Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 16.djvu/289

Rh prove by invincible arguments, has varied very little for these two thousand six hundred and thirty four years past. And my proofs will be drawn from etymology; wherein I shall use my readers much fairer than Pezro, Skinner, Verstegan, Camden, and many other superficial pretenders have done; for I will put no force upon the words, nor desire any more favour than to allow for the usual accidents of corruption, or the avoiding a cacophonia.

I think, I can make it manifest to all impartial readers, that our language, as we now speak it, was originally the same with those of the Jews, the Greeks, and the Romans, however corrupted in succeeding times by a mixture of barbarisms. I shall only produce at present, two instances among a thousand from the Latin tongue. Cloaca, which they interpret a necessary-house, is altogether an English word; the last letter a being, by the mistake of some scribe, transferred from the beginning to the end of the word. In the primitive orthography, it is called a cloac, which had the same signification; and still continues so at Edinburgh in Scotland, where a man in a cloac, or cloak, of large circumference and length, carrying a convenient vessel under it, calls out, as he goes through the streets, "Wha has need of me?" Whatever customer calls, the vessel is placed in the corner of the street; the cloac, or a cloak, surrounds and covers him; and thus he is eased with decency and secrecy.

The second instance is yet more remarkable. The Latin word turpis signifies nasty, or filthy. Now this word turpis is a plain composition of two English words; only, by a syncope, the last letter of the first syllable, which is d, is taken out of the middle, to prevent