The life and growth of language : an outline of linguistic science / By William Dwight Whitney.

  • William Dwight Whitney
Date:
1899
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The life and growth of language : an outline of linguistic science / By William Dwight Whitney. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    out being well aware of it, and yet less comprehending why: it is because, in the distribution by the astrologers of the hours through the whole week to the planets in their order, the first hour of that day fell to the re- gency of Mercury. Then, once upon a time, these Latin day-names were mechanically turned into German shape for the use of Germanic peoples, and Mercurii dies became ^Vodcns day, our Wednesday: and so with the rest. Certainly a most curious history of transfer, which brings out a series of reflective acts of nomen- clature made by learned heathen—and not without Christian aid, since the planetary day-names would have remained to Europe, as to India, a mere astrologers' fancy, but for Christianity and its inheritance of the Jewish seven-day period as a leading measure of time— a little group of some of the commonest and most truly popular terms in our language! The same words, more- over, have been made to answer other purposes: the astrologers held that a person born under the special in- fluence of a certain planet was characterized by a cor- responding disposition; and those dispositions we still call mercurial, jovial, saturnine; martial and venereal, on the other hand, come from the office of the divinities themselves. Again, we use sun and moon to designate ' day' and ' month/ saying {\ so many suns so many moons. Here is simply a striking ellipsis: we mean really so many [revolutions of] sun or moon —counting, how- ever, the revolutions on different principles; else a sun would be a 'year.' Then month, which is only a de- rivative form of moon, has been transferred to desig- nate an arbitrary period of twenty-eight to thirty-one days, having nothing whatever to do with the moon's movement. Further, a moon (or lune) is in fortification
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