Stories That Words Tell Us

aps they began repeating the word half to themselves again and again, and wondered why they had never noticed before what a queer wor

first used it. Some words are very old and some are quite new, for every living language-that is, every language used regularly by some nation-is always growing, a

living language, and grew and changed; but though it is a very beautiful language, i

they grow older and become more and more civilized. Savages use only a few words, not many more, perhaps, than a baby, and not as many as a child belonging to a civilized nation. But

ssing, for though we know a great deal about the way words and languages grow, we do not really know how they first began. Some people used to think that the earliest men had a language all ready-made for them, but this could not be. We know at least that the millions of word

land; how, later on, the Norman duke and his followers overcame Harold, and became the rulers of England, and so on. But suppose we knew nothing at all about British history, and had to guess what had happened in the past, we might guess a great deal of British history from the w

oke. He would know, too, that the name Welsh, which was given to the Britons who were driven into the western parts of England, comes from an Old English word, wealh, which meant "slave." He might then guess that, besides the Brito

rried very often with each other; for if they had done so, many more British words would have

hard to guess that most of the days are called after gods or goddesses whom the English worshipped while they were still heathen, Tew was in the old English religion the bravest of all the gods, for he gave up his own arm to save the other gods. Woden, the wisest of the gods, had given up not an arm but an eye, which he had sold for the waters of wisdom. Thor was the fierce god of thunder, who

e who spoke Latin, for so many of the English words connected with religion come from the Latin language. It was, of course, the Roman monk St. Augustine who brought the Christian religion to the English. Latin was the language of the Romans. The word religion itself is a Latin word me

t, and many others, came into the English lang

he might guess something about them from the fact that there are many Danish words in the English language, and e

ge, that France and England must at one time have had a great deal to do with each other. But it was the English who used French words, and not the French who used Engl

, and swine, but their flesh when it becomes meat is given French names-beef, mutton, venison, and pork. The reason for this is easy to

them that in time the Normans became English, and spoke the English language. But when we remember that for three hundred years French was spoken in the law courts and by

ch every British subject is tried by his equals. It was England who really began this system, but the name jury is French, as are also judge, court, justice, priso

s from the Danish eorl. It is a rather peculiar thing that nearly all our names for relatives outside one's own family come from the F

ten been educated at schools or universities in France. Those who wrote about medicine and law often used French words to describe things for which no English word was known. The French writers borrowed many words f

hould find that quite one-tenth of these are words borrowed from other languages. After this time f

t wonderful history of all the nations. She has had the greatest explorers, adventurers, and sailors. She has built up the greatest empire the world has ever seen. It is only na

calico came from there. From Arabia we got the words harem and magazine, and from Turkey the name coffee, though this is really an Arabian word. We had already learned the words cotton, sugar, and orange from the Arabs at the time of the Crusades. From the West Indies and from South America many words came, though the English learned these first from the Spaniards,

a, which meant the north-east trade wind. The name alligator, an animal which Englishmen saw for the first

North America they took many words from the nativ

which gave us so many new words, was one sign of the times. Then there were changes in manners, in religion, and in the way people thought about things. People

loved had been forgotten and despised; but now there was a sudden new enthusiasm for the beautiful statues and fine writings of the ancient Greeks and Romans. It was not long before this new great c

n for the better, and the change in religion is now always spoken of as the Reformation; just as the reform of the Catholic Church which

untry. It was in the sixteenth century that the old word nation, which before had meant a race or band of peoples, came to be used as we use it now, to mean the people of one country under one government. In the sixteenth

e English state. It was the period of the great Civil War, in which the Parliament fought

g the people who were on the king's side. The Royalists called the men who fought for the Parliament Roun

ey called Sunday. They dressed very plainly, and they thought the followers of the king, with their long hair and lace and ruffles, very frivolous people indeed. It was the men of the Parliament side who first

hereas the Cavaliers of the seventeenth century certainly had much better manners than the Roundhea

they have been kept and used as quite ordinary English words. The word cant, for instance, which every one understands to mean pious or sentimental words which the person who says them does not really mean, was first used in this way by

wild, almost savage, people who lived in the bog lands of Ireland; and the name Whigs was given by the Tories, and came from a Scotch word, Whigamore, the name of some very fierce Protes

people in a nation should help in the government. It was in writing on these subjects that English writers borrowed the words aristocrat and democrat from the French writers. Aristocracy comes from an old Greek word meaning the rule o

people became used to "Reigns of Terror." But if the French Revolution gave us many of the words which relate to democracy or government by the people, England has always been th

English. In the Middle Ages there was no real study of science, and so naturally there were not many words connected with it; but in the last two

big movement in history has given us a new group of words a