use of it. Striking
expressions also which have moved the hearts of nations or are the
precious stones and jewels of great authors partake of the nature of
idioms: they are taken out of the sphere of grammar and are exempt from
the proprieties of language. Every one knows that we often put
words together in a manner which would be intolerable if it were not
idiomatic. We cannot argue either about the meaning of words or the use
of constructions that because they are used in one connexion they will
be legitimate in another, unless we allow for this principle. We can
bear to have words and sentences used in new senses or in a new order or
even a little perverted in meaning when we are quite familiar with them.
Quotations are as often applied in a sense which the author did not
intend as in that which he did. The parody of the words of Shakspere or
of the Bible, which has in it something of the nature of a lie, is far
from unpleasing to us. The better known words, even if their meaning be
perverted, are more agreeable to us and have a greater power over us.
Most of us have experienced a sort of delight and feeling of curiosity
when we first came across or when we first used for ourselves a new word
or phrase or figure of speech.

There are associations of sound and of sense by which every word is
linked to every other. One letter harmonizes with another; every verb or
noun derives its meaning, not only from itself, but from the words
with which it is associated. Some reflection of them near or distant
is embodied in it. In any new use of a word all the existing uses of it
have to be considered. Upon these depends the question whether it will
bear the proposed extension of meaning or not. According to the famous
expression of Luther, 'Words are living creatures, having hands and
feet.' When they cease to retain this living power of adaptation, when
they are only put together like the parts of a piece of furniture,
language becomes unpoetical, in expressive, dead.

Grammars would lead us to suppose that words have a fixed form and
sound. Lexicons assign to each word a definite meaning or meanings. They
both tend to obscure the fact that the sentence precedes the word and
that all language is relative. (1) It is relative to its own context.
Its meaning is modified by what has been said before and after in the
same or in some other passage: without comparing the context we are
not sure whether it is used in the same sense eve