A SELECT GLOSSARY OF ENGLISH WORDS USED FORMERLY IN SENSES BY RICHARD CHENEVIX TRENCH, D.D. DEAN OF WESTMINSTER. Res fugiunt, vocabula manent. Second Edition, revised and improved. LONDON: JOHN W. PARKER AND SON, WEST STRAND. 1859. 302. C. 109. PREFACE. THIS volume is intended to be a contribution, I am aware a very slight one, to a special branch of the study of our own language. It proposes to trace in a popular manner, and for general readers the changes of meaning which so many of its words have undergone; words which, as current with us as they were with our forefathers, yet meant something different on their lips from what they mean on ours. Of my success in carrying out the scheme which I had set before myself, it does not become me to speak, except to say that I have fallen a good deal below my hopes, and infinitely below my desires. But of the scheme itself I have no doubts. I feel sure that, if only adequately carried out, few works of the same compass could embrace matter of more manifold instruction, or in a region of knowledge which it would be more desirable to occupy. In the present condition of education in England, above all with the pressure a |