[…] another process, whereby there comes into being for the uses of expression material which is only in a certain sense new, but which nevertheless furnishes notable enrichment to speech, and in more than one department; a process that the general history of language shows to be more important than any other. It is the composition of words, the putting two independent elements together to form a single designation.
- Whitney (1875), Pag. 120-121

A conspicuous branch of the department of figurative transfer, and one of indispensable importance in the history of language, is the application of terms having a physical, sensible meaning, to the designation of intellectual and moral conceptions and their relations.
- Whitney (1875), Pag. 88

It is where expression quits its emotional natural basis, and turns to intellectual uses, that the history of language begins.
- Whitney (1875), Pag. 283