Page:The grammar of English grammars.djvu/1060



2. AN, our indefinite article, is the Saxon oen, ane, an, ONE; and, by dropping n before a consonant, becomes a. Gawin Douglas, an ancient English writer, wrote ane, even before a consonant; as, "Ane book,"--"Ane lang spere,"--"Ane volume."

OBSERVATIONS.

OBS. 1.--The words of Tooke, concerning the derivation of That and The, as nearly as they can be given in our letters, are these: "THAT (in the Anglo-Saxon Thæt, i.e. Thead, Theat) means taken, assumed; being merely the past participle of the Anglo-Saxon verb Thean, Thegan, Thion, Thihan, Thicgan, Thigian; sumere, assumere, accipere; to THE, to get, to take, to assume.

'Ill mote he THE That caused me   To make myselfe a frere.'--Sir T. More's Workes, pag. 4.

THE (our article, as it is called) is the imperative of the same verb Thean: which may very well supply the place of the correspondent Anglo-Saxon article Se, which is the imperative of Seon, videre: for it answers the same purpose in discourse, to say.... see man, or take man."--Diversions of Purley, Vol. ii, p. 49.

OBS. 2.--Now, between Thæt and Theat, there is a considerable difference of form, for æ and ea are not the same diphthong; and, in the identifying of so many infinitives, as forming but one verb, there is room for error. Nor is it half so probable that these are truly one root, as that our article The is the same, in its origin, as the old Anglo-Saxon Se. Dr. Bosworth, in his Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, gives no such word as Thean or Thegan, no such participle as Thead or Theat, which derivative is perhaps imaginary; but he has inserted together "Thicgan, thicgean, thigan, to receive, or take;" and separately, "Theon, to thrive, or flourish,"--"Thihan, to thrive,"--and "Thion, to flourish;" as well as the preterit "Theat, howled," from "Theotan, to howl." And is it not plain, that the old verb "THE," as used by More, is from Theon, to thrive, rather than from Thicgan, to take? "Ill mote he THE"--"Ill might he thrive," not, "Ill might he take."

OBS. 3.--Professor Hart says, "The word the was originally thæt, or that. In course of time [,] it became abbreviated, and the short form acquired, in usage, a shade of meaning different from the original long one. That is demonstrative with emphasis; the is demonstrative without emphasis."--Hart's E. Grammar, p. 32. This derivation of The is quite improbable; because the shortening of a monosyllable of five letters by striking out the third and the fifth, is no usual mode of abbreviation. Bosworth's Dictionary explains THE as "An indeclinable article, often used for all the cases of Se, seo, thæt, especially in adverbial expressions and in corrupt Anglo-Saxon, as in the Chronicle after the year 1138."

OBS. 4--Dr. Latham, in a section which is evidently neither accurate nor self-consistent, teaches us--"that there exist in the present English two powers of the word spelled t-h-e, or of the so-called definite article;" then, out of sixteen Anglo-Saxon equivalents, he selects two for the roots of this double-powered the; saying, "Hence the the that has originated out of the Anglo-Saxon thy is one word; whilst the the that has originated out of the Anglo-Saxon the, [is] another. The latter is the common article: the former the the in expressions like all the more, all the better--more by all that, better by all that, and the Latin phrases eo majus, eo melius."--Latham's Hand-Book, p. 158. This double derivation is liable to many objections. The Hand-Book afterwards says, "That the, in expressions like all the more, all the better, &c., is no article, has already been shown."--P. 196. But in fact, though the before comparatives or superlatives be no article, Dr. Latham's etymologies prove no such thing; neither does he anywhere tell us what it is. His examples, too, with their interpretations, are all of them fictitious, ambiguous, and otherwise bad. It is uncertain whether he meant his phrases for counterparts to each other or not. If the means "by that," or thereby, it is an adverb; and so is its equivalent "eo" denominated by the Latin grammarians. See OBS. 10, under Rule I.

SECTION II.--DERIVATION OF NOUNS.

In English, Nouns are derived from nouns, from adjectives, from verbs, or from participles.

I. Nouns are derived from Nouns in several different ways:--

1. By the adding of ship, dom, ric, wick, or, ate, hood, or head: as, fellow, fellowship; king, kingdom; bishop, bishopric; bailiff, or baily, bailiwick; senate, senator; tetrarch, tetrarchate; child, childhood; God, Godhead. These generally denote dominion, office, or character.

2. By the adding of ian: as, music, musician; physic, physician; theology, theologian; grammar, grammarian; college, collegian. These generally denote profession.

3. By the adding of r, ry, or ery: as, grocer, grocery; cutler, cutlery; slave, slavery; scene, scenery; fool, foolery. These sometimes denote state or habit; sometimes, an artificer's wares or shop.

4. By the adding of age or ade: as, patron, patronage; porter, porterage; band, bandage; lemon, lemonade; baluster, balustrade; wharf, wharfage; vassal, vassalage.

5. By the adding of kin, let, ling, ock, el, erel, or et: as, lamb, lambkin; ring, ringlet; cross, crosslet; duck, duckling; hill, hillock; run, runnel; cock, cockerel; pistol, pistolet; eagle, eaglet; circle, circlet. All these denote little things, and are called diminutives.

6. By the addition of ist: as, psalm, psalmist; botany, botanist; dial, dialist; journal, journalist. These denote persons devoted to, or skilled in, the subject expressed by the primitive.

7. By the prefixing of an adjective, or an other noun, so as to form a compound word: as, foreman, broadsword, statesman, tradesman; bedside, hillside, seaside; bear-berry, bear-fly, bear-garden; bear's-ear, bear's-foot, goat's-beard.

8. By the adoption of a negative prefix to reverse the meaning: as, order, disorder; pleasure, displeasure; consistency, inconsistency; capacity, incapacity; observance, nonobservance; resistance, nonresistance; truth, untruth; constraint, unconstraint.

9. By the use of the prefix counter, signifying against or opposite: as, attraction, counter-attraction; bond, counter-bond; current, counter-current; movement, counter-movement.

10. By the addition of ess, ix, or ine, or the changing of masculines to feminines so terminating: as, heir, heiress; prophet, prophetess; abbot, abbess; governor, governess; testator, testatrix; hero, heroine.

II. Nouns are derived from Adjectives in several different ways:--

1. By the adding of ness, ity, ship, dom, or hood: as, good, goodness; real, reality; hard, hardship; wise, wisdom; free, freedom; false, falsehood.