But the number of these little etymological sidetracks is almost infinite. We might, for instance, ask ourselves whether the colloquial use of _chap_ for ‘individual’ (from the Old English ‘cheapen’ to ‘buy’, cognate with _chapman_, _cheap_, _Cheapside_, ...) is really the unconscious self-expression of a nation of shopkeepers, or whether it is purely accidental; in which connection we should have to notice the modern tendency to renew a faded metaphor by substituting the word _merchant_, and so on. But the truly scientific way of approaching this part of our subject is to study the various English words which have been adopted by foreign nations, and the meanings they have developed there. These were few enough up to the end of the seventeenth century, but from then on their number and importance increased; and we cannot help being interested in them, whether on the one hand the foreigner has merely employed them in despair of finding any word in his own language adequate to describe the object or idiosyncrasy in question, or whether his adoption of them implies that he has also borrowed the things of which they are the names. In the first of these classes we should probably put _cant_, _comfort_, _gentleman_, _humbug_, _humour_, _respectability_, _romantic_, _sentimental_, _snobbism_, _spleen_,...; in the second, _ale_, _beefsteak_, _gin_, _grog_, _mackintosh_, _pudding_, _riding-coat_ (redingote), _roast-beef_, _rum_, _sport_, _sportsman_, _waterproof_, _whisky_, and various technical terms of sport such as _box_, _Derby_, _handicap_, _jockey_,...