their meaning being, or at least seeming to us, the
result of mere caprice; and not explicable by any principle which we can
appeal to as habitually at work in the mind. But, admitting all this, a
majority will still remain which are reducible to some law or other, and
with these we will occupy ourselves now.

{Sidenote: '_Duke_', '_Corpse_', '_Weed_'}

And first, the meaning of a word oftentimes is gradually narrowed. It
was once as a generic name, embracing many as yet unnamed species within
itself, which all went by its common designation. By and bye it is found
convenient that each of these should have its own more special sign
allotted to it{209}. It is here just as in some newly enclosed country,
where a single household will at first loosely occupy a whole district;
while, as cultivation proceeds, this district is gradually parcelled out
among a dozen or twenty, and under more accurate culture employs and
sustains them all. Thus, for example, all food was once called 'meat';
it is so in our Bible, and 'horse-meat' for fodder is still no unusual
phrase; yet 'meat' is now a name given only to flesh. Any little book or
writing was a 'libel' once; now only such a one as is scurrilous and
injurious. Any leader was a 'duke' (dux); thus "_duke_ Hannibal" (Sir
Thomas Eylot), "_duke_ Brennus" (Holland), "_duke_ Theseus"
(Shakespeare), "_duke_ Amalek", with other 'dukes' (Gen. xxxvi.). Any
journey, by land as much as by sea, was a 'voyage'. 'Fairy' was not a
name restricted, as now, to the _Gothic_ mythology; thus "the _fairy_
Egeria" (Sir J. Harrington). A 'corpse' might be quite as well living as
dead{210}. 'Weeds' were whatever covered the earth or the person; while
now as respects the earth, those only are 'weeds' which are noxious, or
at least self-sown; as regards the person, we speak of no other 'weeds'
but the widow's{211}. In each of these cases, the same contraction of
meaning, the separating off and assigning to other words of large
portions of this, has found place. 'To starve' (the German 'sterben',
and generally spelt 'sterve' up to the middle of the seventeenth
century), meant once to die any manner of death; thus Chaucer says,
Christ "_sterved_ upon the cross for our redemption"; it now is
restricted to the dying by cold or by hunger. Words not a few were once
applied to both sexes alike, which are now restricted to the female. It
is so even with 'girl', which was once a young person of either
sex{212}; w