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Many words that are still current in English have lost meanings that they had in the 16th-18th centuries - more, indeed, than is generally recognized. A recent good edition of Berkeley’s Principles includes a glossary, but it attends only to words that are now obsolete, ignoring current ones with obsolete meanings. Its editor has agreed with me that he was wrong to omit from his glossary the following:

allege, amuse, attend, collect, described, detract, discover, evidence, harsh, ideal, image, induction, parcel, philosopher, presently, pretend, proper, received, repugnant, schools, strangely, suffer

all of which are used by Berkeley in senses very different from their current ones.

For example, he writes of ‘labyrinths of amusement’, meaning ‘labyrinths of baffled confusion’. He and others frequently use

‘pretend’ to mean ‘claim’,

‘repugnant to’ to mean ‘contradictory to’

‘discover’ to mean ‘reveal [in oneself]’

‘conscience’ to mean ‘consciousness’

and so on.


Francis Bacon
George Berkeley
Descartes
Jonathan Edwards
Thomas Hobbes
David Hume
Kant
Leibniz
John Locke
Malebranche
John Stuart Mill
Isaac Newton
Thomas Reid
Spinoza
Copyright ©2005-2008 Jonathan Bennett - Early Modern Texts
Philosophy Topics by Modern Day Philosophers