form-analogy

Updated: May 24, 2025

In both the French and English instances the primary ideas of sex and time have become diluted by form-analogy and by extensions into the relational sphere, the concepts ostensibly indicated being now so vaguely delimited that it is rather the tyranny of usage than the need of their concrete expression that sways us in the selection of this or that form.

Edward Sapir - Language: An Introduction to the Study of Speech