Words Related by Marriage

That words marry and are given in marriage, is too generally overlooked.  Any student of a foreign language, German for instance, can recall the thrill of discovery and the lift of reawakened hope that came to him when first he suspected, aye perceived, the existence of verbal matrimony.  For weeks he had struggled with words that apparently were made up of fortuitous collocations of letters.  Then in some beatific moment these huddles of letters took meaning; in instance after instance they represented, not a word, but words—­a linguistic household.  Let them be what they might—­a harem, the domestic establishment of a Mormon, the dwelling-place of verbal polygamists,—­he could at last see order in their relationships.  To their morals he was indifferent, absorbed as he was in his joy of understanding.

In English likewise are thousands of these verbal marriages.  We may not be aware of them; from our very familiarity with words we may overlook the fact that in instances uncounted their oneness has been welded by a linguistic minister or justice of the peace.  But to read a single page or harken for thirty seconds to oral discourse with our minds intent on such states of wedlock is to convince ourselves that they abound.  Consider this list of everyday words:  somebody, already, disease, vineyard, unskilled, outlet, nevertheless, holiday, insane, resell, schoolboy, helpmate, uphold, withstand, rainfall, deadlock, typewrite, football, motorman, thoroughfare, snowflake, buttercup, landlord, overturn.  Every term except one yokes a verbal husband with his wife, and the one exception (nevertheless) joins a uxorious man with two wives.

These marriages are of a simple kind.  But the nuptial interlinkings between families of words may be many and complicated.  Thus there is a family of graph (or write) words:  graphic, lithograph, cerograph, cinematograph, stylograph, telegraph, multigraph, seismograph, dictograph, monograph, holograph, logograph, digraph, autograph, paragraph, stenographer, photographer, biographer, lexicographer, bibliography, typography, pyrography, orthography, chirography, calligraphy, cosmography, geography.  There is also a family of phone (or sound) words:  telephone, dictaphone, megaphone, audiphone, phonology, symphony, antiphony, euphonious, cacophonous, phonetic spelling.  It chances that both families are of Greek extraction.  Related to the graphs—­their cousins in fact—­are the grams:  telegram, radiogram, cryptogram, anagram, monogram, diagram, logogram, program, epigram, kilogram, ungrammatical.  Now a representative of the graphs married into the phone family, and we have graphophone.  A representative of the phones married into the graph family, and we have phonograph.  A representative of the grams married into the phone family, and we have gramophone.  A representative of the phones married into the gram family, and we have phonogram.  Of such unions children may be born.  For example, from the marriage of Mr. Phone with Miss Graph were born phonography, phonographer, phonographist (a rather frail child), phonographic, phonographical, and phonographically.