A great classical scholar not long ago wrote a letter to an English weekly newspaper expressing a very contemptuous estimate of the French language, as being only a degraded form of Latin. He thought it a great disgrace to the language that it had no better word for “much” than _beaucoup_, which, as he learnedly explained, came from two Latin words meaning “fine” and “blow.” The most cursory examination of any language will show that it abounds in just such verbal devices. We do not in English put the words “great” and “stroke” together, but, using them separately, we say “a great stroke” of luck and of many other things when there is no question of “striking” at all. In the same way we would say “a great hit,” when there is no question of hitting, except by remote analogy. Languages grow rich and flexible precisely by the adoption of such convenient combinations. What they may originally have meant becomes a matter of little moment when once they have become thoroughly accepted and thoroughly expressive. After they have become welded together, as sometimes happens, in one word, it is an advantage rather than otherwise if the separate meanings of their constituent parts become lost to all except the professional etymologist. As long as the separate parts retain their separate meaning some sense of incongruity will sometimes arise in connection with the use of the term. Thus to say “a handful of corn” is all right, but one might feel that it was not all right to say “a mere handful of men.” Yet it would be futile to criticise the expression which has become idiomatic English. If the word “handful” had parted with its essential meaning as completely as say the word “troop” has, for all but etymologists, there would be no kind of incongruity in its employment for any small number or quantity whatsoever.