Table of Contents

DEFINITION.

The word INK has been variously defined by lexicographers, cyclopaedists and chemists; but the following terms may be taken as fully expressing the common qualities and essential specific characteristics of all substances included under the name.

Ink is a colored liquid employed in making lines, characters or figures on surfaces capable of retaining the marks so made. The Encyclopaedia Britannica, (vol. xii. p. 382, 1856,) gives the following definition: “INK.—The term ink is usually restricted to the fluid employed in writing with a pen. Other kinds of ink are indicated by a second word, such as red ink, Indian ink, marking ink, sympathetic ink, printers’ ink, etc. Common ink is, however, sometimes distinguished as writing ink.”

As to COLOR,—black is and has always been preferred in ordinary uses. For ornamental purposes and for occasionally useful distinctions, various other tints have been and are adopted—as blue, red, green, purple, violet, yellow—and so on, according to the fancy of the maker, or purchaser, or consumer.

The substance employed to receive and preserve the marks thus made is now almost universally Paper. Parchment is still used in many legal documents and writings of form and ceremony. Cotton, linen and silk, when woven into fabrics for garments and like uses, are also subjected to marks of ink for the purpose of identifying property. So are wooden and leathern surfaces in similar conditions. It is also employed in writing on stone, in the quite modern art of lithography.

Though its great original and continual employment is in writing, it must be remembered that it is also largely used in the delineation of objects by artists. Ink and paint are mutually convertible to each other’s uses, but are yet so distinct in character and objects, that no one regards the words as synonymous, and no precise definition is needed to teach the distinction between them. As, for instance, in pen-and-ink drawings and sketches, the ink serves the purpose of paint. So likewise in the letters on sign-boards, &c. paint may be considered as a substitute for ink. The artist who traces his name on the canvas in a corner of his painting, employs paint in a similar manner. Printing-ink is used as black paint. In the best red inks, carmine (a paint in water-colors) is the essential ingredient. Indian Ink is used here only as paint,—in China, as ink.

ETYMOLOGY.

The derivation of the English word “INK,” and of its representatives in various modern languages, has caused much perplexity to philologists, and has been the subject of many erroneous conjectures. We suffix the names by which it is known in those nations who have most employed it:

We might amuse ourselves by extending this tabular list indefinitely. Enough, however, has been already shown to illustrate a few remarkable facts which we wish to present that are connected with the etymology of our subject; but we present a page of Lithographic illustrations which will enable any “curious reader” to trace the word further.

No dictionary of the English language gives us any help or light about the matter. Webster suggests “inchiostro,” (the Italian word,) as the source of derivation; and all the Italian lexicographers agree that inchiostro is from the later Latin ENCAUSTUM, which is in fact Greek, Εγκαυστον, (Encauston,) “burned-in or corroded.” Encaustum became corrupted into “enchaustrum,” from which the transition to “inchiostro,” is by the regular form of derivation from the Latin to the Italian,—the L before a vowel giving place to a short I—as “piano” from PLANUS. (The CH, in Italian is always sounded hard, like the English K.)

Leaving the French word encre as on the middle ground between different etymologies, and affording no light either way,—we find the Spanish and Portugese “tinta,” and the German (a language widely remote from those of the Iberian peninsula in origin and affinities) “dinte, tinte and tincta,” forcibly reminding us of the Latin participle TINCTUS, TINCTA, TINCTUM, from the verb TINGO, which is represented in English by TINGE, and other derivatives, such as “tincture,” &c. We cannot refuse to recognize the Holland-Dutch “Inkt” as from the same root to which we have thus traced the corresponding word in a language which we may call its “cousin-German;” and it is hard to exclude the Old French “Enque” and modern “Encre” from this circle of relationship.

Then, we are somewhat impressed by the discovery of the word Ingvas in the Illyrian, a language of the Slavonic (or more properly Slovenic) stock, like the Polish,—and, like that, enriched by words derived from the Latin. The Polish, however, presents us with the actual Graeco-Latin Encaustrum.

Still more remote from the English and Italian, we find among the Orientals of the Shemitish race, ANGHAS and NIKSON in the Arabic, and N’KASHO in the Chaldee, with a manifest resemblance in sound, and with an actual possession of the same elements and radical letters, N. K. Yet we do not think of suggesting that these words had a common origin with the corresponding ones in European Languages, though so nearly coincident in sound. The case is simply one of accidental resemblance, a remarkable coincidence,—(because occurring at three different and remote points,) but yet a coincidence not wholly unparalleled.

The probability is that the English word, like the Dutch, German, Spanish, &c., came from the Latin TINCTUM, but it may be left “an open question;” for if we had not these instances to direct the formation of our opinions, we should have no hesitation in acknowledging the Italian Inchiostro as the true ETYMON; just as, if we had neither of these in view, we might suspect the origin of our word to be in the Oriental ANGHAS or NIKSON.

The Ethiopic KALAMA at first sight appears to be related to the Hindustani KALI; but the latter is merely the word in all the languages of Hindustan for black,—while the former is but a modification of the Greek and Latin CALAMUS, a reed or pen,—the instrument (naturally enough) giving its name to the liquid which was essential to its use.

The word ENCAUSTUM connects, in a very interesting and instructive manner, both with the history and the chemistry or manufacture of our modern inks, and is a satisfactory demonstration of the utility of such etymological researches as those in which we have been here indulging.

The one great distinction between the ancient and the modern inks is this: The old inks were PAINTS; the writing inks now in use by all nations (excepting those of Southern Asia) are DYES. That is the whole difference.

It would be well to give a definition or limitation of the words “Ancient” and “Modern.” No one has done it hitherto. We will not attempt to fix the point precisely, but may reasonably say that the period intervening between September, A.D. 410, (when Rome was taken by ALARIC and his Visigoths) and December 25, A.D. 800, (when Karl the Great, otherwise called Charlemagne, was crowned in Rome by Pope Leo with the title of Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire) contains the interval between antiquity and modern times.

The introduction of Paper as the common material upon which significant characters were to be marked must have had a great agency in producing a change in the composition of the liquid employed in making the marks.

Parchment was the substance in use, among all the European nations, as the substratum of manuscript, from the time when the Egyptian papyrus went out of fashion. Both the parchment and the papyrus were written upon, by Romans, Greeks and Hebrews, with pens made of small reeds, dipped in a fluid composed of carbon, (not dissolved, but) held in a state of suspension by an oil or a solution of gum.