That part of my work on which I expect malignity most frequently to
fasten is, the _Explanation_; in which I cannot hope to satisfy those,
who are, perhaps, not inclined to be pleased, since I have not always
been able to satisfy myself. To interpret a language by itself is very
difficult; many words cannot be explained by synonymes, because the idea
signified by them has not more than one appellation; nor by paraphrase,
because simple ideas cannot be described. When the nature of things is
unknown, or the notion unsettled and indefinite, and various in various
minds, the words by which such notions are conveyed, or such things
denoted, will be ambiguous and perplexed. And such is the fate of
hapless lexicography, that not only darkness, but light, impedes and
distresses it; things may be not only too little, but too much known, to
be happily illustrated. To explain, requires the use of terms less
abstruse than that which is to be explained, and such terms cannot
always be found; for as nothing can be proved but by supposing something
intuitively known, and evident without proof, so nothing can be defined
but by the use of words too plain to admit a definition.

Other words there are, of which the sense is too subtile and evanescent
to be fixed in a paraphrase; such are all those which are by the
grammarians termed expletives, and, in dead languages, are suffered to
pass for empty sounds, of no other use than to fill a verse, or to
modulate a period, but which are easily perceived in living tongues to
have power and emphasis, though it be sometimes such as no other form of
expression can convey.

My labour has likewise been much increased by a class of verbs too
frequent in the English language, of which the signification is so loose
and general, the use so vague and indeterminate, and the senses detorted