A Book about Words. By G. F. Graham. (Longmans.)—The interest
of the subject is inexhaustible, and is such as to make it peculiarly suit- able for the studies of a school. It has the great value of giving a sense of discovery, and so excites a feeling more vivid than any mere learn- ing can give. Mr. Graham makes something of his subject, for he is evidently fond of it, and has taken pains in collecting materials; yet his work is not very well done. In the first place, many of his proposi- tions are doubtful, "hasty generalizations," in fact. It is not true that such adjectives as "brazen," "golden," have entirely lost their primary meaning. Both are still used in the literary language, though in speak- ing " brass " and "gold" would be employed. Next his Greek is not very accurate. " Martyr " should be attributed to par.-up, the later form of Acipre5, not to a word, Aciprupo;, which is never found. And what can he mean by saying that the origin of "spouse " may be traced to the Greek 0/3i14441 (sbennum0, "1 pear out "? 7.4'itbco means "I pour out ;" eghtfulki, "I quench." Is a "spouse," then, a "quencher"? An instance of a more radical error is the favouring of the absurd notion that the word "nose" is derived from the word for promontory. Surely, men named their noses before they named pmemontories. But the great fault of the book is the misconception, or perhaps we should say, the ignoring of the true relationships of languages. We have not discovered a recog- nition of the fact, perhaps the most interesting fact in philology, of a common descent, common, that is, to certain families of them.
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