One of the most interesting results of the study of language is the elucidation which it affords of the history of mankind. In the larger sphere of comparative philology, important discoveries regarding the relations of various races have been made. In some cases a common origin has been proved for the widely dissimilar languages of different nations; in others, the influence of one people upon its less civilised neighbors is clearly shown. If, on the other hand, we confine our inquiries to our own language, the historical associations which it presents are no less interesting. The successive races which predominated in the early days of the history of Great Britain, have each left its impress upon our language, in which Celtic, Latin, Saxon, Danish, and Norman elements are strangely intermingled. Even now, our commercial intercourse with the inhabitants of every quarter of the globe is ever enriching our vocabulary with borrowed terms and phrases. Hence, it is hardly to be wondered that such a composite language affords an ample field for research. We may trace in it the gradual progress of civilisation, and follow the changes of national ideas and feelings, the elevation of some words, the debasement of many others. We may recognise the half-forgotten names of men once famous for their characters and achievements, and of places once renowned for their produce and manufactures. Finally, we may recall states of society which have long since passed away, and find in modern phrases vestiges of the manners and customs of other days.

It is to these records of the minor details of life that we would briefly call attention, as an investigation possessing the double interest of investing with greater reality the history of the past, and of throwing a new light on the bearing of words otherwise inexplicable. This class of words has undoubtedly been increased by startling derivations, due more to the imagination and ingenuity of their inventors, than to any certain foundation in fact. But even those which are universally recognised form a considerable category, from which we may select a few of the more interesting specimens.

We would first remind our readers of the derivations of two words applied to a peculiar form of wealth—the substantive fee and the adjective pecuniary, which, though so widely different in form, recall to us the same idea through the vehicle of different languages. They are both taken from words—the one Saxon, the other Latin—signifying “cattle,” and thus take us back to the times when flocks and herds were the chief property of our ancestors, the evidence as well as the source of their wealth. It is curious how, from this first signification, the words came to be considered applicable to wealth of any kind, and have now become almost limited in meaning to property in the form of money. To the same days of primitive simplicity we may also undoubtedly attribute the word rivals, when the pastoral dwellers by the same stream (Latin rivus) would not unfrequently be brought into unfriendly competition with each other. Some words and expressions are derived from the time when but few persons could boast of what we should consider the most elementary education. The word signature, for example, had a more literal application in the days when the art of writing was known but to a few monks and scholars, and when kings and barons, no less than their humbler followers, affixed their cross or sign to any document requiring their assent. Again, when we speak of abstruse calculations, we make unthinking reference to the primitive method of counting by means of pebbles (calculi), resorted to by the Romans.

It is remarkable how many of the terms relating to books and the external materials of literature refer primarily to the simple materials made use of by our ancestors to preserve their thoughts and the records of their lives. In book itself, it is generally acknowledged we have a proof of how a primitive race, generally believed to have been the Goths, employed the durable wood of the boc or beech-tree on which to inscribe their records. Library and kindred words in our own and other modern languages indicate the use of the liber or inner bark of a tree as a writing material; while code, from caudex, the trunk of a tree, points to the wooden tablets smeared with wax on which the ancients originally wrote. The thin wooden leaves or tablets were not like the volumina, rolled within one another, but, like those of our books, lay over one another. The stilus, or iron-pointed implement used for writing on these tablets, has its modern form in our style, which has come to be applied less to the manner of writing than to the mode of expression. Hence its significance has been extended so as to apply to arts other than that of composition. As advancing civilisation brought to the Western world the art of making a writing material from strips of the inner rind of the Egyptian papyrus glued together transversely, the word paper was introduced, to be applied as time went on to textures made of various substances. The Greek name of the same plant (byblos) gives us a word used with reference to books in the composite forms of bibliographer, bibliomania, and so forth. It is worthy of remark that in England, as well as in France, Germany, and other European countries, the simple form of this Greek word for book, our Bible, has come to be restricted to One Book, to the exclusion of all others. From scheda, a Latin word for a strip of papyrus rind, has also descended our schedule.

The transition from tablets to paper as a writing material has also a monument in volume, which, in spite of its significance as a roll of paper, is applied to the neatly folded books which have taken the place of that cumbrous form of literature. More than one instance of a similar retention of a word the actual signification of which is completely obsolete, might easily be adduced. The word indenture refers to an ancient precaution against forgery resorted to in the case of important contracts. The duplicate documents, of which each party retained one, were irregularly indented in precisely the same manner, so that upon comparison they might exactly tally. A vignette portrait has also lost the accompaniment which alone made the name appropriate, namely, the vine-leaves and tendrils which in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries usually formed its ornamental border. The directions in the English Prayer-book, again, are still known as rubrics (Latin ruber, red), although it is now the exception rather than the rule to see them printed as originally, in red letters. Once more, we apply without any sense of incongruity the name of pen (from Latin penna, a feather) to all those modern appliances which rival, if they have not yet superseded, the quill, to which alone the word is really appropriate.

Several words come down to us derived from customs connected with election to public offices. The word candidate (from Latin candidus, white), is one of these. It was customary among the Romans for any suitor for office to appear in a peculiar dress denoting his position. His toga was loose, so that he might show the people the scars of the wounds received in the cause of the commonwealth, and artificially whitened in token of fidelity and humility. Again, ambition—a word of which the significance has been widened to embrace the most overpowering of all the passions of the human heart—refers primarily to the practice of these same candidates of repairing to the forum and other places of public resort, and their “going round” (Latin ambientes) among the people, endeavoring to ingratiate themselves by friendly words and greetings. From the ancient practice of secret voting by means of “balls,” we have the word ballot, which is erroneously applied to all secret voting, even when, as in the case of our parliamentary elections, voting-papers, and not balls, are employed. Nor must we omit another word of similar origin—that is, ostracism. This word signified among the Greeks the temporary banishment which might be inflicted by six thousand votes of the Athenian people upon any person suspected of designs against the liberty of the state. The name arose from the votes being recorded upon a bit of burnt clay or an earthenware tile shaped like a shell (Gr. ostrakon, a shell). It is closely allied to the Greek ostreon, or Latin ostrea, an oyster. A somewhat similar practice existed among the Syracusans, where it went by the name of petalism, from the leaf (Gr. petalon) on which the name of the offender was written. With the caprice of language, this word has entirely passed away, while the Athenian custom gives us a word expressive of social exclusion.

It has been said that there is hardly an institution of ancient times which has not some memorial in our language. The sacrifices of Greeks and Romans are commemorated in the word immolate, from the habit of throwing meal (Latin mola) upon the head of the victim. The word contemplate was probably used originally of the augurs who frequented the temples of the gods, temple meaning originally “a place cut off,” and hence “reserved,” Our word funeral is borrowed from a Latin word of similar signification, which in its turn is connected with fumus, smoke, thus giving us an allusion to the ancient habit of burning the bodies of the dead. Another word connected with the rites accorded to the dead—that is, dirge—is of Christian origin. It is a contraction of the first word of the antiphon in the office for the dead, taken from the eighth verse of the fifth Psalm: “Dirge, Dominus meus,” etc. (“Lead or direct me, O Lord,” etc.). From a Roman law-term of Greek origin we have the word paraphernalia, signifying strictly those articles of personal property, besides her jointure, which were at the disposal of a woman after the death of her husband.

From a detail of Roman military life we trace the derivation of the word subsidy, originally applied only to assistance in arms, but generalised to signify help of any kind, especially pecuniary aid. Salary meant originally “salt-money,” or money given to the soldiers for salt. With the inconsistency frequently found in language, the name survived after money had taken the place of such rations. Strictly speaking, the word stipend is liable to the same etymological objection, since the meaning of the word is a certain quantity of small coins estimated by weight.

The derivation of the word tragedy has been a fruitful field of controversy. It is undoubtedly the case that this class of drama was originally of anything but a mournful and pathetic character, and was a remnant of the winter festival in honor of the god Dionysus. The word is coined from the Greek tragos, a goat; but various reasons have been assigned for this connection. Some assert that a goat was the prize awarded to the best extempore poem in honor of the god; others, that the first actors were dressed like satyrs, in goat-skins. A more likely explanation is that a goat was sacrificed at the singing of the song.

It is curious to remark how many names applied to persons, in allusion either to their characters or occupations, can be traced to some custom of other days. The very word person is an example of this class of derivatives. It was first applied to the masks which it was customary for actors to wear. These covered the whole head, with an opening for the mouth, that the voice might sound through (Latin personare). The transition was easy from the disguise of the actor to the character which he represented, and the word was ultimately extended beyond the scenic language to denote the human being who has a part to play in the world. Sycophant is compounded of two Greek words (sycon, phantes), signifying literally a “fig-shewer,” that is, one who brings figs to light by shaking the tree. It has been conjectured, also, that “fig-shewer” perhaps referred to one who informed against persons exporting figs from Attica, or plundering sacred fig-trees. Sycophant meant originally a common informer, and hence a slanderer; but it was never used in the modern sense of a flatterer. Another word of somewhat similar meaning, parasite, sprung from no such contemptible trade. The original bearers of the name were a class of priests who probably had their meals in common (Latin parasiteo, to sit beside). But very early with the Greeks the term came to be applied to one who lives at the expense of the great, gaining this position by adulation and servility. Also of Greek origin is pedagogue (paidagogos), signifying, first, rather the slave who conducted the child’s steps to the place of instruction, than, as now, the master who guides his mind in the way of knowledge. In later times, a chancellor gained his name from the place which it was customary for him to occupy near the lattice-work screen (cancellus) which fenced off the judgment-seat from the body of the court. The same Latin derivation gives us the chancel of a church, from the fact of its being screened off, and what is more remarkable, the verb to cancel, that is, to strike out anything which is written by making cross-lines over it.

Several of the names of different trades will at once occur to our readers. Thus, a stationer is one who had a “station” or stand in the market-place for the sale of books, in order to attract the passers-by as customers. An upholsterer, originally upholdster, was, it would seem, an auctioneer, who “held up” his wares in order to show them off. The double -er in this word is superfluous, as in poulter-er. A haberdasher was so called from his selling a stuff called hapertas in old French, which is supposed to be from a Scandinavian word meaning pedlars’ wares, from the haversack in which they were carried.

Two military terms have curious origins. Sentinel has been traced through Italian to the Latin sentina, the hold of a ship, and is thus equivalent to the Latin sentinator, the man who pumps bilge-water out of a ship. It is curious to mark how the name of a naval official of whom constant vigilance was required has been wholly transferred to a post requiring equal watchfulness in the sister service. The other term to which we would call attention is hussar, a Hungarian word signifying “twentieth.” In explanation of this derivation, it is related that when Matthias Corvinus ascended the Hungarian throne in 1458, the dread of imminent foreign invasion caused him to command an immediate levy of troops. The cavalry he raised by a decree ordering that one man should be enrolled out of “twenty” in every village, who should provide among themselves for his subsistence and pay.

We may pass now to some words of the same nature of less honorable significance. Assassin remains in our language as the dread memorial of the domination of an odious sect in Palestine which flourished in the thirteenth century, the Hashishin (drinkers of hashish, an intoxicating drink or decoction of the Cannabis indica, a kind of hemp). The “Old Man of the Mountain” roused his followers’ spirits by help of this drink, and sent them to stab his enemies, especially the leading Crusaders. The emissaries of this body waged for two hundred years a treacherous warfare alike against Jew, Christian, and orthodox Mohammedan. Among the distinguished men who fell victims to their murderous daggers were the Marquis of Monteferrat in 1192, Louis of Bavaria in 1213, and the Kahn of Tartary some forty years later. The buccaneers, who at a later date were hardly less dreaded, derived their name from the boucan or gridiron on which the original settlers at Hayti were accustomed to broil or smoke for future consumption the flesh of the animals they had killed for their skins. The word is said to be Caribbean, and to mean “a place where meat is smoke-dried.”

Some of the contemptuous terms in our language have been attributed to remarkable origins. In scamp, we have a deserter from the field of battle (Latin ex, and campus), a parallel word to decamp; and in scoundrel, “a loathsome fellow,” “one to scunner or be disgusted at.” The old word scunner, still used as a term of strong dislike in Lowland Scotch, meant also “to shrink through fear,” so that scunner-el is equivalent to one who shrinks, a coward. Poltroon is “one who lies in bed,” instead of bestirring himself.

Several words have passed from a literal to a figurative sense, and have thus become much wider in signification. Thus, villain originally meant merely a farm-servant; pagan, a dweller in a village; knave, a boy; idiot, a private person; heathen, a dweller on a heath; gazette, a small coin; and brat, a rag or clout, especially a child’s bib or apron. Treacle meant an antidote against the bites of serpents; intoxicate, to drug or poison; coward, a bob-tailed hare; and butcher, a slaughterer merely of he-goats. Brand and stigmatise still mean to mark with infamy, although the practical significance of the words is now chiefly a matter of history. Under the Romans, a slave who had proved dishonest, or had attempted to run away from his master, was branded with the three letters F U R, a thief or rascal; while it may not be generally known that in England the custom of branding the cheek of a felon with an F was only abolished by statute some sixty years ago.

These examples of a class of words denoting traces of customs of other days, might easily be largely multiplied; but enough has been said to remind our readers of one aspect of the historical value of our language—that is, the impress of the thoughts and practices of past generations stamped upon the words which are used in the familiar intercourse of life.—Chambers’s Journal.