Linguistics is the scientific study of language, and involves an analysis of language form, language meaning, and language in context. The earliest activities in the documentation and description of language have been attributed to the 6th century BC Indian grammarian Pāṇini, who wrote a formal description of the Sanskrit language in his Aṣṭādhyāyī.
For though to smatter ends of Greek Or Latin be the rhetoric Of pedants counted, and vain-glorious, To smatter French is meritorious.
Samuel Butler, Remains in Verse and Prose, Satire, Upon Our Ridiculous Imitation of the French, line 127. A Greek proverb condemns the man of two tongues.
* * * Philologists, who chase A panting syllable through time and space Start it at home, and hunt it in the dark, To Gaul, to Greece, and into Noah's Ark.