old saw"); modern means “moderate,” “commonplace”; instances means what we mean by it today, “examples,” “illustrations.” (Line 18 as a whole gives us a vivid sense of the justice’s readiness to speak sapiently, after the manner of justices, and to trot out his trite illustrations on the slightest provocation.) The word pantaloon in line 20 is interesting.  The patron saint of Venice was St. Pantaleon (the term is from Greek, means “all-lion,” and possibly refers to the lion of St. Mark’s Cathedral). Pantaloon came therefore to signify (1) a Venetian, (2) a garment worn by Venetians and consisting of breeches and stockings in one.  The second sense is preserved, substantially, in our term pantaloons.  The first sense led to the use of the word (in the mouths of the Venetians’ enemies) for “buffoon” and then (in early Italian comedy) for “a lean and foolish old man.”  It is this stock figure of the stage that Shakespeare evokes.  In line 22 hose means the covering for a man’s body from his waist to his nether-stock. (Compare the present meaning:  a covering for the feet and the lower part of the legs.) In line 27 mere means “absolute.”  In line 28 sans means “without.”

Of the words we have examined, only sans is obsolete, though pard, saws, and pantaloon are perhaps not entirely familiar.  That is, only one word in the passage, so far as its outward form goes, is completely alien to our knowledge.  But how different the matter stands when we consider meanings!  The words are words of today, but the meanings are the meanings of Shakespeare.  We should be baffled and misled as to the dramatist’s thought if we had made no inquiries into the vehicle therefor.

In the second place, to look beyond the present into the more remote signification of words will put us on our guard against the reappearance of submerged or half-forgotten meanings.  We have seen that the word tension may be used without conscious connection with the idea of stretching.  But if we incautiously place the word in the wrong environment, the idea will be resurrected to our undoing.  We associate ardor with strong and eager desire.  For ordinary purposes this conception of the word suffices.  But ardor is one of the children of fire; its primary sense is “burning” (compare arson).  Therefore to pronounce the three vocables “overflowing with ardor” is to mix figures of speech absurdly.  We should fall into a similar mistake if we said “brilliant fluency,” and into a mistake of another kind (that of tautology or repetition of an idea) if we said “heart-felt cordiality,” for cordiality means “feelings of the heart.” Appreciate means “set a (due) value on.”  We may perhaps say “really appreciate,” but scrupulous writers and speakers do not say “appreciate very much.”  A humor (compare humid) was once a “moisture”; then one of the