mpt".

{197} See on this subject of the dropping of grammatical gender, Pott,
_Etymologische Forschungen_, part 2, pp. 404, _sqq._

IV

CHANGES IN THE MEANING OF ENGLISH WORDS

I propose, according to the plan sketched out in my first lecture, to
take for my subject in the present those changes which in the course of
time have found place, or now are finding place, in the meaning of many
among our English words; so that, whether we are aware of it or not, we
employ them at this day in senses very different from those in which our
forefathers employed them of old. You observe that it is not _obsolete_
words, words quite fallen out of present use, which I propose to
consider; but such, rather, as are still on the lips of men, but with
meanings more or less removed from those which once they possessed. My
subject is far more practical, has far more to do with your actual life,
than if I had taken obsolete words, and considered them. These last have
an interest indeed, but it is an interest of an antiquarian character.
They constituted a part of the intellectual money with which our
ancestors carried on the business of their life; but now they are rather
medals for the cabinets and collections of the curious than current
money for the needs and pleasures of all. Their wings are clipped, so
that they are "_winged_ words" no more; the spark of thought or
feeling, kindling from mind to mind, no longer runs along them, as along
the electric wires of the soul.

{Sidenote: _Obsolete Words_}

And then, besides this, there is little or no danger that any should be
misled by them. A reader lights for the first time on one of these
obsolete English words, as 'frampold', or 'garboil', or 'brangle'{198};
he is at once conscious of his ignorance; he has recourse to a glossary,
of if he guesses from the context at the word's signification, still his
guess is as a guess to him, and no more. But words that have changed
their meaning have often a deceivableness about them; a reader not once
doubts but that he knows their intention, has no misgiving but that they
possess for him the same force which they possessed for their writer,
and conveyed to _his_ contemporaries, when indeed it is quite otherwise.
The old life has gone out of them and a new life entered in.

Thus, for example, a reader of our day lights upon such a passage as the
following (it is from the _Preface_ to Howell's _Lexicon_, 1660):
"Though the root of