Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 10.djvu/65

 ii s.x. JULY is, 1914.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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CHILEAN VIEWS (11 S. x. 12). QUIEN SABE should look at Maria Graham's ' A Journal of a Residence in Chile,' 1824, and Alexander Caldcleugh's ' Travels in South America,' 1825. The latter has eight plates. If QUIEN SABE likes to communicate with me, I may be able to give him two addressei where he may be able to obtain some illus- trations. W. H. QUARRELL.

0tt Hooks,

A Neic English Dictionary on Historical Principles. (Vol. X.) Traik-Triniiy. By J. A. H. Murray. (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 5-9.)

THIS double section, as a moment's consideration will of itself show, contains a large number ol words derived from Latin and Greek, and but a small proportion of words of Teutonic origin. It embraces two great groups of compounds, each of which occupies many columns those with " trans-," and those with " tri-." To both an excellent General Introduction is supplied. Of the words in " trans- " and it may be said, of the words of Latin derivation in this section throughout the most interesting have come to us, not direct from the Latin, but through French. There is a curious series of compounds of " trans- " with true English words, which at any rate shows how completely the syllable has established itself in our vernacular. The best of these which goes back to the late eighteenth century, and has the authority of Wellington's dispatches is undoubtedly " tranship." In the little collection of instances of " transact " used " dyslogistically " and between inverted commas in the sense of " to compromise," it should have been noted that the writers are simply englishing the French " transiger." The most interesting " trans- " words from the point of view of the history of thought are " transcendental " and " transubstantiation," and the words connected with them : all the articles concerned are satis- factory. An interesting word from its long, continuous, and varied career in technical use legal and commercial is " transfer," which begins with Wyclif in Ezek. xlviii. 14, as " trans- ferrid," having in an explanatory gloss " or born ouer," and changed in 1388 to " translated." We do not see much nowadays of " transformism " or of " transmutation," but quotations here show that, as late as the eighties, these terms were still rivals to the term " evolution," which has happily triumphed. An amusing and instructive collec- tion of meanings and instances is to be found under " transient." The word appears to have got a footing " transatlantic-ally " as a substantive in the sense of a passing guest at an hotel a curiosa infelicilas, as we think. The origin of '' tr.-msept " remains as ever unelucidated the gaps of a century and a half between Leland and Wood, and of a century or nearly so between Wood and Warton, being still unfilled. Some lit Mr light seems to be thrown on " transmogrify " l>y its appearance in the ' Xew Canting Dictionary ' (1725) as " imumoprify, or rather trans- vngraju" which, as the editor of the ' N.E.D.' suggests, may well be a vulgar or uneducated

formation in -fy from " transmigrate " or " trar.s- migure." We hope the great Dictionary has by its article on " transpire " " scotched " the- misuse of that word which it imputes in the first instance to the United States for " to occur." As examples of the minute care of tho compilers we may notice " transriverine," from The Athenceum of 1900, apparently a nonce-word as yet, and Coleridge's quaint " transnihilation." On the other hand, it is curious, in an historical dictionary, that the date and occasion of the giving of the name " Transvaal " to the territory won by the Great Trek should have been entirely omitted ; as it is also curious that one hardly sufficient and merely allusive quotation should be all that is given on the subject of the charac- teristic discipline of the Trappists, which, after all, has become proverbial. An excellent article- which falls into the midst of these " trans- '" compounds is " transom." It is believed by Prof. Skeat, as by Sir James Murray, to come from transtrum, but no intermediate forms have been found, and since it is a word of long standing in more than one great craft, it is suggested that our form of it, which goes back to the fifteenth century, may be a workman's corruption of the Latin.

The internal arrangement of some of the- longer articles in this section has struck us as. unusually good. We may mention among them " trial " and " tree " and " trim," v. Good, too, is the brief summary of facts given in such his- torical articles as explain " trailbaston," " trea- surer," or " trimoda necessitas " so long known to historical students by a travestied name.

The article on " tramp " is one of the most entertaining. We confess we did not know before of the existence of the peculiarly unhappy word " trampism," which, indeed, seems to have as yet no more than feeble journalistic authority. A synonymous word, " trampage," has also cropped up -equally, to our thinking, an atrocity, and equally illustrating the need there is for the revival of English suffixes. These queer, un- pleasant words come to us chiefly from the other ide of the globe. Would it not be a good plan to send Mr. Lascelles Abercrombie on a mission to the Far West to listen to as much unsophisti- cated conversation as possible, and see if he cannot find some new substantives, with English suffix to an English root, and having sound life in them ? Dialect dictionaries might furnish forms, but they would too probably prove de- vitalized.

How an unusual event revives old \ffTrds might be illustrated from more than one term connected with the coronation of our last two kings, and here we have an example in " traverse," used for a small curtained-off compartment in a church. " A little traverse," says Dell in 1633, speaking of James I.'s coronation, " is to be made on the South side of the Altar. . . .for the King to. ... disrobe himself," and in 1902 The Westminster Gazette tells how King Edward " went into his traverse." " Treacle, " trick," " trifle," " trek- schuit," and " triforium " may be mentioned out of a host of words full of suggestion and instruc-
 * ion as we have them here presented to us, but

we have not space to single out further examples. Tho section contains 3,936 words, illustrated jy 14,405 quotations, and it certainly comprises some of the best things in the Dictionary.