ETYMOLOGY, that branch of philol ogy which deals with the investigation of the ongin or derivation and of the original sig nification of words. It forms a subsidiary part of the science of comparative philology, and, though it has occupied the attention of the learned and the curious in (very age, it is only within the 19th century that its study has been pursued on really scientific principles. Igno rance, or what is still more dangerous, half knowledge, has often suggested false etymol ogies and many more have sprung from that excess of confident and self-sufficient ingenuity which will not take plain words like beef-eater and welsh-rabbit for what they are. Folk etymology, properly so called, has played an important role in the development of languages. The words that the people have known from infancy are for them things, but it is quite different from the new terms they meet. These arrest their curiosity, and, as they believe that every word has its signification, they seek for this, guided by resemblances of sound with words already known, and consequently reach conclusions often hopelessly distorted by false analogies. We see the same illogical process in the Old Testament interpretation of personal names, applied conveniently after the fact; in the Homeric explanation of the names of gods and men; in the quaint etymologies so common in the medimval writers and in such moderns as Thomas Fuller; in the vagaries of Celtic topographers; and even in the pages of some modern dictionaries it is possible to find such a statement as that the English word news is derived from a certain conjunction of the points of the compass, north, east, west and south. These whimsical etymologies were laughed at by Dean Swift, whose ostler= oat stealer, was a stroke of genius, but have not yet disappeared; and, indeed, the modern ideas of method in etymology are hardly at all beyond the point attained by the grammarians of Alex andria and by Varro among the Romans. It was the birth of philology and the study of the languages of the East that made a scientific etymology possible. It no longer sought the
relation of the words of a single language ex clusively within itself, but extended its view to the whole group of cognate tongues, or, wider still, to a whole family and became a new science under the name of Comparative Gram mar. Grimm's Law was the first finger-post that pointed out the path; among his greatest successors are Curtius and Fick. The Teutonic revival in England in the 19th century com menced the histog of English upon an historical method, from which has grown a really scientific English etymology, as seen in the dictionaries of Professor Slceat and Dr. Murray. No more useful chart of warning could be given than the former's canons for etymology: 4Before at tempting an etymology, ascertain the earliest form and use of the word and observe chro nology. If the word be of native origin, we should next trace its history in cognate lan guages. If the word be borrowed, we must observe geography and the history of events, remembering that borrowings are due to actual contact.) See Curtius, (Grundziige der Griech ischen Etymologies (1879); Fick, Wergleich endes Worterbuch der Indo-germanischen Sprachen' (1874-76) ; Palmer, 'Folk-Etymol ogy' (1882) ; Skeat, 'The Science of Etymol ogy' (1912) ; also see LANGUAGE, SCIENCE OF, and authorities quoted thereunder.
EU, e (Lat. Auga), France, town in the department of Seine-Inferieure, two miles above the mouth of the Bresle, 17 miles northeast of Dieppe. It was in the castle belonging to this place that William the Conqueror married Maud of Flanders. The town was burned to the ground in 1475, by order of Louis XI, to pre vent it from falling into the hands of the Eng lish. It has several small manufacturing estab lishments. Pop. of commune 5,651.
EUA, or EOA, a small island belong ing to the Friendly Islands, owned by Great Britain. It is about 101/2 miles long by three wide. The climate of all the islands of the Tonga group, to which the Friendly Islands belong, is but slightly higher than that of the Samoan Islands, just north. Pop. about 400.