Page:Alexander and Dindimus (Skeat 1878).djvu/42

 pulle, punched, purchas, purpre. Obs.: prest, prestly, prow, pris or prys. (Add preche, of Latin origin.) Quainte. Obs.: quaintise. Resoun, regne, remewid, renoun, reproue, reward, riche, richesse, rommede (roamed), robbed, romauncus, rout, reule. Sacrifice, saue, sauiour, sauur, sb., sauoren, scole, sience, scorpionus, sel (seal), sesoun, seruantis, serue, simple, sengle, soile, solas, solempne, soueraine, space, spirit, spouce, stable, stat, somak, storie, straiten, stidie (study), sodainly, sofisen, suffre (soffre), somme (sum), sur (sure), sustaine (sostaine). Obs.: swaginge. Taried, tariginge, tast, tastinge, tempren, tempest, templus, temted, tende, tendere, tentus, titelid, torche, turment, touche, touchinge, tribit (tribute), trye, turnen. Obs.: tache, tende. Vse (use), ''sb. and vb. Obs.:'' vndigne. Varied, verrai, vertue, vois. Werre (war), werrede (warred), wasten.

An inspection of these words may teach us some useful lessons. It is remarkable to what extent, in some cases, the language from which an English word is derived is indicated merely by its initial letter. Imperfect as this list is, and unsafe as it may be to generalise from so short a list of words as those which are included in the present glossary, I yet believe that the proportion of French to Anglo-Saxon words in Middle English is, approximately, capable of being ascertained from the above list. Thus the different words in the Glossarial Index beginning with the letter A are, roughly speaking, about 72; whilst the French words in the above list beginning with the same letter are 20. This gives a percentage of 27, neglecting fractions. Following out a similar calculation for the other letters, we obtain, merely as a rough guide, the following results.

Percentage of French words for each letter. Without insisting much on the accuracy of these figures, we may still see clearly that the letters under which we may most expect to