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Trench, Richard C, 1807-1886

"On the Study of Words"

' Other homonyms in the language
are the following: 'ash,' 'barb,' 'bark,' 'barnacle,' 'bat,' 'beam,'
'beetle,' 'bill,' 'bottle,' 'bound,' 'breeze,' 'bugle,' 'bull,' 'cape,'
'caper,' 'chap,' 'cleave,' 'club,' 'cob,' 'crab,' 'cricket,' 'crop,'
'crowd,' 'culver,' 'dam,' 'elder,' 'flag,' 'fog,' 'fold,' 'font,'
'fount,' 'gin,' 'gore,' 'grain,' 'grin,' 'gulf,' 'gum,' 'gust,' 'herd,'
'hind,' 'hip,' 'jade,' 'jar,' 'jet,' 'junk,' 'lawn,' 'lime,' 'link,'
'mace,' 'main,' 'mass,' 'mast,' 'match,' 'meal,' 'mint,' 'moor,'
'paddock,' 'painter,' 'pernicious,' 'plot,' 'pulse,' 'punch,' 'rush,'
'scale,' 'scrip,' 'shingle,' 'shock,' 'shrub,' 'smack,' 'soil,' 'stud,'
'swallow,' 'tap,' 'tent,' 'toil,' 'trinket,' 'turtle.' You will find it
profitable to follow these up at home, to trace out the two or more
words which have clothed themselves in exactly the same outward garb,
and on what etymologies they severally repose; so too, as often as you
suspect the existence of homonyms, to make proof of the matter for
yourselves, gradually forming as complete a list of these as you
can. [Footnote: For a nearly complete list of homonyms in English see
List of Homonyms at the end of Skeat's _Etym. Dict._; Kock's
_Historical Grammar of the English Language_, vol. i. p. 223; Maetzner's
_Engl. Grammatik_, vol. i. pp. 187-204; and compare Dwight's _Modern
Philology_, vol. ii. p. 311.] You may usefully do the same in any other
language which you study, for they exist in all. In them the identity
is merely on the surface and in sound, and it would, of course, be lost
labour to seek for a point of contact between meanings which have no
closer connexion with one another in reality than they have in
appearance.


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