Nearly all everyday words have more than one meaning, and it is only the context or whole situation that shows the hearer how a particular word is to be taken. Man in one sentence may mean human being without regard to sex or age, in another it may be used in contrast to "woman," in a third in contrast to "boy," and in a fourth with the meaning "husband" (man and wife). Tea may according to circumstances mean the plant, the dried leaves of the plant, the drink made from them, or the meal taken with that drink ("She had a substantial tea of bread and butter"). We see then that changes of meaning are often caused by the syntactical combinations into which words enter. "Go to chapel" at first had reference to the place, but chapel in that connection came to mean the service ("There is no chapel on the day on which they hang a man"). Board from meaning a thin slab of wood came to mean table, and then what is put on the table (hence "board and lodging"), and then again a committee sitting round the table ("Board of Trade"), etc. These necessarily cursory remarks may serve to show the infinite variety of pos sibilities attending the development of meanings in a language.
In this field philologists must crave the assistance of psycholo gists and philosophers. How difficult it is to realize and define what exactly is in our minds when we say that such and such a word "means" this or that, is shown in "The Meaning of Mean ing" by C. K. Ogden and I. A. Richards (1923), and K. 0. Erd mann, "Die Bedeutung des Wortes" (191o, much more easily understandable than the English book). It is very important to notice how different words have their own emotional colouring, so that though intellectually they may mean the same thing, they nevertheless produce quite different impressions on the hearer or reader—a fact which naturally affects their applicability in poetry and higher prose. Such differences may depend on various things which cannot be comprised in one formula; but among the most potent factors one must mention the impression produced by the sound as such. Some vowels and consonants, and some combinations of sounds, are more apt to produce agreeable as sociations than others; while the sound of short i (or e) is often suggestive of small or graceful things, as in little, pretty, twig, kid, slip, chick (cf. French petit, Italian piccino, German winzig, Danish bitte and a great many other words meaning "little" in various languages), the opposite idea is expressed in such sounds as clumsy, blunder, bungle, muddle, slobber, sloven, etc. Sound symbolism must not be overlooked if we would understand the development of languages ; in many cases, however, it is not the ultimate source of a word, but rather something that determines the fate of an already existing word in its competition with others.
One example may illustrate the method pursued in etymological investigations. English tooth means the same thing as Latin dens, accusative dentem, and Greek oboin, accusative 666Pra: all three words go back to one and the same form in the parent language (apart from the difference between Lat. e and Gr. o, and the initial o in Gr.). The discrepancies in the consonants are accounted for, when we notice that Eng. t here corresponds to original d in the same way as in tear (Gothic tagr) ; Gr. SaKpv, ten (Gothic taihun, ai=e); &Ka; teach, 6E101410; tame, Lat. domo, Gr. etc. Before th an n has disappeared in English: this is a regular phenomenon, comparing other with German ander, sooth with Norse sann; before s and f the same thing happened, cf. goose, German gans; soft, German sanft. Finally th corresponds to original t as in three, Lat. tres; thin, Lat. tennis. In this way philologists have been able to build up a complete set of correspondences, by means of which even seem ingly distant forms may be connected etymologically with per fect certainty.
Where etymologies are not obvious, the chief thing is to find out all the available historical facts as to the use and occurrence of the words. These may sometimes reveal curious circuitous ways in which words have come to be used. Thus the word chapel, of which we have just seen one change of meaning, owes its origin to Latin cappella, "a little cloak or cape." The cloak of St. Martin was preserved by the Frankish kings as a sacred relic under the care of its cappellani or "chaplains"; hence cap pella was used for the sanctuary in which the cloak was kept, and afterwards transferred to similar places of worship. Another in teresting case in point is check, in some of its uses spelt cheque, which is now used in a variety of meanings having seemingly no connection with the name of the Persian king, shah, from which it is nevertheless derived (through the game of chess, which is ultimately nothing but the plural of the same word). Though a great many words have thus been explained in a most satisfactory way, many others even in the best known languages have resisted all the attempts of linguistic historians, among them such com paratively recent words as put, pull, pun, job, rococo, zinc.