Few persons are aware how much knowledge is sometimes necessary to give the etymology and definition of a word. In 1839 the British Court of Queen’s Bench,--Sir F. Pollock, Mr. Justice Coleridge, the Attorney General, Sir J. Campbell, and other learned lawyers,--disputed for some hours about the meaning of the word “upon,” as a preposition of time; whether it meant “after” or “before.” It is easy to define words as certain persons satirized by Pascal have defined _light_: “A luminary movement of luminous bodies”; or as a Western judge once defined _murder_ to a jury: “Murder, gentlemen, is when a man is murderously killed. It is the _murdering_ that constitutes murder in the eye of the law. Murder, in short, is--murder.” We have all smiled at Johnson’s definition of _network_: “Network--anything reticulated or decussated at equal distances, with interstices between the intersections.” Many of the definitions in our dictionaries remind one of Bardolph’s attempt to analyze the term _accommodation_: “Accommodation,--that is, when a man is, as they say, accommodated; or when a man is being whereby he may be thought to be accommodated, which is an excellent thing.” _Brimstone_, for example, the lexicographer defines by telling us that it is _sulphur_; and then rewards us for the trouble we have had in turning to _sulphur_, by telling us that it is _brimstone_. The eccentric Davy Crockett, whose exterior roughness veiled a great deal of mother wit, happily characterized this whole tribe of lexicographers by a remark he once made to a Western member of Congress. When the latter, in a speech on a bill for increasing the number of hospitals, wearied his hearers by incessant repetition,--“Sit down,” whispered Crockett, “you are coming out of the same hole you went in at.” There is a mythical story that the forty members of the French Academy once undertook to define the word _crab_, and hit upon this, which they deemed quite satisfactory: “Crab,--a small red fish, which walks backward.” “Perfect, gentlemen,” said Cuvier, when interrogated touching the correctness of the definition; “perfect,--only I will make one small observation in natural history. The crab is _not_ a fish, it is _not_ red, and it does _not_ walk backward. With these exceptions, your definition is admirable.” Too many easily made definitions are liable to similar damaging exceptions.