y signify
precisely the same thing. This sameness of words, then, must consist in
something which is to be reconciled with great diversity. Yet every word is
itself, and not an other: and every word must necessarily have some
property peculiar to itself, by which it may be easily distinguished from
every other. Were it not so, language would be unintelligible. But it _is_
so; and, therefore, to mistake one word for an other, is universally
thought to betray great ignorance or great negligence, though such mistakes
are by no means of uncommon occurrence. But that the question about the
identity of words is not a very easy one, may appear from the fact, that
the learned often disagree about it in practice; as when one grammarian
will have _an_ and _a_ to be two words, and an other will affirm them to be
only different forms of one and the same word.

OBS. 6.--Let us see, then, if amidst all this diversity we can find that
principle of sameness, by which a dispute of this kind ought to be settled.
Now, although different words do generally differ in orthography, in
pronunciation, and in meaning, so that an entire sameness implies one
orthography, one pronunciation, and one meaning; yet some diversity is
allowed in each of these respects, so that a sign differing from an other
only in one, is not therefore a different word, or a sign agreeing with an
other only in one, is not therefore the same word. It follows thence, that
the principle of verbal identity, the principle which distinguishes every
word from every other, lies in neither extreme: it lies in a narrower
compass than in all three, and yet not singly in any one, but jointly in
any two. So that signs differing in any two of these characteristics of a
word, are different words; and signs agreeing in any two, are the same
word. Consequently, if to any difference either of spelling or of sound we
add a difference of signification everybody will immediately say, that we
speak or write different words, and not the same: thus _dear_, beloved, and
_deer_, an animal, are two such words as no one would think to be the same;
and, in like manner, _use_, advantage, and _use_, to employ, will readily
be called different words. Upon this principle, _an_ and _a_ are different
words; yet, in conformity to old usage, and because the latter is in fact
but an abridgement of the former, I have always treated them as one and the
same article, though I have nowhere expressly called them t