Page:The Sources of Standard English.djvu/199

170 (a bout at wrestling), which Mr. Wedgwood derives from bugan (flectere), and bought, a word applied to the coils of a rope, and so to the turns of things that succeed each other. File, akin to the Dutch vuil, means a worth&shy;less person; we may still often hear a man called ‘a cunning old file.’ In 2499 of the Havelok, we read,

‘Here him rore, þat fule file.’ foul

We see the origin of the word deuce in the line —

‘Deus! lemman, hwat may þis be?’

Storie appears clipped of the vowel that once began it; and Justice is used for a man in office, as well as for a virtue.

It is curious to see in this Lay two forms of the same word that has come to England by different channels; we have gete (custodire) from the Icelandic gœta; and also wayte, which means the same, coming from the French guaiter, a corruption of the wahten brought into Gaul by her German conquerors. Sad havock must have been wrought with English prepositional compounds in the eighty years that separated the Havelok from the Ormulum. In compound words, umbe, the Greek amphi, comes only three times throughout the long poem before us; for only five times; with only once; of not at all. The English tongue had been losing some of its best appliances. The preposition to, answering to the German zer and the Latin dis, is still often found in composition, and did not altogether drop until the days of James I.