other ways of getting payment than
field-labour, and the word _gain_ in a general sense, were really
making metaphors.

Some of our commonest words take us back to a time before our
ancestors even settled down to cultivate the land, or perhaps even
before the days when they had learned to tame and give pasturage to
their flocks. Some of our simplest words contain the idea of
_travelling_ or _wandering_. The word _fear_, which would not seem to
have anything to do with journeying, comes from the same root-word as
_fare_, the Old English word for "travel." Probably it came to be used
because people travelling through the wild forests and swamps of
Europe in those far-off days found much to terrify them, and so the
word _fear_ was made, containing this idea of moving from place to
place. But again this was a metaphor. Until after the Norman Conquest
the word _fear_ meant a sudden or terrible happening. Only later it
came to mean the feeling which such an event or the expectation of it
would cause.

We may become tired in mind or body from many causes; but when we say
we are "weary" we are literally saying that we have travelled far over
difficult ground, for the word _weary_ comes from an Old English word
meaning this.

Some of our words are really metaphors showing the effect which
different aspects of Nature had on the men who made them. When we say
we are astonished we do not mean that we are "struck by thunder," but
that is what the word literally means. It comes from the Latin word
_attonare_, which means this. The words _astound_ and _stun_ contain
the same hidden metaphor, which we use in a plainer way when we say we
are "thunder-struck," meaning that we are very much surprised.

In the Middle Ages people believed that the stars had a great effect
on the lives of men. If the stars were in a certain position at the
time of a person's birth, he would be lucky all his life; if in
another, he was doomed to unhappiness. From this belief we still use
the expression "born under a lucky star" to describe a person who
seems always to be fortunate. But the same metaphor is contained in
single words. We speak of an unfortunate enterprise as "ill-starred,"
and the metaphor is clear. But when the newspapers speak of a railway
"disaster," very few people realize that they are speaking the
language of the mediaeval astrologers, men who studied the fortunes of
nations and individuals from the stars. _Disaster_ literally means