A NEW ENGLISH DICTIONARY.*
A FEW days ago we saw a dictionary called the "Encyclopaedic advertised as " an exhaustive work, embracing all the words of the English language." Its superiority over any dictionary yet issued was claimed on account of the number of words, which were estimated at 150,000. The great work edited by Dr. Murray, of which the First Part, being the one-twenty-fourth part of the whole, is now before us, will, it is estimated, con- tain nearly 250,000 words. It is about twenty-five years since the work was commenced ; 1,300 readers were engaged in collecting materials, more than 5,000 authors were specially read for the work, and about three and a half millions of quotations have been recorded for the editor's use. Notwith- standing these gigantic efforts, however, after some minutes' search in a few books we chanced to take up, we came across the following words ab-intestate, the afzelian (a British insect), agentrine, the alder, (moth), the all saints' cherry, which we do not see in the dictionary, but which ought, in accordance with the scheme of it, to be found there. Even this great dictionary, therefore, is far from being an "exhaustive work." We have little doubt that many words, will remain to be discovered by some future generation of readers. Nor can it be doubted that numbers of words will be found in the lan- guage at much earlier dates than have been recorded. The- words abdest and abolla, for instance, are explained in Cham- bers's Cyclopcedia, 1786, more than half-a-century before the dates given in the dictionary. It is not, however, on account of the number of words it contains that this dictionary principally claims our attention ; it is because now, for the first time, we have a dictionary based on historical principles presented. to us. In this aspect, we think it will compare most favourably with the only works with which it can be com- pared, the great French dictionary of Littre, and the great German dictionary of Grimm, which is still in progress. In these dictionaries the historical treatment is not so complete, nor made of such primary importance, as it is in the present work, of which it is the entire basis. If any one will look at the development of the different senses in Dr. Murray's dictionary, • A New Enplisl ',Dictionary, on Historical Principles. Founded mainly on the Materials collected by the Philological Society. Edited by James A. H. Murray, LLD., President of the Philological Society, with the assistance of many Scholars and Men of Science. Part L, A to Ant. Oxford : Clarendon Press. all the quotations being given in the order of their age, in such words as have anything of a history,—address, allow, for in- stance,—he cannot fail to be struck with the amount of research displayed, and the perspicuity with which the results are set forth.
The words dealt with in this dictionary are those of the English language subsequent to the middle of the twelfth cen- tury. All the dialects up to the year 1500 are included, sub- sequent to which date that dialect which has become our standard modern English is alone allowed a place in the dictionary. We think Dr. Murray has taken the right course in regard to these limits. Before the middle of the twelfth century our language is called Old English or Anglo-Saxon. It had then full inflexions, like the Latin. Since that time the inflexions have been gradually reduced to the very few remains we have of them at the present day. Moreover, three-fourths of the Old English words have disappeared in the modern language. Dr. Murray, however, has traced back all the old words which have survived the middle of the twelfth century to their earliest date in the old literature, with suitable quotations. With regard to the dialects, there was no standard language before 1500, therefore they are all necessarily included up to that date. It was admittedly impracticable to give all the words to be found in the language. Dr. Murray had to draw the line somewhere. He includes such words as he considers are passing into common use. We think this is too vague. In scientific and technical terminology, his aim has been to include generally "all words English in form." The result is, that while the dictionary is altogether insufficient as one of scientific terms, there are far too many of such words for any other purpose. We think Dr. Murray would have been better advised if he had included only those "common words" of literature which could be proved such from the quotations. We do not see that because a word has been given something of an English form in an exclusively scientific treatise, that is any sufficient reason for providing it with a place in this dictionary, when all other scientific terms in the same treatise, which have not had their form altered, are excluded.
We must now consider a few of the many things that may be learnt from a work of this nature. We may here learn—this is alluded to in the preface—that the French words adopted into our language before the fourteenth century, and on the intro- duction of which so many of our Old English words disappeared, were generally received, not from Paris or any dialect of Con- tinental French, but were Anglo-French, which was a dialect of itself, that spoken by Chaucer's Prioresse,—
" After the scale of Stratford at Bowe,
For frenssh of Parys was to hire vnknowe."
Abeyance, abash, abettor, acceptor, are instances of such words. Next, there are some hundreds of words in all our great dictionaries to which no quotations have been assigned. The 1,300 readers for the dictionary have brought nothing new to light about the great mass of these words. It may be concluded that in all probability they never were in use, but that they were invented either merely to increase the size of the dictionaries, or because they were considered to be needful additions to the language. It was the opinion of the gram- marian Marcellus that even a Roman emperor could not by his mere will add a single word to the Latin language ; and our dictionary-makers, also a great power in the land, notwithstanding all the efforts that have been made for a period of upwards of 200 years, from the date of the first dictionary to the present time, have not been able to add to the English language any of the numerous words which we must now suppose to have been invented by them. Some, of course, only erred in ignorantly receiving the illicit manufactures of others. Instances of such words are abgregate, agrestical, agricolation, in " Cockeram ," 1626; affulsion, aggerose, .amarulence, in "Bayley," 1731. Dr. Johnson adopted most of Bayley's words, but some of them—amendableness, for instance —he would not have anything to say to. Dr. Worcester refused to admit into his dictionary any of the words which he con- sidered had been invented by Webster. We wish Dr. Murray had had the courage to exclude all these purely dictionary words from the New English Dictionary. We do not either consider that snot( a word as able-bodiedness belongs to the language on the evidence merely of one quotation of recent date, and there are many other words with uo better claims. Again, as to the present forms of many words, some words were altered to give them a more learned appearance. As abime, the French form, appeared too common, it was changed to the original Latin form, abysms, and afterwards to abyss. Some words were altered from an en- tirely false etymology being assigned them. One of the most remarkable is the verb to ache, which before the eighteenth cen- tury was always written ake, but was afterwards altered to ache, on the erroneous supposition that it was derived from the Greek Azoc, with which it bas no connection whatever, an alteration for which Dr. Johnson is mainly responsible. Other words, again, were wrongly spelt on similar grounds, but afterwards re- stored to their proper form. Thus, abominable was at one period written abhominable, and explained " ab homine," "away from man," " inhurhan." Abound and abundance were written habound and hab.undance, from being erroneously connected with " habeo."
We will now mention a few words, out- of several that might be quoted, whose separate histories have special points of in- terest. The word agitator was first used only in the restricted sense of a delegate of the common soldiers in the Parliamentary Army,1647-9. The Agitators were, according to Clarendon, " as a House of Commons to the Council of Officers." Burke is the first authority quoted for the use of the word in its present sense. Alcohol is an Arabic word, meaning " the fine powder used to stain the eyelids," which was adopted into mediaeval Latin. Then it was used in early chemistry to denote any fine impalpable powder, especially that produced by sublimation, as "alcohol of sulphur," the first quotation in this sense in English being in 1543. About 150 years later, by the extension of the idea of sublimation to fluids, we meet with " alcool of wine." We find the word figuratively used by Coleridge, " in- tense selfishness, the alcohol of egotism." Subsequently alcohol alone came to mean " pure spirit," and quite recently the word has been applied to any liquor containing alcohol. In modern chemistry, an extensive class of compounds of the same type as spirits of wine has been included under this name. The first notice of the application of alma mater to a University is from Pope, in the Dunciad. For the origin of animal spirits we are re- ferred to what is now an obsolete doctrine in physiology. Animal is from animus, "the soul." The animal spirits had their seat in the brain, and gave " feeling and moving to the body." Milton uses the term in this sense, when he says that Satan "might taint the animal spirits." After animal was thought to mean the substantive " animal,"—a word of later introduction, which is not found in the Bible,—animal spirits came to mean, first, "animal courage," and, lastly, acquired its present meaning of "natural gaiety of disposition." We would not conclude with- out expressing our gratitude to the delegates of the Clarendon Press, for recognising the importance of this great work, and providing the means for its publication. A work of this de- scription is truly a national work, and has been recognised as such in Germany, where the funds for carrying on Grimm's Dictionary are provided by the Government.
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