"Etymology" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the world or something in it conveys a meaning which has its proper consummation in Brahman only: in other words all terms whatsoever denote Brahman in so far as distinguished by the different things which we associate with those terms on the basis of ordinary use of speech and etymology.—The text 'that art thou' we therefore understand merely as a special expression of the truth already propounded in the clause 'in that all this ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... work, a large quarto volume with an Index,* (* The Index was also published separately as an octavo.) comprised an enumeration of all the genera of the animal kingdom, with the etymology of their names, the names of those who had first proposed them, and the date of their publication. He obtained the cooperation of other naturalists, submitting each class as far as possible for revision to the ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... then to be known as provinces or dominions, while the sub-colonies, the privately owned village estates which prevailed in the South, were alone called plantations. In the Creole colonies, however, these were known as habitations—dwelling places. This etymology of the name suggests the nature of the thing—an isolated place where people in somewhat peculiar groups settled and worked and had their being. The standard community comprised a white household in the midst of several or many negro families. The one ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... particular that I desire to impress upon my readers, it is, don't dread disease. It is a beneficial agent, for it is Nature's method of re-adjusting matters in the human economy. There are only two conditions, health and disease. Mark the etymology of the word! Whenever there is any departure from the normal, it is bound to manifest itself in the organ or structure most in need of repair; but as disease is a tearing down, and its cure a process ...
— The Royal Road to Health • Chas. A. Tyrrell
... history of humanity; I would know everything that man has done or thought or felt. I cannot separate lines of study. Philology is a passion with me, but how shall I part the history of speech from the history of thought? The etymology of any single word will hold me for hours; to follow it up I must traverse centuries of human culture. They tell me I have a faculty for philosophy, in the narrow sense of the word; alas! that narrow sense implies an exhaustive ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... self-preservation, is one of the strongest of all the passions. Its object is the sublime.[33] Its highest degree I call astonishment; the subordinate degrees are awe, reverence, and respect, which, by the very etymology of the words, show from what source they are derived, and how they stand ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... for trying a modern German dictionary, I will advise the student to look for the words—Beschwichtigen Kulisse, and Mansarde. The last is originally French, but the first is a true German word; and, on a question arising about its etymology, at the house of a gentleman in Edinburgh, could not be found in any one, out of five ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... problematical; and ancient geography presents so wide a field for the display of ingenuity and learning, that it is in no department of science more necessary to be upon the guard against plausible theories.—There are others who contend for the Teutonic origin of the town, and refer to etymology with equal zeal, and with greater plausibility. The word Eu, otherwise spelt Ou or Au signifies a meadow, in Saxon; and the same name was likewise originally applied to the river Bresle,[163] which washes the walls of Eu, within a distance of two miles ...
— Architectural Antiquities of Normandy • John Sell Cotman
... then this is the place where probably William the Norman stubbed his toe, as he was chasing around inspecting the castles he had set up to keep the Saxons in subjection, hence, Norman's toe,—Normanstow! How's that for etymology?" ...
— The Adventures of the Eleven Cuff-Buttons • James Francis Thierry
... and other special uses of words, here receive their share of attention, and are felicitously rendered or illustrated by corresponding English terms. The arrangement is admirable. The words of the vocabulary are distinguished by an appropriate type. The etymology, the primitive and derivative, the general and special, the proper and tropical significations of a word; its meaning before the courts, in the temples, at the games, among the Roman mob or the Roman exquisites; its anti-classical, golden-augustan, neo-degenerate or patristic use—all this is ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... geological coast is only four days' sail from Sydney, I take it? Labrador! with its auks and puffins, its seals and sea-tigers, its whales and walruses? Why not an offshoot of le Bras d'Or, its earlier brother in the family of discovery. But drive on, John Ormond, we will leave etymology to the pedants." ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... gravest records, in law-proceedings, in his epitaph, in the mention of him put by himself into the mouth of a blessed spirit. Boccaccio intimates that he was christened Dante, and derives the name from the ablative case of dans (giving)—a probable etymology, especially for a Christian appellation. As an abbreviation of Durante, it would correspond in familiarity with the Ben of Ben Jonson—a diminutive that would assuredly not have been used by grave people on occasions like those mentioned, though ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... me of Shakspeare's 'Aroint thee, witch!' I find in several books of that age the words aloigne and eloigne—that is,—'keep your distance!' or 'off with you!' Perhaps 'aroint' was a corruption of 'aloigne' by the vulgar. The common etymology from ronger to ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... geography-book, according to which the canton of Wallis or Valais was so called "parce que c'est la plus grande vallee de la Suisse." And, what is more, a Swiss man of science, eminent in many branches of knowledge, but not strong in etymology, thought it mere folly to call the derivation in question. It was no good arguing when the case was as clear as the sun at noon-day. Now, in the case of Wallis, it is certainly much easier to say what the etymology of the name is not than to say what ...
— Sketches of Travel in Normandy and Maine • Edward A. Freeman
... Homeric question from these much neglected pieces. We must not study obscurum per obscurius. The genius of the Epic soars high above such myths as those about Pytho, Typhaon, and the Apollo who is alternately a dolphin and a meteor: soars high above pedantry and bad etymology. In the Epics ...
— The Homeric Hymns - A New Prose Translation; and Essays, Literary and Mythological • Andrew Lang
... ancienne, p. 134. Upon the etymology of Turanians see MAX MUeLLER'S Science of Language, 2nd edition, p. 300, et seq. Upon the constituent characteristics of the Turanian group of races and languages other pages of the same work may be consulted.... The distinction between Turan and Iran is to ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... involved in them, upon foundations essentially different. The former represents a natural relation, the latter one purely conventional,—even though it may result from the feelings, the mutual interests, and the sense of incumbent duty attendant upon the other. In its very etymology, accordingly, is found implied that sense of constraint, of an artificial bond, that may prove a source, not only of strength, but of irksomeness as well. Its analogue in our social conditions is the marriage tie,—the ...
— The Interest of America in Sea Power, Present and Future • A. T. Mahan
... antiquaries, inform me whether the "Isping Geil" mentioned in this passage is the name of a person, or of some locality in that city now obsolete? In either case I should be glad of any information as to the etymology of so singular {550} a designation, which may possibly have undergone some ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 188, June 4, 1853 • Various
... Canney's notes on the word duda'im (Genesis xxx. 14) verbatim: "The Encyclopaedia Biblica says (s.v. 'Mandrakes'): 'The Hebrew name, duda'im, was no doubt popularly associated with dodim, [Hebrew: dodim], "love"; but its real etymology (like that ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... expositors and frankly confessed. The parables of the New Testament, after critics have done their utmost to generalize and classify, must in the end be accounted sui generis, and treated apart from all others. The etymology of the name affords us no help, for it is applied without discrimination to widely diverse forms of comparison; it indicates the juxtaposition of two thoughts or things, with the view of exhibiting ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... of our author's inspiration are notable. He relies on St. Dionysius the Areopagite for heaven and the angels, Aristotle for Physics and Natural History, Pliny's Natural History, Isidore of Seville's Etymology, Albumazar, Al Faragus, and other Arab writers for Astronomy, Constantinus Afer's Pantegna for Medical Science, and Physiologus, the Bestiarium, and the Lapidarium for the properties of gems, animals, etc. Besides these he quotes many other writers (a list of whom is given in ...
— Mediaeval Lore from Bartholomew Anglicus • Robert Steele
... the writing of the name Enkidu is likewise interesting. It is evident that the form in the old Babylonian version with the sign du (i.e., dg) is the original, for it furnishes us with a suitable etymology "Enki is good." The writing with dg, pronounced du, also shows that the sign d as the third element in the form which the name has in the Assyrian version is to be read d, and that former readings like Ea-bani must be definitely abandoned. [41] The form with ...
— An Old Babylonian Version of the Gilgamesh Epic • Anonymous
... alphabet, never suspecting it to be a modern character. And, if you were to send a 'poulet' to a fine woman, in such a hand, she would think that it really came from the 'poulailler'; which, by the bye, is the etymology of the word 'poulet'; for Henry the Fourth of France used to send billets-doux to his mistresses by his 'poulailler', under pretense of sending them chickens; which gave the name of poulets to those short, but expressive manuscripts. I have often told ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... form has within a recent period been generally substituted for speciality. There is no apparent reason, however, why the i should be dropped, since it is required by the etymology of the word, and is retained in nearly all other words of the ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)
... to prevent the possibility of misunderstanding, it is proper to repeat what has been often said by others, that the English word "priest" has two significations,—the one according to its etymology, through the French pretre, or prestre, and the Latin presbyterus, from the Greek [Greek: presbuteros]; in which sense it is used in our Liturgy and Rubrics, and signifies merely "one belonging ...
— The Christian Life - Its Course, Its Hindrances, And Its Helps • Thomas Arnold
... may well rank them in this irascible row; being that they are as the rest, both causes and symptoms of this disease, producing the like inconveniences, and are most part accompanied with anguish and pain. The common etymology will evince it, Cura quasi cor uro, Dementes curae, insomnes curae, damnosae curae, tristes, mordaces, carnifices, &c. biting, eating, gnawing, cruel, bitter, sick, sad, unquiet, pale, tetric, miserable, intolerable ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... been satisfied with the common explanation of the name, and have stated that it was originally composed with the word tan['e] (seed, or grain), and the word hata (loom). Those who accept this etymology make the appellation, Tanabata-Sama, plural instead of singular, and render it as "the deities of grain and of the loom,"—that is to say, those presiding over agriculture and weaving. In old Japanese pictures the star-gods are represented according to this conception of ...
— The Romance of the Milky Way - And Other Studies & Stories • Lafcadio Hearn
... hood, a scarf, and an armlet, worn hanging over the right shoulder of judges and serjeants at law, is called a piccalyly. What is the origin of this peculiarity of judicial costume, what are the earliest examples of it, and what its etymology? ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 192, July 2, 1853 • Various
... find, "Dril—a stone-cutter's tool wherewith he bores little holes in marble, etc. Also a large overgrown Ape and Baboon, so called." "Drill" is used in the same sense in Charleton's "Onomasticon Zoicon," 1668. The singular etymology of the word given by Buffon seems ...
— Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature • Thomas H. Huxley
... will forget the Doctor's philological contributions towards an amended system of English orthography. Assuming the propriety of discarding all reference to the etymology of words, when engaged in spelling them, and desirous, as a philological reformer, to establish a truly British language, he proposes introducing a distinction of genders, in which the language has hitherto been defective. ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 459 - Volume 18, New Series, October 16, 1852 • Various
... formed mind existed unsurmised relationships of thoughts, harmonies and oppositions; furthermore, he affected a wholly novel manner of action which used the etymology of words as a spring-board for ideas whose associations sometimes became tenuous, but which almost constantly remained ingenious ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... Kaiserinn that now is, one of them: The elder died childless, [1731, Michaelis, i. 132.] precisely a few months before the times we are now got to; reigning Duke of Brunswick-Wolfenbuttel, ["Welf-BOOTHS" (Hunted Camp of the Welfs), according to Etymology. "Brunswick," again, is BRAUN'S-Wick; "Braun" (Brown) being an old militant Welf in those parts, who built some lodge for himself, as a convenience there,—Year 880, say the uncertain old Books. Hubner, t. 149; Michaelis, &c.] ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. IX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... was no other way for it to begin. Knowledge and self-consciousness were born, as twins, together. Knowledge therefore meant Sin (1); for self-consciousness meant sin (and it means sin to-day). Sin is Separation. That is probably (though disputed) the etymology of the word—that which sunders. (2) The essence of sin is one's separation from the whole (the tribe or the god) of which one is a part. And knowledge—which separates subject from object, and in its inception is necessarily occupied with the 'good ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... the existence of a class of men, who were indeed known from the letters of Hammurabi and the contemporary contracts, but whose functions are not easy to fix. They were the rid sabi and the bairu. By their etymology these titles seemed to mean "slave-driver," and "catcher." But the Code sets them in a clearer light. They were closely connected, if not identical, officials. They had charge of the levy, the local quota for the ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Laws, Contracts and Letters • C. H. W. Johns
... root first in the people of Israel, whom therefore the Deity addresses, saying, "I am the Eternal, thy God," signifying, "by thee alone acknowledged hitherto." It also establishes the immutable eternity of the absolute Being, conveyed in the etymology of the ineffable Name; next, his indivisible unity, indicated in the word El, which denotes the sum of all the powers, and the aggregation of all the attributes, in one and the same essence. The same ...
— A Guide for the Religious Instruction of Jewish Youth • Isaac Samuele Reggio
... peculiar meaning is implied in the spelling bearth (Paradise Lost, IX. 624), which he interprets as "collective produce," though in the only other instance where it occurs it is neither more nor less than birth, it should seem that Milton had hit upon Horne Tooke's etymology. But it is really solemn trifling to lay any stress on the spelling of the original editions, after having admitted, as Mr. Masson has honestly done, that in all likelihood Milton had nothing to do with it. And yet he cannot refrain. On the word voutsafe he ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... etymology for the name in the eagle (aguila), assumed as the device of the warlike ancestors of Don Alonso. St. Ferdinand of Castile, in consideration of the services of this illustrious house at the taking of Cordova, in 1236, allowed it to bear as a cognomen the name of that city. This ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V2 • William H. Prescott
... and some one hundred and forty other schoolmasters had been lately turned at the same time, in the same factory, on the same principles, like so many pianoforte legs. He had been put through an immense variety of paces, and had answered volumes of head-breaking questions. Orthography, etymology, syntax, and prosody, biography, astronomy, geography, and general cosmography, the sciences of compound proportion, algebra, land-surveying and leveling, vocal music, and drawing from models, were all ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... from the Arab. "Faruta" being sweet, as applied to water. Al-Furtni the two sweet (rivers), are the Tigris and Euphrates. The Greeks, who in etymology were satisfied with Greek, derived the latter from {Greek} (to gladden, laetificare, for which see Pliny and Strabo, although both are correct in explaining "Tigris") and Selden remarks hereon, "Talibus nugis nugantur Graeculi." But not only the "Graeculi"; ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... interlocutor does not inquire what Tooke could mean by the 'law of nature.' We can guess what Tooke would have said to Paine in the Wimbledon garden. In fact, however, Tooke is here, as elsewhere, following Hobbes, though, it seems, unconsciously. Another famous etymology is that of 'truth' from 'troweth.'[153] Truth is what each man thinks. There is no such thing, therefore, as 'eternal, immutable, everlasting truth, unless mankind, such as they are at present, be eternal, immutable, everlasting.' Two persons may contradict each ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... be well if all students would keep clearly in their mind the real distinction between those words which we use so often, "Manufacture," "Art," and "Fine Art." "MANUFACTURE" is, according to the etymology and right use of the word, "the making of anything by hands,"—directly or indirectly, with or without the help of instruments or machines. Anything proceeding from the hand of man is manufacture; but it must have proceeded from his hand only, acting mechanically, ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin
... exile felt himself all out of joint with his surroundings, and so he called the little child that came to him 'Gershom,' which, according to one explanation, means 'banishment,' and, according to another (a kind of punning etymology), means 'a stranger here'; in the other case expressing the same sense of homelessness and want of harmony with his surroundings. But as the years went on, Moses began to acclimatise himself, and to become more reconciled to his ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... the wonderful effects of the hippomanes, and which fully justifies the etymology of that ...
— Aphrodisiacs and Anti-aphrodisiacs: Three Essays on the Powers of Reproduction • John Davenport
... as if he were in a frosty atmosphere, with scarcely warmth enough to keep life in the region about his heart. It is a patient, long-suffering, quiet, hopeless, shivering aspect. He is not desperate,—that, though its etymology implies no more, would be too positive an expression,—but merely devoid of hope. As all his past life, probably, offers no spots of brightness to his memory, so he takes his present poverty and discomfort as entirely a ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... followed in these lectures the better known and more widely received etymology of the name Goth, I have done so out of no disrespect to Dr. Latham; but simply because his theory seems to me adhuc sub judice. It is this, as far as I understand it. That 'Goth' was not the aboriginal ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... describing the siege of Constantinople, A. D. 1203, says, "'Li murs fu mult garnis d'Anglois et de Danois,"—hence the dissertation of Ducange here quoted, and several articles besides in his Glossarium, as Varangi, Warengangi, &c. The etymology of the name is left uncertain, though the German fort-ganger, i. e. forth-goer, wanderer, exile, seems the most probable. The term occurs in various Italian and Sicilian documents, anterior to the establishment of the Varangian Guards at Constantinople, and collected by Muratori: as, for ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... into a pathy every one of the applications we have already mentioned, and I shall close this brief outline of our therapeutic apparatus at Lord's Island with one more valuable method of relief and cure whose enthusiastic discoverers (or rather adapters) have outraged etymology worse than the regular practice by trying to build on their one good thing an entire system under the title of "Motorpathy." [Footnote: I see that some scholar has lately got hold of them and forced them to respect philological ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... install himself there and take possession of it, nevertheless it is certain that, in normal life, our spiritual tribunal, our for interieur,—as the French have called it, with that profound intuition which we often discover in the etymology of words,—is a kind of forum, or spiritual market place, in which the majority of those who have business there come and go at will, look about them and pick out the truths, in a very different fashion and much more freely than we would have to ...
— The Life Radiant • Lilian Whiting
... particular leave-taking between herself and the children. But the stratagem hardly succeeded as well as it deserved; for the smallest boy but one divining her intent, immediately began swarming upstairs after her—if that word of doubtful etymology be admissible—on his arms and legs; while the eldest (known in the family by the name of Biler, in remembrance of the steam engine) beat a demoniacal tattoo with his boots, expressive of grief; in which he was joined by the rest ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... has written so much and so laboriously on language, was totally ignorant of the philosophy of his subject. There can be no doubt, as we have before admitted, that in the robber jargon, whether spoken in Spain, Italy, or England, there are many words at whose etymology it is very difficult to arrive; yet such a fact is no excuse for the adoption of the opinion that these words are of pure invention. A knowledge of the Rommany proves satisfactorily that many have been borrowed from that language, whilst many others may be traced to foreign ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... power of making even the older English literature vital to a popular audience. An Anglo-Saxon poem was not to him primarily material for the study of philology, although he now and then tried to interest his hearers in the etymology of words — it was a revelation of the life of a race in its childhood. While he lost in technical precision, he gave the listener a real grip on some old poem by which he could always remember it and relate it to other things. A few ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims |
