; in
none is the distance so immense between the frequent sublimity of the
word in its proper use, and the triviality of it in its slovenly and its
popular.

This tendency in words to lose the sharp, rigidly defined outline of
meaning which they once possessed, to become of wide, vague, loose
application instead of fixed, definite, and precise, to mean almost
anything, and so really to mean nothing, is among the most fatally
effectual which are at work for the final ruin of a language, and, I do
not fear to add, for the demoralization of those that speak it. It is
one against which we shall all do well to watch; for there is none of us
who cannot do something in keeping words close to their own proper
meaning, and in resisting their encroachment on the domain of others.

The causes which bring this mischief about are not hard to trace. We all
know that when a piece of our silver money has long fulfilled its part,
as "pale and common drudge 'tween man and man", whatever it had at first
of sharper outline and livelier impress is in the end wholly obliterated
from it. So it is with words, above all with words of science and
theology. These getting into general use, and passing often from mouth
to mouth, lose the "image and superscription" which they had, before
they descended from the school to the market-place, from the pulpit to
the street. Being now caught up by those who understand imperfectly and
thus incorrectly their true value, who will not be at the pains of
understanding that, or who are incapable of doing so, they are obliged
to accommodate themselves to the lower sphere in which they circulate,
by laying aside much of the precision and accuracy and depth which once
they had; they become weaker, shallower, more indefinite; till in the
end, as exponents of thought and feeling, they cease to be of any
service at all.

* * * * *

{Sidenote: '_Bombast_', '_Garble_'}

Sometimes a word does not merely narrow or extend its meaning, but
altogether changes it; and this it does in more ways than one. Thus a
secondary figurative sense will quite put out of use and extinguish the
literal, until in the entire predominance of that it is altogether
forgotten that it ever possessed any other. I may instance 'bombast' as
a word about which this forgetfulness is nearly complete. What 'bombast'
now means is familiar to us all, namely inflated words, "full of sound
and fury", but "signifying not