The word _handkerchief_ is also an interesting word. The word _kerchief_ came from the French _couvre-chef_, "a covering for the head." Another similar word is one which the Normans brought into England, _curfew_, which means "cover fire." When the curfew bell rang the people were obliged to extinguish all lights and fires. The "kerchief" was originally a covering for the head. Then the fashion arose of carrying a square of similar material in the hand, and so we get _handkerchief_, and later _pocket-handkerchief_, which, if we analyse it, is rather a clumsy word, "pocket-hand-cover-head." The reason it is so is that the people who added _pocket_ and _hand_ knew nothing of the real meaning of _kerchief_.
There are several words which used to mean "at the present time" which have now come to mean "at a future time." This can only have come about through the people who used them not keeping their promises, but putting off doing things until later. The word _soon_ in Old English meant "immediately," so that when a person said that he would do a thing soon he meant that he would do it "instantly." The trouble was that often he did _not_, and so often did this happen that the meaning of the word changed, and _soon_ came to have its present meaning of "in a short time." The same thing happened with the words _presently_ and _directly_, and the phrase _by-and-by_, all of which used to mean "instantly." _Presently_ and _directly_ seem to promise things in a shorter time than _soon_, but _by-and-by_ is a very uncertain phrase indeed. It is perhaps because Scotch people are superior to the English in the matter of doing things to time that with them _presently_ still really means "instantly."
In all the examples we have seen of changes in the meaning of words it is fairly easy to see how the changes have come about. But there are some words which have changed so much in meaning that their present sense seems to have no connection with their earlier meaning. The word _treacle_ is a splendid example of this. It comes from a Greek word meaning "having to do with a wild beast," and this seems to have no connection whatever with our present use of the word _treacle_ as another word for _syrup of sugar_. The steps by which this word came to change its meaning so enormously were these. From the general meaning of "having to do with a wild beast," it came to mean "remedy for the bite of a wild beast." As remedies for wounds and bites were, in the old days, generally thick syrups, the word came in time to mean merely "syrup," and lastly the sweet syrup which we now know as "treacle."