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Leaves from a word-hunter's note-book (1876)
Leaves from a wordhunter's notebook - 1876 Author:Abram Smythe Palmer Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. The Word 'try' The Words 'flatter'—'adu- La Tion'—' Persuade '—' Indulged Etc. Words, like photographs of our friends, have a natural tendency... more » in process of time to fade and lose the sharpness of their outlines. Many, which once on a time conveyed to the mind a distinct and vivid picture, lose their chief characteristics after a while ; and thus, as the lights grow dark and the shadows grow pale, a word becoming quite general and undefined in its meaning assumes an inexpressive aspect of colourless monotony, like one of those blanched and pallid likenesses which have ceased to interest us. It is only with effort, and by holding the word, as it were, in a favourable light, that we can trace again the imprint of individuality which formerly it possessed. Of the multitudes of such dulled and exhausted words which are stored up in the crowded album of faded pictures which we call a dictionary, we will bring out one for examination in the present chapter. We will take the word ' try,' in such a sentence as ' Jack is trying to skate'—a use of the word,by the way, which appears to be quite modern; for often as it occurs in the authorised version, it is never found with a dependent infinitive iu the sense of attempting to do a thing. The verb here is so simple and transparent in its mere auxiliary position, that we would not expect it to have been impressed once with a graphic and full-toned significance. Let us see if we can revive the picture. To 'try' is the French trier, (Prov.) triar (to pick, cull out), (0. It.) triare, (It.) tritare (to triturate, sift, examine), from (Lat.) tritare, frequentative of terere (to thrash). The original meaning therefore of ' to try,' or, according to the old phrase, ' to try out,' was to separate the grain from the straw and c...« less