Page:The Sources of Standard English.djvu/62

Rh oldest usage. It is a pity that we have lost our accents; we can now no longer distinguish between metan (me&shy;tiri) and métan (occurrere). We have often doubled our vowels to mark a difference; thus gód (bonus) has become good, that it may not be confounded with our word for Deus: it is the same with toll and tool, cock and cook, and many others.

We have sometimes thought that we could improve on our forefathers' speech by yoking two of their synonyms together; when we say sledgehammer, it is like a Latinist writing malleus twice over. Now and then a good old word is sadly degraded; thus dyderian (decipere) now exists only in the slang verb diddle. Further on I shall give examples of words, that are seven hundred years old, set down as mere slang in our day.

There was one favourite art of our forefathers, which we have not yet altogether lost, prone though we have