Abstract
Etymology, in Plato’s speculative spirit more than that of scientific philology, became one of Coleridge’s most distinctive discursive vehicles. An astute later reader has coined the substantive term etymologic1 to name his way of working from the supposed semantic development of particular words to propositions of other kinds. English cultural critics from Carlyle and Ruskin to Raymond Williams have made etymologic argumentation familiar to modern readers, often with some sense of Coleridge’s informing example. Nothing is more characteristic of his feeling for words as living things than his imaginative literalism.
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Notes
H. J. Jackson, ‘Coleridge, Etymology and Etymologic’, Journal of the History of Ideas 45, no. 1 (1983), 75–88.
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© 1998 Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
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Goodson, A.C. (1998). Words are Things: Etymology and Desynonymy. In: Goodson, A.C. (eds) On Language. Coleridge’s Writings. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-26900-6_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-26900-6_6
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