ever noticed before what a queer word it is.
Then generally they have forgotten all about it, and the next time
they have used the word it has not seemed strange at all.

But as a matter of fact words _are_ very strange things. Every word we
use has its own story, and has changed, sometimes many times since
some man or woman or child first used it. Some words are very old and
some are quite new, for every living language--that is, every language
used regularly by some nation--is always growing, and having new words
added to it. The only languages which do not grow in this way are the
"dead" languages which were spoken long ago by nations which are dead
too.

Latin is a "dead" language. When it was spoken by the old Romans it
was, of course, a living language, and grew and changed; but though it
is a very beautiful language, it is no longer used as the regular
speech of a nation, and so does not change any more.

But it is quite different with a living language. Just as a baby when
it begins to speak uses only a few words, and learns more and more as
it grows older, so nations use more words as they grow older and
become more and more civilized. Savages use only a few words, not many
more, perhaps, than a baby, and not as many as a child belonging to a
civilized nation. But the people of great civilizations like England
and France use many thousands of words, and the more educated a person
is the more words he is able to choose from to express his thoughts.

We do not know how the first words which men and women spoke were
made. People who study the history of languages, and who are called
_Philologists_, or "Lovers of Words," say that words may have come to
be used in any one of three different ways; but of course this is only
guessing, for though we know a great deal about the way words and
languages grow, we do not really know how they first began. Some
people used to think that the earliest men had a language all
ready-made for them, but this could not be. We know at least that the
millions of words in use in the world to-day have grown out of quite a
few simple sounds or "root" words. Every word we use contains a story
about some man or woman or child of the past or the present. In this
chapter we shall see how some common English words can tell us stories
of the past.

In reading British history we learn how different peoples have at
different times owned the land: how the Britons were conquered by the
Englis