We have picked out a few instances in which we think Mr. Wedgwood demonstrably mistaken, because they show the temptation which is ever lying in wait to lead the theoretical etymologist astray. Mr. Wedgwood sometimes seems to reverse the natural order of things, and to reason backward from the simple to the more complex. He does not always respect the boundaries of legitimate deduction. On the other hand, his case becomes very strong where he finds relations of thought as well as of sound between whole classes of words in different languages. But it is very difficult to say how long ago instinctive imitation ceased and other elements are to be admitted as operative. We see words continually coming into vogue whose apparent etymologies, if all historical data of their origin were lost, would inevitably mislead. If we did not know, for example, the occasion which added the word _chouse_ to the English language, we have little doubt that the twofold analogy of form and meaning would have led etymologists to the German _kosen_, (with the very common softening of the _k_ to _ch_,) and that the derivation would have been perfectly satisfactory to most minds.--_Tantrums_ would look like a word of popular coinage, and yet we find a respectable Old High German verb _tantarôn_, delirare, (Graff, V. 437,) which may perhaps help us to make out the etymology of _dander_, in our vulgar expression of "getting one's dander up," which is equivalent to flying into a passion.--_Jog_, in the sense of _going_, (to _jog_ along,) has a vulgar look. Richardson derives it from the same root with the other _jog_, which means to shake, ("A. S. _sceac-an_, to _shake_, or _shock_, or _shog_.") _Shog_ has nothing whatever to do with shaking, unless when Nym says to Pistol, "Will you _shog_ off?" he may be said to have shaken him off. When the Tinker in Beaumont and Fletcher's "Coxcomb" says, "Come, prithee, let's _shog_ off," what possible allusion to shaking is there, except, perhaps, to "shaking stumps"? The first _jog_ and _shog_ are identical in meaning and derivation, and may be traced, by whosoever chooses, to the Gothic _tiuhan_, (Germ, _ziehen_,) and are therefore near of kin to our _tug_. _Togs_ and _toggery_ belong here also. (The connecting link may be seen in the preterite form _zog_.) The other _jog_ probably comes to us immediately from the French _choquer_; and its frequentative _joggle_ answers to the German _schutkeln_, It. _cioccolare_. Whether they are all remotely from the same radical is another question. We only cited it as a monosyllabic word, having the air of being formed by the imitative process, while its original _tiuhan_ makes quite another impression.--Had the word _ramose_ been a word of English slang-origin, (and it might easily have been imported, like so many more foreign phrases, by sailors,) we have as little doubt that a derivation of it from the Spanish _vamos_ would have failed to convince the majority of etymologists. This word is a good example of the way in which the people (and it is always the people, never the scholars, who succeed in adding to the spoken language) proceed in naturalizing a foreign term. The accent has gone over to the last syllable, in accordance with English usage in verbs of two syllables; and though the sharp sound of the _s_ has been thus far retained, it is doubtful how long it will maintain itself against a fancied analogy with the grave sound of the same letter in such words as _inclose_ and _suppose_.--We should incline to think the slang verb _to mosey_ a mere variety of form, and that its derivation from a certain absconding Mr. Moses (who broke the law of his great namesake through a blind admiration of his example in spoiling the Egyptians) was only a new instance of that tendency to mythologize which is as strong as ever among the uneducated. _Post, ergo propter_, is good people's-logic; and if an antecedent be wanting, it will not be long before one is invented.