The group of words belonging to the closed lips, of which mum, mumming, mumble are among the many forms belonging to European languages,' are worked out in like manner among the lower races-Vei mu mu 'dumb'; Mpongwe imamu 'dumb'; Zulu momata (from moma, a motion with the mouth as in mumbling') 'to move the mouth or lips,' mumata 'to close the lips as with a mouthful of water,' mumuta, mumuza 'to eat mouthfuls of corn, &c., with the lips shut; ' Tahitian mamu' to be silent,' omumu 'to murmur;' Fijian, nomo, nomo-nomo 'to be silent; Chilian, ñomn 'to be silent;' Quiché, mem 'mute,' whence memer' to become mute;' Quichua, amu ' dumb, silent,' amullini 'to have something in the mouth,' amullayacuni simicta to mutter, to grumble.' The group represented by Sanskrit t'hût'hû 'the sound of spitting,' Persian thu kerdan (make thu) 'to spit,' Greek Túш, may be compared with Chinook mamook toh, tooh, (make toh, tooh); Chilian tuvcùtun (make tuv); Tahitian tutua; Galla twu; Yoruba tu. Among the Sanskrit verb-roots, none carries its imitative nature more plainly than kshu 'to sneeze;' the following analogous forms are from South America :-Chilian, echiun; Quichua, achhini; and from various languages of Brazilian tribes, techa-ai, haitschu, atchian, natschun, aritischune, &c. Another imitative verb is we" shown in the Negro-English dialect of Surinam, njam 'to eat' (pron. nyam), njam-njam 'food' ('en hem njanjam ben de sprinkhan nanga boesi-honi'' and his meat was locusts and wild honey '). In Australia the imitative verb ' to cat' reappears as g'nam-ang. In Africa the Susu language has nimnim, to taste,' and a similar formation is observed in the Zulu nambita 'to smack the lips after eating or tasting, and thence to be tasteful, to be pleasant to the mind.' This is an excellent instance of the transition of mere imitative sound to the expression of mental emotion, and it corresponds with the imitative way in which the Yakama language, in speaking of little children 1 See Wedgwood, Dic., s.v. mum,' &c. or pet animals, expresses the verb to love' as nem-no-sha (to make n'm-n'). In more civilized countries these forms are mostly confined to baby-language. The Chinese child's word for eating is nam, in English nurseries nim is noticed as answering the same purpose, and the Swedish dictionary even recognizes namnam' a tid-bit.' As for imitative names of animals derived from their cries or noises, they are to be met with in every language from the Australian twonk' frog,' the Yakama rol-rol' lark,' to the Coptic eeiō ass,' the Chinese maoucat,' and the English cuckoo and peewit. Their general principle of formation being acknowledged, their further philological interest turns mostly on cases where corresponding words have thus been formed independently in distant regions, and those where the imitative name of the creature, or its habitual sound, passes to express some new idea suggested by its character. The Sanskrit name of the kåka crow reappears in the name of a similar bird in British Columbia, the káh-káh; a fly is called by the natives of Australia a bumberoo, like Sanskrit bambharâli 'fly,' Greek Boμ-Búλios, and our bumble-bee. Analogous to the name of the tse-tse fly, the terror of African travellers, is ntsintsi, the word for 'fly' among the Basutos, which also, by a simple metaphor, serves to express the idea of ' a parasite.' Mr. H. W. Bates's description seems to settle the dispute among naturalists, whether the toucan had its name from its cry or not. He speaks of its loud, shrill, yelping cries having a vague resemblance to the syllables tocáno, tocáno, and hence the Indian name of this genus of birds.' Granting this, we can trace this sound-word into a very new meaning; for it appears that the bird's monstrous bill has suggested a name for a certain large-nosed tribe of Indians, who are accordingly called Tucanos.1 The cock, gallo quiquiriqui, as the Spanish nursery-language calls him, has a long list of names from various languages 1 Bates, Naturalist on the Amazons,' 2nd ed., p. 404: Markham in 'Tr. Eth. Soc., vol. iii. p. 143. which in various ways imitate his crowing; in Yoruba he is called koklo, in Ibo okoko, akoka, in Zulu kuku, in Finnish kukko, in Sanskrit kukkuta, and so on. He is mentioned in the Zend-Avesta in a very curious way, by a name which elaborately imitates his cry, but which the ancient Persians seem to have held disrespectful to their holy bird, who rouses men from sleep to good thought, word, and work :— 'The bird who bears the name of Parôdars, O holy Zarathustra ; The crowing of the cock (Malay kâluruk, kukuk) serves to mark a point of time, cockcrow. Other words originally derived from such imitation of crowing have passed into other curiously transformed meanings: Old French cocart 'vain;' modern French coquet strutting like a cock, coquetting, a coxcomb;' cocarde a cockade' (from its likeness to a cock's comb); one of the best instances is coquelicot, a name given for the same reason to the wild poppy, and even more distinctly in Languedoc, where cacaracá means both the crowing and the flower. The hen in some languages has a name corresponding to that of the cock, as in Kussa kukuduna cock,' kukukasi 'hen; ' Ewe koklo-tsu cock,' koklo-nohen; and her cackle (whence she has in Switzerland the name of gugel, güggel) has passed into language as a term for idle gossip and chatter of women, caquet, caqueter, gackern, much as the noise of a very different creature scems to have given rise not only to its name, Italian cicala, but to a group of words represented by cicalar to chirp, chatter, talk sillily.' The pigeon is a good example of this kind, both for sound and sense. It is Latin pipio, Italian pippione, piccione, pigione, modern Greek ívov, French pipion (old), pigeon; its derivation is from the young bird's peep, Latin pipire, Italian pipiare, pigiolare, modern Greek vigo, to chirp; by an easy metaphor, a pigcon comes to mean a silly young fellow 14 'Avesta,' Farg. xviii. 34-5 easily caught,' to pigeon' to cheat,' Italian pipione a silly gull, one that is soon caught and trepanned,' pippionare 'to pigeon, to gull one.' In an entirely different family of languages, Mr. Wedgwood points out a curiously similar process of derivation; Magyar pipegni, pipelni 'to peep or cheep ;' pipe, pipök ‘a chicken, gosling;' pipe-ember (chicken-man), a silly young fellow, booby." The derivation of Greek Boûs, Latin bos, Welsh bu, from the ox's lowing, or booing as it is called in the north country, has been much debated. With an excessive desire to make Sanskrit answer as a general Indo-European type, Bopp connected Sanskrit go, old German chuo, English cow, with these words, on the unusual and forced assumption of a change from guttural to labial. The direct derivation from sound, however, is favoured by other languages, CochinChinese bo, Hottentot bou. The beast may almost answer for himself in the words of that Spanish proverb which remarks that people talk according to their nature: 'Habló el buey, y dijó bu!' 'The ox spoke, and he said boo!' Among musical instruments with imitative names are the following the shee-shee-quoi, the mystic rattle of the Red Indian medicine-man, an imitative word which reappears in the Darien Indian shak-shak, the shook-shook of the Arawaks, the Chinook shugh (whence shugh-opoots, rattletail, i.e., ' rattlesnake; ')-the drum, called ganga in Haussa, gañgan in the Yoruba country, gunguma by the Gallas, and having its analogue in the Eastern gong;-the bell, called in Yakama (N. Amer.) kwa-lal-kwa-lal, in Yalof (W. Afr.) walwal, in Russian kolokol. The sound of the horn is imitated in English nurseries as toot-toot, and this is transferred to express the 'omnibus' of which the bugle is the signal with this nursery word is to be classed the 1 Wedgwood, Dic., s.v. pigeon;' Diez, 'Etym. Wörterb.,' s.v. ‘piccione.' 2 Bopp, 'Gloss. Sanscr.,' s.v. 'go.' See Pott, Wurzel-Wörterb. der Indo-Germ. Spr.,' s.v. ‘gu,' ' Zählmethode,' p. 227. Peruvian name for the 'shell-trumpet,' pututu, and the Gothic thuthaurn (thut-horn), which is even used in the Gothic Bible for the last trumpet of the day of judgement,— 'In spêdistin thuthaúrna. thuthaúrneith auk jah daúthans ustandand' (1 Cor. xv. 52). How such imitative words, when thoroughly taken up into language, suffer change of pronunciation in which the original sound-meaning is lost, may be seen in the English word tabor, which we might not recognize as a sound-word at all, did we not notice that it is French tabour, a word which in the form tambour obviously belongs to a group of words for drums, extending from the small rattling Arabic tubl to the Indian dundhubi and the tombe, the Moqui drum made of a hollowed log. The same group shows the transfer of such imitative words to objects which are like the instrument, but have nothing to do with its sound; few people who talk of tambour-work, and fewer still who speak of a footstool as a tabouret, associate these words with the sound of a drum, yet the connexion is clear enough. When these two processes go on together, and a sound-word changes its original sound on the one hand, and transfers its meaning to something else on the other, the result may soon leave philological analysis quite helpless, unless by accident historical evidence is forthcoming. Thus with the English word pipe. Putting aside the particular pronunciation which we give the word, and referring it back to its mediæval Latin or French sound in pipa, pipe, we have before us an evident imitative name of a musical instrument, derived from a familiar sound used also to represent the chirping of chickens, Latin pipire, English to peep, as in the translation of Isaiah viii. 19: 'Seek . . . unto wizards that peep, and that mutter.' The Algonquin Indians appear to have formed from this sound pib (with a grammatical suffix) their name for the pib-e-gwun or native flute. Now just as tuba, tubus, a trumpet' (itself very likely an imitative word) has given a name for any kind of tube, so the word pipe has been transferred from the musical |
