ffirmations people are
always indulging in have led to the weakening of many a word. _Fret_
meant eat; formerly to say that a man was fretting was to use a vigorous
comparison--to have the man devoured with care. _Mortify_ meant to
kill, then killed with embarrassment, then embarrassed. _Qualm_ meant
death, but our qualms of conscience have degenerated into mere twinges.
Oaths are shorn of their might by overuse; _confound_, once a
tremendous malinvocation, may now fall from the lips of respectable young
ladies, and _fie_, in its time not a whit less dire, would be
scarcely out of place in even a cloister. Words designating immediacy come
to have no more strength than soup-meat seven times boiled.
_Presently_ meant in the present, _soon_ and _by and by_
meant forthwith. How they have lost their fundamental meaning will be
intelligible to you if you have in ordering something been told that it
would be delivered "right away," or in calling for a girl have been told
that she would be down "in a minute."

You will detect in words of another class a deterioration, not in force,
but in character; they have fallen into contemptuous or sinister usage.
Many words for skill or wisdom have been thus debased. _Cunning_
meant knowing, _artful_ meant well acquainted with one's art,
_crafty_ meant proficient in one's craft or calling, _wizard_
meant wise man. The present import of these words shows how men have
assumed that mental superiority must be yoked with moral dereliction or
diabolical aid. Words indicating the generality--indicating ordinary rank
or popular affiliations--have in many instances suffered the same decline.
_Trivial_ meant three ways; it was what might be heard at the
crossroads or on any route you chanced to be traveling, and its value was
accordingly slight. _Lewd_ meant belonging to the laity; it came to
mean ignorant, and then morally reprehensible. _Common_ may be used
to signify ill-bred; _vulgar_ may be and frequently is used to
signify indecent. _Sabotage_, from a French term meaning wooden shoe,
has come to be applied to the deliberate and systematic scamping of one's
work in order to injure one's employer. _Idiot_ (common soldier)
crystallizes the exasperated ill opinion of officers for privates.
(_Infantry_--an organization of military infants--has on the contrary
sloughed its reproach and now enshrines the dignity of lowliness.)
Somewhat akin to words of this type is _knave_, which first meant
boy, t