New-York daily tribune., 1859-02-09
MR. MARSH on THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE.

Mr.. MARSH gave his lecture Of Monday to Syno.
nyms. He exposed the sbsu'dity Of Websters deioi-
tion Of synonym aud gave his own, 4" word idsn-
tcal in meaning, Of the same grammatical coustru3-
tion, and belonging to the came language 1t hsd
been denied he said, that word, could be synonyms,
but the unpleasant effect Of repetition required some.
thing of this kind In the fouodaton synonyms the
condition Of people was expressed. Tne wealthy En-
glshman used gold as a synonym for money the
Frerohusn, argent silver and the poorer Roman, e,
brsss. So poetic dialect formed from tue poetic
qualities of things. Toe sword was called brand,
from its flashing and biode from its cotting Ofthe
language peculiar TO religion, some words Of
tive origin, and had lost their ordssry organization
ard others had been imported by the teachers who
brought the faith The poetic dialect led to many
synopyms In lcslandic there were 80 Synonyms for
srord, and 10 Arabic nearly as many. language
which, like the English, borrowed its words from
many languages, would obtain synonyms in that way.
So we had sphere from the Greek aud globe from the
Latin, and they were precisely identical. Toe word
orb, now Synonymous with them, was originally
circle then disc, in which it was applied to
the heavenly bodies. When il was discovered that
they were globular, the word was still applied to
them. AL ttess were synonymous with tai. But
not in the Ioelandic, Gothic, or ADgo-Saxon, was
there any word for the abstrac, idea Of sphericty
When Sporro Sturleson, in his translst0ns into Ice
landc, and King Allied, in his into the Ang.oSAon,
oame TO o, bs h1ro'u, they were obliged to employ
words den otng cIcu inference. The difference Of ue
of words of the Specification gave rise to euphe-
nislns. The composite structure OF E0ginh gave
il greater number Of eupbemsms than almoet any
other language. But nearly all languages were now
ss De Quincy and French had noticed trying 20 clear
themselves of these we'll other superAuous notices
of expression. Mr.. Marh noted the use of Yea s1d
Nav and Yes and No; Yea and Nay being used in re-
ply to an affirmative Iestion, ard Yes and Noinreply
10 a negative question from the time of Wcklhe down
to the middle of the 10th century when, Yea and Ney
were sslgned TO the s.cred dialect This peculiarly
ight not have been discovered, had not SIR Thomas
More censured TyDdsl for his neglect of it. Mr..
Marsh said that toe Eogish needed another word i)r
one Of the uses of In the sentence Give me your
"psper, or your manuscript 1t was not certain
whether the paper and the manuscript were the same
or different bipgs. There was remarkable distnc-
ten between sih and shesee, from the middle OF the
10th century until since took the place OF both SHh
was then used for the consequence and Snhence Tor
the sequence in time. There was 10 chronological
reason for that it originated in the subtle char
acter of mind which characterized the fath-
ere Of the Revolution In the English Bible
Of l6ll this was observed only in tue book Of
Jeremiah, everywhere else since it was. About
the beginning of the seventeenth century there
were Important authors who in their doubt, did not
use either Of the words The general tendency of the
language was toward the discrimination of logical
shades Of thought and the rejection of needless sub
teties in the designation of material things. The vo-
cabulary of the field and the kitchen grew poor, as
the intellect became more refoed. The word fetch,
which included the idea of going for and brneiog was
gorg out of use, and WAS possible that the dstinc-
ton between bring and carry was not great enough
TO secure their separate existence. OF books on
synonyms, he thought Whately's little manual good
20 far as it went. Crabbes great ignorance of
Eymology had led hi IL into many errors and his book
could not compare with the many excellent works in
other languages.