ii. Economy in the Use of Words.

5. The greater forcibleness of Saxon English, or rather non-Latin
English, first claims our attention. The several special reasons
assignable for this may all be reduced to the general reason--economy.
The most important of them is early association. A child's vocabulary
is almost wholly Saxon. He says, _I have,_ not _I possess_---_I
wish,_ not I _desire;_ he does not _reflect,_ he _thinks;_ he does
not beg for _amusement,_ but for _play_; he calls things _nice_
or _nasty,_ not _pleasant_ or _disagreeable._ The synonyms which
he learns in after years, never become so closely, so organically
connected with the ideas signified, as do these original words
used in childhood; and hence the association remains less strong.
But in what does a strong association between a word and an idea
differ from a weak one? Simply in the greater ease and rapidity
of the suggestive action. It can be in nothing else. Both of two
words, if they be strictly synonymous, eventually call up the same
image. The expression--It is _acid,_ must in the end give rise to
the same thought as--It is sour; but because the term _acid_ was
learnt later in life, and has not been so often followed by the
thought symbolized, it does not so readily arouse that thought as
the term sour. If we remember how slowly and with what labour the
appropriate ideas follow unfamiliar words in another language, and
how increasing familiarity with such words brings greater rapidity
and ease of comprehension; and if we consider that the same process
must have gone on with the words of our mother tongue from childhood
upwards, we shall clearly see that the earliest learnt and oftenest