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and vague are from the same root as gives us extravagant.

A parasol, in its origin becomes a weapon in a duel between its user and Sol, the sun. It rather implies a sword, for it is used to parry the force of Sol's weapon, his rays. An umbrella is less combative, in its idea of umbra, "a shade," thrown into the diminutive, by means of the modification, "ella" as stream is affected by the addition of the syllable, "let." An umbr(a)-ella, then, simply casts "a little shade."

The change in the meaning of rivals is very pronounced. From rivus, "a brook" it once meant neighbors having the use of the same brook. Now, it applies to any antagonist. Archbishop Trench, in his "Study of Words," says, with regard to the adoption of its present meaning:

'Since, as all experience shows, there is no such fruitful source of contention as a water-right, it would continually happen that those occupants of the opposite banks would be at strife with one another, in regard to the periods during which they severally had the right to the use of the stream—and, thus, rivals came to be used of any" (persons)-"who were in unfriendly competition with one another."

Scarcely less interesting is the evolution of the meaning of our word salary from the word "salt-money," which was part of the pay given to the Roman soldier; or of person, from persona, "a mask." The English root of the word is "sound," and per (through) sound is a sound through something, in this case a mask. Tracing the origin farther back, we see that the word once referred to an actor, who in those days wore a mask. Then, from that it came to designate the body, as the cover or house of the real being, the soul: as, "Her person is comely," and from that it broadened to take in the individual, himself. Locke says, Consider what person stands for -a thinking, intelligent being, that has reason and reflection.'

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In the word abundance, we see unda, a wave;" in digression, gradi, "to walk;" in desultory, salire, "to leap;" in candle and candid, candere, "to shine;" in bibulous, bibere," to drink;" in attracts, trahere, "to draw;" in comfort, allied to fort, a place of defense, fortis, "strong," and so on, ad infinitum.

Hence the assertion, made at the outset, that we speak in hidden figures, and in doing so, intelligently, we speak tersely, forcefully, energetically.

FANNIE DAY HURST.

SYNONYMS DISCRIMINATED*

Disbelief, n., denial of belief, incredulity.
Syn. unbelief, scepticsm, infidelity.
Ant. faith, credence, trust, assent.

Syn. dis. Unbelief is negative; disbelief is positive; unbelief may arise from want of knowledge, but disbelief rejects as false. Unbelief is the absence, disbelief the refusal of credit. Incredulity and infidelity are used, the former to signify absence of belief where it is possible, the latter absence of belief where it is right. Incredulity may be therefore right where it denotes a proper reluctance of assent to what ought not to be easily believed, or not believed at all; infidelity is, by the force of the term, wrong. Scepticism implies disbelief or inability to believe, and commonly expresses a doubting of the truth of revelation or of the Christian religion.

Distinguished, adj., noted or celebrated for

some superior or extraordinary quality; marked, famous.

Syn. eminent, illustrious, conspicuous, prominent.

Ant.: common, commonplace, obscure, ordinary.

*(Continued from the September issue, Vol, V., p. 570.)

Syn. dis. Distinguished directly relates to persons and to deeds, and to persons for the sake of their deeds: it conveys the idea of social eminence or prominence as the result of public services rendered, or merit publicly exhibited. Eminent is only employed of persons-those who stand above their fellows: when things stand out conspicuously they are called prominent; e. g., the eminent characters of history, and the prominent events. Illustrious is used strictly only of persons, inasmuch as human acts or character can alone make things illustrious, as being the agents or recipients of what is illustrious; thus we speak of illustrious heroes, nobles, titles. If we speak of illustrious deeds or events, it is as being done or brought about by human agency.

Docile, adj. (dō'-sil or dos'-il), easily instructed or managed; teachable; willing or ready to learn.

Syn. tractable, amenable, compliant, tame. Ant. stubborn, dogged, intractable, obstinate.

Syn. dis. Docile (lit. easy to teach (implies more than tractable (easy to handle): tractable denotes no more than the absence of refractoriness, docile the actual quality of meekness. Amenable is commonly used of human

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beings who are willing to be guided by persuasion, entreaty, and reason, without requiring coercion. The docile are easily taught or led; the tractable easily managed; the amenable easily governed and persuaded.

Economy, n., the frugal and prudent management of a family or household; the judicious management of the affairs of an office or a nation.

Syn. frugality, parsimony, thrift.
Ant. liberality, generosity.

Syn. dis. Economy implies management; frugality implies temperance; parsimony implies simply forbearing to spend, which is in fact the common idea included in these terms. Effect, n., result or consequence of a cause of agent. [Do not confound with affect.] Syn. result, consequence.

Syn. dis. Effect applies either to physical or moral objects; consequence, only to moral subjects. An effect is that which necessarily flows out of the cause,- the connection between the cause and the effect being so intimate that we cannot think of the one without thinking of the other. A consequence, on the other hand, may be either casual or natural; it is that on which we can calculate.

Effective, adj., having the power to effect; producing effect.

Syn. effectual, efficient, efficacious.

Ant. weak, futile, inoperative, nugatory.

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Syn. dis. An end or result is effectual, the means are efficacious. Efficient is actively operative, and is used of persons, of things, and of causes, in a philosophical sense, as efficient cause,' an efficient officer.' Effective is producing a decided effect, as an effective remedy,' an effective speech.' Effectual is finally effective, or producing, not effect generally, but the desired effect in such a way as to leave nothing to be done. Efficacious is possessing the quality of being effective, which is latent in the thing until it is put into operation. It is not employed of persons.

Eligible, adj., fit or deserving to be chosen.
Syn. desirable, preferable.

Ant. worthless, ineligible, undesirable. Syn. dis.: Eligible means primarily worthy of being or qualified to be, chosen; it denotes, therefore, an alternative-that of choosing something else, or not choosing this. Desirable is of wider application, and conveys no idea of comparison or selection. Preferable is that which is comparatively desirable or specifically eligible. What is eligible is desirable in itself, what is preferable is more desirable than another. There may be many eligible situations out of which perhaps there is but one preferable: of persons, however, we say rather that they are eligible to an office than preferable.

Elocution, n., the management and quality of the voice in the utterance or delivery of words.

Syn. eloquence, oratory, rhetoric, declamation.

Syn. dis. Elocution turns more upon the accessory graces of speaking in public, as intonation, gesture, and delivery in general; eloquence on the matter, and the natural gifts or the attainments of the speaker. Oratory comprehends both the art and the practice of the

orator, and, in an extended sense, the combined productions of the orators, as 'the oratory of Greece and Rome.' Rhetoric is strictly the theory or science of which oratory is the practice. By poetic license, we sometimes speak of eloquence in a mute sense, as 'the silent eloquence of a look.'

Envious, adj., feeling uneasiness at the superiority or happiness of another; full of or infected with envy.

Syn. invidious, jealous, suspicious.

Ant. unselfish, trusting, disinterested. Syn. dis. Invidious signifies looking at with an evil eye; envious is literally only a variation of invidious, which, in its common acceptation, signifies causing ill-will; while envious signifies having ill-will. Jealous is a feeling of envy mixed with rivalry: we are jealous, not only of the actual but the possible, whence the alliance between jealousy and suspicion. The latter term relates more commonly to thoughts of the character, conduct, and designs of other persons, and wears an inauspicious or unfavorable air.

Equivocate, v., to make use of expressions admitting of a two-fold interpretation.

Syn. prevaricate, evade, quibble, shuffle. Syn. dís. These words designate an artful mode of escaping the scrutiny of an inquirer. We evade by artfully turning the subject or calling off the attention of the inquirer; we equivocate by the use of equivocal or ambiguous expressions; we prevaricate by the use of loose or indefinite statements, shuffling or quibbling so as to avoid disclosing the truth. Error, n., a deviation from truth; involuntarily wandering from the truth.

Syn. mistake, blunder.

Ant. truth, accuracy, correctness.

Syn. dis. Error, in its universal sense, is the general term, since every deviation from what is right, and, we may add, from what is true, just or accurate, in rational agents is termed error, which is strictly opposed to truth. A mistake is an error committed under a misapprehension or misconception of the nature of a case. An error may be from absence of knowledge; a mistake is from insufficient or false observation. Blunder is a practical error of a peculiarly gross or awkward kind, committed through gross or glaring ignorance, heedlessness, or awkwardness. Mistake is an error of choice; blunder, an error of action.

Essay, n., in literature, a written composition

or disquisition upon some particular point or topic, less formal than a treatise. Syn. treatise, dissertation, tract, monograph. Syn. dis. Essay is a modest term to express an author's attempt to illustrate some point of knowlege or learning by general thoughts upon it. It is tentative rather than exhaustive or scientific. A treatise is more formal and scientific than an essay. A dissertation is of an argumentative character, advancing views upon a subject capable of being regarded in different lights. A tract is of a simpler and shorter character, simply didactic, and commonly, as now used, of a religious nature. A monograph — the word is recent-is a treatise or description limited to a single being or object, or to a single branch of a subject.

Evidence, n., that which demonstrates or makes clear that a fact is so; that which makes evident or enables the mind to see truth.

Syn. testimony, proof, illustration, sign. Ant. surmise, conjecture, disproof, fallacy. Syn. dis. The words evidence and testimony, though differing widely in meaning, are often used indiscriminately by careless speakers: evidence is that which tends to convince; testimony is that which is intended to convince. Proof, being a simpler word than testimony and evidence, is used more generally of the ordinary facts of life. Testimony is strictly the evidence of a witness given under oath; evidence is a term of higher dignity, and is applied to that which is moral and intellectual, as the evidences of Christianity; or the body of proofs, or alleged proofs, tending to establish facts in law. Examination, ~., careful observation or inspection; scrutiny by study or experiment. Syn. search, inquiry, research, investigation, scrutiny.

Syn. dis. Examination is the most general of these terms, which all agree in expressing an active effort to find out that which is unknown. An examination is made by the aid either of the senses or the understanding, the body or the mind; a search is principally a bodily action; the inquiry is mostly intellectual: an examination is made for the purpose of forming a judgment; a search is made for ascertaining a fact; an inquiry has much the same meaning. Research is laborious and sustained search after objects, not of physical, but of mental observation and knowledge; investigation is literally a mental tracking (of facts or appearances) scrutiny is confined to minute examination of what is known and present; exploration is to range in inquiry, or to direct one's search over an extensive area.

Exasperate, v., to excite to great anger; to enrage or provoke greatly.

Syn. aggravate, irritate, provoke, enrage, inflame, embitter.

Ant. soothe, conciliate, assuage, alleviate, mitigate.

Syn. dis. Both persons and feelings are said to be exasperated, but more commonly the former: it is to provoke bitter feeling, or to aggravate it. Aggravate is to make heavy, and so to make worse, to make less tolerable or excusable, and is properly applied only to evils or offences, though it has come, incorrectly, to be used in the sense of irritate and exasperate. In this latter sense it is to be presumed that the idea is to make to feel a burden or a grievance. To irritate is less strong than the other terms, and denotes the excitement of slight resentment against the cause or object. To provoke is stronger, and expresses the rousing of a feeling of decided anger and strong resentment by injury or insult, such as naturally tends to active retaliation. To exasperate is stronger still, and denotes a provocation to unrestrained anger or resentment, based upon a determined ill-will. Exceed, v., to pass or go beyond; to surpass. Syn. excel, outdo, transcend, surpass. Syn. dis: To exceed is a relative term, implying some limit, measure or quantity already existing in its limited acceptation, it implies no moral desert; surpass and excel are always

taken in a good sense. It is not so much persons as things which exceed; both persons and things surpass; persons only excel. Transcend is to excel in a signal manner, soaring, as it were, aloft, and surmounting all barriers. Outdo is a simple Saxon compound for the Latin or French surpass. It is accordingly a familiar term, with a familiar application; hence, it has sometimes the undignified force of to get the better of another in no very honorable way, as a synonym of outwit. To outdo is simply to do something better than another, and to reap some personal advantage by the fact.

Excite, v., to call into action; to rouse, to animate.

Syn. rouse or arouse, incite, awaken, stimulate.

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Ant. allay, quiet, appease, soothe, pacify. Syn. dis. To excite is said more particularly of the inward feelings; incite is said of the external actions. To excite is to call into greater activity what before existed in a calm or calmer state, or to arouse to an active state faculties or powers which before were dormant: the term is also used of purely physical action. Awaken is to rouse from a state of sleep, or, analogously, to stir up anything that has lain quiet; rouse is to awaken in a sudden or startling manner. To incite is to excite to a specified act or end which the inciter has in view; to stimulate is to spur into activity (stimulus, a spur) and to a certain end.

Excuse, v., to overlook on giving an explanation or apology.

Syn.: pardon, forgive, acquit, remit, exculpate, condone.

Ant. charge, condemn, accuse.

Syn. dis. We excuse whenever we exempt from the imputation of blame: when used reflectively it sometimes means no more than to decline, or to take such exemption to oneself. We excuse a small fault; we pardon a great fault or a crime; we excuse commonly what relates to ourselves; we pardon offences against rule, law, or morals. Forgive differs from both in relating only to offences against oneself. Omissions and neglects or slight commissions may be excused; graver offences and crimes pardoned; personal insults and injuries forgiven. The term condone implies the forgiveness or overlooking of an offence or offences by outward acts; in the law, the term has special force as a bar to action in suits for divorce. Expedient, n., that which serves to promote or help forward any end or purpose.

Syn. resource, shift, contrivance, resort. Syn. dis. An expedient is a contrivance more or less adequate, but irregular, and sought for by tact and adaptation to the peculiar circumstances of the case. It is a kind of unauthorized substitute for more recognized modes of doing things. A shift is an expedient which does not profess to be more than temporary and very imperfect, a mere evasion of difficulty. Makeshift expresses this idea best. A resource is that to which one resorts: it is often, therefore, that on which the others are based. So it may be a test of skill in contrivance to find an adequate expedient in limited resources. Shift usually relates to objects trivial and external, contrivance to matters of more importance, and expedient to those even of the highest.

SCIENCE OF FAMILIAR THINGS:

VIII. — EXPERIMENTS WITH HEAT. —SPECIFIC HEAT

A

BOTTLE of hot water will retain its heat, as every nurse knows, longer than a hot flat-iron or a hot brick. The reason is that, weight for weight and at the same temperatures, the water contains more heat than either the brick or the iron. To prove this fact, make the following experiments :Experiment 1.- Mix together a pint of ice-cold water, the temperature of which is 32 degrees Fahrenheit, and a pint of water at the boiling point, or at a temperature of 212 degrees. The temperature of the mixture will be found to be 122 degrees; that is, it will stand midway between the boiling and the freezing points. There has been a transfer of heat from the hot to the cold water; and the point to be noted is that the former in falling in temperature 90 degrees has given out heat sufficient to raise the temperature of an equal quantity of water the same number of degrees. Hence we may infer that a body in cooling a certain number of degrees gives off as much heat as is required to raise its temperature by the same amount, a point to be kept in mind in making the next experi

ment.

Experiment 2.-Take a strip of sheet iron, weighing, say, three ounces, make a loose roll of it, and suspend it by a thread in boiling water long enough to ensure its being heated to the same temperature as the water. Remove the roll from the hot water, and immerse it quickly in the same weight of ice-cold water, and introduce the bulb of a thermometer. Note the temperature of the water when it ceases to rise. It will be found to be about 50 degrees. The iron cools very much more than the water warms. The temperature of the water rises but 18 degrees, while that of the iron falls 162 degrees, or nine times as far. This means that the quantity of heat which will raise the temperature of a given weight of iron 162 degrees, and which the iron will give off in cooling, will raise that of the same weight of water only 18 degrees, or one-ninth as much. Experiment has shown that when bodies are heated their rise in temperature is nearly proportional to the quan

tity of heat applied. That is to say, if a certain quantity of heat will cause a rise of one degree, twice that quantity will raise the temperature two degrees; three times the quantity, three degrees, and so on. As the temperature rises, the quantity of heat necessary to add to it another degree increases slightly; but not enough to affect practically the law just stated. We can calculate, then, that to raise the temperature of our three ounces of water from 50 degrees to the boiling point would require nine times as much heat as was given off by the iron in cooling from that temperature, while the same quantity of heat applied to the iron would raise its temperature to between 1400 and 1500 degrees Fahrenheit, or to a red heat. From this experiment we may infer that a bottle of boiling-hot water contains as much heat as a red-hot mass of iron of the same weight.

This fact is somewhat surprising, but we may test the correctness of our conclusion roughly by heating a piece of iron to a cherry-red heat and cooling it in ice-water, taking care to have the weight of the water the same as that of the iron. The temperature of the water will rise to somewhere about 120 degrees, or to about the same point to which it would be raised by mixing with it the same weight of boiling water.

If, in making our second experiment, we had used any other substance than iron for heating the water, we should have reached a similar result, the figures only being different. Every substance, whether solid, liquid or gaseous, has a special susceptibility to heat, no two substances being affected by the application of a given quantity of heat, when equal weights or masses of them are taken, to the same extent. To put this fact into every-day phraseology, some substances are harder to heat than others. They are able to receive and to stow away within themselves a great quantity of heat without showing its effect so visibly by a rise of temperature as do other substances which are more sensitive to heat. Water is the hardest of all substances to heat, with the single exception of hydrogen gas. The easiest two are mercury and lead, which stand

as regards their sensitiveness to heat on nearly the same footing. The same quantity of heat which will raise an ounce of water from the freezing to the boiling point, will raise the temperature of about thirty ounces of mercury or lead, nine ounces of iron, eleven ounces of copper, sixteen ounces of silver, through the same number of degrees.

This is one way of stating the facts in these cases. Scientists have a different and, for the purpose of tabulation, a more convenient way of saying the same thing. Taking as a unit for measuring heat the quantity required for raising the temperature of a given weight of icecold water,-as one pound or one gramme, -one degree, they have determined experimentally the fractional part of this unit of heat required for raising the same weight of any other substance one degree, and this fraction, written decimally, is known as the specific heat of that substance. Below are given, for the purpose of illustration, the specific heats of a few of the most common substances:

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twice as fast as water, and this is true also of steam, approximately, its specific heat being 0.4750.

The great capacity of water and steam for heatfor heat-the fact that a given quantity of either will hold a much larger amount of heat at a conveniently low temperature than will the same quantity of any other substance renders them peculiarly fitted for the purpose of heating buildings, not to speak of the ease with which they can be conducted to the various parts of a building. On a far grander scale we may see this same peculiarity of water utilized by nature for tempering climate. The waters of the ocean absorb during the summer a vast quantity of heat, without, however, showing any great rise of temperature, and during the winter this heat is given out slowly and serves to warm the air. This is one cause of the absence of extremes in an island climate.

GEO. SENECA JONES.

heit-its temperature ceases to rise. During the process of melting, though the ice and the resulting water continue to receive heat, the temperature of both remains constant at 32 degrees. What becomes of the heat which at The answer is this time is put into them? that it remains in the water. This heat is required to counterbalance the mutual attractions of the molecules of ice-the attraction which the molecules of every solid have for one another -and thus give them that freedom of movement which characterizes the liquid state of matter. This heat which is necessary for maintaining the liquid state of any substance, and without which it would become a solid, and which does not affect the temperature of the substance, is called latent heat, that is, concealed heat. When a liquid passes into the gaseous state, a like phenomenon is presented; heat is consumed without any resulting rise of temperature. Gases, as well as liquids, contain latent heat heat which does not affect their temperatures, but serves only to keep them in the gaseous state- which is surrendered when they pass, the one from the gaseous to the liquid, the other from the liquid to the solid state.

minutes after the ball, in the case supposed, had disappeared down the hole, it would return to the starting-point, having twice traversed the diameter of the earth. If left to follow its own inclination, it would at once drop back into the hole and would perform the feat again; and it would continue thus to travel to and fro through the hole, from end to end, forever.

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