As the name of the deity they derive it from vas to dwell, he in whom all things abide and who abides in all. Śiva and Vishṇu are not in their nature different from other Indian ideas, high or low. They are the offspring of philosophic and poetic minds playing with a luxuriant popular mythology.
We see words continually coming into vogue whose apparent etymologies, if all historical data of their origin were lost, would inevitably mislead. Togs and toggery belong here also. Whether they are all remotely from the same radical is another question.
I do not say that all ideas can be so clearly traced to their origin as in this root. In some the intermediate forms have been lost, and the etymologies become uncertain, often impossible. But the result on the whole remains the same.
For the Teutonic etymologies, I am commonly indebted to Junius and Skinner, the only names which I have forborne to quote when I copied their books; not that I might appropriate their labors or usurp their honors, but that I might spare perpetual repetition by one general acknowledgment.
So he thought, and so every reader has thought since, with the exception of teachers and writers upon grammar. Mr. Windham, indeed, who was a sophist, but not a logician, charged him with having found "a mare's-nest;" but it is not to be doubted that Mr. Tooke's etymologies will stand the test, and last longer than Mr.
Now the head master at New Coventry is a real good fellow, who knows a Sanskrit root when he sees it, and often cracks etymologies with me so that, in strictness, I ought to go to their exhibitions. But think, reader, of sitting through three long July days in that Academy chapel, following the program from Tuesday Morning. English Composition. Sunshine. Miss Jones, round to Trio on Three Pianos.
Take a few specimens of this manner of dealing with words; and first from the earlier etymologists. Medieval suggestions abound, as vain, and if possible, vainer still. With all their real, though not very accurate, erudition, his three folio volumes, two on French, one on Italian etymologies, have done nothing but harm to the cause which they were intended to further.
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