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antithesis it could not have lasted long enough to become a part of the language.

Of all the technical terms of the Stoic philosophy, only passion has become completely popular; but the history of this word is not intelligible apart from the others, and the whole group illustrates, in the most striking way, both the continuity of civilization and the scope and significance of etymological study.

CHAPTER V

TECHNICAL OR CLASS DIALECTS

IN Chapters III and IV we have distinguished between popular and learned words, and have seen how learned words may pass into the popular category, drawing some of our most striking examples from the language of science and philosophy. This matter of technical language, however, requires some further discussion.

Every profession or trade, every art, and every science has its technical vocabulary, the function of which is partly to designate things or processes which have no names in ordinary English, and partly to secure greater exactness in nomenclature. Such special dialects, or jargons, are necessary in technical discussion of any kind. Being universally understood by the devotees of the particular science or art, they have the precision of a mathematical formula. Besides, they save time, for it is much more economical to name a process than to describe it. Thousands of these technical terms are very properly included in every large dictionary, yet, as a whole, they are rather on the outskirts of the English language than actually within its borders.

Different occupations, however, differ widely in the character of their special vocabularies. In trades and handicrafts, and other vocations, like farming and fishery, that have occupied great numbers of men from remote times, the technical vocabulary is very old. It consists largely of native words, or of borrowed words that have

worked themselves into the very fibre of our language. Hence, though highly technical in many particulars, these vocabularies are more familiar in sound, and more generally understood, than most other technicalities. The special dialects of law, medicine, divinity, and philosophy have also, in their older strata, become pretty familiar to cultivated persons, and have contributed much to the popular vocabulary. Yet every vocation still possesses a large body of technical terms that remain essentially foreign, even to educated speech. And the proportion. has been much increased in the last fifty years, particularly in the various departments of natural and political science and in the mechanic arts. Here new terms are coined with the greatest freedom, and abandoned with indifference when they have served their turn. Most of the new coinages are confined to special discussions, and seldom get into general literature or conversation. Yet no profession is nowadays, as all professions once were, a close guild. The lawyer, the physician, the man of science, the divine, associates freely with his fellowcreatures, and does not meet them in a merely professional way. Furthermore, what is called popular science makes everybody acquainted with modern views and recent discoveries. Any important experiment, though made in a remote or provincial laboratory, is at once reported in the newspapers, and everybody is soon talking about it, as in the case of the Röntgen rays and wireless telegraphy. Thus our common speech is always taking up new technical terms and making them commonplace. The process began with the conversion of the AngloSaxons, soon after their settlement in Britain. Ecclesiastical words from the Latin (mostly of Greek origin) were the first to come in. Among these were:

abbot: A.S. abbod, from L. abbas, abbatis, which comes, through the Greek, from the Syriac abba,' father.'

alb: A.S. albe, from L. albus, 'white.'

bishop: A.S. biscop, from L. episcopus (Gr. níoкопоs, episkopos, literally overseer'). Episcopal is a later borrowing from the Latin. cowl: A.S. cugle, from L. cucullus, ‘hood.'

monk: A.S. munuc, from L. monachus, 'one who lives alone' (from Gr. póvos, mónos, alone,' seen in monologue, monotone, monarchy, etc.). minster: A.S. mynster, from L. monasterium (also from Gr. μóvos). Monastery is a later borrowing, like episcopal.

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noon: A.S. non, from L. nona (hora), ninth hour' (three o'clock in the afternoon; the shift in meaning coincided with a change in the time of the service called nones).

nun: A.S. nonne, from L. nonna (from a Greek word of uncertain origin).

pope: A.S. papa, from L. papa, 'father,' originally a childish word. It is the same as our papa, which we have independently adopted from the French papa, which is the same Latin word.

A.S. preost, from L. presbyter (Gr. #рeoẞúreрos, presbúteros, 'elder'). The Latin presbyter was afterward borrowed without change, and gives its name to the Presbyterian Church, in which the ministers are not called 'priests.'

school: A.S. scōl, from L. schola, which is from the Gr. oxoλý (scholé), leisure.'1

verse: A.S. vers, fers, from L. versus, ‘a turning,' 'a line of verse.' clerk: A.S. clerc. Clerk, clergy, and clerical well illustrate the variety of our vocabulary. They all come ultimately from Greek KAŋpikós (klērikos), 'clerical' (literally, pertaining to the lot,' from κλĤpos, kléros, · lot,' later 'orders' in the ecclesiastical sense 2). Clerk, however, was borrowed from L. clericus by the Anglo-Saxons, as cleric, clerc, and has maintained itself in the latter form. The same Latin word gave clerc in Old French, and thence come O. Fr. clergie

1 The shift of meaning, which seems so peculiar to our schoolboys, is simple enough. War and politics were the business of the Greek and Roman gentleman. He gave to literature (with good effect!) what leisure he had from these more serious pursuits. Similarly we have ludus in Latin, and ludi magister ('a master of sport') meant 'schoolmaster.' Pedagogue, however, was originally the slave who led (Gr. ayw) the boy (παῖς, παιδός) to school,

2 See Deuteronomy xviii. 2.

and our clergy (which also shows the influence of another O. Fr. word, clergie, from L.L. clericatus). Clerical comes directly from L.L. clericalis, a derivative of clericus. Clergy and clerk doubtless became popular almost immediately, and the latter (through its sense of scholar') has received a wide extension of meaning.

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is comparatively a learned word.

But clerical

From the beginning of our language to the present day, Latin has been, in large part, the language of scholars and of the learned professions; hence, a multitude of technical terms are of Latin origin. Medicine has also brought in a great many Greek terms, since the ancient physicians were largely Greeks. In the Middle Ages there were a succession of distinguished Arabian physicians who had become saturated with Greek culture, and from them we have a number of words, some Arabic, some Greek in an Arabic form (see p. 108).

The law, from the time of the Norman Conquest, had two technical languages, Latin and Norman French. The latter gradually developed into what is still known as Law French,—a curious jargon containing a large admixture of English words. Hence, the law-terms which have made their way into our ordinary vocabulary, show now a French and now a Latin derivation, and in many instances are out-and-out Latin, with no change in form. have, for example:

Thus we

From French: mortgage, from mort, 'dead,' and gage, 'pledge' (the same word seen in our wager and wages).

champerty, from champart (L. campi pars).

mortmain, from mort, and main, 'hand.'

convey, from O. Fr. conveier (L.L. conviare, from L. con- and via, 'way'); ; convoy is from the modern Fr. convoyer, of the same derivation. Technical derivatives of convey are conveyance and conveyancer. entail, from O. Fr. entailler, 'cut off,' 'curtail' (from L. talea, ‘a rod,' 'a cutting'; cf. tally, tailor).

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