the effect of a genetic relationship between the two words compared as to give us an impression that they must be related, when in fact they are not. Resemblances of this sort, of every degree of closeness, do actually appear in abundance among languages related and unrelated, demonstrably as the result of accident alone, being mistaken for signs of genetic connection only by incompetent or heedless inquirers. Thus, an enterprising etymologist, turning over the pages of his Hebrew lexicon, discovers that the Hebrew root kophar means 'cover;' and he is at once struck with this plain proof of the original identity of Hebrew and English: whereas, if he only looks a little into the history of the English word, he finds that it comes, through the Old French covrir, from the Latin coöperire, made up of con and operire; which latter is gotten, by two or three steps of derivation and composition, from a root par, 'pass:' and this puts upon him the necessity, either of giving up his fancied identification, or of making out some degree of probability that the Hebrew word descended, through a like succession of steps, from a like original. Another word-genealogist finds that lars in ancient Etruscan meant 'a chief, a head man,' and he parades it as an evidence that the Etruscan was, after all, an Indo-European language: for is not lars clearly the same with the Scottish word laird, our lord? He is simply regardless of the fact that laird and lord are the altered modern representatives of the Anglo-Saxon hlaford, with which lars palpably has about as little to do as with brigadier-general or deputy-sheriff. A Polynesian scholar, intent on proving that South-Sea islanders and Europeans are tribes of the same lineage, points out the almost exact coincidence of the Polynesian mata and the modern Greek mati, both signifying 'eye:' which is just as sensible as if he were to compare a (hypothetical) Polynesian busa, 'a four-wheeled vehicle,' with our 'bus (from omnibus): for mati in Greek is abbreviated from ommation, diminutive of omma, 'eye,' and has lost its originally significant part, the syllable om, representing the root op, 'see.'
These are only a few samples of false etymologies, selected from among the thousands and tens of thousands with which
