But you are not reduced to these extremities.  The ologies, arrogant as they are, sometimes are the applicants for matrimony, and the marriage registry of the dictionary so indicates.  To be sure, they do not, when thus appearing at the beginning of words, take the form ology.  They take the form log.  But you must be resourceful enough to keep after your quarry in spite of the omission of a vowel or two.  Also from some lexicons you may obtain still further help.  You may find ology, logy, logo, or log listed as a combining form, its meaning given, and examples of its use in compounds cited.

By your zeal and persistence you have now brought together a goodly array of the ologies—­all or most, let us say, of the following:  conchology, biology, morphology, phrenology, physiology, osteology, histology, zoology, entomology, bacteriology, ornithology, pathology, psychology, cosmology, eschatology, demonology, mythology, theology, astrology, archeology, geology, meteorology, mineralogy, chronology, genealogy, ethnology, anthropology, criminology, technology, doxology, anthology, trilogy, philology, etymology, terminology, neologism, phraseology, tautology, analogy, eulogy, apology, apologue, eclogue, monologue, dialogue, prologue, epilogue, decalogue, catalogue, travelogue, logogram, logograph, logo-type, logarithms, logic, illogical. (Moreover you may have perceived in some of these words the kinship which exists in all for the loquy group—­see (1) Soliloquy below.) Of course you will discard some items from this list as being too learned for your purposes.  But you will observe of the others that once you know the meaning of ology, you are likely to know the whole word.  Thus from your study of conchology you have mastered, not an individual term, but a tribe.

In conchology only one element, ology, was really dubious at the outset.  Let us take a word of which both elements give you pause.  Suppose your thought is arrested by the word eugenics.  You perhaps know the word as a whole, but not its components.  For by looking at it and thinking about it you decide that its state is married, that it comprises the household of Mr. Eu and his wife, formerly Miss Gen. But you cannot say offhand just what kind of person either Mr. Eu or the erstwhile Miss Gen is likely to prove.

Have you met any of the Eu’s elsewhere?  You think vaguely that you have, but cannot lay claim to any real acquaintance.  To the dictionary you accordingly betake yourself.  There you find that Mr. Eu is of a family quite respectable but not prone to marriage. Euphony, eupepsia, euphemism, euthanasia are of his retiring kindred.  The meaning of the eu blood, so the dictionary informs you, is well.  The gen blood, as you see exemplified in gentle, general, genital, engender, carries with it the idea of begetting, of producing, of birth, or (by extension) of kinship. Eugenics, then, is an alliance of well and begotten (or born).