These too
are children of the same father; they are brothers and sisters to each
other. But what shall we say of legerdemain (light, or sleight, of hand),
maintain, coup de main, and the like? They bear a resemblance to the
_man's_ and _manu's_, yet one that casual observers would not
notice. Is there kinship between the two sets of words? There is. But not
the full fraternal or sororal relation. The _mains_ are children of
_manus_ by a French marriage he contracted. With this French blood in
their veins, they are only half-brothers, half-sisters of the
_manu's_ and the _man's_.
Your examination of the family trees of words will be practical, rather
than highly scholastic, in nature. You need not track every word in the
dictionary to the den of its remote parentage. Nor need you bother your
head with the name of the distant ancestor. But in the case of the large
number of words that have a numerous kindred you should learn to detect
the inherited strain. You will then know that the word is the brother or
cousin of certain other words of your acquaintance, and this knowledge
will apprise you of qualities in it with which you should reckon. To this
extent only must you make yourself a student of verbal genealogy.
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