This brief allusion to these early authorities will be sufficient, without a prolonged investigation, to show that the meaning of “_send_” was not, historically, the first signification. But a still more rational ground for this opinion is found in the natural order of transition in sense, which would be followed in the later applications of the word. It is perfectly easy to see how, from this primary meaning of “_fix_,” or “_equip_,” when applied to a person, in reference to an expedition or any distant object, would insensibly originate the meaning of “_send_;” since, in most cases, to equip or fix out an expedition or a messenger, is to commission and send one. In this way, all the secondary meanings flow naturally from this common theme, but if the order should be inverted in respect to any one of them, the beautiful harmony of derivation would be lost at once. There is no other of the meanings of στελλω which can be thus taken as the natural source of all the rest, and shown to originate them in its various secondary applications. The meanings of “array,” “dress,” “adorn,” “take in,” &c., are all deducible from the original idea conveyed by στελλω, and are, like “_send_,” equally incapable of taking the rank of the primary meaning. In tracing the minute and distant etymology of this word, it is worth noticing that the first element in στελλω is the sound _st_, which is at once recognized by oriental scholars as identical with the Sanscrit and Persian root _st_, bearing in those and in many combinations in the various languages of their stock, the idea of “_fixity_.” This idea is prominent in the primary meaning of στελλω given by Passow, who, in his Greek lexicon, (almost the only classical one that properly classifies and deduces the meanings of words,) gives the German word _stellen_ as the original ground-meaning of the term before us. This is best expressed in English by “fix,” in all its vagueness of meaning, from which, in the progress of use, are deduced the various secondary senses in which στελλω is used, which here follow in order: