SECTION II.—DERIVATION OF NOUNS.
In English, Nouns are derived from nouns, from adjectives, from verbs, or from participles.
I. Nouns are derived from Nouns in several different ways:—
1. By the adding of ship, dom, ric, wick, or, ate, hood, or head: as, fellow, fellowship; king, kingdom; bishop, bishopric; bailiff, or baily, bailiwick; senate, senator; tetrarch, tetrarchate; child, childhood; God, Godhead. These generally denote dominion, office, or character.
2. By the adding of ian: as, music, musician; physic, physician; theology, theologian; grammar, grammarian; college, collegian. These generally denote profession.
3. By the adding of r, ry, or ery: as, grocer, grocery; cutler, cutlery; slave, slavery; scene, scenery; fool, foolery. These sometimes denote state or habit; sometimes, an artificer's wares or shop.
4. By the adding of age or ade: as, patron, patronage; porter, porterage; band, bandage; lemon, lemonade; baluster, balustrade; wharf, wharfage; vassal, vassalage.
5. By the adding of kin, let, ling, ock, el, erel, or et: as, lamb, lambkin; ring, ringlet; cross, crosslet; duck, duckling; hill, hillock; run, runnel; cock, cockerel; pistol, pistolet; eagle, eaglet; circle, circlet. All these denote little things, and are called diminutives.
6. By the addition of ist: as, psalm, psalmist; botany, botanist; dial, dialist; journal, journalist. These denote persons devoted to, or skilled in, the subject expressed by the primitive.
7. By the prefixing of an adjective, or an other noun, so as to form a compound word: as, foreman, broadsword, statesman, tradesman; bedside, hillside, seaside; bear-berry, bear-fly, bear-garden; bear's-ear, bear's-foot, goat's-beard.
8. By the adoption of a negative prefix to reverse the meaning: as, order, disorder; pleasure, displeasure; consistency, inconsistency; capacity, incapacity; observance, nonobservance; resistance, nonresistance; truth, untruth; constraint, unconstraint.
9. By the use of the prefix counter, signifying against or opposite: as, attraction, counter-attraction; bond, counter-bond; current, counter-current; movement, counter-movement.
10. By the addition of ess, ix, or ine, or the changing of masculines to feminines so terminating: as, heir, heiress; prophet, prophetess; abbot, abbess; governor, governess; testator, testatrix; hero, heroine.
II. Nouns are derived from Adjectives in several different ways:—
1. By the adding of ness, ity, ship, dom, or hood: as, good, goodness; real, reality; hard, hardship; wise, wisdom; free, freedom; false, falsehood.
2. By the changing of t into ce or cy: as, radiant, radiance; consequent, consequence; flagrant, flagrancy; current, currency; discrepant, discrepance, or discrepancy.
3. By the changing of some of the letters, and the adding of t or th: as, long, length; broad, breadth; wide, width; high, height. The nouns included under these three heads, generally denote abstract qualities, and are called abstract nouns.
4. By the adding of ard: as, drunk, drunkard; dull, dullard. These denote ill character.
5. By the adding of ist: as, sensual, sensualist; separate, separatist; royal, royalist; fatal, fatalist. These denote persons devoted, addicted, or attached, to something.
6. By the adding of a, the Latin ending of neuter plurals, to certain proper adjectives in an: as, Miltonian, Miltoniana; Johnsonian, Johnsoniana. These literally mean, Miltonian things, sayings, or anecdotes, &c.; and are words somewhat fashionable with the journalists, and are sometimes used for titles of books that refer to table-talk.
III. Nouns are derived from Verbs in several different ways:—
1. By the adding of ment, ance, ence, ure, or age: as, punish, punishment; abate, abatement; repent, repentance; condole, condolence; forfeit, forfeiture; stow, stowage; equip, equipage; truck, truckage.
2. By a change of the termination of the verb, into se, ce, sion, tion, ation, or ition: as, expand, expanse, expansion; pretend, pretence, pretension; invent, invention; create, creation; omit, omission; provide, provision; reform, reformation; oppose, opposition. These denote either the act of doing, or the thing done.
3. By the adding of er or or: as, hunt, hunter; write, writer; collect, collector; assert, assertor; instruct, instructer, or instructor. These generally denote the doer. To denote the person to whom something is done, we sometimes form a derivative ending in ee: as, promisee, mortgagee, appellee, consignee.
4. Nouns and Verbs are sometimes alike in orthography, but different in pronunciation: as, a house, to house; a use, to use; a reb'el, to rebel'; a rec'ord, to record'; a cem'ent, to cement'. Of such pairs, it may often be difficult to say which word is the primitive.
5. In many instances, nouns and verbs are wholly alike as to form and sound, and are distinguished by their sense and construction only: as, love, to love; fear, to fear; sleep, to sleep;—to revise, a revise; to rebuke, a rebuke. In these, we have but the same word used differently.
IV. Nouns are often derived from Participles in ing; as, a meeting, the understanding, murmurings, disputings, sayings, and doings: and, occasionally, one is formed from such a word and an adverb or a perfect participle joined with it; as, "The turning-away,"—"His goings-forth,"—"Your having-boasted of it."