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[25] But the most effective method of establishing and refuting definitions is derived from the examination of properties and differences, and sometimes even from considerations of etymology, while all these considerations will, like others, find further support in equity and occasionally in conjecture.1 Etymology is rarely of assistance, but the following will provide an example of its use. “For what else is a 'tumult' but a disturbance of such violence as to give rise to abnormal alarm? And the name itself is derived from this fact.”2

1 Conjecture is here used in the ordinary sense, not the technical.

2 Cic. Phil. VIII. i. 3. Tumultus is here used by Cicero in its special sense, civil war or Gallic invasion. He derives it from timor multus.

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load focus Introduction (Harold Edgeworth Butler, 1922)
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