etymology do not determine our use and understanding of the terms. It is, no doubt, an interesting and valuable bit of information for the physicist that galvanism was named after its first discoverer; the fact is one of which no student, no well-informed man even, should be ignorant; but one may use the word galvanism as well for all practical purposes without ever having heard of Galvani; and thousands do it every day. How few of those who talk about electricity are aware that it signifies by derivation 'the quality of being like amber (Greek, elektron),' and has no better ground than the accidental circumstance that the first recognized manifestation of this potent force was the power of attracting light objects exhibited by a piece of amber when rubbed? And as to the etymological reason of elektron itself, as Greek designation of 'amber,' it is irrecoverably lost. It is, however, far from being at our option to declare the etymology of electricity a paltry and insufficient one, and to resolve that we will have a name which shall denote some more essential quality of the force, and of which we can trace the history back to the very beginning; he would be laughed at for a fool who should attempt such a revolution; a designation in the use of which the community are agreed is good enough for any one: it requires no other sanction. If the case were otherwise, if the right to use a word depended in any manner on its etymology, then every human being would have to be an etymologist, prepared to render a reason, when called upon, for everything he utters. But, in fact, only the most skilled and practised student of his native tongue can explain the history of any considerable part of its vocabulary; and even his researches are apt to carry him back through no more than the latest stages of its growth: the ultimate facts are out of his reach.
We study, then, the history of words, not in order to assure ourselves of our right to employ them as we do, but to satisfy a natural curiosity respecting the familiar and indispensable means of our daily intercourse, and to learn something of the circumstances and character of those who established them in use. It is because every act of word-making is a historical act, the work of human minds under the guidance
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