Towne v. Eisner, 245 U.S. 418 (1918), is a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that "a stock dividend based on accumulated profits was not 'income' within the true intent of the statute." Congress passed a new law in reaction to Towne v. Eisner and so the case was soon overturned by the Supreme Court in Eisner v. Macomber.
It includes the quotable passage: "A word is not a crystal, transparent and unchanged; it is the skin of a living thought and may vary greatly in colour and content according to the circumstances and time in which it is used." ― Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.