Maurice Bloomfield  

Every word, in so far as it is semantically expressive, may establish, by hap-hazard favoritism, a union between its meaning and any of its sounds, and then send forth this sound (or sounds) upon predatory expeditions into domains where the sound is at first a stranger and parasite. A slight emphasis punctures the placid function of a certain sound-element, and the ripple extends, no one can say how far. [...] No word may consider itself permanently exempt from the call to pay tribute to some congeneric expression, no matter how distant the semasiological cousinship ; no obscure sound-element, eking out its dim life in a single obscure spot, may not at any moment find itself infused with the elixir of life, until it bursts its confinement and spreads through the vocabulary a lusty brood of descendants. [...] The signification of any word is arbitrarily attached to some sound-element contained in it, and then congeneric names are created by means of this infused or, we might say, irradiated, or inspired element. --"On Assimilation and Adaptation in Congeneric Classes of Words"