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ROOTS AND RAMIFICATIONS; 
 
 EXTRACTS 
 
 FROM 
 
 VAKIOUS BOOKS EXPLANATORY OF THE DERIVATION 
 OR MEANING OF DIVERS WORDS. 
 
 BY ARTHUR JOHN KNAPP. 
 
 Verba sunt rerum note." — Cic. Top. 8. 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 PRIVATELY PRINTED. 
 
 1856. 
 
205449 
 J 13 
 
 
 LONDON: PRINTED BY W. CLOWES AND SONS, STAMiORD STREET, 
 AND OH A RING CROSS. 
 
PREFACE, 
 
 The author of the following pages, who has for 
 many years taken an interest in antiquarian, his- 
 torical, and genealogical research, acknowledges the 
 gratification afforded him by the perusal of Mr. 
 Trench's book ' On the Study of Words/ which first 
 invited him to explore this new and interesting field, 
 at such occasional and limited intervals as his pro- 
 fessional duties admitted of his devoting to the 
 purpose. He cannot, however, express the same 
 gratification from the perusal of Mr. Trench's later 
 work, ' English Past and Present,' since he there 
 found many words derived or explained which were 
 previously destined to appear in this little volume, 
 and which, in consequence, he has been obliged to 
 reduce, not without regret, since the special object 
 of this publication is to form from the proceeds of its 
 sale the nucleus of a fund for providing church and 
 school accommodation in a rural parish, where, with 
 a population of several thousands, the church will 
 
 b 2 
 
IV PREFACE. 
 
 accommodate only a few hundreds, and where there 
 is no provision for schools. With such facts as 
 these to recommend his object, the author hesitates 
 not to let the volume go forth in its present form, 
 preferring this course to increasing its size by further 
 delay, which might endanger a further entrenchment 
 upon it. He has generally preserved references to 
 the works from which he has made extracts, but he 
 is conscious that in many instances this has been 
 neglected, especially where he has borrowed from 
 dictionaries or cyclopaedias ; he however acknow- 
 ledges his obligation to every author from whose 
 works he has made extracts without giving the 
 reference. Should any who may peruse this Pre- 
 face feel disposed to contribute to the sum sought to 
 be raised, the author will thankfully receive such 
 contributions. 
 
 10, Paragon, Clifton, 
 Oct. 1855. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 Of the Saxon Language in names and places in England 7 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 Of words which we have acquired from the institutions 
 or customs of the Romans 20 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 Of words derived from the names of places or persons . . 40 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Of words the etymology of which is obscured by reason 
 of the original spelling ^having been corrupted .. .. 58 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 Of the interchange of letters in languages 73 
 
 *©~ — o- 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 The same subject continued 91 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 The consideration of words in daily use with us .. .. 112 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 Of words derived from the Greek language 133 
 
ROOTS AND RAMIFICATIONS, 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 Of the Saxon Language in Names and Places in 
 England. 
 
 The truth of the words of Cicero which I have 
 selected as the motto for this little book, that " words 
 are the record of things," becomes more and more 
 apparent according to the degree of investigation 
 which we bestow upon the origin and meaning of 
 words. The names of our country, and the dis- 
 tricts, towns, and places in it, will, when examined, 
 bear out this assertion, and I propose in this chapter 
 very briefly to investigate the early description of 
 our country as given by our historians, and to test 
 the fidelity of their narratives by an examination 
 into the origin of the names given to many of the 
 places in it. Mr. Hume, in his first chapter, says, 
 " All ancient writers agree in representing the first 
 inhabitants of Britain as a tribe of the Gauls or 
 Celtae, who peopled that island from the neighbour- 
 ing continent — their language was the same, their 
 manners, their government, their superstitions;" 
 and after describing the successive invasions by the 
 Romans and the Saxons, he adds : " Thus was esta- 
 
8 ROOTS AND RAMIFICATIONS Chap. I. 
 
 Wished, after a violent contest of near a hundred 
 and fifty years, the Heptarchy or seven Saxon king- 
 doms in Britain, and the whole southern part of the 
 island, excepting Wales and Cornwall, had totally 
 changed its inhabitants, language, customs, and 
 political institutions." From this we see that Wales 
 and Cornwall continued to be inhabited by the 
 people styled Gauls or Celtse, who, from Caesar's 
 Commentaries on the wars in Gaul, Book I. c. 1, 
 appear to have been called in their own language 
 Celtse, but in the Roman language Galli. 
 
 The names of these provinces, Wales and Corn- 
 wall, bear evidence of the fact that they were peopled 
 by the persons called Galli, for the word Wallia 
 (Wales) is but the Saxon corruption of Gallia, by 
 the change of the letter Q- into W, in the same 
 manner as the French word ^ardien becomes in our 
 language warden, ^arderobe wardrobe, </arenne 
 warren, guerre war, #uepe wasp. In the statute of 
 2 Richard, c. 6 (1378), " against Welshmen taking 
 away women from England, and other abuses," the 
 Welshmen are called " gentz de Gales," and in the 
 statute 2 Hen. IV. c. 12 (1400), " enacting that no 
 Welshman wholly born in Wales shall purchase 
 lands or tenements in Chester," &c, the words are 
 " null homme Galoys entier neez en Gales et aiaux 
 pere et mere neez en Gales purchace terres ou tene- 
 mentz deinx les villes de Cestre," &c. ; and to this 
 day a Welshman is, in the French language, called 
 
Chap. I. OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. i) 
 
 " Gallois," and the Prince of Wales " le Prince de 
 Galles." 
 
 So with respect to Cornwall, the Romans gave to 
 this district the name of Cornubia (probably from 
 cornu, a horn or promontory, descriptive of the 
 numerous promontories on the coast), and the Saxons 
 adopted the first syllable of this descriptive word, 
 adding Gallia as descriptive of the people, but in 
 like manner changing g into w, and thus forming 
 the word Cornwall. 
 
 Antiquarians have perplexed themselves in their 
 endeavours to discover the etymology of the name 
 of the town of Wallingford in Berkshire, but none 
 of their conjectures appear to me satisfactory. I 
 would suggest the possibility of the name being 
 a corruption of Galliaford, and the record of some 
 defeat of the Galli or Gauls at this place, the par- 
 ticulars of which have not descended to us. Our 
 historians, describing the establishment of the Hep- 
 tarchy, say that the Saxon leader, Hengist, laid the 
 foundation of the kingdom of Kent, comprehending 
 Middlesex, Essex, part of Surrey, and Kent. Mid- 
 dlesex, it is evident, was the county of the middle 
 Saxons, Essex that of the East Saxons, Surrey the 
 land south of the river Thames (as St. Mary Overy 
 is St. Mary's over the river), and Kent (written in 
 Domesday Chent) is the corruption of Canticum, 
 the Roman name of that province, still preserved in 
 our days in the name of the city of Canterbury. 
 
 b 3 
 
10 ROOTS AND RAMIFICATIONS Chap. I. 
 
 Mr. Hume says, " The next Saxon kingdom esta- 
 blished in Britain was that of South Saxony by 
 Ella, who brought over an army from Germany in 
 the year 477." We find that Ella died in 504, and 
 was succeeded in the kingdom by his son Cissa. 
 This kingdom of South Saxony we have corrupted 
 into Sussex, and its chief town, founded by Cissa, 
 Cissaciaster, into Chichester. The kingdom of West 
 Saxony was the third which was founded by the 
 Saxons, and adjoined the South Saxons on the west, 
 and was therefore called Wessex, or the country of 
 the West Saxons, and seems originally to have con- 
 sisted of the counties of Hants, Dorset, Wilts, and 
 Berks. The founders of this kingdom attempted to 
 extend their conquests, and laid siege to Mount 
 Badon, or Banes downe, near Bath (where the Bri- 
 tons had retired), so named from the hot springs in 
 the neighbourhood, which have rendered the city so 
 celebrated throughout the world, but which name 
 we have most unreasonably corrupted into Lans- 
 downe. 
 
 The kingdom of the East Saxons was the fourth 
 in order of the Heptarchy, and seems to have been 
 formed principally out of the kingdom of Kent, and 
 to have comprised Essex, Middlesex, and part of 
 Hertfordshire. The name of Seward, one of the 
 early kings of the East Saxons, is preserved to us 
 in the name of the hamlet of Sewardstone in the 
 parish of Waltham Abbey, as is the name of Offa, 
 
Chap. I. OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 1 1 
 
 one of its later kings, in the name of Offley, near 
 Hitchin, where he had a palace. 
 
 Next to the kingdom of the East Saxons was the 
 kingdom of the East Angles, containing the coun- 
 ties of Cambridge, Norfolk, and Suffolk, and founded 
 by Uffa, whose name is still perpetuated in that of 
 the village of Ufford (Uffa's ford) in Suffolk, on the 
 river Deben. The two latter counties still preserve, 
 with a trifling alteration in orthography and pro- 
 nunciation, their original Saxon names of the North- 
 folk and the Southfolk. In Norfolk also the name 
 of the chief Saxon town, Northwic, is continued in 
 the name of Norwich, and in Suffolk the Saxon 
 town of Southberi is preserved in the modern name 
 of Sudbury. 
 
 The sixth kingdom of the Heptarchy was the 
 kingdom of the North Humber, and comprised the 
 whole of the district lying north of the river Hum- 
 ber, known to us as Northumberland, Cumberland, 
 Westmoreland, Durham, Lancashire, and Yorkshire. 
 This kingdom was originally two, one founded by 
 Ida, comprising the four former counties, and called 
 Bernicia, and the other by Ella, comprising Lanca- 
 shire and Yorkshire, and called Deira. The grand- 
 son of Ida married the daughter of Ella, and the 
 two kingdoms became united. Traces of Ella's 
 name still continue in Yorkshire in the name of 
 the parish of Ella Kirk, and the township of Ella 
 West, Ella East, and Ellerby in the East Riding ; 
 
12 ROOTS AND RAMIFICATIONS Chap. I. 
 
 also in the West Riding in the Chapelry of Ellard, 
 and in the township of Ellerbeck and the parish of 
 Ellerburn in the North Riding. 
 
 Cumberland derived its name from tribes of Celtic 
 origin known by the name of Cymri or Kymri, who 
 were its inhabitants at the time of the Saxon inva- 
 sion : by this same name are the Welsh still known 
 in the Principality, and from them it received, by 
 the Romans, the appellation of Cambria, by which 
 it is still known to us. 
 
 The last and greatest of the seven kingdoms of 
 the Heptarchy was that of Mercia, so called since, 
 being situated in the middle of the whole country, 
 it formed a March or border upon all the rest which 
 abutted on it. It was situated southward of the 
 kingdom of North Humber, and was bounded on 
 the east by the kingdom of East Anglia and East 
 Saxony, west by Wales, and south by the kingdoms 
 of Wessex and South Saxony. In the name of the 
 town of Oswestry in this kingdom we have a record 
 of the battle fought there in 642 between Oswald, 
 king of the North Humbers, and Penda, king of 
 the Mercians, in which the former was defeated and 
 slain ; and in the parish of Offenham in Worcester- 
 shire we have a record of a subsequent king of 
 Mercia, Offa, who resided there. In the Chapelry 
 of St. Kenelm's, in the parish of Hales Owen, Shrop- 
 shire, we have a memento of a later king of Mercia, 
 St. Kenelm, who is reported to have been murdered 
 
Chap. I. OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 13 
 
 in 819 at this place by his sister, and to which 
 Shenstone alludes in his 23rd elegy : — 
 
 " Born near the scene for Kenelm's fate renowned 
 I take rny plaintive reed, and range the grove 
 And raise the lay, and bid the rocks resound 
 The savage force of empire and of love." 
 
 Kennett, in his * Parochial Antiquities,' p. 31, says, 
 that though these usurpers of the country were 
 swallowed up in the same common name of Saxons, 
 yet they were three different sorts of people, Saxons, 
 Jutes, and Angles, of which the latter took posses- 
 sion of the midland country, and were the most 
 noble of all the intruding party. The Venerable 
 Bede also calls the invaders Jutes, Saxons, and 
 Angles. 
 
 These Angles seem to have come from a small 
 province in the kingdom of Denmark and duchy 
 of Sleswick, north of the Elbe, which to this day 
 is called Angeln. They are mentioned by Tacitus 
 in his book on the c Manners of the Germans,' ch. 
 40. We know that the kingdom of Wessex by 
 degrees subdued the other six kingdoms of the Hep- 
 tarchy, until, in the year 827, the whole country 
 formed one kingdom under Egbert, shortly prior to 
 which date Mr. Trench is of opinion that its 
 earlier name of Britain was changed into that of 
 Anglia. But I apprehend that the country must 
 have been known by the name of Anglia at an 
 earlier date ; for the Venerable Bede published 
 
14 ROOTS AND RAMIFICATIONS Chap. I. 
 
 about 734 his work, entitled ' Historia Ecclesiastica 
 Gentis Anglorum,' a title which he would hardly 
 have adopted unless the nation had at that time 
 been commonly called Angles. In Lewis's * Topo- 
 graphical Dictionary of Wales,' Egbert is also 
 said to have taken possession of the island for- 
 merly called Mona, and to have changed its name 
 into Anglesea, or the Isle of Angles, Ey being the 
 Saxon word denoting an island. 
 
 It is somewhat singular that we should have 
 preserved the original spelling and pronunciation of 
 the name of Anglesea, when we have corrupted the 
 spelling of Anglia into England, and its pronuncia- 
 tion into ihgland. 
 
 As Anglesea signified the Isle of Angles, so 
 Athelney, in Somersetshire, signified the Isle of 
 Athels, or nobles, the name having been given by 
 Alfred to that small isolated spot in the moors, 
 which he fortified. So Sheppy signifies the Isle of 
 Sheep, Ely the Isle of Eels, Hertsey the Isle of 
 Herts, Bermondsey the Isle of St. Bermond, Bard- 
 sey the Isle of Bards, formerly called the Isle of 
 Saints, who in the monkish legends were stated to 
 have enjoyed, whilst they continued virtuous, the 
 privilege of dying in regular succession, the oldest 
 going first, a privilege which was withdrawn when 
 they became corrupt ; which legend I imagine the 
 monks framed from Gen. ii. 28, where Abram's 
 brother Haran is recorded as the first man who died 
 
Chap. I. OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 15 
 
 before his father. The meadow at Chester, also, 
 between the walls of the city on the west side, and 
 the river Dee, now used as a race-course, is called 
 Roodey, or the Island of the Rood or Cross. 
 
 The monuments of our Saxon ancestors are 
 thickly studded through our land in the names of 
 our villages and towns. Thus, the Saxon word 
 wold or weald, a forest, is preserved to us in the 
 names of Waltham, in Essex, in the Cotswold Hills, 
 in Gloucestershire, the Weald of Kent, and Stow-in- 
 the-Wold in Gloucestershire, which were no doubt 
 formerly extensive forests. Stow was the Saxon 
 word for a place, and we still use it in our word 
 " stowing away;" and the word is largely intro- 
 duced into the names of our towns, of which Bristol, 
 formerly Brightstowe, and Chepstow are instances. 
 The prefix Chep to the latter name, denoted that 
 the place was a market-town, from the Saxon word 
 cyppan, to buy and sell, a word which we preserve 
 in our word cheap, and when we talk of " chopping 
 and changing ;" also, in our word "chapman," one 
 who buys and sells. A market, or place where goods 
 were bought and sold, was called a "chipping." 
 In Wiclif's translation of the Bible in 1380, the 
 passage at the 7th chap, of St. Luke, v. 32, is thus 
 rendered : " Thei ben like to children sitting in 
 chepinge and spekinge togidre," &c. ; and again, 
 at 20th chap, of St. Matthew, v. 3 : " And he zede 
 out about the thridde oure, and size othere stand- 
 
16 ROOTS AND RAMIFICATIONS Chap. I. 
 
 ynge idil in the cheping ; " so again at the 7th 
 chap, of St. Mark, v. 4 : " And whanne thei turnen 
 again fro chepinge," &c. It would be tedious to 
 give a list of the places in which this word is incor- 
 porated, and I will only mention a few, such as 
 Chipping Ongar, Cheapside, Chapmanslade, Chip- 
 penham. The termination of the latter place, ham 
 (which word we still retain in our word hamlet, a 
 little village), is of very general occurrence, and 
 signified a habitation or village, as Keynsham, the 
 village of St. Keyna ; Farnham, the village of 
 Ferns ; Horsham, the village of Horsa, brother of 
 Hengist ; Shoreham, the village near the shore ; 
 Denham, the village in the dale — den being the 
 Saxon word for a valley or dale — whence places 
 situated in valleys frequently had this termination, 
 such as Ambrosden, Hampden, Missenden. Names 
 of places beginning with Der indicate that they 
 were formerly the resort of wild beasts, from Deor, 
 a wild beast, such as Derby, Derwent, Deerhurst — 
 the termination of the latter word hurst, or hirst, is 
 used in Domesday Book, to denote a little wood, 
 and so we find the word joined to names of places 
 where wood formerly abounded, as Hurst Mon- 
 ceaux, Hurst Courtney, Hurst Pierpoint, denoting 
 the woods of the families of Monceaux, Courtney, 
 and Pierpoint, and Chiselhurst, the wood abounding 
 with pebbles — Chesyl signifying gravel or pebbles. 
 For the same reason this latter word is affixed to 
 
Chap. I. OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 17 
 
 the name of the parish of Chiselhampton, in Oxford- 
 shire ; and to the Chesyl bank near Weymouth, 
 which is an immense bank of pebbles thrown up by 
 the sea, nine miles in length. We meet with this 
 word in the ' Country Mysteries :' — 
 
 " As soncl in the Se doth ebbe and flowe 
 Hath chesyls many innnnierablle, 
 So shall thi sede thou mayst me trowe 
 Encres and be evyr prophytabylle," — 
 
 and it appears to me that we still preserve this an- 
 cient name for pebbles in our word shingle, 
 
 When names of places terminate in gate, it dis- 
 closes to us that they were situated on a thorough- 
 fare, "gate" being the Saxon word for a way or 
 path ; thus, Sandgate is the sandy way ; Highgate, 
 the high way ; Margate, the way to the sea. Hence, 
 also, comes our word " gait," the manner of walk- 
 ing, and, as I fancy, our word "gaiters," though 
 Richardson says that the latter word is of no great 
 antiquity in English. The names of places termi- 
 nating in ford, evidently indicate their position on a 
 river passable on foot, examples of which are Oxford, 
 the ford of an ox (synonymous with the name 
 Bosphorus), Knutsford, Canute's ford ; Bradford, 
 the Broad ford ; and Hereford, the ford of an army, 
 from the Saxon word her, an army, of which word 
 we preserve a record in our word Herring, expressive 
 of the number and order in which the shoals of 
 these fishes arrive in our seas. Lord Coke says 
 
18 ROOTS AND RAMIFICATIONS Chap. I. 
 
 that "wic" signifies a place on the sea-shore, or on 
 the banks of a river : hence we have Ipswich, 
 Sandwich, Greenwich, Norwich, &c. In Cheshire 
 the houses appropriated to the making of salt are 
 called Wych-houses ; and the chief towns where the 
 salt trade flourishes are called by the same name, 
 as Nantwich, Middlewich, Northwich, Droitwich, 
 Shirleywich, and Wicham ; and it would seem, 
 therefore, that this word has some reference to 
 salt. 
 
 We need not, however, refer to counties and 
 towns for evidence of Saxon remains, for every parish 
 and farm furnishes such testimony. A very large 
 portion of the fields of almost every farm bears the 
 name of the Tyning, or the middle or upper Tyning, 
 the word being derived from the Anglo-Saxon verb 
 Tynan, to enclose, and thus the word signifies an 
 enclosure, or close, as distinguished from the waste, 
 or un-enclosed land. From the same origin, also, 
 we get our word town, now signifying habitation, 
 enclosed by walls, but which seems originally to 
 have signified an enclosure of land, for where in 
 our translation of the passage of St. Matthew, ch. 
 22, v. 5 : " But they made light of it, and went their 
 ways, one to his farm, another to his merchandise " 
 — in Wiclif's translation in 1380, the passage is : 
 " But they dispiseden and wenten forth, oon to his 
 town, another to his marchandise." And again in 
 St. Luke, chap. 14, v. 18, the passage in our Bible : 
 
Chap. I. OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 19 
 
 " I have bought a piece of ground, and I must needs 
 go and see it," is in Wiclif s translation : " I have 
 bougt a town, and I have nede to go out and se it." 
 From the same source, also, we have the word 
 Tunnel, signifying an enclosed or covered way. 
 
 The word " holme " denotes a river island, or 
 a place surrounded by rivers : thus we have the 
 several holmes in Derwentwater, Windermere, and 
 Ulswater; the "Flat Holmes" and the "Steep 
 Holmes," in the Bristol Channel, and Axholme in 
 Lincolnshire, a district of land bounded by the 
 rivers Don, Trent, Tone, and Idle, the name being 
 an abbreviation of Axelholme, from Axel, formerly 
 the principal place in the district, but now a mere 
 village called Haxey. The word lade signified 
 flowing water, and was used by the Saxons to de- 
 scribe a town at the mouth of a river ; thus Lechlade 
 is the town at the mouth of the river Leach, and 
 Cricklade, the town where the rivers Churn and 
 Key join the Thames. We also preserve a record 
 of this word in our verb " to ladle." 
 
20 ROOTS AND RAMIFICATIONS Chap. II. 
 
 CHAPTEE II. 
 
 Of Words which we have acquired from the Institu- 
 tions or Customs of the Romans. 
 
 I purpose in this chapter to consider some words 
 which the institutions, customs, and habits of the 
 Romans have supplied us with. The word prero- 
 gative is one of these, and is used by us to signify 
 an exclusive or peculiar privilege. The Romans, 
 when they assembled to elect magistrates, make 
 laws, or deliberate upon any public affairs, divided 
 the people into centuries or hundreds, and in order 
 that the votes might be more easily collected, they 
 were taken by centuries. The names of the cen- 
 turies were thrown into a box, and the box shaken, 
 so that the lots might lie equally, and the century 
 whose name was first drawn, was first asked its opi- 
 nion, and was therefore called Prcerogativa, from 
 the Latin words prce, before or first, and rogo, to 
 ask. So when we speak of the royal prerogative, 
 we speak of the right which appertains to the King 
 or Queen of being first asked or consulted in what- 
 ever concerns the business of the nation, and Lord 
 Coke says that the word was adopted because, 
 though an Act of Parliament passes both houses of 
 Parliament, yet in order to make it a law, the Royal 
 assent must be first asked and obtained. From this, 
 
Chap. II. OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 21 
 
 the great prerogative of the crown, other powers and 
 rights enjoyed by the ruling authority came to be 
 called by the same name. 
 
 We use the word corollary to denote a consequence 
 or a conclusion deduced from something previously 
 demonstrated, but the word in its earlier use signified 
 a surplus, or addition, and is so used by Shakspeare 
 in ' The Tempest,' Act iv., Scene 1. Prospero says, — 
 
 " Well 
 Now come, my Ariel, bring a corollary 
 Bather than want a spirit." 
 
 The word is handed down to us from the Romans, 
 and was used by them in their dramatic entertain- 
 ments to signify a reward given to the players, over 
 and above their just hire, and was derived from the 
 word corolla, a little crown or garland, such being 
 the reward usually given. 
 
 Our word confiscate comes from the Latin word 
 fiscus, which originally signified a wicker-basket, 
 used for squeezing olives or grapes. It afterwards 
 signified a basket for holding money, and was sub- 
 sequently used to denote the treasury of the Emperor, 
 and then the money itself : thus confiscate now means 
 to transfer private money or goods, as forfeited to 
 the public treasury or exchequer. From the same 
 source the French get their word fisc, the treasury 
 or exchequer, and we and they the word fiscal. 
 
 Amongst the Romans, those slaves who were 
 emancipated, were called liberti and libertini, de- 
 
22 EOOTS AND RAMIFICATIONS Chap. II. 
 
 noting that they were freed, and had the power of 
 doing what they pleased, and so we now adopt the 
 word libertine, to denote one who is free from all 
 moral and religious restraint. Slaves who were born 
 in the house of their masters were called ver nee : 
 hence vernaculus, from whence we get our word ver- 
 nacular, came to signify proper and peculiar to 
 one's own country. Slaves employed to accompany 
 boys to and from school were called JPcedagogi, 
 from the Greek words nous, pais, a boy, and ayw, 
 ago, to lead ; and hence the word pedagogue with 
 us came to signify an instructor of boys. Slaves 
 who were branded with a hot iron, as a punish- 
 ment for theft, were called Stigmatici, from the 
 Greek word ony^x, stigma, a brand, and hence we 
 get our word stigmatize. 
 
 When a Roman made his will, it was tied up with 
 thread, and sealed; if he desired to alter it, he 
 broke the seal and unsealed it, which was called 
 resignare, to break the seal. The word resign 
 thus came to signify to yield up, in order to be can- 
 celled. Thus we say to resign the crown, when the 
 king gives up the kingdom ; and resignation to the 
 will of Providence is a submissive yielding up of 
 ourselves to the Divine authority. 
 
 In using the words tribe, tribune, tribunal, tribute, 
 contribute, we little think that they all derive their 
 origin from the Latin word tres, three ; and that in 
 using these words we preserve a record of the ear- 
 
Chap. II. OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 23 
 
 liest state of the Romans under Romulus, who 
 divided the people into three divisions, and called 
 them tribes, from their number. The tribune was 
 an officer at the head of each tribe, the tribunal 
 was the place of his residence, and came to signify 
 a seat of justice ; the tribute was the sum paid by- 
 each tribe to the common stock, towards the main- 
 tenance of the state ; and contribution was the act of 
 paying the tribute to this common stock. From the 
 same source we get our words tributary ', 'that which 
 pays tribute ; distribute, to allot or portion out, 
 attribute in its early sense signifying to give a part 
 or portion ; and hence the substantive attribute, 
 something given, assigned, or ascribed. 
 
 How often do we hear the word palliate made 
 use of, without discerning the antiquity which it 
 covers. As the Toga was the distinguishing part 
 of the Roman dress, so was the Pallium that of the 
 Greeks, and these habits were so peculiar to the 
 two nations respectively, that " Palliatus" was used 
 by the Romans to signify a Greek, as distinguished 
 from " Togatus," a Roman. Palliatse was the name 
 of plays in which the scene was laid in Greece, as 
 Togatse was of those in which the scene was laid in 
 Rome. The Pallium consisted of a short cloak, and 
 thence to palliate is literally to cover with a cloak. 
 At the age of seventeen the Roman youth of quality 
 assumed the toga virilis, but up to that age, they 
 wore the dress called toga prcetexta, which was a 
 
24 EOOTS AND KAMIFICATIONS Chap. II. 
 
 white garment bordered or edged with purple, the 
 word prcetexta literally meaning, woven before. As 
 the toga prcetexta was the dress used to cover the 
 body, so in process of time the word prcetextus was 
 used to signify a cover to conceal the thoughts, and 
 hence our word pretext, a colour or motive for doing 
 something. 
 
 To assess, to impose a rate or tax, is by Johnson 
 and Richardson derived from the Italian assesso, 
 and we may have obtained the word immediately 
 from this source, but the word comes originally from 
 the Latin, censeo, to number. The census, among 
 the Romans, did not at first signify the actual taxa- 
 tion, but the numbering of the people, and the va- 
 luation of their property, prior to the making of the 
 rate. The latter no doubt followed the former very 
 quickly, and so the word census afterwards came 
 to denote the tax itself. In our translations of St. 
 Luke ii. 1, the passage is, " that there went out a 
 decree from Csesar Augustus that all the world 
 should be taxed" — the word so translated, taxed, is 
 in the Greek otKoypz(pa<j9ou, apographesthai, which 
 merely means, should be enrolled or registered. In 
 Wiclif 's Bible, 1380, the passage is rendered, " that 
 all the world should be described" and in the 
 Rheims Bible, 1582, " that the whole world should 
 be enrolled," so that the decree of the Emperor 
 really was, that the census or enrolment should be 
 taken, in order that the tax might afterwards be 
 
Chap. II, OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 25 
 
 imposed. It is quite clear that there is some fur- 
 ther confusion in the translation of our Bibles, at 
 this passage, for in the next verse it is thrown in by 
 way of parenthesis, that this taxing (or numbering 
 or enrolment, for the Greek word is the same as 
 that used before) was first made when Cyrenius was 
 governor of Syria. Now Cyrenius, or Quirinus, 
 was not made governor of Syria until many years 
 after the birth of our Saviour, and this enrolment, 
 here mentioned by St. Luke, took place before our 
 Saviour's birth. The solutions of this difficulty in 
 the notes to Mant's Bible by Archdeacon Paley, 
 Dean Prideaux, and Dr. Hammond, are not satis- 
 factory ; neither do the notes to Scott's Bible satisfy 
 me. The true solution seems to be, that our trans- 
 lators did not select the appropriate meaning of the 
 word TTpcorn in this passage which they translated 
 first. The word signifies not only first, but before, 
 and former, when used adverbially; and had the 
 passage been rendered, " this taxing was made 
 before Cyrenius was governor," or, " that this was a 
 prior taxing to that made when Cyrenius was go- 
 vernor," it would have removed all difficulty. It is 
 evident that the passage was thrown in by the Evan- 
 gelist, by way of parenthesis, and is not at all neces- 
 sary to the sense of the passage. The reason of its 
 introduction seems to have been, to distinguish this 
 taxation of which he was speaking from that which 
 subsequently took place, and which he records in 
 
 c 
 
26 ROOTS AND RAMIFICATIONS Chap. II. 
 
 the passage, Acts v. 37, " After this man, rose up 
 Judas of Galilee in the days of the taxing, and drew 
 away much people after him." That the taxation 
 spoken of Acts v. took place when Cyrenius was 
 Governor of Syria, we know from "The Antiquities" 
 of Josephus, Book xviii., ch. 1, where he says that 
 Cyrenius came into Syria, being sent by Csesar to 
 be a judge of that nation, and to take an account of 
 their substance," adding immediately, "yet was 
 there one Judas, a Gaulonite, who became zealous 
 to draw the people to a revolt, who both said that 
 this taxation was no better than an introduction to 
 slavery, and exhorted the nation to assert their 
 liberty," thus clearly identifying the taxation under 
 Cyrenius with the taxing at which Judas revolted. 
 There is no question, therefore, but that the taxa- 
 tion referred to in Acts v. took place many years 
 after the taxation referred to in Luke ii., and the 
 second verse of the latter chapter was evidently in- 
 serted to distinguish the one from the other. The 
 masculine of the adjective Trpooros, protos (the femi- 
 nine of which is, in the second chap, of St. Luke, 
 translated first), occurs at 1 St. John xv. 30, where 
 it is translated before. " He that cometh after me 
 is preferred before rne, for he was before me ;" and, 
 again, in the 15th chap, of St. John 18, we find the 
 neuter of this adjective used adverbially, and trans- 
 lated before. " If the world hate you, ye know that 
 it hated me before it hated you." 
 
Chap. II. OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 27 
 
 We meet with the word cense, signifying a tax, in 
 many old writers, which seems first to have been 
 corrupted into cess, and then into assess. The 
 officer at Rome whose duty it was to take the ac- 
 count of the different families and their possessions 
 was called the Censor, and it was part of his duty 
 to correct ill manners and punish misdemeanours of 
 a private nature, which did not come under the cog- 
 nisance of the civil magistrate ; thus, if one did not 
 cultivate his ground properly, if a horse-soldier did 
 not take proper care of the horse provided for him 
 by the state, or if one lived too long unmarried, the 
 duty of the Censor arose, and hence from the name 
 of this officer, and his judgment in such matters, we 
 acquired the words censure and censorious. 
 
 In our word auspicious, derived from the Latin 
 word aaspex, a compound of avis, a bird, and specio, 
 to behold, we preserve a record of Roman super- 
 stition. The auspex was an officer who foretold 
 future events by observing the flight, chirping, or 
 feeding of birds. In early times the different works 
 of the husbandman were governed or regulated by 
 observing the arrival and departure of birds, and in 
 later times no affair of moment was undertaken by 
 the Romans, nor did any magistrate among them 
 enter upon the duties of his office until the birds had 
 been consulted by means of these officers. If chickens 
 fed greedily, it was considered a good omen ; if, on 
 the contrary, they declined to eat, the omen was 
 
 c 2 
 
28 
 
 ROOTS AND RAMIFICATIONS 
 
 Chap. II. 
 
 deemed bad. In the first Punic War, the Roman 
 Consul, Pulcher Claudius, consulted the officer in 
 charge of the chickens, who reported that they would 
 not eat, upon which the Consul ordered them to be 
 thrown into the sea, saying, " Then let them drink." 
 After this he engaged the enemy, was defeated, with 
 the loss of his fleet, and was disgraced on his return 
 to Rome. Though the word omen was used by the 
 Romans indifferently, to signify good or ill luck, we 
 use the word, and the adjective ominous, as indi- 
 cative only of ill ; and we use the word abominable 
 as descriptive of a thing, or of conduct which should 
 be turned from, as from an ill omen. 
 
 We popularly use the word annals to denote a 
 simple record of events, as, when Gray speaks of 
 " the short and simple annals of the poor ;" but 
 among the Romans it had a much more important 
 signification, and denoted the account of the public 
 transactions of each year drawn up in form by the 
 chief priest, and was derived from the Latin word 
 annus, a year, and were consequently called annales. 
 As these annales were the record of the year, so the 
 kalendares among the Romans (whence our word 
 calendar) signified the first days of each month, 
 being derived by them from the Greek word kqcXsw, 
 kaleo, to call, because the priests were accustomed to 
 call the people together on the first day of each 
 month, and to apprise them of the festivals, or days 
 that were to be kept sacred during the month. 
 
Chap. II. OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 29 
 
 Again, the words mimic and pantomime have 
 descended to us from the Roman mimi, buffoons who 
 entertained the people with representations by dumb 
 show, in which everything was expressed by dancing 
 and gestures, without speaking. With us the word 
 discuss has no other meaning than to debate, but 
 this is really the metaphorical meaning of the word, 
 which comes from the Latin discutio, to shake apart ; 
 and so to discuss is properly to shake apart, and 
 thoroughly sift and examine a subject. The word 
 is frequently found in Holland's Pliny in its primary 
 meaning ; thus in book xx. ch. ix. he says, " The 
 sudden mists and dimness which cometh over the 
 eyesight is discussed and dispatched cleane, in case 
 one do no more but chew cabbage in vinegar." 
 Again, book xx. ch. xiii. he says, " that the juice of 
 wild rue helpeth those that are hard of hearing, 
 and discusseth the ringing sound in the ears." 
 
 We use the word second in a variety of senses, yet 
 if we investigate the derivation of the word, we shall 
 perceive an uniformity of meaning in them all. The 
 word comes from the Latin sequor, to follow ; thus 
 second is that which followeth the first ; a second in 
 a duel is he who followeth the principal ; a seconder 
 of a motion is he that followeth the mover of it. The 
 man who is second to none is one who followeth 
 nobody ; a secondary or second-rate person is one 
 who is contented to follow in an inferior place. The 
 Romans used the word scrupulum, to denote a 
 
30 ROOTS AND RAMIFICATIONS Chap. II. 
 
 minute of time, the scrupulum being a small pebble 
 (originally, no doubt, used in reckoning), and they 
 called the sixtieth part of a minute secundum scru- 
 pulum, whence, by dropping the word scrupulum, 
 we have applied the word second to denote the 
 sexagesimal division of the minute. The scrupulum 
 is described as a small pebble, such as found its way 
 between the sandal and the foot, and occasioned 
 difficulty or vexation to the foot-passenger; and 
 hence the word scruple with us is applied to express 
 a doubt or perplexity about small matters ; and scru- 
 pulous, signifying literally full of little gravel stones, 
 came to signify full of little doubts or hesita- 
 tions. 
 
 Abstemious comes from the two Latin words abs, 
 without, and temetum, wine. It was a term applied 
 to those who, from their natural aversion to wine, 
 could not partake of the cup of the Eucharist, and 
 the Calvinists allowed such to partake of the bread 
 only. Pliny tells us, book xiv. ch. xiii. that "in 
 ancient time women at Rome were not permitted to 
 drink any wine," and he adds, that Fabius Pictor 
 in his ' Annales,' reporteth, " that a certain Roman 
 dame, a woman of good worship, was by her own 
 kinsfolke famished and pined to death, for opening 
 a cupboard wherein the keys of the wine-cellar lay, 
 and that Cato doth record that hereupon arose the 
 manner and custom that kinsfolk should kiss women 
 when they met them, to know by their breath 
 
Chap. II. OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 31 
 
 whether they smelled of temetum, for so they used 
 in those days to term wine." 
 
 We preserve a record of the primitive mode of 
 making payment of the price of an article, by weigh- 
 ing the silver to be given for it, in our verb to spend, 
 from the Latin word pendo, to weigh ; and the same 
 record is preserved in our word expenses. Again, 
 the word pensive, which we use to signify thoughtful, 
 literally signifies one who weighs well a subject, and 
 is near of kin to our word ponder, v/hich comes 
 from the same source. So also stipend is also de- 
 rived from the same Latin word to weigh, and stips, 
 the Latin word for money (which was so called from 
 being stowed away in a cellar, that it might occupy 
 less room), being derived from the Latin word stipo, 
 to fill up close. We use the word pecuniary as re- 
 lating to money, the word being derived from the 
 Latin word pecus, cattle, which represented the 
 wealth of the ancients. Servius Tullius stamped 
 pieces of brass with the images of cattle, oxen, 
 swine, &c, which pieces passed current as money ; so 
 the word peculate is derived from the same source, 
 and though now used to denote the pilfering of the 
 public money, formerly denoted the stealing of 
 cattle. Peculiar, belonging to any one, to the ex- 
 clusion of all others, comes from the Latin word pecu- 
 lium, which is derived from the same word pecus, 
 cattle, and was that stock of cattle which a son, with 
 the consent of his father, or a slave, with the consent 
 
32 ROOTS AND RAMIFICATIONS Chap. II. 
 
 of his master, acquired and retained to his own use ; 
 and when money became more plentiful, the signifi- 
 cation of the word became extended from cattle to 
 money, and other property. In the Roman Catholic 
 convents the word peculium means those goods which 
 each religious member of a house reserves to and 
 possesses for his particular use. 
 
 The word retaliate also comes to us from the 
 Romans, being derived from the Latin word talis, 
 like, and among the Romans the lex talionis, law of 
 retaliation, awarded a punishment similar to the in- 
 jury inflicted, such as an eye for an eye, a limb for a 
 limb, &c. But this punishment, though decreed by 
 the Twelve Tables, was rarely inflicted, since the law 
 also allowed the redemption of the punishment by a 
 money payment. This legislation seems to have 
 been almost identical with the Levitical law, which 
 in words authorised the authorities to execute a 
 punishment similar to the offence, but also per- 
 mitted, except in the case of murder, pecuniary 
 satisfaction to be substituted for the punishment. 
 
 The Romans had an officer called the Prefect of 
 the Praetorian Cohorts. This office was originally a 
 military one ; but the Emperor Constantine created 
 four of these officers, and made their offices civil, 
 taking from them the command of the soldiers, and 
 dividing among them the care of the whole empire. 
 Under each of these were several substitutes or 
 deputies, who had the charge of certain districts, 
 
 
Chap. II. OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 33 
 
 which they called dioceses, from the Greek word 
 (ttoixeeu, dioikeo, to govern ; from whence, in the 
 ecclesiastical division of our country, we have adopted 
 the word diocese, to denote a district presided over 
 by a bishop. 
 
 Johnson derives the word porcelain from the French 
 pour cent annees, for a hundred years, and Richardson 
 says that China dishes were so called, perhaps be- 
 cause they are believed to be buried for many years 
 in cells. Neither of these derivations seems to be 
 very satisfactory. The true derivation will, I think, 
 be found to be from porcus, the Latin word for a 
 pig. In consequence of the aid afforded by the 
 Portuguese to the Chinese against the pirates who 
 infested their coasts, they obtained from the Chinese 
 liberty to establish a settlement at Macao, and from 
 thence by way of Portugal China ware was first im- 
 ported into Europe, and was called porcellana, the 
 name given by the Portuguese in the East to the 
 cowrie shells (called by the Germans porcellanen, 
 and by the French porcelaines), and which name was 
 so transferred to the Chinese cups, as indicative of 
 their transparent shell-like texture. In our own 
 language these shells bear the same name. In 
 Holland's translation of Pliny, book ix. ch. li., 
 speaking of fishes, he mentions porcelains, and in 
 book xiii. ch. xii., speaking of the manufacture of 
 paper, he says, "It is polished with some tooth, 
 or else with a porcellane shell." Mr. Gray, the 
 
 c 3 
 
34 ROOTS AND RAMIFICATIONS Chap. II. 
 
 naturalist, states that these shells are called porcetti 
 in Italy, and adds, that porcellain, the common name 
 of the cowries, is taken from the fancied resemblance 
 of these shells to pigs ; thus we see that our porcelain 
 cups and our porkers are both derived from the same 
 Latin wor&poi-cus, a pig. In like manner the Romans 
 gave the name porca to the ridge of land raised by 
 the action of the plough, from the same fancied re- 
 semblance to a pig's back ; such ridges were also 
 called lira, and the Romans were at great pains to 
 make the furrows straight, and of equal breadth. 
 The ploughman who went crooked was said delirare, 
 to depart from the straight ridge, and thus by a 
 metaphor the word was applied to a person com- 
 mitting an error, or deviating from the right course. 
 We meet with the word so used in Horace, book i. 
 epistle i. ver. 14 — " Quicquid delirant reges plec- 
 tuntur Achivi" ("Whatever errors kings commit, 
 the people suffer for them"), and we have extended 
 the application of the word still further ; for we say 
 that a person of wandering mind is delirious. The 
 ploughman who went crooked was also by the 
 Romans said prcevaricare, derived from the Latin 
 word varus, not walking straight. Horace, book i. 
 sat. iii. ver. 47, says, " that an affectionate father 
 conceals as much as possible the bodily defects of his 
 children. If he has a son who squints, he says he 
 merely blinks ; he calls another who is a dwarf his 
 chicken, and calls the third varus, walking crooked, 
 
Chap. II. OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 35 
 
 when the boy is bandy-legged. This word varus came 
 to be applied to a person who did not go straight in 
 anything he had undertaken, and thus prcevaricator 
 was applied by the Romans to an advocate who be- 
 trayed the cause of his client, and by neglect or collu- 
 sion assisted his opponent, and we now apply the word 
 to denote a shuffler, or one who plays fast and loose. 
 
 The French use the word in the same sense as we 
 do, but it also has with them its former meaning, 
 namely, one who betrays his trust. 
 
 The word varicose has the same origin, and sig- 
 nifies veins unnaturally tortuous. 
 
 The Romans gave the name of interpreted to per- 
 sons employed by candidates for office to bargain 
 with the people for their votes, and hence we get 
 our word interpreter, denoting one who acts between 
 two persons, to explain the words of the one to the 
 other. 
 
 The act of the candidate going round to the 
 houses of the voters to solicit votes was called 
 ambiendo, going round, and hence the word am- 
 bition with us has acquired the signification of a 
 desire for preferment or honour ; and from the same 
 source we get our word ambient, going round, or 
 surrounding. 
 
 The word province, in such general use with us, 
 comes, as I believe, from the Latin words pro, far, 
 and vinco, to conquer, and signified with the Romans 
 a distant country conquered by them, and to which 
 
36 ROOTS AND RAMIFICATIONS Chap. II. 
 
 the Senate sent a governor from Rome. The district 
 in France now called Provence derives its name 
 from the designation Provineia, given to it by the 
 Romans after its conquest, and from being at first 
 a mere descriptive term has now come to be appro- 
 priated as a proper name. The word Provineia was 
 also used by the Romans metaphorically to signify 
 the office or business of any one. Thus, if a Consul 
 was charged with the conduct of a war, it was called 
 his province or duty ; and we retain the word in this 
 sense also in our language. Thus Pope, in the 
 ' Rape of the Lock,' chap. 2, says : 
 
 " Our humbler province is to tend the fair, 
 Not a less pleasing, though less glorious care." 
 
 Among the Romans books were not divided into 
 pages and bound up as they now are, but a skin 
 was written on continuously and rolled up upon a 
 staff or cylinder, fastened at one end of it, in the 
 same manner as large maps are now with us ; and 
 from the Latin word, describing this process of roll- 
 ing, volvo, came their word volumen, from whence 
 we have obtained our word volume, and also our 
 word voluble, meaning in its primary sense easy to 
 be rolled, and afterwards expressing fluency, or 
 words rolling out without difficulty. 
 
 The act of unrolling a book for the purpose of 
 reading was called evolvere, and hence we get our 
 word evolve, to unfold or disentangle. If one skin 
 
Chap. II. OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 37 
 
 were not large enough to contain the whole writing, 
 another skin was joined on at the end, and this 
 additional skin was called scheda, from whence we 
 get our word sheet and schedule. 
 
 The Romans adopted the word papyrus to denote 
 paper made from that rush, but when it ceased to 
 be so made it acquired another name, for Pliny 
 (book xiii., ch. 12), after giving a full description of 
 making paper in Egypt, says "that papyrus was 
 the material from which the Roman paper was pre- 
 pared, but when that material was taken away, the 
 manufactured article received the name of charta ; 
 this word they derived from the Greek x^prrts, 
 chartes, from yjx.%a.aau, charasso, to inscribe, and 
 signified an article on which letters were inscribed. 
 From this word we get our words chart, charter, 
 cartel, cartoon, a painting on thick paper. From 
 the same source we get character and characteristic ; 
 character, from its general sense, signifying an 
 engraved mark or figure, as numeral characters 
 engraved to express numbers, each figure conveying 
 a distinct meaning ; and when the word is applied 
 as descriptive of a person, it denotes something 
 peculiar to such person, distinguishing him from 
 others, and as it were engraved upon him ; and 
 when used as a verb it preserves its original mean- 
 ing : thus Shakspeare says, — 
 
 " Rosalind ! these trees shall be my hooks, 
 And in these hooks my thoughts I '11 character.'''' 
 
38 ROOTS AND RAMIFICATIONS Chap. II. 
 
 The manufacture of paper in England is com- 
 paratively of recent date. A paper-mill is said to 
 have existed in Hertfordshire in the reign of Henry 
 VII. ; however this may be, coarse brown paper 
 was manufactured in England in the year 1588, by 
 John Spielman, a German, who was knighted by 
 Queen Elizabeth in that year, and to whom she 
 granted the manor of Portbridge or Bycknore, near 
 Dartford in Kent, and a license for the sole gather- 
 ing, for ten years, of all rags necessary for the 
 making of such paper. He erected a paper-mill at 
 Dartford, and died in the year 1607. 
 
 Fuller, who was born 1608 and died 1661, com- 
 plains that the making of paper in England was not 
 sufficiently encouraged, " considering the vast sums 
 of money expended in our land for paper out of 
 Italy, France, and Germany, which might be lessened 
 were it made in our own nation." The manufacture 
 of paper seems shortly afterwards to have received 
 some protection, for we find a statute in the reign 
 of William and Mary, imposing duties on foreign 
 paper; and by a statute passed in the tenth year 
 of Queen Anne's reign certain duties are imposed 
 on all paper imported from abroad ; and amongst 
 other descriptions of paper we find in this statute 
 " Genoa foolscap fine " and " Genoa foolscap second," 
 the word foolscap being a corruption of the Italian 
 joglio capa, a chief or large sheet of paper, or first- 
 sized sheet; and so this word has no connexion, 
 
Chap. II. OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 3$ 
 
 as is too often supposed, with the persons in the 
 French epigram, of which I have somewhere met 
 with the following translation : — 
 
 " The world of fools has such a store, 
 That he who would not see an ass 
 Must bide at home, and holt his door, 
 And break his looking-glass." 
 
 The Italian word foglio, before mentioned, is derived 
 from the Latin folium, a leaf of a tree, leaves 
 having been originally used for writing upon — the 
 record of which we preserve in speaking of the 
 leaves of a book ; from the same Latin word folium, 
 derived from the Greek word QuKKov, a leaf, we get 
 our word foliage. 
 
40 ROOTS AND RAMIFICATIONS Chap. III. 
 
 CHAPTEK III. 
 
 Of Words derived from the Names of Places or 
 Persons. 
 
 Many articles derive their names from places or 
 persons ; thus, the wine which we call Madeira, is 
 from the Spanish word Madera, a wood, such 
 having been the name which Gonzalves Zarco 
 gave on its discovery, in 1420, to the island from 
 whence we obtain that wine, the island being then 
 covered by an immense forest. In like manner, 
 Sherry derives its name from Xeres, a town of An- 
 dalusia in Spain, pronounced Jeres. The cherry, 
 called by the French Cerise, from Cerasus (now 
 Kheresoun), a seaport in Asiatic Turkey, situated 
 on a gulf in the Black Sea, from whence it was 
 introduced into Europe by the Romans under 
 Lucullus, in the year 73 b.c. Pliny, in book 
 xv. ch. 25, says: "Before the time that Lu- 
 cullus defeated King Mithridates, there were no 
 cherry trees in Italy ; he was the man that first 
 brought them out of Pontus, and furnished Italy 
 so well with them, that in six and twenty years 
 other lands had part thereof, even as far as Bri- 
 tain, beyond the ocean." From the Dalmatian 
 Maraschi, cherry, we get the name Maraschino, 
 given to the liquo~ gf European celebrity, which 
 
Chap. III. OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 41 
 
 the Austrians distil from it. In like manner, Jalap 
 derives its name from Xalapa, a town in Mexico, 
 and the seat of government for the state of Vera 
 Cruz, in the neighbourhood of which the plant was 
 discovered, being the root of the Tpomea. Choco- 
 late comes from Choco, a province in Mexico, where 
 the Cocoa tree abounds, and from whence it was 
 imported into Europe, about 1520. Pheasant, from 
 the river Phasis, in Colchis, as we learn from Mar- 
 tial, book xxx. ep. 72. Pistol, from the town of 
 Pistoja, in Tuscany, where, Sir James Turner (in 
 his 'Pallas Armata,' pub. 1670) informs us, this 
 weapon was first manufactured in the reign of 
 Henry VIII. , by Camillo Vitelli. It is probable 
 that in 1541 this weapon was unknown in England, 
 as it is not mentioned in an Act of Parliament 
 passed in that year, "concerning crossbows and 
 hand-guns ;" but it would seem was shortly after- 
 wards introduced, as we meet with the word in a 
 proclamation by Queen Elizabeth, 1575 ; and pistols 
 are mentioned as articles of English manufacture and 
 export, in the act of 12 Charles II. chap. 4 (1660). 
 In our word chalybeate, which we obtain from the 
 Greek %aXv^, in Latin chalybs, signifying iron, 
 we preserve the name of Chalybes, once a very 
 powerful people of Asia Minor, who harassed the 
 10,000 Greeks in their retreat from Cunaxa, and 
 whose country abounded in iron mines. Again, we 
 learn from Arethas, who wrote an account of Bi- 
 
42 ROOTS AND RAMIFICATIONS Chap. III. 
 
 thynia, that the stone which we call Calcedony, de- 
 rived its name from Chalcedon, an ancient city of 
 Bithynia, opposite Constantinople. In like manner, 
 Agate is derived from the Greek word a%«r?}s, 
 Achates, a river in Sicily, on the banks and in the 
 bed of which these stones were abundant. They 
 are, however, found in abundance in our own 
 country, especially at Aberystwith, in Cardigan- 
 shire, and at Kinnoul, near Perth, in Scotland, 
 where they bear the more simple name of Scotch 
 pebbles. 
 
 Camden, in his ' Britannia,' p. 971, tells us that 
 the Sandpiper, which we call the Knot, derived 
 its name from King Canute, or Knute, to which 
 Drayton, in his ' Polyolbion,' refers in the following 
 passage : 
 
 " The Knot that called was Canutus, bird of old, 
 Of that great King of Danes his name that still doth hold, 
 His appetite to please that far and near was sought 
 For him, as some have said, from Denmark hither brought." 
 
 Pliny informs us that the serpent called Boa, 
 derives its name from Bos, a cow, giving as a 
 reason, "this serpent liveth at the first of kine's 
 milk." 
 
 The pound Troy derived its name from Troyes, a 
 city of Champagne, where it was a standard weight. 
 The ounce of this weight was brought from Grand 
 Cairo into Europe about the time of the Crusades, 
 and was first adopted at Troyes ; " la libre de 
 
Chap. III. OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 43 
 
 Troy " is used with us as early as 1414, in the 
 second statute of 2 Hen. V. ch. 4. In like manner, 
 the towns of Cologne and Toulouse had their 
 pounds, which were standard weights. Copper 
 derives its name from the island of Cyprus, which 
 was discovered by the Phoenicians (according to 
 Eratosthenes, the Librarian of Alexandria) about 
 2000 years before the Christian era. At this time 
 the island was so full of wood, that it could not be 
 tilled, and the Phoenicians cut down the wood for 
 smelting the copper, with which the island abounded. 
 The island is said to have derived its name from 
 Cypros, the name of a shrub or tree, with which it 
 abounded, and which is supposed to have been the 
 same as our Cypress. 
 
 Worsted derived its name from Worsted, a parish, 
 and formerly a market-town in Norfolk, where 
 there were formerly extensive manufactories of this 
 article. In the ' Parliamentary Gazetteer of Eng- 
 land and "Wales/ it is said " Norwich is the most 
 ancient manufacturing town in the United King- 
 dom, and has been noted for its woollen fabrics 
 since the reign of Henry I., when a colony of 
 Flemings settled in the city, and got the long 
 wool spun at the village of Worsted, nine miles to 
 the north, whence the article took its name. We 
 find worsted mentioned in the statute of 17 Richard 
 II. (1393), and again as being made at Norwich in 
 the statute of 7 Edward IV. (1467). So Blankets 
 
44 ROOTS AND RAMIFICATIONS Chap. III. 
 
 derive their name from Thomas Blanket, who in 
 1340 established a loom in his own house in Bristol, 
 for the manufacture of this article. His house, it is 
 believed, was in Touker Street (now called Tucker 
 Street), and which derived its name from the Touker, 
 the ancient name of cloth-workers, and who were so 
 named from the river Toucques, near Abbeville, in 
 Normandy, from which country the manufacture of 
 cloth was brought to Bristol and the West of Eng- 
 land, early in the reign of Edward L, as we learn 
 from Dallaway's 'Antiquities,' pp. 79 and 179. In 
 the statute 2 and 3 Philip and Mary, chap. 12 (1555), 
 cloth-workers are styled Tuckers, and their mills 
 tucking-milh. 
 
 In our word Spaniel we preserve the record that 
 this species of dog originally came from Spain, 
 though at what period cannot now be ascertained. 
 The Latin poet Nemesianus, who nourished about 
 the year 281 of our era, in his ' Cynegeticon, or 
 book concerning hunting-dogs,' apparently speaking 
 of the spaniel, says, " Quorum proles de sanguine 
 manat Ibero " (whose stock sprung from Spanish 
 blood) ; and the celebrated naturalist, Ulysses Al- 
 drovandus, who was born in 1527 and died in 1605, 
 gives two sketches of the spaniel, both of which he 
 calls Oanis Hispanicus, "the Spanish dog." 
 
 Mummery is derived from Mahomeria, the temple 
 of Mahomet, and was the term used in ridicule of 
 the gestures and songs practised by the followers 
 
Chap. III. OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 45 
 
 of Mahomet, and the word afterwards came to de- 
 note any kind of foolery ; and gibberish, anciently 
 written gebrish, took the name from Geber, a Sabean 
 of Harran, in Mesopotamia, who lived in the eighth 
 century, and wrote four tracts on Chemistry, having 
 the object of teaching the method of finding the philo- 
 sopher's stone. We learn from Pliny, book vi. ch. 
 20, that the Topaz derives its name from Topazos, 
 an island in the Red Sea, where this gem was found 
 in abundance. 
 
 The fruit which we call Currants derives its 
 name from Corinth, and was formerly spelt Corinths. 
 Stowe mentions them as Corinths, commonly called 
 Currants. 
 
 Ermine derives its name from Armenia, and in 
 1660 we find, in the statute of 12 Charles II. chap. 
 4, this fur written Armins ; so in Littleton's Latin 
 Dictionary, seventeen years later, it is called pellis 
 Armeniana, Armenian skin. In Italian, the weasel 
 producing the fur is called Armellina, and in the 
 Spanish Armino and Armelina. 
 
 Gin, the contraction of the name Geneva, we are 
 told was first made in that city, and thence derived 
 its name. A similar spirit was afterwards manu- 
 factured by the Dutch, and acquired the name of 
 Hollands, from which country, also, the linen, called 
 by us Holland, derives its name. 
 
 Galvanism took its name from Aloysius Galvani, 
 who was born at Bologna, 1737, and who, about 
 
46 ROOTS AND RAMIFICATIONS Chap. III. 
 
 1763, was appointed public lecturer in the Univer- 
 sity of that city, and who, by a mere accident, dis- 
 covered that all animals have within them an elec- 
 tricity of a peculiar nature, to which he gave the 
 name of " animal electricity," but which has since 
 acquired the name of Galvanism, from its dis- 
 coverer. 
 
 Alessandro Vblta, professor of natural philosophy, 
 in the university of Pavia, made further discoveries 
 in the science of electricity, and from him we acquire 
 the name of Voltaic battery. 
 
 The Carraway plant preserves in its name a 
 record of its native country, Caria, as we learn 
 from Pliny, book xix. ch. 8. The name which we 
 have given to the Turkey indicates that we ob- 
 tained it from that country, though it was not a 
 native of it, the bird being peculiar to the con- 
 tinent of America, from whence it was probably 
 introduced into Europe by the Spaniards. This 
 bird is called by the Italians and Spaniards G-allo 
 d' India, by the French Coq d'Inde, and by the 
 Germans Indianische Mahn, all preserving the name 
 of India, originally given by the Europeans to 
 America. Robertson, in his ' History of America,' 
 says that Columbus, on landing on this continent, 
 found gold, cotton, and a root resembling rhubarb, 
 the alligator, and rich plumaged birds ; and consi- 
 dering that these productions were peculiar to the 
 East Indies, tenaciously adhered to the opinion that 
 
Chap. III. OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 47 
 
 he had landed at the eastern extremity of India, 
 and the Spaniards and all other nations in Europe 
 adopted that opinion ; and, accordingly, in an 
 agreement made by Ferdinand and Isabella with 
 Columbus, the name of Indies was given to the 
 newly discovered countries ; and after the error 
 which gave rise to this opinion was detected, and 
 the true position of the new world ascertained, the 
 name was continued, and the name of West Indies 
 was given by all the people of Europe to the coun- 
 try, and that of Indians to the inhabitants, by which 
 name the American aborigines continue to be called 
 to this day. The name of the drug which we call 
 Rhubarb, is the corruption of the Latin words Rha 
 Barbara (foreign Rha), and preserves a record of 
 the river known to the ancients as the Rha (now the 
 Volga, in Russia), on the banks of which the plant 
 producing the root furnishing the drug was sup- 
 posed to grow. This drug is mentioned as Rha- 
 barbarum in the statute 12 Charles II. ch. 4 (1660). 
 It is somewhat surprising that although this drug 
 has been used for centuries, the native place of the 
 plant producing it is still unknown to us. 
 
 Our word Shallot, frequently written eschalot, 
 comes to us from the French, but the word is de- 
 rived from the name given to the vegetable by the 
 Romans ascalonia, and which was so given because 
 the plant was a native of AsJcelon, in Palestine, one 
 of the fenced cities of the Philistines, and was pro- 
 
48 ROOTS AND RAMIFICATIONS Chap. III. 
 
 bably introduced into Rome after the destruction of 
 Jerusalem by the Romans. 
 
 How completely have the words Bedlam and 
 Bridewell become incorporated into our language to 
 denote places for the reception of insane persons 
 and vagrants, and how currently do we use these 
 words without considering the modes by which they 
 acquired their present signification. Stowe tells us 
 that Simon Fitzmary, sheriff of London, 1247, 
 founded the Priory of St Mary of Bethlehem, to 
 consist of canons, with brethren and sisters, to re- 
 ceive the Bishop of Bethlehem and the canons and 
 messengers of the church of Bethlehem, whensoever 
 they should have occasion to travel to England. 
 On the dissolution of monastic establishments in 
 England, King Henry VIII. (1545) granted this 
 priory to the city of London, who converted it into 
 a house or hospital for the cure of lunatics, and this 
 name Bethlehem, corrupted into Bedlam, came to 
 signify a lunatic asylum. Then as regards Bride- 
 ivell, I would observe that before the Reformation 
 there existed in London and various parts of the 
 country holy wells, the waters of which were sup- 
 posed to be endowed with peculiar virtues, and which 
 were, in consequence, much resorted to by devotees 
 and superstitious persons. St. Bride's well, near 
 the church of St. Bride, in Fleet Street, London, was 
 one of these. In the vicinity of this well anciently 
 stood a royal palace, which from this well took the 
 
Chap. III. OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 49 
 
 name of Brideivell Palace, where King John held 
 his courts, and where succeeding monarchs resided. 
 Henry VIII. repaired it, and resided in it as late 
 as 1529, but it shortly afterwards fell into decay, 
 and in 1552 the martyr Ridley, then Bishop of 
 London, petitioned Secretary Cecil to grant it to the 
 city of London, which petition being granted, the 
 city, in 1553, converted it into a house of correction 
 for disorderly persons, and thus such houses acquired 
 the name of Brideivells. 
 
 It is somewhat curious to trace the origin of the 
 word farriers. Johnson says it came to us from 
 the French ferrier, and it is true that it is of 
 French origin, for we acquired the word from the 
 name of the noble Norman family of Ferrers. Stowe, 
 in treating of the " Farriers' Company," tells us 
 that Henry de Ferrariis or Ferrers, a Norman born, 
 came over into England with William the Con- 
 queror, who gave to him, as being his farrier or 
 master of the horse, the honour of Tutbury in the 
 county of Stafford. Robert de Ferrers, his son, 
 succeeded to his father's possessions, and was created, 
 in 1137, Earl of Derby, and his family bore for 
 arms six horseshoes, in allusion to their original 
 vocation. The word far r rier was formerly spelt with 
 us ferrer. Blundeville, in his c Address to the 
 Gentlemen of England,' written in the reign of 
 Queen Elizabeth, says in his fourth book, " All 
 horses for the most part come into their decay 
 
 D 
 
50 ROOTS AND RAMIFICATIONS Chap. III. 
 
 sooner than they should do by one of these four 
 ways, that is to say, either for the lack of being 
 well bred, or through the rashness of the rider, the 
 negligence of the keeper, or else through the un- 
 skilfulness of the ferrer ;" and again he mentions 
 " Martin Ghelly of Aston, called Martin Alman, 
 chief ferrer to the Queen's Majesty." In Holland's 
 ' Pliny,' book 33, ch. 11, we find the following pas- 
 sage, " and within the remembrance of man, even 
 in this age, Poppsea the Empress, wife to Nero the 
 Emperor, was known to cause her ferrers ordinarily 
 to shoe her coach-horses and other palfries for her 
 saddle with cleane gold." 
 
 The Bezant, which was the chief gold coin cur- 
 rent throughout Europe for many centuries, appears 
 to have been first coined at Constantinople, the an- 
 cient Byzantium of the western Emperors, and 
 thence acquired its name. 
 
 The Sedan chair takes its name from the town of 
 Sedan in France, where they were first invented, 
 and were introduced into England in 1634 by Sir 
 Saunders Buncombe, who, in the ' Strafford Letters,' 
 vol. i. p. 336, is stated to have obtained a patent 
 for their manufacture. 
 
 Mr. Trench, in his book ' On the Study of 
 Words,' dismisses the word calico by informing us 
 that it took its name from Calicut in the East. The 
 word, however, seems entitled to a little further 
 notice. Dr Buchanan Hamilton, in his work en- 
 
Chap. III. OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 51 
 
 titled ' A Journey through Mysore, Canara, and 
 Malabar,' says that " when Cherusman Permal (the 
 first monarch of Malabar) had divided the country 
 among his nobles, and had no principality remaining 
 to bestow on the ancestor of the Tamuri (i. e. the 
 Rajah), he gave that chief his sword, with all the 
 territory in which a cock crowing at a small temple 
 in the town could be heard. This formed the 
 original dominions of the Tamuri, and was called 
 Calicudo, or the Cock-crowing." Thus, therefore, 
 we arrive at the meaning of the word Calico. We 
 learn from Robertson's l India,' that the seaport town 
 of Calicut was the place at which the Portuguese 
 under Vasco de Gama landed on the 22nd May, 
 1498, and they probably gave the name to the 
 article so called, and communicated it to the 
 Spaniards, in whose language it is called Calicud 
 or Calicut, and we in all probability obtained it 
 through Spain, and corrupted the word into calico. 
 Mr. Trench also informs us that the word tariff is 
 derived from Tarifa, a fortified promontory in Spain 
 commanding the entrance of the Mediterranean Sea, 
 from whence the Moors watched merchant ships 
 frequenting that sea, and levied duties on the mer- 
 chandise passing in and out of the straits, according 
 to a fixed scale ; and he adds that the word is of 
 Moorish origin, but does not give us that origin. 
 Richardson, in his Dictionary, quoting Menage, says 
 that the word is Arabic, from d'araf, to know. The 
 
 d 2 
 
52 ROOTS AND RAMIFICATIONS Chap. III. 
 
 word, indeed, is of Moorish origin, but the etymo- 
 logy of Menage is not the true one. The word is a 
 monument of the conquest of Spain by the Arabs, 
 the town Tarifa (from which it is derived) taking its 
 name from Tarif Ibn Malek Almaferi, the Arabian 
 Viceroy of Africa, who on the 30th of April, a.d. 
 711, landed at the promontory (then called Calpe), 
 and shortly afterwards conquered Spain. The Arabs 
 changed the name of Calpe to Jezira Tarif (the 
 Island of Tarif), and in later times it became 
 Tarif. In like manner the Rock of Gibraltar is 
 another record of the same conquest, the name 
 Gibraltar being the corruption of the Moorish words 
 Gibel Tarif (the Mountain of Tarif). 
 
 Lydius lapis was the name given by the Romans 
 to the stone which attracts iron, from the circum- 
 stance of its being found in Lydia, and which we 
 have corrupted into our loadstone. Pliny, in his 
 34th book, tells us " that this stone is to be found 
 in Biskay scattered here and there in small quan- 
 tities, but it is not that true magnet or loadstone 
 indeed which groweth in one continued rock." 
 This word magnet, in Latin magnes, took its name 
 from the city of Magnesia in Lydia, where it was 
 found. This kingdom of Lydia was anciently called 
 MaBonia, through which ran the river Mccander, 
 remarkable for its tortuous course, and hence we 
 have acquired our word meander. 
 
 We reid that Eumenes, the second king of Per- 
 
Chap. III. OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. Do 
 
 gamus, died B.C. 159, having embellished the city 
 of Pergamus and founded a library there, which 
 became second in importance only to that of Alex- 
 andria, and that Ptolemy Epiphanes, becoming 
 jealous lest the library at Pergamus should rival 
 that of Alexandria, prohibited the export of papyrus 
 from Egypt. The art of preparing skins for writing 
 consequently improved at Pergamus, and such skins 
 were called by the Romans Charta Pergamena, 
 from which the Spaniards acquired their word per- 
 gami?w, the French their word parchemin, and we 
 our word parchment, 
 
 In like manner our word cordwainer is derived 
 from the city of Cordova (anciently spelt Cordova), 
 the capital of Andalusia, where was manufactured a 
 celebrated leather, cordoban, which was a prepara- 
 tion of goat-skins. From this source the French 
 get their word for shoemaker, cordonnier, and we 
 our word cordwainer. This celebrated leather, having 
 been first prepared at Cordova by the Moors when 
 masters of Granada, is still manufactured by them 
 in their empire of Morocco, and has now taken that 
 name. We find this leather mentioned in the 
 'Coventry Mysteries' — 
 
 " Of ffine Cordewan, a goodly peyre of long pikyd Schon 
 Hosyn enclosyd of the most costlyous cloth of crenscyn " 
 
 (crimson) : the word also occurs in most of our early 
 writers. 
 
 We use the word milliner, to describe one who 
 
54 EOOTS AND RAMIFICATIONS Chap. III. 
 
 sells ladies' dresses and ribbons. In Littleton's 
 ' Latin and English Dictionary,' published in 1677, 
 a milliner is defined to be "a Jack of all trades," 
 and "one who sells a thousand different sorts of 
 things," as if the word were derived from mille, a 
 thousand ; but this derivation is, 1 think, clearly 
 erroneous, for Stowe tells us these persons were so 
 called from Milan, in Italy, whence the commo- 
 dities they dealt in chiefly came, such as "owches, 
 brooches, agglets, spurs, caps, glasses, &c." He 
 adds, "that in Edward VI. 's reign there were not 
 above a dozen of them in all London ; but within 
 forty years after, about the year 1580, from the City 
 of Westminster along to London, every street be- 
 came full of them." He states that some of the 
 wares sold by these shopkeepers were, " gloves made 
 in France or Spain ; kerseys of Flanders' dye, 
 French cloth or Fruzado ouches, brooches, aggletts, 
 made in Venice or Milan ; daggers, swords, knives, 
 girdles of the Spanish make ; glasses, painted cruses, 
 dials, tables, cards, balls, puppets, penners, ink- 
 hornes, toothpicks, silk bottoms, silver bottoms, fine 
 earthen pots, pins, points, hawksbells, saltcellars, 
 spoons, and dishes of tin, w T hich made such a show 
 in the passengers' eyes, that they could not but gaze 
 on them and buy some of these knicknacks, though 
 to no purpose necessary ; of which trade and trifles, 
 a writer in the middle of Queen Elizabeth's reign, 
 makes this complaint, — I mervail no man taketh 
 
Chap. III. OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 55 
 
 heed to it, what number of trifles cometh hither 
 from beyond the seas, that we might either clean 
 spare, or else make them within our realm, for the 
 which we either pay inestimable treasure every year, 
 or else exchange substantial wares, and necessary 
 for them, for the which we might receive great 
 treasure." These persons so called milliners, were 
 also called haberdashers or hurrers, and were incor- 
 porated in the year 1447. 
 
 I shall conclude this chapter with the word ala- 
 baster, which almost all the dictionaries, Greek, 
 Latin, and English, derive from the Greek a, a, 
 without ; and XaCoo, labe (a handle), and render the 
 word into English, as a box without handles for 
 holding ointment ; but this seems to be a fanciful 
 derivation, as the material from which these boxes 
 were made seems to have been called alabaster, 
 when in its rough unmanufactured state. It is true 
 that the boxes were called alabasters, no doubt from 
 their having been originally made of this stone, and 
 they were so called, although made of gold, or of 
 any other material. In the passages St. Matt. 
 xxvi. 7, St. Mark xiv. 3, and St. Luke vii. 37, ren- 
 dered in our translation an alabaster box, the Greek 
 words used are aXocfiaareov pupou, alabastron murou, 
 literally, an alabaster of myrrh, the word being 
 used as a substantive, and the same words pre- 
 cisely occur, in the third book of Herodotus, ch, 
 xx., wherein he records the presents sent by Cam- 
 
56 ROOTS AND RAMIFICATIONS Chap. III. 
 
 byses to the king of Ethiopia ; and in Theocritus, 
 Idyll xv., line 114, we read of "golden alabasters, 
 full of myrrh of Syria" — 2vg/« Vs [avqco %pvazC oCKoc- 
 Qxvrpa,. It would seem from the following passages, 
 that this peculiar stone derived its name from a 
 place in Egypt called Alabastrum, where it was 
 found. Pliny, in his 36th book, ch. viii., speaking 
 of the onyx-stone, says, " this onyx-stone, or ony- 
 chites, some name alabastrites, whereof they use for 
 to make hollow boxes and pots, to receive sweet 
 perfumes and ointments. This cassidronic, or ala- 
 baster, is found about Thebes in Egypt, and Da- 
 mascus in Syria, and this alabaster is whiter than 
 the rest ;" and again, in his 37th book, ch. x., he 
 says, " The stone alabastrites is found about Ala- 
 bastrum, a citie in Egypt, and Damasco in Syria ; 
 white of colour it is, and entermeddled with sundry 
 colours." Pliny, in book v., ch. 9, gives us pretty 
 nearly the situation of this city Alabastrum ; he 
 commences by describing the towns of Egypt from 
 Syene, its ancient southern boundary, and following 
 the course of the Nile he reaches Ptolemais and 
 Panapolis : he then proceeds, " Also on the Libyan 
 coast, Lycon, where the hills do bound Thebais, soon 
 after, these towns of Mercury, Alabastron, Canum, 
 and that of Hercules, before spoken of," so that it is 
 clear that Alabastron was situated between Pano- 
 polis and Heracleopolis, and could not have been 
 far from Hermopolis, lat. 28, Ion. 31. What the 
 
Chap. III. OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 57 
 
 shape of these alabasters was we also learn from 
 Pliny, who, in his 9th book, ch. xxxv., describing 
 the pearls called Elenchi, says they were "fastigiata 
 longitudine alabastrorum figura in pleniorem orbem 
 desinentes," which Holland translates " long and 
 pointed upwards, growing downward broader and 
 broader like a pear, or after the manner of alabaster 
 boxes." 
 
 Mr. Layard, in his ' Discoveries in the Ruins of 
 Nineveh and Babylon,' published in 1853, gives at 
 p. 197, a drawing of an alabaster vase found at 
 Nimroud, which he describes as being seven inches 
 high, and adds, " and was probably used for holding 
 some ointment or cosmetic." It appears from p. 
 200 of the same work, that after Mr. Layard's de- 
 parture from Assyria, a similar alabaster jar was 
 discovered, and Colonel Rawlinson states, " that 
 remains of preserves were found in it, and conjec- 
 tured from this circumstance that the room in which 
 it was found had been a kitchen. The drawing 
 which Mr. Layard has given of the jar found by 
 him, may well Le said to be " pear-shaped," and 
 why therefore should not these jars be the same as 
 the alabasters containing ointments referred to by 
 Pliny and St. Matthew, by Herodotus and Theo- 
 critus? That which Colonel Rawlinson took for 
 preserves was much more likely to have been oint- 
 ment, as the latter would endure longer than the 
 former. 
 
 T) 3 
 
58 ROOTS AND RAMIFICATIONS Chap. IV. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Of Words the Etymology of which is obscured by 
 reason of the original spelling having been cor- 
 RUPTED. 
 
 In many instances we have abridged words in our 
 language by dropping a letter or syllable, and in 
 others we have changed one or more letters, and in 
 consequence the origin of such words has become 
 somewhat obscured. The word strange is one of 
 these. This word was formerly written estrange, 
 and its origin was then apparent as coming from the 
 French estrange, from the Latin extraneus, of ano- 
 ther country. In Hollingshed, vol. vi. p. 446, we 
 find the word as originally spelt. " This prelate 
 (the Archbishop of Dublin), after that he had con- 
 tinued well near the space of five years in the see, 
 was sore appalled by reason of an estrange and 
 wonderful dream ;" so stranger was formerly estr anger. 
 In Nicolls's translation of Thucydides, published in 
 1550, fol. 58, he says, "And having with them 
 souldyars, estrangers, which Pissithnes and the Ar- 
 cadians had sent them." We still preserve the 
 original spelling in our word estrange, and it would 
 seem that Shakspeare well knew the connexion be- 
 tween the words estrange and strange when he wrote 
 this passage — 
 
Chap. IV. OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 59 
 
 " How comes it now, my husband, oh ! 
 How comes it ; 
 
 That thou art thus estranged from thyself? 
 Thyself I call it, being strange to me." 
 
 We may in vain search for the origin of our word 
 dropsy, unless we first restore it to its original spell- 
 ing, hydropsy, and then we at once get the derivation 
 of it from the Greek vocop, udor (water). Holling- 
 shed, vol. vi. p. 8, speaking of the virtues of brandy, 
 says, "it lighteneth the mind, it quickeneth the 
 spirits, it cureth the hydropsy" &c. The French, in 
 their word hydropisie, and the Spaniards, in their 
 word hidropesia, still preserve the original spelling ; 
 so our word licorice will not yield up its meaning, 
 unless we first restore it to its original spelling of 
 lycorys, which we meet with in the ' Coventry 
 Mysteries,' p. 22 ; and then we see that the word is 
 corrupted from glycorys, i. e. glycyrhiza, from the 
 Greek y\vxus, gluhus (sweet), and pi&, riza (root). 
 Again, we must restore molasses to its original spell- 
 ing, melasses, in order to get at its derivation from 
 the Spanish word melaza (the dregs of honey), from 
 the Latin word mel (honey). This article is spelt 
 mehsses in the schedule to the Act of 12 Car. II. 
 c. 9, where it is described as an article of export and 
 import. 
 
 To arrive at the derivation of the word clover, 
 we must return to the way in which it was ori- 
 ginally spelt, claver ; and then we see that the 
 
60 ROOTS AND RAMIFICATIONS Chap. IV. 
 
 name is descriptive of the plant, as cleaved or cloven 
 grass. 
 
 Pliny, in his 18th book, ch. xvi., treats of Spanish 
 trefoil, or horned elavergr&sse, called in Latin medica, 
 and says, " As for the grasse or hearb medica (a 
 kind of claver or trefoile), the Greeks held it in old 
 time for a meere straunger, as being brought into 
 Greece from Media during the Persian wars, which 
 King Darius levied against Greece ;" he adds, 
 " Now, when this hearbe medica, or clavergrasse, 
 beginneth once to flour, cut it downe, and so often 
 as it floureth againe, down with it. Thus you may 
 have sixe mathes in one year, or foure at least." 
 
 Sir Richard Weston, our ambassador to the Elector 
 Palatine and King of Bohemia, in 1619, has the 
 merit of being the person who introduced clover 
 into English agriculture. 
 
 Our word quinine, Peruvian or Jesuits' bark, is 
 the corruption of quinaquina, the name by which it 
 is known in Peru, whence it was introduced into 
 Europe by the Spaniards in 1640. In 1738 La 
 Condamine first printed a detailed account of this 
 bark, under the name of quinquina, as it was then 
 called ; a name which it still retained in 1796, as we 
 meet with the word in ' Robertson's America,' vol. hi. 
 p. 302. The drug saffron (manufactured from the 
 crocus) is chiefly imported from France and Spain, 
 that from the latter country being preferred. It is 
 in the Spanish language called azafron, which we 
 
Chap. IV. OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 61 
 
 have corrupted into saffron. The word was pro- 
 bably introduced into Spain by the Moors, as it 
 seems of Arabic origin. 
 
 Our word lettuce, as now spelt, conveys to us no 
 idea of its signification or derivation ; but written, as 
 it used to be of old, leetuce, it at once gives us a clue 
 to its origin from the Latin word laetuca, from lac 
 (milk), and then we immediately see the ap 
 propriateness of the name. Holland, in his transla- 
 tion of Pliny, always spells the word leetuce. He 
 says, in book xix. ch. viii., " There is another distinct 
 kind of the blacke leetuce which, for the plenty that 
 it yieldeth of a milky white juice, procuring drowsi- 
 ness, is tearmed meconis, although all of them are 
 thought to cause sleep. In old time our ancestors 
 knew no other leetuce in Italy but this alone, and 
 thereupon it took the name in Latin of lactuca." 
 The French, in their word for this vegetable, laitue, 
 have kept somewhat nearer to the original Latin 
 name. 
 
 Again, in our words linen, linseed, linsey-woolsey, 
 having kept to the original spelling, we perceive at 
 first sight the derivation of them from liraim, flax ; 
 but although the word linnet comes from the same 
 source ^the seed of the linum being the favourite 
 food of that bird), yet the origin of the name does 
 not at once occur to us, because we have doubled the 
 letter n ; but the French, in this instance also, have, in 
 their word linotte, adhered closer to the parent word. 
 
62 HOOTS AND RAMIFICATIONS Chap. IV. 
 
 Our verb to wither is derived by Johnson and 
 Richardson from a Saxon word, ge-wyther-ed, but it 
 seems to me that it is simply a corruption of winder 
 (by the change of d into th), expressive of the action 
 of wind on vegetation. Thus in Holland's Pliny, 
 book xviii. ch. xvii., speaking of the disasters incident 
 to corn, he says, " When the grain, being formed, 
 before that it is firm and hard, is smitten with a 
 noisome blast, it decayeth and windereth away ;" and 
 again, in the 19th book, ch. iii. (speaking of a plant 
 called by him laser 'pitium, which grew in wild dis- 
 tricts), he says, " that it cannot abide culture ; but 
 if one should go about to tend and cherish it, it 
 would rather chuse to be gone into the desert, or else 
 winder away and die." The transition from wilder 
 to wi^er, and then to wither is simple enough. The 
 passage at the 21st chapter of St. Matthew, v. 20, 
 " How soon is the fig-tree withered away/' is ren- 
 dered, in Tyndale's Bible, 1534, and in Cranmer's, 
 1539, " How soon is the fig-tree wyddered away." 
 A like change has taken place in other words ; thus 
 leather was anciently written ledder, and father 
 fader. 
 
 Quinsy, inflammation of the throat, was formerly 
 written squinancy, and then squincey, and then, by 
 dropping the letter s, quincey, and at last we get 
 quinsy, the present spelling. In Jeremy Taylor's 
 work — 'Holy Living and Dying' — the word fre- 
 quently occurs as originally spelt, squinancy ; thus 
 
Chap. IV. OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 63 
 
 he says, " Without revelation we cannot tell whether 
 we shall eat to-morrow, or whether a squinaney shall 
 choke us;" and again, speaking of Senecio Cor- 
 nelius, he says, "he went away, supped merrily, 
 went to bed cheerfully, and on a sudden, being sur- 
 prised by a squinaney, scarce drew his breath until 
 the morning, but by that time he died." Holland, in 
 his translation of Pliny, book x. ch. xxxiii., uses the 
 word as originally written : " The young birds of 
 these martins, if they be burnt into ashes, are a sin- 
 gular and sovereign remedie for the deadly squin- 
 ancie." This word in fact comes from the Latin 
 word synanche, a drawing together, which Latin 
 word came from the Greek avvxyar, sunago (to 
 collect or gather together), being the same Greek 
 word from which is derived synagogue, a congrega- 
 tion, or gathering together of persons. 
 
 Richardson is of opinion that the word meyiial is 
 from the same source as many, but I think this is a 
 mistake, and that the original spelling of the word 
 must have been moenial, though I have not met 
 with the word so spelt. If I am correct in this 
 supposition, the derivation of the word would seem 
 to be from the Latin word moenia, the walls of a 
 castle or house, and then we get an intelligible 
 signification of menials, as being domestic or house- 
 hold servants, living within the walls of their master's 
 house, as distinguished from agricultural labourers 
 or out- door servants. The term meing is used in 
 
64 EOOTS AND RAMIFICATIONS Chap. IV. 
 
 the statute 1 Richard II., c. 4, 1377, to denote the 
 king's household. Again, in Acts x. 2, the passage 
 rendered in our translation, " a devout man, and 
 one that feared God with all his house," is in 
 Wiclif's translation, 1388, "a religious man, and 
 dredinge the Lord with all his meyne" The word 
 menials, spelt in the Norman French meignals, 
 occurs also in the statute 2 Hen. IV. c. 21, 1400; 
 and in Littleton's English and Latin Dictionary, 
 1684, he renders the English word meny with the 
 Latin word familia, a family, and the word meny 
 is marked with a star, as being of " immediate 
 descent from the Latin," as explained in the preface 
 to the reader. It is clear therefore that he con- 
 sidered it of Latin origin. I think the French word 
 for household, manage, and the Spanish word menage 
 (the moveable furniture of a house) have the same 
 origin. 
 
 We do not at once see the derivation of the word 
 ridings (being the three great districts into which 
 Yorkshire is divided), but when we go back and 
 see that the word was in Magna Charta and -in the 
 statute of 21 Hen. III., c. 10, 1260, formerly spelt 
 trithing, we see at a glance the derivation from the 
 Latin tres, three, and that trithing became corrupted 
 into triding, and Priding into riding. 
 
 The origin of our word farthing is similai. In 
 the statute 9 Hen. V., stat. 2, c. 7, 1421, it is 
 enacted "that the king do to be ordained good 
 
Chap. IV. OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 65 
 
 and just weight of the noble, half-noble, and far- 
 thing of gold" showing that the coin then known as 
 the farthing was the fourth thing, or fourth part of 
 the noble ; so our farthing is the fourth part of a 
 penny. In the same way the quadrans, with the 
 Romans, was the fourth part of an as. Before the 
 reign of Edward I. the penny was the smallest coin, 
 and was marked or indented with a cross, by the 
 guidance of which it might be cut into halves for 
 halfpennies, or into quarters for farthings ; but to 
 avoid the frauds occasioned by unequal cutting, 
 Edward I. caused halfpence and farthings to be 
 coined in round distinct pieces. Instances of pennies 
 neatly and accurately cut into halves and quarters 
 occur almost wherever Saxon coins have been dis- 
 covered. The Saxon word penny first occurs in 
 the laws of Ina, king of the West Saxons, whose 
 reign commenced in 688. It was equal in weight 
 to three pence with us, and four of these made a 
 Saxon settling, from whence comes our word shil- 
 ling ; the Saxon word settling being derived from 
 schild, a shield, because this coin was anciently 
 stamped with the representation of a shield. Edward 
 I. reduced the weight of the penny to a standard, 
 ordering that it should weigh 32 grains of wheat 
 taken out of the middle of the ear. Twenty of 
 these pence were to weigh an ounce, and thus 
 the penny became a weight as well as a coin, and 
 was afterwards known only as a weight until subse- 
 
66 ROOTS AND RAMIFICATIONS Chap. IV. 
 
 quently re-introduced into the British coinage. The 
 pennyweight seems afterwards to have been reduced 
 to 24 grains, each grain weighing a grain of wheat 
 gathered out of the middle of the ear, and well 
 dried ; and it is supposed that when the reduction 
 took place the improvement in agriculture had ren- 
 dered 24 grains of wheat equivalent to 32 grains 
 of the more early harvests. 
 
 In the Saxon times no silver coin bigger than a 
 penny was struck in England, nor after the Con- 
 quest till the reign of Edward III., who about the 
 year 1361 coined grosses, or great pieces, which 
 went for fourpence each, and were so called from 
 the French word gros, great, and which name we 
 subsequently corrupted into groat. From the same 
 word w r e get our word grogran, meaning a stuff 
 woven with large woof and a rough pile — the word 
 literally signifying large-grained or coarsely woven. 
 Admiral Vernon, who in 1739 was appointed com- 
 mander-in-chief on the West Indian station, was 
 in the habit of walking the deck in bad weather 
 wrapped in a rough grogran coat, and thus acquired 
 with the sailors the name of Old Grog. He intro- 
 duced the use of rum and water by the ship's com- 
 pany, which speedily became very popular, and 
 from the admiral's nickname acquired the name of 
 grog. 
 
 Burly was anciently written boorley, and then 
 there was a clue to its origin from boor; thus a 
 
Chap. IV. OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 67 
 
 burly man is a boorlike man. Sir Thomas More 
 says, " how be it in his latter dayes, with over liberall 
 dyet. somewhat corpulent and booreley" So neigh- 
 bour was anciently neizbore, i. e. one boor nigh an- 
 other. In the passage Romans xiii. 9, " Thou shalt 
 love thy neighbour as thyself," in Wiclifs Bible, 
 1380, we find "Thou schalt love thy neizbore as 
 the silf." In like manner nigh at hand was for- 
 merly neyhand — we meet with the word in the 
 4 Coventry Mysteries,' p. 172. In the way in which 
 we now spell the word butcher we lose sight of its 
 origin, but if we restore it to its ancient spelling, 
 bocher, we see that we have adopted the word from 
 the French boucher. Stowe, vol. ii. p. 445, giving 
 the ancient assize of the butcher, says, " A bocher 
 that selleth swyne's flesh that is anywise mesell, 
 corrupt, or in the morayne, or if he by flesh of 
 Jewes, and sell it unto Chrystus men, and thereof 
 the same bocher be convicte, first he shall grievously 
 be amercyed," &c. The passage at 1 Cor. x. 25, 
 " Whatsoever is sold in the shambles that eat," is 
 in Wiclifs Bible, " Al thing that is seeld in the 
 bocheri ete ye." In like manner the word currier, 
 as now spelt, conveys to us no clue as to its ety- 
 mology, but restore it to its ancient spelling, coryour 
 or coriour, and we see at once its derivation from 
 the Latin corium, a skin. Stowe, vol. ii. p. 446, 
 says, " Also the assize of a coryour is that he cory 
 no maner of ledder, but if it be thurgh tanned, and 
 
68 ROOTS AND RAMIFICATIONS Chap. IV. 
 
 that it be thurgh coried with suffiseant stuff." The 
 passage translated in our version of Acts x. 6, " he 
 lodgeth with one Simon a tanner, whose house is by 
 the sea side," is in Wiclifs Bible, " this is herboride 
 at a man symount couriour, whos hous is biside 
 the sea." 
 
 The spelling and pronunciation of our word 
 squirrel discloses to us nothing of the meaning of 
 the name, but if we trace it back to the Latin 
 sciurus, of which our word is a bad corruption, we 
 at once get a clue to its meaning, and see that it is 
 derived from the Greek words am*, skia, shade, 
 and ov^oc, oura, a tail ; and thus we discover that 
 the meaning of our word squirrel is shady-tail, and 
 that this little creature, so familiar to us, derives its 
 name from the fact of its tail serving it as an 
 umbrella, for protection against heat and cold. 
 Linnaeus, however, tells us that it makes a further 
 use of this appendage, for he says that when a 
 squirrel crosses a river, a piece of bark is its boat, 
 and its tail the sail. 
 
 When furmety was spelt frumente its derivation 
 was seen at a glance, from the Latin frumentum, 
 corn. Holland, in his translation of Pliny, book xviii. 
 ch. vii., after reprobating the custom of working and 
 kneading dough with sea- water to save the charge 
 of salt, says, "In France and Spaine, when the 
 brewers have steeped their wheat or frument in 
 water and masht it for their drinke of divers sorts." 
 
Chap. IV. OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 69 
 
 So again when furnace was written fornace, its 
 derivation from the Latin fornax, a chimney or 
 oven, was apparent. 
 
 The word which we use to denote the juice of the 
 apple when expressed and fermented, and which we 
 now spell eider, gives us, when so spelt, no clue 
 whatever to its derivation. The word formerly had 
 a more extended meaning than at present, and sig- 
 nified any strong drink other than wine, and was 
 written sieer. The passage at 1 St. Luke, v. 15, 
 translated in our Bibles " and shall drink neither 
 wine nor strong drink," is in the Rheims Bible, 1582, 
 " and wine and sicer he shall not drink." In the 
 statute (12 Chas. II. c. 9) the word is spelt sider ; 
 the ancient spelling leads us to discover that the 
 word came from the Greek word aixsqa., sikera, 
 translated into Latin sicera, and by us turned first 
 into sicer, then sider, now cider. The word seems 
 to be of Hebrew origin, for St. Jerome, who went to 
 Jerusalem about the year 369 to study the Hebrew 
 language, in order to acquire a more perfect know- 
 ledge of the Holy Scriptures, in his letter to Nepo- 
 tianus (a son of a sister of the Emperor Constantine) 
 concerning the lives of the clergy, informs us that 
 in Hebrew any inebriating liquor is called sicera, 
 whether made of corn, the juice of apples, honey, 
 dates, or any other fruit. 
 
 Mr. Southey, in his ' Omniana,' or * Horse Otio- 
 siores,' vol. i. p. 283, suggests that the old Leonese 
 
70 ROOTS AND RAMIFICATIONS Chap. IV. 
 
 word merino is a mongrel derivative from the Arabic 
 or Moorish title Emir, likely enough to have been 
 formed when the two languages were, as it were, 
 running into each other. In vol. ii. p. 105, he says 
 that Merino is the old Leonese title still preserved 
 in Portugal, though long since obsolete in the other 
 kingdoms of Spain. He says that the old laws of 
 Spain define it thus : " He is a man who has autho- 
 rity to administer justice within a certain district." 
 The first mention of this office is in the reign of 
 Bermudo II. (982). The Merinos then commanded 
 the troops of their respective provinces in war, but 
 before the time of Enrique II. (1369) it was become 
 wholly a civil office. Mr. Southey adds that most 
 probably the judge of the shepherds was called the 
 merino, and hence the appellation extended to the 
 flocks under his care. I think there can be no 
 doubt but that Mr. Southey's suggestion is the true 
 one, for in Connelly's Spanish Dictionary, published 
 at Madrid, 1798, the word merino is rendered into 
 English, first as " the chief judge of a sheep-walk, 
 invested with an ample power," and then as "he 
 who superintends the sheep and pastures :" the 
 term afterwards became transferred to the sheep 
 themselves, and since the introduction of the sheep 
 into England by George III. (1788) the word has 
 been of common use with us, and was applied to 
 designate the wool of the Spanish sheep, in the spin- 
 ning of which the French, until recently, far ex- 
 
Chap. IV. OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 71 
 
 celled our manufacturers; but in 1833, Captain 
 Charles Stuart Cochrane, of the Royal Navy, esta- 
 blished in Glasgow a manufacture for spinning 
 merino yarn on the French principle, and the term 
 merinos has for some years been applied to the soft 
 and beautiful fabrics made from this yarn. Thus 
 has this word been degraded from the title of a 
 military commander to denote the office of a civil 
 magistrate, then a kind of master-shepherd, after- 
 wards the sheep themselves, and finally the articles 
 manufactured from the wool. 
 
 Again, the word shot was formerly much used as 
 synonymous with reckoning, and is still so used by 
 the lower orders. Shakspeare so used this word 
 when he said, "A man is never welcome to a place 
 till some certain shot be paid and the hostess says 
 welcome." The word, when so spelt, leads us on a 
 wrong scent after its origin, since our ideas naturally 
 turn to the verb " to shoot," with which it has nothing 
 to do. The word is a corruption or mis-spelling of 
 scot, which we retain in our words scot and lot, the 
 payment of which in many boroughs, before the 
 passing of the Reform Act, constituted the qualifica- 
 tion of the voters, and which word we also retain 
 in our expression scot free. The meetings formerly 
 held in England for drinking ale, the expense of 
 which was paid by contribution, were called scotales. 
 The tenants of the Archbishop of Canterbury at 
 South Mailing, in Sussex, were bound by the custom 
 
72 ROOTS AND RAMIFICATIONS Chap. IV. 
 
 of the manor to entertain the lord or his bailiff 
 with a drinking, and the rule of contribution to- 
 wards the expenses was, that a man should pay 
 threepence halfpenny for himself and his wife, and 
 a widow and a cottager a penny halfpenny. The 
 French have a similar word, Scot, to denote the 
 quota of a tavern bill. Again, the Peter Pence, 
 formerly collected in this country and remitted to 
 Rome was called Homescot, and the rate collected 
 to defray the charge of candles in churches was 
 called waxshot or waxscot. 
 
 When we find camomile spelt without an h, as it 
 commonly is, its origin is concealed, but restore the 
 original spelling of chamomile, and we readily see 
 its origin, from the Greek %u[aoc,i, chamai, " of the 
 ground," and /xtjXov, melon, "an apple." Pliny 
 (book xxi ) gives us the different names by which this 
 plant was known, and says, " others again name it 
 chamoemelon, for the scent or savour that it hath 
 of an apple." Again, the word soder, to join to- 
 gether, when so spelt, does not disclose its etymo- 
 logy, but restored to its ancient spelling so/der, and 
 we see its derivation from the Latin word solido, to 
 make firm. 
 
Chap. V. OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 73 
 
 CHAPTEE V. 
 
 Of the Interchange of Letters in Languages. 
 
 Letters which are called labial and mute, being 
 those that are chiefly pronounced by means of the 
 lips, and which are incapable of pronunciation with- 
 out the aid of a vowel, such as b, p, v, and c, have 
 a constant tendency in the articulation of different 
 languages to become confounded with one another, 
 and even in the same language are often inter- 
 changed one with another. Thus the old Greek 
 word fioiaikzvs, basileus (a king), is by the modern 
 Greeks pronounced " t'asileus," whereas the ancient 
 Greeks wrote the Roman name Fzrgilius as if it 
 had been spelt " J^Vgilius." 
 
 The same change of letter occurs in Spain, which 
 led Scaliger to affirm satirically, that in Gascony 
 bibere (to drink) was the same as vivere (to live), — 
 a statement which was quite true, so far as the pro- 
 nunciation of the word was concerned. We have a 
 familiar instance of the tendency of the letters b and 
 v to interchange, in the name of the city of Sebas- 
 topol, i. e. <js£a.<TTos, sebastos (august), and ttq\is, 
 polls (a city), which we frequently see written " Se- 
 vastopol," and which is so spelt at the exhibition of 
 Mr. Wyld's model in Leicester-square. Another 
 
 E 
 
74 ROOTS AND RAMIFICATIONS Chap. V. 
 
 instance occurs in the Latin word habere (to have), 
 which in the Italian is changed into avere. Again, 
 in the Latin word caballus (a pack-horse), but which 
 in aftertimes was used to signify a war-horse, by 
 the change of the letter b into v, we get the cor- 
 rupted word " cavallus," the origin of our word 
 cavalry and cavalier, and of the French words, 
 chevalier and cheval. From the same source we 
 get our word chivalry, frequently used by our old 
 poets to signify cavalry, thus Milton, in • Paradise 
 Lost,' book i., line 37, says, — 
 
 " Whose waves o'erthrew 
 Busiris and his Memphian chivalry." 
 
 And again, at line 765, — 
 
 " Defy'd the best of Painim chivalry 
 To mortal combat or career with lance." 
 
 And again, in ' Paradise Regained/ book iii., line 
 344,— 
 
 " Such and so numerous was their chivalry." 
 
 In the Roman army a day's journey was about 
 twenty miles, and the army never passed a night 
 without pitching a camp, and fortifying it with a ditch 
 and rampart. The camp, if used only for a night, or 
 two or three nights, was called mansio, from maneo 
 (to remain), and hence comes our word mansion, a 
 house where a family usually remains or resides. 
 
 The rampart before referred to, was composed of 
 the earth dug from the ditch, with sharp stakes 
 
 
Chap. V. OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 75 
 
 fixed into it, and was called vallum, from vallus (a 
 stake) ; and the space between the stakes was called 
 inter vallum, and from first signifying this small 
 space, the word was afterwards used to denominate 
 any space, either of place or time, and hence we get 
 our word interval. By the change of the letter v 
 into b, the word vallum became corrupted into bal- 
 lum, or ballium. In the preface to Grose's ' An- 
 tiquities of England and Wales,' describing the 
 different parts of our ancient castles, he says, " the 
 work next in order was the ditch, &c. : the ditch 
 was sometimes called the ditch delBayle, or of the 
 Ballium; within the ditch were the walls of the 
 Ballium, or outworks. In towns, the appellation 
 was given to a work fenced with palisades, and 
 sometimes masonry covering the suburbs, but in 
 castles, was the space immediately within the outer 
 walls. When there was a double enceinte of walls, 
 the areas next each wall were styled the outer and 
 inner ballia." Matthew of Westminster, a Bene- 
 dictine monk, who wrote a history from the begin- 
 ning of the world to the end of Edward L, and 
 who died in 1380, whilst narrating the siege of 
 Rochester by the Earl of Leicester, in 1265, says, 
 " He occupied the city with the outward ballium, of 
 the castle." In the Paris edition of ' Froissart's 
 Chronicles,' published in 1514, in ch. lix., describ- 
 ing the taking of St. Am and during the siege of 
 Tournay by the Earl of Hainault, he says, " he won 
 
 e 2 
 
76 ROOTS AND RAMIFICATIONS Chap. V. 
 
 at his first coming the bailies, ' conquiret de pre- 
 miere venue ses bailies."' Colonel Jones, in the 
 edition of ' Froissart's Chronicles,' which he pub- 
 lished at Hafod, does not seem to have known 
 what these bailies were, for he translates the pas- 
 sage, " that the barriers were instantly won." 
 In Morant's ' History of Essex,' vol. i., p. 8, 
 speaking of Colchester Castle, he says, " The castle- 
 yard, bailey, and baylywiek, was formerly encom- 
 passed on the south and west sides, by a strong 
 wall," and these words seem to be the translation of 
 the Court Rolls in 37 Hen. VI. He also enume- 
 rates the lands out of which tithes were payable to 
 the chapel in the castle, and amongst these lands 
 we find " the Castell Baylie with the gardens ad- 
 joining next the street." Drake, in his ' History 
 of the City of York,' p. 286, says, " that there was 
 a castle in York, long before the Conqueror's time, 
 I have proved elsewhere, which I take to have been 
 in the place already described, called Old Bayle. 
 Had he known the origin of this word, he might 
 have spoken with greater confidence as to the locality 
 of the old castle. The church of St. Peter, in the 
 Bailey, at Oxford, is so called in consequence of its 
 standing in the area which had formed the outer 
 ballium of Oxford Castle ; and so the Old Bailey, in 
 London, receives its name in reference to its posi- 
 tion with regard to the ancient walls of the City. 
 Johnson, in his ' Dictionary,' says that the word 
 
Chap. V. OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE . 77 
 
 Bailiff is of doubtful etymology ; but it seems to me 
 that this word is derived from the same source, and 
 probably originally signified the officer in charge of 
 a castle. 
 
 In the foregoing cases the tendency to the change 
 of the letters b and v is illustrated, and I will now 
 give a few instances of the interchange of the letters 
 b and^>. 
 
 The Macedonian Greeks wrote the name <&i\i7i7ros, 
 Philippus, as if it had been spelt Bilippus. 
 
 The Latin word for a whale, balcena, is merely a 
 corruption of the Greek word for the same fish, 
 <pa\xiv* 9 phalaina. The Turkish Pasha or Pacha 
 is by us transformed into Bashaw, and our word 
 potatoe is with the Spaniards batata; whilst our 
 word apricot is with the French abricot. 
 
 We have another instance of the change of p into 
 b in our word " bishop," derived from the Greek 
 z7rirsyt.o7ros 9 episcopus, signifying an overseer or in- 
 spector. The word episcopus first became corrupted 
 into piscop by cutting off the letter e ; and the ter- 
 mination, then piscop, changed to biscop and bishop. 
 Though the word is now universally used to signify 
 an ecclesiastical overseer, the word from which it is 
 derived was originally used to denote a temporal 
 governor. Thus, Homer applies the word to 
 Hector, because he had the chief command of the 
 city of Troy ; and Cicero applies the term to him- 
 self, as having charge of the coasts of Campania, 
 
78 ROOTS AND RAMIFICATIONS Chap. V. 
 
 and the Athenians gave the title to those whom they 
 sent as governors into their provinces. 
 
 From the Latin word bursa, derived from the 
 Greek $vqgx, bursa (an ox-hide), came the word 
 bursarius, used by the writers of the middle ages 
 to denote a treasurer, from whence the officers 
 of colleges in England called bursers derive their 
 name. From the same origin comes the word 
 bourse, an exchange where merchants meet to ne- 
 gotiate money transactions. In 1531, Sir Richard 
 Gresham, the King's merchant, and who was Sheriff 
 of London, wrote to Sir Thomas Audley, Lord 
 Privy Seal, requesting him to move the King 
 (Henry VIII.) to direct a letter to be sent to Sir 
 George Monaux, requiring him to sell certain 
 houses in Lombard Street to the Mayor and com- 
 monalty, for the purpose of erecting a burse on the 
 ground of the same for the use of the merchants. 
 Three years afterwards the king sent letters to the 
 city, directing the building of a burse at Leaden- 
 hall; but the Court of Common Council, having 
 voted that the place of meeting should not be 
 removed from Lombard Street, nothing further was 
 then accomplished. However, Sir Thomas Gre- 
 sham (son of Sir Richard) persevered in his father's 
 design, and in 1564 proposed to the corporation to 
 erect a suitable building for the merchants, if the 
 corporation would provide the ground. This was 
 accordingly done ; and before the end of the year 
 
Chap. V. OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 79 
 
 1567, a structure, in general similar to the Ex- 
 change at Antwerp, was covered in. Stowe tells 
 us, that on the 23rd January, 1570-71 : " Queen 
 Elizabeth, attended with her nobilitie, came from 
 her house at the Strand, called Somerset House, 
 and entered the City, by Temple Bar, through 
 Fleete Street, Cheape, and so by the north side of 
 the Burse, to Sir Thomas Gresham's, in Bishop's- 
 gate Streete, where she dined ; after dinner, Her 
 Majestie, returning through Cornhill, entered the 
 Burse on the south side ; and after that she had 
 viewed every part thereof above ground, especially 
 the Pawne, which was richly furnished with all 
 sortes of the finest wares in the City, she caused the 
 same Burse by an herald and a trompet to be pro- 
 claimed the Royall Exchange, and so to be called 
 from thenceforth, and not otherwise." The resort 
 of merchants, however, is still called the Bourse in 
 most continental towns. 
 
 Littleton, in his ' Latin Dictionary,' published in 
 1677, says, "that the first building of this sort, to 
 which the name of burse was given, was at Bruges, 
 in Flanders, which city, whilst under the dominion 
 of the Dukes of Burgundy, was the principal em- 
 porium of the commerce of Europe." The first 
 building, however, which seems to have borne the 
 name, was the Citadel at Carthage, said to have 
 been erected by Dido, who, on coming to Africa, 
 agreed with the inhabitants for the purchase of as 
 
80 ROOTS AND RAMIFICATIONS Chap. V. 
 
 much land as could be encompassed by a bull's 
 hide ; and, having concluded the agreement, she is 
 said to have cut the hide in small thongs, and 
 therewith to have enclosed a considerable territory 
 on which she built a citadel, which she called 
 Bursa, from the Greek word above referred to, sig- 
 nifying an ox-hide. From this word we get our 
 words disburse, re-emburse, &c, and by the change 
 of b into p we get purse, and purser, the officer who 
 on board ship performs the same duties as a burser 
 at a college. 
 
 In our word Haven we have an instance of the 
 change of the letter v into /, and back again from 
 / into v. This bird is in the Danish language 
 called Rami, from whence, by the change of u into 
 /, the Saxons produced their word Reafan, the 
 name of the famous magical Standard of the Danes. 
 Hume, in his ' History of England/ chap. ii. p. 81, 
 speaking of Alfred, says : " He made a sudden 
 sally on the Danes before sunrising, and taking 
 them unprepared, he put them to rout, pursued 
 them with great slaughter, killed Hubba himself, 
 and got possession of the famous Reafen, or en- 
 chanted Standard, in which the Danes put great 
 confidence. It contained the figure of a Raven, 
 which had been inwoven by the three sisters of 
 Hinguar and Hubba, with many magical incanta- 
 tions, and which by its different movements prog- 
 nosticated, as the Danes believed, the good or bad 
 

 Chap. V. OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 81 
 
 success of any enterprise." We learn from Sir 
 John Spelman's ' Life of Alfred,' p. 61, what these 
 movements were, for he there says : " It is pre- 
 tended that being carried in battle, towards good 
 success it would always seem to clap its wings, and 
 make as if it would fly ; but towards the approach 
 of mischief it would hang down and not move." 
 By changing the / in this Reafan back into v we 
 get our word Haven, and its derivative ravenous. 
 The Germans call the raven Der Habe, changing the 
 v into b. 
 
 Our word fascinate is an instance of a double 
 change, first from p to b, and then from b to /. 
 This word springs from the Greek fiuaxoiivaj, bas- 
 kaino (to bewitch), a corruption of (Qoug-hxwco, phais- 
 kaino, from (pocos, phaos (the eye), and x.aivu f kaino 
 (to kill) ; * thus, fascinate means to kill with the eye, 
 and is appropriately used with reference to the feline 
 tribe, and serpents, who bewitch their victims by the 
 power of the eye. We might adduce many words 
 to show that the letters v and / are interchangeable, 
 but a few will suffice. The word Vetch, from the 
 Latin word vicia, was in olden time written fitch, 
 instances of which spelling occur at Isaiah xxviii. 
 25 and 27 : " When he hath made plain the face 
 thereof, doth he not cast abroad the fitches? for 
 the fitches are not threshed with a threshing in- 
 
 * See Parkhurst's Lexicon by Rose, and the authorities 
 there quoted. 
 
 E 3 
 
82 ROOTS AND RAMIFICATIONS Chap. V. 
 
 strument, &c, but the fitches are beaten out with a 
 staff." 
 
 And so, again, our word fan comes from the 
 Latin vannus, from whence also comes fane (a wea- 
 thercock). Fane (a temple or church), however, we 
 get from the Latin word fanum, and profane is 
 from pro, for proeul (far from), and fanum (the 
 church). So, again, vixen was anciently fixen, and 
 previously foxen. 
 
 In many French words, derived from the Latin, 
 the letter p is changed to v. Thus, from the before 
 mentioned Latin word episcopus, the French, by such 
 a change of letter, derive their word for a bishop, 
 eveque. Numerous instances of a similar change of 
 these letters in French words derived from Latin 
 might be adduced, but we will content ourselves 
 with two more examples. 
 
 The Latin word pauper is adopted by us without 
 change, but in the French language it becomes 
 pauvre. Again, the Latin name for the fourth 
 month, Aprilis, becomes April with us, but with the 
 French, Avril. 
 
 It does not strike us at first sight that this word 
 April and our word overture have the same origin, 
 and originally had the same meaning. The name 
 Aprilis was given by the Romans to the month from 
 their word aperire (to open), because in that month 
 the buds and vegetation began to open. So over- 
 ture, which now signifies something offered for con- 
 
Chap. V. OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 83 
 
 sideration, originally signified a hole or opening. 
 In Holland's Pliny, book viii. ch. xxxviii., speaking of 
 the squirrels, we find it stated: "The squirrels also 
 foresee a tempest coming, and where the wind will 
 blow ; for look in what corner the wind is like to 
 stand, on that side they stop up the mouth of their 
 holes, and make an overture on the other side 
 against it ;" and again, in book xvi. ch. xii., treat- 
 ing of the method of obtaining rosin from trees, he 
 says, " but the nearer the overture, or hole, is made 
 to the earth, the better is the rosin that issue th forth." 
 To make an overture, then, was to make an opening ; 
 and thus one who commences a negotiation, makes 
 an opening to the discussion, and so is said to make 
 overtures. In like manner the overture to a concert 
 is the music played at the opening of the entertain- 
 ment. Now, as to the immediate derivation of the 
 word, we get it from the French ouverture (an open- 
 ing), and they from the Latin aperire (to open), by 
 the change of the letter p into v. In its original 
 signification the word was equivalent to our word 
 aperture, which we get direct from the same Latin 
 word aperire, to open, without a change of letter. 
 
 We find the letter c in the Latin language chang- 
 ing into g in the French ; thus from the Latin word 
 eithara (a harp), derived by them from the Greek 
 x*9aga, hithara, the French get their word guitare, 
 from which we get our word guitar. 
 
 Again, from the Latin word macer (thin or poor 
 
84 ROOTS AND RAMIFICATIONS Chap. V. 
 
 in flesh) the French obtain their word maigre, from 
 whence comes our word meager; but our word 
 macerate (to make lean) comes to us direct from the 
 same Latin word, without the change of letter, and 
 so also our word emaciate. 
 
 Again, from the Latin word acer (sharp), the 
 French, by a similar change of letter, obtain their 
 word aigre, from which we take our word eager, 
 which, although now signifying ardent or vehement, 
 formerly signified sharp or sour, in which sense it is 
 frequently used by Shakspeare. Thus in the colloquy 
 between Hamlet, Horatio, and Marcellus, ' Hamlet,' 
 Act i. scene 4, 
 
 Hamlet (says) " The air bites shrewdly — Is it very cold ? 
 Horatio. It is a nipping and an eager air." 
 
 Again, in the Third Part of Henry VI., Act ii. 
 scene 6, we find the Duke of York's son, George, 
 saying — 
 
 " If so thou thinks't, vex him with 
 Eager words." 
 
 Again, Shakspeare, in his 108th sonnet, says — 
 
 " Like as to make our appetites more keen 
 With eager compounds we our palates urge." 
 
 Dr. Cole concludes his second letter to Bishop 
 Jewel, dated 24th March, 1560, with these words ; 
 " And so I trust you see cause to forgive me, if in 
 any part of my writing I seem over eager." We 
 still retain the original meaning of this word in our 
 
Chap. V. OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 85 
 
 word vinegar, derived from the French vinaigre, 
 which the French obtain from the Latin words vinum 
 (wine) and acer (sharp). Our words acrid and 
 acerbity we derive direct from the Latin word acer, 
 and in these words no change of the letter c into g 
 takes place. 
 
 Again, we find the letter c in the Latin language 
 turning into s in the French. Thus, from the Latin 
 placer e (to delight) the French get plaisir, and we 
 get pleasure. From licere (to be free), the French 
 get loisir, and we, leisure ; and from the Latin word 
 placare (to subdue), the French get appaiser, from 
 whence we get appease, whereas we derive our words 
 placid, licence, and placable, direct from the same 
 three Latin words, and no change of the letter c into 
 s takes place. 
 
 From the Latin word spuma (froth), we obtain 
 two words, the one spume, direct from it, without any 
 change ; the other scum, indirectly through the 
 French, who obtain their word ecume from the same 
 original. 
 
 The letter y, g, in the Greek language changes 
 frequently into k in our language ; thus our word 
 know is derived from the Greek word ywu oku, ginosco, 
 which comes from the obsolete Greek word yvoo/, 
 gnow ; so again our word knee is derived from the 
 Greek word yovy, gonu, from whence the Latin word 
 genu comes, signifying the same part of the body ; 
 and from whence we get our word genuflection, and 
 
86 ROOTS AND RAMIFICATIONS Chap. V. 
 
 all these words have their origin in an Hebrew word 
 signifying to bend down. The letter y, g, in the 
 Greek language sometimes changes into c in our 
 language, and also in the French. Thus, from the 
 Greek word ycovia, gonia, derived from the same 
 original as the words just mentioned, we get our 
 word corner, signifying that part of a building or 
 other article which is bent ; also our word coigne and 
 the French word coin, signifying a corner : but in 
 describing a building having many angles or corners, 
 we retain the Greek spelling and pronunciation thus, 
 a pentagon, a hexagon, &c. The reverse change of 
 the letter c into g takes place in the Italian word 
 gaggia (a gaol), derived from the Latin cavea (a 
 cage for wild beasts), from whence the French get 
 geole, and we gaol or jail. Among the Romans the 
 cavece were iron cages, wherein wild beasts were kept 
 ready to be let out for sport in the amphitheatre ; 
 but in England we adopted these cages for the con- 
 finement of prisoners, and we read in Stowe that in 
 the year 1401 the authorities in London caused a 
 strong timber prison to be erected for disorderly 
 persons, which was called the cage, which, being 
 totally decayed in 1614, was pulled down, and a 
 new one erected on an improved plan, having a room 
 for a sick person. We also find that Sir William 
 Capell, Lord Mayor of London in the year 1503, 
 caused cages to be set up in every ward of the city 
 for the punishment of vagabonds, and in the poems 
 
Chap. V. OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 87 
 
 of Taylor, the Water Poet, who was born in 1580, 
 and died in 1654, we find the following passage : — 
 
 " In London, and within a mile I ween, 
 There are of jails and prisons full eighteen, 
 And sixty whipping posts, and stocks, and cages." 
 
 We find the vowels e and u interchanging in 
 different languages; thus, from the Greek word 
 sX*or, elkos, from sXxm, elko (to draw), the Latins 
 get their word ulcus, from which we get our word 
 ulcer ; so from the Latin word ulmus we get the 
 word elm. 
 
 Again, we find the vowel i changing into e ; thus 
 from the Latin piper we get pepper ; from the Latin 
 tinea, tench, and from pica, pecker ; and again we 
 find the vowel e changing into a; and from the 
 Latin Berberis we get Barhary : from the Greek 
 /jwjX« v>I > mechane, the Latins had machina, and we 
 machine ; and from the Latin perdix we get part- 
 ridge. 
 
 It is not at first sight very apparent that our word 
 cookery is derived from the Greek tt&titw, pepto (to 
 boil). From this word we first get ttsttcov, pepon 
 (boiled). The Greek letter p frequently changes 
 into g in the Latin, as instanced in the Latin words 
 equus (a horse), derived from the Greek ittkos, ippos 
 and linquo (to leave), from the Greek Xeittco, leipo ; 
 and in the Latin language the letter q interchanges 
 with c, as in the instances quum {when), and quur 
 (why), which change into cum and cur. By the 
 
88 ROOTS AND RAMIFICATIONS Chap. V. 
 
 union of these changes the Greek word pepto in the 
 Latin becomes coquo, from which we get our word 
 cookery. The word dyspepsia (difficulty of digestion) 
 does not come to us through the Latin language, but 
 direct from the Greek, and there is no change of 
 letter. Dyspepsia literally signifies the act of cook- 
 ing with difficulty, from the Greek ^us, dus (with 
 difficulty), and ttsttto, pepto (to cook). When Italian 
 or French words are derived from the Latin, the 
 letter c disappears before t, as dictus (said), becomes 
 ditto in the Italian, and dit in the French ; so eoetus 
 (cooked) becomes in the Italian cotto (whence terra 
 eotta, baked earth), and in French, cuit. From 
 this French word cuit, and the Latin word bis 
 (twice), we have manufactured the word biscuit, sig- 
 nifying twice baked. In the first making of biscuits 
 it was probably necessary to bake them twice, to 
 deprive them completely of moisture ; but though 
 this process has been discontinued, and the object 
 obtained by other means, the name has been con- 
 tinued. It is also used at the potteries to denote 
 porcelain destined to receive a vitreous coating, and 
 which therefore requires to be twice subjected to the 
 action of heat. The glaze used to form this vitreous 
 coating is a liquid ; and if it were put on before the 
 vessel were set by semi-baking, the clay would ab- 
 sorb the water from the glaze, and the form of the 
 vessel would be altered. One baking, therefore, is 
 necessary to fix the shape of the vessel, and the 
 
Chap. V. OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 89 
 
 second to vitrify the glaze. The term biscuit is, 
 however, applied to signify the article after the first 
 baking, and before the glaze is applied, and is not 
 therefore a well-selected term. 
 
 From the same Latin word coquo (to cook, digest, 
 or ripen), and the prefix prce (before or early), the 
 Romans obtained the name precoqua, given by them 
 to the fruit which we, by adding another prsefix, a, 
 call apricot, signifying a fruit which ripens early. 
 The old English name of this fruit was a precoJce, 
 which afterwards became apricoek, and then apricot. 
 
 Pliny, in his ' Natural History,' book xv. ch. xii., 
 speaking of the peach, says, " This fruit ordinarily 
 waxeth ripe after the fall of the leafe, or autumn, 
 but abricots are ready to be eaten in summer." 
 
 The same word prcecoqua is the parent of our 
 word precocious (ripe before the time). From the 
 same word coquo (to cook) we also get our words 
 to decoct, decoction, and concoct, and also the name 
 of that useful servant, the cooJc. We may finish this 
 article on cookery and this chapter by mentioning 
 the fate of one Richard Roose, of Rochester, cook, 
 concerning whom we find an act of Parliament, in 
 the 22nd year of the reign of Henry VIII. , 1531, 
 ordering him and all other persons guilty of poison- 
 ing to be boiled to death ; this Richard Roose 
 having poisoned some porridge in the Bishop of 
 Rochester's kitchen, whereby seventeen persons were 
 poisoned, two of whom died ; this sentence was car- 
 
90 ROOTS AND RAMIFICATIONS Chap. V. 
 
 ried into execution in Smithfield, as we learn from 
 Rapin (vol. i. p. 792). Lord Coke, in his third 
 ' Institute,' says, that eleven years afterwards, Mar- 
 garet Davy, a young woman, was attainted of high 
 treason for poisoning her mistress, and was,, with 
 some others, boiled to death in Smithfield, on the 
 17th of March, 1542. He adds, that the Act of 
 Parliament was too severe to last long, and there- 
 fore was repealed by the statutes of 1 Edward VI. 
 ch. 12, and 1 Mary, ch. 1. This statute probably 
 gave rise to the proverb " getting oneself into hot 
 water," as suggested by a writer in i Notes and 
 Queries/ 
 
Chap. VI. OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 91 
 
 CHAPTEE VI. 
 
 Of the Interchange of Letters rx Languages — 
 continued. 
 
 Words commencing with h will generally be found 
 to be of Greek origin, this letter being used nei- 
 ther by the Romans nor the French, excepting in a 
 few terms of art and proper names, derived from 
 other languages. The letter Jc is interchangeable 
 with c, and thus many of our words commencing 
 with the letter e will also be found to be traceable 
 to the Greek language. Thus, kennel is the cor- 
 ruption of the French chenil, the French word being 
 the corruption of the Italian canile, from the Latin 
 cams (a dog), formed from the Greek xvcov, kuon, 
 genitive xvvo?, hunos (of a dog). We should hardly 
 imagine that the name of the Canary bird is trace- 
 able to the same origin, but such is the case. The 
 bird immediately derives its name from the Canary 
 Islands, which are the most frequented haunts of 
 the species ; and we learn from Pliny, following the 
 description of Juba, the Mauritanian Prince, that 
 one of these islands was called Canaria, from the 
 number of dogs of a large size which were found 
 there. A dance common in these islands was in- 
 troduced into this country, under the name of the 
 " Canary dance," to which Shakspeare alludes in 
 
92 ROOTS AND RAMIFICATIONS Chap. VI. 
 
 ' Love's Labour Lost,' Act iii. sc. 1, in the following 
 passage : — 
 
 " Moth. — Master, will you. win 
 Your love with a French brawl ? 
 
 " Armado. — How meanest thou, brawling in French ? 
 
 " Moth. — No, my complete Master ; but to gig off a tune 
 at the tongue's end, ' canary ' to it with your feet, humour 
 it with turning up your eyelids." 
 
 So, also, the wine made in these islands was called 
 Canary, to which Shakspeare also alludes — 
 
 " I will to my honest knight Falstaff, 
 And drink canary with him." 
 
 In like manner, kindle, the corruption of candle, is 
 from the Latin word candeo (to burn), derived from 
 the Greek xouco, kaio (to burn). So canal and 
 channel (anciently amongst us written kennelT), 
 coming direct to us from the Latin canalis (a 
 gutter), are derived from the Greek %a.vco, chano (to 
 gape), which is also the origin of our word chaos. 
 Again, carriage is, I think, incorrectly derived by 
 our etymologists from car, and that from a Saxon 
 word cyranto, turn. It seems to me to come from 
 the Latin carruca (a chariot), the origin of which 
 is clearly the Greek word napouxiov, carouchion (a 
 coach). 
 
 Stowe tells us, " that coaches were not known in 
 this island of old time, but chariots, or whirlicotes, 
 then so called, and then only used of Princes, or men 
 of great estates, such as had their footmen about 
 
Chap. VI. OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 93 
 
 them. And for example to note, I read that Ri- 
 chard II., being threatened by the rebels of Kent, 
 rode from the Tower of London to the Mile's End, 
 and with him his mother (because she was sick and 
 weak) in a whirlicote, divers Lords attending on 
 horseback. But in the year next following, the 
 said Richard, who took to wife Anne, daughter to 
 the King of Bohemia, that first brought hither the 
 riding upon side saddles ; and so was the riding 
 in those whirlicotes and chariots forsaken, except at 
 coronations, and such like spectacles ; but now, of 
 late years, the use of coaches, brought out of Ger- 
 many, is taken up and made so common, as there is 
 neither distinction of time, nor difference of persons 
 observed ; for the world runs on wheels, with many 
 whose parents were glad to go on foot." He adds 
 that " the number of coaches in London must needs 
 be dangerous," and that, "although there were good 
 laws and customs in the City for their government, 
 such as, that the forehorse of every carriage should 
 be led by the hand, &c, yet these good orders are 
 not observed." Coaches seem to have been in- 
 troduced into England about the year 1570, but 
 were used only by a few distinguished individuals. 
 Hume, in his ' History of England,' says, " About 
 1580 the use of coaches was introduced by the Earl 
 of Arundel ; before that time the Queen, on public 
 occasions, rode behind her Chamberlain." In 1625, 
 however, they were let for hire ; and in 1689 a 
 
94 ROOTS AND RAMIFICATIONS Chap. VI. 
 
 Company of Coachmakers was incorporated in Lon- 
 don, and bore for their arms a coach, which is so 
 similar to the family-coach of the present day, as to 
 convince us that little change in the form has taken 
 place since that time. But though coaches, that 
 is, covered vehicles for travelling, are but of com- 
 paratively modern use in England, wheeled car- 
 riages are of very great antiquity. About 1500 
 years before the Christian era they were in common 
 use among the Egyptians ; and carriages were also 
 well known to the Greeks and Romans, and seem to 
 have been used not only for purposes of war, but 
 also for domestic purposes. Homer describes the 
 chariot of Juno, with wheels having eight brazen 
 spokes and tires of brass, and the seat fastened 
 with cords of gold and silver. And again, in the 
 24th book of the Iliad, line 266, when describing 
 Priam's visit to the Grecian camp to ransom the 
 body of Hector, he says that he had k<z\yiv tt%ojto- 
 Trxya. a,[Aoi%ait, which is well translated in a treatise 
 on ' Draught,' published by the Society for the Dif- 
 fusion of Useful Knowledge, by the words " a beau- 
 tiful, new-built travelling carriage." 
 
 The Greek word yXiiaqc, clima, from ytkivoo (to 
 incline or decline), technically signified spaces upon 
 the surface of the globe, measured from the equator 
 to the polar circles, in each of which spaces the 
 longest day is half an hour longer than in that 
 nearer to the equator — these spaces were called kkt~ 
 
Chap. VI. OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 95 
 
 (axtoi, climata, because in numbering them they de- 
 clined from the equator, and inclined towards the 
 pole. From this technical signification the word 
 clima was by the Romans applied to denote parts of 
 country, without regard to the length of the days ; 
 and from clima we get our word climate, which with 
 us has lost both its technical and subsequent mean- 
 ing, and now popularly denotes the temperature of 
 the atmosphere in regard to heat and moisture in 
 any district or country. From the same Greek word 
 the Romans obtained their word climax (a ladder, or 
 ascending by degrees), and hence we have obtained 
 our word climax, a figure in rhetoric, by which the 
 sentence rises gradually as if ascending a ladder. 
 
 Our word crystal, again, is of Greek descent, and 
 literally signifies ice, being derived from the Greek 
 xpvos, cruos (cold), and o-tsKKw, stello (to contract). 
 The word was applied to designate the rock-crystals, 
 which the ancients, according to Pliny, believed to 
 be water congealed by the action of cold. He says 
 in book xxxvii. ch. ii. : " As touching crystal, it pro- 
 ceeded of cold, for a liquor it is, congealed by 
 extreme frost in the manner of ice ; and for proof 
 hereof you shall find crystal in no place else but 
 where the winter snow is frozen hard ; so, as we 
 may boldly say, it is very ice and nothing else, 
 whereupon the Greeks have given it the right name, 
 crystallus" (ice). At Job vi. 16, the Greek word 
 is used and translated in our Bibles by the word 
 
96 BOOTS AND RAMIFICATIONS Chap. VI. 
 
 ice, and so again in the 148th Psalm, v. 8, where it 
 is translated hail. From the Greek word the Ro- 
 mans obtained their word crystallum, whence we have 
 got crystal. So our word cemetery, and the French 
 word cimetiere, derived from the Latin coemeterium, 
 springs from the Greek xoi/jwitoq^iov, koimeterion (a 
 dormitory), from xoj/xao;, Jcoimao (to lie down to 
 sleep) ; and cemetery is thus a beautiful and ex- 
 pressive word on the lips of Christians, who, being 
 assured of a resurrection, use the words falling 
 asleep, as synonymous with dying. The Saxons 
 had a somewhat similar expression for a sepulchre, 
 which they called a slapgrave, a sleepgrave. It is 
 somewhat curious to note that the heathens univer- 
 sally allowed the natural resemblance between death 
 and sleep ; but, knowing nothing of the resurrection, 
 never described death as sleep, without prefixing an 
 epithet of endurance, precluding the idea of waking. 
 Thus Homer, describing the death of Iphidamus, 
 when slain by Agamemnon, says " he slept a brazen 
 sleep." Virgil in the 10th book of the ' ^Eneid,' 
 describing a hero's death, says, — ■ 
 
 " An iron sleep o'erwhelrns his swimming sight, 
 And his eyes close in everlasting night." 
 
 Catullus, contrasting the setting and rising of the 
 
 sun with death, says — 
 
 " The sun that sets with light refined 
 Keturns to gild the plains ; 
 When man's short day hath once declined 
 Perpetual night remains." 
 
 
Chap. VI. OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 97 
 
 Moschus, a Greek poet, after observing that some 
 plants died, and revived in a succeeding year, pro- 
 ceeds to say — 
 
 " But we, or great, or wise, or brave, 
 Once dead, and silent in the grave, 
 Senseless remain ; one rest we keep, 
 One long, eternal, imawaken'd sleep." 
 
 Horace, in his Ode to Virgil, lamenting the early 
 death of his friend Quintilianus, complains — 
 
 " That an eternal sleep had seized him." 
 
 From the fragments of the Twelve Tables which 
 have come down to us we learn that these laws pro- 
 hibited the burying of the Roman dead in cities, 
 The Romans consequently used cemeteries, which 
 were without the walls of the towns ; and when the 
 Christian religion was established under the Em- 
 peror Constantine, the Christians selected these 
 cemeteries as sites for churches, because the bodies 
 of martyrs had been buried there. Cuthbert, arch- 
 bishop of Canterbury, was the first (as we learn 
 from Dugdale's ' Monasticon,' vol. i. p. 2) who ob- 
 tained from the Pope, about the year 742, the 
 liberty of having burial-places within cities in Eng- 
 land — a custom which, though condemned by all, it 
 has taken upwards of 1100 years to change. When 
 the practice of burning the dead was introduced 
 amongst the Romans, the ashes were collected in 
 sepulchral urns, which were placed in small arched 
 holes in their villas. The place appropriated to 
 
 F 
 
98 ROOTS AND RAMIFICATIONS Chap. VI. 
 
 receive these urns was called columbarium, from 
 columba, a dove, from the fancied resemblance which 
 these arched holes bore to the recesses in a dove- 
 cote. The small room V. in the British Museum 
 (Townley Marbles) represents a columbarium on a 
 large scale. 
 
 Mr. Trench, in his book ' On the Study of Words,' 
 has given us the derivation of the word church, from 
 the Greek nvqios, Jcurios, The Lord, but he has 
 referred only to one of the senses in which we use 
 the word church, viz. as a building devoted to holy 
 purposes ; but as the word is frequently used in 
 another sense, when we speak of the church, it will 
 be well to consider its proper meaning when so 
 used. The word is thus used Acts ii. 47, " The 
 Lord added daily to the church ;" St. Matthew xvi. 
 18, " Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will 
 build my church;" St. Matthew xviii. 17, "And if 
 he shall neglect to hear them, tell it unto the 
 church;" and in many other places in the New 
 Testament. Now in all these passages above quoted, 
 and I believe in every passage where the word 
 church is found in the English translation of the 
 New Testament, the word sx-xXwaioc, eJcMesia, is 
 found in the Greek version, which word is carried 
 without change into the Latin language, and also 
 into the English, for in the Latin we find ecclesia, 
 and in the English ecclesiastic. To understand 
 therefore the proper meaning of this word the church, 
 
Chap. VI. OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 99 
 
 we must trace out the meaning of the Greek word 
 sxx"ky<jioc, eJcMesia. The word comes from ex, ek, 
 out, and xxXsco, Jcaleo, to call, and means therefore 
 those who are called out, that is, called out of the 
 world to be the servants of God, or, as we find it in 
 St. John xv. 19, "I have chosen you out of the 
 world." The whole community of Christians there- 
 fore constitute the church; but though we may be 
 members of the community professing Christianity, 
 it does not follow that we are members of Christ, 
 as we learn from the parable of the tares, and from 
 the comparison with vessels of gold and silver, of 
 wood and earth, and of vessels of honour and dis- 
 honour, mentioned by St. Paul, 2 Tim. ii. 20. To 
 confine the meaning of this word, as is too often 
 done, to the officers of the church, or to the clergy, 
 in contradistinction to the laity, is an improper and 
 unwarranted use of the word. It is not only an 
 attempt to appropriate to a class the rights which 
 belong to the whole community of Christians, and 
 which all who value belonging to that community 
 will resist ; but it is the human creation of an inter- 
 vening power between the soul and its Maker, to 
 which homage is required to be paid which is due 
 to Deity alone. As the church therefore is the 
 community evoked or called out of the world, so the 
 churches of Ephesus, Sardis, &c, consisted of the 
 whole community of Christians at those places : and 
 the Protestant Church of England is the whole body 
 
 F 2 
 
100 ROOTS AND RAMIFICATIONS Chap. VI. 
 
 of Protestant Christians in England ; and the Ro- 
 man Catholic Church in England is the whole body 
 of Roman Catholics in England. 
 
 The word chancel, used by us to designate that 
 part of the church in which the communion-table is 
 placed, obtains its name from the Latin word can- 
 celli, derived from the Greek xiykkir, kigklis, from 
 xXetw, kleio, to shut as a door. The cancelli were 
 cross bars anciently used to separate this part of 
 the church from the nave, by lattice -work, as it now 
 is by railings. The word chancel is in many churches 
 applied to chantries or chapels within the church, 
 set apart for particular families, which are so called 
 from their being separated from the body of the 
 church by lattice- work. 
 
 From the same Latin word we obtain our word 
 to cancel, meaning to cross out or deface. So the 
 word chancellor, in Latin cancellarius, in its primary 
 meaning denoted one who was placed at the lattice- 
 work of a window or doorway to introduce visitors, 
 and was literally no more than a doorkeeper. We 
 are told by Flavius Vopiscus that the Roman Em- 
 peror Carinus, who succeeded jointly with his bro- 
 ther to the throne a.d. 284, made one of his can- 
 cellarii prefect of the city, which caused great 
 dissatisfaction. Lord Coke, in his fourth Institute, 
 says that the chancellor was a notary or scribe 
 under the Emperor, and derived his name from 
 sitting within the cancelli, to avoid being crowded 
 
Chap. VI. OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 101 
 
 by the people ; and Judge Blackstone says that the 
 office passed from the Roman Empire to the Roman 
 Church, ever emulous of imperial state, and that 
 hence every bishop has to this day his chancellor ; 
 and when the modern kingdoms of Europe were 
 established upon the ruins of the Empire, almost 
 every state preserved its chancellor, with different 
 jurisdictions and dignities. Polydore Virgil, in his 
 1 History of England,' book ix., states that the office 
 was introduced into this country at the Conquest; 
 but Lord Coke, in his fourth Institute, shows that 
 this was an error, and enumerates several Saxon 
 kings who had chancellors. 
 
 The words critick, criterion, critical, and crisis, 
 though having different significations with us, all 
 
 © © © i 
 
 come from the Latin, crisis (judgment), formed 
 from the Greek word xpivco, crino (to judgej. A 
 critic should be an impartial judge ; criterion is the 
 standard whereby anything is judged ; a critical 
 point is a point requiring nice judgment ; and crisis^ 
 though, in its original meaning, signifying judg- 
 ment, and afterwards, the anxious moment when 
 judgment was given, is now more generally used to 
 denote the period of conflict between nature and 
 disease, or some other important period requiring 
 judicious treatment, or the point of time at which 
 decision becomes necessary. 
 
 The word discriminate, and its compounds, are 
 from the same origin, signifying to separate or dis- 
 
102 ROOTS AND RAMIFICATIONS Chap. VI. 
 
 tinguish by the exercise of sound judgment ; and 
 crime also springs from the same source, signifying 
 an act committed in violation of the law, for which 
 the offender is subject to be judged. 
 
 The word hypocrite unquestionably comes from 
 the same origin, being compounded of the two 
 Greek words, viro, under, and xgtvw, Jcrino (to judge). 
 Suetonius uses the word hypocrite, to denote one 
 who stood by an actor in a play to prompt him, and 
 the word may have signified one who passed judg- 
 ment on a play. I cannot say that it ever had this 
 signification, since I can find no authority for say- 
 ing so ; but however this may be, the word came to 
 signify the actor himself, and Demosthenes uses the 
 word uTroKMpiToci, hupoJcekritai, when he says that 
 " Aristodemus often acted, or personated the Anti- 
 gone of Sophocles," and other Greek writers use 
 the word in the same sense. 
 
 From thus denoting an actor, the word came to 
 signify a dissembler, or one who acted a feigned 
 character, and so now is generally applied to those 
 who assume the appearance of virtue or religion 
 without in reality having anything of either. 
 
 From the same Greek word koivco, Jcrino (to 
 judge), and the Greek prefix W, dia, is derived our 
 word to discern, and the Greek word is so trans- 
 lated in our Bibles. St. Matt. xvi. 3, "Oh ye 
 hypocrites, ye can discern the face of the sky," &c. ; 
 the word, however, comes to us direct from the Latin 
 
Chap. VI. OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 103 
 
 cernere, anciently pronounced kernere. The same 
 Greek word, signifying to discern, again occurs 
 
 1 Cor. xi. 29, and is similarly translated, — " For 
 he that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and 
 drinketh damnation to himself, not discerning the 
 Lord's body." The word also, in this passage trans- 
 lated damnation, is in the Greek xpifAu, Jcrima, from 
 the same source, x§»v&/, Jcrino (to judge). I find this 
 word xpifxa, Jcrima, at sixteen other places in the New 
 Testament, — viz. Acts xxiv. 25 ; Heb. vi. 2 ; Rom. 
 ii. 2, 3 ; Matt. vii. 2 ; Gal. v. 10 ; 1 Peter iv. 17 ; 
 
 2 Peter ii. 3 ; 1 Tim. iii. 6 ; Luke xxiii. 40 ; Luke 
 xxiv. 20 ; Jas. iii. 1 ; Matt, xxiii. 14 ; Mark xii. 40 : 
 Luke xx. 47 ; Rom. iii. 8 ; and Rom. xiii. 2. 
 
 In the first seven of these passages the word is 
 in our Bible translated judgment, in the four next 
 condemnation, and in the five last, damnation. The 
 three first of these five last are the same, being 
 simply different records of the same passage by 
 three of the Evangelists, but each of them contains 
 the adjective greater preceding the word damnation. 
 " The same shall receive the greater damnation" It 
 is obvious therefore from this circumstance, that the 
 word damnation in the sense in which it is used in 
 these three passages, does not mean the sentence 
 of eternal punishment, or exclusion from Divine 
 mercy ; for if so, the adjective greater would have 
 no meaning. It is plain that the word is simply 
 equivalent to condemnation or judgment. So in the 
 
104 ROOTS AND RAMIFICATIONS Chap. VI. 
 
 next of the five passages referred to, where the word 
 is in our translation rendered damnation, that at 
 Romans iii. 8, " whose damnation is just ;" and in 
 the remaining passage, Rom. xiii. 2, " and they 
 that resist shall receive to themselves damnation" — 
 it is quite impossible to suppose that St. Paul 
 meant to say, that those who resisted the civil au- 
 thority should suffer eternal punishment, and be 
 excluded from Divine mercy ; it is clear that his 
 meaning was, that resistance to authority was an 
 offence for which the offender would be called to 
 account or be judged, — so it is equally clear that 
 the word damnation used at 1 Cor. xi. 29, " eateth 
 and drinketh damnation to himself," does not mean 
 eternal punishment; and as this is too often sup- 
 posed, it is much to be regretted that the Greek 
 word should have received so harsh a translation, 
 unless indeed, as I suspect was the case, the word 
 was then in common use, and synonymous with 
 condemnation. The Apostle, rebuking those who 
 made no discrimination between the religious ordi- 
 nance of which he was speaking and a common 
 meal, enforces the duty of previous self-examination, 
 adding, that the neglect of this duty would call 
 down the righteous judgment of the Almighty. 
 That this is the correct sense of the word here 
 used, is confirmed by reference to a passage where 
 eternal punishment is clearly spoken of. At 2 Pet. 
 ii. 3, the Apostle, speaking of teachers of false doc- 
 
Chap. VI. OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 105 
 
 trines, who denied our Saviour, adds, " whose judg- 
 ment now of a long time lingereth not, and their 
 damnation slumbereth not." Now in this passage 
 we fortunately meet with both the words judgment 
 and damnation, and in the Greek we find very 
 different words used to express them, the former 
 word being expressed by the word xpt^a, Jcrima, of 
 which I have been treating, whereas the damnation, 
 or eternal punishment to follow the judgment and 
 condemnation, is represented by a very different 
 word, the word xttcoXsix, apoleia (destruction), from 
 whence is derived the name Apollyon, given Rev. 
 ix. 11, to the angel of the bottomless pit. 
 
 We must bear in mind also, that the Sacrament 
 of the Lord's Supper was not solemnised among the 
 early Christians in the same manner as with us, but 
 was administered at the ay aim, agape, or love- 
 feasts, in use among the primitive Christians, called 
 by St. Jude 12, in our translation, " feasts of cha- 
 rity," and referred to in Pliny's celebrated Epistle 
 to Trajan, written about the year 112, wherein, 
 speaking of the Christians in Bithynia, of which 
 place he was governor, he says, " that they were 
 wont on a stated day to meet together before it was 
 light, and to sing a hymn to Christ as a God, alter- 
 nately, and to oblige themselves by a sacrament or 
 oath not to do anything that was ill, after which it 
 was their custom to depart, and to meet again at a 
 common but innocent meal." St. Chrysostom, who 
 
 F 3 
 
106 ROOTS AND RAMIFICATIONS Chap. VI. 
 
 was born at Antioch about the year 344, gives the 
 following account of these feasts, which he derives 
 from the Apostolical practice : he says, " The first 
 Christians had all things in common, as we read in 
 the Acts of the Apostles, but when that equality of 
 possessions ceased (as it did even in the Apostles' 
 time), the love -feast was substituted in the room of 
 it. Upon certain days, after partaking of the Lord's 
 Supper, they met at a common feast, the rich bring- 
 ing provisions, and the poor, who had nothing, being 
 invited." These feasts were always attended with 
 receiving the Holy Sacrament ; but a difference of 
 opinion exists as to the time of receiving, whether 
 before or after the feast, and probably the practice 
 varied at different places. During the first three 
 centuries these feasts were held in the churches, or 
 in the same building in which the Christians assem- 
 bled for divine worship. In process of time they 
 were much abused, and the abuses committed at 
 them became so notorious, that the holding of them 
 (in churches at least) was solemnly condemned at 
 the Council of Carthage in the year 307, and again 
 at the Council of Laodicea, in the year 364. In 
 imitation of these " Love-feasts" our " wakes" were 
 instituted. They were established in England by 
 Pope Gregory the Great, who was elected Pope in 
 590, and died 604. In an epistle to Melitus, the 
 British abbot, he gave instructions to be delivered 
 to Austin, whom he sent to Britain to convert the 
 
Chap. VI. OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 107 
 
 Saxons ; and in these instructions, he directs that 
 the solemn anniversary of dedication should be cele- 
 brated in those churches which were made out of 
 heathen temples, with religious feasts kept in sheds 
 or arbories, made up with branches, or boughs of 
 trees round the church ; and in the laws of Edward 
 the Confessor, peace and protection are given to all 
 parishes during the solemnity of the day of dedica- 
 tion, and the same privilege to all who were going 
 or returning from such solemnity. In the Saxon 
 times, the Church method of reckoning the day was 
 from sunset to sunset, so that Sunday commenced 
 from the sunset of Saturday, and any festival or 
 fast-day commenced from the sunset of the pre- 
 ceding day. The evening, therefore, was the com- 
 mencement of the sacred day, when the people were 
 accustomed to repair to the church and join in the 
 religious exercises. We preserve evidence of this 
 mode of reckoning time, in our words sennight, the 
 seventh night — twelfth night — and fortnight, the 
 fourteenth night. 
 
 The ivake (or customary festival of the dedication 
 of churches) signified therefore the same as vigil 
 or eve. Dugdale, in his ' Antiquities of Warwick- 
 shire,' quoting an old manuscript legend, says, " And 
 ye shall understand and know how the evyns were 
 first found in old time. In the beginning of holi 
 chirche it was so, that the pepull came to the 
 chirche with candellys brennynge, and would wake 
 
108 ROOTS AND RAMIFICATIONS Chap. VI. 
 
 and coome with light towards night to the chirche 
 in their devotions ;" and after enumerating the bad 
 practices that ensued among the people in conse- 
 quence, he adds, " wherefore holy faders ordained 
 the pepull to leve that waking and to fast the evyn. 
 But it is called vigilia^ that is, waking, in English, 
 and it is called the evyn, for at evyn they were 
 wont to come to chirche/' In a council held at 
 Oxford, anno 1222, it was ordained that among 
 other festivals should be observed the day of dedi- 
 cation of every church within the proper parish, 
 and in a synod under Archbishop Islip (who was 
 promoted to the see of Canterbury, 1349), the dedi- 
 cation feast is mentioned with particular respect. 
 This solemnity was at first celebrated on the very 
 day of dedication as it annually returned, but the 
 bishops sometimes changed the day to some other 
 day, and especially to Sunday, whereon the people 
 could best attend the devotions and rites intended 
 in the ceremony, and at last this convenience of 
 Sunday above the week days was the reason of 
 attempting an universal change ; and Henry VIII., 
 in 1536, ordered that the dedication of churches 
 should in all places be celebrated on the first Sunday 
 of the month of October, but the order was ■ not 
 strictly enforced nor obeyed. It is said, however, 
 that there were two festivals observed in all parishes, 
 the dedication day and the festival of the patron 
 saint, and that the order in convocation of Henry 
 
[ 
 
 Chap. VI. OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 109 
 
 VIII. not only changed the day of celebration of 
 the feast of dedication, but attempted to abolish 
 also the festival of the saint, but this being- the 
 favourite festival of the people, they gradually ceased 
 to attend the festival of dedication, which has now 
 been entirely discontinued, whilst the saint's day 
 festival still subsists in the altered form of the 
 country wake, whilst the wakes were converted into 
 fasts, preserving the name of vigils or eves. 
 
 The wake or feast of dedication, however, con- 
 tinued to prevail for many years, until the Puritans 
 began to exclaim against them as a remnant of 
 popery, and at the summer assizes held at Exeter 
 in 1627 the judges made an order for the suppres- 
 sion of all wakes in the county of Devon, and a 
 like order was made in 1631 for the county of 
 Somerset by Judge Richardson ; but on Bishop 
 Laud's complaint of this innovating humour, the 
 king commanded the last order to be revoked, which 
 Judge Richardson refusing to do, an account was 
 required from the Bishop of Bath and Wells how 
 the said feast days, church ales, wakes, and revels 
 were for the most part celebrated and observed in 
 his diocese. On receipt of these instructions the 
 Bishop advised with seventy-two of the most orthodox 
 of his clergy, who certified under their hands that 
 on these feast-days (which generally fell on a Sun- 
 day) the service was more solemnly performed and 
 the church much better frequented, both in the fore- 
 
110 ROOTS AND RAMIFICATIONS Chap. VI. 
 
 noon and afternoon, tban on any other Sunday in 
 the year; that the people very much desired the 
 continuance of them ; that the ministers did in most 
 places do the like for these reasons, viz., for pre- 
 serving the memorial of the dedication of their 
 several churches, &c. &c. On the return of this 
 certificate, Judge Richardson was again cited to the 
 council -table, and peremptorily commanded to re- 
 verse the former order. In Holland the dedication 
 of a church is called JcerJc misse, that is, church 
 mass, or the solemn service on the day of the 
 church's consecration. Their fairs also are called 
 by the same name, kerk masses, clearly indicating 
 that the latter arose out of the former. 
 
 The case was the same in England — the resort 
 of the people to the churches to celebrate these 
 wakes was the origin of our fairs (so called from 
 the Latin word feria, a holiday), which were gene- 
 rally held in the churchyard, or even in the church, 
 on the same day as the wake, until the indecency 
 and scandal occasioned thereby were so great as to 
 require reformation. In the year 1230 the arch- 
 deacons within the diocese of Lincoln were directed 
 to inquire into and regulate this abuse ; and Henry 
 III., by express mandate, prohibited the keeping of 
 Northampton fair in the church or churchyard of 
 All Saints in that town, and the Bishop of Lincoln 
 (Robert Grosthead), following the king's example, 
 sent positive instructions through his whole diocese 
 

 Chap. VI. OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. Ill 
 
 prohibiting all fairs to be kept in such sacred places. 
 A little later, in 1285, we find that a general Act 
 of Parliament was passed, " forbidding fairs or 
 markets to be held in churchyards ;" and again in 
 1448 another statute was passed " that all fairs or 
 markets on Ascension Day, Corpus Christi Day, 
 Whitsunday, Trinity Sunday, or any other Sunday 
 (except the four Sundays in harvest), the Assump- 
 tion of Our Lady, All Saints, and Good Friday, 
 should cease to exhibit all goods or merchandise, 
 necessary victual only excepted." Notwithstanding 
 these mandates and statutes the practice long pre- 
 vailed, for in a comment on the Ten Command- 
 ments, by way of dialogue between Dives and 
 Pauper, printed at London in the year 1493, we 
 find the following : — 
 
 " Dices. What sayest thou of them, that hold 
 Markets arid feirs in holy church 
 And in sanctuary ? 
 
 " Pauper. Both the byer, and the seller, and 
 Men of holy church, that 
 Maintain them, or suffer them, when 
 They might let it — be accursed." 
 
112 ROOTS AND RAMIFICATIONS Chap. VII. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 The Consideration of Words in daily Use with us. 
 
 The subject of the last two chapters — the inter- 
 change of letters in languages — might be continued 
 almost to an unlimited extent. I do not, however, 
 propose to weary the reader, and pursue the subject 
 further, but will consider some words, the origin of 
 which is not duly regarded by us, although the 
 words themselves are in general use. 
 
 How frequently, for instance, do we use the word 
 "purlieu, without at all discovering its original mean- 
 ing. In Manwood's ' Forest Laws,' ch. xx., a 
 purlieu is described to be " a certain territory of 
 ground adjoining unto a forest, meered and bounded 
 with unmoveable marks, meers, and boundaries, 
 known by matter of record only, which territory of 
 ground was also once forest, and afterwards dis- 
 afforested again by the perambulators made for the 
 severing of the new forests from the old." From 
 this description we obtain a clue to the derivation of 
 the word from the French words pur and lieu (a free 
 place), being those lands which were once subject to 
 the rigour of the forest laws, but, being taken from 
 the forest, became pure or free from those laws. 
 Manwood tells us that Henry II., not contented 
 
Chap. VII. OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 113 
 
 with the forests as they existed at the time of his 
 succeeding to the throne in 1154, enlarged them "by 
 taking in the lands adjoining, which example was 
 followed by his son Richard I., and afterwards by 
 King John ; so that " the forrests in every place 
 were so much enlarged, that the greatest part of this 
 realm was forrest, to the great grief and sorrow of 
 all the best sort of the inhabitants of this land." 
 The barons, in consequence, petitioned King John 
 to disafforest the lands so added to the ancient 
 forests, and these lands so disafforested were those 
 that became purlieus. 
 
 Again, the word pulpit, when duly considered, 
 carries our thoughts back to the Roman theatre, in 
 which the higher part of the stage, where the actors 
 recited and performed their parts, was called pul- 
 pitum, as distinguished from the lower part, orches- 
 trum, where they danced. 
 
 The word chapel is, by Littleton, in his Latin 
 Dictionary, derived from capella (a goat), because 
 formerly the tabernacle was covered with the skins 
 of goats, a derivation which seems to me preferable 
 to that of Sir Henry Spelman, who imagined that it 
 came from eapsa (a chest), in which the relics of 
 martyrs were preserved. 
 
 The word gazette is of daily use amongst us, and 
 we rest satisfied with the knowledge that it means a 
 newspaper, without inquiring how it happened to 
 acquire that name. The gazetta, the origin of 
 
114 EOOTS AND RAMIFICATIONS Chap. VII. 
 
 gazette, was a Venetian coin of the value of a half- 
 penny, but now no longer current. The war which 
 the Republic of Venice waged against the Turks in 
 Dalmatia in 1563 gave rise to the custom of com- 
 municating military news in written sheets, which 
 were read in a particular place to those who were 
 desirous to hear them, and who paid for this privilege 
 a gazetta, a name which by degrees was transferred 
 to the paper itself in Italy and France, and passed 
 over into England. 
 
 The first ' Court Gazette' in England was pub- 
 lished in 1665 at Oxford whilst the Court resided 
 there, on account of the plague in London ; but on 
 the removal of the Court to London, the title was 
 changed to the ' London Gazette.' Before the intro- 
 duction of printed newspapers in England, great 
 families, however, had a sort of gazetteer in London, 
 who transmitted to them the news of the day in 
 written letters, and the word was in use early in the 
 reign of King James I., as appears from John 
 Donne's verses upon T. Cory at' s Crudities, pub- 
 lished in 1661 — 
 
 " As deep a Statesman as a Gazeteer" 
 
 In using the word artillery we have a clear know- 
 ledge of the meaning the word is now intended to 
 convey, but we do not see its derivation ; and indeed 
 our etymologists have so differed about its origin, 
 that I proceed with great diffidence to trace it. 
 
Chap. VII. OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 115 
 
 The earliest record of the word that I have met 
 with is in Sir Henry Spelman, voce ' Bombard,' 
 where, quoting the tables of the civil and military 
 expenses of Edward III. in 1344, he mentions — 
 
 Mariners 60 
 
 Armourers 7 
 
 Artillers 6 
 
 Gunners 6 
 
 Now, it seems clear that artillers, being named as 
 distinct from gunners, they did not at this time belong 
 to the latter class of warriors, and I think that, as 
 we proceed, we shall see that they were then simply 
 archers. It is said in Stowe's ' London' M that in 
 the 13th year of the reign of Henry VII., 1496, all 
 the gardens which had continued, time out of mind, 
 without Moorgate, to wit, about and beyond the 
 lordship of Fensbury (Finsbury) were destroyed, and 
 of them was made a plain field for archers to shoot 
 in. The land was enclosed, and called the Artillery 
 Ground." 
 
 In 1541 a statute was passed, intitled " A Bill 
 for the maintaining of Artillery, and the debarring 
 of unlawful games." This statute was passed on 
 the petition of the bowyers, fletchers (arrow-makers), 
 stringers, and arrow-head makers, who complained 
 " that divers subtil, inventative, and crafty persons, 
 daily find many new and crafty games, as loggetting 
 in the fields, slidethrift, otherwise called shovegroat, 
 by reason whereof archery was sore decayed, and 
 
116 ROOTS AND RAMIFICATIONS Chap. VII. 
 
 like to be more minished, and divers bowyers and 
 fletchers, for lack of work, gone to Scotland, and 
 other places." The statute enacts, that every man, 
 under sixty years of age, shall have bows and arrows 
 continually in his house, and instruct his children to 
 shoot ; and enacts, that butts be made in every city 
 and town, and that the inhabitants shall exercise 
 themselves with long bows in shooting at the same. 
 The statute then prohibits any artificer or servant 
 from playing the games of bowling, coyting, cloysh- 
 cayls, half-bowl tennis, dicing-table, or cards, except 
 at Christmas, in their master's houses or presence, 
 but enables the master to license his servants to 
 play at cards, dice, or tables, with their master, or 
 with any other gentleman repairing to their master. 
 It then repeals all other statutes made for the 
 restraint of unlawful games, or for the maintenance 
 of artillery. We find that in the same session 
 another Act was passed " concerning crosbowes and 
 handguns," which recites former statutes relating to 
 these weapons, and adds, " that, since the passing of 
 them, divers malicious and evil-disposed persons 
 have wilfully and shamefully perpetrated and done 
 divers detestable and shameful murders, robberies, 
 felonies, riots and routs with crosbowes, little short 
 handguns, and little haquebuts, and that divers 
 gentlemen, yeomen, and serving men, have laid 
 aside the good and laudable exercise of the longbow, 
 and that the said evil-disposed persons have used, 
 
Chap. VII. OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 117 
 
 and do daily use, to ride and go on the King's high- 
 way, and elsewhere, having with them crossbowes 
 and little handguns, ready furnished with quarrells, 
 gunpowder, fire, and touch." The statute then 
 prohibits all persons, except such as had a hundred 
 a year in land, annuities, or offices, from using or 
 keeping in their houses or elsewhere any "cross- 
 bowe, handgun, haquebut, or demyhake ;" and, 
 after regulating the length of the stock and gun, 
 authorises the use of these weapons in time of war, 
 and also, by way of practice, against butts or banks, 
 whereby to be better able to assist in the defence of 
 the realm, in case of need. Persons inhabiting within 
 five miles of the coasts, or within twelve miles of the 
 borders of Scotland, and the inhabitants of the Isles 
 of Wight, Man, Jersey, Guernsey, and Anglesea, 
 were exempted from the operation of the Act, and 
 allowed to use handguns, haquebuts, and demi- 
 hakes, " so that it be at no manner of deere, hearne, 
 shovelard, fezant, partridge, wild swan, or wild elke." 
 There is no doubt but that this statute being in 
 the same year as the one before mentioned, " for 
 maintaining of artillery and the debarring of un- 
 lawful games," was passed at the instigation of the 
 bowyers and fletchers, and to enforce the continuance 
 of the use of the longbow ; and it is clear from these 
 statutes that, down to this period, 1541, the word 
 artillery was applied to the longbow, and not to the 
 crossbow or handgun. 
 
118 ROOTS AND RAMIFICATIONS Chap. VII. 
 
 Notwithstanding these statutes, the longbow con- 
 tinued to give way to other weapons, and these 
 worthy bowyers, fletchers, stringers, and arrowhead- 
 makers, continued to " minish," for, about the year 
 1570, they petitioned Queen Elizabeth concerning 
 their decayed condition, by reason of the discon- 
 tinuance of the use of archery, and toleration of 
 unlawful games and exercises ; and the Queen, in 
 consequence, appointed commissioners in each county 
 for the reformation of unlawful games, and for the 
 maintenance and exercise of shooting, and in the 
 following year a statute was passed directing the im- 
 portation of bow-staves. We also find that in Sep- 
 tember, 1583, a general meeting of 3000 London 
 archers was held in Smithfield, where, having per- 
 formed their several evolutions, they shot at the Target 
 for Glory ; and we find that Charles I., as late as 
 1633, issued a commission " to prevent the inclosure 
 of the fields near London, so as to interrupt the 
 necessary and profitable exercise of shooting." 
 
 Fairfax, in his translation of Tasso's " Godfrey of 
 Boulogne, or the Recovery of Jerusalem," which was 
 published in 1600 (book xvii. section49),uses the word 
 artillery to denote archery in the following passage : — 
 
 " While thus the Princesse said, his hungrie eine 
 Adrastus fed on her sweet beauties light. 
 The Gods forbid (quoth he) one shaft of thine 
 Should be discharg'd 'gainst that discourteous knight ; 
 His heart unworthy is (shootresse divine) 
 Of thine ' artillerie ' to feel the might." 
 
Chap. VII. OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 119 
 
 The present Authorised Version of the Bible was 
 published in 1611, and at that period it would seem 
 that the word artillerie was considered the proper 
 word to designate bows and arrows, for at 1 Sam. 
 ch. xx. ver. 40, it is said, " And Jonathan gave his 
 artillery unto his lad, and said unto him, Go carry 
 them to the city" — the word referring to the bow 
 and arrows which Jonathan had just before been 
 using. In Cotgrave's French and English Dictionary, 
 published as late as 1650, we find the words artillier, 
 a bowyer, and artilier du Roy, the King's bowman. 
 I think, therefore, we may assume that, down to this 
 latter date, the word denoted archery, and was ac- 
 quired by us from France, and that it is only of 
 comparatively late years that it has been applied to 
 cannon and great ordnance. As to the derivation 
 of the French word, from which our word appears to 
 be undoubtedly derived, after premising that Johnson 
 says " the word artillery is always used of missive 
 weapons," I would suggest the possibility of the 
 word being a compound of the Latin word aer (air), 
 and telum (a weapon). The word in our language 
 which most nearly approaches it is artery, used to 
 denote the vessels which convey the blood from the 
 heart to all parts of the body, but to which our 
 ancestors gave the name of arteries, because, finding 
 them always empty after death, they supposed them 
 to be air-vessels. 
 
 Attainted, from the Latin word attinctus (stained), 
 
120 ROOTS AND RAMIFICATIONS Chap. VII. 
 
 means one found guilty, and whose character is thus 
 tainted. Persons attainted or found guilty of high 
 treason forfeited their estates to the crown: the 
 word forfeit, being derived from the French word 
 forfait, wickedness, signified that by reason of guilt 
 the estates of such persons reverted to the crown, 
 the condition of good behaviour annexed to the 
 grant of the estates, either directly or impliedly, 
 having been broken. The same consequence fol- 
 lowed a crime against the king under the Jewish 
 dispensation, as we learn from the narrative of Ahab 
 and Naboth. The charge against Naboth was, not 
 that he blasphemed God only, but that he " blas- 
 phemed God and the king," and witnesses having 
 been found to establish both charges, Naboth was 
 stoned to death for blaspheming God and for blas- 
 pheming the king— the vineyard was forfeited to 
 Ahab. If the charge had been blasphemy against 
 the Almighty alone, the consequence of forfeiture of 
 the vineyard would not have occurred, but Naboth 
 would have been put to death and his vineyard 
 would have descended to his heir ; for we learn by 
 the 24th chap, of Leviticus, v. 16, that death, not 
 forfeiture, was the punishment of blaspheming the 
 name of the Lord. Among the Romans there ex- 
 isted a practice of expunging a person's name from 
 the public list of accused, hung up in the treasury, 
 which was termed abolitio, derived from the two 
 words ah (from) and oleo (to smell), that is, to do 
 
Chap. Vll. OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 121 
 
 away with the taint. The act of abolition cleared 
 the stain from the character of the accused, and 
 hence we get our word abolish, to annul or put an 
 end to. 
 
 The common use of our words abbot and abbey 
 leads us to fancy them native words, whereas they, 
 as well as the French word abbe, spring from a 
 much earlier source, having their origin in the He- 
 brew word ab, signifying a father, the root of the 
 name Abraham, "for a father of many nations have 
 I made thee." 
 
 From ab the Syrians formed abba, used by St. 
 Mark, ch. xiv., and by St. Paul in his epistle to the 
 Romans, ch. viii. The Greeks retained the word in 
 their a/3/3as-, abbas, and the Romans in abbas, and 
 we have continued it in our word abbot, anciently 
 written " abb«t," to denote the father or head of a 
 monastery. The application of the name to per- 
 sons presiding over monasteries was resisted by St. 
 Jerome as an infringement of the Divine command 
 to " call no man Father upon earth." As the abbot 
 was the head, so were the friars the brethren of the 
 establishment, in the same way as the master and 
 brethren of an hospital with us constitute the mem- 
 bers of such a foundation; the word friar being 
 a corruption of the French word " frere," derived 
 from the Latin frater, a brother. Innumerable 
 instances might be found of the word " frere " being 
 used by our early writers ; but one, and that a short 
 
 G 
 
122 ROOTS AND RAMIFICATIONS Chap. VII. 
 
 one, shall suffice from Chaucer, 'The Prologue,' v, 
 208:— 
 
 " A frere there was, a wanton and a mery." 
 
 In our word freemason, descriptive of the brethren 
 belonging to the fraternity of masons, we preserve 
 the original word, the prefix free referring not to 
 the immunities of that body, but to their brother- 
 hood, the word freemason being a corruption of the 
 French frere (a brother), and magon (a mason). 
 We find that in monastic times many charitable 
 establishments called bedehouses existed, and which, 
 though not now so called, except in a few instances, 
 are to be distinctly traced. At Stamford there is 
 still a bedebouse, founded in 1493 by William 
 Brown, and the statistical account of Scotland, de- 
 scribing the parish of Ruthven in Banffshire, says, 
 " There is a bedehouse still in being, though in bad 
 repair, and six bedesmen in the establishment, but 
 none of them live in the house. Again we trace 
 the word in the college of Vicars Choral belonging 
 to York Cathedral, called the Bedern. The word 
 is derived from the Saxon word bidden or beden (to 
 pray), from whence came bedesman or beedman, 
 signifying one who prayed for another, the inha- 
 bitants of these almshouses praying for the souls of 
 the founders or benefactors of them. The word 
 bedesman was a common conclusion to letters in the 
 time of Henry VIII, in the same way as a peti- 
 
Chap. VII. OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 123 
 
 tioner to the crown now concludes with the words 
 " and your petitioner will for ever pray." Sir 
 Thomas More, in his letters to Cardinal Wolsey, 
 concludes them with the words, " Your humhle orator 
 and most bounden beedman Thomas More ;" and 
 Margaret Bryan, the governess of Lady Elizabeth, 
 in writing to Lord Cromwell, signs herself " your 
 daily bedewoman ;" and Shakspeare, in ' The Two 
 Gentlemen of Verona,' Act i. Scene 1, uses the 
 word and explains its meaning when Proteus says — 
 
 " Commend thy grievance to my holy prayers, 
 For I will be thy ' beadsman,' Valentine." 
 
 To which Valentine replies — 
 
 " And on a love-book pray for my success." 
 
 Sir Henry Lee, champion to Queen Elizabeth in 
 the year 1590, when old age and infirmities had 
 come upon him, gave a masque at his seat at Qua- 
 rendon in Bucks on his retirement from the office of 
 champion, on which occasion a copy of verses alluding 
 to his retirement was read before her Majesty, con- 
 cluding with these words — 
 
 " Goddess, vouchsafe this aged man his right 
 To be your beadsman now, that was your knight." 
 
 To bid beads was to say prayers, and before the 
 invention of printing, when poor persons could not 
 defray the expenses of a manuscript book, small 
 balls of glass strung upon a thread were invented 
 (and are still used by the Romanists) to assist their 
 
 G 2 
 
124: ROOTS AND RAMIFICATIONS Chap. VII. 
 
 memories in counting their prayers, and hence the 
 word, which primarily denoted the prayer itself, 
 afterwards signified the instrument used to assist the 
 memory of the person praying. These beads, pro- 
 fessedly hallowed by the Pope's consecration, were 
 in former days imported into England, but such 
 importation was prohibited by statute in the year 
 1570. Gower, our old English writer, uses the 
 words bid thy bede in the following passage : — 
 
 " Beware, therefore, and bid thy bede, 
 And do nothing in holy church 
 But that thou might by reason worthe." 
 
 With us, to this day, the prayer before the sermon 
 is still known by the name of the bidding prayer, and 
 still we say to bid or forbid the banns. 
 
 Our word beadle is also of the same origin, such 
 person having originally been the officer of the 
 forest, who bid or summoned the people to attend 
 the Court of the Forest ; and in after times, the 
 officer who summoned the clergy and church officers 
 to visitations ; and in later times, the officer of any 
 Court whose duty it was to summon the people. 
 The passage in our Bible, Dan. iii. 3 and 4 : — 
 " And they stood before the image that Nebuchad- 
 nezzar had set up, then an herald cried aloud, &c." 
 is, in one of the editions of the Bible published in 
 1551, thus rendered: — "Now when they stood 
 before the image which Nebuchadnezzar set up, the 
 Beadle cried out with all his might, &c." In early 
 
Chap. VII. OF THE EXGLISH LANGUAGE. 125 
 
 times the tenants of many manors were bound by 
 the customs of the manors to perform at the will or 
 bidding of the Lords certain days' work, in order to 
 gather in the Lord's harvest ; these days were called 
 bidden days, or bindays, and the work performed 
 was called Bederepe, from the Saxon bidden, to bid, 
 and repe, to reap corn. The tenants who performed 
 this service for the Lord of the manor, besides their 
 ordinary daily meals, were rewarded with a more 
 substantial entertainment at the end of the harvest, 
 and this is the origin of our harvest home supper 
 In the customs of the manor of Cheltenham beadrepe 
 money is mentioned, which I conceive was a money 
 payment in substitution for the feast, or in lieu of 
 the daily meals. These bidden days, or rather the 
 work performed on them, were afterwards rendered 
 in Latin precarice, from the Latin word preco, to 
 pray or bid, and as the days were selected at the will 
 of the Lord, and therefore uncertain, precarious 
 came to have that signification. Our word to bid 
 comes from the same source, and in its early use had 
 the sense of praying, which it has not entirely lost 
 with us. Thus in the 2nd Epistle of St. John, v. 10 : 
 " If there come any unto you, and bring not this 
 doctrine, receive him not into your houses, neither 
 bid him God speed," and again, Acts xviii. 20, 21 : 
 " When they desired him to tarry longer with them, 
 he consented not, but bade them farewell." The 
 words so used were in fact a prayer commending the 
 
126 ROOTS AND RAMIFICATIONS Chap. VII. 
 
 parties to the Divine care, and were equivalent to 
 the French d Dieu, the Spanish a Bios, and the 
 Italian Addio, the parting benediction, committing a 
 friend to the care of the Almighty. The foregoing 
 expression " bade them farewell " is pure Saxon, for 
 this word fare is also a Saxon word, signifying to go, 
 to travel, to pass, and is very commonly used in 
 early English. Hence we have the phrases a 
 thoroughfare, a wayfaring, and a seafaring man ; so 
 the price paid for travelling by land or water is called 
 a, fare ; & ferry is a passage by water ; and a ford is 
 that part of a river which is passed or fared on foot. 
 The Vicar preaches his farewell sermon, and in 
 return his auditors, anxious for his future happiness, 
 express their wishes for his ivelfare. In the neigh- 
 bourhood of London we find this word in use as 
 descriptive of the passage, in the spring, of the 
 young eels up the river Thames. This takes place 
 from the neighbourhood of Blackfriars bridge to 
 Chertsey in immense quantities, and this passage is 
 called the eelfare. Rudder, in his history of 
 Gloucestershire, treating of the parish of St. Briavels, 
 says, " There is a great plenty of elvers taken in it 
 (the river Wye) by means of hair sieves, every 
 spring ;" and Collinson, in his history of Somerset- 
 shire, treating of the parish of Keynsham, says, 
 "The tide from Bristol comes up the Avon to this 
 parish, and in the spring sometimes brings up large 
 quantities of that small fish, called elvers, which are 
 
Chap. VII. OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 127 
 
 noted by Camden as a curiosity, but now reckoned 
 common. It is evident, I think, that the word 
 elvers used to denote the young eels, is simply the 
 corruption of the beforementioned word eelfare. 
 We may here mention that the parish of Keynsham 
 before referred to, is celebrated for that well known 
 fossil shell, the Ammonite, which is found in immense 
 quantities in the quarries in the parish, varying in 
 size from a quarter of an inch to upwards of two feet 
 in diameter. This shell is the Hammonis Cornu 
 of Pliny, still called by us the Cornua Ammonis, 
 and by the French Comes d'Ammon, which name 
 it received from its resemblance to the horns with 
 which the head of Jupiter Ammon was sculptured. 
 Pliny, in his 31st book, ch. 7, tells us that the word 
 Ammonia comes from the Greek word onx^os ; 
 ammos (sand), ammonia being a salt found below 
 the sand in Cyrenaica in Africa. The Greeks and 
 Romans became acquainted with the worship of 
 Jupiter Ammon through the Cyrenians, and so in 
 heathen mythology the addition of Ammonias given 
 to Jupiter in allusion to the sandy desert of Sahara, 
 where a temple to Jupiter was built. But to return 
 from our digression : eels are not the only fish which 
 at certain seasons ascend the rivers, for we know 
 that the salmon quits the sea at certain seasons for 
 the purpose of depositing its spawn in security, and 
 for this purpose ascends rivers for hundreds of miles, 
 forcing its way against the most rapid currents, and 
 
128 EOOTS AND RAMIFICATIONS Chap. VII. 
 
 leaping with amazing agility over cataracts or 
 impediments eight or even ten feet in height. It is 
 from this habit, indeed, that it derives its name from 
 the Latin word salio, to leap. The manner of leap- 
 ing is effected by the fish bending its tail towards 
 its mouth, and then suddenly, like a bow let loose, 
 forcing itself from this circular form, it springs with 
 great force from the bottom to the top of the rock, or 
 other obstacle impeding its progress. In this manner 
 the salmon finds its way up the whole course of the 
 Rhine as far as Basle, and somewhat higher, but 
 here the falls of Schaffhausen oppose a formidable 
 barrier to its advance, and stop its further progress, 
 and this fish is consequently not found in Lake 
 Constance. The word progress, just made use of, as 
 well as digress, egress, regress, and transgress are 
 compounds of the old English word for steps, or a 
 flight of stairs, gnes being derived from the Latin 
 word gressus (a step). We meet with this old word 
 in the 'Itinerary of William of Wyrcestre,' who 
 died about 1484. The first gryse called a slypp, 
 going to the water, called Avyn water, to wash 
 clothes, and to enter into the vessels and shippes 
 that com en to the bak." We meet with it also in 
 the ' Coventry Mysteries ' : — 
 
 " If the fyfteen ' grees ' thou may ascend" — 
 and again : 
 
 " A Bahe of thre yer age so zynge (young) 
 To come up these ' grees ' so up right." 
 

 Chap. VII. OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 129 
 
 Shakspeare also uses the word in ' Timon of Athens,' 
 Act iv. Scene 3 : — 
 
 " For every * grize ' of fortune is smoothed by that below." 
 So again in 'Twelfth Night,' Act iii. Scene 1 : — 
 
 " Viola. — I pity you. 
 
 Olivia. — That 's a degree of love. 
 Viola. — No, not a ' grize,'' for 't is a vulgar proof 
 That very oft we pity enemies." 
 
 It is very evident from this last quotation that 
 Shakspeare well knew the derivation of degree from 
 grees. By degrees, is by steps ; the highest or lowest 
 degree is the highest or lowest step ; and to take a 
 degree at one of our Universities is to take a step. 
 Again, the word pedigree, a tabular statement con- 
 taining the descent of a family step by step, is a 
 compound of this word and the Latin per, and 
 means by steps. In Yorkshire and Lancashire, and 
 other northern counties, the word gradeley or 
 greadly, is in common use, and signifies orderly, 
 and is apparently derived from the same source, and 
 means step by step, by degrees, orderly. Pennant, 
 in his 'British Zoology,' vol. i. p. 74, quoting Dr. 
 Caius, informs us that the word greyhound is from 
 the same source, giving as his reason that it is the 
 first in rank or steps amongst dogs, ' ' quod prsecipui 
 gradus sit inter canes." Richardson very justly 
 terms this derivation fanciful, and states that the word 
 is of unsettled etymology. The word greyhound is of 
 
 G 3 
 
130 ROOTS AND RAMIFICATIONS Chap. VII. 
 
 great antiquity with us, for in the 21st Canon of the 
 Laws of Canute, quoted in Manwood's ' Forest 
 Laws,' we find it enacted, " quod nullus mediocris 
 habebit nee custodiet canes quos Angli greyhound 
 appellant," that is, " that no mean man shall have 
 or keep those dogs which the English call grey- 
 hounds." We now only know the greyhound as a 
 dog used in coursing the hare, but this use is of 
 comparatively recent date (the first coursing club in 
 England having been established at Swaffham, in 
 Norfolk, only so late as 1776), and the dog we 
 now use under this name has become (by what is 
 termed improving the breed) a totally distinct animal 
 from the greyhound mentioned in our early writers, 
 which was endowed with the faculty of smell, and 
 was the dog used in coursing deer. It seems to me 
 that this even was not the earliest use to which this 
 hound was applied, but that its primary use was in 
 hunting the badger, the old name for which was 
 the gray, and that thus it acquired the name of 
 greyhound. No doubt the badger acquired the 
 name of the gray from its colour, since the phrase 
 "as grey as a badger," has become one of our pro- 
 verbial expressions. The use of the word gray, to 
 denote a badger, has not been discontinued by us 
 for any great length of time ; for Holland, in his 
 translation of Pliny, book viii. ch. 38, says, "The 
 grayes, polcats, or brocks, have a cast by them- 
 selves, where they be afraid of hunters : for they 
 
Chap. VII. OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 131 
 
 will draw in their breath so hard, that their skin 
 being stretched and puffed up withall, they will 
 avoid the biting of the hound's tooth," and eighty 
 years later we meet with the term in Littleton. In 
 the Latin-English part of his dictionary he renders 
 the word taxus into English by the words " a 
 badger, grey, or brock," and in the English-Latin 
 part of it, he renders, a gray, badger, or brock into 
 Latin by the word taxus. Why the Romans gave 
 the badger the name of taxus, which also with them 
 signified a yew-tree, I have not been able to dis- 
 cover. The yew-tree acquired its name of taxus 
 from the Greek to^ov, toxon (a bow), since in all 
 ages the wood of this tree has been used in the 
 making of bows. The tree was supposed to possess 
 poisonous qualities. Pliny, in his 16th book, eh. 
 10, says, that "in Arcadia the yew-tree is so 
 venemous, that whosoever take either repose or re- 
 past under it are sure to die presently. And here- 
 upon it cometh that those poysons wherewith arrow- 
 heads be envenomed after some were called in times 
 past Taxica, which we now name Toxica" Intoxicate, 
 derived from this word, seems therefore in its literal 
 sense to be, to deprive a person of reason by means 
 of poison ; and hence came to signify to take away 
 the senses by drink. The word yew was anciently 
 with us spelt yugh and eugh, and is probably an old 
 British word. That our present mode of spelling 
 the word is not the original one, may be collected 
 
132 ROOTS AND RAMIFICATIONS Chap, VII. 
 
 from the name of the parish of j5^hurst, near Ba- 
 singstoke, on the summit of a hill, in which parish 
 are some yew-trees of great antiquity, from which, 
 or their predecessors no doubt, the parish took its 
 name of Ewhurst, meaning the yew wood ; and the 
 same occurs again in Wiltshire, in the parish of 
 Colerne, in which parish there is a hamlet called 
 Mwri&ge, no doubt signifying the ridge of yew 
 trees. 
 
Chap. VIII. OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 133 
 
 CHAPTEK VIII. 
 
 Of Words derived from the Greek Language. 
 
 In many instances we find words purely Greek in 
 common use amongst us. Cholera is simply the 
 Greek word for disease, and the parent of our 
 word choler. Mustache is the Greek word for the 
 upper lip, [augtoi%, mustax. Horizon is the Greek 
 oqi^cov, orizon, signifying bounding or terminating 
 the sight. Lichen is the Greek word for tree-moss. 
 Cataract is Greek for rushing down, and in that lan- 
 guage signified not only a waterfall, but was the 
 name given to a sea-bird from its rushing down 
 upon its prey. Pliny (book x. ch. 43) describes 
 this bird in such a manner, as to leave no doubt 
 but that it was the Solan goose. Our word catarrh, 
 a defluxion, is from the same source. Paradox is 
 pure Greek, for anything contrary to received opi- 
 nion ; and paralysis is Greek for loosening of the 
 nerves. Our word garret is by our etymologists 
 derived from the French garite, the tower of a 
 citadel ; but it seems to me to be the corruption of 
 the Greek na§a, kara, the head or top of anything. 
 Canopy is the corruption of the Greek xo/vwwsiov, 
 Jconopion, from xwvwx}/, Jconops, el gnat or mosquito, 
 konopeion with the Greeks signifying a tester of a 
 bed for keeping away gnats. We meet with this word 
 
134 EOOTS AND RAMIFICATIONS Chap. VIII. 
 
 in the 10th ch. of Judith, 21, where the passage is 
 in our versions rendered, " Now Holofernes rested 
 upon his bed under a canopy " — the word passed 
 into the Latin language uncorrupted. Horace uses 
 it in his 9th Epode, v. 16, — 
 
 11 Interqne Signa turpe militaria 
 Sol aspicit conopeum ;" 
 
 and the sun beheld an infamous canopy spread in 
 the midst of our military standards. The Romans 
 borrowed these tents from the Egyptians, where 
 they were used by the ladies to guard them from 
 the mosquitos which infested the Nile. We have 
 corrupted the word into canopy, and have extended 
 its meaning from the covering of a bed to any shade 
 or covering, and even to denote the spangled hea- 
 vens. The Romans also gave the name of Papilio 
 to a military tent ; and for the same reason, for 
 papilio, with them in its primary sense, signified a 
 fire-fly. This Latin word for a tent, the French 
 corrupted into their word Pavilion, from whence we 
 get our word Pavilion. But to return to words in 
 use with us of Greek origin. Our word sere is 
 direct from the Greek %npos, seros, dry ; and sincere 
 is, I imagine, pure Greek, from gw, sun, with, and 
 X7j§, ker, the heart, the parent of the Latin word for 
 the heart, cor, and the root of the words core and 
 cordial. Many of our etymologists, however, derive 
 the word sincere from the Latin, sine cerd, without 
 wax, applied to honey separated from the wax, and 
 
Chap. VIII. OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 135 
 
 thus free from impurity ; but this derivation appears 
 to me far-fetched. Again, we have lamp, from 
 XafjLTTco, lampo, to shine. Ecstasy, from sx, eh, out 
 of, and la-rxcu, istao, to stand or place, and signifies 
 therefore that state of the mind in which it is for a 
 time placed, or carried, as it were out of, or beyond 
 itself. Our verb, to pine, is from the Greek Trstva, 
 peina, hunger; and pirate from vrsipotms, peirates, a 
 sea rover, from wsipaco, peirao, to rove. Energy is 
 from the Greek words sv, en, in, and spyov, ergon, 
 work ; and energetic therefore signifies one who is 
 heartily engaged in his work. From the same 
 Greek word for work, and Xsiros, leitos, public, we 
 get our word liturgy, meaning public service. 
 
 In the primitive days, Divine service was exceed- 
 ingly simple, but by degrees a number of external 
 ceremonies and extra prayers were added, until at 
 length it was found necessary to reduce the service 
 into writing, and regulate the manner of performing 
 it, and this was what was called a liturgy. The 
 Liturgy of the Church of England was composed in 
 the year 1547, and slightly revised and established 
 by Parliament in 1551; it was abolished in 1553 
 by Queen Mary, but restored in 1558 by Queen 
 Elizabeth, and revised in the following year. In 
 1602, a few alterations were made in it, and in the 
 office for private baptism, the words " lawful mi- 
 nister" introduced, to prevent midwives and laymen 
 from baptizing, and in 1661 the liturgy was brought 
 
136 ROOTS AND RAMIFICATIONS Chap. VIII. 
 
 to its present state, and established by Act of Par- 
 liament. The original Greek word, however, was 
 used in civil affairs, and at Athens « the Xsirovqyi, 
 leitourgi, were wealthy citizens, who were compelled 
 by the laws of the State to undertake expensive 
 offices at their own cost. In the 6th verse of the 
 13th chap, of Romans, the word is used to denote 
 the rulers of the people. From the same Greek word 
 for work and j^eig, cheir (the hand), we framed our 
 word chirurgeon (now corrupted into surgeon), signi- 
 fying a medical practitioner, working with his hands, 
 and dealing with outward cases, being prohibited 
 from administering medicines internally. Surgery 
 was originally practised in London by the Company 
 of the Barbers, and we find Thomas Colard, Citizen 
 and Barber, in the year 1467, bequeathing u his book 
 of Fysyk and Surgery, called ' Rosse and Constan- 
 tine,' to the Hall of Barbers to be laid in the 
 Library." Another society, however, existed after- 
 wards, who also practised surgery. 
 
 In 1540 these two companies were united by an 
 Act of Parliament, which provided that no barber 
 should practise surgery, letting of blood, or any- 
 thing relating thereto, except drawing of teeth, and 
 that no surgeon should exercise the craft of bar- 
 bery, which is described as " washing and shaving, 
 and other feats thereto belonging." Physician is 
 also of Greek origin, from Quait, phusis (nature), 
 and from originally signifying a natural philosopher, 
 
Chap. VIII. OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 137 
 
 has become descriptive of one skilled in the art of 
 healing natural diseases. We still retain the ori- 
 ginal meaning of the word in the adjective physical. 
 Apothecary, also, is of Greek origin, from the Greek 
 preposition a<zro, apo, and Q^xoo, thece (a place) ; and 
 the Greek word a«ro9?jx*i, apothece, signified nothing 
 more than a store or warehouse. In the New Testa- 
 ment the word is frequently used to signify a barn 
 or store-house for corn, one instance of winch, in 
 St. Matthew xiii. 30, will suffice : — " Gather ye 
 together first the tares, and bind them in bundles to 
 burn them, but gather the wheat into my barn," 
 the Greek word for barn being apothece. From 
 this Greek word the Romans framed their word for 
 a shop or warehouse, apotheca. In early times in 
 England, spices, sugar-plums, and medical drugs 
 were sold at the same shop by the grocers. Stowe 
 tells us that the Company of the Apothecaries 
 divided themselves from the ancient Society of 
 Grocers ; and in 1540 we find a statute passed re- 
 lating to apothecary drugs, and directing that four 
 physicians should be annually chosen in London to 
 inspect these drugs. It seems probable that when 
 the apothecaries separated from the grocers, they 
 adopted the name of apotheca for the shop where 
 these drugs were sold, and thus acquired the name 
 of apothecaries ; their connexion with the grocers 
 seems, however, to have continued for many years 
 after. Holland, in his translation of Pliny, book 
 
138 ROOTS AND RAMIFICATIONS Chap. VIII. 
 
 xix., ch. 4, treats grocers and apothecaries as iden- 
 tical, and speaking of the advantages of having 
 gardens and herbs, he says, " The masters and mis- 
 tresses thereof were not wont to run in the mer- 
 chants' books for spicery, but changed the grocer or 
 apothecaries' shop for the garden." 
 
 The word engrave is from the Greek ei/, en (in), 
 and yqoctpco, grapho (to write). Telegraph is from 
 the same word, compounded with m\s, tele (far). 
 This word, used by our ancestors to denote an in- 
 strument that answered the end of writing, by 
 conveying intelligence to a distance by means of 
 signals, was, in later times, nearly superseded by 
 the more general use of the word Semaphore, derived 
 from the Greek o-wiaqc, sema (a sign), and Qepw, 
 phero (to bear), a much more appropriate word, since 
 intelligence was then communicated not by writing, 
 but by signs. The practice of communicating news 
 by signs is of the greatest antiquity and univer- 
 sality. The Prophet Jeremiah, ch. vi. v. 1, alludes 
 to it when he directs the children " to set up a sign 
 of fire in Bethhaccerem ;" and the other prophets 
 often speak of these signals, which were set up on 
 the heights to give notice to distant people of the 
 approach of an enemy. The same practice pre- 
 vailed in England from the earliest times. Pen- 
 nant, in his journey from Chester to London, de- 
 scribing Hadley Church, on the edge of Enfield 
 Chase, says, " On the top of the steeple there re- 
 
Chap. VIII. OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 139 
 
 mains an iron pitch-pot, designed as a beacon, 
 occasionally to be fired to alarm the country in case 
 of invasion. It takes its name from the Saxon 
 becman, to call by signs, from whence we get our 
 word beckon." He adds, that before the time of 
 Edward III. the signals were given by firing stacks 
 of wood ; but in the 11th year of his reign (1338) 
 it was first ordered that this species of alarm should 
 be made with pitch-pots, placed on standards, or 
 on elevated buildings within due distance of one 
 another. In our days, however, when the use of 
 signals to communicate intelligence has given way 
 to writing, by means of electric wires, the old word 
 telegraph (now appropriate to this method of com- 
 munication) has revived, but it seems problematical 
 whether it will long retain its place with the multi- 
 tude, since men are beginning to substitute for it 
 the word wire, and it is no uncommon language 
 now for a man to say, "He has wired to Liver- 
 pool," &c. 
 
 The word sack, from the Greek ffaxxor, saccos, 
 passed into the Latin language. Martial speaks of 
 saccus nivarius (a snow-bag to cool wine with), and 
 from the Latin this word has descended to us. 
 Sarcasm is from the Greek frx^xa-fxo^ sarkasmos — 
 from arxpKa.^co, sarJcazo (to tear off the flesh), and 
 signifies, in a metaphorical sense, a bitter taunt, 
 lacerating to the quick. From the same Greek 
 word signifying flesh, aaefe, sarx, and (pay a, phage- 
 
140 EOOTS AND RAMIFICATIONS Chap. VIII. 
 
 (to eat), the Greeks formed their word oxpnofyayos, 
 sarcophagos, literally meaning carnivorous, and it 
 was applied by them as a substantive to denote a 
 stone coffin, from the belief that the stone used in 
 the construction of coffins had the property of con- 
 suming the flesh. Pliny, in his 2nd book, ch. 96, 
 says, " About Assos in Troas there grows a stone, 
 wherewith all bodies are consumed, and thereupon 
 sarcophagus it is called." In his 36th book, ch. 17, 
 he writes further of this stone, " Near unto Assos, 
 a citie in Troas, there is found in the quarries a 
 certaine stone called Sarcophagus, which runneth in 
 a direct veine, and is apt to be cloven, and so cut 
 out of the rock by flakes ; the reason of that name 
 is this, because that within the space of fortie days 
 it is known for certain to consume the bodies of 
 the dead which are bestowed therein, skin, flesh, 
 and bone, all save the teeth." 
 
 From the same Greek word (pocyco, phago (to eat), 
 and xvQpeoiros, anthropus (a man), is formed the 
 word Anthropophagi, used by Shakspeare in his 
 Tragedy of Othello — 
 
 " The cannibals that each other eat, 
 
 The anthropophagi, and men whose heads 
 Do grow beneath their shoulders." 
 
 This word is also used by Bishop Taylor and other 
 writers. This barbarous practice has existed in 
 almost all ages of the world. Herodotus, speaking 
 of the Issedonian Scythians, says, that as often as 
 
Chap. VIII. OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 141 
 
 any one of them loses his father, his relations pro- 
 vide some cattle, which they kill and cut in pieces ; 
 they dismember, also, the body of the deceased, and 
 mixing the whole together, feast upon it. The head 
 alone is preserved ; from this they carefully remove 
 the hair, and cleansing it thoroughly, set it in gold. 
 Speaking of the Massagetse, he says, that as soon as 
 any one of them becomes infirm through age, his 
 relations put him to death, and then boil the body 
 with the carcase of a sheep, and feast upon it. 
 Speaking of the Padeei of India, he says, if any of 
 them are diseased, his nearest connexions put him 
 to death and eat him. They pay no regard to his 
 assertions that he is not really ill, but without the 
 smallest compunction deprive him of life. The 
 Battas, inhabiting the island of Sumatra, are ad- 
 dicted to the same practice ; and robbers amongst 
 them, if taken in the fact, are publicly executed and 
 eaten forthwith ; and proof the most conclusive has 
 
 been brought against the New Zealanders, who de- 
 ft O ' 
 
 vour their captives taken in war. in the most open 
 manner. Revolting as this practice is, it becomes 
 most degrading when we consider the meaning of 
 the Greek word av9§ wwor, anthiropus (man), of which 
 the word anthropophagi is formed. The word is 
 derived from the Greek words ava rpswciv uttx, ana 
 trepein opa (looking upwards). Ovid seems to have 
 been well aware of the origin of this word for, in 
 the first book of his Metamorphoses, he distinctly 
 
142 ROOTS AND RAMIFICATIONS Chap. VIII. 
 
 speaks of this characteristic of man, in the lines ren- 
 dered into English — 
 
 " Whilst other creatures towards the earth look down, 
 He gave to man a front sublime, and raised 
 His nobler view to ken the starry heaven." 
 
 So Cicero, in his second book of the ' Nature of 
 the Gods/ says : " God raised men aloft from the 
 ground, and made them upright, that by viewing 
 the heavens they might receive the knowledge of 
 the Gods., For men are upon the earth not merely 
 as inhabitants, but as spectators of things above 
 them in the heavens, the view of which belongs to 
 no other animals." And again, in his first book 
 ' De Legibus,' ch. 2, he says : " For while Nature 
 has bent down other animals to their pasture, 
 she has raised up the face and form of man 
 alone, and thus excites him to the contemplation 
 of the heavens, as of his native and original ha- 
 bitation." 
 
 The Greeks, while applying to man this generic 
 name, signifying looking upwards, used a word 
 having the reverse signification to describe an old 
 man about to leave the world — their word yspcov, 
 geron (an old man), being derived from the word yw, 
 ge (the earth), and opuv, oron (looking on). 
 
 " With downcast looks he views his place of birth, 
 And bows his bended trunk to mother earth." 
 
 So also the term for an old woman was yspaia., 
 geraia, by contraction graia, from whence we derive 
 
Chap. VIII. OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 143 
 
 our word gray. Our word humble has a similar 
 meaning with the Greek word for an old man, being 
 derived from the Latin word humus (the ground). 
 An humble man therefore is one whose eyes are 
 directed to the ground. 
 
 The word idea is transferred into our language 
 from the Greek i£&a, letter for letter, and comes 
 from e^oj, eido (to see). Idea has in our language 
 a different signification, however, from that which 
 it had in the Greek, where it was used to denote 
 aspect or general appearance. In St. Matthew 
 xxviii. 3, the angel rolling back the stone from the 
 sepulchre is described as having " a countenance 
 like lightning," the word in the Greek for coun- 
 tenance being idea. From originally meaning the 
 aspect of the human countenance, the word was 
 applied to denote those images which present them- 
 selves to the mind, leading to thought, and thus 
 came to signify mental imagination. 
 
 Again, our word dower is from the Greek Lr, 
 dos, from SiSwfAi, didomi (to give), and signifies the 
 provision which a husband gives to his wife to be 
 enjoyed after his decease ; and when she comes into 
 the possession of this gift by the death of her hus- 
 band, she is called, from the same Greek word, the 
 dowager ; but she is also entitled to something more 
 which the law gives her, and this is called her 
 paraphernalia, from the Greek irapa, para (beyond), 
 and (pspvYi, pherne (dower), and signifies jewels, 
 
144 ROOTS AND RAMIFICATIONS Chap. VIII. 
 
 trinkets, and ornaments of the person, to which a 
 wife has a right over and above her dower. Endow, 
 to provide for the maintenance or sustentation of an 
 almshouse or church, is from the same Greek word 
 above mentioned, signifying to give ; and so also is 
 dose, a portion of medicine given to a patient. 
 Anecdote, something not yet given out or published, 
 is from the same word compounded with a, a (not), 
 and ex, eh (out). 
 
 Sir Henry Spelman suggests that the word pillory 
 comes from the French pilleur (a pilferer), because 
 the punishment by the pillory was inflicted on 
 thieves ; and Skinner conceives that the true origin 
 of the word is pillar, suggesting that this instrument 
 of punishment was formerly surrounded by pillars. 
 However ingenious these suggestions may be, I 
 cannot think them satisfactory, but that we must 
 look to the Greek for the true derivation of this 
 word: <nu\copos, puloros, was with the Greeks a 
 porter or doorkeeper ^as pilloro is now with the 
 Spaniards), and no doubt this officer derived his 
 name from his office, having the care of the door, 
 or from the custom still prevalent in our jails of 
 looking through a lattice, before opening the door, 
 to see who sought admittance. The word, being a 
 compound of two Greek words, itv\r\, pule (a door), 
 and opxw, orao (to look), signified one who looked 
 after or had the charge of a door, or one who 
 looked through a door. The form of the pillory 
 
Chap. VIII. OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 145 
 
 with us seems to have varied, but generally to have 
 consisted of a door or wooden frame supported upon 
 a platform, behind which the delinquent was fixed, 
 with his head and arms thrust through three holes 
 cut in the door or frame. This instrument of 
 punishment was known to our Saxon ancestors by 
 the name of the halsfang, from hals, the neck, 
 and fang, to catch, and signified an instrument that 
 caught by the neck : this word fang is the origin 
 of our word finger. 
 
 The pillory is mentioned in the statute of 51 
 Hen. III., 1266, where it is rendered into Latin by 
 the word colUstrigium, from collum, the neck, and 
 stringere, to stretch ; and in a subsequent part of 
 the statute by the word pillorium, framed from the 
 French name for this instrument, pilon, which I 
 have no doubt they framed from the Greek words 
 above mentioned, signifying looking through a door. 
 In Hawkins's 'Pleas of the Crown' we find that 
 lords of hundreds and manors were bound to main- 
 tain a pillory within the limits of their jurisdiction — 
 a charge from which they are now relieved, since 
 the punishment by pillory was abolished by Act of 
 Parliament in the first year of the present Queen's 
 reign. Before taking leave of this word, I will give 
 one instance of the infliction of this punishment. 
 In 1757 John Shebbeare published several letters, 
 addressed to the people of England, attributing the 
 progress of the national ruin to the influence of the 
 
 H 
 
146 ROOTS AND RAMIFICATIONS. Chap. VIII. 
 
 Crown of Hanover on the councils of England. 
 For publishing these letters he was prosecuted and 
 found guilty, and sentenced to stand in the pillory 
 at Charing Cross, and to pay a fine of five pounds. 
 We read in Burrows' s Reports that the under-sheriff 
 befriended him in his punishment, and permitted 
 him to stand on the pillory without putting his head 
 and arms through the holes, and allowed him to 
 have a servant in livery in attendance upon him 
 holding an umbrella over his head. For these 
 breaches of duty, and for ridiculing the majesty of 
 the law, the under-sheriff was fined fifty pounds 
 and imprisoned for two months. 
 
 I might multiply instances of Greek words in 
 general use with us, but the foregoing shall suffice, 
 as it is time to close this chapter, and with it to 
 bring this little work to a termination. 
 
 In conclusion, I have only to beg that the reader 
 will not omit to read the Preface. 
 
 Vale. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 ABBE\ 
 
 A Page 
 
 Abbe 121 
 
 Abbey 121 
 
 Abbot 121 
 
 Abolish 121 
 
 Abominable .. .. 28 
 
 Abricot 77 
 
 Abstemious .. .. 30 
 
 Acerbity 85 
 
 Acrid 85 
 
 AgapEe 105 
 
 Agate 42 
 
 Alabaster 55 
 
 Alescote 71 
 
 Ambient 35 
 
 Ambition 35 
 
 Ambrosden .. .. 16 
 
 Ammonite 127 
 
 Anecdote 144 
 
 Angeln 13 
 
 Angles 13 
 
 Anglesea 14 
 
 Annals 28 
 
 Anthropophagi .. .. 140 
 
 Aperture 83 
 
 Apothecary .. .. 137 
 Apricot .. .. 77,89 
 
 April 82 
 
 Appease 85 
 
 Artery 119 
 
 Artillery 114 
 
 Assess 24 
 
 Athelney 14 
 
 Attainted 119 
 
 Attribute 23 
 
 Auspicious 27 
 
 Axholm 19 
 
 B 
 
 Bailiff 77 
 
 Ballium 75 
 
 Barbary 87 
 
 Bardsey 14 
 
 CAVALIER. 
 
 Page 
 
 Beadle 124 
 
 Beads 123 
 
 Beckon 139 
 
 Bedehouse 122 
 
 Bederepe 125 
 
 Bedeme 122 
 
 Bedesman 122 
 
 Bedlam 48 
 
 Bermondsey .. .. 14 
 
 Bezant 50 
 
 Bidden days .. .. 125 
 
 Biscuit 88 
 
 Bishop 77 
 
 Blanket 44 
 
 Boa 42 
 
 Bourse 78 
 
 Bradford 17 
 
 Bristol 15 
 
 Bridewell 48 
 
 Burser 78 
 
 Burly 66 
 
 Butcher 67 
 
 Butts 116 
 
 C 
 
 Calico 50 
 
 Cage 86 
 
 Calcedony 42 
 
 Calendar 28 
 
 Cambria 12 
 
 Canal 92 
 
 Canary 91 
 
 Cancel 100 
 
 Candle 92 
 
 Canopy 133 
 
 Carraway 46 
 
 Carriage 92 
 
 Cartel 37 
 
 Cartoon 37 
 
 Cataract 133 
 
 Catarrh 133 
 
 Cavalier 74 
 
 H 2 
 
148 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 CAVALRY. 
 
 Page 
 
 Cavalry 74 
 
 Cemetery 96 
 
 Censor 27 
 
 Censorious 27 
 
 Censure 27 
 
 Census 24 
 
 Chalybeate 41 
 
 Chamomile 72 
 
 Chancel 100 
 
 Chancellor 100 
 
 Channel 92 
 
 Chaos 92 
 
 Chapel 113 
 
 Chapman 15 
 
 Chapmanslade .. .. 16 
 
 Character 37 
 
 Characteristic .. .. 37 
 
 Charter 37 
 
 Cheap 15 
 
 Cheapside 16 
 
 Chepstow 15 
 
 Cherry 40 
 
 Chesyl 16 
 
 Chesyl bank .. .. 17 
 
 Cheval 74 
 
 Chevalier 74 
 
 Chichester 10 
 
 Chippenham .. .. 16 
 
 Chipping 15 
 
 Chipping Ongar . . . . 16 
 
 Chiselhurst .. .. 16 
 
 Chiselhampton .. .. 16 
 
 Chivalry 74 
 
 Chocolate 41 
 
 Cholera 133 
 
 Chopping 15 
 
 Chrystal 95 
 
 Church 98 
 
 Cider .. 69 
 
 Clover 59 
 
 Climate 95 
 
 Climax .. .. .. 95 
 
 Coigne 86 
 
 Columbarium . . .. 98 
 
 DOWAGER. 
 
 Page 
 
 Concoct 89 
 
 Confiscate 21 
 
 Contribute 22 
 
 Cook 89 
 
 Cookery 88 
 
 Copper 43 
 
 Cordial 134 
 
 Cordwainer .. .. 53 
 
 Core 134 
 
 Corner 86 
 
 Corollary 21 
 
 CotsAvold 15 
 
 Cricklade 19 
 
 Crime 102 
 
 Crisis 101 
 
 Criterion 101 
 
 Critical 101 
 
 Critic 101 
 
 Cumberland .. .. 12 
 
 Currants 45 
 
 Currier 67 
 
 Cyder 69 
 
 Cymri 12 
 
 D 
 
 Decoct 89 
 
 Deerhurst 16 
 
 Degree 129 
 
 Delirious 34 
 
 Den 16 
 
 Denham 16 
 
 Der 16 
 
 Derby 16 
 
 Derwent 16 
 
 Digress 128 
 
 Diocese 33 
 
 Disburse 80 
 
 Discern 102 
 
 Discriminate .. .. 101 
 
 Distribute 23 
 
 Discuss .. .... 29 
 
 Ditto 88 
 
 Dose 144 
 
 Dowager .... .. 143 
 
INDEX. 
 
 149 
 
 DOWER. 
 
 Page 
 
 Dower 143 
 
 Dropsy 59 
 
 Droitwicli 18 
 
 Dyspepsia 88 
 
 E 
 
 Eager 84 
 
 Ecclesiastic .. .. 98 
 
 Eelfare 126 
 
 Egress 128 
 
 Ecot 72 
 
 Ecstasy 135 
 
 Ella East 11 
 
 Ella Kirk 11 
 
 Ella West .. .. .. 11 
 
 Elland 12 
 
 Ellerbeck 12 
 
 Ellerbura 12 
 
 Ellerby 11 
 
 Elm 87 
 
 Elver 126 
 
 Ely 14 
 
 Emaciate 84 
 
 Endow 144 
 
 Energy 135 
 
 Engrave 138 
 
 Ermine 45 
 
 Essex 9 
 
 Evolve 36 
 
 Ewhurst 132 
 
 Ewridge 132 
 
 Expences 31 
 
 Ey 14 
 
 F 
 
 Fairs 110 
 
 Fan 82 
 
 Fane 82 
 
 Fare 126 
 
 Farewell 126 
 
 Farnham 16 
 
 Farrier 49 
 
 Farthing 65 
 
 Fascinate . . • . . . . 81 
 
 HIGHGATE. 
 
 Page 
 
 Father .. .. .. 62 
 
 Ferry 126 
 
 Finger 145 
 
 Fiscal 21 
 
 Foliage 39 
 
 Foolscap 39 
 
 Ford 126 
 
 Forfeit 120 
 
 Fortnight 107 
 
 Freemason 122 
 
 Furmety 68 
 
 Furnace 69 
 
 G 
 
 Gait 17 
 
 Gaiters 17 
 
 Galli 8 
 
 Galvanism 45 
 
 Gaol 86 
 
 Garret 133 
 
 Gate 17 
 
 Gazette 113 
 
 Genuflection .. .. 85 
 
 Gibberish 45 
 
 Gin 45 
 
 Gradeley 129 
 
 Gray 130, 143 
 
 Greenwich 18 
 
 Grees 128 
 
 Greyhound 129 
 
 Groat 66 
 
 Grog 66 
 
 Grogram 66 
 
 Guitar 83 
 
 H 
 
 Ham 16 
 
 Hamlet 16 
 
 Hampden 16 
 
 Hereford 17 
 
 Herring 17 
 
 Hertsey 14 
 
 Hexagon 86 
 
 Highgate 17 
 
150 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 HOLME 
 
 Page 
 
 Holme 19 
 
 Hollands 45 
 
 Horizon .. ,'. .. 133 
 
 Horsham 16 
 
 Humble 143 
 
 Hurst 16 
 
 Hurst Courtney .. 16 
 
 Hurst Monceaux .. 16 
 
 Hurst Pierpoint .. 16 
 
 Hypocrite 102 
 
 I 
 
 Idea 143 
 
 Interpreter 35 
 
 Interval 75 
 
 Intoxicate .. .. • • 131 
 
 J 
 
 Jalap 40 
 
 K 
 
 KenehmSt 12 
 
 Kennel 91 
 
 Kent 9 
 
 Kerk masses .. .. 110 
 
 Kerk-misse .. .. 110 
 
 Keynsham 16 
 
 Kindle 92 
 
 Knee 85 
 
 Knot 42 
 
 Know 85 
 
 Knutsford 17 
 
 L 
 
 Lade 19 
 
 Ladle 19 
 
 Lamp .. .. ,. .. 135 
 
 Lansdowne 10 
 
 Leather .... .. 62 
 
 Lechlade 19 
 
 Leisure 85 
 
 Lettuce 61 
 
 Libertine 22 
 
 License .. ., .. 85 
 
 OMEN. 
 
 Page 
 
 Lichen 133 
 
 Licorice 59 
 
 Linen 61 
 
 Linseed 61 
 
 Linsey Woolsey . . . . 61 
 
 Linnet 61 
 
 Liturgy 135 
 
 Loadstone 52 
 
 M 
 
 Macerate .. ... .. 84 
 
 Machine 87 
 
 Madeira 40 
 
 Magnet 52 
 
 Mansion 74 
 
 Maraschino 40 
 
 Margate 17 
 
 Meager 84 
 
 Meander 52 
 
 Menial 63 
 
 Mercia 12 
 
 Merino 70 
 
 MiddleAvick .. .. 18 
 
 Middlesex .-. .. .. 9 
 
 Milliner 53 
 
 Mimic 29 
 
 Missenden 16 
 
 Molasses 59 
 
 Morocco 53 
 
 Moustache 133 
 
 Mummery 44 
 
 N 
 
 Nantwich 18 
 
 Neighbour 67 
 
 Norfolk 11 
 
 Northumberland . . 11 
 
 Northwich 18 
 
 Norwich 11,18 
 
 O 
 
 Offenham 12 
 
 Offley 11 
 
 Omen 28 
 
INDEX. 
 
 151 
 
 0SWESTEY. 
 
 Page 
 
 Oswestry 12 
 
 Overture 82 
 
 Oxford 17 
 
 P 
 
 Pacha 77 
 
 Palliate 23 
 
 Pantomime .. .. 29 
 
 Paradox 133 
 
 Paralysis 133 
 
 Paraphernalia .. .. 143 
 
 Parchment 53 
 
 Partridge 87 
 
 Pauper 82 
 
 Pavilion 134 
 
 Pecker 87 
 
 Peculate 31 
 
 Peculiar 32 
 
 Pecuniary 32 
 
 Pedagogue 22 
 
 Pedigree 129 
 
 Pensive 31 
 
 Pentagon 86 
 
 Pepper 87 
 
 Pheasant 41 
 
 Physical 136 
 
 Physician 136 
 
 Pillory 144 
 
 Pine 135 
 
 Pirate.. .. .. .. 135 
 
 Pistol 41 
 
 Placable 85 
 
 Placid 85 
 
 Pleasure 85 
 
 Ponder 31 
 
 Porcelaine 33 
 
 Porker 34 
 
 Potatoe 77 
 
 Precarious 125 
 
 Precocious 89 
 
 Prerogative .. .. 20 
 
 Pretext 24 
 
 Prevaricate 35 
 
 Profane 82 
 
 Progress 128 
 
 SHEET. 
 
 Page 
 
 Province 36 
 
 Pulpit 113 
 
 Purlieu 112 
 
 Purse 80 
 
 Purser 80 
 
 Q 
 
 Quinine 60 
 
 Quinsey 62 
 
 Raven 80 
 
 Kavenous 81 
 
 Regress 128 
 
 Reimburse 80 
 
 Resign 22 
 
 Retaliate 32 
 
 Rhubarb 47 
 
 Ridings 64 
 
 Romescot 72 
 
 Roodey 15 
 
 S 
 
 Sack 139 
 
 Saffron 61 
 
 Salmon 127 
 
 Sandgate 17 
 
 Sandwich 18 
 
 Sarcasm 139 
 
 Sarcophagus .. .. 140 
 
 Schedule 37 
 
 Scotales 71 
 
 Scotfree 71 
 
 Scruple 30 
 
 Scum 85 
 
 Seafaring 126 
 
 Sebastopol 73 
 
 Second 29 
 
 Sedan 50 
 
 Semaphore 138 
 
 Se'nnight 107 
 
 Sere 134 
 
 Sewardstone .. .. 10 
 
 Shallot 47 
 
 Sheppev 14 
 
 Sheet ." 37 
 
152 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Sherry 
 
 Shilling 
 
 Shingle 
 
 Shirley Wick 
 
 Shoreham 
 
 Shot .. 
 
 Sincere 
 
 Sleepgrave 
 
 Solder.. 
 
 Spaniel 
 
 Spend .. 
 
 Spume 
 
 Squirrel 
 
 Stigmatise 
 
 Stipend 
 
 Stow . . 
 
 Stow-in-the 
 
 Strange 
 
 Stranger 
 
 Sudbury 
 
 Suffolk 
 
 Surgeon 
 
 Surrey 
 
 Sussex 
 
 Synagogue 
 
 Wold 
 
 Page 
 
 40 
 65 
 17 
 18 
 16 
 71 
 
 134 
 96 
 72 
 4-4 
 31 
 85 
 68 
 22 
 31 
 15 
 15 
 58 
 58 
 11 
 11 
 
 136 
 
 9 
 
 10 
 
 63 
 
 Tariff 51 
 
 Telegraph 138 
 
 Tench 87 
 
 Thoroughfare .. .. 126 
 
 Topaz 45 
 
 Town 18 
 
 Transgress 128 
 
 Tribe 22 
 
 Tribunal 22 
 
 Tribune 22 
 
 Tributary 23 
 
 Tribute 22 
 
 Troy 42 
 
 Tucker 44 
 
 WYCH-HOUSES. 
 
 Page 
 
 Tunnel 19 
 
 Turkey 46 
 
 Twelfth Night .. .. 107 
 
 Tyning 18 
 
 U 
 
 Ufford 11 
 
 Ulcer 87 
 
 V 
 
 Vallum .. .... 75 
 
 Varicose 35 
 
 Vernacular 22 
 
 Vetch 81 
 
 Vigil 108 
 
 Vinegar 84 
 
 Virgilius 73 
 
 Vixen 82 
 
 Voltaic 46 
 
 Voluble .. .. .. 36 
 
 Volume 36 
 
 W 
 
 Wakes 106 
 
 Wales 8 
 
 Wallingford .. .. 9 
 
 Waltham 15 
 
 War 8 
 
 Warden 8 
 
 Wardrobe 8 
 
 Warren 8 
 
 Wasp 8 
 
 Waxscot 72 
 
 Wayfaring 126 
 
 Weald 15 
 
 Welfare 126 
 
 Wic 18 
 
 Wicham 18 
 
 Wither 62 
 
 Wold 15 
 
 Worsted 43 
 
 Wych-houses .. .. 18 
 
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