LECTURE XXVI.

SYNONYMS AND EUPHEMISMS.

WEBSTER'S definition of synonym is as follows: "A noun or other word having the same signification as another is its synonym. Two words containing the same idea are synonyms." If this is a true definition, the French cheval and the English horse are synonyms of each other, because the one has "the same signification" as the other. Again, the verb to fear, the noun fear, the adjectives fearful and fearless, and the adverb fearfully are synonyms, each of all the others, because they all "contain the same idea." The definition is manifestly erroneous in both its parts. Cheval and horse are reciprocally translations, not synonyms, of each other; and as to the other example I have cited, it is a violation of the established use of the word to apply the term synonyms to words of different grammatical classes, for synonyms are necessarily convertible, which different parts of speech cannot be. Synonym, in the singular number, hardly admits of an independent definition, for the notion of synonymy implies two correlative words, and therefore, though there are synonyms, there is in strictness no such thing as a

synonym, absolutely taken. Properly defined, synonyms are words of the same language and the same grammatical class, identical in meaning; or, more generally, synonyms are words of the same language which are the precise equivalents of each other. And if a definition of the word in the singular is insisted on, we may say that a noun or other part of speech, identical in meaning with another word of the same language and the same grammatical class, is the synonym of that word; or, less specifically, a synonym is a word identical in meaning with another word of the same language and the same grammatical class. But though this is the proper definition of true synonyms, it is by no means the ordinary use of the term, which is generally applied to words not identical, but similar, in meaning. Both in popular literary acceptation, and as employed in special dictionaries of such words, synonyms are words sufficiently alike in general signification to be liable to be confounded, but yet so different in special definition as to require to be distinguished.

It has been denied that synonyms have any real existence in human speech, and critical writers have affirmed, that between two words of similar general signification some shade of difference in meaning is always discernible. Persons who think, and therefore speak, accurately, do indeed seldom use any two words in precisely the same sense, and with respect to words which do not admit of rigorously scientific definition as terms of art, and which are neither names of sensuous objects, nor expressive of those primary ideas which are es sential to, if not constitutive of, the moral and intellectual nature of man, it is almost equally true that no two persons use any one word in exactly the same signification. Every man's conception of the true meaning of words is modified,

both in kind and in degree, by the idiosyncrasies of his mental constitution. Language, as a medium of thought and an instrument for the expression of thought, is subjective, not absolute. We mould words into conformity with the organization of our inner man; and though different persons might, under the same circumstances, use the same words, and even define them in the same terms, yet the ideas represented by those words are more or less differenced by the mental characters and conditions of those who employ them. Hence, with the exceptions already made, all determinations of coincidence in, and distinction between, the meanings of words, are approximate only, and there is always an uncertain quantity which cannot be eliminated.

Besides this inherent difficulty, common to all languages, there is the further fact, that in tongues of considerable territorial extension, there are often local differences of usage; so that of two words of like meaning, one will be exclusively employed in one district, the other in another, to express precisely the same idea.

Again, the unpleasant effect of constant repetition often obliges both speakers and writers to employ different words for the same purpose. For instance, in this course of lectures, I must, to vary the phrase, and avoid wearisome iteration of the same word, use language, tongue, speech, words, dialect, idiom, discourse, vocabulary, nomenclature, phraseology, often, indeed, in different acceptations, but frequently to convey the same thought. For the same reason, one word is often figuratively used as an equivalent of another very dif ferent in its proper signification. Thus the wealthy Englishman employs gold, the less affluent and commercial Frenchman silver, and the still poorer old Roman brass, as synonyms of money.

There are, moreover, words not distinguishable in defini tion, but employed under different circumstances. Of this character are many words which occur only in the poetic dialect, and in the ambitious style of writing called 'sensation' prose. These in some languages, as in Icelandic for example, are so numerous as to make the poetic and the prose vocabularies very widely distinct. Of this class are blade, brand, and falchion, for sword; dame, damsel, maiden, for lady or girl; steed, courser, charger, palfrey, for horse; and there are also, in most languages, many words peculiar to the sacred style or language of religion, but still having exact equivalents, the use of which is restricted to secular purposes. In general, words consecrated to religious and poetical uses, are either native terms, which in the speech of common life have been supplanted by alien ones, or they belong to foreign tongues, and have been introduced with foreign forms of poetical composition, or foreign religious instruction.

Nations much inclined to the figurative or metaphorical style have usually numerous words synonymous in their use, though etymologically of different signification. Thus, the Arabic has a large number of names for the lion, and not fewer for the sword. The figurative dialect of the Icelanders is also extremely rich. Snorro's Edda enumerates an hundred and fifty synonyms for 'sword,' and a proportionate number for almost every other object which could be important in the poetic vocabulary. In such a profuse nomenclature as that of the Arabic and the Icelandic, a large proportion of the words were originally descriptive epithets, drawn from some quality or use of the object to which they are applied, and at other times they are taken from some incident in the popular mythology of the countries where they are employed. Our

own brand, which occurs also in Icelandic poetry as a name of the sword, is probably from the root of to burn, and refers to the flaming appearance of a well-polished blade. Other names are derived from the cutting properties of the edge, from the form of the blade, from the metal of which it was forged, and so of all its material qualities. These, of course, once conveyed distinct meanings, but in many instances, the etymology, though known to the learned, was popularly forgotten, and thus these different words came at last to be, in common use, exact equivalents the one of the other.

In composite languages like the English, there often occur words derived from different sources, which, though distinguished in use, are absolutely synonymous in meaning. For example, we have globe from the Latin, sphere from the Greek. The one is fairly translated by the other, and they are identical in signification, inasmuch as all that can be truly affirmed of the one is true also of the other; but they differ in use, and therefore we cannot always employ them interchangeably, sphere belonging rather to scientific and poetical, globe to popular language. Allied to both these, and often confounded with, or substituted for them, is orb, from the Latin orbis. This word originally signified a circle, then a flat object limited by a circular boundary, and it was applied both to the fellies of wheels, and to wheels cut out of solid timber without spokes, as they often are at this day in the East. Then it was transferred to the heavenly bodies, which present to the eye a plain surface bounded by a circle, or what we generally call a dise, from the Greek and Latin discus, a quoit, whence also possibly our word dish, and even the German Tisch, or table, from general resemblance of form. But when it was discovered that the sun and moon