Page:Vocabulary of Menander (1913).djvu/28

24 in accent and gender, but we may simply mention  for  and  for  of which grammarians do not approve. They occur, however, in the modern editions of the orators.

Variations in gender from ordinary usage are:

of a man; cf. ch. I.

Compounds with -privative.

H. A. Hamilton has shown that the use of these words increased as time went on. There is a fair number of them in Menander which do not occur in the classical writers, but few which were not used before his day. The former group comprises 14; viz. (of a virgin), (Plato),  = carefree,. Of these only in this sense,  in this sense,  (used by [Dem.]),,  and  first appear in Menander, and the adjective  occurs in Aeschines. As compared with 20 new negative compounds in Demosthenes, this number does not show that Menander had a tendency to this form of expression, but rather the contrary. Here he agrees with middle and new comedy in general, which shows 19 new negative compounds, in contrast to Aristophanes and the old comedy, which furnish 92 new examples.

Compounds with.

New compounds with are. None of these is censured by the grammarians, yet elicits blame from Phrynichus and Pollux, though it is found in a fragment of Aristophanes. This compound seems less regular in formation than the others. They are all rare words, as appears from the list in chapter III.

.

The suffix is not common in good writers. We find in Menander three words formed with it which do not occur in classical writers with the exception of Plato: viz.