Page:Stories from Tagore (IA storiesfromtagor00tago).pdf/140

126 English back to their sources, e. g. currant, comes from Corinth; mango from the Portuguese manga (from the Tamil “ mankay ” fruit-tree); orange from the Arabic “narang ” and Hindustani “ narangi ”; apricot from Arabic al-burquq; date from the Greek "darktulos," meaning “ finger.”

alphabet. The two first letters in the Greek language are called “ alpha ” and “ beta.” Then the whole series of letters was named an alphabeta or alphabet.

consonants. From the Latin “sonare,” meaning to sound. Consonants are letters which “sound with” the vowels. Compare dissonant, assonance, sonant, sonorous, sonata.

cannal. This is one example of a word taken into English from the Latin, through the French, having a companion word in English. The companion word in this case is channel. Compara cavalry and chivalry, legal and loyal, guard and ward.

dumbfounded. This word has come into the English language from common speech. It is a mixture of the English word dumb, and the Latin “fundere,” “to pour” which we find in confound, profound, confusion. It is not often that we get such hybrid words in earlier English, though to-day they are becoming common in the case of new words such as motorcar, speedometer, airplane, waterplane, automobile, etc. The old rule used to be that a compound world in English should have both its parts from the same language (e.g. both parts Latin, or Greek, or Saxon, etc.). But this rule is rapidly breaking down in common practice as new words rush into the English language to express all the new discoveries of science. We have English and Greek roots mixed (such as airplane), and Latin and Greek roots mixed (such as oleograph).