[…] words are crowded out of use, and so out of life, by the coming into use of other words which mean the same thing, and which for some cause, definable or not, win the popular favor, and supplant their predecessors.
- Whitney (1875), a pag.100

It is […] in the nature of a word to have its figurative as well as its literal uses and applications; we inherited our vocabulary in that condition […] we use each word as we have learned it, leaving to the lexicographer to follow up the ramifications to their source in its primitive or etymological meaning.
- Whitney (1875), a pag.87-88