CHAPTER XI.

NEW WORDS.-PREFIXES AND SUFFIXES.

XXXVIII. New Words are Constantly Coming into the Vocabulary. They enter to supply the demand which increase of knowledge creates. The changes in the vocabulary of a language, unlike those made in its grammar, are greatest during periods of high intellectual activity. As shown, this demand is partly met

1. By the Widening of Meaning in Words.—Of this we need not give illustrations here. When we learn something new of an object, we do not cast about for a new word. We simply add this new fact to the old facts, and stretch the old word to cover it.

Out of some kind things, we can, for upper part of the

2. By Metaphor and Metonymy. When we come upon a new thing resembling an old, or sustaining any other noteworthy relation to it, we may bring over the word denoting the old, and apply it to the new. of likeness, real or fancied, between the instance, apply head, the name of the body, to one end of a pin, to the top of a cabbage, to the source of a river; we can extend moon to name the satellites of Jupiter and Saturn. Words so transferred on the basis of likeness between the things, we call metaphors. From the material used in making it, we can call a sword, steel, and sails, canvas. Putting a part for a whole, we may speak of a ship as a keel or a mast or a sail. A word so used we call a metonymy.

And even when the metaphor or the metonymy yields only an additional name for a thing, how the expression gains in beauty and vividness by its use! How apt is bubble applied to the South Sea Scheme! and who does not wish he had anticipated Lowell in calling humming-birds zigzagging blurs and winged emeralds?

3. By Distinguishing between Synonyms.-As said in the preceding chapter, this discrimination does not actually add new words to the vocabulary, but it releases from a joint work all the words of a group, and leaves each for a distinct service.

4. New Words Come from Proper Names. Places and inventors, discoverers, and other persons, noted for some act or quality, leave their names in nouns and verbs and adjectives.

Martinet, tantalize, boycott, canter, macadamize, petrel, maudlin, Jeremiad, Gerrymander, Puseyism, cereal, meander, money, dunce, jovial, gypsy, worsted, volt,

and scores of other words illustrate this source of verbal growth.

5. Obsolete Words are Recalled.-Words return to active duty after a long Rip Van Winkle sleep. It would seem that hitherto men have not been able to carry on abreast all departments of investigation. In their advance they have moved not in straight lines, but in lines that zigzag. When engrossed with one class of questions, and off on what we may call one tack of their progress, they have been forced to neglect topics that once occupied them. Words needed and used before are not needed now, and drop into disuse. They become, in the language of the dictionary, first obsolescent, and then obsolete. But when the investigators have put about, and return, not over the old course, but in the old

direction, and are absorbed in the re-discussion of old questions, the disused words are wanted, and are revived, and re-enlisted into active service.

6. Old Words are Compounded. are Compounded. The compounds stand for a while with a hyphen between their parts, as in camp-stool, door-post, and foot-note; the hyphen drops out, as in steamship, railway, fortnight, and forehead, when the relation between the parts has become intimate.

It is worth noting that this capacity for composition possessed by Anglo-Saxon words gradually diminished, though it was not wholly lost, after they had entered English. A paralysis seems to have fallen upon them. Words grew indisposed to combine with words or with prefixes, and prefixes to unite with words. The reason is not far to seek. The new tongue supplemented its available Anglo-Saxon words by a liberal employment of the Norman-French. The old habit of answering calls for words by compounding them out of old Anglo-Saxon material-a habit which all self-relying languages have-was not continued in the new tongue, because of its free use of Latin. To employ the ready-made words seemed only just, and was easier than to make new ones. Consequently the facility and the felicity of combination which Anglo-Saxon words once possessed no longer distinguish them. They still combine, but with an awkwardness that comes from loss of habit.

7. We Borrow from Modern Languages.-The English go everywhere, and bring back many things; and, along with the things, their foreign names. This accounts for the hundreds of commercial terms illustrated in Chapter II.

8. We Use the Greek and the Latin.—We need not enlarge upon this way of adding to our vocabulary. We may, perhaps, say that those coming in from the Greek, ofter

technical at first, in time work out of special into general

use.

9. We Make Many Words out of One.-Words increase by what we may call fissiparous generation; by change of accent or of spelling, one word multiplying into two or more; as :

Species, specie, spice; spirit, sprite; other, either, or; rote, route, rout, rut.

10. New Words by the Use of Prefixes and Suffixes.— Words come into the vocabulary by joining to words, already in, our hosts of Saxon and Greek and Latin prefixes and suffixes. These prefixes and suffixes are words, or relics of words, that have run down into mere formative elements. They combine, as we shall see, each with many roots, and with roots already in combination, and vastly increase the number and the expressiveness of vocables.

CHAPTER XII.

WORD-BUILDING.

-ELEMENTARY ENGLISH.

NOTE. This work was suggested by the Syllabus of the Regents of the University of the State of New York. The roots laid down in the Syllabus, and their division into Elementary and Advanced English, we have adopted. But we have (1) added many distinct roots, and (2) have taken all the root-forms of a word instead of one only. The derivative words have thus increased from many hundreds to several thousands-between five and six.

Introduction.

I. The Meanings of Root and Stem.-The word root is used by philologists to denote the simplest and most primitive forms which words once had, or to which they can now be traced. In this sense of the word—its rigidly scientific sense-the word root names that monosyllabic form which is the origin and source of all verbal derivatives. But usage applies the word as well to later forms of these original and primitive words-forms from which, by the use of prefixed and suffixed syllables, new words are produced-nouns, adjectives, verbs, and adverbs. Respectable as is the authority for calling these "later forms" stems, what we regard as the prevailing usage leads us to choose roots instead.

II. Definitions.—A primitive word is one not derived from another word in the same language.

A derivative word is one derived from another word; as, unmanly-man being the primitive word.

A compound word is one composed of two or more simple words; as, forty-two.

Prefixes and suffixes are, with rare exceptions, relics of words once independent, but now run down into mere formative elements. They are used, each with a meaning of its own, to modify the meaning of the root to which in the derivative they are attached; though, when many of them are used in the same word, it is sometimes difficult to detect in the derivative the distinct force of each. Prefixes