Democratic Sentinel, Volume 17, Number 3, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 February 1893 — How Words Change. [ARTICLE]

How Words Change.

Language is the result of ages of growth. Word after word has been added to the previous stock—some of them new Inventions, as new things have been discovered or brought into use, others but perversions or variations of terms already familiar. The process of word-making and wordtransformatjion has been carried on, not by scholars only, but by the common people, with the natural result that many words have curious histories. As a writer in Chambers’ Journal remarks, “People must have words which they can understand and recall,” and they are not scrupulous as to the means by which they obtain them. Take the common word “titmouse,” a chickadee. The first syllable means something small, and the two together ought to mean a little mouse. But the word was formerly “titmose,” “mose” meaning a little bird. Somebody—there is no knowing who—changed the name to “titmouse.” The'new form tickled the popular ear; by aud by it was generally accepted; then the old and true form went but of use altogether, and the plural, which ought to be “titmouses,” became “titmice.”

Long ago when a certain article made of sturgeons’ bladders came into use in England, it was known by its Dutch name “huizenblas,” that is, “sturgeon-bladder.” The term was a meaningless one to English ears, and by some means or other was transformed into the word which we all know, “isinglass.” The change was precisely like that which in some quarters has turned “asparagus” into “sparrow-grass. ” In the same manner the old word “berfry,” which means simply a watch-tower, was transformed into “belfry.” It became the custom to hang bells in such towers, and by common consent a change of spelling followed. What is the derivation of the word

“steelyard”? Most readers would rereply without hesitation that It must have been invented as the name of a certain familiar instrument for weighing, an instrument made of steel, and about three feet in length. In point of fact, however, the word meant in the beginning nothing but the yard, or court, in London, where the continental traders sold their steel. In this yard, of course, there was some kind of balance for weighing the metal—a steel-yard balance. Language is full of such cases. “Blindfold” has nothing to do with the act of folding something over the eyes, but is “blindfelled,” or struck blind. “Buttery” has no connection with butter, but is, or was, a “bottlery,” a place for bottles. A “blunderbuss” was not an awkward or inefficient weapon, but on the contrary was so terrible as ta be called a “donderbus,” that is to say, a “thunderbox” or “thunder-barrel.” The advance in the art of war is happily—or unhappily—typified by the fact that a weapon once so terrible has become an object of ridicule. Will the world ever find our present iron-clads and mortars nothing but things to laugh at?