Fernandian sia! 'listen!' 'tush!' Yoruba sió! 'pshaw!'
Thus it appears that these sounds, far from being special to
one linguistic family, are very widespread elements of
human speech. Nor is there any question as to their
passage into fully-formed words, as in our verb to hush,
which has passed into the sense of 'to quiet, put to sleep'
(adjectively, 'as hush as death'), metaphorically to hush up
a matter, or Greek (
Greek characters) 'to hush, say hush! command
silence.' Even Latin silere and Gothic silan, 'to be silent,'
may with some plausibility be explained as derived from the
interjectional s! of silence.
Sanskrit dictionaries recognize several words which explicitly state their own interjectional derivation; such are hûñkâra (hûm-making), 'the utterance of the mystic religious exclamation hum!' and çiççabda (çiç-sound), 'a hiss.' Besides these obvious formations, the interjectional element is present to some greater or less degree in the list of Sanskrit radicals,which represent probably better than those of any other language the verb-roots of the ancient Aryan stock. In ru, 'to roar, cry, wail,' and in kakh, 'to laugh,' we have the simpler kind of interjectional derivation, that which merely describes a sound. As to the more difficult kind, which carry the sense into a new stage, Mr. Wedgwood makes out a strong case for the connexion of interjections of loathing and aversion, such as pooh! fie! &c., with that large group of words which are represented in English by foul and fiend, in Sanskrit by the verbs pûy, 'to become foul, to stink,' and piy, pîy, 'to revile, to hate.'[1] Further
- ↑ Wedgwood, 'Origin of Language,' p. 83, 'Dictionary,' Introd. p. xlix. and s.v. 'foul.' Prof. Max Müller, 'Lectures,' 2nd series, p. 92, protests against the indiscriminate derivation of words directly from such cries and interjections, without the intervention of determinate roots. As to the present topic, he points out that Latin pus, putridus, Gothic fuls, English foul, follow Grimm's law as if words derived from a single root. Admitting this, however, the question has to be raised, how far pure interjections and their direct derivatives, being self-expressive and so to speak
earth, and behold, they shall come with speed,' Is. v. 26; Jer. xix. 8.) Alcock, 'The Capital of the Tycoon,' vol. i. p. 394. Cook, '2nd Voy.' vol. ii. p. 36. Casalis, 'Basutos,' p. 234.
