{213} ['Hoyden' seems to be derived from the old Dutch heyden, a heathen, then a clownish, boorish fellow.]

{214} [This "ancient Saxon phrase", as Longfellow calls it, has not been found in any old English writer, but has been adopted from the Modern German. Neither is it known in the dialects, E.D.D.]

{215} "A furlong, quasi furrowlong, being so much as a team in England plougheth going forward, before they return back again". (Fuller, Pisgah Sight of Palestine, p. 42.) ['Furlong' in St. Luke xxiv, 13, already occurs in the Anglo-Saxon version of that passage as furlanga.]

{216} [Recent etymologists cannot see any connexion between 'peck' and 'poke'.]

{217} [e. g. "One said thus preposterously: 'when we had climbed the clifs and were a shore'" (Puttenham, Arte of Eng. Poesie, 1589, p. 181, ed. Arber). "It is a preposterous order to teach first and to learn after" (Preface to Bible, 1611). "Place not the coming of the wise men, preposterously, before the appearance of the star" (Abp. Secker, Sermons, iii, 85, ed. 1825).]

{218} Thus Barrow: "Which [courage and constancy] he that wanteth is no other than equivocally a gentleman, as an image or a carcass is a man".

{219} Phillips, New World of Words, 1706. ['Garble' comes through old French garbeler, grabeler (Italian garbellare) from Latin cribellare, to sift, and that from cribellum, a sieve, diminutive of cribrum.]

{220} "But his [Gideon's] army must be garbled, as too great for God to give victory thereby; all the fearful return home by proclamation" (Fuller, Pisgah Sight of Palestine, b. ii, c. 8).

{221} [Compare the transitions of meaning in French manant = (1) a dweller (where he was born—from manoir to dwell), the inhabitant of a homestead, (2) a countryman, (3) a clown or boor, a coarse fellow.]

{222} [These words lie totally apart. 'Brat', an infant, seems a figurative use of 'brat', a rag or pinafore, just as 'bantling' comes from 'band', a swathe.]

{223} "We cannot always be contemplative, or pragmatical abroad: but have need of some delightful intermissions, wherein the enlarged soul may leave off awhile her severe schooling". (Milton, Tetrachordon.)

{224} [Anglo-Saxon cnafa, or cnapa, a boy.]

{225} [Mr. Fitzedward Hall in 1873 says 'antecedents' is "not yet a generation old" (Mod. English, 303). Landor in 1853 says "the French have lately taught (it to) us" (Last Fruit of an Old Tree, 176). De Quincey, in 1854 calls it "modern slang" (Works xiv, 449); and the earliest quotation, 1841, given in the N.E.D., introduces it as "what the French call their antecedents".]

{226} See Whewell, History of Moral Philosophy in England, pp. xxvii.-xxxii.

{227} For a fuller treatment of the subject of this lecture, see my Select Glossary of English Words used formerly in senses different from their present, 2nd ed. London, 1859.



V

CHANGES IN THE SPELLING OF ENGLISH WORDS

When I announce to you that the subject of my lecture to-day will be English orthography, or the spelling of the words in our native language, with the alterations which this has undergone, you may perhaps think with yourselves that a weightier, or, if not a weightier, at all events a more interesting subject might have occupied this our concluding lecture. I cannot admit it to be wanting either in importance or in interest. Unimportant it certainly is not, but might well engage, as it often has engaged, the attention of those with far higher acquirements than any which I possess. Uninteresting it may be, by faults in the manner of treating it; but I am sure it ought as little to be this; and would never prove so in competent hands{228}. Let us then address ourselves to this matter, not without good hope that it may yield us both profit and pleasure.

I know not who it was that said, "The invention of printing was very well; but, as compared to the invention of writing, it was no such great matter after all". Whoever it was who made this observation, it is clear that for him use and familiarity had not obliterated the wonder which there is in that, whereat we probably have long ceased to wonder at all—the power, namely, of representing sounds by written signs, of reproducing for the eye that which existed at first only for the ear: nor was the estimate which he formed of the relative value of these two inventions other than a just one. Writing indeed stands more nearly on a level with speaking, and deserves rather to be compared with it, than with printing; which, with all its utility, is yet of altogether another and inferior type of greatness: or, if this is too much to claim for writing, it may at any rate be affirmed to stand midway between the other two, and to be as much superior to the one as it is inferior to the other.

The intention of the written word, that which presides at its first formation, the end whereunto it is a mean, is by aid of symbols agreed on beforehand, to represent to the eye with as much accuracy as possible the spoken word.

{Sidenote: Imperfection of Writing}

It never fulfils this intention completely, and by degrees more and more imperfectly. Short as man's spoken word often falls of his thought, his written word falls often as short of his spoken. Several causes contribute to this. In the first place, the marks of imperfection and infirmity cleave to writing, as to every other invention of man. All alphabets have been left incomplete. They have superfluous letters, letters, that is, which they do not want, because other letters already represent the sound which they represent; they have dubious letters, letters, that is, which say nothing certain about the sounds they stand for, because more than one sound is represented by them—our 'c' for instance, which sometimes has the sound of 's', as in 'city', sometimes of 'k', as in 'cat'; they are deficient in letters, that is, the language has elementary sounds which have no corresponding letters appropriated to them, and can only be represented by combinations of letters. All alphabets, I believe, have some of these faults, not a few of them have all, and more. This then is one reason of the imperfect reproduction of the spoken word by the written. But another is, that the human voice is so wonderfully fine and flexible an organ, is able to mark such subtle and delicate distinctions of sound, so infinitely to modify and vary these sounds, that were an alphabet complete as human art could make it, did it possess eight and forty instead of four and twenty letters, there would still remain a multitude of sounds which it could only approximately give back{229}.

{Sidenote: Alphabets Inadequate}

But there is a further cause for the divergence which comes gradually to find place between men's spoken and their written words. What men do often, they will seek to do with the least possible trouble. There is nothing which they do oftener than repeat words; they will seek here then to save themselves pains; they will contract two or more syllables into one; ('toto opere' will become 'topper'; 'vuestra merced', 'usted'; and 'topside the other way', 'topsy-turvey'{230}); they will slur over, and thus after a while cease to pronounce, certain letters; for hard letters they will substitute soft; for those which require a certain effort to pronounce, they will substitute those which require little or none. Under the operation of these causes a gulf between the written and spoken word will not merely exist; but it will have the tendency to grow ever wider and wider. This tendency indeed will be partially counterworked by approximations which from time to time will by silent consent be made of the written word to the spoken; here and there a letter dropped in speech will be dropped also in writing, as the 's' in so many French words, where its absence is marked by a circumflex; a new shape, contracted or briefer, which a word has taken on the lips of men, will find its representation in their writing; as 'chirurgeon' will not merely be pronounced, but also spelt, 'surgeon', and 'synodsman' 'sidesman'. Still for all this, and despite of these partial readjustments of the relations between the two, the anomalies will be infinite; there will be a multitude of written letters which have ceased to be sounded letters; a multitude of words will exist in one shape upon our lips, and in quite another in our books.

It is inevitable that the question should arise—Shall these anomalies be meddled with? shall it be attempted to remove them, and bring writing and speech into harmony and consent—a harmony and consent which never indeed in actual fact at any period of the language existed, but which yet may be regarded as the object of written speech, as the idea which, however imperfectly realized, has, in the reduction of spoken sounds to written, floated before the minds of men? If the attempt is to be made, it is clear that it can only be made in one way. The alternative is not open, whether Mahomet shall go to the mountain, or the mountain to Mahomet. The spoken word is the mountain; it will not stir; it will resist all interference. It feels its own superior rights, that it existed the first, that it is, so to say, the elder brother; and it will never be induced to change itself for the purpose of conforming and complying with the written word. Men will not be persuaded to pronounce 'would' and 'debt', because they write 'would' and 'debt' severally with an 'l' and with a 'b': but what if they could be induced to write 'woud' and 'det', because they pronounce so; and to deal in like manner with all other words, in which there exists at present a discrepancy between the word as it is spoken, and the word as it is written?

{Sidenote: Phonetic Systems}

Here we have the explanation of that which in the history of almost all literatures has repeated itself more than once, namely, the endeavour to introduce phonetic writing. It has certain plausibilities to rest on; it has its appeal to the unquestionable fact that the written word was intended to picture to the eye what the spoken word sounded in the ear. At the same time I believe that it would be impossible to introduce it; and, even if it were possible, that it would be most undesirable, and this for two reasons; the first being that the losses consequent upon its introduction, would far outweigh the gains, even supposing those gains as great as the advocates of the scheme promise; the second, that these promised gains would themselves be only very partially realized, or not at all.

{Sidenote: Alphabets Imperfect}

In the first place, I believe it to be impossible. It is clear that such a scheme must begin with the reconstruction of the alphabet. The first thing that the phonographers have perceived is the necessity for the creation of a vast number of new signs, the poverty of all existing alphabets, at any rate of our own, not yielding a several sign for all the several sounds in the language. Our English phonographers have therefore had to invent ten of these new signs or letters, which are henceforth to take their place with our a, b, c, and to enjoy equal rights with them. Rejecting two (q, x), and adding ten, they have raised their alphabet from twenty-six letters to thirty-four. But to procure the reception of such a reconstructed alphabet is simply an impossibility, as much an impossibility as would be the reconstitution of the structure of the language in any points where it was manifestly deficient or illogical. Sciolists or scholars may sit down in their studies, and devise these new letters, and prove that we need them, and that the introduction of them would be a great gain, and a manifest improvement; and this may be all very true; but if they think they can induce a people to adopt them, they know little of the ways in which its alphabet is entwined with the whole innermost life of a people. One may freely own that all present alphabets are redundant here, are deficient there; our English perhaps is as greatly at fault as any, and with that we have chiefly to do. Unquestionably it has more letters than one to express one and the same sound; it has only one letter to express two or three sounds; it has sounds which are only capable of being expressed at all by awkward and roundabout expedients. Yet at the same time we must accept the fact, as we accept any other which it is out of our power to change—with regret, indeed, but with a perfect acquiescence: as one accepts the fact that Ireland is not some thirty or forty miles nearer to England—that it is so difficult to get round Cape Horn—that the climate of Africa is so fatal to European life. A people will no more quit their alphabet than they will quit their language; they will no more consent to modify the one ab extra than the other. Caesar avowed that with all his power he could not introduce a new word, and certainly Claudius could not introduce a new letter. Centuries may sanction the bringing in of a new one, or the dropping of an old. But to imagine that it is possible to suddenly introduce a group of ten new letters, as these reformers propose—they might just as feasibly propose that the English language should form its comparatives and superlatives on some entirely new scheme, say in Greek fashion, by the terminations 'oteros' and 'otatos'; or that we should agree to set up a dual; or that our substantives should return to our Anglo-Saxon declensions. Any one of these or like proposals would not betray a whit more ignorance of the eternal laws which regulate human language, and of the limits within which deliberate action upon it is possible, than does this of increasing our alphabet by ten entirely novel signs.

But grant it possible, grant our six and twenty letters to have so little sacredness in them that Englishmen would endure a crowd of upstart interlopers to mix themselves on an equal footing with them, still this could only be from a sense of the greatness of the advantage to be derived from this introduction. Now the vast advantage claimed by the advocates of the system is, that it would facilitate the learning to read, and wholly save the labour of learning to spell, which "on the present plan occupies", as they assure us, "at the very lowest calculation from three to five years". Spelling, it is said, would no longer need to be learned at all; since whoever knew the sound, would necessarily know also the spelling, this being in all cases in perfect conformity with that. The anticipation of this gain rests upon two assumptions which are tacitly taken for granted, but both of them erroneous.

The first of these assumptions is, that all men pronounce all words alike, so that whenever they come to spell a word, they will exactly agree as to what the outline of its sound is. Now we are sure men will not do this from the fact that, before there was any fixed and settled orthography in our language, when therefore everybody was more or less a phonographer, seeking to write down the word as it sounded to him, (for he had no other law to guide him,) the variations of spelling were infinite. Take for instance the word 'sudden'; which does not seem to promise any great scope for variety. I have myself met with this word spelt in the following fifteen ways among our early writers: 'sodain', 'sodaine', 'sodan', 'sodayne', 'sodden', 'sodein', 'sodeine', 'soden', 'sodeyn', 'suddain', 'suddaine', 'suddein', 'suddeine', 'sudden', 'sudeyn'. Again, in how many ways was Raleigh's name spelt, or Shakespeare's? The same is evident from the spelling of uneducated persons in our own day. They have no other rule but the sound to guide them. How is it that they do not all spell alike; erroneously, it may be, as having only the sound for their guide, but still falling all into exactly the same errors? What is the actual fact? They not merely spell wrong, which might be laid to the charge of our perverse system of spelling, but with an inexhaustible diversity of error, and that too in the case of simplest words. Thus the little town of Woburn would seem to give small room for caprice in spelling, while yet the postmaster there has made, from the superscription of letters that have passed through his hands, a collection of two hundred and forty-four varieties of ways in which the place has been spelt{231}. It may be replied that these were all or nearly all from the letters of the ignorant and uneducated. Exactly so;—but it is for their sakes, and to place them on a level with the educated, or rather to accelerate their education by the omission of a useless yet troublesome discipline, that the change is proposed. I wish to show you that after the change they would be just as much, or almost as much, at a loss in their spelling as now.

{Sidenote: Pronouncing Dictionaries}

And another reason which would make it quite as necessary then to learn orthography as now, is the following. Pronunciation, as I have already noticed, is far too fine and subtle a thing to be more than approximated to, and indicated in the written letter. In a multitude of cases the difficulties which pronunciation presented would be sought to be overcome in different ways, and thus different spelling, would arise; or if not so, one would have to be arbitrarily selected, and would have need to be learned, just as much as the spelling of a word now has need to be learned. I will only ask you, in proof of this which I affirm, to turn to any Pronouncing Dictionary. That greatest of all absurdities, a Pronouncing Dictionary, may be of some service to you in this matter; it will certainly be of none in any other. When you mark the elaborate and yet ineffectual artifices by which it toils after the finer distinctions of articulation, seeks to reproduce in letters what exists, and can only exist, as the spoken tradition of pronunciation, acquired from lip to lip by the organ of the ear, capable of being learned, but incapable of being taught; or when you compare two of these dictionaries with one another, and mark the entirely different schemes and combinations of letters which they employ for representing the same sound to the eye; you will then perceive how idle the attempt to make the written in language commensurate with the sounded; you will own that not merely out of human caprice, ignorance, or indolence, the former falls short of and differs from the later; but that this lies in the necessity of things, in the fact that man's voice can effect so much more than ever his letter can{232}. You will then perceive that there would be as much, or nearly as much, of the arbitrary in spelling which calls itself phonetic as in our present, that spelling would have to be learned just as really then as now. We should be unable to dismiss the spelling card even after the arrival of that great day, when, for example, those lines of Pope which hitherto we have thus spelt and read,

"But errs not nature from this gracious end, From burning suns when livid deaths descend, When earthquakes swallow, or when tempests sweep Towns to one grave, whole nations to the deep"?

when I say, instead of this they should present themselves to our eyes in the following attractive form:

"But {?} erz not n{e}tiur from {dh}is gr{e}cus end, from burni{ng} sunz when livid de{th}s d{i}send, when er{th}kw{e}ks swol{o}, or when tempests sw{i}p tounz tu wun gr{e}v, h{o}l n{e}conz tu {dh}e d{i}p".

{Sidenote: Losses of Phonetic Spelling}

The scheme would not then fulfil its promises. Its vaunted gains, when we come to look closely at them, disappear. And now for its losses. There are in every language a vast number of words, which the ear does not distinguish from one another, but which are at once distinguishable to the eye by the spelling. I will only instance a few which are the same parts of speech; thus 'sun' and 'son'; 'virge' ('virga', now obsolete) and 'verge'; 'reign', 'rain', and 'rein'; 'hair' and 'hare'; 'plate' and 'plait'; 'moat' and 'mote'; 'pear' and 'pair'; 'pain' and 'pane'; 'raise' and 'raze'; 'air' and 'heir'; 'ark' and 'arc'; 'mite' and 'might'; 'pour' and 'pore'; 'veil' and 'vale'; 'knight' and 'night'; 'knave' and 'nave'; 'pier' and 'peer'; 'rite' and 'right'; 'site' and 'sight'; 'aisle' and 'isle'; 'concent' and 'consent'; 'signet' and 'cygnet'. Now, of course, it is a real disadvantage, and may be the cause of serious confusion, that there should be words in spoken languages of entirely different origin and meaning which yet cannot in sound be differenced from one another. The phonographers simply propose to extend this disadvantage already cleaving to our spoken languages, to the written languages as well. It is fault enough in the French language, that 'mere' a mother, 'mer' the sea, 'maire' a mayor of a town, should have no perceptible difference between them in the spoken tongue; or again that in some there should be nothing to distinguish 'sans', 'sang', 'sent', 'sens', 's'en', 'cent'; nor yet between 'ver', 'vert', 'verre' and 'vers'. Surely it is not very wise to propose gratuitously to extend the same fault to the written languages as well.

This loss in so many instances of the power to discriminate between words, which however liable to confusion now in our spoken language, are liable to none in our written, would be serious enough; but far more serious than this would be the loss which would constantly ensue, of all which visibly connects a word with the past, which tells its history, and indicates the quarter from which it has been derived. In how many English words a letter silent to the ear, is yet most eloquent to the eye—the g for instance in 'deign', 'feign', 'reign', 'impugn', telling as it does of 'dignor', 'fingo', 'regno', 'impugno'; even as the b in 'debt', 'doubt', is not idle, but tells of 'debitum' and 'dubium'{233}.

{Sidenote: Pronunciation Alters}

At present it is the written word which is in all languages their conservative element. In it is the abiding witness against the mutilations or other capricious changes in their shape which affectation, folly, ignorance, and half-knowledge would introduce. It is not indeed always able to hinder the final adoption of these corrupter forms, but does not fail to oppose to them a constant, and very often a successful, resistance. With the adoption of phonetic spelling, this witness would exist no longer; whatever was spoken would have also to be written, let it be never so barbarous, never so great a departure from the true form of the word. Nor is it merely probable that such a barbarizing process, such an adopting and sanctioning of a vulgarism, might take place, but among phonographers it already has taken place. We all probably are aware that there is a vulgar pronunciation of the word 'Europe', as though it were 'Eurup'. Now it is quite possible that numerically more persons in England may pronounce the word in this manner than in the right; and therefore the phonographers are only true to their principles when they spell it in the fashion which they do, 'Eurup', or indeed omitting the E at the beginning, 'Urup'{234} with thus the life of the first syllable assailed no less than that of the second. What are the consequences? First its relations with the old mythology are at once and entirely broken off; secondly, its most probable etymology from two Greek words, signifying 'broad' and 'face', Europe being so called from the Broad line or face of coast which our continent presented to the Asiatic Greek, is totally obscured. But so far from the spelling servilely following the pronunciation, I should be bold to affirm that if ninety-nine out of every hundred persons in England chose to call Europe 'Urup', this would be a vulgarism still, against which the written word ought to maintain its protest, not sinking down to their level, but rather seeking to elevate them to its own{235}.

{Sidenote: Changes of Pronunciation}

And if there is much in orthography which is unsettled now, how much more would be unsettled then. Inasmuch as the pronunciation of words is continually altering, their spelling would of course have continually to alter too. For the fact that pronunciation is undergoing constant changes, although changes for the most part unmarked, or marked only by a few, would be abundantly easy to prove. Take a Pronouncing Dictionary of fifty or a hundred years ago; turn to almost any page, and you will observe schemes of pronunciation there recommended, which are now merely vulgarisms, or which have been dropped altogether. We gather from a discussion in Boswell's Life of Johnson{236}, that in his time 'great' was by some of the best speakers of the language pronounced 'greet', not 'grate': Pope usually rhymes it with 'cheat', 'complete', and the like; thus in the Dunciad:

"Here swells the shelf with Ogilby the great, There, stamped with arms, Newcastle shines complete".

Spenser's constant use of the word a century and a half earlier, leaves no doubt that such was the invariable pronunciation of his time{237}. Again, Pope rhymes 'obliged' with 'beseiged'; and it has only ceased to be 'obleeged' almost in our own time. Who now drinks a cup of 'tay'? yet there is abundant evidence that this was the fashionable pronunciation in the first half of the last century; the word, that is, was still regarded as French: Locke writes it 'the'; and in Pope's time, though no longer written, it was still pronounced so. Take this couplet of his in proof:

"Here thou, great Anna, whom three realms obey, Dost sometimes counsel take, and sometimes tea".

So too a pronunciation which still survives, though scarcely among well-educated persons, I mean 'Room' for 'Rome', must have been in Shakespeare's time the predominant one, else there would have been no point in that play on words where in Julius Caesar Cassius, complaining that in all Rome there was not room for a single man, exclaims,

"Now is it Rome indeed, and room enough".

Samuel Rogers too assures us that in his youth "everybody said 'Lonnon'{238} not 'London'; that Fox said 'Lonnon' to the last".

The following quotation from Swift will prove to you that I have been only employing here an argument, which he employed long ago against the phonographers of his time. He exposes thus the futility of their scheme{239}: "Another cause which has contributed not a little to the maiming of our language, is a foolish opinion advanced of late years that we ought to spell exactly as we speak: which, besides the obvious inconvenience of utterly destroying our etymology, would be a thing we should never see an end of. Not only the several towns and counties of England have a different way of pronouncing, but even here in London they clip their words after one manner about the court, another in the city, and a third in the suburbs; and in a few years, it is probable, will all differ from themselves, as fancy or fashion shall direct; all which, reduced to writing, would entirely confound orthography".

This much I have thought good to say in respect of that entire revolution in English orthography, which some rash innovators have proposed. Let me, dismissing them and their innovations, call your attention now to those changes in spelling which are constantly going forward, at some periods more rapidly than at others, but which never wholly cease out of a language; while at the same time I endeavour to trace, where this is possible, the motives and inducements which bring them about. It is a subject which none can neglect, who desire to obtain even a tolerably accurate acquaintance with their native tongue. Some principles have been laid down in the course of what has been said already, that may help us to judge whether the changes which have found place in our own have been for better or for worse. We shall find, if I am not mistaken, of both kinds.

{Sidenote: 'Grogram'}

There are alterations in spelling which are for the worse. Thus an altered spelling will sometimes obscure the origin of a word, concealing it from those who, but for this, would at once have known whence and what it was, and would have found both pleasure and profit in this knowledge. I need not say that in all those cases where the earlier spelling revealed the secret of the word, told its history, which the latter defaces or conceals, the change has been injurious, and is to be regretted; while, at the same time, where it has thoroughly established itself, there is nothing to do but to acquiesce in it: the attempt to undo it would be absurd. Thus, when 'grocer' was spelt 'grosser', it was comparatively easy to see that he first had his name, because he sold his wares not by retail, but in the gross. 'Coxcomb' tells us nothing now; but it did when spelt, as it used to be, 'cockscomb', the comb of a cock being then an ensign or token which the fool was accustomed to wear. In 'grogram' we are entirely to seek for the derivation; but in 'grogran' or 'grograin', as earlier it was spelt, one could scarcely miss 'grosgrain', the stuff of a coarse grain or woof. How many now understand 'woodbine'? but who could have helped understanding 'woodbind' (Ben Jonson)? What a mischievous alteration in spelling is 'divest' instead of 'devest'{240}. This change is so recent that I am tempted to ask whether it would not here be possible to return to the only intelligible spelling of this word.

{Sidenote: 'Pigmy'}

'Pigmy' used formerly to be spelt 'pygmy', and so long as it was so, no Greek scholar could see the word, but at once he knew that by it were indicated manikins whose measure in height was no greater than that of a man's arm from the elbow to the closed fist{241}. Now he may know this in other ways; but the word itself, so long as he assumes it to be rightly spelt, tells him nothing. Or again, the old spelling, 'diamant', was preferable to the modern 'diamond'. It was preferable, because it told more of the quarter whence the word had reached us. 'Diamant' and 'adamant' are in fact only two different adoptions on the part of the English tongue, of one and the same Greek, which afterwards became a Latin word. The primary meaning of 'adamant' is, as you know, the indomitable, and it was a name given at first to steel as the hardest of metals; but afterwards transferred{242} to the most precious among all the precious stones, as that which in power of resistance surpassed everything besides.

{Sidenote: 'Cozen', 'Bless'}

Neither are new spellings to be commended, which obliterate or obscure the relationship of a word with others to which it is really allied; separating from one another, for those not thoroughly acquainted with the subject, words of the same family. Thus when 'jaw' was spelt 'chaw', no ne could miss its connexions with the verb 'to chew'{243}. Now probably ninety-nine out of a hundred who use both words, are entirely unaware of any relationship between them. It is the same with 'cousin' (consanguineus), and 'to cozen' or to deceive. I do not propose to determine which of these words should conform itself to the spelling of the other. There was great irregularity in the spelling of both from the first; yet for all this, it was then better than now, when a permanent distinction has established itself between them, keeping out of sight that 'to cozen' is in all likelihood to deceive under show of kindred and affinity; which if it be so, Shakespeare's words,

"Cousins indeed, and by their uncle cozened Of comfort"{244},

will be found to contain not a pun, but an etymology{245}. The real relation between 'bliss' and 'to bless' is in like manner at present obscured{246}.

The omission of a letter, or the addition of a letter, may each effectually do its work in keeping out of sight the true character and origin of a word. Thus the omission of a letter. When the first syllable of 'bran-new' was spelt 'brand' with a final 'd', 'brand-new', how vigorous an image did the word contain. The 'brand' is the fire, and 'brand-new' equivalent to 'fire-new' (Shakespeare), is that which is fresh and bright, as being newly come from the forge and fire. As now spelt, 'bran-new' conveys to us no image at all. Again, you have the word 'scrip'—as a 'scrip' of paper, government 'scrip'. Is this the same word with the Saxon 'scrip', a wallet, having in some strange manner obtained these meanings so different and so remote? Have we here only two different applications of one and the same word, or two homonyms, wholly different words, though spelt alike? We have only to note the way in which the first of these 'scrips' used to be written, namely with a final 't', not 'scrip' but 'script', and we are at once able to answer the question. This 'script' is a Latin, as the other is an Anglo-Saxon, word, and meant at first simply a written (scripta) piece of paper—a circumstance which since the omission of the final 't' may easily escape our knowledge. 'Afraid' was spelt much better in old times with the double 'ff', than with the single 'f' as now. It was then clear that it was not another form of 'afeared', but wholly separate from it, the participle of the verb 'to affray', 'affrayer', or, as it is now written, 'effrayer'{247}.

{Sidenote: 'Whole', 'Hale', 'Heal'}

In the cases hitherto adduced, it has been the omission of a letter which has clouded and concealed the etymology. The intrusion of a letter sometimes does the same. Thus in the early editions of Paradise Lost, and in all writers of that time, you will find 'scent', an odour, spelt 'sent'. It was better so; there is no other noun substantive 'sent', with which it is in danger of being confounded; while its relation with 'sentio', with 'resent'{248}, 'dissent', and the like, is put out of sight by its novel spelling; the intrusive 'c', serves only to mislead. The same thing was attempted with 'site', 'situate', 'situation', spelt for a time by many, 'scite', 'scituate', 'scituation'; but it did not continue with these. Again, 'whole', in Wiclif's Bible, and indeed much later, occasionally as far down as Spenser, is spelt 'hole', without the 'w' at the beginning. The present orthography may have the advantage of at once distinguishing the word to the eye from any other; but at the same time the initial 'w', now prefixed, hides its relation to the verb 'to heal', with which it is closely allied. The 'whole' man is he whose hurt is 'healed' or covered{249} (we say of the convalescent that he 'recovers'){250}; 'whole' being closely allied to 'hale' (integer), from which also by its modern spelling it is divided. 'Wholesome' has naturally followed the fortunes of 'whole'; it was spelt 'holsome' once.

Of 'island' too our present spelling is inferior to the old, inasmuch as it suggests a hybrid formation, as though the word were made up of the Latin 'insula', and the Saxon 'land'. It is quite true that 'isle' is in relation with, and descent from, 'insula', 'isola', 'ile'; and hence probably the misspelling of 'island'. This last however has nothing to do with 'insula', being identical with the German 'eiland', the Anglo-Saxon 'ealand'{251} and signifying the sea-land, or land girt, round with the sea. And it is worthy of note that this 's' in the first syllable of 'island' is quite of modern introduction. In all the earlier versions of the Scriptures, and in the Authorized Version as at first set forth, it is 'iland'; while in proof that this is not accidental, it may be observed that, while 'iland' has not the 's', 'isle' has it (see Rev. i. 9). 'Iland' indeed is the spelling which we meet with far down into the seventeenth century.

{Sidenote: Folk-etymologies}

What has just been said of 'island' leads me as by a natural transition to observe that one of the most frequent causes of alteration in the spelling of a word is a wrongly assumed derivation. It is then sought to bring the word into harmony with, and to make it by its spelling suggest, this derivation, which has been erroneously thrust upon it. Here is a subject which, followed out as it deserves, would form an interesting and instructive chapter in the history of language{252}. Let me offer one or two small contributions to it; noting first by the way how remarkable an evidence we have in this fact, of the manner in which not the learned only, but all persons learned and unlearned alike, crave to have these words not body only, but body and soul. What an attestation, I say, of this lies in the fact that where a word in its proper derivation is unintelligible to them, they will shape and mould it into some other form, not enduring that it should be a mere inert sound without sense in their ears; and if they do not know its right origin, will rather put into it a wrong one, than that it should have for them no meaning, and suggest no derivation at all{253}.

There is probably no language in which such a process has not been going forward; in which it is not the explanation, in a vast number of instances, of changes in spelling and even in form, which words have undergone. I will offer a few examples of it from foreign tongues, before adducing any from our own. 'Pyramid' is a word, the spelling of which was affected in the Greek by an erroneous assumption of its derivation; the consequences of this error surviving in our own word to the present day. It is spelt by us with a 'y' in the first syllable, as it was spelt with the {Greek: y} corresponding in the Greek. But why was this? It was because the Greeks assumed that the pyramids were so named from their having the appearance of flame going up into a point{254}, and so they spelt 'pyramid', that they might find {Greek: pyr} or 'pyre' in it; while in fact 'pyramid' has nothing to do with flame or fire at all; being, as those best qualified to speak on the matter declare to us, an Egyptian word of quite a different signification{255}, and the Coptic letters being much better represented by the diphthong 'ei' than by the letter 'y', as no doubt, but for this mistaken notion of what the word was intended to mean, they would have been.

Once more—the form 'Hierosolyma', wherein the Greeks reproduced the Hebrew 'Jerusalem', was intended in all probability to express that the city so called was the sacred city of the Solymi{256}. At all events the intention not merely of reproducing the Hebrew word, but also of making it significant in Greek, of finding {Greek: hieron} in it, is plainly discernible. For indeed the Greeks were exceedingly intolerant of foreign words, till they had laid aside their foreign appearance—of all words which they could not thus quicken with a Greek soul; and, with a very characteristic vanity, an ignoring of all other tongues but their own, assumed with no apparent misgivings that all words, from whatever quarter derived, were to be explained by Greek etymologies{257}.

'Tartar' is another word, of which it is at least possible that a wrongly assumed derivation has modified the spelling, and indeed not the spelling only, but the very shape in which we now possess it. To many among us it may be known that the people designated by this appellation are not properly 'Tartars', but 'Tatars'; and you sometimes perhaps have noted the omission of the 'r' on the part of those who are curious in their spelling. How, then, it may be asked, did the form 'Tartar' arise? When the terrible hordes of middle Asia burst in upon civilized Europe in the thirteenth century, many beheld in the ravages of their innumerable cavalry a fulfilment of that prophetic word in the Revelation (chap. ix.) concerning the opening of the bottomless pit; and from this belief ensued the change of their name from 'Tatars' to 'Tartars', which was thus put into closer relation with 'Tartarus' or hell, out of which their multitudes were supposed to have proceeded{258}.

Another good example in the same kind is the German word 'suendflut', the Deluge, which is now so spelt as to signify a 'sinflood', the plague or flood of waters brought on the world by the sins of mankind; and probably some of us have before this admired the pregnant significance of the word. Yet the old High German word had originally no such intention; it was spelt 'sinfluot', that is, the great flood; and as late as Luther, indeed in Luther's own translation of the Bible, is so spelt as to make plain that the notion of a 'sin-flood' had not yet found its way into, even as it had not affected the spelling of, the word{259}.

{Sidenote: 'Currants'}

But to look now nearer home for our examples. The little raisins brought from Greece, which play so important a part in one of the national dishes of England, the Christmas plum-pudding, used to be called 'corinths'; and so you would find them in mercantile lists of a hundred years ago: either that for the most part they were shipped from Corinth, the principal commercial city in Greece, or because they grew in large abundance in the immediate district round about it. Their likeness in shape and size and general appearance to our own currants, working together with the ignorance of the great majority of English people about any such place as Corinth, soon brought the name 'corinths' into 'currants', which now with a certain unfitness they bear; being not currants at all, but dried grapes, though grapes of diminutive size{260}.

{Sidenote: 'Court-cards'}

'Court-cards', that is, the king, queen, and knave in each suit, were once 'coat-cards'{261}; having their name from the long splendid 'coat' (vestis talaris) with which they were arrayed. Probably 'coat' after a while did not perfectly convey its original meaning and intention; being no more in common use for the long garment reaching down to the heels; and then 'coat' was easily exchanged for 'court', as the word is now both spelt and pronounced, seeing that nowhere so fitly as in a Court should such splendidly arrayed personages be found. A public house in the neighbourhood of London having a few years since for its sign "The George Canning" is already "The George and Cannon",—so rapidly do these transformations proceed, so soon is that forgotten which we suppose would never be forgotten. "Welsh rarebit" becomes "Welsh rabbit"{262}; and 'farced' or stuffed 'meat' becomes "forced meat". Even the mere determination to make a word look English, to put it into an English shape, without thereby so much as seeming to attain any result in the way of etymology, this is very often sufficient to bring about a change in its spelling, and even in its form{263}. It is thus that 'sipahi' has become 'sepoy'; and only so could 'weissager' have taken its present form of 'wiseacre'{264}.

{Sidenote: Transformation of Words}

It is not very uncommon for a word, while it is derived from one word, to receive a certain impulse and modification from another. This extends sometimes beyond the spelling, and in cases where it does so, would hardly belong to our present theme. Still I may notice an instance or two. Thus our 'obsequies' is the Latin 'exequiae', but formed under a certain impulse of 'obsequium', and seeking to express and include the observant honour of that word. 'To refuse' is 'recusare', while yet it has derived the 'f' of its second syllable from 'refutare'; it is a medley of the two{265}. The French 'rame', an oar, is 'remus', but that modified by an unconscious recollection of 'ramus'. 'Orange' is no doubt a Persian word, which has reached us through the Arabic, and which the Spanish 'naranja' more nearly represents than any form of it existing in the other languages of Europe. But what so natural as to think of the orange as the golden fruit, especially when the "aurea mala" of the Hesperides were familiar to all antiquity? There cannot be a doubt that 'aurum', 'oro', 'or', made themselves felt in the shapes which the word assumed in the languages of the West, and that here we have the explanation of the change in the first syllable, as in the low Latin 'aurantium', 'orangia', and in the French 'orange', which has given us our own.

It is foreign words, or words adopted from foreign languages, as might beforehand be expected, which are especially subjected to such transformations as these. The soul which the word once had in its own language, having, for as many as do not know that language, departed from it, or at least not being now any more to be recognized by such as employ the word, these are not satisfied till they have put another soul into it, and it has thus become alive to them again. Thus—to take first one or two very familiar instances, but which serve as well as any other to illustrate my position—the Bellerophon becomes for our sailors the 'Billy Ruffian', for what can they know of the Greek mythology, or of the slayer of Chimaera? an iron steamer, the Hirondelle, now or lately plying on the Tyne, is the 'Iron Devil'. 'Contre danse', or dance in which the parties stand face to face with one another, and which ought to have appeared in English as 'counter dance', does become 'country dance'{266}, as though it were the dance of the country folk and rural districts, as distinguished from the quadrille and waltz and more artificial dances of the town{267}. A well known rose, the "rose des quatre saisons", or of the four seasons, becomes on the lips of some of our gardeners, the "rose of the quarter sessions", though here it is probable that the eye has misled, rather than the ear. 'Dent de lion', (it is spelt 'dentdelyon' in our early writers) becomes 'dandylion', "chaude melee", or an affray in hot blood, "chance-medley"{268}, 'causey' (chaussee) becomes 'causeway'{269}, 'rachitis' 'rickets'{270}, and in French 'mandragora' 'main de gloire'{271}.

{Sidenote: 'Necromancy'}

'Necromancy' is another word which, if not now, yet for a long period was erroneously spelt, and indeed assumed a different shape, under the influence of an erroneous derivation; which, curiously enough, even now that it has been dismissed, has left behind it the marks of its presence, in our common phrase, "the Black Art". I need hardly remind you that 'necromancy' is a Greek word, which signifies, according to its proper meaning, a prophesying by aid of the dead, or that it rests on the presumed power of raising up by potent spells the dead, and compelling them to give answers about things to come. We all know that it was supposed possible to exercise such power; we have a very awful example of it in the story of the witch of Endor, and a very horrid one in Lucan{272}. But the Latin medieval writers, whose Greek was either little or none, spelt the word, 'nigromantia', as if its first syllables had been Latin: at the same time, not wholly forgetting the original meaning, but in fact getting round to it though by a wrong process, they understood the dead by these 'nigri', or blacks, whom they had brought into the word{273}. Down to a rather late period we find the forms, 'negromancer' and 'negromancy' frequent in English.

{Sidenote: Words Misspelt}

'Pleurisy' used often to be spelt, (I do not think it is so now,) without an 'e' in the first syllable, evidently on the tacit assumption that it was from plus pluris{274}. When Shakespeare falls into an error, he "makes the offence gracious"; yet, I think, he would scarcely have written,

"For goodness growing to a plurisy Dies of his own too much",

but that he too derived 'plurisy' from pluris. This, even with the "small Latin and less Greek", which Ben Jonson allows him, he scarcely would have done, had the word presented itself in that form, which by right of its descent from {Greek: pleura} (being a pain, stitch, or sickness in the side) it ought to have possessed. Those who for 'crucible' wrote 'chrysoble' (Jeremy Taylor does so) must evidently have done this under the assumption that the Greek for gold, and not the Latin for cross, lay at the foundation of this word. 'Anthymn' instead of 'anthem' (Barrow so spells the word), rests plainly on a wrong etymology, even as this spelling clearly betrays what that wrong etymology is. 'Rhyme' with a 'y' is a modern misspelling; and would never have been but for the undue influence which the Greek 'rhythm' has exercised upon it. Spenser and his cotemporaries spell it 'rime'. 'Abominable' was by some etymologists of the seventeenth century spelt 'abhominable', as though it were that which departed from the human (ab homine) into the bestial or devilish.

In all these words which I have adduced last, the correct spelling has in the end resumed its sway. It is not so with 'frontispiece', which ought to be spelt 'frontispice' (it was so by Milton and others), being the low Latin 'frontispicium', from 'frons' and 'aspicio', the forefront of the building, that part which presents itself to the view. It was only the entirely ungrounded notion that the word 'piece' constitutes the last syllable, which has given rise to our present orthography{275}.

{Sidenote: Wrong Spelling}

You may, perhaps, wonder that I have dwelt so long on these details of spelling; that I have bestowed on them so much of my own attention, that I have claimed for them so much of yours; yet in truth I cannot regard them as unworthy of our very closest heed. For indeed of how much beyond itself is accurate or inaccurate spelling the certain indication. Thus when we meet 'syren', for 'siren', as so strangely often we do, almost always in newspapers, and often where we should hardly have expected (I met it lately in the Quarterly Review, and again in Gifford's Massinger), how difficult it is not to be "judges of evil thoughts", and to take this slovenly misspelling as the specimen and evidence of an inaccuracy and ignorance which reaches very far wider than the single word which is before us. But why is it that so much significance is ascribed to a wrong spelling? Because ignorance of a word's spelling at once argues ignorance of its origin and derivation. I do not mean that one who spells rightly may not be ignorant of it too, but he who spells wrongly is certainly so. Thus, to recur to the example I have just adduced, he who for 'siren' writes 'syren', certainly knows nothing of the magic cords ({Greek: seirai}) of song, by which those fair enchantresses were supposed to draw those that heard them to their ruin{276}.

Correct or incorrect orthography being, then, this note of accurate or inaccurate knowledge, we may confidently conclude where two spellings of a word exist, and are both employed by persons who generally write with precision and scholarship, that there must be something to account for this. It will generally be worth your while to inquire into the causes which enable both spellings to hold their ground and to find their supporters, not ascribing either one or the other to mere carelessness or error. It will in these cases often be found that two spellings exist, because two views of the word's origin exist, and each of those spellings is the correct expression of one of these. The question therefore which way of spelling should continue, and wholly supersede the other, and which, while the alternative remains, we should ourselves employ, can only be settled by settling which of these etymologies deserves the preference. So is it, for example, with 'chymist' and 'chemist', neither of which has obtained in our common use the complete mastery over the other{277}. It is not here, as in some other cases, that one is certainly right, the other as certainly wrong: but they severally represent two different etymologies of the word, and each is correct according to its own. If we are to spell 'chymist' and 'chymistry', it is because these words are considered to be derived from the Greek word, {Greek: chymos}, sap; and the chymic art will then have occupied itself first with distilling the juice and sap of plants, and will from this have derived its name. I have little doubt, however, that the other spelling, 'chemist', not 'chymist', is the correct one. It was not with the distillation of herbs, but with the amalgamation of metals, that chemistry occupied itself at its rise, and the word embodies a reference to Egypt, the land of Ham or 'Cham'{278}, in which this art was first practised with success.

{Sidenote: 'Satyr', 'Satire'}

Of how much confusion the spelling which used to be so common, 'satyr' for 'satire', is at once the consequence, the expression, and again the cause; not indeed that this confusion first began with us{279}; for the same already found place in the Latin, where 'satyricus' was continually written for 'satiricus' out of a false assumption of the identity between the Roman satire and the Greek satyric drama. The Roman 'satira',—I speak of things familiar to many of my hearers,—is properly a full dish (lanx being understood)—a dish heaped up with various ingredients, a 'farce' (according to the original signification of that word), or hodge-podge; and the word was transferred from this to a form of poetry which at first admitted the utmost variety in the materials of which it was composed, and the shapes into which these materials were wrought up; being the only form of poetry which the Romans did not borrow from the Greeks. Wholly different from this, having no one point of contact with it in its form, its history, or its intention, is the 'satyric' drama of Greece, so called because Silenus and the 'Satyrs' supplied the chorus; and in their naive selfishness, and mere animal instincts, held up before men a mirror of what they would be, if only the divine, which is also the truly human, element of humanity, were withdrawn; what man, all that properly made him man being withdrawn, would prove.

{Sidenote: 'Mid-wife', 'Nostril'}

And then what light, as we have already seen, does the older spelling of a word often cast upon its etymology; how often does it clear up the mystery, which would otherwise have hung about it, or which had hung about it till some one had noticed and turned to profit this its earlier spelling. Thus 'dirge' is always spelt 'dirige' in early English. This 'dirige' may be the first word in a Latin psalm or prayer once used at funerals; there is a reasonable probability that the explanation of the word is here; at any rate, if it is not here, it is nowhere{280}. The derivation of 'mid-wife' is uncertain, and has been the subject of discussion; but when we find it spelt 'medewife' and 'meadwife', in Wiclif's Bible, this leaves hardly a doubt that it is the wife or woman who acts for a mead or reward{281}. In cases too where there was no mystery hanging about a word, how often does the early spelling make clear to all that which was before only known to those who had made the language their study. For example, if an early edition of Spenser should come into your hands, or a modern one in which the early spelling is retained, what continual lessons in English might you derive from it. Thus 'nostril' is always spelt by him and his cotemporaries 'nosethrill'; a little earlier it was 'nosethirle'. Now 'to thrill' is the same as to drill or pierce; it is plain then here at once that the word signifies the orifice or opening with which the nose is thrilled, drilled, or pierced. We might have read the word for ever in our modern spelling without being taught this. 'Ell' tells us nothing about itself; but in 'eln' used in Holland's translation of Camden, we recognize 'ulna' at once.

Again, the 'morris' or 'morrice-dance', which is alluded to so often by our early poets, as it is now spelt informs us nothing about itself; but read 'moriske dance', as it is generally spelt by Holland and his cotemporaries, and you will scarcely fail to perceive that of which indeed there is no manner of doubt; namely, that it was so called either because it was really, or was supposed to be, a dance in use among the moriscoes of Spain, and from thence introduced into England{282}.

Again, philologers tell us, and no doubt rightly, that our 'cray-fish', or 'craw-fish', is the French 'ecrevisse'. This is true, but certainly it is not self-evident. Trace however the word through these successive spellings, 'krevys' (Lydgate), 'crevish' (Gascoigne), 'craifish' (Holland), and the chasm between 'cray-fish' or 'craw-fish' and 'ecrevisse' is by aid of these three intermediate spellings bridged over at once; and in the fact of our Gothic 'fish' finding its way into this French word we see only another example of a law, which has been already abundantly illustrated in this lecture{283}.

{Sidenote: 'Emmet', 'Ant'}

In other ways also an accurate taking note of the spelling of words, and of the successive changes which it has undergone, will often throw light upon them. Thus we may know, others having assured us of the fact, that 'ant' and 'emmet' were originally only two different spellings of one and the same word; but we may be perplexed to understand how two forms of a word, now so different, could ever have diverged from a single root. When however we find the different spellings, 'emmet', 'emet', 'amet', 'amt', 'ant', the gulf which appeared to separate 'emmet' from 'ant' is bridged over at once, and we do not merely know on the assurance of others that these two are in fact identical, their differences being only superficial, but we perceive clearly in what manner they are so{284}.

Even before any close examination of the matter, it is hard not to suspect that 'runagate' is in fact another form of 'renegade', slightly transformed, as so many words, to put an English signification into its first syllable; and then the meaning gradually modified in obedience to the new derivation which was assumed to be its original and true one. Our suspicion of this is very greatly strengthened (for we see how very closely the words approach one another), by the fact that 'renegade' is constantly spelt 'renegate' in our old authors, while at the same time the denial of faith, which is now a necessary element in 'renegade', and one differencing it inwardly from 'runagate', is altogether wanting in early use—the denial of country and of the duties thereto owing being all that is implied in it. Thus it is constantly employed in Holland's Livy as a rendering of 'perfuga'{285}; while in the one passage where 'runagate' occurs in the Prayer Book Version of the Psalms (Ps. lxviii. 6), a reference to the original will show that the translators could only have employed it there on the ground that it also expressed rebel, revolter, and not runaway merely{286}.

{Sidenote: Assimilating Power of English}

I might easily occupy your attention much longer, so little barren or unfruitful does this subject of spelling appear likely to prove; but all things must have an end; and as I concluded my first lecture with a remarkable testimony borne by an illustrious German scholar to the merits of our English tongue, I will conclude my last with the words of another, not indeed a German, but still of the great Germanic stock; words resuming in themselves much of which we have been speaking upon this and upon former occasions: "As our bodies", he says, "have hidden resources and expedients, to remove the obstacles which the very art of the physician puts in its way, so language, ruled by an indomitable inward principle, triumphs in some degree over the folly of grammarians. Look at the English, polluted by Danish and Norman conquests, distorted in its genuine and noble features by old and recent endeavours to mould it after the French fashion, invaded by a hostile entrance of Greek and Latin words, threatening by increasing hosts to overwhelm the indigenous terms. In these long contests against the combined power of so many forcible enemies, the language, it is true, has lost some of its power of inversion in the structure of sentences, the means of denoting the difference of gender, and the nice distinctions by inflection and termination—almost every word is attacked by the spasm of the accent and the drawing of consonants to wrong positions; yet the old English principle is not overpowered. Trampled down by the ignoble feet of strangers, its springs still retain force enough to restore itself. It lives and plays through all the veins of the language; it impregnates the innumerable strangers entering its dominions with its temper, and stains them with its colour, not unlike the Greek which in taking up oriental words, stripped them of their foreign costume, and bid them to appear as native Greeks"{287}.

{FOOTNOTES}

{228} In proof that it need not be so, I would only refer to a paper, On Orthographical Expedients, by Edwin Guest, Esq., in the Transactions of the Philological Society, vol. iii. p. 1.

{229} [The scientific treatises on Phonetics of Mr. Alexander J. Ellis and Dr. Henry Sweet have surmounted the difficulty of registering sounds with great accuracy.]

{230} I have not observed this noticed in our dictionaries as the original form of the phrase. There is no doubt however of the fact; see Stanihurst's Ireland, p. 33, in Holinshed's Chronicles. [Rather from torvien, to throw,—Skeat].

{231} Notes and Queries, No. 147.

{232} See Boswell's Life of Johnson, Croker's edit. 1848, p. 233.

{233} [The b was purposely foisted into these words by bookmen to suggest their Latin derivation; it did not belong to them in earlier English. The same may be said of the g, intruded into 'deign' and 'feign'.]

{234} A chief phonographer writes to me to deny that this is the present spelling (1856) of 'Europe'. It was so when this paragraph was written. [Most people would now consider [Yeuroap] as American pronunciation.]

{235} Quintilian has expressed himself with the true dignity of a scholar on this matter (Inst. 1, 6, 45): Consuetudinem sermonis vocabo consensum eruditorum; sicut vivendi consensum bonorum.—How different from innovations like this the changes in the spelling of German which J. Grimm, so far as his own example may reach, has introduced; and the still bolder and more extensive ones which in the Preface to his Deutsches Woerterbuch, pp. liv.-lxii., he avows his desire to see introduced;—as the employment of f, not merely where it is at present used, but also wherever v is now employed; the substituting of the v, which would be thus disengaged, for w, and the entire dismissal of w. They may be advisable, or they may not; it is not for strangers to offer an opinion; but at any rate they are not a seizing of the fluctuating, superficial accidents of the present, and a seeking to give permanent authority to these, but they all rest on a deep historic study of the language, and of the true genius of the language.

{236} Croker's edit. 1848, pp. 57, 61, 233.

{237} [An incorrect conclusion. Almost all 'ea' words were pronounced 'ai' down to the eighteenth century. Thus 'great' was a true rhyme to 'cheat' and 'complete', their ordinary pronunciation being 'grait', 'chait', 'complait'.]

{238} [i.e. 'Lunnun'.]

{239} A proposal for correcting, improving and ascertaining the English Tongue, 1711, Works, vol. ix, pp. 139-59.

{240} ['Devest' was still in use till the end of the eighteenth century, but 'divest' is already found in King Lear, 1605, i, 1, 50.]

{241} Pygmaei, quasi cubitales (Augustine).

{242} First so used by Theophrastus in Greek, and by Pliny in Latin.—The real identity of the two words explains Milton's use of 'diamond' in Paradise Lost, b. 7; and also in that sublime passage in his Apology for Smectymnuus: "Then zeal, whose substance is ethereal, arming in complete diamond".—Diez (Woerterbuch d. Roman. Sprachen, p. 123) supposes, not very probably, that it was under a certain influence of 'diafano', the translucent, that 'adamante' was in the Italian, whence we have derived the word, changed into 'diamante'.

{243} [Similarly jowl for chowl or chavel.]

{244} Richard III, Act iv, Sc. 4.

{245} [For another account of this word, approved by Dr. Murray, see The Folk and their Word-Lore, p. 156.]

{246} ['Bliss' representing the old English bliths or blidhs, blitheness, is really a quite distinct word from 'bless', standing for blets, old English bletsian (=bloedsian, to consecrate with blood, blod), although the latter was by a folk-etymology very frequently spelt 'bliss'.]

{247} [But 'afraied' is the earliest form of the word (1350), the verb itself being at first spelt 'afray' (1325). N.E.D.]

{248} How close this relationship was once, not merely in respect of etymology, but also of significance, a passage like this will prove: "Perchance, as vultures are said to smell the earthiness of a dying corpse; so this bird of prey [the evil spirit which personated Samuel, 1 Sam. xxviii. 41] resented a worse than earthly savor in the soul of Saul, as evidence of his death at hand". (Fuller, The Profane State, b. 5, c. 4.)

{249} [There is an unfortunate confusion here between 'heal' to make 'hale' or '[w]hole' (Anglo-Saxon haelan) and the old (and Provincial) English hill, to cover, hilling, covering, hellier, a slater, akin to 'hell', the covered place, 'helm'; Icelandic hylja, to cover.]

{250} [By a curious slip Dr. Trench here confounds 'recover', to recuperate or regain health (derived through old French recovrer from Latin recuperare), with a totally distinct word re-cover, to cover or clothe over again, which comes from old French covrir, Latin co-operire. It is just the difference between 'recovering' a lost umbrella through the police and 'recovering' a torn one at a shop. I pointed this out to the author in 1869, and I think he altered the passage in his later editions.]

{251} ['Island', though cognate with Anglo-Saxon ea-land "water-land" (German ei-land), is really identical with Anglo-Saxon ig-land, i.e. "isle-land", from ig, an island, the diminutive of which survives in eyot or ait.]

{252} [The editor essayed to make a complete collection of this class of words in his Folk-etymology, a Dictionary of Words corrupted by False Derivation or Mistaken Analogy, 1882, and more recently in a condensed form in The Folk and their Word-Lore, 1904.]

{253} Diez looks with much favour on this process, and calls it, ein sinnreiches mittel fremdlinge ganz heimisch zu machen.

{254} Ammianus Marcellinus, xxii, 15, 28.

{255} [The Greek pyramis probably represents the Egyptian piri-m-uisi (Maspero, Dawn of Civilization, 358), or pir-am-us (Brugsch, Egypt under the Pharaohs, i, 73), rather than pi-ram, 'the height' (Birch, Bunsen's Egypt, v, 763).]

{256} Tacitus, Hist. v. 2.

{257} Let me illustrate this by further instances in a note. Thus {Greek: boutyron}, from which, through the Latin, our 'butter' has descended to us, is borrowed (Pliny, H.N. xxviii. 9) from a Scythian word, now to us unknown: yet it is sufficiently plain that the Greeks so shaped and spelt it as to contain apparent allusion to cow and cheese; there is in {Greek: boutyron} an evident feeling after {Greek: bous} and {Greek: tyron}. Bozra, meaning citadel in Hebrew and Phoenician, and the name, no doubt, which the citadel of Carthage bore, becomes {Greek: Byrsa} on Greek lips; and then the well known legend of the ox-hide was invented upon the name; not having suggested it, but being itself suggested by it. Herodian (v. 6) reproduces the name of the Syrian goddess Astarte in a shape that is significant also for Greek ears—{Greek: Astroarche:}, The Star-ruler, or Star-queen. When the apostate and hellenizing Jews assumed Greek names, 'Eliakim' or "Whom God has set", became 'Alcimus' ({Greek: alkimos}) or The Strong (1 Macc. vii. 5). Latin examples in like kind are 'comissatio', spelt continually 'comessatio', and 'comessation' by those who sought to naturalize it in England, as though it were connected with 'c{)o}medo', to eat, being indeed the substantive from the verb 'c{-o}missari' (—{Greek: ko:mazein}), to revel, as Plutarch, whose Latin is in general not very accurate, long ago correctly observed; and 'orichalcum', spelt often 'aurichalcum', as though it were a composite metal of mingled gold and brass; being indeed the mountain brass ({Greek: oreichalkos}). The miracle play, which is 'mystere', in French, whence our English 'mystery' was originally written 'mistere', being properly derived from 'ministere', and having its name because the clergy, the ministri Ecclesiae, conducted it. This was forgotten, and it then took its present form of 'mystery', as though so called because the mysteries of the faith were in it set out.

{258} We have here, in this bringing of the words by their supposed etymology together, the explanation of the fact that Spenser (Fairy Queen, i, 7, 44), Middleton (Works, vol. 5, pp. 524, 528, 538), and others employ 'Tartary' as equivalent to 'Tartarus' or hell.

{259} For a full discussion of this matter and fixing of the period at which 'sinfluot' became 'suendflut', see the Theol. Stud. u. Krit. vol. ii, p. 613; and Delitzsch, Genesis, 2nd ed. vol. ii, p. 210.

{260} [The name of the small grape, originally raisins de Corauntz, was transferred to the ribes in the sixteenth century.]

{261} Ben Jonson, The New Inn, Act i, Sc. i.

{262} [On the contrary, it is the modern "Welsh rarebit" which has been mistakenly evolved out of the older "Welsh rabbit" as I have shown in Folk-Etymology, p. 431. Grose has both forms in his Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, 1785.]

{263} 'Leghorn' is sometimes quoted as an example of this; but erroneously; for, as Admiral Smyth has shown (The Mediterranean, p. 409) 'Livorno' is itself rather the modern corruption, and 'Ligorno' the name found on the earlier charts.

{264} Exactly the same happens in other languages; thus 'armbrust', a crossbow, looks German enough, and yet has nothing to do with 'arm' or 'brust', being a contraction of 'arcubalista', but a contraction under these influences. As little has 'abenteuer' anything to do with 'abend' or 'theuer', however it may seem to be connected with them, being indeed the Provencal 'adventura'. And 'weissagen' in its earlier forms had nothing in common with 'sagen'.

{265} [So Diez. But Prof. Skeat and Scheler see no reason why it should not be direct from French refuser and Low Latin refusare, from refusus, rejected.]

{266} It is upon this word that De Quincey (Life and Manners, p. 70, American Ed.) says excellently well: "It is in fact by such corruptions, by off-sets upon an old stock, arising through ignorance or mispronunciation originally, that every language is frequently enriched; and new modifications of thought, unfolding themselves in the progress of society, generate for themselves concurrently appropriate expressions.... It must not be allowed to weigh against a word once fairly naturalized by all, that originally it crept in upon an abuse or a corruption. Prescription is as strong a ground of legitimation in a case of this nature, as it is in law. And the old axiom is applicable—Fieri non debuit, factum valet. Were it otherwise, languages would be robbed of much of their wealth". [Works, vol. xiv., p. 201.]

{267} [The direct opposite is the fact. The French contredanse was borrowed from the English 'country-dance'. See The Folk and their Word-Lore, p. 153.]

{268} [These words are not identical. They were in use as distinct words in the fifteenth century. See N.E.D.]

{269} [Dr. Murray has shown that 'causeway' is not a corruption of 'causey' but a compound of that word with 'way'.]

{270} [Prof. Skeat has demonstrated that the supposed Greek 'rachitis', inflammation of the back, is an aetiological invention to serve as etymon of 'rickets', the condition of being rickety, a purely native word. See also Folk-Etymology, 312.]

{271} [See The Folk and their Word-Lore, p. 124.]

{272} Phars. vi. 720-830.

{273} Thus in a Vocabulary, 1475: Nigromansia dicitur divinatio facta per nigros.

{274} [Dyce believed that it was really thus derived and distinct from pleurisy, but it was evidently modelled upon that word (Remarks on Editions of Shakespeare, p. 218).]

{275} As 'orthography' itself means properly "right spelling", it might be a curious question whether it is permissible to speak of an incorrect orthography, that is of a wrong right-spelling. The question which would be thus started is one of not unfrequent recurrence, and it is very worthy of observation how often, so soon as we take note of etymologies, this contradictio in adjecto is found to occur. I will here adduce a few examples from the Greek, the Latin, the German, and from our own tongue. Thus the Greeks having no convenient word to express a rider, apart from a rider on a horse, did not scruple to speak of the horseman ({Greek: hippeus}) upon an elephant. They often allowed themselves in a like inaccuracy, where certainly there was no necessity; as in using {Greek: andrias} of the statue of a woman; where it would have been quite as easy to have used {Greek: heiko:n} or {Greek: agalma}. So too their 'table' ({Greek: trapeza} = {Greek: tetrapeza}) involved probably the four feet which commonly support one; yet they did not shrink from speaking of a three-footed table ({Greek: tripous trapeza}), in other words, a "three-footed four-footed"; much as though we should speak of a "three-footed quadruped". Homer writes of a 'hecatomb' not of a hundred, but of twelve, oxen; and elsewhere of Hebe he says, in words not reproducible in English, {Greek: nektar eo:nochoei}. 'Tetrarchs' were often rulers of quite other than fourth parts of a land. {Greek: Akratos} had so come to stand for wine, without any thought more of its signifying originally the unmingled, that St. John speaks of {Greek: akratos kekerasmenos} (Rev. xiv. 10), or the unmingled mingled. Boxes in which precious ointments were contained were so commonly of alabaster, that the name came to be applied to them whether they were so or not; and Theocritus celebrates "golden alabasters". Cicero having to mention a water-clock is obliged to call it a water sundial (solarium ex aqua). Columella speaks of a "vintage of honey" (vindemia mellis), and Horace invites his friend to impede, not his foot, but his head, with myrtle (caput impedire myrto). Thus too a German writer who desired to tell of the golden shoes with which the folly of Caligula adorned his horse could scarcely avoid speaking of golden hoof-irons. The same inner contradiction is involved in such language as our own, a "false verdict", a "steel cuirass" ('coriacea' from corium, leather), "antics new" (Harrington's Ariosto), an "erroneous etymology", a "corn chandler"; that is, a "corn candle-maker", "rather late", 'rather' being the comparative of 'rathe', early, and thus "rather late" being indeed "more early late"; and in others.

{276} ['Siren' is now generally understood to have meant originally a songstress, from the root svar, to sing or sound, seen in syrinx, a flute, su(r)-sur-us, etc. See J. E. Harrison, Myths of the Odyssey, p. 175.]

{277} ['Chymist' seems to be the oldest form of the word in English; see N.E.D.]

{278} {Greek: che:mia}, the name of Egypt; see Plutarch, De Is. et Os. c. 33.

{279} We have a notable evidence how deeply rooted this error was, how long this confusion endured, of the way in which it was shared by the learned as well as the unlearned, in Milton's Apology for Smectymnuus, sect. 7, which everywhere presumes the identity of the 'satyr' and the 'satirist'. It was Isaac Casaubon who first effectually dissipated it even for the learned world. The results of his investigations were made popular for the unlearned reader by Dryden, in the very instructive Discourse on Satirical Poetry, prefixed to his translations of Juvenal; but the confusion still survives, and 'satyrs' and 'satires', the Greek 'satyric' drama, the Latin 'satirical' poetry, are still assumed by most to have something to do with one another.

{280} ['Dirige' was the first word of the antiphon at matins in the Office for the Dead, taken from Psalm v, 9 (Vulg.), in which occur the words "dirige in conspectu tuo vitam meam". See Skeat, Piers Plowman, ii, 52. Hence also Scotch dregy, a dirge.]

{281} [Incorrect: the 'mid-wife' is etymologically she that is with (old English mid) a woman to help her in her hour of need, like German bei-frau, Spanish co-madre, Icelandic naer-kona, "near-woman", Latin ob-stetrix, "by-stander", all words for the lying-in nurse. Compare German mit-bruder, a comrade.]

{282} "I have seen him Caper upright, like a wild Morisco, Shaking the bloody darts, as he his bells".

Shakespeare, 2 Henry VI Act iii, Sc. 1.

{283} In the reprinting of old books it is often very difficult to determine how far the old shape in which words present themselves should be retained, how far they should be conformed to present usage. It is comparatively easy to lay down as a rule that in books intended for popular use, wherever the form of the word is not affected by the modernizing of the spelling, as where this modernizing consists merely in the dropping of superfluous letters, there it shall take place; as who would wish our Bibles to be now printed letter for letter after the edition of 1611, or Shakespeare with the orthography of the first folio; but wherever more than the spelling, the actual shape, outline, and character of the word has been affected by the changes which it has undergone, that in all such cases the earlier form shall be held fast. The rule is a judicious one; but when it is attempted to carry it out, it is not always easy to draw the line, and to determine what affects the form and essence of a word, and what does not. About some words there can be no doubt; and therefore when a modern editor of Fuller's Church History complacently announces that he has allowed himself in such changes as 'dirige' into 'dirge', 'barreter' into 'barrister', 'synonymas' into 'synonymous', 'extempory' into 'extemporary', 'scited' into 'situated', 'vancurrier' into 'avant-courier'; he at the same time informs us that for all purposes of the study of the English language (and few writers are for this more important than Fuller), he has made his edition utterly worthless. Or again, when modern editors of Shakespeare print, and that without giving any intimation of the fact,

"Like quills upon the fretful porcupine",

he having written, and in his first folio and quarto the words standing,

"Like quills upon the fretful porpentine",

this being the earlier, and in Shakespeare's time the more common form of the word [e.g. "the purpentines nature" (Puttenham, Eng. Poesie, 1589, p. 118, ed. Arber)], they must be considered as taking a very unwarrantable liberty with his text; and no less, when they substitute 'Kenilworth' for 'Killingworth', which he wrote, and which was his, Marlowe's, and generally the earlier form of the name.

{284} [Compare Latin amita, yielding old French ante, our 'aunt'.]

{285} "The Carthaginians shall restore and deliver back all the renegates [perfugas] and fugitives that have fled to their side from us".—p. 751.

{286} [See further in The Folk and their Word-Lore, p. 80.]

{287} Halbertsma quoted by Bosworth, Origin of the English and Germanic Languages, p. 39.



INDEX OF WORDS

PAGE Abenteuer 240 Abnormal 72 Abominable 245 Academy 70 Accommodate 107 Acre 193 Adamant 230 Admiralty 107 Advocate 82 Aeon 72 Aesthetic 72 Afeard 126 Affluent 104 Afraid 127 Afterthink 120 Alcimus 237 Alcove 16 Amphibious 107 Analogie 56 Ant 253 Antecedents 210 Anthem 245 Antipodes 68 Apotheosis 67 -ard 141 Armbrust 240 Arride 58 Ascertain 186 Ask 126 Astarte 237 Attercop 123 Aurantium 241 Aurichalcum 237 Avunculize 91 Axe 126

Baffle 181 Baker, bakester 157 Banter 106 Barrier 70 Battalion 61 Bawn 123 Benefice, benefit 97 Bitesheep 144 Black art 243 Blackguard 189 Blasphemous 128 Bless 231 Bombast 199 Book 21 Boor 202 Bozra 237 Brangle 177 Bran-new 231 Brat 205 Brazen 164 Breaden 163 Bruin 89 Buffalo 16 Butter 237 Buxom 139

Chagrin 95 Chance-medley 243 Chanticleer 89 Chemist, chemistry 248 Chicken 158 Chouse 91 Chymist, chymistry 248 Clawback 144 Comissatio 237 Commerage 204 Confluent 104 Congregational 79 Contrary 128 Corpse 191 Country dance 242 Court card 239 Coxcomb 229 Cozen 231 Crawfish 252 Creansur 45 Criterion 67 Crone, crony 93 Crucible 245 Crusade 62 Cuirass 246 Currant 239 Cynarctomachy 91

Dahlia 88 Dame 192 Dandylion 243 Dearworth 120 Dedal 86 Dehort 137 Demagogue 55 Denominationalism 79 Depot 69 Diamond 230 Dirge 250 Dissimilation 103 Divest 229 Donat 86 Dorter 20 Dosones 90 Doughty 146 Drachm 193 Dragoman 12 Dub 146 Duke 191 Dumps 147 Dutch 177

Eame 118 Earsport 119 Eaves 159 Educational 79 Effervescence 55 Einseitig 75 Eliakim 237 Ell 251 Emet 253 Emotional 79 Encyclopedia 67 Enfantillage 55 Equivocation 196 Erutar 149 Escobarder 88 -ess 153 Europe 224 Eyebite 120

Fairy 191 Farfalla 15 Fatherland 75 Flitter-mouse 118 Flota 17 Folklore 75 Foolhappy 137 Foolhardy 137 Foolhasty 137 Foollarge 137 Foretalk 120 Fougue 66 Fraischeur 66 Frances 95 Francis 95 Frimm 118 Frivolite 55 Frontispiece 245 Furlong 193

Gainly 136 Gallon 193 Galvanism 88 Garble 199 Geir 118 Gentian 86 Girdle 21 Girfalcon 118 Girl 192 Glassen 163 Gordian 86 Gossip 203 Great 226 Grimsire 119 Grocer 229 Grogram 229

Halfgod 120 Hallow 82 Handbook 75 Hangdog 145 Hector 89 Heft 118 Hermetic 86 Hery 118 Hierosolyma 236 Hipocras 86 Hippodame 64 His 131 Hooker 16 Hoppester 155 Hotspur 119 Hoyden 192 Huck 157 Huckster, huckstress 157 Hurricane 14

Iceberg 73 Icefield 74 Idea 197 Imp 205 Influence 181 International 78 Island 234 Isle 234 Isolated 107 Isothermal 102 Its 130

Jaw 230 Jeopardy 82

Kenilworth 253 Kindly 184 Kirtle 21 Knave 207 Knitster 155 Knot 87

Lambiner 88 Lass 154 Lazar 86 Leer 118 Leghorn 240 Libel 191 Lifeguard 74 Lissome 140 London 227 Lunch, luncheon 129

Malingerer 119 Mammet, mammetry 87 Mandragora 243 Mansarde 89 Matachin 17 Matamoros 143 Mausoleum 86 Meat 191 Meddle, meddlesome 206 Middler 121 Mid-wife 250 Milken 163 Mischievous 128 Miscreant 179 Mithridate 86 Mixen 123 Morris dance 251 Mystery, mystere 237 Myth 72