The oak, in Greek [Greek: drys],
plays no inconsiderable part in the Ritual of the Druids; it is not
therefore wonderful if most students at one time of their lives have
put the two in etymological relation. The Greeks, who with so
characteristic a vanity assumed that the key to the meaning of words in
all languages was to be found in their own, did this of course. So, too,
there have not been wanting those who have traced in the name 'Jove' a
heathen reminiscence of the awful name of Jehovah; while yet, however
specious this may seem, on closer scrutiny the words declare that they
have no connexion with one another, any more than 'Iapetus' and
'Japheth,' or, I may add, than 'God' and 'good,' which yet by an
honourable moral instinct men can hardly refrain from putting into an
etymological relation with each other.
Sometimes a falsely-assumed derivation of a word has reacted upon and
modified its spelling. Thus it may have been with 'hurricane.' In the
tearing up and _hurrying_ away of the _canes_ in the sugar plantations
by this West-Indian tornado, many have seen an explanation of the name;
just in the same way as the Latin 'calamitas' has been derived from
'calamus,' the stalk of the corn. In both cases the etymology is
faulty; 'hurricane,' originally a Carib word, is only a transplanting
into our tongue of the Spanish 'huracan.'
It is a signal evidence of the conservative powers of language, that we
may continually trace in speech the record of customs and states of
society which have now passed so entirely away as to survive in these
words alone.
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