Lectures on Language As Particularly Connected with English Grammar.

LECTURE VI.

ON AD­JEC­TIVES.

Def­ini­tion of ad­jec­tives.--Gen­er­al char­ac­ter.--Deriva­tion.--How un­der­stood.--Defin­ing and de­scrib­ing.--Mean­ing changes to suit the noun.--Too nu­mer­ous.--De­rived from nouns.--Nouns and verbs made from ad­jec­tives.--For­eign ad­jec­tives.--A gen­er­al list.--Dif­fi­cult to be un­der­stood.--An ex­am­ple.--Of­ten su­per­flu­ous.--De­rived from verbs.--Par­tici­ples.--Some prepo­si­tions.--Mean­ing un­known.--With.-- In.--Out.--Of.

The most im­por­tant sub-​di­vi­sion of words is the class called Ad­jec­tives, which we pro­pose to no­tice this evening. _Ad­jec­tive_ sig­ni­fies _added_ or _joined to_. We em­ploy the term in gram­mar to des­ig­nate that class of words which are _added to nouns to de­fine or de­scribe them_. In do­ing this, we strict­ly ad­here to the prin­ci­ples we have al­ready ad­vanced, and do not de­vi­ate from the laws of na­ture, as de­vel­oped in the reg­ula­tion of speech.

In speak­ing of things, we had oc­ca­sion to ob­serve that the mind not on­ly con­ceived ideas of things, but of their prop­er­ties; as, the hard­ness of flint; the heat of fire; and that we spoke of one thing in ref­er­ence to an­oth­er. We come now to con­sid­er this sub­ject more at large.

In the use of lan­guage the mind first rests on the thing which is present be­fore it, or the word which rep­re­sents the idea of that thing. Next it ob­serves the changes and at­ti­tudes of these things. Third­ly, it con­ceives ideas of their qual­ities and re­la­tions to oth­er things. The first use of these words is to name things. This we call _nouns_. The sec­ond is to ex­press their ac­tions. This we call _verbs_. The last is to de­fine or de­scribe things. This we call _ad­jec­tives_. There is a great sim­ilar­ity be­tween the words used to name things and to ex­press their ac­tions; as, builders build build­ings; singers sing songs; writ­ers write writ­ings; painters paint paint­ings. In the pop­ular use of lan­guage we vary these words to avoid the monotony and give pleas­ant­ness and va­ri­ety. We say builders _erect_ hous­es, barns, and oth­er build­ings; singers per­form pieces of mu­sic; mu­si­cians play tunes; the choir sing psalm tunes; artists paint pic­tures.

From these two class­es a third is de­rived which par­takes some­what of the na­ture of both, and yet from its sec­ondary use, it has ob­tained a dis­tinc­tive char­ac­ter, and as such is al­lowed a sep­arate po­si­tion among the class­es of words.

It might per­haps ap­pear more in or­der to pass the con­sid­er­ation of ad­jec­tives till we have no­ticed the char­ac­ter and use of verbs, from which an im­por­tant por­tion of them is de­rived. But as they are used in con­nex­ion with nouns, and as the char­ac­ter they bor­row from the verb will be read­ily un­der­stood, I have pre­ferred to re­tain the old ar­range­ment, and con­sid­er them in this place.

_Ad­jec­tives are words added to nouns to de­fine or de­scribe them._ They are de­rived ei­ther, 1st, from nouns; as, _win­dow_ glass, _glass_ win­dow, a stone house, build­ing stone, maple sug­ar, sug­ar cane; or, 2d, from verbs; as, a _writ­ten_ pa­per, a _print­ed_ book, a _paint­ed_ house, a _writ­ing_ desk. In the first case we em­ploy one noun, or the name of one thing, to de­fine an­oth­er, thus giv­ing it a sec­ondary use. A _glass_ win­dow is one made of glass, and not of any thing else. It is nei­ther a _board_ win­dow, nor a _pa­per_ win­dow. _Maple_ sug­ar is not _cane_ sug­ar, nor _beet_ sug­ar, nor _mo­lasses_ sug­ar; but it may be _brown_ sug­ar, if it has been browned, or _white_ if it has been whit_ed_ or whit_ened_. In this case, you at once per­ceive the cor­rect­ness of our sec­ond propo­si­tion, in the deriva­tion of ad­jec­tives from verbs, by which we de­scribe a thing in ref­er­ence to its con­di­tion, in some way af­fect­ed by the op­er­ation of a pri­or ac­tion. A _print­ed_ book is one on which the ac­tion of print­ing has been per­formed. A _writ­ten_ book dif­fers from the for­mer, in as much as its ap­pear­ance was pro­duced by writ­ing and not by print­ing.

In the def­ini­tion or de­scrip­tion of things, what­ev­er is best un­der­stood is em­ployed as a defini­tive or de­scrip­tive term, and is at­tached to the ob­ject to make known its prop­er­ties and re­la­tions. Speak­ing of na­tions, if we de­sire to dis­tin­guish some from oth­ers, we choose the words sup­posed to be best known, and talk of Eu­ro­pean, African, Amer­ican, or In­di­an na­tions; north­ern, south­ern, east­ern, or west­ern na­tions. These last words are used in ref­er­ence to their rel­ative po­si­tion, and may be var­ious­ly un­der­stood; for we speak of the north­ern, east­ern, west­ern, and south­ern na­tions of Eu­rope, of Africa, and the world.

Again, we read of civ­iliz_ed_, half-​civ­ilized, and bar­barous na­tions; learned, un­learned, ig­no­rant, and en­light­ened; rich, pow­er­ful, en­ter­pris­ing, re­spect­ed, an­cient or mod­ern, chris­tian, ma­home­dan or pa­gan. In these, and a thou­sand sim­ilar cas­es, we de­cide the mean­ing, not alone from the word em­ployed as an ad­jec­tive, but from the sub­ject of re­mark; for, were we to at­tach the same mean­ing to the same word, wher­ev­er used, we could not re­ceive cor­rect or def­inite im­pres­sions from the lan­guage of oth­ers--our in­fer­ences would be the most mon­strous. A _great_ moun­tain and a _great_ pin, a _great_ con­ti­nent and a _great_ farm, a _great_ ocean and a _great_ pond, a _great_ gram­mar and a _great_ schol­ar, re­fer to things of very dif­fer­ent di­men­sions and char­ac­ter; or, as Mr. Mur­ray would say, “_qual­ities_.” A moun­tain is great by com­par­ison with oth­er moun­tains; and a pin, com­pared with oth­er pins, may be very large--ex­ceed­ing great--and yet fall very far short of the size of a very small moun­tain. A _small_ man may be a _great_ schol­ar, and a rich neigh­bor a poor friend. A sweet flow­er is of­ten very bit­ter to the taste. A _good_ horse would make a _bad_ din­ner, but _false_ gram­mar can nev­er make _true_ philol­ogists.

All words are to be un­der­stood ac­cord­ing to their use. Their mean­ing can be de­ter­mined in no oth­er way. Many words change their forms to ex­press their re­la­tions, but few­er in our lan­guage than in most oth­ers, an­cient or mod­ern. Oth­er words re­main the same, or near­ly so, in ev­ery po­si­tion; noun, ad­jec­tive, or verb, agent or ob­ject, past or present. To de­ter­mine whether a word is an ad­jec­tive, first as­cer­tain whether it names a thing, de­fines or de­scribes it, or ex­press­es its ac­tion, and you will nev­er be at a loss to know to what class it be­longs.

The busi­ness of ad­jec­tives is twofold, and they may be dis­tin­guished by the ap­pel­la­tions of _defin­ing_ or _de­scrib­ing_ ad­jec­tives. This dis­tinc­tion is in many cas­es unim­por­tant; in oth­ers it is quite es­sen­tial. The same word in one case may _de­fine_, in oth­ers _de­scribe_ the ob­ject, and oc­ca­sion­al­ly do both, for we of­ten spec­ify things by their de­scrip­tions. The learn­er has on­ly to as­cer­tain the mean­ing and use of the ad­jec­tive to de­cide whether it de­fines or de­scribes the sub­ject of re­mark. If it is em­ployed to dis­tin­guish one thing from the gen­er­al mass, or one class from oth­er class­es, it has the for­mer char­ac­ter; but af­ter such thing is point­ed out, if it is used to give a de­scrip­tion of its char­ac­ter or prop­er­ties, its char­ac­ter is dif­fer­ent, and should be so un­der­stood and ex­plained.

_Defin­ing ad­jec­tives_ are used to _point out_, spec­ify or dis­tin­guish cer­tain things from oth­ers of their kind, or one sort from oth­er sorts, and an­swer to the ques­tions _which_, _what_, _how many_, or _how much_.

_De­scrib­ing ad­jec­tives_ ex­press the char­ac­ter and qual­ities of things, and give a more full and dis­tinct knowl­edge than was be­fore pos­sessed.

In a case be­fore men­tioned, we spoke of the “In­di­an na­tions.” The word _In­di­an_ was cho­sen to spec­ify or de­fine what na­tions were al­lud­ed to. But all may not de­cide alike in this case. Some may think we meant the abo­rig­ines of Amer­ica; oth­ers, that the south­ern na­tions of Asia were re­ferred to. This dif­fi­cul­ty orig­inates in a mis­ap­pre­hen­sion of the defini­tive word cho­sen. In­dia was ear­ly known as the name of the south part of Asia, and the peo­ple there, were called In­di­ans. When Colum­bus dis­cov­ered the new world, sup­pos­ing he had reached the coun­try of In­dia, which had long been sought by a voy­age round the coast of Africa, he named it In­dia, and the peo­ple In­di­ans. But when the mis­take was dis­cov­ered, and the truth ful­ly known, in­stead of ef­fect­ing a change in the name al­ready very gen­er­al­ly un­der­stood, and in com­mon use, an­oth­er word was cho­sen to dis­tin­guish be­tween coun­tries so op­po­site and _West_ In­dia be­came the word to dis­tin­guish the new­ly dis­cov­ered is­lands; and as In­dia was lit­tle bet­ter known in Eu­rope at that time, in­stead of re­tain­ing their old name un­al­tered, an­oth­er word was pre­fixed, and they called it _East_ In­dia. When, there­fore, we de­sire to be def­inite, we re­tain these words, and say, East In­di­ans and West In­di­ans. With­out this dis­tinc­tion, we should un­der­stand the na­tive peo­ple of our own coun­try; but in Eu­rope, Asia, and Africa, they would think we al­lud­ed to those in Asia. So with all oth­er ad­jec­tives which are not un­der­stood. _In­di­an_, as an ad­jec­tive, may al­so be em­ployed to _de­scribe_ the char­ac­ter and con­di­tion of the abo­rig­ines. We talk of an in­di­an tem­per, in­di­an looks, in­di­an blan­kets, furs, &c.

In writ­ing and con­ver­sa­tion we should em­ploy words to ex­plain, to de­fine and de­scribe, which are bet­ter un­der­stood than those things of which we speak. The pedantry of some mod­ern writ­ers in this re­spect is ridicu­lous. Not sat­is­fied to use plain terms which ev­ery body can un­der­stand, they hunt the dic­tio­nar­ies from al­pha to omega, and not un­fre­quent­ly over­leap the “king's en­glish,” and ran­sack oth­er lan­guages to find an un­heard of word, or a list of ad­jec­tives nev­er be­fore ar­ranged to­geth­er, in so nice a man­ner, so that their ideas are lost to the com­mon read­er, if not to them­selves. This fault may be al­leged against too many of our pub­lic speak­ers, as well as the af­fect­ed gen­try of the land. They are like Shak­speare's Gra­tiano, “who speaks an in­fi­nite deal of noth­ing, more than any man in all Venice; his rea­sons are as two grains of wheat hid in two bushels of chaff: you shall seek all day ere you find them; and, when you have found them, they are not worth the search.” Such sen­tences re­mind us of the paint­ing of the young artist who drew the form of an an­imal, but ap­pre­hen­sive that some might mis­take it, wrote un­der it, “_This is a horse._”

In form­ing our no­tions of what is sig­ni­fied by an ad­jec­tive, the mind should pause to de­ter­mine the mean­ing of such word when used as a dis­tinct name for some ob­ject, in or­der to de­ter­mine the im­port of it in this new ca­pac­ity. A _tal­low_ can­dle is one made of a sub­stance called tal­low, and is em­ployed to dis­tin­guish it from wax or sper­ma­ceti can­dles. The ad­jec­tive in this case, names the ar­ti­cle of which the can­dle is made, and is thus a noun, but, as we are not speak­ing of tal­low, but of can­dles, we place it in a new re­la­tion, and give it a new gram­mat­ical char­ac­ter. But you will per­ceive the cor­rect­ness of a for­mer as­ser­tion, that all words may be re­duced to two class­es, and that ad­jec­tives are de­rived from nouns or verbs.

But you may in­quire if there are not some ad­jec­tives in use which have no cor­re­spond­ing verb or noun from which they are de­rived. There are many words in our lan­guage which in cer­tain us­es have be­come ob­so­lete, but are re­tained in oth­ers. We now use some words as verbs which orig­inal­ly were known on­ly as nouns, and oth­ers as nouns which are un­known as verbs. We al­so put a new con­struc­tion up­on words and make nouns, verbs and ad­jec­tives promis­cu­ous­ly and with lit­tle re­gard to rule or pro­pri­ety. Words at one time un­known be­come fa­mil­iar by use, and oth­ers are laid aside for those more new or fash­ion­able. These facts are so ob­vi­ous that I shall be ex­cused from ex­tend­ing my re­marks to any great length. But I will give an ex­am­ple which will serve as a clew to the whole. Take the word _hap­py_, long known on­ly as an ad­jec­tive. In­stead of fol­low­ing this word _back_ to its prim­itive use and de­riv­ing it di­rect­ly from its noun, or as a past par­tici­ple, such as it is in truth, we have gone _for­ward_ and made from it the noun _hap­pi­ness_, and, in more mod­ern days, are us­ing the verb _hap­pi­fy_, a word, by the way, in com­mon use, but which has not yet been hon­ored with a place in our dic­tio­nar­ies; al­tho Mr. Web­ster has giv­en us, as he says, the _unau­tho­rised_ (un-​au­thor-​ised) word “_hap­pi­fy­ing_.” Per­haps he had nev­er heard or read some of our great­est sa­vans, who, if not the au­thors, em­ploy the word _hap­pi­fy_ very fre­quent­ly in the pul­pit and halls of leg­is­la­tion, and at the bar, as well as in com­mon par­lance.

_Hap­py_ is the past par­tici­ple of the verb _to hap_, or, as af­ter­wards used, with a nice shade of change in the mean­ing, _to hap­pen_. It means _hap­pied_, or made hap­py by those fa­vor­able cir­cum­stances which have _hap­pened_ to us. Who­ev­er will read our old writ­ers no fur­ther back than Shak­speare, will at once see the use and changes of this word. They will find it in all its forms, sim­ple and com­pound, as a verb, noun, and ad­jec­tive. “It may _hap_ that he will come.” It hap­pened as I was go­ing that I found my lost child, and was there­by made quite hap­py. The man de­sired to _hap_pi­fy him­self and fam­ily with­out much la­bor, so he en­gaged in spec­ula­tion; and _hap_pi­ly he was not so _hap_less in his pur­suit of _hap_pi­ness as of­ten _hap_pens to such _hap_-haz­ard fel­lows, for he soon be­came very _hap_py with a mod­er­ate for­tune.

But to the ques­tion. There are many ad­jec­tives in our lan­guage which are bor­rowed from for­eign words. In­stead of _ad­jec­tiv­ing_ our own nouns we go to our neigh­bors and _ad­jec­tive_ and an­gli­cise [en­glish-​ise] their words, and adopt the pam­pered urchins in­to our own fam­ily and call them our fa­vorites. It is no won­der that they of­ten ap­pear auk­ward and un­fa­mil­iar, and that our chil­dren are slow in form­ing an in­ti­mate ac­quain­tance with them. You are here fa­vored with a short list of these words which will serve as ex­am­ples, and en­able you to com­pre­hend my mean­ing and ap­ply it in fu­ture use. Some of them are reg­ular­ly used as ad­jec­tives, with or with­out change; oth­ers are not.

EN­GLISH NOUNS. FOR­EIGN AD­JEC­TIVES.

Alone Sole, soli­tary Alms Eleemosy­nary Age Primeval Be­lief Cred­ulous Blame Cul­pa­ble Breast Pec­toral Be­ing Es­sen­tial Bo­som Gram­inal, sin­uous Boy, boy­ish Puerile Blood, bloody San­guinary, san­guine Bur­den Oner­ous Be­gin­ning Ini­tial Bound­ary Con­ter­mi­nous Broth­er Fra­ter­nal Bow­els Vis­cer­al Body Cor­po­re­al Birth Na­tal, na­tive Calf Vi­tu­line Car­cass Ca­dav­er­ous Cat Fe­line Cow Vac­cine Coun­try Ru­ral, rus­tic Church Ec­cle­si­as­ti­cal Death Mor­tal Dog Ca­nine Day Di­ur­nal, merid­ian, ephemer­al Dis­ease Mor­bid East Ori­en­tal Egg Oval Ear Au­ric­ular Eye Oc­ular Flesh Car­nal, car­niv­orous Fa­ther Pa­ter­nal Field Agrar­ian Flock Gre­gar­ious Foe Hos­tile Fear Tim­orous, timid Fin­ger Dig­ital Flat­tery Adu­la­to­ry Fire Ig­neous Faith Fidu­cial Foot Ped­al Groin In­guinal Guardian Tute­lar Glass Vit­re­ous Grape Uveous Grief Do­lor­ous Gain Lu­cra­tive Help Aux­il­iary Heart Cor­dial, car­diac Hire Stipen­di­ary Hurt Nox­ious Ha­tred Odi­ous Health Salu­tary, salu­bri­ous Head Cap­ital, chief Ice Glacial Is­land In­su­lar King Re­gal, roy­al Kitchen Culi­nary Life Vi­tal, vivid, vi­var­ious Lungs Pul­monary Lip Labi­al Leg Cru­ral, isosce­les Light Lu­cid, lu­mi­nous Love Amorous Lust Li­bidi­nous Law Le­gal, loy­al Moth­er Ma­ter­nal Mon­ey Pe­cu­niary Mix­ture Promis­cu­ous, mis­cel­la­neous Moon Lu­nar, sub­lu­nary Mouth Oral Mar­row Medu­lary Mind Men­tal Man Vir­ile, male, hu­man, mas­cu­line Milk Lacteal Meal Feri­na­ceous Nose Nasal Navel Um­bil­ical Night Noc­tur­nal, equinoc­tial Noise Ob­streper­ous One First Parish Parochial Peo­ple Pop­ular, pop­ulous, pub­lic, epi­dem­ical, en­dem­ical Point Punc­tu­al Pride Su­perb, haughty Plen­ty Co­pi­ous Pitch Bi­tu­mi­nous Priest Sac­er­do­tal Ri­val Emu­lous Root Rad­ical Ring An­nu­lar Rea­son Ra­tio­nal Re­venge Vin­dic­tive Rule Reg­ular Speech Lo­qua­cious, gar­ru­lous, elo­quent Smell Ol­fac­to­ry Sight Vi­su­al, op­tic, per­spic­uous, con­spic­uous Side Lat­er­al, col­lat­er­al Skin Cu­ta­neous Spit­tle Salivial Shoul­der Humer­al Shep­herd Pas­toral Sea Ma­rine, mar­itime Share Lit­er­al Sun So­lar Star As­tral, sider­al, stel­lar Sun­day Do­mini­cal Spring Ver­nal Sum­mer Es­ti­val Seed Sem­inal Ship Naval, nau­ti­cal Shell Tes­ta­ceous Sleep So­porif­er­ous Strength Ro­bust Sweat Su­dorif­ic Step Grad­ual Sole Ve­nal Two Sec­ond Treaty Fed­er­al Tri­fle Nu­ga­to­ry Tax Fis­cal Time Tem­po­ral, chron­ical Town Op­pi­dan Thanks Gra­tu­itous Theft Furtive Threat Mi­na­to­ry Treach­ery In­sid­ious Thing Re­al Throat Jugu­lar, gut­ter­al Taste In­sipid Thought Pen­sive Thigh Femoral Tooth Den­tal Tear Lachry­mal Ves­sel Vas­cu­lar World Mun­dane Wood Syl­van, sav­age Way De­vi­ous, ob­vi­ous, im­per­vi­ous, triv­ial Worm Ver­mic­ular Whale Cu­ta­ceous Wife Ux­ori­ous Word Ver­bal, ver­bose Weak Heb­do­madal Wall Mu­ral Will Vol­un­tary, spon­ta­neous Win­ter Bru­mal Wound Vul­ner­ary West Oc­ci­den­tal War Mar­tial Wom­en Fem­inine, fe­male, ef­fem­inate Year An­nu­al, an­niver­sary, peren­ni­al, tri­en­ni­al

Such are some of the ad­jec­tives in­tro­duced in­to our lan­guage from oth­er na­tions. The list will en­able you to dis­cov­er that when we have no ad­jec­tive of our own to cor­re­spond with the noun, we bor­row from our neigh­bors an ad­jec­tive de­rived from one of their nouns, to which we give an en­glish ter­mi­na­tion. For ex­am­ple:

_En­glish Noun._ _Latin Noun._ _Ad­jec­tive._

Boy Puer Puerile Grief Do­lor Do­lor­ous Thought Pen­sa Pen­sive Wife Ux­or Ux­ori­ous Word Ver­bum Ver­bal, ver­bose Year An­num An­nu­al Body Cor­pus Cor­po­re­al Head Ca­put Cap­ital Church Ekkle­sia (_Greek_) Ec­cle­si­as­ti­cal King Roi (_French_) Roy­al Law Loi " Loy­al

It is ex­ceed­ing­ly dif­fi­cult to un­der­stand the ad­jec­tives of many nouns with which we are fa­mil­iar, from the fact above stat­ed, that they are de­rived from oth­er lan­guages, and not our own. The most thoro schol­ars have found this task no easy af­fair. Most gram­mar­ians have let it pass un­ob­served; but ev­ery per­son has seen the ne­ces­si­ty of some ex­pla­na­tion up­on this point, to af­ford a means of as­cer­tain­ing the et­ymo­log­ical deriva­tion and mean­ing of these words. I would here en­ter far­ther in­to this sub­ject, but I am re­mind­ed that I am sur­pass­ing the lim­its set me for this course of lec­tures.

The at­ten­tion I have be­stowed on this part of the present sub­ject, will not be con­strued in­to a mere ver­bal crit­icism. It has been adopt­ed to show you how, in the def­ini­tion or de­scrip­tion of things, the mind clings to one thing to gain some in­for­ma­tion con­cern­ing an­oth­er. When we find a thing un­like any thing else we have ev­er known, in form, in size, in col­or, in ev­ery thing; we should find it a dif­fi­cult task, if not an im­pos­si­bil­ity, to de­scribe it to an­oth­er in a way to give any cor­rect idea of it. Hav­ing nev­er seen its like be­fore, we can say lit­tle of its char­ac­ter. We may give it a _name_, but that would not be un­der­stood. We could say it was as large as--no, it had no size; that it was like--but no, it had no like­ness; that it re­sem­bled--no, it had no re­sem­blance. How could we de­scribe it? What could we say of it? Noth­ing at all.

What idea could the Pacha of Egypt form of ice, hav­ing nev­er seen any till the french chemists suc­ceed­ed in freez­ing wa­ter in his pres­ence? They told him of ice; that it was _cold_; that it would freeze; that whole streams were of­ten frozen over, so that men and teams could walk over them. He be­lieved no such thing--it was a “chris­tian lie.” This idea was con­firmed on the first tri­al of the chemists, which failed of suc­cess. But when, on the sec­ond at­tempt, they suc­ceed­ed, he was all in rap­tures. A new field was open be­fore him. New ideas were pro­duced in his mind. New qual­ities were learned; and he could now form some idea of the _ice_ bergs of the north; of _frozen_ re­gions, which he had nev­er seen; of _icy_ hearts, and storms of _frozen_ rain.

We of­ten hear it said, such a man is very _sto­ical_; an­oth­er is an _epi­cure­an_; and an­oth­er is a _bac­cha­nal_, or _bac­cha­na­lian_. But what idea should we form of such per­sons, if we had nev­er read of the Sto­ics and their phi­los­ophy; of Epi­cu­rus and his no­tions of hap­pi­ness and du­ty; or of Bac­chus, the god of wine and rev­el­ry, whose an­nu­al feasts, or Dionysia, were cel­ebrat­ed with the most ex­trav­agant li­cen­tious­ness thro out Greece and Rome, till put down by the Sen­ate of the lat­ter.

You can not fail to see the im­por­tance of the knowl­edge on which we here in­sist. The mean­ing you at­tach to words is ex­ceed­ing­ly di­verse; and hence you are not al­ways able to think alike, or un­der­stand each oth­er, nor de­rive the same sen­ti­ment from the same lan­guage. The con­tra­dic­to­ry opin­ions which ex­ist in the world may be ac­count­ed for, in a great mea­sure, in this way. Our knowl­edge of many things of which we speak, is lim­it­ed, ei­ther from lack of means, or dis­po­si­tion to em­ploy them. Peo­ple al­ways dif­fer and con­tend most about things of which they know the least. Did we all at­tach the same mean­ing to the same words, our opin­ions would all be the same, as true as the forty-​fifth prob­lem of Eu­clid. How im­por­tant, then, that chil­dren should al­ways be taught the same mean­ing of words, and learn to use them cor­rect­ly. Et­ymol­ogy, viewed in this light, is a most im­por­tant branch of sci­ence.

When­ev­er a word is suf­fi­cient­ly un­der­stood, no ad­jec­tive should be con­nect­ed with it. There is a ridicu­lous prac­tice among many peo­ple, of ap­pend­ing to ev­ery noun one or more ad­jec­tives, which have no oth­er ef­fect than to ex­pose their own fol­ly. Some writ­ers are so in the habit of an­nex­ing ad­jec­tives to all nouns, that they dare not use one with­out. You will not un­fre­quent­ly see ad­jec­tives dif­fer­ent in form, added to a noun of very sim­ilar mean­ing; as, sad melan­choly, an omi­nous sign, this mun­dane earth, pen­sive thoughts.

When words can be ob­tained, which not on­ly name the ob­ject, but al­so de­scribe its prop­er­ties, it should be pre­ferred to a noun with an ad­jec­tive; as _pi­rate_, for _sea rob­ber_; _sa­van_, for a _learned_ or _wise man_.[4]

In re­la­tion to that class of ad­jec­tives de­rived from verbs, we will be brief. They in­clude what have been termed par­tici­ples, not a dis­tinct “part of speech,” but by some in­clud­ed in the verbs. We use them as ad­jec­tives to de­scribe things as stand­ing in some re­la­tion to oth­er things on the ac­count of the ac­tion ex­pressed by the verb from which they are de­rived. “The man is re­spect­ed.” _Re­spect­ed_, in this case, de­scribes the man in such a re­la­tion to those who have be­come ac­quaint­ed with his good qual­ities, that he now re­ceives their re­spect. He is re­spect_able_, (_able_ to com­mand, or wor­thy of re­spect,) and of course, re­spect­ed for his re­spectabil­ity. To avoid rep­eti­tion, we se­lect dif­fer­ent words to as­sist in the ex­pres­sion of a com­plex idea. But I in­dulge in phras­es like the above, to show the nice shades of mean­ing in the com­mon use of words, en­deav­or­ing to an­alyze, as far as pos­si­ble, our words and thoughts, and show their mu­tu­al con­nex­ion and de­pen­den­cies.

What has been termed the “present par­tici­ple” is al­so an ad­jec­tive, de­scrib­ing things in their present con­di­tion in ref­er­ence to ac­tions. “The man is writ­ing.” Here, _writ­ing_ de­scribes the man in his present em­ploy­ment. But the con­sid­er­ation of this mat­ter more prop­er­ly be­longs to the con­struc­tion of sen­tences.

* * * * *

There is an­oth­er class or va­ri­ety of words prop­er­ly be­long­ing to this di­vi­sion of gram­mar, which may as well be no­ticed in this place as any oth­er. I al­lude to those words gen­er­al­ly called “Prepo­si­tions.” We have not time now to con­sid­er them at large, but will give you a brief view of our opin­ion of them, and re­serve the re­main­der of our re­marks till we come to an­oth­er part of these lec­tures.

Most of the words called prepo­si­tions, in books of gram­mar, are par­tici­ples, de­rived from verbs, many of which are still in use, but some are ob­so­lete. They are used in the true char­ac­ter of ad­jec­tives, _de­scrib­ing one thing by its re­la­tion to an­oth­er_. But their mean­ing has not been gen­er­al­ly un­der­stood. Our dic­tio­nar­ies have af­ford­ed no means by which we can trace their et­ymol­ogy. They have been re­gard­ed as a kind of ce­ment to stick oth­er words to­geth­er, hav­ing no mean­ing or im­por­tance in them­selves.[5] Un­til their mean­ing is known, we can not rea­son­ably ex­pect to draw them from their hid­ing places, and give them a re­spectable stand­ing in the trans­mis­sion of thought.

Many words, from the fre­quen­cy of their use, fail to at­tract our at­ten­tion as much as those less em­ployed; not be­cause they are less im­por­tant, but be­cause they are so fa­mil­iar­ly known that the op­er­ations of thought are not ob­served in the choice made of them to ex­press ideas. If we use words of which lit­tle is known, we pon­der well be­fore we adopt them, to de­ter­mine whether the sense usu­al­ly at­tached to them ac­cords ex­act­ly with the no­tions we de­sire to con­vey by them. The same can not be said of small words which make up a large pro­por­tion of our lan­guage, and are, in fact, more nec­es­sary than the oth­ers, in as much as their mean­ing is more gen­er­al­ly known. Those who em­ploy car­riages to con­vey their bod­ies, ob­serve lit­tle of their con­struc­tion, un­less there is some­thing sin­gu­lar or fine in their ap­pear­ance. The com­mon parts are un­ob­served, yet as im­por­tant as the small words used in the com­mon con­struc­tion of lan­guage, the ve­hi­cle of thought. As the apos­tle says of the body politic, “those mem­bers of the body, which seem to be more fee­ble, are nec­es­sary;” so the words least un­der­stood by gram­mar­ians are most nec­es­sary in the cor­rect for­ma­tion of lan­guage.

It is an easy mat­ter to get along with the words called prepo­si­tions, af­ter they are all learned by rote; but when their mean­ing and use are in­quired in­to, the best gram­mar­ians have lit­tle to say of them.

A list of prepo­si­tions, al­pha­bet­ical­ly ar­ranged, is found in near­ly ev­ery gram­mar, which schol­ars are re­quired to com­mit to mem­ory, with­out know­ing any thing of their mean­ing or use, on­ly that they are prepo­si­tions when an ob­jec­tive word comes af­ter them, _be­cause the books say so_; but oc­ca­sion­al­ly the same words oc­cur as ad­verbs and ad­jec­tives. There is, how­ev­er, no trou­ble in “pars­ing” them, un­less the list is for­got­ten. In that case, you will see the pupil, in­stead of in­quir­ing af­ter the mean­ing and du­ty of the word, go to the book and search for it in the lists of prepo­si­tions or con­junc­tions; or to the dic­tio­nary, to see if there is a “_prep._” ap­pend­ed to it. What will chil­dren ev­er learn of lan­guage in this way? Of what avail is all such gram­mar teach­ing? As soon as they leave school it is all for­got­ten; and you will hear them say, at the very time they should be reap­ing the har­vest of for­mer toil, that they once un­der­stood gram­mar, but it is all gone from them. Poor souls! their mem­ory is very treach­er­ous, else they have nev­er learned lan­guage as they ought. There is a fault some­where. To us it is not dif­fi­cult to de­ter­mine where it is.

That cer­tain words are prepo­si­tions, there can be no doubt, be­cause the books say they are; but _why_ they are so, is quite an­oth­er mat­ter. All we de­sire is to have their mean­ing un­der­stood. Lit­tle dif­fi­cul­ty will then be found in de­ter­min­ing their use.

I have said they are de­rived from verbs, many of which are ob­so­lete. Some are still in use, both as verbs and nouns. Take for ex­am­ple the word =with=. This word sig­ni­fies _joined_ or _unit­ed_. It is used to show that two things are some how joined to­geth­er so that they are spoke of in con­nex­ion. It fre­quent­ly oc­curs in com­mon con­ver­sa­tion, as a verb and noun, but not as fre­quent­ly in the books as for­mer­ly. The farmer says to his _hired_ man, “Go and get a _withe_ and come and _withe_ up the fence;” that is, get some pli­ant twigs of tough wood, twist them to­geth­er, and _withe_ or bind them round these posts, so that one may stand firm _with_, or _withed_ to, the oth­er. A book _with_ a cov­er, is one that has a cov­er _joined_, bound, or at­tached to it. “A fa­ther _with_ a son, a man _with_ an es­tate, a na­tion _with_ a con­sti­tu­tion.” In all such cas­es _with_ ex­press­es the re­la­tion be­tween the two things men­tioned, pro­duced by a _union_ or con­nex­ion with each oth­er.[6]

=In= is used in the same way. It is still re­tained as a noun and is sus­pend­ed on the signs of many pub­lic hous­es. “The trav­eller's _inn_,” is a house where trav­ellers _in_ them­selves, or go _in_, for en­ter­tain­ment. It oc­curs fre­quent­ly in Shak­speare and in more mod­ern writ­ers, as a verb, and is still used in com­mon con­ver­sa­tion as an im­per­ative. “Go, _in_ the crops of grain.” “_In_ with you.” “_In_ with it.” In de­scribes one thing by its re­la­tion to an­oth­er, which is the busi­ness of ad­jec­tives. It ad­mits of the reg­ular de­grees of com­par­ison; as, _in_, _in­ner_, _in­ner­most_ or _in­most_. It al­so has its com­pounds. _In_step, the _in­ner_ part of the foot, _in_let, _in_vest­ment, _in_her­itance. In this ca­pac­ity it is ex­ten­sive­ly used un­der its dif­fer­ent shades of mean­ing which I can­not stop to no­tice.

=Of= sig­ni­fies _di­vid­ed_, _sep­arat­ed_, or _part­ed_. “The ship is _off_ the coast.” “I am bound _off_, and you are bound _out_.” “A part _of_ a pen­cil,” is that part which is _sep­arat­ed_ from the rest, im­ply­ing that the act of _sep­arat­ing_, or _off­ing_, has tak­en place. “A branch _of_ the tree.” There is the tree; this branch is from it. “Our com­mu­ni­ca­tion was bro­ken _off_ sev­er­al years ago.” “Sailors record their _off_in­gs, and par­ents love their _off_spring,” or those chil­dren which sprung from them.[7] “We al­so _are his off­spring_;” that is, sprung from God.[8] In all these, and ev­ery oth­er case, you will per­ceive the mean­ing of the word, and its of­fice will soon ap­pear es­sen­tial in the ex­pres­sion of thought. Had all the world been a com­pact whole, noth­ing ev­er sep­arat­ed from it, we could nev­er speak of a part _of_ it, for we could nev­er have such an idea. But we look at things, as sep­arat­ed, di­vid­ed, part­ed; and speak of one thing as sep­arat­ed from the oth­ers. Hence, when we speak of the part of the earth we in­hab­it, we, in imag­ina­tion, sep­arate it from some oth­er _part_, or the gen­er­al whole. We can not use this word in ref­er­ence to a thing which is in­di­vis­ible, be­cause we can con­ceive no idea of a part _of_ an in­di­vis­ible thing. We do not say, a por­tion _of_ our mind tak­en as a whole, but as ca­pa­ble of di­vi­sion. A share _of_ our re­gards, sup­pos­es that the re­main­der is re­served for some­thing else.

=Out=, out_er_ or ut­ter, out­er_most_ or ut­most, ad­mits of the same re­mark as _in_.

* * * * *

In this man­ner, we might ex­plain a long list of words, called ad­verbs, con­junc­tions, and prepo­si­tions. But I for­bear, for the present, the fur­ther con­sid­er­ation of this sub­ject, and leave it for an­oth­er lec­ture.