[…] it is certain that, through the whole history of language since, the method has been in constant use: epithets of things, representing some one of their various attributes, become the names of things, through every department of nomenclature.
- Whitney (1875), Pag. 83

Every exploring naturalist […] is all the time illustrating, in an openly reflective way, in his naming of species, the two principles which direct a great part of the world’s less conscious nomenclature.
- Whitney (1875), Pag. 85

It is wont to be assumed by those who opposed the antecedence of the idea to the sign, that this opinion implies the elaboration by thinkers of a store of thoughts in advance and then the turning back and naming them by a conscious after-thought. Here is an inexcusably gross misrepresentation. There is implied rather that each act of nomenclature is preceded by its own act of conception; the naming follows as soon as the call for it is felt; even, it may be, before the need is realized […].
- Whitney (1875), Pag. 139