An Improved Grammar Of The English Language

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: DIVISION OP NAMES OR NOUNS. Names are of two kinds; common, or thos... Read more

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: DIVISION OP NAMES OR NOUNS. Names are of two kinds; common, or those which represent the idea of a whole kind or species; and proper or appropriate, which denote individuals. Thus animal is a name common to all beings, having organized bodies and endowed with life, digestion, and spontaneous motion. Plant and vegetable are names of all beings which have organized bodies and life, without the power of spontaneous I motion. Fowl is the common name of all feathered animals ) which fly; fish, of animals which live wholly in water. On the other hand, Thomas, John, William, are proper, - or appropriate names, each denoting an individual of which; there is no species or kind. London, Paris, Amsterdam, ] Rhine, Po, Danube, Massachusetts, Hudson, Patowmac, are also proper names, being appropriate to individual things. Proper names however become common when they com- prehend two or more individuals; as, the Capets, the Smiths, the Fletchers? Two Roberts there the pagan force defy'd. Hook's Tasso, b. 20. LIMITATION OF NAMES. Proper names are sufficiently definite without the aid of another word to limit their meaning, as Boston, Baltimore, Savannah. Yet when certain individuals have a common character, or predominant qualities which create a similitude between them, this common character becomes in the mind a species, and the proper name of an individual possessing this character, admits of the definitives and of plural number, like a common name. Thus a conspirator is called a Catiline; and numbers of them Catilines or the Catiliues i; of their country. A distinguished general is called a Cesar; an eminent orator the Cicero of his age. But names, which are common to a whole kind or species, require often to be limited to an individual or a certain number of i... Less