Kitabı oku: «An Outline of English Speech-craft»
FORE-SAY
This little book was not written to win prize or praise; but it is put forth as one small trial, weak though it may be, towards the upholding of our own strong old Anglo-Saxon speech, and the ready teaching of it to purely English minds by their own tongue.
Speech was shapen of the breath-sounds of speakers, for the ears of hearers, and not from speech-tokens (letters) in books, for men’s eyes, though it is a great happiness that the words of man can be long holden and given over to the sight; and therefore I have shapen my teaching as that of a speech of breath-sounded words, and not of lettered ones; and though I have, of course, given my thoughts in a book, for those whom my voice cannot reach, I believe that the teaching matter of it may all be put forth to a learner’s mind, and readily understood by him, without book or letters. So, for consonants and vowels, as letters, I put breath-pennings and free-breathings, and these names would be good for any speech, of the lettering of which a learner might know nothing. On the grounds here given, I have not begun with orthography, the writing or spelling of our speech, or of any other, while as yet the teaching or learning of the speech itself is unbegun.
I have tried to teach English by English, and so have given English words for most of the lore-words (scientific terms), as I believe they would be more readily and more clearly understood, and, since we can better keep in mind what we do than what we do not understand, they would be better remembered. There is, in the learning of that charmingly simple and yet clear speech, pure Persian, now much mingled with Arabic, a saddening check; for no sooner does a learner come to the time-words than he is told that he should learn, what is then put before him, an outline of Arabic Grammar. And there are tokens that, ere long, the English youth will want an outline of the Greek and Latin tongues ere he can well understand his own speech.
The word grammar itself seems a misused word, for grapho is to write, and graphma, worn into gramma, means a writing, and the word grammatikē meant, with the Greeks, booklore or literature in the main, and not speech-teaching alone.
Whether my lore-words are well-chosen is a question for the reader’s mind. I have, for better or worse, treated the time-words, and nearly all the parts of speech, in a new way. I have clustered up the time-words as weak or strong on their endings, rather than on their headings, which had nothing to do with their forshapening or conjugation. Case I have taken as in the thing, and not in the name of it, as case is the case into which a thing falls with a time-taking, and case-words (prepositions) and case-endings are the tokens of their cases. The word preposition means a foreputting, or word put before; but then from and to, in herefrom, and therefrom, and hitherto, and thereto, are postpositions.
I have tried, as I have given some so-thought truths of English speech, to give the causes of them, and hope that the little book may afford a few glimpses of new insight into our fine old Anglo-Saxon tongue.
To any friend who has ever asked me whether I do not know some other tongues beside English, my answer has been ‘No; I do not know English itself.’ How many men do? And how should I know all of the older English, and the mighty wealth of English words which the English Dialect Society have begun to bring forth; words that are not all of them other shapes of our words of book-English, or words of their very meanings, but words of meanings which dictionaries of book-English should, but cannot give, and words which should be taken in hundreds (by careful choice) into our Queen’s English? If a man would walk with me through our village, I could show him many things of which we want to speak every day, and for which we have words of which Johnson knew nothing.
Some have spoken of cultivated languages as differing from uncultivated ones, and of the reducing of a speech to a grammatical form.
What is the meaning of ‘cultivate’ as a time word about a speech? The Latin dictionary does not help us to its meaning, and it might be that of the French cultiver, from which we should have, by the wonted changes, to cultive. The Romans said colere deum and colere agrum, but not agrum cultivare; and we may believe that colo, with deus or ager, bore the same meaning, ‘to keep or hold (with good care),’ and a speech is cultivated by the speaking as well as by the writing of it, and a speech which is sounding over a whole folkland every moment of the day cannot be uncultivated. ‘Not with good care,’ it may be said. Yes; most people speak as well as they can, as they write as well as they can, from the utterer of a fine rede-speech (oration), and the clergyman who gives unwritten sermons, down to the lowly maiden who dresses as finely as she can; and to try to dress herself well is a token that she will try to express herself well.
King Finow, of the Tonga Islands, gave a fine speech, as Mr. Mariner tells us, at his coming to the throne; and it may be well said that he made it, as he had made it in thought, ere he came to the meeting.
What is meant by the reducing of a speech to a grammatical form, or to grammar, is not very clear. If a man would write a grammar of a speech, of which there is yet none, what could he do but show it forth as it is in the shape which its best speakers over the land hold to be its best? To hold that a tongue had no shape, or a bad one, ere a grammar of it was written, seems much like saying that a man had no face, or a bad one, till his likeness was taken.
SPEECH-CRAFT
Speech-craft (Grammar), called by our Saxon fore-fathers Staef-craeft or Letter-craft, is the knowledge or skill of a speech.
The science of speech in the main, as offmarked from any one speech (Philology), may be called Speech-lore.
Speech is the speaking or bewording of thoughts, and is of sundry kinds of words.
Speech is of breath-sounds with sundry breathings, hard or mild, and breath-pennings, which become words.
(1) A freely open breathing through the throat, unpent by tongue or lips, as in the sounds A, E, O, OO, which are pure voicing. The main ones in English are —
1. ee, in meet.
2. e, in Dorset speech.
3. a, in mate.
4. ea, in earth.
5. a, in father.
6. aw, in awe.
7. o, in bone.
8. oo, in fool.
Besides this open speech-breathing there are two kinds of breath-penning.
(2) The dead breath-penning, as in the sounds AK, AP, AT, AG, AB, AD, which end with a dead penning of the sounding breath.
In AK and AG it is pent in the throat.
In AP and AB with the lips.
In AT and AD on the roof.
K, P, T are hard pennings; G, B, D are mild pennings, the breathing being harder in the former and softer in the latter.
Then there are half-pennings of the sounding breath, which is more or less but not wholly pent, but allowed to flow on as through the nose in
AMH,
ANH,
AM,
AN,
ANG;
as in the half-pent sounds —
half-pent by the tongue and mouth-roof.
For a hard breathing the mark is H, as and, hand; art, hart.
Words are of breath-sounds, and some words are one-sounded, as man; and others are tway-sounded, as manly; and others many-sounded, as unmanliness.
There is word-strain and speech-strain.
The high word-strain (accent) is the rising or strengthening of the voice on one sound of a word, as man´ly.
The high speech-strain (emphasis) is the rising or strengthening of the voice on a word of a thought-wording.
The voice may both rise and fall on the same sounds, as nō.
In English and its Teutonic sister speeches the strain keeps on the root or stem-word, as man, man´ly, man´liness; though in clustered words, with their first breath-sounds the same, the strain may shift for the sake of clearness, as ‘Give me the tea´pot’ – the teakettle is given, and thereupon the bidder may say ‘the teaPOT´,’ not the teaKETTLE.
In Greek the accent shifts in word-building, and likes mainly to settle at about two times or short breath-sounds from the end of the word; and in Welsh it settles mostly on the last breath-sound but one, as eis´tedd, a sitting; eistedd´fod, a sitting-stead; eisteddfod´an, sitting-steads, or bardic sessions.
Besides the word-strain (accent) and the speech-strain (emphasis), there is a speech-tuning (modulation) of the voice (voice-winding), which winds up or down with sundry feelings of the mind, and with question and answers and changes of the matter of speech.
Things may be matterly (concrete) or bodies of matter, as a man, a tree, a stone; or
Things may be unmatterly (abstract), not bodies of matter, as faith, hope, love, shape, speed, emptiness.
It is not altogether good that a matterly and unmatterly thing should be named by the very same word, as youth, a young man, and youth, youngness.
THINGS AND THING-NAMES
Things are of many kinds, as a man, a bird, a fish; an oyster, a sponge, a pebble; water, air, earth; honey, gold, salt.
The names of things may be called Thing-names.
But there are one-head thing-names (proper names), the names each of some one thing of its kind; as John, the miller; Toby, the dog; Moti, the lady’s Persian cat.
With Christian names may be ranked the so-called patronymics, or sire-names, taken from a father’s name, as William Johnson, Thomas Richardson; or in Welsh, Enid Verch Edeyrn; or in Hebrew Jeroboam Ben-nebat.
Thing Sundriness and Thing Mark-words.
☛ Mark is here to be taken in its old Saxon meaning, mearc– what bounds, defines, describes, distinguishes.
The Welsh call the adjective the weak name or noun, enw gwan.
Sundriness of Sex, Kindred, Youngness, and Smallness.
Marked by sundry names or mark-words, or mark endings.
Sex.
The stronger or carl sex, as a man; the weaker or quean sex, as a girl; the unsexly things, as a stone.
In Saxon the sexes in mankind were called halves or sides, the spear-half and the spindle-half.
Kindred, Youngness, or Smallness.
Small Things.
By forlessening mark-endings:
By mark-words:
A wee house, a little boy.
For bigness the English tongue wants name-shapes.
We have bul, horse, and tom, which are mark-words of bigness or coarseness.
Bulfinch.
Bullfrog.
Bulhead (the Miller’s Thumb. Pen-bwll, Welsh).
Bulrush.
Bulstang (the Dragonfly).
Bullspink.
Bulltrout.
Horse.
Horse-bramble.
Horse-chesnut.
Horse-laugh.
Horse-leech.
Horse-mushroom.
Horse-mussel.
Horse-tinger.
Horse-radish.
Tom.
Tomboy.
Tomcat.
Tomfool.
Tomnoddy.
Tomtit.
The words bul and horse are not taken from the animals.
Sundriness in Tale.
By tale mark-words, as one, five, ten, and others onward.
Sundriness in Rank.
By rank-word, as first, fifth, tenth, last.
An, a, the so-called indefinite article, is simply the tale mark-word an, one.
We use a before a consonant, and an before a vowel, as a man, an awl. But it is not that we have put on the n to a against the yawning, but it is that the n has been worn off from an.
The Frieses and Holsteiners now say ien man and en mann.
The mark-word an, a is of use to offmark a common one-head name, as ‘I have been to a white church’ (common); or, without the mark-word, ‘I have been to Whitechurch’ (one-head), the name of a village so called. ‘He lives by a pool’; ‘he lives by Pool’ (a town in Dorset). ‘He works in a broad mead’; ‘he works in Broadmead’ (in Bristol).
As the Welsh has no such mark-word, it might be thought that it cannot give these two sundry meanings; and the way in which it can offmark them shows how idle it is to try one tongue only by another, or to talk of the unmeaningness or uselessness of the Welsh word moulding.
Llan-Tydno would mean a church of Tydno, but the parish called ‘The Church of Tydno’ is in Welsh Llandydno, which, as a welding of two words, hints to the Welsh mind that Llandydno is a proper name, and so that of a parish.
Hoel da would mean a good Hoel; but to Hoel, the good king, the Welsh gives as a welded proper name Hoel dda; and to Julius Cæsar the Welsh gives, as one welded proper name, Iolo-voel, Julius-bald, whereas Iolo-moel would mean some bald Julius.
One sundriness of tale, the marking of things under speech – as onely (singular) or somely (plural) – is by an onputting to the thing-name for someliness a mark-ending, or by a moulding of the name into another shape or sound.
By mark-endings, -es, -s, -en, -n.
By for-moulding, as foot, feet—tooth, teeth; or by both word-moulding or sound-moulding and an ending, as brother, brethren.
When the singular shape ends in -sh, -ss, or -x, -ks, it takes on -es for the somely, as lash, lashes; kiss, kisses; box, boxes.
And surely, when the singular shape ends in -st, our Universities or some high school of speech ought to give us leave to make it somely by the old ending -en or -es instead of -s—fist, fisten, fistes; nest, nesten, nestes.
What in the world of speech can be harsher than fists, lists, nests?
It is unhappy that the old ending in -en, which is yet the main one in West Friesic, should have given way to the hissing s.
Where common names with the definite mark-word become names of places they are wont to lose the article, as The Bath, in Somerset, is now Bath; The Wells, in Somerset, Wells; Sevenoaks, not The Seven Oaks, in Kent.
In our version of Acts xxvii. 8, we have a place which is called The Fair Havens, instead of Fairhavens without the mark-word, as the Greek gives the name.
Other thing mark-words offmark all of the things of a name or set from others of another name or set.
All birds, or all the birds in the wood; or all taken singly, as each or every bird; or somely, as set or share; some few or a few; many or a many birds.
Another or others beyond one or some under speech.
Any one or more of a some, either apple or any apples.
Both, for the two without others; or
Much or little grass.
Many mark-words were at first thing-names.
Many was a menge, a main or upmingled set; and a great many men would mean a great set or gathering of men.
Few was feo, which seems to have meant at first a cluster or herd; and a few men was a few (cluster) of men.
Some was a sam or som, a set or upmingled mass; and some men was a sam or som of men.
Now if the speech is about the set, it may be onely, as ‘There is a great many,’ ‘there is a small few,’ or ‘a few’; but if the speech is about the bemarked things, the mark-word may well be somely – ‘many men are’; ‘few men are’; ‘some men are.’
In the queer wording, ‘many a man,’ ‘many a flow’r is born to blush unseen,’ it is not at all likely that a is the article. It is rather a worn shape, like a in a-mong (an-menge), or a-hunting (an-huntunge), of the Saxon case-word an or on, meaning in; and it is not unlikely that man has, by the mistaking of a for an article, taken the stead of men– ‘an maeng an men,’ a many or mass in men; as we say ‘a herd in sheep,’ ‘a horde in gold.’ So far as this is true the mark-word may be somely – ‘many a man or men,’ ‘a main in men are.’
None (Saxon na-an, no one) should have a singular verb – ‘None is (not are) always happy.’
Some mark-words are for a clear outmarking (as single or somely) of things outshown from among others.
Outshowing Mark-words.
The so-called definite article the is a mark-word of the same kind as this, that, these, and those.
The word the in ‘the more the merrier’ is not the article the– to a name-word. It is an old Saxon outshowing mark-word meaning with that (mid þy). ‘The more the merrier’; þy (with that measure), they are more; þy (with that measure), they are merrier.
In the wording ‘the man who’ or ‘the bird which was in the garden,’ who and which are not the names, but are tokens or mark-words of the things —who of the man, and which of the bird.
A thing may be marked by many mark-words, as ‘the (never to be forgotten) day,’ ‘the (having to me shown so many kindnesses) man is yet alive.’
A long string of mark-words may, however, be found awkward, and so we may take a name-token who for the man, and, instead of the words ‘having to me shown so many kindnesses,’ say, ‘who showed me so many kindnesses.’
Who or that is the name-token for menkind, and which or that for beings of lower life or of no life, as ‘the man who’ or ‘the bird or flower which was in the garden.’
Who and which are used in the asking of questions – ‘Who is he?’ ‘What is that?’
The name-token should follow close on the forename for the sake of clearness. ‘Alfred sold, for a shilling, the bat which William gave him,’ not ‘Alfred sold the bat for a shilling which William gave him,’ if it was the bat that was given to him by William.
These mark-words take the stead of thing-names, and are Name-stead words, and clear the speech of repetitions of the names. The baby may say ‘Baby wants the doll,’ but at length learns to say ‘I want the doll’; or ‘Papa, take baby,’ and afterwards ‘You take me’; or ‘Give baby the whip– the whip is baby’s,’ for ‘It is mine.’
A man may be beholden to the speech in three ways: —
(1) He may be the speaker, called the First Person;
(2) He may be spoken to, the Second Person (the to-spoken thing);
(3) He may be spoken of, the Third Person (the of-spoken thing);
Here the sex is marked.
It is sometimes put for an unforeset thing-name of an unbodily cause or might, as ‘it rains’; ‘it freezes.’
For a child or an animal of unknown sex we may take the neuter (or sexless) mark-word it. ‘It (the child) cries.’
SUCHNESS OR QUALITIES,
and mark-words or mark-wording of suchness, as good, bad, long, heavy.
Suchness may be marked by one word, as ‘a white lily,’ or by a some or many of words, as ‘a very white lily,’ or ‘a most dazzlingly white lily,’ or ‘a lily as white as snow.’
Things are marked as having much of something, as hilly, stony, watery; or made of something, as golden, wooden, woollen; or having some things, as two-legged, three-cornered, long-eared, or loved or hated; of the same set or likeness of something, as lovely, quarrelsome, manly, childish; wanting of something, as beardless, friendless.
Pitches of Suchness.
The Suchnesses of Things are of sundry pitches, which are marked by sundry shapes or endings or bye-words of the mark-words, as ‘My ash is tall, the elm is taller, and the Lombardy poplar is the tallest of the three trees’; or ‘Snow is whiter than chalk,’ or ‘Chalk is less white than snow,’ or ‘John is the tallest or least tall of the three brothers.’
These Pitch-marks offmark sundry things by their sundry suchnesses, as ‘The taller or less tall man of the two is my friend,’ or ‘The tallest man is less tall than the tree,’ or ‘The least tall man is taller than the girl.’
The three Pitches may be called the Common Pitch, the Higher Pitch, and the Highest Pitch.
The Welsh has a fourth Pitch-word, called the Even Pitch, as pell, far; pellach, farther; pellaf, farthest; pelled, as far (as something else).
Younger may mean younger reckoned from young, or younger reckoned from old; as ‘Alfred at 80 is younger than Edward at 85.’ In this case we may well say less old.
Worse (wyrse) is shapen from wo, wa, we, a stub-root which means wrong, atwist, bad in any way, and is our woe.
The r in weor is most likely of a forstrengthening and not a comparative meaning —weor, wyr, very bad; weorer, wyrer, still more strongly bad. But, not to double the r, men might have put a strengthening s, and so had weors.
TIME-TAKING
You cannot behold a thing in your mind otherwise than in or under some doing or in some form of being.
Every case of being or doing is a taking of time, as ‘the lily is white,’ ‘the man strikes,’ ‘the bird flies or was hit.’ For though the being white, or the striking or flying or hitting was only for the twinkling of an eye, it took time; for the eyelid takes time, however short it may be, to flit down and up over the eyeball. Thence the word commonly called the verb may be called the Time-taking word or Time-word, as it is called by the Germans Das Zeitwort; or, as it is the main word of the thought and speech, it is the Thought-word or Speech-word; or, as it is called in Latin and other tongues, the Word.
Welsh speech-lore has called the verb the soul1 of the thought-wording.
Among the thousands of sundriness of time-taking there are some wide differences which should be borne in mind.
Unoutreaching or Intransitive.
Time-takings, which must or may end with the time-taking thing, as
To be. John cannot be another man.
To sleep; to walk. John cannot sleep or walk another man.
Outreaching (Transitive).
Time-takings that may begin with the time-taking thing, and reach out to another, as
To strike; to see. John may strike or see another man.
Time-giving.
If a man, A, takes time against another, B, as to see B, we should more truly say of B that he gives, not takes, the time which A takes.
The time-words for unoutreaching time-takings may be called Unoutreaching; of the outreaching ones, Outreaching; of the time-givings, Time-giving.
In some cases there is between the time-taking thing and the time-giving thing a middle one – the thing, tool, or matter with which the time is taken, as ‘John hit William with a stone’ or ‘a cane.’ But then, again, this wording is shortened by the putting of the name of the mid-thing as a time-word, as ‘John stoned or caned William.’ And this brings in a call for the marking of two sundry kinds of time-words – the strong or moulded, and weak or unmoulded time-words.
A time-word, when it tells a taking of time by one thing against another, is in the outreaching (active) voice– ‘John strikes the iron.’ When it tells of the giving of time, it is in the time-giving (passive) voice. When it tells of an unoutreaching time-taking it is in the middle voice.
For the causing of another thing to take time some tongues have set shapes of the time-word, as, in Hindustani, durna, to run; durāna, to make another run.
We have hardly any of such words, though such are —
Lie, lay.
Sit, set.
Rise, raise.
Time-takings for becoming or making another thing become otherwise are marked by the ending -en on the mark-word, as
To blacken.
To whiten.
Misdoing by the fore-eking mis-: —
Mistake.
Misread.
Longer-lasting time-takings marked by the ending -er, as
Short or small time-takings by endings such as
A time-taking, taken as a deed or being without any time-taking thing, is taken as a thing, and its name is a Thing-name, as to write.
As in Greek the Infinitive mood, tò gráphein, the ‘to write’; and in Italian, il scrivere, the ‘to write’ (the deed of writing or a writing), so the Infinitive mood-shape of the Saxon time-word was taken as a thing-name after the preposition to, to or for, as to huntianne (to or for the deed to hunt or hunting), as ‘Why does Alfred keep those dogs?’ ‘To huntianne.’
Thence we have our wording —
‘Any chairs to mend?’ (any chairs to or for the deed mending),
‘A house to let,’
‘Letters to write,’
‘A tale to tell,’
which is all good English.
It is an evil to our speech that the thing-shape now ending in -ing should be mistaken for the mark-word ending in -ing.
Unhappily two sundry endings of the old English have worn into one shape. They were -ung or -ing and -end.
Singung is the deed of singing, a thing. Singend is a mark-word, as in the wording ‘I have a singing bird.’
Sailing and hunting, in the foregiven thought-wordings, are thing-names, and not mark-words. Sailing is segling, as ‘ne mid seglinge ne mid rownesse’ (neither with sailing nor rowing). – Bede 5, 1.
‘Wunigende ofer hyne’ (woning [mark-word] over him). – Matt iii. 16.
‘Sy wunung heora on west’ (be their woning [thing-name] waste). – Ps. lxviii 30.
‘Ða genealaehton hym to Farisaer hyne costigende’ (then came near to him the Pharisees tempting [mark-word] him). – Matt xix. 3.
‘Ne gelaede þu us on costnunge’ (lead us not into tempting [thing-name]). – Lord’s Prayer.
So ‘haelende,’ Matt v. 23; ‘haeling’; ‘bodigende,’ Matt. x. 35; ‘bodung,’ Luke xi. 32.
‘Waere þu to-daeg, on huntunge?’ (not huntende) (wert thou to-day on or in hunting?) – Aelfric’s Dialogue.
‘Hwaet dest þu be þinre huntunge?’ (not huntende) (what dost thou by thy hunting?) – Aelfric.
‘The CALLING of assemblies I cannot away with.’ – Isa. i. 13. Not ‘calling assemblies,’ which, if calling were a mark-word, would mean assemblies that call.
The right speech-trimming with the thing-names in -ing is to trim them in the old English way as thing-names in their cases; as,
‘We are the offscouring of all things unto this day.’ – 1 Cor. iv. 13. Not ‘We are the offscouring all things.’
‘For that righteous man, IN seeing and hearing, vexed his righteous soul.’
‘By the WASHING of regeneration and (the) RENEWING of the Holy Ghost.’ – Titus iii. 5. Not ‘He saved us by the washing regeneration and renewing the Holy Ghost.’
The ending -er of the time-taker (deeder, name-word) is, not unclearly, the Celtic, Welsh gwr, or in word-welding -wr, the Latin -or; as,
Welsh, barn, doom; barnwr, a doom-man.
Latin, canto, to sing; cantor, a sing-man.
Thence -er seems a far less fitting ending for a tool-name than the old Saxon -el; and a tool for the whetting of knives would be more fitly called a whettel than a whetter. Choppel, chopper; clippels, clippers.
All new time-words now taken or shapen from other tongues must be unmoulded.
We say shoot, shot (not shooted); but loot, looted (not lot), loot being the Hindustani lootna, to rob or plunder.
So time-words, which are known English words, of another kind, names or mark-words, are mostly unmoulded.
The shapening of the time-words hangs rather more on their endings than on their headings.
The oddest are those which end in the throat-pennings —NG, NK, K, G; and those ending in roof-pennings —T, D.
Because the -d of the roof-penning -ed is so unlike a throat-penning, which cannot easily stand with it: and because the T and D are like d as roof-pennings, and (see Table) they may run into them.
-ING Root-words (strong)
The wording of a time-taking (predicate) with its speech-thing (subject) is a Thought-wording (proposition).
Strong or moulded time-words are such as, for a time-taking of foretime, are moulded (without any out-eking) into another shape or sound, as
The weak or unmoulded time-words take on, unmoulded, an ending such as -ed, as
All time-words that are known names of things are unmoulded, as
Very many of our time-words are unmoulded from the same cause – that they are names of things; although such names of things, having become worn more or less out of shape, or having fallen out of use, may not show themselves to our minds what they are.
To hunt makes hunted; why? From hound, to hunt, meaning at first to seek with a hound.
It may, however, be said, ‘Is to hunt from hound, or hound from to hunt?’
Such a point is, in very many cases, cleared out by the Anglo-Saxon, in which ‘to hunt’ is hunt-i-an, not hunt-an; and the i, a worn shape of ig, shows that huntian is from hund, hound, and so hound is not from hunt.
The time-word from the thing hunt-ig-an, hunt-i-an, is to houndy, to take time with a hound.
We say
But we should say ‘he ringed (not rung) his pig’; ‘he stringed his harp’; ring and string being things.
The strong or moulded time-words are nearly or quite all words ending in one single breath-penning, and of a close sound (1, 2, 3, or 4 of the Table), as
Other time-words, name-words, or stem-words, and broad-sounded ones (5, 6, 7, 8 of the Table), are nearly all weak or unmoulded.
Weak.
The ending -NG in broad-sounded words —
-NK, Broad.
And in
-K, Broad, Long Stem-words (weak).
Make was heretofore maked:
‘For aevric rice man his castles makede.’ – Sax. Chron. MCXXXVI.
K wore out, whence
Maked, ma-ed, maed, made.
-K, Short.
-G, Short.
All but dig, dug. What a pity to put it out of keeping with all of the others! It is digged in the Bible.
-T, Long Stem-words.
-T, Short Stem-words.
-TH.
-T, Short (weak shortened).
The wear of these words was thislike:
Let-ede.
Let-de.
The mild penning, d, after a hard one, t, became hard, t. Whence lette, let, with the two tt run into one. A pity!
So were shapen feed, fedde, fed; lead, ledde, led; read, redde.
Weak – D (long).
Weak – D (short).
-L, Broad Sound (long).
A few of them are shortened, as feel, feeld, felt.
-N, Long.
-N, Short Stem-words.
-R, Broad Sounds.
Dare now makes durst; but in Friesic it is unmoulded – ‘and ne thuradon nâ wither forskina’ (and dared not to show themselves again).
-R, Short.
-S and – Z, Long.
-SS.
-SH.
-P, Long.
-P, Short.
Weak – B (short).
-V, Long.
-F, Short.
-M, Long.
All but come, came.
Stub-roots.
Time-words ending in an open breathing. Most of them are weak: —
A few of them are moulded: —
All those that end in two or three sundry breath-pennings are weak: —
A few time-words ending with a throat-penning mark the heretofore time by some oddness of shape; as,
They were opened in sound, and also took the ending ode, od (our ed), and then came into our shapes by sundry wonted changes: —
Then the d, a mild penning after a hard penning (k), became hard, t: —
as k and t are harsh together. Whence —
Our gh as in taught is the now unuttered (though still written) throat-penning.
Time-takings or time-givings may be taken as thing-marks, as ‘the hunting dog’; ‘the hunted hare.’
The sundry moods of time-takings are marked by sundry shapes of the time-word, or by bye-words or mark-words —shall, will, can, may, must.
The timings of time-takings are marked by sundry shapes of the time-word, and by bye-words or mark-words to it, as ‘the bird flies’ or does fly, or flew or did fly, or will fly.
Under-Sundrinesses of Time-takings
Time-takings are of sundry kinds, under sundry names, as to be, to walk, to strike.
Under-time-markings may be by single words, as ‘to write well or ill, slowly or quickly’; or by two or three words, as ‘he runneth very swiftly’; or by clusters of words, as ‘he runs with most amazing speed’; or ‘he works in a very skilful way.’
Fitting of the Time-word to all the cases of Person, Time, and Mood
In this fitting the time-word is helped by sundry bye-words or under-mark-words.
Can, from the Saxon cun-n-an, to ken, know, to know how. ‘I can write,’ I know how to write.
The heretofore time-shape of Ic can was Ic cuðe, for which we have now I could, with an l which was never in the root of the word, and for which there is not any ground.
May.—Mag-an, the stem of maht, might, means to strongen, to be or become strong (Lat. valere), as is shown by cases of its use in Saxon and other Teutonic tongues.
In an old Friesic good wish at the drinking to the health of a bride and bridegroom we find ‘Dat se lang lave en wel mage,’ that they long live and well may (strongen, bene valeant); and in Saxon, ‘Hu maeg he?’ how mays he? (strongens or valet).
Shall.—Sceal-an, meant, as a stem, to offmark, distinguish, or to skill in the meaning of 1 Kings v. 6 – ‘Ic sceal dón,’ I offmark or skill to do; as what I am bent to do.
‘Thou shalt love the Lord thy God.’ Thou markest or clearly seest to love the Lord thy God.
‘Thou shalt not steal.’ Thou markest this. Not to steal.
Must.—Mot-an, most-an, is most likely a stem of the word mag-an, to strongen (valere).
The -st would strengthen the meaning of mag (may) as it does in -est of longest. So ‘I must go’ (Ic moste gán) would mean ‘I am overmighted by another’s might to go.’
Time-words are fitted
To Mood, as
I write, or shall write.
I may or can write, or might or could or should write.
If I write, or if I had written.
Things and Time-takings
Timing of time-takings is the marking of their times, as now, heretofore, or hereafter.
Time.
Now or hereat.
I am, or I love, or am loved.
Heretofore done.
I was, or I loved, or was loved.
Heretofore ongoing.
I was, or I was a-loving or I did love.
Now ended.
I have been, or I have loved, or have been loved.
Heretofore ended.
I had been, or I had loved, or had been loved.
Heretofore ongoing, ended.
I had been a-loving.
Hereafter doing.
I shall be, or I shall love, or shall be loved.
Hereafter ongoing.
I shall be a-loving.
Hereafter ended.
I shall have been, or shall have loved, or shall have been loved.
Hereafter ended, ongoing.
I shall have been a-loving.
Single and stringly time-takings of the same name, as ‘Mary sold me some apples yesterday.’ There was a single selling; but under the wording ‘Mary formerly sold apples in the market,’ it is clear that under the same word sold is meant a string of sellings.
So under the wording ‘Write your name’ is understood a single writing; but under the wording ‘If you would write readily, write every day,’ the same word write implies a string of writings.
Some tongues (as the Greek and Russian) have two shapes of the time-words for these two cases of time-taking; as, Greek —
‘Take thy bill and write fifty’ (γράψον, aorist). – Luke xvi. 6.
‘Jesus, stooping down, wrote on the ground’ (ἔγραφεν, imperfect, ondoing shape, wrote on).
See the Greek text of the 3rd Epistle of John v. 13 – ‘I had many (things or many times?) to write (γράφειν, ondoing shape), but I will not with pen and ink write (γράψαι) to thee’ (aorist, offdoing form).
An understanding of the difference between the aorist and ondoing shapes is of weight in the reading of the Gospel. ‘To make intercession, to intercede for them.’ – Heb. vii. 25. To intercede once for all, at the doom-day? No. To intercede on always; for the word is not in the aorist shape, but in the present ondoing form, to be interceding.
Historic Time-wording.
A time-shape of a time-word used in an unwonted way for the telling of a string of deeds, as, in English, the present time-shape is so used for deeds of foretime, as ‘He opens the door, walks in, coolly takes a chair, sits down, and tells the maid he wishes to see me.’
So ‘Philip findeth Nathanael, and saith unto him,’ &c. – John i. 45.
The Moods of Time-takings.
Mood.
The wording of the time-taking may be; as,
(1) Now or heretofore true, or hereafter sure, as ‘He is, or was, or will be’; ‘He sings, or sang, or will sing.’ The Truth Mood.
(2) That it may or can, or could or might be so taken, as ‘He may or can go.’ The Mayly Mood.
(3) Or that it is to be wished that it may or might be taken, as ‘I wish,’ or ‘Oh that I could go.’ The Wish Mood.
Or that it is a hinge time-taking on which another hangs, as ‘If you ask (hinge), you will receive (on-hang).’
Or as bidden to be taken, as ‘Go thy way.’
Stead-marks and Way-marks of Time-takings.
Case.
Things named in speech, so as to mark the stead of the beginning or end, or of the way of the time-taking at any point of its length or outreach in time or room, are Case-things.
There are, however, two cases which are speech-cases and not stead-marks or way-marks: —
(1) That of the of-spoken thing (nominative), the thing of which the speech speaks, as ‘The bird flies’; and
(2) The to-spoken thing (vocative), as ‘O sing, sweet bird.’
Cases are marked by shapes of thing-names or by case-words, or by the setting of the case-word either after or before the time-word, as ‘The dog drove out the cat,’ where the dog is the beginning of the time-taking; or ‘The cat drove out the dog,’ where the dog is the end of it, and is shown to be so by the setting of its name after the time-word.
Source.
‘The bird flew from, or off, or out of the tree.’
‘He died of or from intemperance.’
The tree and intemperance are source-marks of flew and died.
End or Aim.
‘John loved George.’
‘He went to or towards London.’
‘Edwin worked for wages, or strolled along by the stream.’
The Stead Case.
‘John was in the field or at the church.’
The Tool.
‘Alfred wrote with a pen.’
‘The bird flew before, behind, over, under, above, below, by, around, or through the gate-turret,’ which is the way-mark of flew.
There is a Source-mark which is a source of the time-taking, not as being only that thing, but as being a thing then in some shape or kind of time-taking.
‘(a) The wind being against us, (b) we made but little way.’ a is the source of b, ‘we made but little way,’ not from the wind simply as wind, but as also being against us.
‘You being my leader, I shall overcome.’
This is commonly called the absolute case (allfree case); though the wind is not free of a time-taking (being against us). It may be called the ‘thing-so-being’ case.
Some tongues mark many of the cases by sundry endings of the thing-name, but we have in common names only one ending for case, the possessive, as ‘the horse’s mane,’ ‘John’s house.’
In name-tokens we have three case-forms, as thou, thy, thee—thy for the possessive, and thee for all the other cases.
‘The bird flew from the apple-tree in the corner of the garden, through the archway, and under the elm by the barn, round the hayrick, and on over the stream just below the willow, and above the bridge, and then to the stall, and on towards the wood, and into an ivy-bush.’
Here the sundry named things are way-marks which mark the place of the flying in its beginning and end, and at sundry points of its length.
Such stead-marks or way-marks may be taken as in either of one or two or three cases, as they may be either stead-marks or way-marks, and as their beholdingness to the time-taking may be reckoned to it or from it to themselves.
‘The bird flew over or under or by the tree.’ The flying at first reached on nearer towards the tree, and then reached off again farther from it, so that the tree was at first in the case of a toness, and then in the case of a fromness, with the flying.
But under the wording ‘the roof is over the floor,’ or ‘the floor is under the roof,’ the time-taking is is a staid and not an ongoing one, and either the roof or the floor may be in the fromness or toness case, as the height may be reckoned from it to the other, or to it from the other.
A housemother may say ‘We live near (to) Fairton’ (toness case); yet an hour afterwards she may say ‘We live too far from Fairton (fromness case) to step in readily for errands.’
Her abode may be four miles from Fairton, so that the time-taking live is as far from Fairton in one case as the other; and yet it puts it in two sundry cases.
‘If Alfred gave to Edred a field,’ the time-taking gave ended in the mid-thing, the field (the endingness case), but it put the field to Edred, as his, in the toness case.
The place of a time-taking may be shown by one place-mark, or by two or three, of which a latter may mark the place of a former, as ‘The rooks build in the elms, above the house,’ where the elms mark the place of the building, and the house marks that of the place-mark (the elms).
But some case-words are made up of a smaller case-word and a thing-name, as ‘Alfred sat beside the wall.’ Beside being ‘by the side,’ and the side of the wall (whereof case).
The figure for case-shifting, or the changing of the case-tokens, is called in Gr. enallage as
‘I have ten sovereigns in my purse’; ‘My purse contains ten sovereigns.’
‘The pump has a new handle’; ‘There is a new handle to the pump.’
‘The carpet in the hall’; ‘The carpet of the hall.’
‘The brother of or to that lady.’
‘John likes cricket or is fond of cricket.’
‘Greedy of gain or for gain.’
‘Think of me or on me.’
‘He was killed by a blow of a club or with a club.’
‘He spoke in the balcony or from the balcony.’
THOUGHT-WORDING, SPEECH-WORDING,
is the setting of words or a bewording of thought or speech (syntax).
A thought-wording (proposition) is a bewording of the case of a thing with its time-taking. ‘The boy is good’ or ‘the boy plays.’
A thought-wording may have more thing-names and time-words, as ‘The boys and girls read and play.’
Thought-wordings (propositions) may be linked together in sundry ways, though mostly by Link-words (conjunctions). ‘Men walk and birds fly’; ‘I sought him, but I found him not’; ‘I waited at the door while Alfred went into the house.’
Twin Time-takings.
The Hinge Time-taking, on which the other hangs, and the Hank Time-taking which hangs on the Hinge one, as ‘If ye ask (hinge), ye shall receive (hank).’
There are sundry kinds of hinge time-takings, as one or the other or both of the time-takings may or may not be trowed or true or sure.
(1) Hinge and hank, trowed – ‘As ye ask (as I trow you do), so ye receive (I trow).’
(2) Hinge, untrowed; hank, trowed – ‘If ye ask (I trow not whether ye will or no), then ye will receive (I trow).’
The hinge-word put down as trowedly untrue, and the hank one trowed, as ‘If ye asked (as I trow you do not), ye would receive (I trow)’; or ‘If ye had asked (ye have not), ye would have received (I trow).’
The hinge time-taking trowed, and the other untrowed, as ‘Ye ask (I trow), that ye may receive (I trow not that ye will).’
Speech-trimming.
The putting of speech into trim; trim being a truly good form or state. To trim a shrub, a bonnet, or a boat, is to put it into trim.
1. The first care in speech-trimming is that we should use words which give most clearly the meanings and thoughts of our mind, though it is not likely that unclear thought will find a clear outwording; and either of the two, as clear or unclear, helps to clearen or bemuddle the other.
With most English minds, and with all who have not learned the building of Latin and Greek words, English ones may be used with fewer mistakes of meaning than would words from those tongues; though Englishmen should get a clearer insight into English word-building ere they could hope to keep English words to their true sundriness of meaning.
The so-seeming miswordings (solœcisms) of writers in the Latinised and Greekish speech-trimming are not uncommon or unmarkworthy.
One man writes of something which necessitates another, though Latin itself has no necessito to back ‘necessitate’; another gives eliminate as meaning elicit, or outdraw; a third calls a failure of a rule an exception from it. There is no EXCEPTION to a rule but that which is excepted from it at and in the downlaying of it. If a man gives a simple rule ‘that if it rains on St. Swithin’s day it rains forty days after it,’ and it did not so rain last year, the case is a breach or failure of the rule, and not an exception to it. He gave no exception.
Some say ‘Mrs. A. has had twins’ or ‘Alfred was one of twins.’ A twin is a twain, a two, or a couple of things of the same name or kind; and twins of children must be at least four. I should say ‘Alfred was one of a twin.’ In the latter case it would be correct to say ‘There IS one or a twain of fat men,’ &c., in which is would match both.
One has written ‘ideas are manufactured.’ By whose hands? Another talks of ‘a dilapidated dress’; and a third has ‘found the stomach of a big fish dilapidated.’ What are lapides? and what means delapido?
A man has written of an old Tartar that he was ‘a tameless gorilla’ – a gorilla without a tame! as if tame were a thing-name.
Another says ‘It imposed absolute limits upon the choice of positions.’ What are absolute limits if absolute (from absolvo, to offloosen) means offloosened from all check and all limits?
A man writes of ‘a photograph reproduced by a new permanent process.’ Is it the process or the sunprint that is permanent?
Preposterous, foreaft, as when what should be præ, foremost, is put post or behind; whereas a writer gives a structure as ‘preposterously overgrown,’ as if ‘preposterous’ meant only very much, vastly.
One takes irretrievable as nohow amended. If ‘retrieve’ is the French retrouver (to find again), ‘irretrievable’ would mean not to be found again; and ‘the irretrievable defeat of the whole nation’ would be one which they could not find again, as most likely they would not wish to find it.
Twy-meanings.
From want of words in English, or of care, our wording may seem to bear two meanings, as ‘John played with Edwin, and broke his bat.’ The bat of which boy?
‘One Robert Bone of Antony shot at a little bird sitting upon his cow’s back, and killed it – the bird (I mean), not the cowe.’ —Carew.
Word-sameness (Synonyms).
Words of the same meaning are less often so than they are so called; and we sometimes give lists of synonyms showing the differences of their meanings.
A twin of words of one very same meaning is rather evil than good; and if they are not of one very same meaning they should not be given as such.
It may be that from a misunderstanding of the word tautology, as the name of a bad kind of speech-trimming, men have often shunned the good use of words.
The bad tautology from which speakers have been so frayed seems to be the giving twice or many times, within one scope of thought-wording, the same matter of speech in the same words.
It is true that it would not be good wording to say ‘John has sold John’s horse’ for ‘his horse’ since the name-tokens are shapen to stand for foregiven names.
But where the same foreused word would give a very clear – if not the clearest – meaning, there seems to be little ground against the use of it.
‘I bought a horse on Monday and a donkey on Tuesday, and sold the horse again at a gain on Thursday.’ Why should not the word horse take the latter place as well as the word steed, or equine animal, or ‘more worthy beast’ – or why should I not as well say, ‘An ass I want, and an ass I will buy,’ as ‘An ass I want, and a donkey, or it or him, I will buy’?
It seems that much wrong is done to the Greek of the Gospel by the putting, for the same Greek word, sundry English ones at sundry passages; and by what right do we try an Evangelist’s or an Apostle’s wisdom in the use of the same word, by which he must have meant to give the same meaning? or why should we make him to mean by κρίσις, at one time, a trying of a soul, and at another time a fordooming of him?
It is not any tautology to use near to each other a thing-name and a mark-word which are only fellow stem-words, as ‘As free, and not using your freedom for a cloke of wickedness.’
2. Another care in speech-trimming is the choice of words for their sound-sweetness (Gr. euphony) or well-soundingness, or for speech-readiness.
Past, with the hissing s with t, is less sound-good than after; and aqueduct, with ct, is less well-sounding than waterlode; nor is cataract softer than waterfall.
The hereunder given wordings were lately heard in a law court: —
‘I can give you one or two instances of remarkable intelligence in the cases of fat men’; and
A Juror – ‘There are one or two fat men on the jury (laughter).’
Dr. K. – ‘I don’t think there are.’
How should these cases be treated? In the first case, ‘one instances’ is a breach of word-matching, as would be ‘two instance’; and in the latter, the word one calls for man, and two for men. May we not better say, ‘I can give you at least one instance,’ or ‘I believe more instances than one’?
‘A man who has already, and will still, render such services will be,’ &c. Rendered is understood after has; but how may the thought be worded without the two puttings of the word render? Thus: ‘a man who will still be, as he has already been, found to render,’ &c.
Penetrate means insink, inpierce. M. Gambetta writes, ‘After the heroic examples given by open towns, and by villages only guarded by their firemen, it is absolutely necessary that each town, each commune, shall pay its debt to the national defence, and that all alike be penetrated by the task which is imposed upon France.’ It seems a queer speech-wording to take a task as a thing that penetrates, though it might be undertaken.
A bad wording is often found with mark-words of the higher pitch, as ‘Alfred was more clever, but not so good, as John.’ ‘Not so good’ is an inwedged word-cluster, but the word-setting is bad, as ‘more clever’ calls for the word than, not as; and ‘so good’ wants as, not than. It would be better to say ‘Alfred was more clever, but less good, than John.’ To try the word-setting take out the wedge-words (‘but not so good’), and you will have ‘Alfred was more clever as John.’
Dislike seems a bad word-shape. Mislike is the old and true English one. Like is from lic, a shape, as lich, the body of a dead man. ‘It liketh (licað) me well’ is ‘it shapes itself (looketh) to me well.’ ‘It misliketh me’ is ‘it misshapes itself to me’ (looks bad).
To seem is from the thing-name —sam, seam, seem, body or mass – and ‘it seems to me’ is ‘it bodies itself to me.’ ‘That ship seems to be a French one,’ or ‘that man seems to be ill,’ bodies itself or himself to be a French one or ill.
‘The house and the goods were burnt’; but ‘the house with the goods was (not were) burnt,’ since it is only the house that is in the speech-case, as the goods are in the mate-case. ‘The house was burnt with the goods.’
‘One of the children are come.’ No —is come. The one only is come.
We may often hear a man who is careful to speak good English say ‘This rose smells very sweetly,’ for sweet. The rose smells (gives out smell) as being itself very sweet, not as smelling (taking in smell) in a sweet way. To find which to use, the thing-markword or the under-markword, put ‘as being’ after the time-word, as ‘This rose smells (as being itself) sweet,’ not sweetly.
‘Can you smell now? you had, the other day, lost your smelling?’ ‘Yes, I smell very nicely.’ Not I smell as being myself very nice. A rose cannot smell any other thing, and so cannot smell it nicely.
‘Mary sings very charmingly,’ but ‘Mary looks very charming.’
‘John looks pale,’ but ‘John looks very narrowly into that gold-work.’
‘I can taste well,’ ‘That peach tastes good.’
To have seen a man at a bygone time would mean that the seeing was before that bygone time; but we sometimes hear a man say, ‘I should (yesterday) have been very glad to have seen you (if you had called yesterday).’ That is, by wording, ‘I should have been very glad (yesterday) to have seen you (at a time before yesterday),’ not to see you yesterday; and yet that is what the speaker means. ‘I should have been very glad (yesterday) to see you (yesterday),’ or ‘I should be very glad to-day to have seen you yesterday.’
3. Odd word-shapes are not in the main choice-worthy.
Our time-word go is of unwontsome conjugation, as its foretime shape went is not shapen from go, but is a shape of another word, wend.
So the forlessening name, leveret for a hareling, and cygnet for a swanling, are unwontsome, as being words of another speech.
4. There is a greater or less freedom of word-shifting (Gr. anastrophe, up-shifting or back-shifting), as up in ‘Fasten it up well,’ ‘fasten it well up’; or back in ‘He brought back the saw,’ or ‘he brought the saw back’; ‘There is none to dispute my right,’ or ‘my right there is none to dispute.’
Why should not English, like other tongues, more freely form words with headings of case-words, as downfalls, incomings, offcuttings, outgoings, upflarings, instead of the awkward falls-down, comings-in, cuttings-off, goings-out, flare-ups; or offcast (for cast-off) clothes; or a downbroken (for a broken-down) schoolmaster; outlock or outlocking (for a lock-out); the uptaking beam (for the taking-up beam) of an engine?
Oddly-shapen or Oddly-taken Words.
Mongrel (hybrid) words, or words partly from one tongue and partly from another.
Twy-speechwords are a sore blemish to our English, as they seem to show a scantiness of words which would be a shame to our minds; as,
Sub-warder for under-warder.
Pseudo-sailor for sham-sailor.
Ex-king for rodless or crownless king.
Prepaid for forepaid.
Bi-monthly for fortnightly or every fortnight.
Wordiness (Verbosity).
As ‘The train ran with extraordinary velocity,’ for ‘the train ran very fast.’
‘Alfred did the business with perfect fidelity;’ for ‘Alfred did the business faithfully.’
Thence much of the wordiness of our written, if not spoken, composition.
The ‘New York Times’ thus explains how it was that the flames got to the roof in the burning of the Fifth Avenue Hotel: – ‘Fire always is aspirant, the sole exception being where incandescent masses fall down, and so act as a medium of ignition.’
The hard breathing (aspirate) is often wrongly dropped or misput by less good speakers; but, while the upper ranks laugh at them for their mistakes, they themselves, like our brethren of Friesland and Holstein, often drop it from words to which it of right belongs, and mainly from the hard-breathed W or the Saxon HW (our WH).
Shall we soon hear ‘Wet the ’ook with a wetstone’ for ‘Whet the hook with a whetstone’?
Some Englishmen would say, ‘The ’ammer is on the hanvil’; and some have been known to say, ‘’enry ’it ’orace with the ’ollow of ’is ’and,’ for ‘Henry hit Horace with the hollow of his hand.’
English mark-timewords (participles) are of two kinds – one of an ongoing time-taking, as ‘the rising sun’; and another of the ended time-taking, as ‘the risen sun’; and they are of a few sundry shapes, some ending with -en, -n, as broken, and others ending with -ed, -d; and some without an ending, as cut.
1. In -en, those which are of one breath-sound, and moulded so that the bygone time-shape takes the sound (7) o2: —
2. Some one-sounded and moulded time-words, of the sound (8) in the shape for bygone time, take -en, -n; as,
Unmoulded time-words take -ed, but a few of them take -ed or -en; as,
These following, as is shown by the Saxon, ought to take -ed rather than -en: —
Hew.
Rive.
Show.
Shape, shave, and swell were in Saxon moulded, and thence took -en.
There is a set of time-words which were weak, but are now endingless in their mark-word shape. They ended with a roof-penning -t or -d, and the roof-penning of the ending -ed ran at last into the roof-penning of the stems in the way shown on p. 22, and their mark-word shapes are the same as those for bygone time.
Cast.
Cost.
Cut.
Hit.
Let.
Put.
Rid.
Set.
Shoot.
Shut.
Split.
Spread.
Shed.
Shortened Shapes (p. 23 ).
Bred.
Crept.
Dealt.
Fed.
Fled.
Left.
Lost.
Slept.
Sped.
Spilt.
Swept.
Wept.
One-sounded root time-words are mostly endingless in their mark-word shape: —
WORDS OF SPEECH-CRAFT, AND OTHERS, ENGLISHED
WITH SOME NOTES
Ablative (fromness case). The case of the source of the time-taking.
Abnormal. Unshapely, queer of shape, odd.
Abrade. To forfray, forfret. For for- see For- hereafter.
Absist. Forbear.
Absorb. Forsoak.
Absolute. Checkless, freed or loosened from checks.
Absolve. To forfree-en, forloosen.
Abstract (in speech-craft). Unmatterly, not of matterly form.
Accelerate. To onquicken, quicken.
Accent. Word-strain, a strain of the voice, higher or lower, on a breath-sound.
Accessary. A bykeeper, deedmate.
Accidence. The forshapenings of words for case, tale, time, mood, or person.
Accusative (case). End-case, the case of a thing which is the end or aim of a time-taking.
Acephalous. Headless.
Acoustics. Sound-lore, hearing-lore.
Active. Sprack (Wessex), doingsome, doughty.
Active (time-taking). One that can reach from the time-taker to another thing; as, ‘to strike.’ John can strike another thing.
Acute. Sharp or high in sound.
Adjective. Thing-markword, mark-word.
Adulation. Flaundering, glavering.
Adverb. An under-markword.
Adversative. Thwartsome.
Aerology. Air-lore.
Aeronaut. Airfarer.
Affirmation. Foraying, or a foryeaing, not a fornaying; as, ‘Yes, he is.’
Agglutinate. To upcleam, to cleam up.
Aggregate. The main, whole.
Allative (case). A name given by some writers to that of a thing at which the time-taking is aimed (the aim case).
Alienate. To unfrienden.
Allegory. A forlikening.
Alliteration. Mate-pennings (i. e. Breath-pennings).
Alone. All-án, all-one: – ‘Nen manniska buta God al ena.γράψον’ – W. Friesic. ‘No man, but God all-one (alone.)’
Altercation. A brangle, brangling, brawling.
Ambiguous. Twy-sided, twy-meaning: – ‘Alfred was struck as he was walking with a stout stick.’ Struck or walking with a stick? (twy-sided.) ‘Those shoes were made before the man that made them.’ Before in time, or before not behind?
Amicable. Friendly: – ‘We have lived in amicable relations’ (friendly, in friendliness).
Amphibious. Twy-breath’d, twy-aired: by lungs and gills.
Amphibology. A twy-casting, a wording of two meanings.
Amphimacrum. Long sidelings, long end-sounds. A foot (in verse) of one short sound between two long ones, or of a low sound between two high ones; as, Tó and fró.
Amputate. Forcarve.
Anachronism. A mistiming.
Anagram. A letter-shuffling; as, out of ‘name’ to
Anagram. A letter-shuffling; as, out of ‘1234
make ‘mane,’ or of ‘march’ to make ‘charm.’
make ‘3214
Analysis. A forloosening or unmaking of a word or wording, or any thing, into its sundry clear pieces.
Anastrophe. A word-shifting; as, ‘Fasten it up well,’ ‘Fasten it well up.’ ‘He brought back the horse,’ or ‘He brought the horse back.’ ‘There is none to dispute my right,’ or ‘My right there is none to dispute.’
Anastrophe affords a case
Of the shifting of words from place to place.
Ancestor. Fore-elder, kin-elder.
Animate. To quicken.
Annals. Year-bookings.
Annihilate. To fornaughten.
Anniversary. Year-day.
Annuity. Year-dole.
Antanaclasis. Twy-hitting on a word: – ‘If shape that was which had no shape.’ ‘It is the best art that conceals art.’
By antanaclasis is heard
Aloud once more a former word.
Anodyne. Pain-dunting, pain-dilling. (Dill, -n, to dunt, to soothe.)
Anomalous. Odd-shaped, oddly shapen.
Antepenultimate (breath-sound). Last but two.
Anticipate. To foreween, foretake.
Antique. Ancient, foreold, ereold. Old for things in being, foreold or ereold for things forgone.
Antithesis. An atsetting.
Antonomasia. Name-shunning, the marking of a man by other words than his name; as, ‘The honourable member for A.,’ instead of ‘Mr. B.’
Aphæresis. Foredocking of a word; as, pothecary for apothecary, nob for knob.
Aphorisms. Thought-cullings.
Apocope. End-lopping; as mortal for mortalis, send for send-an.
Apodosis. The hank time-taking to a hinge one (protasis): – ‘If ye ask (hinge), ye shall receive (hank).’
Aposiopésis. A tongue-checking; as, ‘Do you think – but I reck not what you think.’
Apostrophe. An offturning.
Appellative (name). A call-name.
Appendix. Hank, hank-matter.
Apposition. A twy-naming, a putting of two names for one thing; as, ‘The dog Toby.’
Aptote. Casemarkless.
Aqueduct. Waterlode.
Arbitrator. Daysman (Job ix. 33).
Armistice. A weapon-staying, weapon-stay, war-pause.
Articulation. Breath-penning.
Aspirate. A breathing, hard breathing.
Assimilate. To make of the same sam (form of matter) or lic (bodily form of a thing). To assimilate food, to forselfen it, to make it into a man’s self.
Asylum has with us widely shifted its first meaning. An asylon was a sanctuary where a man was asylos, not to be pulled away (from a, sylao) by a foe. Now it often means a place whence a man cannot get away.
Asyndeton. Linklessness. The putting of words without link-words; as, ‘Faith, hope, charity,’ for ‘Faith and hope and charity.’
Asyndeton puts side by side
Strong words, by ne’er a linkword tied.
Atmosphere. Welkin-air.
Attraction. A fordrawing, a drawing of a word out of its true case or tale by another word to which it is nearer than to the one which it should match; as, ‘Neither of the men are (for is) come.’ Where the time-word would most likely have been drawn into the somely shape by its nearness to men.
Attraction may be misdrawing.
Augment. An eking, eking on or out.
Auxiliary. Outeking or helping.
Be- (a fore-eking, meaning by, to, about). Bebutton a coat, to put buttons to it; becloke school-children, give them clokes; becloud, obnubilate; beflood, inundate; behem, bebound or circumscribe; bereek, fumigate.
Belligerent. War-waging.
Bibulous. Soaksome.
Bicornous. Twy-horned.
Bidental. Two-teeth, two-teethed.
Bilateral. Two-sided: – ‘These articles would be considered a public bilateral contract, and would form the subject of an agreement with the Powers having Catholic subjects.’ Bilateral contract is put for bipartite, a contract by or between two sides, or of men of two sides; but it would seem that the Romans did not call the two sides in a contract or cause latera, but partes– ‘Parte utrâque auditâ.’ —Plin. Jun.
Latera are the sides of a body or space.
Binocular. Two-sighted.
Bipennated (as an axe). Twy-bladed.
Botany. Wortlore.
Cardinal (numbers). Tale-numbers; as, one, two, three.
Catachresis. A misuse (of a word); as, an iron milestone; a parricide for one who has killed his mother; dilapidated for a ragged coat.
Chemistry. Matter-lore, the science of matter.
Chronology. Time-lore.
Cinereous. Ash-grey.
Circular (a trade-circular). A touting-sheet or – bill.
Circumference. Rim, rimreach.
Circumflex. A roundwinding, a winding of the voice up and down again.
Clause. A word-cluster in a thought-wording.
Cognate. Kin, akin. Cognate breath-pennings; as, T, D, both on the roof.
Collective (name). That of a cluster or a many or a body of single things; as, a club, a herd.
Colon. Gr. kōlon, a limb or member. A mark for a limb, or marked share of a thought-bewording.
Colophon. Book-end.
Comma. Gr. komma, a cut or share. A mark for the offcutting of small shares of a discourse.
Complement. An upfilling or outfilling in words.
Compound. Clustered or a cluster, a clustered word, as horseman, or a thought-wording of two or more smaller ones.
Concord. A matching.
Concrete. Matterly.
Conditional (mood). Hinge-mood (p. 34).
Conjugation (of a time-word). The forfitting of it, the fortrimming of it.
Conjunction. A link-word.
Conjunctive. Linked, byholding.
Consonant. A letter for any breath-penning.
Construction. A word-setting, speech-trimming (see p 36).
Contraction. An updrawing: —I’ll for I will, sinn’d for sinnèd.
Co-ordinate. Rank-mate, row-mate.
Copula. A link or bond.
Correlative (words). Mate-words.
Crasis. Sound-blending, sound-welding.
Dactyl. Gr. daktylos. A foot (in verse) of one long and two short sounds, or of one high and two low sounds, as cheerily.
Dative. Giving.
Deciduous (plant). Fallsome. (Does it mean that only the leaves fall, or that the whole stem falls?) An elm is summer-green or leaved, and winter-sear. Holly is ever-green or winter-leaved. Parsley or the nettle is summer-stemm’d and winter-fallsome.
Decimate. To tithe: – ‘Breech-loading rifles would so decimate columns.’ Decimate (decimo, from decem, ten, in Latin) was to take for death every tenth man of a body that had behaved very badly. The word decimate is now used very loosely, as meaning to cut up.
Defective. Wanting of something of its kind.
Defective (verb). Wanting of some time-shapes, as quoth, must, go. The foretime shape of go (gang) would be, as that of an unmoulded time-word, goed; and goed, a worn shape of the older ‘gaode,’ is found in northern folk-speech, with yowed (Saxon eode.) Gang makes ganged.
Deficiency. Underodds. Excess, overodds.
Define. L. de, off; finio, to mark. To offmark.
Demagogue. Folk-leader, folk’s-ringleader, folk’s-reder.
Democracy. Folkdom.
Dental. L. dentes, teeth. A dental breath-penning is one more or less on the teeth; as, eth, ef.
Dependency. Beholdingness: – ‘As if one member would continue his wellbeing without beholdingness to the rest.’ —Carew.
Depilatory. Hairbane.
Depletion. Unfullening.
Depopulate. Unfolk, forwaste.
Deport. Behave.
Deposit (of money). Earnest, pledge, bewaring.
Deprave. Forshrew, forwarp.
Depraved. Wicked.
Desecrate. Unhallow.
Desolate. Forloned.
Deter. Forfray.
Deteriorate. Worsen.
Develop. Unfold, unroll.
Diacritical. Offmarking, offskilling, sunder-clearing.
Diæresis. An outsundering or outopening, or foropening or forsundering, of a sound into two; as, L. sylva, syl-wa, into syl-u-a.
Diæresis splits sounds in two,
As if for true you said tri-u.
Diagram. A draught, offdrawing.
Dialect. A sunder-speech, a folk-speech, a fortongueing.
Diaphanous. Thoroughshining, thoroughshowing.
Dictionary. A word-book.
Didactic. Teaching, teachsome.
Disease. The Saxon-English had about fifty pure Teutonic names of diseases, to the main of which we now give Latin names. They were ranked under some few head-words.
Cwealm (qualm) meant mostly a deadly or many-killing epidemic, as the plague or cholera, which they would call a mancwealm (manqualm). Of this word we have left only qualm with qualmish.
Adl (our addle) was another main word for disease, as an unsoundness. From this word we have addle-headed and an addled egg.
Coða, coðe, was another main word for a disease. Hence (Dorset) a cothed sheep.
Weorc, werc (our wark), was a disease of pain or achingness, as the gout or colic.
Seoc, syc, meant any sickness in which a man sinks down on his bed or is off his legs.
Braec or breach was also given for some ailings.
To these words were set others of the parts of the body which they took, or of some other marks.
Stic-adl, stitch.
Sid-adl (side-addle), pleurisy.
Lengten-adl, lent-adl, typhus.
Hip-werc (hip-wark), sciatica.
Hrop-werc (bowel-wark, belly-wark (York)), colic.
Fylle seoc, falling sickness.
Lifer seoc, liver sickness.
Lifer-adl (Aelfric), liver-addle.
Milte-seoc (Aelfric), milt-sickness.
Lenden-wyrc (Aelfric), loin-wark.
Mete-afluing (Aelfric), atrophy.
Wylde-fyr (wildfire) (Aelfric), erysipelas.
Dissipate. Forscatter.
Distribution (of prizes). Outdealing, fordealing, outgiving: – ‘Uetdieling fen da pryzen.’ —Frs. (outdealing of the prizes.)
-dom (an ending). It is our word doom, from deem, and means a state or outreach of free judgment or power; as, kingdom, freedom.
-dom. ‘The scoundreldom and the rascality of a great city.’ Scoundrelhood. Dom (from deman, to judge or rule) would be good for kingdom, popedom, sheriffdom, or mayordom. Scoundreldom would mean the might of scoundrels as ruling or judging.
Domicile. Abode, wonestead.
Ecthlipsis. An outcasting or outstriking, as of a sound; as, ‘Sing th’ Almighty’s praise’ for ‘the Almighty’s,’ or ‘I’ll go’ for ‘I will go.’
Ecthlipsis happens where one leaves
Out sounds, or for the eaves says th’ eaves.
Elative (case). The fromward case; as, ‘He came from the house.’
Electricity. Matter-quickness; not speed, but liveliness. The word electricity means, as a word, only amberishness.
Ellipsis. An outleaving, as of a word understood; as, ‘I went to St. Paul’s’ (church).
Ellipsis is of any word
Well understood, but yet not heard.
-el (an ending). It means smallness or slightness: —Dazzle, to daze; fraze, frizzle; nose, nozzle (p. 18).
Embrasure. Gun-gap, cannon-gap.
Emphasis. Speech-loudening, speech-strain.
Emporium. Warestore.
Enallage. Case-shifting, an onchanging, as of a word or case into or for another; as, ‘He was father to (or of) the fatherless.’ ‘The child took the toy in (or with) her hand.’
Enallagē takes word or case,
To put it in another’s place.
-en-ing (an ending). It means a becoming such; as, blacken, to make or become black; blackening, the becoming black.
The ending -en-ing differs from -ness, -en-es, as in blackness, which means the having become such.
Enthesis. An insetting.
Epenthesis. An inputting or inthrusting or infoisting of a sound or clipping into a word.
Epithet. A mark-word put to a thing; as, ‘The far-shooting Apollo,’ ‘the white-blossom’d sloe.’
Equilibrium. Weight evenness.
Equivalent. Worth evenness.
-er-r (an ending). It means outeked in size or time: —Chatter, to chat much; clamber, to climb much; wander, to wind about (pp. 18, 59).
Esculent (plant). Meatwort.
Etymology. Word-building, word-making, word-shapening.
Euphemismus. A fair wording, or the putting of bad or unworthy things in a fairer light by words of less evil meanings; as, ‘I did time’ for ‘I was in prison.’ ‘A government man’ for ‘a convict.’
By euphemismus men are glad
To make a bad case seem less bad.
Euphony. Sound softness, sound sweetness.
Exalt. Forheighten: – ‘Sa hwa him selma forheaget’ (whoever himself forheightens). —Friesic (Matt xxiii. 12).
Excrescence. Outgrowth.
Exegetical. Outclearening.
Exordium. Outsetting, outset.
Expansion. Outbroadening of wild or overwrought fullness readily becomes a bad kind of wordiness: – ‘Farmer Stubbs drank beer,’ ‘The votary of Demeter, who rejoiced in the name of Stubbs, indulged in potations of the cereal liquor’; or ‘He received me with the most lively indications of amity’ for ‘He received me very kindly’; or for ‘He owes ten thousand pounds,’ ‘He is in a state of indebtedness to the extent of ten thousand pounds’; ‘He warned the hunters off his land,’ ‘He conveyed to the votaries of Diana a strong admonition that they would not be permitted to prosecute their sport within his domain.’
Faculty. Makingness.
Filiaceous. Threaden.
Flexible. Bendsome.
Fluctuate. Waver.
Foliate. Leafen.
For-. The fore-eking of forgive, forbear, is a most useful one. It is the Anglo-Saxon for, the German ver, and the Latin per, and means off or away.
For-go, per-eo, to go off or away.
Per-suadeo (L. suadeo, from suavis), to soften or sweeten off.
Foreshorten and forego should be forshorten and forgo.
Forceps. Tonglings, nipperlings.
Fore- (a fore-eking). Foredoom, predestinate; fore-token, portent, omen (p. 61).
Fossil. A forstonening.
Frangible. Breaksome.
Garrulity. 4 Wordiness, talksomeness.
Genealogy. Kin-lore, kinhood-lore.
Genitive (case). The offspring case (p. 30).
Genuflexion. Knee-bowing. Much has been said (in the law trials about posture in the administration of the Holy Communion) of genuflexion. A genuflexion is any knee-bowing, but all knee-bowing is not kneeling, which is knee-grounding.
Glossarist. A word-culler.
Glossary. Gr. glossa, tongue, speech. A word-list or word-list: – ‘Mei en lyst vin oade spreckworden’ (with a list of old saws). —Friesic.
Grandiloquent. High-talking.
Gratuitous. Out of kindness. Gratia is good will, free kindness; and gratuitus is freely bestowed of gratia, without hire or reward. But a writer says that an attack of slander on a woman’s purity ‘was gratuitous,’ or of gratia or good will, without hire or reward, as if gratuitous meant without grounds of malice.
