Is this little vocabulary, 5184 English words are represented by less than 3000 Hindustani colloquial ones. With the exception of one or two useful technical terms, the list contains only the common words of the everyday speech of the illiterate.

These words have not been merely selected from the dictionaries. Each word has been subjected to many tests; and an attempt, which it is hoped will be considered successful, has been made to give the exact meaning or application of each word, and to show how its common synonyms differ in their shades of meaning. It is believed that a careful study of this vocabulary will materially help the student to use the right word in the right place.

Considerations of expense required the employment of the Roman character alone. This, however, should prove no stumbling-block.

My thanks are due to Shams-ul-'Ulama Mawlavt Muhammad Yusuf Ja'fari, Khan Bahadur, for continuous help in the preparation of the vocabulary, and also to Muhammad Kazim Shtrazi who assisted in the correction of the proofs.

The English language is certainly the most neglected and the most carelessly spoken and written language in Europe.

If candidates for the Lower Standard and Higher Standard in Hindustani knew English better, failures in the exercise (Le. the translation from English into Hindustani) would be proportionately less. The following remarks may at first appear to deal only with the English language, but they apply in reality to all languages; and most examinees, and not a few of their teachers, will benefit by a careful study of them.

Nearly every word acquires many secondary meanings in addition to its primary meaning. Charge' is derived from a Latin word meaning a car, and to its primary meaning of, to burden (connected also with carry, cargo, and caricature), it adds secondary meanings of, to fill; to occupy; impute or register as a debt; to fix the price of; to accuse; to intrust; to commission; to command; to exhort, to give directions to (a jury); to make an onset. Entertain' means to support; to receive into the home and treat with hospitality, to engage the attention of agreeably, to amuse; to take into consideration; to maintain in the mind with favour; to harbour; to cherish (sentiments); to accept (a petition); to listen (to a suit). Apprehend means to arrest a person; to take hold of by the mind, to understand, to entertain suspicion or fear of; to conceive; to believe or be of opinion, etc. Comedy is derived from komos a banquet (at which the guests lay down) and odos a song, and comedy signified at first songs sung at banquets comedy and cemetery have really the same root.

The meanings of words change because the life of the people changes. Great inventions, great industrial improvements, cause great changes in language. Great social and political events do the same the French Revolution had a direct influence on language. The superficially educated, too, not only alter the forms of words, but also adapt them to homely meanings. Policy' once meant only the art of ruling men: to-day every small tradesman speaks of his policy in business. Imagination and meta- phor (a Greek word meaning transportation) play an important part in the development, and consequently in the change of meaning, in words: in fact language develops chiefly by the metaphorical process, i.e.