Page:The Sources of Standard English.djvu/136

Rh

The old meaning of stintan was ‘to be weary;’ it now has the meaning of ‘to leave off.’ See II. page 92.

We now first find the verb stir with an intransitive sense.

Tœcan, ic tœhte (docere, docui), become in Orrmin's month tœchenn, ic tahhte, not far from our own way of pronouncing it, and feccan becomes fecchenn.

The old geworht is now seen as wrohht, not far from our wrought

We cannot help envying Orrmin his power of making long Teutonic compounds. He has no need to write the Latin immortality, when he has ready to hand such a word as unndœþshildi&#x0293;nesse, implying even more than the Latin. But this power was now unhappily on the wane in England.

We have had a great loss in the Old English words mid (cum) and niman (capere). These are, with little change, good Sanscrit; and the Germans have been too wise to part with them. Orrmin but seldom employs them, and they must have been now dying out in the North. He is fonder of the two words which have driven them out, i.e. with and take. Had the banks of Thames been the birthplace of our Standard English, we should have kept all four words alike.

In giving a specimen of Orrmin's verse, I have been careful to take the subject from scenes in Courtly life, where, after his time, numbers of French words must unavoidably have been used by any poet, however much a lover of homespun English. Orrmin's peculiar way of doubling consonants will be remarked. He clings