the colloquial monstrosities get-at-able and go-ahead-itive

ness.

If the phrase is very old, its component parts may be no longer recognizable, and we have a simple word, not a compound at all. Thus wassail is the Anglo-Saxon wes hal! 'be well!' a sentence used in drinking healths. The same result is often produced when a foreign phrase is adopted into English. Aid-de-camp, bas-relief, belles lettres, embonpoint, extempore, locum tenens (whence lieutenant), are still felt as phrases or phrase-compounds; but alarm, carouse, jeopardy, kickshaws, and hoax are not so recognized except by the etymologist. Alarm (Fr. alarme) is the Italian call to arms!' (all' arme!). Carouse is the German gar aus! 'quite out!' i.e. 'empty your glass.' Jeopardy (in Chaucer, jupartie) is Fr. jeu parti, 'even (literally, divided) game,' i.e. a game in which the chances are equal. From the noun we have formed a verb, to jeopardize. Kickshaws is a corruption of Fr. quelque chose, something'; it was at first singular (plural, kickshawses). Hoax, which was formerly slang, and is still undignified, though accepted into the legitimate vocabulary, is a shortening of hocus pocus. So is to hocus, for to drug.' Hocus pocus seems to be a bit of juggler's mock Latin, — a fragment of a longer formula used by a particular magician in the seventeenth century.

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A peculiar form of phrase-composition is found in numerous words consisting of a verb and its object used as names, more commonly of an abusive character. Some of these look like imperative phrases used in ironical address. At any rate, the category must have originated in quotation. This is seen from the peculiar relation of the two

1 Carouse came to us through the French carous (later carrousse), whence the form of the English word.

parts. Thus, a spendthrift is a person who spends what others have saved; so telltale, do-nothing, ne'er-do-well, dreadnaught, daredevil, singsong, killjoy, makeshift, turncoat, catchpoll, holdback, holdfast, Johnny jump-up (the name of a flower), forget-me-not. We may compare the subjunctive phrase-compounds hit or miss, live or die, willy nilly, used adverbially. Here again, as usual, slang is very fertile: as, kiss me quick, hug me tight, follow me lads, names for articles of female attire. The distinctive mark of these is that they have a verb and an object, so that they must not be confounded with a few others which are like them, but can hardly be quotations, such as catchbasin, turnstile, ramrod. These seem to arise from a confusion between noun and verb in the first member. Words like go-between and hangdog are somewhat doubtful.

A curious tendency of our language is that of making virtual new compounds of verbs and prepositions without actual union, not unlike the separative compounds in Homer. This shows itself in neuter (intransitive) verbs, which become capable of having a passive by taking up the preposition which properly governs the following case. Thus one might speak to a woman, in which case we should say that to governed woman, but it would not be surprising if the woman should complain of being spoken to in the street. So an adversary may be reckoned with, a book quoted from, a house lived in, a divinity sworn by, a man run through, or run over, or stared at, or despaired of, or talked about, or looked after. A doctrine may be fought against. An argument may be insisted on, or lost sight of, and in newspaper English, an opportunity may be availed of. Not all sorts of such combinations can be made, for nothing is so freaky as language in new for

mations by analogy, but many have become good English, and the number is increasing. Perhaps the future antiquarian will revive the figure 'tmesis' to account for the separation of the verb from its preposition in these cases!

The almost entire loss of inflections in English has brought about a curious result in the possibilities of our language, namely, the free interchangeableness of verb and noun. The tendency in this direction is visible very early in our family of languages; but, so long as inflections exist, a verb must be distinguished from a noun by some termination. Hence, though the change of noun to verb has been a universal want, yet it had to be accomplished by means of a system of derivative suffixes gradually adapted to the purpose, and so in like manner of the change from verb to noun. Indeed, so common have these changes and parallelisms been, that in some cases one of the members has been supplied by a false analogy. Thus in French almost all verbs in -er have (or once had) a corresponding noun in -e: as voyager, voyage; ménager, ménage, and the like. Hence, coucher (L. col·locare) not having a noun to match inasmuch as the noun (locus) was never compounded with con-, one was made, out of hand, to correspond with the others. Thus the French have the noun couche, whence our couch is borrowed. As it happens, this proceeding gives a curious combination. The Latin locus became lieu in French (a word which we have borrowed), so that couch and lieu are cognates, though they have only a single letter in common.

When inflections are lost, as in English, there is nothing to distinguish the form of verb and noun. Hence any noun or adjective can at once become a verb if employed as such, and conversely almost any verb may be used to express the idea of its action or result.

Thus we have to cudgel, to powder, to oil, to pipe (for gas), to wall in, to brick up, to bell (the cat), to metal, to provision, to wood and water, to color, to yellow, to black, to serenade, to paper, to match, to fire, to fringe, to cover (a book), to letter, to carpet, to coach, to tutor, to gum, to ground, to varnish, to hedge about, to man, to chaperon, to people, to tar, to plane, to counterfeit. Indeed, a whole phrase may be used as a verb: to blackball, to copperbottom, mastheaded. Conversely are found the nouns: a sell, a pull up, a setback, a walk-over, an upper cut, a knock-down, a run-over, a spin, a hit; and many such terms are used even in literary English. In general, however, we are not so free in using verbs as nouns, as in using nouns as verbs. Our inclination is rather to have recourse to derivation by means of nominal suffixes (as in starvation from starve, and the countless noun-formations in -ing), or to employ a readymade synonym from our enormous stock of borrowed words (as to climb, ascent; to break, fracture). Thus every part of our complicated vocabulary works together in perfect harmony in the expression of thought in all its varieties.

CHAPTER XV

FOSSILS

A LANGUAGE which is not given to borrowing foreign elements, but develops its vocabulary out of its native resources, makes an immediate impression of consistency. In such a language the same inflectional and derivative endings are almost universally applicable, and composition goes on in accordance with fixed linguistic habits. The formative processes are therefore almost sure to yield words of like character and sound. And, though phonetic decay works incessantly to alter the form of a language, yet the habits of speech are so regular and the associative forces so strong, that words when they change are likely to go in groups or classes, so that they retain the same similarity of sound to each other, though the sound itself may be altered beyond recognition.

In an omnivorous language like English the same forces work, though with slightly less energy. Words are borrowed in blocks, as it were, or what amounts to the same thing- one after another in the same line merely because a similar word has been borrowed before. We have many long-tailed Latin words in -osity and -ation, not because they are peculiarly adapted to our tongue, but because, having found a use for a number of them, the language is impelled to borrow more to match those it has already. Notice also the huge quantity of verbs in -ate (adapted from Latin past participles in -atus). The ten