When, therefore, it was at length
perceived, that under an apparent unity of meaning there lurked a real
dualism, and for philosophic purposes it was necessary that this
distinction should have its appropriate expression, this necessity was
met half way by the _clinamen_ which had already affected the popular
usage of the words.' Compare what Coleridge had before said on the same
matter, _Biogr. Lit_. vol. i. p. 90; and what Ruskin, _Modern Painters_
part 3, Section 2, ch. 3, has said since. It is to Coleridge that we
owe the word 'to desynonymize' (_Biogr. Lit_. p. 87)--which is
certainly preferable to Professor Grote's 'despecificate.' Purists
indeed will object that it is of hybrid formation, the prefix Latin,
the body of the word Greek; but for all this it may very well stand
till a better is offered. Coleridge's own contributions, direct and
indirect, in this province are perhaps more in number and in value than
those of any other English writer; thus to him we owe the
disentanglement of 'fanaticism' and 'enthusiasm' (_Lit. Rem_. vol. ii.
p. 365); of 'keenness' and 'subtlety' (_Table-Talk_, p. 140); of
'poetry' and 'poesy' (_Lit. Rem_. vol. i. p. 219); of 'analogy' and
'metaphor' (_Aids to Reflection_, 1825, p. 198); and that on which he
himself laid so great a stress, of 'reason' and 'understanding.'] This
is but one example, an illustrious one indeed, of what has been going
forward in innumerable pairs of words. Thus in Wiclif's time and long
after, there seems to have been no difference recognized between a
'famine' and a 'hunger'; they both expressed the outward fact of a
scarcity of food.
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