e in the present day? Some
communities, like the Germans, prefer to construct new words for new
ideas out of the old material existing in the language; others, like the
English, prefer to go to the ancient languages of Greece and Rome for
terms to express new ideas. The same chemical element is described in
the two languages as sour stuff (Sauerstoff) and as oxygen. Both terms
mean the same thing etymologically as well as in fact. On behalf of the
German method, it may be contended that the new idea is more closely
attached to already existing ideas, by being expressed in elements of
the language which are intelligible even to the meanest capacity. For
the English practice it may be argued that, if we coin a new word which
means one thing, and one thing only, the idea which it expresses is
more clearly defined than if it were expressed in popularly intelligible
elements like "sour stuff." If the etymological value of words were
always present in the minds of their users, "oxygen" would undoubtedly
have an advantage over "sour stuff" as a technical term. But the
tendency in language is to put two words of this kind which express but
one idea under a single accent, and when this has taken place, no one
but the student of language any longer observes what the elements really
mean. When the ordinary man talks of a "blackbird" it is certainly not
present to his consciousness that he is talking of a black bird, unless
for some reason conversation has been dwelling upon the colour rather
than other characteristics of the species.

But, it may be said, words like "oxygen" are introduced by learned men,
and do not represent the action of the man in the street, who, after
all, is the author of most additions to the stock of human language. We
may go back therefore some four centuries to a period, when scientific
study was only in its infancy, and see what process was followed. With
the discovery of America new products never seen before reached Europe,
and these required names. Three of the most characteristic were tobacco,
the potato, and the turkey. How did these come to be so named? The first
people to import these products into Europe were naturally the Spanish
discoverers. The first of these words--tobacco--appears in forms which
differ only slightly in the languages of all civilised countries:
Spanish tabaco, Italian tabacco, French tabac, Dutch and German tabak,
Swedish tobak, etc. The word in the native dialect of Hayti is