4. Analogues.

Words denoting different things, and yet likely to be confounded on account of their resemblance, may be subdivided into two classes : (1) those which are similar in form; and (2) those which are similar in meaning.

(1) Analogues in Form.—Mr. Shillaber has won his reputation as a humorist chiefly by his illustrations of the nonsense resulting from the confounding of words which resemble each other in form but not in nue. Mrs. Partington is too well known to require a quotation. Respectable writers sometimes confound words from the same radical, but having different meanings ; as, falsehood, falseness, and fa/gig ; sophism and sophistry. As much often depends on the differential of a word as on its radical, and USE is more important than either.

(2) Analogues in Meaning.—The co-existence of two distinct classes of words in English, the Anglo- Saxon and the Norman-French, gives to our language a bilingual character that often leads writers into error The very richness of the language exposes the careless to a loose expression of thought. Daily and diurnal are to a certain degree interchangeable ; as in "the daily revolution of the earth," and "the diurnal revolution of the earth ; " but we cannot say "our diurnal bread." Usage has appropriated daily to the common affairs of life, and diurnal to astronomical and other scientific descriptions. Rich as our language is in words closely allied in meaning, scarcely two have precisely the same signification. Successful writers have, therefore, been careful students of synonyms. Usage, "the law and rule of speaking," as Horace calls it, is the supreme authority here, rather than etymology. A departure from the ordinary acceptation of words, however phil! osophical it may seem, is almost sure to present a diffi¬culty to the interpreting mind. Since language is wholly conventional, one who would master its re¬sources must read extensively and critically the best books of his age, and, as much as possible, associate with the most cultivated speakers.