iii

her residence. She appeared in a garb which concealed her from the knowledge of the vulgar, or, if she deigned to assume the dress of her country, it was so disfigured by the trappings of antiquity as to be known only to a few.

From these causes has arisen almost the whole of the difficulty in composing an Explanatory Dictionary; and this the Author hopes to obviate, in part, by attempting to analyze the word, to be explained, into its constituent principles. For this purpose he has judged it most eligible to arrange the words into classes, placing under one head all that are derived from the same root: thus, when the word MAN is sufficiently explained, its various compounds follow, such as manful, manly, manhood, unmanly, &c. When the fundamental part, or root, is not found in its simple state in the English language, (as in the case of homicide, humanity, &c., from the Latin HOMO,) search is made in other tongues where it is usually discovered. Where this search has been made in vain, the idea expressed by the fundamental syllable is gathered from a comparison of its compounds.

In the formation of English polysyllables there is a considerable degree of regularity. The signification of the primitive word is varied by the addition of a pretty extensive list of Prepositions and Terminations, such as ad, con, sub,―ary, ation, ment, &c. These are words as susceptible of definition as any other; but their explanation, (or how they modify the original idea,) if given wherever they occur, would tend only to swell the work by useless tautology. These, therefore, with a Grammar of the language, will form the INTRODUCTION.

Nothing is more necessary, nor is there any point in which Dictionaries are more defective, than a rigid accuracy of definition. To tell us that TO ABANDON is to give up, resign, or quit; to desert, to forsake, is to tell us nothing, unless we are to believe that all these expressions are synonymous. A number of words are huddled together which have a certain degree of resemblance, from a particular point of view, but the nicer shades of discrimination are neglected. To assert that the present Work will excel its predecessors, might be censured as unpardonable vanity; and yet, if it be found to contain no improvement in this respect, the Author must confess that his labour has been in vain.

A marked feature in the plan of this Dictionary, and that which will distinguish it from every other that has hitherto appeared, is its perfect freedom from the fetters of Alphabetical arrangement. In consequence of this emancipation, the Author is persuaded that he has been enabled materially to improve his definitions, both as to correctness and to perspicuity, while the ease of consultation will be sufficiently provided for by an INDEX. By the ordinary arrangement, words that have the most intimate connexion in their nature, or in their etymology, are often separated by hundreds of pages. No subject, however interesting, can be dwelt upon for a moment :-the thread of thought is continually cut asunder by the inexorable battalions of rank and file; and the whole frame of language, which might exhibit no imperfect history of the human mind,

iv

is so torn and disjointed that we view it with pain. All is chaos without a ray of creative light the lamps of genius are broken into atoms. Who ever read ten successive pages of a Dictionary, without the feeling of lassitude or the approach of sleep? It is not thus that language should be taught; and the Writer will certainly feel mortified at his want of success, if the Reader of the Analytical Dictionary shall not be interested in the perusal, as well as benefited by the consultation.

With respect to the Author's ability to execute the task which he has undertaken, it will not be expected that he himself should speak. It is now sixteen years since he first published an Introduction to this Analytical Dictionary. The Introduction was favourably received, and the part of the Dictionary, now published, may be considered as a specimen of the whole. In a Work of research, improvement might be expected in proportion to the procrastination of its appearance: but human life has only a limited duration; and, whatever may be the estimation of the merit of his Book, the Author will scarcely be accused of having too hastily obtruded it upon the public, when it is known that he has laboured for its perfection during a period of more than twenty years

London, May, 1822,

AN

ANALYTICAL DICTIONARY

OF THE

ENGLISH LANGUAGE.

IT is by no means the province of the writer of a Dictionary to distinguish between what is true and what is fabulous in the history of the world. Whether Language be the necessary consequence of society, and owe its origin and its improvement to the same principle of the human heart which collects the habitations of men; or whether a primitive tongue were communicated to the first inhabitants of the globe by an all-powerful Being, who called them into existence, it is not our present business to enquire. The different thoughts of the mind are now, whatever may have been the cause, expressed by distinctive sounds of the human voice; and these sounds are recalled to the memory, along with their associated thoughts, by means of the varied combinations of certain visible characters, each of which brings to our recollection merely an elementary sound. Every such combination is a word. To discover the thought that each of these words expresses, in the written language of this country, is the object of the present work. For this purpose, however, some mode of arrangement is requisite. Every arrangement must, in some degree, be founded on hypothesis:-but it should be kept in mind, that, whatever we may here adopt will be, solely with the view of facilitating our explanations ;-not to support any particular system or fanciful speculation. Whether the thread that shall connect the tale be real or imaginary, we are anxious that the features of the description shall be true to

nature.

The feelings of the mind are sufficiently similar, among the different individuals of mankind, to constitute a general reciprocity of sentiment. With like organs of sensation, we acquire corresponding ideas; and we are capable of communicating these ideas, by means of the faculty of speech. The howl of the savage at the approach of danger, or his cry of joy at the sight of his prey,-reiterated or varied with the return or the change of objects,-was, probably, the

origin of the Language of the early ages of the human race.

The subdivision of

a sound, into the elements which we how denominate letters, would have been then unknown, and must have formed a second, but distant, epoch in the improvements of society.

The names of objects, thus acquired and understood, would, with the accompaniments of tone and gesture, be sufficient in ordinary cases to signify the desires or aversions of the speaker. His words would indeed be few, but they would be as numerous as his ideas, or the particulars of his knowledge, and it might not then have been necessary for him to speak, by the direction of others, of what he could not comprehend. Even in expressing the common occurrences of life, he must have found sufficient difficulty, without entering into the regions of imagination. The names, then, of those things with which the senses are conversant would, seemingly, constitute the whole of the Vocabulary of the first age of the world; and it will be seen, in the progress of this work, what are the number and nature of those classes of words which succeeding generations have added to the collection.

Man feels himself as a Being distinct from the other parts of the Universe. The images of things flit before him like the reflexions of a mirror; and, by an inexplicable association, those images are retained, or recalled, by what we term Memory, long after the things themselves have, in our judgment, changed their form, or ceased to be. Man has, therefore, a World within himself, the counterpart of that which he conceives to exist around him; and, hence, he is sometimes denominated the MICROCOSM, a word derived from the Greek, signifying, a little world.

The names of objects may be considered as conventional sounds, by which one Man endeavours to give information to another of the images that pass through his mind. Those things with which he is more immediately connected must occur more frequently than others. Pleasure and pain, apparently the result of the impressions of outward objects, must lead him more generally to attend to the organs of his body, by which those impressions are received; and, therefore, we shall not be accused of adopting an unnatural arrangement, if we begin our definitions with an account of the human race.

The word MAN, with a slightly varied orthography, or pronunciation, is common to all the Gothic dialects. It is the general name of the species, and, if unaccompanied with any mark of sexual distinction, and confined to an individual, it signifies that which is held pre-eminent-the male-the same as in many other animals:-The Horse, for instance, is the name of the species, including both sexes; but the same word Horse signifies also the male, while another word, Mare, is appropriated to the female. In the Anglo-Saxon, or old English, WIFE

was the general denomination of the human female. It was applied even to a Maiden. WOMAN is now used (which was formerly Wifman) and the word Wife is confined, by modern usage, to denote a married Woman. The word Man has undergone an opposite change. It once signified a married Man, as it still does in Scotland, and in some of the dialects of Germany, where Man and Wife are correlative. In modern English, however, it is solely applicable to the species in general, or to the male in particular.

Every fundamental word may originate an extensive number of compounds. Every object, or thing, may have various qualities, or modes of operation: Thus, from MAN, we have MANFUL, Manfully, ManfuLNESS, MANLY or Manlike, MANLINESS, and MANHOOD. They express the various qualities of Man as he ought to be; and they may be varied, or extended, at the pleasure of the writer. We have also its compounds with words in use, as well as with terminations: We have MANEATER, MANHATER, MANKIND, (the kind or race of man) MANKILLER, OF MANSLAYER, and MANSLAUGHTER. MANNIKEN, the diminutive, is a little Man. The word MONKEY is supposed to be from the same source;—it is the name of an animal that, in some degree, resembles, but is less than Man. The verb TO MAN is used in a peculiar manner: a Ship of War is termed a MAN OF WAR, and to Man is to fill her with Men. To UNMAN is to deprive one of the properties of Man. UNMANLY, or UNMANLIKE, is applied to designate conduct unworthy of a Man. WOMAN has the compounds WOMANHOOD, Or Womanhead, WOMANHATER, WOMANKIND, WOMANISH, and WOMANLY. Shakespear uses the verb TO WOMAN, in different senses, which are easily understood, in every case, from the other words with which the phrase is connected.

Such were the variations of the primitive words of the English tongue, previous to the introduction of foreign compounds with which it is now inundated. It was a spoken, long before it was a written, language; and those, who first attempted to mark, by characters, its fleeting sounds, were previously initiated into the literature of Greece and Rome. It is hence that our language contains numerous compounds, of which the component words are unknown to the mere English scholar. They express nothing better than could have been done by the language of our earlier ancestors; but here we find them, and we must write now, as those before us have written. There is this difference, however, between the compounds of words that are separately used, and those which belong to a stranger language, that, in the former, we may multiply the compounds at pleasure, while, in the latter, we are limited to the usage of those who introduced them. What we here mention will become more obvious as we advance.

MALE and FEMALE are never used but to indicate the gender. They are merely He and She; and are applied to every animal as well as to Man. The