ENGLISH ETYMOLOGY. * ETYMOLOGY is the weak point in our English

dictionaries partly because their compilers have known little or nothing of the Ger- and Scandinavian tongues most nearly allied to our own, and have been wholly ignorant of Celtic, but chiefly because etymo- logy is mainly a science of modern creation, and it is but recently that Englishmen have been made aware of its powers and begun in a few instances to apply, themselves to its study. What passed for etymology in England before this change began was either ludicrous guess-work—as when a learned author gravely asserts in his folio that the English word " tidy " is derived from the name of Dromede's father, because Tydeus was the type of smart little men—or it was a reproduction of the ingenious but false theories propounded by Tooke in his Diversions of Purley. Tooke's researches have been highly useful in directing and stimulating inquiry, but their utility in this respect have been quite independent of the intrinsic value of his conclusions, which may confidently be set down as nought. It is curious, however, to observe how trustfully to this day zealous, and in some respects highly accomplished philologists cling to Tooke's authority. Dean -Trench, for instance, who is so singularly well versed in the literary and historical department of lexicography, repeatedly brings forward Tooke's exploded fallacies as instances of the hap- piest discoveries in the genesis of words. For example, in his Studies of Words he asserts after Tooke that " Odd " is identi- cal with Owed, and means what is wanted to make up a pair. Now Odd does not signify deficiency, but surplus, as the late Mr. Garnett has shown. In Icelandic, oddr is a point, cuspis ; Danish, odd, the same ; Swedish, u,dd, a point, also ' odd ' in the

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English sense. With a difference only n form, "Odd" is iden- tical with " Ort, Orts," which Tooke erroneously derives from the Anglo-Saxon orettan, deturpare, as meaning made vile or worth- less. In German the primary meaning of ort is also point. In the Bavarian dialect it not only denotes point but also beginning, 'the end of a thread or skein, and, what is more to our purpose, ort oder eben is exactly our odd or even. In odd, the idea is that of unity, a single point, hence one over, orts are waste or super- fluous ends, leavings. To the passage from which we have extracted these corrections of Tooke Mr. Garnett appends the following note from a letter addressed to him by Mr. Wedgwood, of whose book we shall speak presently.

" When numbers are considered as odd or even they seem to be considered as placed in two rows—and if the ends of the rows are even with each other We call the number even; if one row projects beyond the other it is an odd number ; and the Icelanders have yddin, to project from udd. I don't think you alluded to the expression, odds and ends, which is a common one."

Another of Tooke's guesses which Dean Trench quotes with marked approval is the famous etymology of "truth." It is based on two assumptions : first, that to trow simply denotes to think or believe ; secondly that truth originally meant, and still does mean, what is trowed, and nothing more. The Dean is in love with this etymology for the oddest of all reasons—its alleged moral and metaphysical beauty. Its worthlessness in a philological point of view has been clearly shown by Mr. Garnett, in a passage of which we would gladly give an abstract, but that it would detain us too long from Mr. Wedgwood, the first volume of whose Dictionary of English Etymology we have perused with intense satisfaction. To say that it immeasurably surpasses anything of the kind that has yet been attempted would be equivocal praise of a work of such intrinsic excellence. It is based upon a very comprehensive acquaintance with European languages, and upon sound and ad- vanced principles of etymological science, and in every page it gives evidence of elaborate research and critical sagacity. It can hardly fail to give a great impulse to the study of etymology in this country by popularizing its results, showing as it does that this science is "not harsh and crabbed, as dull fools suppose," but an inexhaustible source of intellectual pleasure. In his very interesting Introduction Mr. Wedgwood states what he believes to be the true reach of his science, the ultimate object at which its cultivaors should aim.

"Etymology is still at the stage where an arbitrary theory is accepted as the basis of scientific explanation. It is supposed that all language is de- veloped from roots or skeletons of articulate sound, endowed with distinct and often very abstract meaning, but incapable of being actually used in speech, until properly clothed in grammatical forms. And this theory of roots takes the place of the elementary powers which form the basis of other sciences. The etymologist, who succeeds in tracing a word to a Sanscrit root, is as well satisfied with the account he has rendered of his problem, as the astronomer who traces an irregularity in the orbit of a comet to the at- traction of a planet, within whose influence it has been brought in its last revolution. Now in what condition is it possible that roots could have ex- isted, before they were actually used in speech ? If it be suggested that they were implanted by Nature in the mind of man—as some people have supposed that the bones of mammoths were created, at the same stroke with the other materials of the strata in which they are buried—we can only say that it is directly opposed to anything we observe in infanta of the present day. But if it be said that no one supposes that the roots, as such, ever had independent existence ; that they are merely fictions of the grammarians to indicate the core of a group of related words having similar significations, in which sense the term will always be used in the present work ; or if they are regarded as the remains of some former condition of language, then they cease to afford a solid resting-place, and the origin of the roots themselves becomes as fit an object of inquiry, as of the words in actual use at the pre- sent day. Nor will the curiosity of a rational inquirer be satisfied until he meets with a principle adequate to give rise to the use of language in a being with a mental constitution, such as he is conscious of in himself, or observes in the course of development in the infants growing up around him.

"Now one such principle at least is universally admitted under the name of Onomatopceia, when a word is made to imitate or represent a sound cha-

* A Dictionary of English Etymology. By Heusleigh Wedgwood, M.A., late Fellow of Chr. Coll, Cam. Vol. r. (A—D.) Published by Trilbner and Co. racteristic of the object it is intended to designate, as Bang, &trek, .Purr, Whizz, Hum. In uncivilized languages the consciousness of the imitative character of certain words is sometimes demonstrated by their composition with verbs like say, or do, to signify making a noise like that represented by the word in question. Thus in Galls, from defula, to say, or gorts,le make or do, are formed cam* (Ueda (to say tweak), to crack, tier-or tem- 4eda, to chirp, dadada-goda (to make 11,4.'4), to beat, to make a noise, *am (Yam goda, to smack or make a sound with the lips in eating, as swine, to champ.—Tutschek. And the same mode of speech may be observed even in English.

" 'I should he loth to see you Come fluttering down like a young rook, cry squab, And take you up with your brain' s beaten into your buttocks.' B. and F. Women pleased. "Here squab represents the sound made by the young rook thrown down from its nest upon the ground, whence a young rook is called a squab.

"But though the origin of a certain number of words in the direct imita- tion of sounds is a recognized fact, yet it has been considered as quite an exceptional case, and there is a constant tendency in the progress of cultiva- tion to regard the words, whose imitative character is most clearly marked, as a sort of illegitimate pretenders to the dignity of language. We are too apt to look upon words like .fl=, what*, bump, bang, clearly representing different kinds of sound, or the actions which they accompany, as make- shifts of modern invention, not entitled to take place in sustained composi- tion with elements which appear to derive their significance from the mys- terious source of universal speech. The discredit, however, into wincli words of this description have fallen, is a prejudice resting on no solid foundation. There is no reason for supposing them less ancient than the most time-worn particle, of whose origin in a sensible image we cannot form a guess. To slain the door is a colloquial expression in which the verb seems as if it might have been suggested yesterday by its appropriateness to express that kind of noise, but the word is used in a much wider sense by the Laplanders, with a special application to this very instance of slamming the door; and what countless ages must have elapsed since their ancestors and ours parted from a common stock !"

There are classes of words in which the imitative character is so strongly marked that it will be admitted by every one as soon as the question is raised ; in others it can be only demonstrated by a detailed examination of the mode in which the meaning of the word has been developed. Mr. Wedgwood applies himself with great ingenuity and force to show that the imitative principle is adequate to the expression of ideas the most opposed to all appa- rent connexion with sound of any kind. The word " ugly " is one of the examples he adduces.

"In a passage of Hardyng, cited at the same place, it is said that the ab- bess of Coldinghame, having cut off her own nose and lips for the purpose of striking the Danish ravishers with horror'

--counselled all her sister to do the game,

To make their foes to houge so with the sight. And so they did, afore the enemies came Echo-on their nose and over-lip full right Cut off anon, which was an hougly eight. Here, as damieson rightly observes, the passage clearly points out the origin of the E. ugly, as signifying what causes aborrence, and he might have ca- ned the derivation to its original source if he had added, what impels one to utter the exclamation ugh !

Ugh! the odious ugly fellow ! Countess of St. Albans.

In the Sc. agsonle, frightful, terrible, the original force of the roof is priN• served, which is much softened down in ugly.

The ugsomeneas and silence of the nycht In every place my sprete made sare aghast.—D. V.

Then as things of an extraordinary size have p tendency to excite awe and terror, to make us ug or houge at them, the term huge is used to signify the utmost degree of magnitude.'

The present volume comprises words in alphabetical order from A to D inclusive. The author hopes to complete the work in two more volumes.