by its homophone--a French girl collecting postage-stamps in England
explained that she collected _timberposts_--, whereas our English form of
the French sound of the word would be approximately _tamber_; and this
would be not only a good English-sounding word like _amber_ and _clamber_,
but would be like our _tambour_, which is _tympanum_, which again IS
_timbre_. So that if our professors and doctors of music were brave, they
would speak and write _tamber_, which would be not only English but
perfectly correct etymologically.

But this is just where what is called 'the rub' comes in. It would, for a
month or two, look so peculiar a word that it might require something like
a _coup d'état_ to introduce it. And yet the schools of music in London
could work the miracle without difficulty or delay.

_Swine_. Americans still use the word _pig_ in its original sense of the
young of the hog and sow; though they will say _chickens_ for _poultry_.
In England we talk of pigs and chickens when we mean swine and poultry.
Chaucer has


His swyn his hors his stoor and his pultreye.


The verb _to pig_ has kept to its meaning, though it has developed
another: the substantive probably got loose through its generic employment
in composite words, e.g. guinea-pig, sea-pig, &c.; and having acquired a
generic use cannot lose it again. But it might perhaps be worth while to
distinguish strictly between the generic and the special use of the word
_pig_, and not call a sow a pig, nor a hen a chicken. So _hog_ and _sow_
might still have their _pigs_ and be all of them _swine_.