rather than to interpret loan-words with reference to history. There is no intrinsic fault in this; the fault lies in the exaggeration of a valid principle rather than the principle itself. It would be idle to deny that loan-words for the most part do bear witness to historical events …; but to construct a monograph by fitting a number of words into a prepared historical pattern, to use borrowings as a text upon which to write a chronicle of political and cultural events (which are in any case well