From the PREFACE.
The object of the present volume is to draw attention to some of the principles that should guide the student of etymology in general, and of English etymology particularly; in order that any one who employs an etymological dictionary may be able to do so with some degree of intelligence and to some profit. It is much easier to accomplish this at the present date than it was some ten or twenty years ago. The steady progress of the New English Dictionary furnishes us with innumerable and indisputable instances of the actual usages of English words, so that the mistakes which formerly arose from a very imperfect knowledge of their history have largely been corrected, and much that was once obscure has been made plain. Meanwhile, the great gains that have resulted from the scientific study of comparative philology as applied to the Indo-Germanic languages have been properly formulated and tabulated, to the explosion and exclusion of many hasty inferences that were both misleading and mischievous. It is now possible to introduce science where once there was little but guesswork.
Such science is founded, as all science should be, upon the careful observation of the effects of well-ascertained laws, which have been laboriously evolved from the comparison of innumerable forms of words in many languages. A large number of such laws can now be positively and safely relied upon, because they rest upon the sure foundations of a careful study of phonetics. This study enables us to concern our- selves with something that is far more valuable than written forms, viz. the actual sounds which the symbols employed in various languages actually represent. The most important of these languages is Latin, because the Latin alphabet has been so widely adopted. Hence it is that all serious attempts to assimilate the lessons and results which have been secured by the strenuous labours of modern philologists....