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etymology
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  • The secret strength of its etymology floods the word with another light and gives it a broader meaning: to have compassion (co-feeling) means not only to be able to live with the other's misfortune but also to feel with him any emotionjoy, anxiety, happiness, pain.†   (source)
  • Langdon knew it was no coincidence that the word minstrel and minister shared an etymological root.†   (source)
  • Neckties had been required six days a week when Langdon attended Phillips Exeter Academy, and despite the headmaster's romantic claims that the origin of the cravat went back to the silk fascalia worn by Roman orators to warm their vocal cords, Langdon knew that, etymologically, cravat actually derived from a ruthless band of "Croat" mercenaries who donned knotted neckerchiefs before they stormed into battle.†   (source)
  • Then he read the first sentence from the introduction: Without question this modern American dictionary is one of the most surprisingly complex and profound documents ever to be created, for it embodies unparalleled etymological detail, reflecting not only superb lexicographic scholarship, but also the dreams and speech and imaginative talents of millions of people over thousands of years—for every person who has ever spoken or written in English has had a hand in its making.†   (source)
  • BATTLE LANGUAGE: any special language of restricted etymology developed for clear-speech communication in warfare.†   (source)
  • Although modern culture had erased much of Venus's association with the male/female physical union, a sharp etymological eye could still spot a vestige of Venus's original meaning in the word "venereal."†   (source)
  • I am not certain, by the way, of the etymology of Roussainville.†   (source)
  • MOBY DICK; OR THE WHALE by Herman Melville ETYMOLOGY.†   (source)
  • Etymology: over England; from one land to another; into Ireland.†   (source)
  • —TO CONFIDE IS SOMETIMES TO DELIVER INTO A PERSON'S POWER 108 etymologists.†   (source)
  • This vampire which is amongst us is of himself so strong in person as twenty men, he is of cunning more than mortal, for his cunning be the growth of ages, he have still the aids of necromancy, which is, as his etymology imply, the divination by the dead, and all the dead that he can come nigh to are for him at command; he is brute, and more than brute; he is devil in callous, and the heart of him is not; he can, within his range, direct the elements, the storm, the fog, the thunder;…†   (source)
  • The Cure (an excellent man, with whom I am sorry now that I did not converse more often, for, even if he cared nothing for the arts, he knew a great many etymologies), being in the habit of shewing distinguished visitors over his church (he had even planned to compile a history of the Parish of Com-bray), used to weary her with his endless explanations, which, incidentally, never varied in the least degree.†   (source)
  • The realm of the subconscious, the "occult" realm in the etymological sense of the word, very quickly turns out to be occult in the narrower sense as well and forms one of the sources for phenomena that emerge from it and to which we apply that same makeshift term.†   (source)
  • I wouldn't try to set my friend right in his etymology; and I thought I had best say nothing about the boy-farms which I had been used to call schools, as I saw pretty clearly that they had disappeared; so I said after a little fumbling, "I was using the word in the sense of a system of education."†   (source)
  • But Mr. Casaubon's theory of the elements which made the seed of all tradition was not likely to bruise itself unawares against discoveries: it floated among flexible conjectures no more solid than those etymologies which seemed strong because of likeness in sound until it was shown that likeness in sound made them impossible: it was a method of interpretation which was not tested by the necessity of forming anything which had sharper collisions than an elaborate notion of Gog and…†   (source)
  • "Miss Lucy's called the bell o' St. Ogg's, they say; that's a cur'ous word," observed Mr. Pullet, on whom the mysteries of etymology sometimes fell with an oppressive weight.†   (source)
  • The syllabus that he read on the notice-board stunned him; lectures on anatomy, lectures on pathology, lectures on physiology, lectures on pharmacy, lectures on botany and clinical medicine, and therapeutics, without counting hygiene and materia medica—all names of whose etymologies he was ignorant, and that were to him as so many doors to sanctuaries filled with magnificent darkness.†   (source)
  • …Messrs Pyke and Pluck waiting to escort her to her box; and so polite were they, that Mr Pyke threatened with many oaths to 'smifligate' a very old man with a lantern who accidentally stumbled in her way—to the great terror of Mrs Nickleby, who, conjecturing more from Mr Pyke's excitement than any previous acquaintance with the etymology of the word that smifligation and bloodshed must be in the main one and the same thing, was alarmed beyond expression, lest something should occur.†   (source)
  • Orthography, etymology, syntax, and prosody, biography, astronomy, geography, and general cosmography, the sciences of compound proportion, algebra, land-surveying and levelling, vocal music, and drawing from models, were all at the ends of his ten chilled fingers.†   (source)
  • If they have sometimes recourse to learned etymologies, vanity will induce them to search at the roots of the dead languages; but erudition does not naturally furnish them with its resources.†   (source)
  • Its grey front stood out well from the background of a rookery, whose cawing tenants were now on the wing: they flew over the lawn and grounds to alight in a great meadow, from which these were separated by a sunk fence, and where an array of mighty old thorn trees, strong, knotty, and broad as oaks, at once explained the etymology of the mansion's designation.†   (source)
  • It appeared, in answer to my inquiries, that nobody had the least idea of the etymology of this terrible verb passive to be gormed; but that they all regarded it as constituting a most solemn imprecation.†   (source)
  • Whence Mr. Stelling concluded that Tom's brain, being peculiarly impervious to etymology and demonstrations, was peculiarly in need of being ploughed and harrowed by these patent implements; it was his favorite metaphor, that the classics and geometry constituted that culture of the mind which prepared it for the reception of any subsequent crop.†   (source)
  • So far as Tom had gained any acquaintance with the Romans at Mr. Jacob's academy, his knowledge was strictly correct, but it went no farther than the fact that they were "in the New Testament"; and Mr. Stelling was not the man to enfeeble and emasculate his pupil's mind by simplifying and explaining, or to reduce the tonic effect of etymology by mixing it with smattering, extraneous information, such as is given to girls.†   (source)
  • Slang abounds in words of this description, immediate words, words created instantaneously no one knows either where or by whom, without etymology, without analogies, without derivatives, solitary, barbarous, sometimes hideous words, which at times possess a singular power of expression and which live.†   (source)
  • Some say social contract; which is the same thing, the word contract being etymologically formed with the idea of a bond.†   (source)
  • The coulpe is entirely spontaneous; it is the culpable person herself (the word is etymologically in its place here) who judges herself and inflicts it on herself.†   (source)
  • The blending of Greek and West Asiatic traditions can be seen in so central a figure as Zeus: dwelling on the peak of Mount Olympus and wielding the thunderbolt, Zeus has an Indo-European pedigree as a sky- and weather-god; this is indicated by the etymology of his name, which comes from a root (deiw-) meaning "shining," "bright."†   (source)
  • My most absorbing interests at the present time are etymologies of ancient languages, the newer works on the calculus of variations, and Hindu history.†   (source)
  • None of them, however, goes into the matter at any length, nor even into the matter of etymology.†   (source)
  • The Standard Dictionary does not give its etymology.†   (source)
  • Its etymology is not given in the American dictionaries.†   (source)
  • The etymology of /slave/ indicates that the inquiry might yield interesting results.†   (source)
  • But here, as in other directions, the investigation of American etymology remains sadly incomplete.†   (source)
  • Most etymologists derive the word from the Dutch /doop/, a sauce.†   (source)
  • It has, indeed, little etymological basis, and is but imperfectly justified logically.†   (source)
  • "A crude popular etymology," says a leading authority on surnames,[9] "often begins to play upon a name that is no longer significant to the many.†   (source)
  • Charles Ledyard Norton has devoted a whole book to their etymology and meaning;[23] the number is far too large for a list of them to be attempted here.†   (source)
  • Thus, /quandary/, despite a fanciful etymology which would identify it with /wandreth/ (=/evil/), is probably simply a composition form of the French phrase, /qu'en dirai-je?†   (source)
  • Of late the theory has been put forward that it is derived from an Indian word, /okeh/, signifying "so be it," and Dr. Woodrow Wilson is said to support this theory and to use /okeh/ in endorsing government papers, but I am unaware of the authority upon which the etymology is based.†   (source)
  • The theory that it has some blasphemous reference to the blood of Christ is disputed by many etymologists.†   (source)
  • The derivation of /poker/, which came into American from California in the days of the gold rush, has puzzled etymologists.†   (source)
  • [11] Certain later etymologists hold that it originated more probably in an Indian mishandling of the French word /Anglais/.†   (source)
  • /Ante/, the poker term, though the etymologists point out its obvious origin in the Latin, probably came into American from the Spanish.†   (source)
  • Bartlett's etymologies are scanty and often inaccurate; Schele de Vere's are sometimes quite fanciful; Thornton offers scarcely any at all.†   (source)
  • For example, there is what philologists call the habit of back-formation—a sort of instinctive search, etymologically unsound, for short roots in long words.†   (source)
  • He deleted the /u/ for purely etymological reasons, going back to the Latin /honor/, /favor/ and /odor/ without taking account of the intermediate French /honneur/, /faveur/ and /odeur/.†   (source)
  • True enough, Fitzedward Hall, the Anglo-Indian-American philologist, disposed of many of his etymologies and otherwise did execution upon him,[16] but in the main his contentions held water.†   (source)
  • And where no etymological reasons presented themselves, he made his changes by analogy and for the sake of uniformity, or for euphony or simplicity, or because it pleased him, one guesses, to stir up the academic animals.†   (source)
  • A great rage for extending the vocabulary by the use of suffixes seized upon [Pg077] the corn-fed etymologists, and they produced a formidable new vocabulary in /-ize/, /-ate/, /-ify/, /-acy/, /-ous/ and /-ment/.†   (source)
  • The same and similar elements greatly reinforce the congenital tendencies of the dialect—toward the facile manufacture of compounds, toward a disregard of the distinctions between parts of speech, and, above all, toward the throwing off of all etymological restraints.†   (source)
  • Much of the discussion of slang by popular etymologists is devoted to proofs that this or that locution is not really slang at all—that it is to be found in Shakespeare, in Milton, or in the Revised Version.†   (source)
  • "[70] The theory, at that time, was somewhat strange to English grammarians and etymologists, despite the investigations of A. J. Ellis and the massive lesson of Grimm's law; their labors were largely wasted upon deductions from the written word.†   (source)
  • The English objection to our simplifications, as Brander Matthews points out, is not wholly or even chiefly etymological; its roots lie, to borrow James Russell Lowell's phrase, in an esthetic hatred burning "with as fierce a flame as ever did theological hatred."†   (source)
  • The word, which I interpret the flying or floating island, is in the original Laputa, whereof I could never learn the true etymology.†   (source)
  • The word Houyhnhnm, in their tongue, signifies a HORSE, and, in its etymology, the PERFECTION OF NATURE.†   (source)
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