Page:The Sources of Standard English.djvu/61

32 is, in our day, the one sole case in which the is not a Definite Article.

The expletive þœr was used to begin a sentence, as, þœr was án cyning. This resembles nothing in German or Latin.

The English of old employed hwœt (quid) as an In&shy;terjection. This is the first word of the Beowulf, where it answers to our Ho. The old usage may be traced down to our times, though it was thought to be some&shy;what overdone by King George the Third.

Our speech is now but a wreck of what it once was; for instance, of the many verbs which bore the prefix œt, only one is left, retaining that preposition sadly mangled; this is œtwitan, our twit.

Other verbs have become oddly corrupted, and the corruptions have, as it were, run into each other. Thus we have but one verb, own, to represent both the old áhnian (possidere), and the old unnan (concedere). Thus also we have but settle, to stand for both setlan and sahtlian.

An old verb had often two forms slightly differing; we still translate fugere by both fly and flee, following the