Soul of words

Guy de Maupassant says, “Les mots ont une ame . . . . Il faut trouver cette ame qui apparait au contact d’autres mots” (Words have a soul . . . . It is necessary to find this soul which appears at contact with other words).

Owen Barfield, who quotes this passage, comments: “this ‘contact’ with other words is the precise point at which the potential new meaning originally enters language.” Which means that new meaning is always potentially entering the language since words are always being put into contact with new sets of words.