But it has
recovered lost ground, and in such constructions was for were
is now a distinct vulgarism.
recovered lost ground, and in such constructions was for were
is now a distinct vulgarism.
Cambridge History of English Literature - 1908 - v14
Till into the
eighteenth century, Cornish survived in Cornwall, and Norse in
Orkney and Shetland. Outside the British isles, the language has
followed the flag, and is spoken all over the empire—in Canada,
in Australia, in New Zealand, in Africa, and in the East and
West Indies. Beyond the boundaries of the empire, it possesses
a vigorous life and literature among many millions in the United
States of North Americal
Since in those regions English was planted at different times
and has been subjected to varying influences, the types of language,
especially as spoken, differ from standard English and from one an-
other. The vocabulary, in particular, is notably dissimilar. Strange
objects, new conditions of life, have either added native words, or
caused special adaptations of old words or extensions of meaning.
Sometimes, also, as in the United States, the language is splitting
1 Attempts have been made to calculate how many persons employ English.
Exact figures are not obtainable ; but, in round numbers, 120,000,000 may be considered
a tolerably safe estimate-about double the aggregate of those who speak French,
or Italian, or Spanish; and half as many again as speak German, or Russian. It is
believed that, in 1600, English was spoken by about 6,000,000, much fewer than then
spoke French, or German, or Italian, or Spanish.
## p. 435 (#465) ############################################
CH, XV]
Pronunciation
435
into dialects. To discuss all these varieties of English as well as
the numerous dialects in Britain, with their chequered history
during the last three centuries, would be impossible here, for
want of space, if for no other reason. We must, accordingly,
restrict ourselves to the standard literary language, which is every-
where practically homogeneous. Its principal changes we shall
now consider under the three divisions of pronunciation, grammar
and vocabulary
Pronunciation
A book printed in the early decades of the seventeenth century
presents little difficulty in one respect. It can be read without
much trouble; for the differences in orthography are trifling, and
whole sentences may occur with present-day spelling. But, if a
chapter from The Authorised Version or a scene from one of
Shakespeare's plays were read to us with the contemporary
pronunciation, the ear would be considerably puzzled to recognise
certain of the words. For, while the spelling has remained
tolerably constant, many of the sounds have changed a great
deal.
To begin with the vowels. Middle English i and è, in wit and
men for example, have, as a rule, continued unaltered. Not so
the other vowels, whether single or diphthongal. Sometimes, one
Middle English sound has, in modern times, split into several,
as a in man, was, path. Sometimes different Middle English
sounds have converged : name, day, which have now one and the
same vowel sound, had distinct sounds (ā, ai) in Middle English.
Today see and sea are indistinguishable in pronunciation. In
Middle English, the former had tense ē, the latter slack ē; and
their pronunciation was dissimilar till into the eighteenth century.
This explains and justifies the rimes in Pope :
But for the wits of either Charles's days,
The mob of gentlemen who wrote with ease;
and in Cowper :
I am monarch of all I survey,
My right there is none to dispute,
From the centre all round to the sea
I am lord of the fowl and the brute.
The vowel sound in sea, meat, heat, treat, deal was then identical
with the vowel sound in day, name: it is now the same as in meet,
feel, see. There are exceptions, however : great, break, steak have
not followed the example of the others. Middle English Ō also
2842
## p. 436 (#466) ############################################
436
Changes in the Language [CH.
had a tense and a slack value. Tense 7 changed to ū, which
remains in such words as too, soon, moon. Sometimes ū has been
shortened and made slacker: hence, the sound we have in book,
good. Slack 7 has been diphthongised to the sound heard in go,
stone, coat. Middle English ŭ was unrounded in the seventeenth
century. Then, in words like sun, son, come it was lowered to its
present value; but, in other words, it was again rounded, as in bull,
full, put. Consequently, cut and put no longer rime. Middle
English i and ū were gradually diphthongised till they acquired
their modern sounds, as in wine and house. The diphthong oi has
now the same sound as in Middle English ; but that does not imply
that it has undergone no change. It altered from time to time till
its accepted value closely resembled the current pronunciation of
the diphthong in wine, to which it was then assimilated. Dryden
rimes coin'd, mind; choice, vice; join, line. Similarly, Pope rimes
night with doit, mind with join'd; and writes :
Waller was smooth; but Dryden taught to join
The varying verse, the full-resounding line,
The long majestic march, and energy divine.
In those days, the oi sound was considered 'low'in such words as
join; now it is correct, while the other pronunciation is vulgar,
dialectic, or comic as in “strike ile. The influence of the spelling
helped, in comparatively recent times, to restore the old sound of oi.
During the last three centuries the consonants have, on the
whole, been more stable than the vowels ; but they, also, have
suffered certain changes. In words like night, gh seems to have
been mute by 1600, while the vowel received compensatory
lengthening. In laugh, enough, thought, sought, gh continued
to be pronounced into the seventeenth century, though not un-
modified. Then it disappeared, or was replaced by an f sound.
In the same century, the k sound was vanishing from know, knee,
and the g sound from gnaw, gnarled. The first step was for kn to
become tn—a combination still heard in parts of Perthshire and
Forfarshire. J. M. Barrie (Auld Licht Idylls, chap. VIII) has
T''nowhead instead of Knowhead. Colonel Lovelace (To Lricasta)
could sing,
For whether he will let me pass
Or no, I'm still as happy as I was.
But the voicing of s in is, was, and other words, has made such a
rime inadmissible, though Byron (Childe Harold, iv, 1473—5) and
Keats (Lamia, 126—7) employ was with voiceless 8. Certain
## p. 437 (#467) ############################################
Xv]
Phonetic Changes
437
8 sounds changed in the seventeenth century to sh, as in passion,
sure, sugar, ocean, nation; others to zh, as in leisure, osier, usual.
During the same period, t following 8 or f and followed by l, m,
or n, regularly became silent, as in castle, chestnut, Christmas,
soften. Towards the close of the eighteenth century, changes
started in the pronunciation of initial h and wh. H came to be
regularly dropped, but it has since reappeared in standard speech,
partly because of the spelling, partly because it had been retained
in Ireland and Scotland. So strong was the reaction that h is now
heard in words where it had all along been silent, as herb, hospital,
humour, humble. One of the marks of Uriah Heep's vulgarity is
his iteration of 'umble. In words like when, white, wh began to
be levelled under w. Purists have sought to revive the sound
of wh, especially where confusion might result, as in whet con-
trasted with wet. In recent times one of the most noteworthy
developments has been the loss of r as a trill. Dr Johnson speaks
of the 'rough snarling sound of r in his day. Now, it is lost
medially before other consonants, and finally, in most cases, except
in combinations where a vowel sound follows, as far away. Early
in modern English, r modified preceding vowels. Contrast Middle
English sterre, hert, herte with present-day star, hart, heart; and
note the modern sound of clerk and Derby. In addition, r levelled
distinct vowels under one sound, as in bird, word, fur; while it
sometimes caused a vowel murmur to develop, as in fire, fair, cure.
Phonetic changes do not necessarily make a language better
or worse in its essential character of an instrument to reveal our
thoughts. The modern pronunciation of house, wine, fair need
not be more expressive, or less expressive, than the older pro-
nunciation. But, in certain instances, the change may produce
ambiguity or may be useful only for puns. In the following
groups, for example, the words were formerly distinct in sound
but are now identical-father, farther; no, know; ruf, rough.
Phonetic change, as we have seen, forbids rimes formerly allow-
able, as days with ease, makes with speaks, great with cheat,
though poetic tradition may admit an obsolete rime and call it
an eye-rime, as love with move. On the other hand, new rimes
may develop: the change in the sound of Middle English slack ē now
permits sweet to rime with meat. Alliteration may, also, be upset
by an altered pronunciation. When chivalry is sounded with initial
sh (as if the word were a recent importation from France) instead
of tch, the alliterative effect in Campbell's Hohenlinden is ruined-
And charge with all thy chivalry.
## p. 438 (#468) ############################################
438
Changes in the Language [CH.
The untrilling of r may spoil the force of onomatopoeia, where that
depends on the 'rough snarling sound. '
In Middle English, words of French origin (as courage, honour,
nature) sometimes had the stress shifted from the last syllable to
the first. This tendency has increased in modern English, and in
such words the stress is now permanent on the first syllable. In
certain words, the throwing back of the stress has taken place
quite recently. In the seventeenth century, bigoted had the stress
and spelling of bigoťted. The spelling lingered into the eighteenth
century, as in Burke's Present Discontents. Till about 1820,
balcoʻny was almost the only stress. Cowper, in John Gilpin,
has
At Edmonton his loving wife
From the balcony spied;
and Byron, in Beppo, rimes balcony with Giorgione. The Oxford
English Dictionary points out that, though con'templatel occurs
from the sixteenth century to the nineteenth, orthoepists generally
have contem'plate down to the third quarter of last century. Since
then, con'template has more and more prevailed. Similar shifting of
stress is found in concentrate, confiscate, compensate, demonstrate,
enervate, illustrate, but not in remonstrate. Some eighteenth-
century authorities stressed the last syllable of recondite, others
(as Dr Johnson) the middle. Dr Johnson's way still has followers;
but The Oxford English Dictionary stresses the first syllable.
Till about 1800, revenue regularly had the stress on the middle
syllable, a pronunciation which to a much later date was current
in legal and parliamentary circles.
In spite of the changes in the pronunciation of English since
the close of the sixteenth century, the spelling has altered little.
Middle English spelling was phonetically defective; but, still, every
writer tried to make it represent his own pronunciation. The result
was a varying orthography. This continued into the modern
English period, with additional variations caused by attempts at
etymological spelling. In the early years of the seventeenth
century, the same volume, sometimes the same page, has such
differences as the following: beene, bene, bin; detter, debter;
guests, ghests; yles, isles; vitaile, victuals; hautie, haughtie; he,
hee; least, lest. But it began to be felt more convenient to keep
one spelling for a word; and, by the end of the eighteenth century,
our orthographical system was practically in its present shape
Early in that century, Robinson Crusoe has surprize, lyon, tyger,
1. Con'template,' said Samuel Rogers, 'is bad enough, but balcony makes me sick. '
## p. 439 (#469) ############################################
Xv]
Modern Spelling
439
cloaths, taylor. Fifty years later, controul, publick, dutchy, cryer,
interiour occur in Burke's Present Discontents. Johnson spent
much time and trouble in adjusting what he calls our 'unsettled
and fortuitous' orthography; but he confesses that he was often
obliged 'to sacrifice uniformity to custom': to write convey and
inveigh, deceit and receipt, fancy and phantom. An examination
of his Dictionary will show that he successfully anticipated the
orthography that triumphed, or, perhaps, his way commended itself
to writers and printers; for, with a few exceptions like chymist,
domestick, dutchess, translatour, his spellings are ours.
Modern spelling is marked by two features: fixity (such
diversities as judgment by the side of judgement notwithstand-
ing), and an almost entire dissociation from the spoken language.
Phonetic representations like bet, fin, hop, put, are few. On the
whole, we spell by the eye, not by the ear. The ear helps little
in a language where one sign may represent several sounds, as
ch in which, chemistry, machine; and i in pick, pike, pique; or
where one sound may be represented by a variety of signs, as in
go, oath, stone, dough, sow, sew; and in call, keen, deck, chaos,
quoit.
Though a fixed orthography has not generally checked phonetic
change, the spelling has, in certain instances, helped to restore an
older pronunciation, as noted before in regard to oi and h. So,
too, in words like backward, forward, Edward, where, in the
seventeenth century, the w sound was regularly dropped. The n
sound is now generally heard in kiln, where it became mute in
early modern English. A number of words had letters inserted,
rightly or wrongly, as a clue to the etymology. In some of these,
the insertion has not affected the pronunciation, as b in doubt;
c in scent, victuals; g in foreign; 1 in salmon; 8 in island. In
others, the letter has gradually come to be pronounced, as c in
perfect, verdict; th (for t) in apothecary, author, anthem; 1 in
fault, vault, falcon, solder. The struggle of perfet to keep its
ground against perfect is visible in Milton's poems, where perfect
and imperfect occur thirty-four times, twenty-two of them without
His Areopagitica has perfeted and autority. Fault was pro-
nounced without the l sound till into the eighteenth century.
Pope rimes it with ought, thought; Dr Johnson says, “The 1 is
sometimes sounded, sometimes mute. In conversation it is generally
suppressed'; and Goldsmith writes,
Yet he was kind, or, if severe in aught,
The love he bore to learning was in fault.
## p. 440 (#470) ############################################
440 Changes in the Language [CH.
At the present day, solder and falcon may be pronounced with or
without l; while falconry and falconer have no l sound.
Finally, three of the eccentricities of English spelling and
pronunciation may be mentioned. Originally, the noun ache
differed in spelling and in pronunciation from the verb ake, as
speech from speak. About 1700, however, the noun began to be
confused in pronunciation with the verb, and then in spelling.
Dr Johnson registers both formas but makes no distinction. He
derives the word-wrongly-from Greek ăxos, and, consequently,
prefers ache. For both words we now have the spelling of the
noun and the pronunciation of the verb. The old pronunciation
of the noun lingered as a stage tradition into the nineteenth
century, which explains the saying of the O. P. rioters (1809), “John
Kemble's head aitches,' where they gave the verb the sound of
the noun. Evidently, Thackeray considered this pronunciation
sufficiently well known to his readers in 1849—50, for he writes,
perhaps imitating Shakespeare's pun in Much Ado-
. . . Lady Brouncker; who was a druggist's daughter, or some such thing,
and as Tom Wag remarked of her, never wanted medicine certainly, for she
never had an h in her life. (Pendennis, chap. VII. )
Bowl, a vessel, and bowl, a ball, are now spelled and pronounced
,
alike. Originally different, they continued distinct into the
eighteenth century. Later, the pronunciation of the former word
and the spelling of the latter came to be adopted for both. Colonel,
with the first l sounded as l, was trisyllabic in the early part of the
seventeenth century, as in Milton's
Captain or Colonel or Knight in Arms.
Soon after the restoration it became disyllabic. “It is now,' says
Dr Johnson, 'generally sounded with only two distinct syllables,
colnel. But another form coronel had lived in popular usage;
and, in the nineteenth century, while the spelling with l remained,
the pronunciation with r was adopted.
Grammar
The story of English grammar is a story of simplification, of
dispensing with grammatical forms. Though a few inflections have
survived, yet, compared with Old English, the present-day language
has been justly designated one of lost inflections. It is analytic,
and not synthetic. This stage had virtually been reached
by the beginning of the seventeenth century, though certain
modifications have taken place since then.
## p. 441 (#471) ############################################
xv]
Inflectional Shortening
441
One of those is the supersession, in the standard language,
of verb forms like cometh (originally midland and southern) by
northern forms like comes. In the early seventeenth century,
the prose usage was still -eth. The Authorised Version has nothing
else. In poetry, especially dramatic poetry, the form in -8 was a
licence borrowed from colloquial speech, and helpful for metre or
euphony, as when Shakespeare has in The Merchant of Venice,
Who chooseth me shall get as much as he deserves;
and
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.
For a time, the custom prevailed of writing -eth, but pronouncing -8.
In 1643, Richard Hodges says,
howsoever wee use to write thus, leadeth it, maketh it, noteth it, raketh it,
perfumeth it, etc. Yet in our ordinary speech. . . we say leads it, makes it,
notes it, rakes it, perfumes it.
He also gives a list of words alike in sound and unlike in their
signification and writing,' where we find such groups as,
Cox, cocks, cocketh up the hay.
Furze, furreth, furs.
Jests, gests, gesteth.
Mr Knox, hee knocketh many knocks.
Rites, rights, wheel-wrights, righteth, writeth.
Waits, weights, waiteth1.
Gradually, -8 predominated, but -eth did not disappear. It was
heard in church, though, even there, -8 was frequently sounded
instead. In The Spectator (no. 147), Steele denounces
a set of readers, who affect forsooth a certain gentlemanlike familiarity of
tone and mend the language as they go on, crying instead of pardoneth and
absolveth, pardons and absolves.
In an earlier Spectator (no. 135), Addison speaks of
the change which has bappened in our language by the abbreviation of
several words that are terminated in eth, by substituting an s in the room
of the last syllable, as in drowns, walks, arrives. . . which in the pronunciation
of our forefathers were drowneth, walketh, arriveth. This has wonderfully
multiplied a letter which was before too frequent in the English tongue, and
added to that hissing in our language, which is taken so much notice of by
foreigners; but at the same time humours our taciturnity and eases us of
many superfluous syllables.
In the days of the romantic revival, poets resuscitated the
-eth, which continues to live in poetry and, also, to some extent,
in prose. The poet finds it advantageous for rhythm, or rime,
1 Ellis, Early English Pronunciation, iv, 1018 ff.
## p. 442 (#472) ############################################
442 Changes in the Language [CH.
or euphony. Swinburne, in Atalanta in Calydon, rimes saith with
breath, while Tennyson, in The Lady of Shalott, sings,
And so she weaveth steadily,
And little other care hath she.
Another inflectional shortening occurs in the -ed of verbs. In
early modern English, the weak vowel here was dropped in the
spoken language, except, of course, in forms like mended, rooted.
In the higher language, however, -ed was fully sounded after all
consonants, especially by poets for the sake of metre, who naturally
also dropped the vowel if necessary, as Shakespeare in
Hugg'd and embracëd by the strumpet wind.
Gradually, the colloquial usage encroached upon the literary.
In the passage of The Spectator already cited, Addison protests
against this loss of a syllable.
"The same natural aversion to loquacity,' he says, 'has of late years made a
very considerable alteration in our language by closing in one syllable the
termination of our praeterperfect tense, as in these words, drown'd, walk'd,
arrivd, for drowned, walked, arrived, which has very much disfigured the
tongue, and turned a tenth part of our smoothest words into so many clusters
of consonants. '
The full syllable has lived on in the liturgical language, where we
have blessëd, cursëd, beloved, believed.
During the last two centuries, the second person singular of
verbs (as lovest, lovedst, wilt love) has gradually vanished from
ordinary usage. This has gone hand in hand with the disuse of thou.
In Middle English, French influence led to the employment of ye,
you as a ceremonious substitute for thou, thee; and, by 1600, the
plural had come to be the regular polite form of address, while
the singular remained chiefly in family use (parent to child, master
to servant) and for contempt. Thou, consequently, became gene-
rally obsolete, though still retained in poetry, in liturgical language,
sporadically in dialects, and by quakers—who employ thee as
nominative construed with third singular. The surrender of thou
is, to some extent, a loss. English has no longer the advantage
of a familiar as well as a polite style of address nor the clearness
arising from the power to make a formal distinction in number.
Further simplification in the verb is found in the disappearance
of subjunctive forms. The only remaining parts are be and were,
and the forms without -8 in the third singular of the present tense.
The syntax, also, of the subjunctive has greatly shrunk since
Middle English days, and is still shrinking. At times, however,
the tendency has been checked. In the seventeenth and the
a
## p. 443 (#473) ############################################
6
xv]
Losses in Syntax
443
eighteenth century, were of rejected conditions and unfulfilled
wishes seemed to be regularly giving place to was.
But it has
recovered lost ground, and in such constructions was for were
is now a distinct vulgarism. The subjunctive, however, has
been entirely or almost entirely abandoned in the following-
indirect assertions : 'I think he be transformed into a beast'
(As You Like It); indefinite adjective clauses : 'a prone and
speechless dialect such as move men' (Measure for Measure);
concessive clauses regarded as real : ‘no marvel though thou
scorn thy noble peers, when I, thy brother, am rejected thus'
(Edward II); and clauses of future time. The last construction
is still, occasionally, found, especially in poetry : Tennyson writes,
Till in all lands and through all human story
The path of duty be the way to glory.
At the present time, Othello’s ‘Judge me the world' would
regularly be expressed by 'Let the world judge me’; and,
generally, forms with may, might, should, would, are, for clearness,
preferred to simple subjunctives. In ‘Hadst thou been here, my
brother had not died,' the apodosis would take the compound form.
Other syntactical losses since Shakespeare's day include the
constructions 'good my lord' and 'I know thee who thou art';
against and without as conjunctions; the ethic dative; the
accusative and infinitive as subject, now superseded by the
construction with for: 'for a man to behave so is absurd’; be
as the auxiliary of perfect tenses in certain intransitive verbs, a
usage still existing in instances like ‘he is gone. ' In the Elizabethan
age, me as the ethic dative was sometimes felt to be obscure
and was easily mistaken for the direct object. This ambiguity
Shakespeare (The Taming of the Shrew, 1, 2, ad init. ) seized upon
to bewilder the clown Grumio-
Petruchio. Villain, I say, knock me at this gate
And rap me well, or I'll knock your knave's pate.
Grumio. My master is grown quarrelsome. I should knock you first,
And then I know after who comes by the worst.
These old usages bave been revived in recent times in poetry and
historical fiction ; but, unless skilfully and sparingly employed,
they are apt to offend, as when Stevenson overdoes the ethic dative
in The Black Arrow.
In certain nouns, the same combination of sounds may stand
for different ideas. To the ear, horses represents the genitive
singular as well as all the plural cases. To the eye, this defect is
## p. 444 (#474) ############################################
444 Changes in the Language [Ch.
6
so far remedied by the device of the apostrophe: horse's, horses,
horses'. This distinction began to appear in the seventeenth
century, but it was not a settled usage till the eighteenth.
"The gradual restriction of the apostrophe to the genitive,' says Henry
Sweet in his New English Grammar, 'apparently arose from the belief that
such a genitive as prince's in the prince's book was a shortening of prince
his, as shown by such spellings as the prince his booki!
The employment of his for the genitive suffix was most prevalent
from 1400 to 1750. In the sixteenth and the seventeenth century,
it was chiefly used with proper names ending in a sibilant, or to
avoid an awkward inflectional genitive. It occurs in Dryden, as in
Astraea Redux,
Such is not Charles his too too active age.
The Prayer Book of 1662 has, ' And this we beg for Jesus Christ
his sake. ' The Pilgrim's Progress, part 11, has. Gaius his kindness
to Feeble-mind. ' Many an old tome is inscribed 'John Smith his
book'; and the usage (which still survives, in book-keeping for
example) was turned by Dickens into a joke in ‘Bill Stumps, His
mark. '
Many changes exemplify what Addison calls humouring our
national taciturnity, while they do no injury to clearness of
expression. Old and Middle English revelled in multiplying
negatives for emphasis. The practice was retained by the Eliza-
bethans; but, in time, the principle prevailed that two negatives
contradict each other and make an affirmative. In standard
English, we now find one negative only, though, colloquially, we
may still hear the old redundancy. Double comparison, another
Elizabethan characteristic-Ben Jonson reckoned it an elegancy
of style, 'a certain kind of English Atticism'-began to die out in
the seventeenth century, and now survives only as a vulgarism.
Occasionally, however, it appears in poetry, as in Swinburne's
Atalanta,
Touch the most dimmest height of trembling heaven.
The desire to lop off superfluities accounts for various types of
omissions, as of in 'That is no use'; the verb after to in ‘Are you
going? '--'I should like to,' or 'He must leave now, though he
doesn't want to'; and it is in as usual. ' Swift still wrote the last
in full (Gulliver's Travels, part II, chap. I), ‘Whereof three or four
came into the room, as it is usual in farmers' houses. '
1 'I might here observe that the same single letter [8] on many occasions does
the office of a whole word and represents the His and Her of our forefathers. '
Addison, The Spectator, no. 135.
## p. 445 (#475) ############################################
Xv]
The Attributive Noun
445
Further condensation is seen in the wide use in modern
English of the attributive noun instead of a phrase more or less
lengthy. The usage began in Middle English, and has been
vigorously extended in present-day language. It is regularly
employed in all kinds of new phrases, as when we speak of
birthday congratulations, Canada balsam, a motor garage.
Compound expressions are similarly applied, as loose leaf book
manufacturers, The Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act, a
dog-in-the-manger policy.
The attributive noun is not an isolated phenomenon in English.
It belongs to the widespread tendency whereby a part of speech
jumps its category. The dropping of distinctive endings made
many nouns, for example, identical with the corresponding verbs;
and, consequently, form presented no obstacle to the use of the
one for the other. The interchange was also facilitated by the
habit of indicating a word's function or construction by its
position in the sentence. This liberty became licence in the
Elizabethan age. ‘Almost any part of speech,' says E. A. Abbott,
'can be used as any other part of speech? ' Later usage has been
more restrained, but of the liberty advantage has been amply
and profitably taken. The following are examples of nouns con-
verted into verbs in recent times: ape, balloon, burlesque, cartoon,
dovetail, gas, laager, lampoon, loot, palaver, sky, tailor, telescope,
tiptoe, tool; of verbs into nouns: build, futter, haul, shampoo,
sip, sneer, sneeze, splash, tinkle, trend; of adjectives into verbs :
grey, tidy. To distinguish the double function, the pronunciation
is sometimes varied, as a good rec'ord but to record' it; an agëd
man but he ag(e)d rapidly.
An extreme instance of this freedom appears in sentences
transformed, for the nonce, into attributes, as when Dickens writes,
'a little man with a puffy “Say-nothing-to-me-or-I'll-contradict-
you" sort of countenance'; or into verbs, as in Browning's lines,
While, treading down rose and ranunculus,
You Tommy-make-room-for-your-uncle' us.
One might have expected that the tendency to simplify would
lead English to abolish the strong conjugation with its numerous
complications; but, apparently, any bias towards uniformity has
been counteracted by conservatism linked with the superiority
which the strong verbs possess in clearness, brevity and ease of
pronunciation. Weak forms have, indeed, been adopted, as crowed
for crew, climbed for clomb, melted for molten. On the other
1 A Shakespearian Grammar, Introduction ad init. and 8 290.
## p. 446 (#476) ############################################
446
Changes in the Language [ch.
hand, certain verbs, as dig and stick, formerly weak, are now
strong. It was in the eighteenth century that dug prevailed over
digged, which is the only form found in Shakespeare, The
Authorised Version and Milton. Dug and stuck are easier
sounds than digged and sticked. Within the strong conjugation,
numerous changes have been made. In the sixteenth and the
seventeenth century, there was a general movement towards
supplanting the form of the perfect participle by the form of the
past indicative. Shakespeare used mistook for mistaken, drove
for driven, wrote for written. Goldsmith and other eighteenth-
century writers did the same; and, in their days, drank threatened
to supersede drunk. In present-day English, the original parti-
ciples have, as a rule, been restored, though stood has permanently
displaced stonden.
Other parts of speech have been regularised. One instance is
the modern distinction between who and which as relatives. In
the Elizabethan age, these pronouns could refer indifferently to
persons and things, a usage which lasted into the eighteenth
century. In the first half of the preceding century, they had
seemed likely to drive out that; but, in time, that recovered
lost ground and even encroached upon the others. Steele (The
Spectator, no. 78, cf. no. 80) sets forth the grievances of who and
which in a petition to Mr Spectator-
. . . your petitioners, being in a forlorn and destitute condition, know not to
whom we should apply ourselves for relief, because there is hardly any man
alive who has not injured us. Nay, we speak it with sorrow, even you
yourself, whom we should suspect of such a practice the last of all mankind,
can hardly acquit yourself of having given us some cause of complaint. We
are descended of ancient families, and kept up our dignity and honour many
years, till the jacksprat that supplanted us.
Later in the eighteenth century, who and which came again into
favour; and the three relatives have since been advantageously
employed to fulfil different functions.
In Elizabethan English generally, a strange welter appears
in the cases of pronouns-nominative for accusative, accusative
for nominative. Since then, order has been, for the most part,
restored : nominative and accusative are, as a rule, correctly
employed. We have still, however, such expressions as “Who is
that for? ' But 'It is me' is not frequent till the first half of
the eighteenth century. Before that, 'It is I' was general.
In Middle English, the two methods of comparing adjectives—
by inflection and by periphrasis--were employed indiscriminately,
Later, the method was regularised; and inflectional comparison
## p. 447 (#477) ############################################
Xv] Regularising of Parts, of Speech 447
became restricted to monosyllables and to such disyllables as
the addition does not make discordant. Sixteenth-century writers
supply examples of what we now consider uncouth shapes—elo-
quenter, virtuouser, artificialest, excellentest, famousest, learned'st,
tediousest, unwillingest. Sometimes, the pages of recent poets
and prose-writers bristle with forms like daringest, wonderfulest,
wretcheder.
In Middle English and early modern English (for example, in
Shakespeare and The Authorised Version), shall and will, when
employed as auxiliaries, are not in conformity with present-day
usage. This established itself in the seventeenth century, but
only in England. It never got a footing in the Scottish or the
Irish dialect; and natives of Scotland and Ireland find it hard, if
not impossible, to acquire the standard system with its intricate
rules 1.
By the beginning of the modern English period, do was in
regular use as an auxiliary; and it seemed as if the forms with do
and did were to oust those without. At first, no fixed principle
guided the employment of do write, did write, for write, wrote.
It might be euphony, or perspicuity, or metre, or caprice. Com-
pare the following:
So they did eat, and were filled.
Mark, viii, 8.
Rejoice with them that do rejoice, and weep with them that weep.
Romans, xii, 15.
It lifted up it head, and did address
Itself to motion.
Hamlet, 1, 2, 215 f.
In the early seventeenth century, however, the language began to
restrict do to certain special functions. 'Does he write? ' came
to take the place of 'Writes he? ' 'He did not write’ the place of
'He wrote not. ' In affirmations, the custom arose of avoiding do
except for emphasis, or in particular cases where the order of
words requires it, as in 'So quietly does he come,’ ‘Nor did he
hesitate. ' But the indiscriminate use of unemphatic do did not
readily vanish; and that gave point to Pope's gibe in 1711,
While expletives their feeble aid do join.
In his Dictionary (1755), Johnson brands unemphatic do 'as a
vicious mode of speech. ' A quarter of a century later, he writes
(Lives of the Poets), 'The words do and did, which so much
degrade in present estimation the line that admits them, were in
1 Gerald Molloy's book on the subject has as its sub-title. The Irish Difficulty';
and J. M. Barrie (When a Man's Single, chap. XVII) uses the mystery to poke fun at
a fellow-Scot.
6
## p. 448 (#478) ############################################
448
Changes in the Language [CH.
the time of Cowley little censured or avoided. ' In spite of Johnson,
later poets have gladly availed themselves of do and did for pur-
poses of metre. Till recent times, doest and dost, doeth and doth
were not differentiated in use. In vain one searches the 1611
edition of The Authorised Version to find why doth appears in
one place, doeth in another. The nineteenth century made doest,
doeth, the verb of full meaning, dost, doth, the auxiliary.
But, during the last three centuries, English has not merely
been regularised and simplified. It has also devised new gram-
matical material to improve the old or replace the lost.
One of the most striking inventions is its. A clear and un-
ambiguous possessive was required for neuters, in place of the old
his and the stopgap it, both felt to be inconvenient. The earliest
known instance of its is in Florio's Worlde of Wordes (1598),
where part of the explanation of spontaneamente is 'for its
owne sake. ' Though in colloquial use before this date, the new
pronoun found favour in literature very slowly. It does not
occur in the 1611 edition of The Authorised Version. A few
examples appear in Shakespeare, but only in plays printed after
his death, while three are met with in Milton's poetry and some
in his prose. Its, however, was too useful to be ignored, and, by
1660, had won a place in the language. The idea that it was an
upstart had disappeared before the end of the century, and Dryden
censured Ben Jonson for writing in Catiline,
Though heaven should speak with all his wrath at once,
remarking 'Heaven is ill syntax with his. ' So quickly was the
old usage forgotten.
Our period has also established a new verbal—the gerund.
This form originated in the use of nouns in -ing preceded by the
and followed by of. The preposition was frequently omitted, a con-
struction which lasted till through the eighteenth century. Steele
writes, “a very great difference between the reading a prayer and
a gazette'; Swift, ‘you owe the cultivating those many virtues';
and Goldsmith, “the gaining two or three battles, or the taking
half a score of towns. ' But the had also been dropped, as in
Shakespeare's ‘Deserve well at my hands by helping me'; and this
shorter form was destined to prevail. Though always retaining
certain noun functions, these -ing forms were considered to belong
to verbs; and, by analogy, others were constructed which had not
and could not have nouns to correspond, as 'He boasts of having
won the game,' 'He was annoyed at being contradicted. '
6
## p. 449 (#479) ############################################
Xv] Tenses of English Verbs 449
In the syntax of the gerund, a genitive case or a possessive
pronoun must sometimes precede, as ‘we could prevent his knowing
it' To express the same notion, a variant construction is prevent
him knowing,' found frequently in recent writers. This has been
attacked as ungrammatical and illogical, but is defended on the
ground of long descent and greater concreteness.
A noticeable feature of the English verb is its wealth of tenses,
whereby precise and accurate expression is given to many shades
of meaning. Though our mode of tense formation by auxiliaries
began in Old English and was gradually extended in Middle
English, it has been, for the most part, settled and developed in
modern times. Forms like I am writing existed long ago; but
it was well into the seventeenth century before the current
distinction arose between I am writing, the actual present, and
I write, the present of general application or of habit. Our
friends all stay for you,' in The Merchant of Venice, and, 'Behold,
three men seek thee,' in The Acts of the Apostles, show the usual
mode of expressing the actual present three centuries ago, while
the regular form today would be are staying and are seeking.
The double forms are also distinguished in the past and the future
tenses. The corresponding passive forms in -ing were much later in
origin than the active, and at first met with fierce opposition, in spite
of their manifest convenience and freedom from ambiguity. Con-
structions like "The house is being built' and 'Rabbits were being
shot in the field' have not been traced further back than the last
decade of the eighteenth century. These forms, however, were
inevitable, since English makes a wider use of the passive voice
than any other modern literary language. How untrammelled the
English passive is, may be seen in the fact that, not content with
a construction like 'A book was given him,' the language has
devised ‘He was given a book. '
Two other constructions may be mentioned. The genitive in -'s
must stand immediately before its governing noun or separated
therefrom only by qualifiers. This produced the peculiar modern
usage by which -'s is detached from the word really governed,
and attached to some group containing that word, as “The father-
in-law's gift,' "The Duke of Oldenburg's dominions. ' The detach-
ment has gone too far in ‘The man I saw yesterday's attempt,'
where the relative clause is regarded as united with man to make
one compound word. Another innovation, involving a minor
change, is 'the split infinitive,' when a word or phrase is inserted
between the to and the verbal part of the infinitive. Though
29
6
2
E. L. XIV.
CH, XV.
## p. 450 (#480) ############################################
450 Changes in the Language [CH.
existing in Middle English, this construction seems to have
become most common in the second half of the nineteenth
century. It has been defended on the plea of occasional superiority
in clearness and emphasis. Purists, however, have energetically
denounced it and sometimes branded its presence as a sign of
stylistic depravity. And certainly many examples are extremely
ugly and in very bad taste.
The extent to which English grammar has been simplified,
has tempted some to speculate whether it could not be simplified
still further. They have suggested that we might dispense with
these and those ; and might drop s in the third person of the
present tense. Others demand the evolution of fresh material-
new pronouns of the third person for indirect speech, and a new
pronoun, of singular number and common gender, to refer to
everyone, each, in order to avoid the inconvenience of Everyone
did what they could' or 'Each did his or her best. '
6
Vocabulary
During the last three centuries, the vocabulary of English has
displayed the characteristic marks of a living tongue—words have
become obsolete, words have altered in meaning, words have been
created. In addition, many words have been borrowed, and the
borrowing has been world-wide.
It is sometimes hard to determine if a word is really obsolete,
for it may linger in obscurity and then suddenly emerge. To
thieve, found in Old English, then for long unrecorded, reappears
in the seventeenth century. Through their occurrence in the
Prayer Book, in the Bible, and in Shakespeare's plays, many
expressions, though disused in ordinary speech and writing, have
remained in knowledge and can hardly be termed obsolete. Again,
the romantic revival restored old words to literature, some of which
have returned into general use. To this class belong words like
dight, nearly lost in the eighteenth century but revived in the
nineteenth ; elfish; hue, archaic about 1600, afterwards reintro-
duced as a poetic synonym for colour; to jeopard; to smoulder ;
sooth
fast, brought back by Sir Walter Scott.
Some words naturally fell out of use with the objects they
denoted, as crowd (fiddle), spontoon (half-pike). But, in many
cases, the exact reason for disuse is obscure. It may be to avoid
ambiguity or to obtain greater vividness, the feeling that a word
is played out or merely the longing for novelty. The following
## p. 451 (#481) ############################################
Xv]
Words Altered in Meaning
451
are examples of words obsolete in the standard language since
Shakespeare's time : accite, bisson, brickle, cypress (gauze), end
(gather in harvest), gent (graceful), grin (a snare), hent, makesport,
neeze, nesh, pink (small), rear (half-cooked), terrestrious, uneath.
Other words may be regarded as archaic, employed to impart an
antique flavour to speech or writing, as an (if), anon, astonied,
bewray, certes, coil (uproar), ear (to plough), eld, feat (adroit), fere,
glister, gobbet, lazar, leasing (falsehood), leman, murrey, nim,
peradventure, sennight, sooth, targe, thole, thrall, throughly, vails
(perquisites), yare.
When we meet an obsolete word, its strangeness puts us on our
guard : not so a word which, while still in common use, has under-
gone a change of meaning. Its familiar appearance lulls the mind
into accepting it at its most familiar value, while, in reality, its
meaning is quite different. Shakespeare's 'Security is mortals’
‘
chiefest enemy,' the Biblical injunction to the receivers of the
talents Occupy till I come,' the petition in the Prayer Book
that they may truly and indifferently minister justice, must
frequently be misunderstood. Some thinking is required to dis-
cover the precise meaning of Swift's whole pack of dismals
coming to you with their black equipage,' while Goldsmith’s ‘loud
laugh that spoke the vacant mind' is often so quoted as to betray
misapprehension of what he meant by vacant.
In some of the numerous words which have altered in meaning
during the last three centuries the change is slight, in others it is
very great, in all the result is a real addition to the capacity of
the language. When a name is required for a new mechanical in-
vention, for a new idea, for a disturbance in the body politic, instead
of coining a word, we may employ an old word with a new sense.
The application of mule in spinning, of train in railways, of
negative in photography, exemplifies how inventions divert words
into new channels. Sometimes, as in the case of train, the
new channel comes to be one of the most important. Nine-
teenth-century politics gave new meanings to conservative,
unionist, liberal, radical, as seventeenth-century troubles did
to puritan, roundhead, cavalier, covenanter. The new use may
originate in the desire for a fresh and vivid designation, which
at first may be dubbed slang, as guinea-pig (a paid director), go
baldheaded (to stake all and disregard consequences), blackbird
(negro), garret (head). The fact that presently now means 'by and
by' testifies to the universality of procrastination. Conceited no
longer signifies full of imagination, full of judgment, but suggests
29_2
## p. 452 (#482) ############################################
452 Changes in the Language [ch.
>
thinking too highly of oneself, since one's estimate of oneself
inclines to be too high. Censure acquired its notion of fault-finding
because we are apt to be harsh in judging others.
eighteenth century, Cornish survived in Cornwall, and Norse in
Orkney and Shetland. Outside the British isles, the language has
followed the flag, and is spoken all over the empire—in Canada,
in Australia, in New Zealand, in Africa, and in the East and
West Indies. Beyond the boundaries of the empire, it possesses
a vigorous life and literature among many millions in the United
States of North Americal
Since in those regions English was planted at different times
and has been subjected to varying influences, the types of language,
especially as spoken, differ from standard English and from one an-
other. The vocabulary, in particular, is notably dissimilar. Strange
objects, new conditions of life, have either added native words, or
caused special adaptations of old words or extensions of meaning.
Sometimes, also, as in the United States, the language is splitting
1 Attempts have been made to calculate how many persons employ English.
Exact figures are not obtainable ; but, in round numbers, 120,000,000 may be considered
a tolerably safe estimate-about double the aggregate of those who speak French,
or Italian, or Spanish; and half as many again as speak German, or Russian. It is
believed that, in 1600, English was spoken by about 6,000,000, much fewer than then
spoke French, or German, or Italian, or Spanish.
## p. 435 (#465) ############################################
CH, XV]
Pronunciation
435
into dialects. To discuss all these varieties of English as well as
the numerous dialects in Britain, with their chequered history
during the last three centuries, would be impossible here, for
want of space, if for no other reason. We must, accordingly,
restrict ourselves to the standard literary language, which is every-
where practically homogeneous. Its principal changes we shall
now consider under the three divisions of pronunciation, grammar
and vocabulary
Pronunciation
A book printed in the early decades of the seventeenth century
presents little difficulty in one respect. It can be read without
much trouble; for the differences in orthography are trifling, and
whole sentences may occur with present-day spelling. But, if a
chapter from The Authorised Version or a scene from one of
Shakespeare's plays were read to us with the contemporary
pronunciation, the ear would be considerably puzzled to recognise
certain of the words. For, while the spelling has remained
tolerably constant, many of the sounds have changed a great
deal.
To begin with the vowels. Middle English i and è, in wit and
men for example, have, as a rule, continued unaltered. Not so
the other vowels, whether single or diphthongal. Sometimes, one
Middle English sound has, in modern times, split into several,
as a in man, was, path. Sometimes different Middle English
sounds have converged : name, day, which have now one and the
same vowel sound, had distinct sounds (ā, ai) in Middle English.
Today see and sea are indistinguishable in pronunciation. In
Middle English, the former had tense ē, the latter slack ē; and
their pronunciation was dissimilar till into the eighteenth century.
This explains and justifies the rimes in Pope :
But for the wits of either Charles's days,
The mob of gentlemen who wrote with ease;
and in Cowper :
I am monarch of all I survey,
My right there is none to dispute,
From the centre all round to the sea
I am lord of the fowl and the brute.
The vowel sound in sea, meat, heat, treat, deal was then identical
with the vowel sound in day, name: it is now the same as in meet,
feel, see. There are exceptions, however : great, break, steak have
not followed the example of the others. Middle English Ō also
2842
## p. 436 (#466) ############################################
436
Changes in the Language [CH.
had a tense and a slack value. Tense 7 changed to ū, which
remains in such words as too, soon, moon. Sometimes ū has been
shortened and made slacker: hence, the sound we have in book,
good. Slack 7 has been diphthongised to the sound heard in go,
stone, coat. Middle English ŭ was unrounded in the seventeenth
century. Then, in words like sun, son, come it was lowered to its
present value; but, in other words, it was again rounded, as in bull,
full, put. Consequently, cut and put no longer rime. Middle
English i and ū were gradually diphthongised till they acquired
their modern sounds, as in wine and house. The diphthong oi has
now the same sound as in Middle English ; but that does not imply
that it has undergone no change. It altered from time to time till
its accepted value closely resembled the current pronunciation of
the diphthong in wine, to which it was then assimilated. Dryden
rimes coin'd, mind; choice, vice; join, line. Similarly, Pope rimes
night with doit, mind with join'd; and writes :
Waller was smooth; but Dryden taught to join
The varying verse, the full-resounding line,
The long majestic march, and energy divine.
In those days, the oi sound was considered 'low'in such words as
join; now it is correct, while the other pronunciation is vulgar,
dialectic, or comic as in “strike ile. The influence of the spelling
helped, in comparatively recent times, to restore the old sound of oi.
During the last three centuries the consonants have, on the
whole, been more stable than the vowels ; but they, also, have
suffered certain changes. In words like night, gh seems to have
been mute by 1600, while the vowel received compensatory
lengthening. In laugh, enough, thought, sought, gh continued
to be pronounced into the seventeenth century, though not un-
modified. Then it disappeared, or was replaced by an f sound.
In the same century, the k sound was vanishing from know, knee,
and the g sound from gnaw, gnarled. The first step was for kn to
become tn—a combination still heard in parts of Perthshire and
Forfarshire. J. M. Barrie (Auld Licht Idylls, chap. VIII) has
T''nowhead instead of Knowhead. Colonel Lovelace (To Lricasta)
could sing,
For whether he will let me pass
Or no, I'm still as happy as I was.
But the voicing of s in is, was, and other words, has made such a
rime inadmissible, though Byron (Childe Harold, iv, 1473—5) and
Keats (Lamia, 126—7) employ was with voiceless 8. Certain
## p. 437 (#467) ############################################
Xv]
Phonetic Changes
437
8 sounds changed in the seventeenth century to sh, as in passion,
sure, sugar, ocean, nation; others to zh, as in leisure, osier, usual.
During the same period, t following 8 or f and followed by l, m,
or n, regularly became silent, as in castle, chestnut, Christmas,
soften. Towards the close of the eighteenth century, changes
started in the pronunciation of initial h and wh. H came to be
regularly dropped, but it has since reappeared in standard speech,
partly because of the spelling, partly because it had been retained
in Ireland and Scotland. So strong was the reaction that h is now
heard in words where it had all along been silent, as herb, hospital,
humour, humble. One of the marks of Uriah Heep's vulgarity is
his iteration of 'umble. In words like when, white, wh began to
be levelled under w. Purists have sought to revive the sound
of wh, especially where confusion might result, as in whet con-
trasted with wet. In recent times one of the most noteworthy
developments has been the loss of r as a trill. Dr Johnson speaks
of the 'rough snarling sound of r in his day. Now, it is lost
medially before other consonants, and finally, in most cases, except
in combinations where a vowel sound follows, as far away. Early
in modern English, r modified preceding vowels. Contrast Middle
English sterre, hert, herte with present-day star, hart, heart; and
note the modern sound of clerk and Derby. In addition, r levelled
distinct vowels under one sound, as in bird, word, fur; while it
sometimes caused a vowel murmur to develop, as in fire, fair, cure.
Phonetic changes do not necessarily make a language better
or worse in its essential character of an instrument to reveal our
thoughts. The modern pronunciation of house, wine, fair need
not be more expressive, or less expressive, than the older pro-
nunciation. But, in certain instances, the change may produce
ambiguity or may be useful only for puns. In the following
groups, for example, the words were formerly distinct in sound
but are now identical-father, farther; no, know; ruf, rough.
Phonetic change, as we have seen, forbids rimes formerly allow-
able, as days with ease, makes with speaks, great with cheat,
though poetic tradition may admit an obsolete rime and call it
an eye-rime, as love with move. On the other hand, new rimes
may develop: the change in the sound of Middle English slack ē now
permits sweet to rime with meat. Alliteration may, also, be upset
by an altered pronunciation. When chivalry is sounded with initial
sh (as if the word were a recent importation from France) instead
of tch, the alliterative effect in Campbell's Hohenlinden is ruined-
And charge with all thy chivalry.
## p. 438 (#468) ############################################
438
Changes in the Language [CH.
The untrilling of r may spoil the force of onomatopoeia, where that
depends on the 'rough snarling sound. '
In Middle English, words of French origin (as courage, honour,
nature) sometimes had the stress shifted from the last syllable to
the first. This tendency has increased in modern English, and in
such words the stress is now permanent on the first syllable. In
certain words, the throwing back of the stress has taken place
quite recently. In the seventeenth century, bigoted had the stress
and spelling of bigoťted. The spelling lingered into the eighteenth
century, as in Burke's Present Discontents. Till about 1820,
balcoʻny was almost the only stress. Cowper, in John Gilpin,
has
At Edmonton his loving wife
From the balcony spied;
and Byron, in Beppo, rimes balcony with Giorgione. The Oxford
English Dictionary points out that, though con'templatel occurs
from the sixteenth century to the nineteenth, orthoepists generally
have contem'plate down to the third quarter of last century. Since
then, con'template has more and more prevailed. Similar shifting of
stress is found in concentrate, confiscate, compensate, demonstrate,
enervate, illustrate, but not in remonstrate. Some eighteenth-
century authorities stressed the last syllable of recondite, others
(as Dr Johnson) the middle. Dr Johnson's way still has followers;
but The Oxford English Dictionary stresses the first syllable.
Till about 1800, revenue regularly had the stress on the middle
syllable, a pronunciation which to a much later date was current
in legal and parliamentary circles.
In spite of the changes in the pronunciation of English since
the close of the sixteenth century, the spelling has altered little.
Middle English spelling was phonetically defective; but, still, every
writer tried to make it represent his own pronunciation. The result
was a varying orthography. This continued into the modern
English period, with additional variations caused by attempts at
etymological spelling. In the early years of the seventeenth
century, the same volume, sometimes the same page, has such
differences as the following: beene, bene, bin; detter, debter;
guests, ghests; yles, isles; vitaile, victuals; hautie, haughtie; he,
hee; least, lest. But it began to be felt more convenient to keep
one spelling for a word; and, by the end of the eighteenth century,
our orthographical system was practically in its present shape
Early in that century, Robinson Crusoe has surprize, lyon, tyger,
1. Con'template,' said Samuel Rogers, 'is bad enough, but balcony makes me sick. '
## p. 439 (#469) ############################################
Xv]
Modern Spelling
439
cloaths, taylor. Fifty years later, controul, publick, dutchy, cryer,
interiour occur in Burke's Present Discontents. Johnson spent
much time and trouble in adjusting what he calls our 'unsettled
and fortuitous' orthography; but he confesses that he was often
obliged 'to sacrifice uniformity to custom': to write convey and
inveigh, deceit and receipt, fancy and phantom. An examination
of his Dictionary will show that he successfully anticipated the
orthography that triumphed, or, perhaps, his way commended itself
to writers and printers; for, with a few exceptions like chymist,
domestick, dutchess, translatour, his spellings are ours.
Modern spelling is marked by two features: fixity (such
diversities as judgment by the side of judgement notwithstand-
ing), and an almost entire dissociation from the spoken language.
Phonetic representations like bet, fin, hop, put, are few. On the
whole, we spell by the eye, not by the ear. The ear helps little
in a language where one sign may represent several sounds, as
ch in which, chemistry, machine; and i in pick, pike, pique; or
where one sound may be represented by a variety of signs, as in
go, oath, stone, dough, sow, sew; and in call, keen, deck, chaos,
quoit.
Though a fixed orthography has not generally checked phonetic
change, the spelling has, in certain instances, helped to restore an
older pronunciation, as noted before in regard to oi and h. So,
too, in words like backward, forward, Edward, where, in the
seventeenth century, the w sound was regularly dropped. The n
sound is now generally heard in kiln, where it became mute in
early modern English. A number of words had letters inserted,
rightly or wrongly, as a clue to the etymology. In some of these,
the insertion has not affected the pronunciation, as b in doubt;
c in scent, victuals; g in foreign; 1 in salmon; 8 in island. In
others, the letter has gradually come to be pronounced, as c in
perfect, verdict; th (for t) in apothecary, author, anthem; 1 in
fault, vault, falcon, solder. The struggle of perfet to keep its
ground against perfect is visible in Milton's poems, where perfect
and imperfect occur thirty-four times, twenty-two of them without
His Areopagitica has perfeted and autority. Fault was pro-
nounced without the l sound till into the eighteenth century.
Pope rimes it with ought, thought; Dr Johnson says, “The 1 is
sometimes sounded, sometimes mute. In conversation it is generally
suppressed'; and Goldsmith writes,
Yet he was kind, or, if severe in aught,
The love he bore to learning was in fault.
## p. 440 (#470) ############################################
440 Changes in the Language [CH.
At the present day, solder and falcon may be pronounced with or
without l; while falconry and falconer have no l sound.
Finally, three of the eccentricities of English spelling and
pronunciation may be mentioned. Originally, the noun ache
differed in spelling and in pronunciation from the verb ake, as
speech from speak. About 1700, however, the noun began to be
confused in pronunciation with the verb, and then in spelling.
Dr Johnson registers both formas but makes no distinction. He
derives the word-wrongly-from Greek ăxos, and, consequently,
prefers ache. For both words we now have the spelling of the
noun and the pronunciation of the verb. The old pronunciation
of the noun lingered as a stage tradition into the nineteenth
century, which explains the saying of the O. P. rioters (1809), “John
Kemble's head aitches,' where they gave the verb the sound of
the noun. Evidently, Thackeray considered this pronunciation
sufficiently well known to his readers in 1849—50, for he writes,
perhaps imitating Shakespeare's pun in Much Ado-
. . . Lady Brouncker; who was a druggist's daughter, or some such thing,
and as Tom Wag remarked of her, never wanted medicine certainly, for she
never had an h in her life. (Pendennis, chap. VII. )
Bowl, a vessel, and bowl, a ball, are now spelled and pronounced
,
alike. Originally different, they continued distinct into the
eighteenth century. Later, the pronunciation of the former word
and the spelling of the latter came to be adopted for both. Colonel,
with the first l sounded as l, was trisyllabic in the early part of the
seventeenth century, as in Milton's
Captain or Colonel or Knight in Arms.
Soon after the restoration it became disyllabic. “It is now,' says
Dr Johnson, 'generally sounded with only two distinct syllables,
colnel. But another form coronel had lived in popular usage;
and, in the nineteenth century, while the spelling with l remained,
the pronunciation with r was adopted.
Grammar
The story of English grammar is a story of simplification, of
dispensing with grammatical forms. Though a few inflections have
survived, yet, compared with Old English, the present-day language
has been justly designated one of lost inflections. It is analytic,
and not synthetic. This stage had virtually been reached
by the beginning of the seventeenth century, though certain
modifications have taken place since then.
## p. 441 (#471) ############################################
xv]
Inflectional Shortening
441
One of those is the supersession, in the standard language,
of verb forms like cometh (originally midland and southern) by
northern forms like comes. In the early seventeenth century,
the prose usage was still -eth. The Authorised Version has nothing
else. In poetry, especially dramatic poetry, the form in -8 was a
licence borrowed from colloquial speech, and helpful for metre or
euphony, as when Shakespeare has in The Merchant of Venice,
Who chooseth me shall get as much as he deserves;
and
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.
For a time, the custom prevailed of writing -eth, but pronouncing -8.
In 1643, Richard Hodges says,
howsoever wee use to write thus, leadeth it, maketh it, noteth it, raketh it,
perfumeth it, etc. Yet in our ordinary speech. . . we say leads it, makes it,
notes it, rakes it, perfumes it.
He also gives a list of words alike in sound and unlike in their
signification and writing,' where we find such groups as,
Cox, cocks, cocketh up the hay.
Furze, furreth, furs.
Jests, gests, gesteth.
Mr Knox, hee knocketh many knocks.
Rites, rights, wheel-wrights, righteth, writeth.
Waits, weights, waiteth1.
Gradually, -8 predominated, but -eth did not disappear. It was
heard in church, though, even there, -8 was frequently sounded
instead. In The Spectator (no. 147), Steele denounces
a set of readers, who affect forsooth a certain gentlemanlike familiarity of
tone and mend the language as they go on, crying instead of pardoneth and
absolveth, pardons and absolves.
In an earlier Spectator (no. 135), Addison speaks of
the change which has bappened in our language by the abbreviation of
several words that are terminated in eth, by substituting an s in the room
of the last syllable, as in drowns, walks, arrives. . . which in the pronunciation
of our forefathers were drowneth, walketh, arriveth. This has wonderfully
multiplied a letter which was before too frequent in the English tongue, and
added to that hissing in our language, which is taken so much notice of by
foreigners; but at the same time humours our taciturnity and eases us of
many superfluous syllables.
In the days of the romantic revival, poets resuscitated the
-eth, which continues to live in poetry and, also, to some extent,
in prose. The poet finds it advantageous for rhythm, or rime,
1 Ellis, Early English Pronunciation, iv, 1018 ff.
## p. 442 (#472) ############################################
442 Changes in the Language [CH.
or euphony. Swinburne, in Atalanta in Calydon, rimes saith with
breath, while Tennyson, in The Lady of Shalott, sings,
And so she weaveth steadily,
And little other care hath she.
Another inflectional shortening occurs in the -ed of verbs. In
early modern English, the weak vowel here was dropped in the
spoken language, except, of course, in forms like mended, rooted.
In the higher language, however, -ed was fully sounded after all
consonants, especially by poets for the sake of metre, who naturally
also dropped the vowel if necessary, as Shakespeare in
Hugg'd and embracëd by the strumpet wind.
Gradually, the colloquial usage encroached upon the literary.
In the passage of The Spectator already cited, Addison protests
against this loss of a syllable.
"The same natural aversion to loquacity,' he says, 'has of late years made a
very considerable alteration in our language by closing in one syllable the
termination of our praeterperfect tense, as in these words, drown'd, walk'd,
arrivd, for drowned, walked, arrived, which has very much disfigured the
tongue, and turned a tenth part of our smoothest words into so many clusters
of consonants. '
The full syllable has lived on in the liturgical language, where we
have blessëd, cursëd, beloved, believed.
During the last two centuries, the second person singular of
verbs (as lovest, lovedst, wilt love) has gradually vanished from
ordinary usage. This has gone hand in hand with the disuse of thou.
In Middle English, French influence led to the employment of ye,
you as a ceremonious substitute for thou, thee; and, by 1600, the
plural had come to be the regular polite form of address, while
the singular remained chiefly in family use (parent to child, master
to servant) and for contempt. Thou, consequently, became gene-
rally obsolete, though still retained in poetry, in liturgical language,
sporadically in dialects, and by quakers—who employ thee as
nominative construed with third singular. The surrender of thou
is, to some extent, a loss. English has no longer the advantage
of a familiar as well as a polite style of address nor the clearness
arising from the power to make a formal distinction in number.
Further simplification in the verb is found in the disappearance
of subjunctive forms. The only remaining parts are be and were,
and the forms without -8 in the third singular of the present tense.
The syntax, also, of the subjunctive has greatly shrunk since
Middle English days, and is still shrinking. At times, however,
the tendency has been checked. In the seventeenth and the
a
## p. 443 (#473) ############################################
6
xv]
Losses in Syntax
443
eighteenth century, were of rejected conditions and unfulfilled
wishes seemed to be regularly giving place to was.
But it has
recovered lost ground, and in such constructions was for were
is now a distinct vulgarism. The subjunctive, however, has
been entirely or almost entirely abandoned in the following-
indirect assertions : 'I think he be transformed into a beast'
(As You Like It); indefinite adjective clauses : 'a prone and
speechless dialect such as move men' (Measure for Measure);
concessive clauses regarded as real : ‘no marvel though thou
scorn thy noble peers, when I, thy brother, am rejected thus'
(Edward II); and clauses of future time. The last construction
is still, occasionally, found, especially in poetry : Tennyson writes,
Till in all lands and through all human story
The path of duty be the way to glory.
At the present time, Othello’s ‘Judge me the world' would
regularly be expressed by 'Let the world judge me’; and,
generally, forms with may, might, should, would, are, for clearness,
preferred to simple subjunctives. In ‘Hadst thou been here, my
brother had not died,' the apodosis would take the compound form.
Other syntactical losses since Shakespeare's day include the
constructions 'good my lord' and 'I know thee who thou art';
against and without as conjunctions; the ethic dative; the
accusative and infinitive as subject, now superseded by the
construction with for: 'for a man to behave so is absurd’; be
as the auxiliary of perfect tenses in certain intransitive verbs, a
usage still existing in instances like ‘he is gone. ' In the Elizabethan
age, me as the ethic dative was sometimes felt to be obscure
and was easily mistaken for the direct object. This ambiguity
Shakespeare (The Taming of the Shrew, 1, 2, ad init. ) seized upon
to bewilder the clown Grumio-
Petruchio. Villain, I say, knock me at this gate
And rap me well, or I'll knock your knave's pate.
Grumio. My master is grown quarrelsome. I should knock you first,
And then I know after who comes by the worst.
These old usages bave been revived in recent times in poetry and
historical fiction ; but, unless skilfully and sparingly employed,
they are apt to offend, as when Stevenson overdoes the ethic dative
in The Black Arrow.
In certain nouns, the same combination of sounds may stand
for different ideas. To the ear, horses represents the genitive
singular as well as all the plural cases. To the eye, this defect is
## p. 444 (#474) ############################################
444 Changes in the Language [Ch.
6
so far remedied by the device of the apostrophe: horse's, horses,
horses'. This distinction began to appear in the seventeenth
century, but it was not a settled usage till the eighteenth.
"The gradual restriction of the apostrophe to the genitive,' says Henry
Sweet in his New English Grammar, 'apparently arose from the belief that
such a genitive as prince's in the prince's book was a shortening of prince
his, as shown by such spellings as the prince his booki!
The employment of his for the genitive suffix was most prevalent
from 1400 to 1750. In the sixteenth and the seventeenth century,
it was chiefly used with proper names ending in a sibilant, or to
avoid an awkward inflectional genitive. It occurs in Dryden, as in
Astraea Redux,
Such is not Charles his too too active age.
The Prayer Book of 1662 has, ' And this we beg for Jesus Christ
his sake. ' The Pilgrim's Progress, part 11, has. Gaius his kindness
to Feeble-mind. ' Many an old tome is inscribed 'John Smith his
book'; and the usage (which still survives, in book-keeping for
example) was turned by Dickens into a joke in ‘Bill Stumps, His
mark. '
Many changes exemplify what Addison calls humouring our
national taciturnity, while they do no injury to clearness of
expression. Old and Middle English revelled in multiplying
negatives for emphasis. The practice was retained by the Eliza-
bethans; but, in time, the principle prevailed that two negatives
contradict each other and make an affirmative. In standard
English, we now find one negative only, though, colloquially, we
may still hear the old redundancy. Double comparison, another
Elizabethan characteristic-Ben Jonson reckoned it an elegancy
of style, 'a certain kind of English Atticism'-began to die out in
the seventeenth century, and now survives only as a vulgarism.
Occasionally, however, it appears in poetry, as in Swinburne's
Atalanta,
Touch the most dimmest height of trembling heaven.
The desire to lop off superfluities accounts for various types of
omissions, as of in 'That is no use'; the verb after to in ‘Are you
going? '--'I should like to,' or 'He must leave now, though he
doesn't want to'; and it is in as usual. ' Swift still wrote the last
in full (Gulliver's Travels, part II, chap. I), ‘Whereof three or four
came into the room, as it is usual in farmers' houses. '
1 'I might here observe that the same single letter [8] on many occasions does
the office of a whole word and represents the His and Her of our forefathers. '
Addison, The Spectator, no. 135.
## p. 445 (#475) ############################################
Xv]
The Attributive Noun
445
Further condensation is seen in the wide use in modern
English of the attributive noun instead of a phrase more or less
lengthy. The usage began in Middle English, and has been
vigorously extended in present-day language. It is regularly
employed in all kinds of new phrases, as when we speak of
birthday congratulations, Canada balsam, a motor garage.
Compound expressions are similarly applied, as loose leaf book
manufacturers, The Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act, a
dog-in-the-manger policy.
The attributive noun is not an isolated phenomenon in English.
It belongs to the widespread tendency whereby a part of speech
jumps its category. The dropping of distinctive endings made
many nouns, for example, identical with the corresponding verbs;
and, consequently, form presented no obstacle to the use of the
one for the other. The interchange was also facilitated by the
habit of indicating a word's function or construction by its
position in the sentence. This liberty became licence in the
Elizabethan age. ‘Almost any part of speech,' says E. A. Abbott,
'can be used as any other part of speech? ' Later usage has been
more restrained, but of the liberty advantage has been amply
and profitably taken. The following are examples of nouns con-
verted into verbs in recent times: ape, balloon, burlesque, cartoon,
dovetail, gas, laager, lampoon, loot, palaver, sky, tailor, telescope,
tiptoe, tool; of verbs into nouns: build, futter, haul, shampoo,
sip, sneer, sneeze, splash, tinkle, trend; of adjectives into verbs :
grey, tidy. To distinguish the double function, the pronunciation
is sometimes varied, as a good rec'ord but to record' it; an agëd
man but he ag(e)d rapidly.
An extreme instance of this freedom appears in sentences
transformed, for the nonce, into attributes, as when Dickens writes,
'a little man with a puffy “Say-nothing-to-me-or-I'll-contradict-
you" sort of countenance'; or into verbs, as in Browning's lines,
While, treading down rose and ranunculus,
You Tommy-make-room-for-your-uncle' us.
One might have expected that the tendency to simplify would
lead English to abolish the strong conjugation with its numerous
complications; but, apparently, any bias towards uniformity has
been counteracted by conservatism linked with the superiority
which the strong verbs possess in clearness, brevity and ease of
pronunciation. Weak forms have, indeed, been adopted, as crowed
for crew, climbed for clomb, melted for molten. On the other
1 A Shakespearian Grammar, Introduction ad init. and 8 290.
## p. 446 (#476) ############################################
446
Changes in the Language [ch.
hand, certain verbs, as dig and stick, formerly weak, are now
strong. It was in the eighteenth century that dug prevailed over
digged, which is the only form found in Shakespeare, The
Authorised Version and Milton. Dug and stuck are easier
sounds than digged and sticked. Within the strong conjugation,
numerous changes have been made. In the sixteenth and the
seventeenth century, there was a general movement towards
supplanting the form of the perfect participle by the form of the
past indicative. Shakespeare used mistook for mistaken, drove
for driven, wrote for written. Goldsmith and other eighteenth-
century writers did the same; and, in their days, drank threatened
to supersede drunk. In present-day English, the original parti-
ciples have, as a rule, been restored, though stood has permanently
displaced stonden.
Other parts of speech have been regularised. One instance is
the modern distinction between who and which as relatives. In
the Elizabethan age, these pronouns could refer indifferently to
persons and things, a usage which lasted into the eighteenth
century. In the first half of the preceding century, they had
seemed likely to drive out that; but, in time, that recovered
lost ground and even encroached upon the others. Steele (The
Spectator, no. 78, cf. no. 80) sets forth the grievances of who and
which in a petition to Mr Spectator-
. . . your petitioners, being in a forlorn and destitute condition, know not to
whom we should apply ourselves for relief, because there is hardly any man
alive who has not injured us. Nay, we speak it with sorrow, even you
yourself, whom we should suspect of such a practice the last of all mankind,
can hardly acquit yourself of having given us some cause of complaint. We
are descended of ancient families, and kept up our dignity and honour many
years, till the jacksprat that supplanted us.
Later in the eighteenth century, who and which came again into
favour; and the three relatives have since been advantageously
employed to fulfil different functions.
In Elizabethan English generally, a strange welter appears
in the cases of pronouns-nominative for accusative, accusative
for nominative. Since then, order has been, for the most part,
restored : nominative and accusative are, as a rule, correctly
employed. We have still, however, such expressions as “Who is
that for? ' But 'It is me' is not frequent till the first half of
the eighteenth century. Before that, 'It is I' was general.
In Middle English, the two methods of comparing adjectives—
by inflection and by periphrasis--were employed indiscriminately,
Later, the method was regularised; and inflectional comparison
## p. 447 (#477) ############################################
Xv] Regularising of Parts, of Speech 447
became restricted to monosyllables and to such disyllables as
the addition does not make discordant. Sixteenth-century writers
supply examples of what we now consider uncouth shapes—elo-
quenter, virtuouser, artificialest, excellentest, famousest, learned'st,
tediousest, unwillingest. Sometimes, the pages of recent poets
and prose-writers bristle with forms like daringest, wonderfulest,
wretcheder.
In Middle English and early modern English (for example, in
Shakespeare and The Authorised Version), shall and will, when
employed as auxiliaries, are not in conformity with present-day
usage. This established itself in the seventeenth century, but
only in England. It never got a footing in the Scottish or the
Irish dialect; and natives of Scotland and Ireland find it hard, if
not impossible, to acquire the standard system with its intricate
rules 1.
By the beginning of the modern English period, do was in
regular use as an auxiliary; and it seemed as if the forms with do
and did were to oust those without. At first, no fixed principle
guided the employment of do write, did write, for write, wrote.
It might be euphony, or perspicuity, or metre, or caprice. Com-
pare the following:
So they did eat, and were filled.
Mark, viii, 8.
Rejoice with them that do rejoice, and weep with them that weep.
Romans, xii, 15.
It lifted up it head, and did address
Itself to motion.
Hamlet, 1, 2, 215 f.
In the early seventeenth century, however, the language began to
restrict do to certain special functions. 'Does he write? ' came
to take the place of 'Writes he? ' 'He did not write’ the place of
'He wrote not. ' In affirmations, the custom arose of avoiding do
except for emphasis, or in particular cases where the order of
words requires it, as in 'So quietly does he come,’ ‘Nor did he
hesitate. ' But the indiscriminate use of unemphatic do did not
readily vanish; and that gave point to Pope's gibe in 1711,
While expletives their feeble aid do join.
In his Dictionary (1755), Johnson brands unemphatic do 'as a
vicious mode of speech. ' A quarter of a century later, he writes
(Lives of the Poets), 'The words do and did, which so much
degrade in present estimation the line that admits them, were in
1 Gerald Molloy's book on the subject has as its sub-title. The Irish Difficulty';
and J. M. Barrie (When a Man's Single, chap. XVII) uses the mystery to poke fun at
a fellow-Scot.
6
## p. 448 (#478) ############################################
448
Changes in the Language [CH.
the time of Cowley little censured or avoided. ' In spite of Johnson,
later poets have gladly availed themselves of do and did for pur-
poses of metre. Till recent times, doest and dost, doeth and doth
were not differentiated in use. In vain one searches the 1611
edition of The Authorised Version to find why doth appears in
one place, doeth in another. The nineteenth century made doest,
doeth, the verb of full meaning, dost, doth, the auxiliary.
But, during the last three centuries, English has not merely
been regularised and simplified. It has also devised new gram-
matical material to improve the old or replace the lost.
One of the most striking inventions is its. A clear and un-
ambiguous possessive was required for neuters, in place of the old
his and the stopgap it, both felt to be inconvenient. The earliest
known instance of its is in Florio's Worlde of Wordes (1598),
where part of the explanation of spontaneamente is 'for its
owne sake. ' Though in colloquial use before this date, the new
pronoun found favour in literature very slowly. It does not
occur in the 1611 edition of The Authorised Version. A few
examples appear in Shakespeare, but only in plays printed after
his death, while three are met with in Milton's poetry and some
in his prose. Its, however, was too useful to be ignored, and, by
1660, had won a place in the language. The idea that it was an
upstart had disappeared before the end of the century, and Dryden
censured Ben Jonson for writing in Catiline,
Though heaven should speak with all his wrath at once,
remarking 'Heaven is ill syntax with his. ' So quickly was the
old usage forgotten.
Our period has also established a new verbal—the gerund.
This form originated in the use of nouns in -ing preceded by the
and followed by of. The preposition was frequently omitted, a con-
struction which lasted till through the eighteenth century. Steele
writes, “a very great difference between the reading a prayer and
a gazette'; Swift, ‘you owe the cultivating those many virtues';
and Goldsmith, “the gaining two or three battles, or the taking
half a score of towns. ' But the had also been dropped, as in
Shakespeare's ‘Deserve well at my hands by helping me'; and this
shorter form was destined to prevail. Though always retaining
certain noun functions, these -ing forms were considered to belong
to verbs; and, by analogy, others were constructed which had not
and could not have nouns to correspond, as 'He boasts of having
won the game,' 'He was annoyed at being contradicted. '
6
## p. 449 (#479) ############################################
Xv] Tenses of English Verbs 449
In the syntax of the gerund, a genitive case or a possessive
pronoun must sometimes precede, as ‘we could prevent his knowing
it' To express the same notion, a variant construction is prevent
him knowing,' found frequently in recent writers. This has been
attacked as ungrammatical and illogical, but is defended on the
ground of long descent and greater concreteness.
A noticeable feature of the English verb is its wealth of tenses,
whereby precise and accurate expression is given to many shades
of meaning. Though our mode of tense formation by auxiliaries
began in Old English and was gradually extended in Middle
English, it has been, for the most part, settled and developed in
modern times. Forms like I am writing existed long ago; but
it was well into the seventeenth century before the current
distinction arose between I am writing, the actual present, and
I write, the present of general application or of habit. Our
friends all stay for you,' in The Merchant of Venice, and, 'Behold,
three men seek thee,' in The Acts of the Apostles, show the usual
mode of expressing the actual present three centuries ago, while
the regular form today would be are staying and are seeking.
The double forms are also distinguished in the past and the future
tenses. The corresponding passive forms in -ing were much later in
origin than the active, and at first met with fierce opposition, in spite
of their manifest convenience and freedom from ambiguity. Con-
structions like "The house is being built' and 'Rabbits were being
shot in the field' have not been traced further back than the last
decade of the eighteenth century. These forms, however, were
inevitable, since English makes a wider use of the passive voice
than any other modern literary language. How untrammelled the
English passive is, may be seen in the fact that, not content with
a construction like 'A book was given him,' the language has
devised ‘He was given a book. '
Two other constructions may be mentioned. The genitive in -'s
must stand immediately before its governing noun or separated
therefrom only by qualifiers. This produced the peculiar modern
usage by which -'s is detached from the word really governed,
and attached to some group containing that word, as “The father-
in-law's gift,' "The Duke of Oldenburg's dominions. ' The detach-
ment has gone too far in ‘The man I saw yesterday's attempt,'
where the relative clause is regarded as united with man to make
one compound word. Another innovation, involving a minor
change, is 'the split infinitive,' when a word or phrase is inserted
between the to and the verbal part of the infinitive. Though
29
6
2
E. L. XIV.
CH, XV.
## p. 450 (#480) ############################################
450 Changes in the Language [CH.
existing in Middle English, this construction seems to have
become most common in the second half of the nineteenth
century. It has been defended on the plea of occasional superiority
in clearness and emphasis. Purists, however, have energetically
denounced it and sometimes branded its presence as a sign of
stylistic depravity. And certainly many examples are extremely
ugly and in very bad taste.
The extent to which English grammar has been simplified,
has tempted some to speculate whether it could not be simplified
still further. They have suggested that we might dispense with
these and those ; and might drop s in the third person of the
present tense. Others demand the evolution of fresh material-
new pronouns of the third person for indirect speech, and a new
pronoun, of singular number and common gender, to refer to
everyone, each, in order to avoid the inconvenience of Everyone
did what they could' or 'Each did his or her best. '
6
Vocabulary
During the last three centuries, the vocabulary of English has
displayed the characteristic marks of a living tongue—words have
become obsolete, words have altered in meaning, words have been
created. In addition, many words have been borrowed, and the
borrowing has been world-wide.
It is sometimes hard to determine if a word is really obsolete,
for it may linger in obscurity and then suddenly emerge. To
thieve, found in Old English, then for long unrecorded, reappears
in the seventeenth century. Through their occurrence in the
Prayer Book, in the Bible, and in Shakespeare's plays, many
expressions, though disused in ordinary speech and writing, have
remained in knowledge and can hardly be termed obsolete. Again,
the romantic revival restored old words to literature, some of which
have returned into general use. To this class belong words like
dight, nearly lost in the eighteenth century but revived in the
nineteenth ; elfish; hue, archaic about 1600, afterwards reintro-
duced as a poetic synonym for colour; to jeopard; to smoulder ;
sooth
fast, brought back by Sir Walter Scott.
Some words naturally fell out of use with the objects they
denoted, as crowd (fiddle), spontoon (half-pike). But, in many
cases, the exact reason for disuse is obscure. It may be to avoid
ambiguity or to obtain greater vividness, the feeling that a word
is played out or merely the longing for novelty. The following
## p. 451 (#481) ############################################
Xv]
Words Altered in Meaning
451
are examples of words obsolete in the standard language since
Shakespeare's time : accite, bisson, brickle, cypress (gauze), end
(gather in harvest), gent (graceful), grin (a snare), hent, makesport,
neeze, nesh, pink (small), rear (half-cooked), terrestrious, uneath.
Other words may be regarded as archaic, employed to impart an
antique flavour to speech or writing, as an (if), anon, astonied,
bewray, certes, coil (uproar), ear (to plough), eld, feat (adroit), fere,
glister, gobbet, lazar, leasing (falsehood), leman, murrey, nim,
peradventure, sennight, sooth, targe, thole, thrall, throughly, vails
(perquisites), yare.
When we meet an obsolete word, its strangeness puts us on our
guard : not so a word which, while still in common use, has under-
gone a change of meaning. Its familiar appearance lulls the mind
into accepting it at its most familiar value, while, in reality, its
meaning is quite different. Shakespeare's 'Security is mortals’
‘
chiefest enemy,' the Biblical injunction to the receivers of the
talents Occupy till I come,' the petition in the Prayer Book
that they may truly and indifferently minister justice, must
frequently be misunderstood. Some thinking is required to dis-
cover the precise meaning of Swift's whole pack of dismals
coming to you with their black equipage,' while Goldsmith’s ‘loud
laugh that spoke the vacant mind' is often so quoted as to betray
misapprehension of what he meant by vacant.
In some of the numerous words which have altered in meaning
during the last three centuries the change is slight, in others it is
very great, in all the result is a real addition to the capacity of
the language. When a name is required for a new mechanical in-
vention, for a new idea, for a disturbance in the body politic, instead
of coining a word, we may employ an old word with a new sense.
The application of mule in spinning, of train in railways, of
negative in photography, exemplifies how inventions divert words
into new channels. Sometimes, as in the case of train, the
new channel comes to be one of the most important. Nine-
teenth-century politics gave new meanings to conservative,
unionist, liberal, radical, as seventeenth-century troubles did
to puritan, roundhead, cavalier, covenanter. The new use may
originate in the desire for a fresh and vivid designation, which
at first may be dubbed slang, as guinea-pig (a paid director), go
baldheaded (to stake all and disregard consequences), blackbird
(negro), garret (head). The fact that presently now means 'by and
by' testifies to the universality of procrastination. Conceited no
longer signifies full of imagination, full of judgment, but suggests
29_2
## p. 452 (#482) ############################################
452 Changes in the Language [ch.
>
thinking too highly of oneself, since one's estimate of oneself
inclines to be too high. Censure acquired its notion of fault-finding
because we are apt to be harsh in judging others.
