Thus, Wordsworth and Coleridge took great pains to distinguish between
Imagination and Fancy, which had become in common usage practically
equivalent; and they sought to limit 'imagination' to an order of poetic
effect, which (they said) had prevailed during the Elizabethan age, but
had been almost lost during the Gallo-classic, and which it was their
mission to restore. Co-ordinate terms often tend to coalesce and become
synonymous, or one almost supersedes the other, to the consequent
impoverishment of our speech. At present _proposition_ (that something
is the fact) has almost driven out _proposal_ (that it is desirable to
co-operate in some action). Even good writers and speakers, by their own
practice, encourage this confusion: they submit to Parliament certain
'propositions' (proposals for legislation), or even make 'a proposition
of marriage.' Definition should counteract such a tendency.

(6) We must avoid the temptation to extend the denotation of a word so
far as to diminish or destroy its connotation; or to increase its
connotation so much as to render it no longer applicable to things which
it formerly denoted: we should neither unduly generalise, nor unduly
specialise, a term. Is it desirable to define _education_ so as to
include the 'lessons of experience'; or is it better to restrict it as
implying a personal educator? If any word implies blame or praise, we
are apt to extend it to everything we hate or approve. But _coward_
cannot be so defined as to include all bullies, nor _noble_ so as to
include every honest man, without some loss in distinctness of thought.

The same impulses make us specialise words; for, if two words express
approval, we wish to apply both to whatever we admire and to refuse both
to whatever displeases us. Thus, a man may resolve to call no one great
who is not good: greatness, according to him, connotes goodness: whence
it follows that (say) Napoleon I. was not great. Another man is
disgusted with greatness: according to him, good and great are mutually
exclusive classes, sheep and goats, as in Gray's wretched clench:
"Beneath the good how far, yet far above the great." In feet, however
'good' and 'great' are descriptive terms, sometimes applicable to the
same object, sometimes to different: but 'great' is the wider term and
applicable to goodness itself and also to badness; whereas by making
'great' connote goodness it becomes the narrower term. And as we have
seen (Sec. 3), s