sources; yet our Germanic words are full of the same kind of meaning. One of our commonest intellectual terms, understand, is also one presenting an exceptionally bold and difficult figure: as if to 'stand beneath' (or perhaps, according to the older meaning of under, to 'stand in the midst of') a thing were to take such a position of advantage with regard to it that it could not help disclosing to us its secrets. Forget is the opposite of get, and means to 'fail to get,' or, having gotten, to lose again from possession. In this latter sense the language seizes upon it, but arbitrarily restricts its application to a mental possession, and makes the compound signify 'to lose from memory' only. I get my lesson, and forget it again; but the fortune I had once gotten I have by no means forgotten, when an unlucky venture has made it slip from my hands. Forgive has had a somewhat similar history. It signifies primarily to 'give up.' I forgive a debt (in phrase now antiquated) when I magnanimously yield it up to him by whom it is due, waiving my claim against him on account of it: I forgive an offence when in like manner I voluntarily release the offender from obligation to make amends, from liability to penalty, for it. It is only by what was originally a blunder of construction that we now talk of forgiving the offender, as well as the offence—a blunder like that which we have made in the treatment of more than one other word: for instance, in please and like; we said "if you please," "if you like," i. e. 'if it please you,' 'if it like you,' until we forgot that the you was object of the verb used impersonally, and, apprehending it as subject, began to say also "if I please," "if they like;" and again, in reproach, which means strictly to 'approach again,' to bring up anew before a person what he would fain forget, and, until its etymology was forgotten, took for direct object the offence, and for indirect the offender; as, "I reproached to my friend his fault." Befall is 'fall upon;' but, if some unlucky person is crushed under the ruins of his dwelling, we speak, not of the house, but only of the accident, as having befallen him. Right is 'straight, direct;' wrong is 'wrung, twisted;' queer is 'crosswise'—and so on, through the whole list of words of the same kind.
