corapositioa, parfcicularly in familiar style, on account of their being
peculiarly expressive, and because we have no corresponding
words of equal force in our own language.[1] Tbe rapid advances
which are being made in scientific knowledge, and consequent improvement in all the arts of life, and the extension of those- arts and sciences to so many new purposes and objects, create a continual demand for the formation of new terms to express new agencies,
new wants, and new combinations. Such terms, from being at first
merely technical, are rendered, by more general use, familiar to the
multitude, and having a well-defined acceptation, are eventually in-
corporated into the language, which they contribute to enlarge and
to enrich. Neologies of this kind are perfectly legitimate, and highly
advantageous ; and they necessarily introduce those gradual and
progressive changes which every language is destined to undergo. [2]
Some modern writers, however, have indulged in a habit of arbitrarily fabricating new words and a new-fangled phraseology, without any necessity, and with manifest injury to the purity of the language. This vicious practice, the offspring of indolence or conceit, implies an ignorance or neglect of the riches in which the English language already abounds, and which would have supplied them with words of recognized legitimacy, conveying precisely the
same meaning as those they so recklessly coin in the illegal mint of
their own fancy.
A work constructed on the plan of classification I have proposed might, if ably executed, be of great value, in tending to limit the fluctuations to which language has always been subject, by establishing an authoritative standard for its regulation. Future historians, philologists, and lexicographers, when investigating the period when new words were introduced, or discussing the import given at the present time to the old, might find their labours lightened by being enabled to appeal to such a standard, instead of having to search for data among the scattered writings of the age. Nor would its utility be confined to a single language ; for the principles of its construction are universally applicable to all languages, whether living or dead. On the same plan of classification there might be formed a French, a German, a Latin, or a Greek
- ↑ All these words and phrases are printed in Italics.
- ↑ Thus, in framing the present classification, I have frequently felt the want of substantive terms corresponding to abstract qualities or ideas denoted by- certain adjectives ; and have been often tempted to invent words that might express these abstractions : but I have yielded to this temptation only in the four following instances ; having framed from the adjectives irrelative, amorphmis, sinistral, and gaseous, the abstract nouns v)'relation, amoi-jyliism, sinistrality, and gaseity. 1 have ventured also to introduce the adjective intersooial, to express the active voluntary relations between man and man.
