Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 10.djvu/216

 176

NOTES AND QUERIES. [io s. x. AUG. 29,

knows that rudder is a direct agential deriva- tive from the verb to row.

What I have already said about vowel- shortening is by no means complete ; there is much more behind. The derivatives frequently react on the primitives, with surprising results. Thus we have, for example, to account for the fact that the oo in food is long, whilst that in blood is short. They have evidently been differently treated, and their whole history must be considered. In the case of food, the A.-S. foda was dissyllabic ; and so was the early M.E. fo-de, where fo- was an open syllable. The later food was hence regularly derived ; and there was no tendency to shortening, because food had no immediate derivatives. The only real derivative was fodor, i.e., the modern fodder, with shortened o. The derived verb to feed had a mutated vowel from the first.

But blood (A.-S. blod) had the deriva- tive blood-ed, as in hot-blooded, cold-blooded ; and there was a verb to blood as well as a verb to bleed, the former having blooded for its past participle. Besides this, there was the highly important adjective bloody, in such common use that there is perhaps no other so familiar to the lower orders among our speakers. Hence it was that the ten- dency to shortening had its due effect ; and we all know the result.

As I could give a considerable number of similar examples, I think there is a good deal more in the tendency which I have indicated than my opponents are willing to admit. WALTER W. SKEAT.

The shortening of vowel-sounds on the lengthening of words is the constant rule in Welsh, and it is very interesting to see from PROF. SKEAT'S article how common it is in English. For Welsh cf. djn, man, pi. djnion ; gwrdig, woman, pi. gwrdgedd. There are instances of the rule in inflexions ; for instances in composition cf. un, one ; ton, note, with unddn, monotonous. The rule is, I believe, invariable. H. I. B.

SALARINO, SALANIO, AND SALERIO (10 S. ix. 22, 113, 236, 315, 515; x. 132). I am quite sure that MR. M. L. R. BRESLAR does not mean anything discourteous, but it is not easy to see what he does mean when he says that " ST. S WITHIN has been kind enough to assert the contrary " of MR. BRESLAR'S own declaration that Sala never was a Jewish name. I hardly understand how MR. BRESLAR can be better informed than M. Lionti, in whom M. Ulysse Robert, author of * Les Signes d'Infamie au Moyen

Age,' places much trust. Speaking of the badge imposed upon Venetian Jews, M.. Robert says :

" II y a des dispenses particulieres ; nous en trouvons une en faveur de Moi'se Rap, me"decin, en recompense des services rendus par lui a la Repub- lique de Venise ; une autre en faveur des families de- Samuel et Elie Sala de 1392, est cite"e par M. Lionti." P. 82.

ST. SWITHIN.

As favouring the adoption of the spelling Solanio, instead of Salanio (see 10 S. ix. 315), from Sp. solano, I would instance Shake- speare's apparent coining of the name Borachio in ' Much Ado about Nothing ' from Sp. borracho, drunk, passionate. Solano- too, it should be noted, is still current in Spanish both as prsenomen and cognomen.

In the Furness ' Variorum Edition " (notes to list of dramatis personae) it is shown that Shillock not Sallock, as MR. BRESLAR wills it was a common generic name in the sixteenth century, probably corrupted from the Italian Scialac or Scialacca. What I meant to convey as to the proposed derivation from Shiloh, wa& that it was inconceivable that such a con- sideration could have entered into the poet's calculations at a time when the study of etymology was in its infancy. It is of course possible that " Shiloh " 'is the primi- tive Jewish source of the name (see 1 S. i. 184). ^ N. W. HILL.

New York.

INITIAL LETTERS INSTEAD OF WORDS (10 S. ix. 126, 174). May I take occasion to protest against the objectionable and. growing practice of using the initials K.B. to denote a Knight Bachelor ? Before the- division of the Order of the Bath into- classes in 1815, these initials invariably de- noted a Knight of the Bath, and much con- fusion is likely to arise in the future from the use of the same initials for a Knight Bachelor, whose rank is properly and con- veniently described by the abbreviation " Knt." HARBEN.

We have become inured to such abbre- viations as " buses," " cabs," " bykes," " wires," or " phones," but the modern lazy habit of substituting initials for names of various organizations or institutions is increasingly troublesome. To give an illus- tration : A printed booklet of parochial accounts has just come under my eye in which the following headings occur : A.C.S., C.L.B., S.P.G., C.E.M.S., U.M.C.A., W.H.S., C.B.S., and so on. Some are recognizable r but a waste of time would be involved in tracing others.