THE AMERICAN DICTIONARY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE BASED ON THE LATEST CONCLUSIONS OF THE MOST EMINENT PHILOLOGISTS AND COMPRISING MANY THOUSANDS OF NEW WORDS WHICH MODERN EXISTENCE AND COMMON USAGE Together with Pronunciations the most approved; Etymologies based on the researches of Skeai, PREFACE. T is confidently expected that this dictionary will commend itself to all those who favor books of reference on the multum in parvo plan. Every accepted word in the English language will be found in its pages; and, in addition, many technical terms which the advance of modern science and the recent rapid spread of useful knowledge in the United States have made part and parcel of our popular literature; also many old words and meanings found in the writings of the Elizabethan and Queen Anne periods. It has been found necessary to enlarge upon many words, whose full and real meaning is not adequately disclosed by a mere definition. To all definitions which do not apply in this country, the American meaning has been added. Local meanings, words and phrases; provincialisms, both English and American, and a few slang words and phrases-all of which are instructive as showing the natural growth, and in some cases the debasement, of the pure stock of our language-are given for what they are worth, and only in such instances as are to be met with in early and recent standard works. The etymology of each word will be found at the end of the definition of the primitive word. These etymologies will be found to differ materially from those found in other dictionaries, of even recent date. As it is only within the past twenty-five years that the etymology of English words has attained even the semblance of an exact science, these new etymologies will be found, in general, more correct than those of any preceding work. The industrious labors of Skeat, Wedgwood and other recent authorities on English philology, leave the most patient lexicographer with many open questions upon his hands. For this very sufficient reason, the editors of this dictionary announce, simply, that they have given the latest and what to them seem the most imperative conclusions of the science of English philology—a science which, though rapidly progressing, is still, on the whole, quite incomplete. We have but to add that, in general, the aim of the editors of the "American Dictionary of the English Language" has been to give to the public a convenient lexicon which will decide all questions about words, which arise in the course of general reading, and to give to the American reading public the latest, most authentic and most complete conclusions of English philology. NEW YORK, March 1, 1892. WE INTRODUCTION. HEN Pope wrote "The proper study of mankind proper study of mankind | cost their author so much to get together, must be is man, ," he gave to the world a most palpable omitted; though, despite all this, there is but one truism. It seems to us of this age of science, that the "Webster's Unabridged." much-quoted assertion was hardly worth the penning. Every science now leads up to and down to man. him chemistry has its highest exponent; zoology, its acme; astronomy, the final object of its search among the planets as well as the final object of solar and planetary influences. If we search the stratified rocks of geology, we find his imprint and those of his animal 66 ancestors "in Evolution. Geographical exploration finds him, or the remnants of him, wellnigh every where. Archæology excavates and deciphers hieroglyphics, and lo! the buried city and the long-locked mausoleum give up the dead rulers and chieftains of prehistoric ages. For centuries learned men studied the various languages and dialects of the earth. They brought the dead languages of ancient civilizations into schools and colleges. More recently they studied the rude and uncouth languages and dialects of barbarous and savage tribes. They sagely guessed at the origin of modern words, and many of their guesses were printed in books and studied as philology. Naturally, the fount ain-head from which flowed the stream of their investigations was the Syro-Chaldaic, the supposed original language of the Semitic people, spoken in the cradle of the human race. On this basic line the dead languages, and many of the languages of modern Europe, were studied, their roots were unearthed and deciphered, and the older French, German and other Continental savants piled up a philological literature of enormous proportions, hopelessly locked against the nonprofessional, and for the most part utterly worthless, in the light of modern philological research. The philological savants of England and America were content to follow the German and French scholars in this line of investigation. The old and misleading line of philological research was not seriously taken up to any extent, in even the highest English and American institutions of learning. No original investigations were attempted. The French and German scholars had pre-empted the field, and the occasional echo heard at Oxford or Harvard was from some imported Orientalist who had studied and travelled among cuneiform inscriptions and had finished his studies at Paris or Berlin. The exception to this, in this country, is of course the great" Webster's Unabridged Dictionary," so long valued for its depth and for its patient and painstaking selection of the results of French and German philological research up to the date of its publication. But the investigations, the systematized canons of derivation, and the classification of root-forms to be found in that great work of a laborious lifetime, will live in history as the magnificent ruin of a noble structure which but for a few short years outlived its builder. In modern editions of the "Unabridged," the bulk of the philological canons and systems, which Modern English etymology divides all languages into Aryan and non-Aryan. Our language is one of the former; Hebrew and Arabic belong to the latter classification. It is easy to conclude, therefore, that no English word is derived from a Hebrew or an Arabian root; and that no word of either Hebrew or Arabian extraction could come into the English unless the word was actually borrowed and made a part of the latter through custom and constant usage. If the Englishspeaking people could not come in contact with the people of Arabia or Palestine, we would have no Hebrew or Arabian words in our language. In the early ages of civilization, peaceable inter- visitations between even neighboring peoples were few and infrequent; and between distant peoples, absolute non-interCourse was the rule with very slight exception. Two very important facts must be noted, as the natural and inevitable result of this. First, the two original divisions of languages found at the dawn of written history-the Aryan and the non-Aryan-had a tendency to diverge more and more widely from each other as time advanced. Each grew and developed and changed along different basic lines, and in obedience to different climatic, social, moral and even physiological influences. Under primitive conditions the divergence of the two languages had a tendency to more and more estrange the nations and peoples speaking them, to build up widely differing systems of government, religion, and the other concomitants of civilization. At this day, therefore, we \ should not expect to find words in the English-one of the Aryan family of languages-whose roots are traceable to a non-Aryan language, such as the Hebrew. We must note, secondly, that two peoples of the Aryan race, and whose remote ancestors originally spoke the same language, might, in the course of ages, become so widely separated as to develop finally into very different and differently-speaking communities. The original word-spoken exactly alike before their separation-would become modified so that it would be different in sound. The fact, therefore, that an English word sounds very much like a word we may find in some other language does not prove, or even tend to prove, that the two words are related. On the contrary, if the two words in question had been originally the same word, they would now be very different- X would look but very little, if any, alike! In the study of linguistic roots we must be cautious, go slow, and not be led astray by mere appearances. The comparative study of languages, which is now absolutely essential to the proper study of English etymology, has a most important aid in the comparative study of peoples-their manners, customs, religious beliefs and superstitions, their folk-lore and their legendary literature. And, conversely, since the new era of comparative philology has dawned upon the world of |