You must develop a feeling for _the limits_ of the
word, so that you may perceive where its likeness to the other terms
leaves off and its unlikeness begins. Thus if one of the terms employed in
defining _command_ is _control_, you must not assume that the
two words are interchangeable; you must not say, for instance, that the
captain controlled his men to present arms.
Such, abstractly stated, is the way to look up a word in the dictionary.
Let us now take a concrete illustration. Starting with the word
_tension_, let us ascertain what we can about it in the _Century
Dictionary and Cyclopedia_. Our first quest is the original meaning.
For this we consult the bracketed matter. There we meet the French,
Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian kinsmen of the word, and learn that they
are traceable to a common ancestor, the Latin _tensio(n)_, which
comes from the Latin verb _tendere_. The meaning of _tensio(n)_
is given as "stretching," that of _tendere_ as "stretch," "extend."
Thus we know of the original word that in form it closely resembles the
modern word, and that in meaning it involves the idea of stretching.
What is the central meaning of the word today? To acquaint ourselves with
this we must run through the definitions listed.
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