This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1859 Excerpt:...applied to words, affirm of them that they cover not merely almost, but altogether, the same extent of meaning, that they are in their signification perfectly identical and coincidedent; circles, so to speak, with the The word "synonym" only found its way into the English language about the middle of the seventeenth century. Its recent incoming is marked by the Greek or Latin termination which for a while it bore; Jeremy Taylor writing "synonymon," Hacket ' synonymum,' and Milton (in the plural) ' synonyma.' On the sub ject of this chapter see Marsh, Lectures on the English Language, New York, 1860, p. 571, sqq. same centre and the same circumference. The terms, however, are not ordinalily so used; they evidently are not so by such as undertake to trace out the distinction between synonyms; for, without venturing to deny that there may be such perfect synonyms, words, that is, with this absolute coincidence, yet these could not be the objects of any such discrimination; since, where no real distinction exists, it would be lost labor and the exercise of a perverse ingenuity to attempt to draw one out. 194. There are, indeed, those who affirm that words in one language are never exactly synonymous, in all respects commensurate, with words in another; that, when they are compared with one another, there is always something more, or something less, or something different, in one as compared with the other, which hinders this complete identity. And, those words being excepted which designate objects in their nature absolutely incapable of a more or less and of every qualitative difference, I should be disposed to consider other exceptions to this assertion exceedingly rare. "In all languages whatever," to quote Bentley's words, &quo...