A Book About Words

by G. F. Graham

The mode of forming a plural by a change of the internal vowel, which was common in Saxon nouns, has now almost vanished from the language. We have some few left; but not more than five or six examples, as ‘tooth,’ ‘goose,’ ‘foot,’ ‘man,’ ‘woman,’ and ‘mouse.’ We may be quite confident that any new nouns brought into English will form their plurals by the French, and not the German, system.

Again, verbs of strong conjugation are much fewer than formerly. Many verbs now form the past tense by adding d or ed to the present which, in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, changed the internal vowel-sound for that purpose. To ‘climb’ formerly made ‘clomb’ (a form used by Milton in the seventeenth century); ‘quake’ made ‘quoke;’ ‘laugh,’ ‘lofe;’ ‘reach,’ ‘raught;’ and many others. All these now adopt the weak form of conjugation, and form the past tense by adding d or ed to the root of the verb: ‘climb-ed,’ ‘laugh-ed,’ ‘reach-ed,’ ‘quak-ed,’ &c. And so it will be with all verbs that may be hereafter brought into the language; they will, one and all, form the past tense by adding ed.

But not only have we lost these Saxon characteristics: whole lists of Saxon words have disappeared which once did good service in the language. This may be easily shown by glancing over a few pages of Chaucer or Mandeville, where we shall find a multitude of terms which have been long disused. For example:—

clepen	to call		sterve	to die
thorpe	village		swappen	to strike
grutchen	to murmur		foryield	to repay
stound	moment		reden	to advise, &c.

Even in Shakspere and Milton we may find many words which are now obsolete. All these, again, are Saxon; so that it may be truly said that our losses have been Saxon, whilst our additions have been all Romance, i.e. Latin or French.

In most cases substitutions have been made; but we shall always find that the disused word was Saxon, while the one substituted for it is French or Latin. Thus, for the Saxon compound ‘monath-seoc’ (month sick) we now have ‘lunatic;’ instead of ‘waeter-adl’ (water-illness), we have ‘dropsy.’ The old Anglo-Saxon ‘eorth-gemet’ (earth-measure) has given way to the Greek ‘geometry;’ and the Saxon ‘witena-gemot’ (meeting of wise men), has been transformed into the French ‘parliament.’

In all probability it was the influence of the Norman conquest that assisted this tendency to substitute single terms for compound words. The French language not being favourable to such formations, after a time pushed out many Saxon compounds; and yet, in point of clearness, power, and feeling, the Saxon words were far more effective. Their separate parts were significant, and familiar to the commonest understanding; whereas the new word was, of course, at first altogether foreign, and even after a time was far from being so impressive as the other. For example, the meaning of the Anglo-Saxon noun ‘sige-beacan’ must have been clear to the most uneducated mind: ‘sige’ is ‘victory,’ and ‘beacan’ is ‘sign;’ that is, ‘victory-sign.’ Now, for this was substituted ‘trophy,’ which, being a more uncommon word, does not explain itself as the other, and is, therefore, not so vivid or picturesque. Again, ‘heah-setl’ is translated into ‘throne.’ In the former word we have two distinct ideas, ‘high’ and ‘seat,’ both familiar to the most illiterate peasant; whereas the word ‘throne,’ though now common enough, must at first have puzzled the people considerably.

One very expressive Saxon word, ‘wanhope,’ has disappeared from the language. This may be considered a real loss; ‘wanhope’ expressed that condition of the mind in which we have not actually lost all hope, but when it is beginning to wane, i.e. grow gradually less, and we feel it slipping away from us. ‘Hope’ and ‘despair’ are the two opposite ends of the scale, and ‘wanhope’ formerly expressed an intermediate state of mind. This was a beautiful word, and we have now no equivalent for it.

A host of Saxon derivatives have also vanished from the language which were once in common use; and among them may be named those having the prefix ‘for.’ We still retain the words ‘forbear,’ ‘forbid,’ ‘forget,’ ‘forgive,’ ‘forlorn,’ and ‘forswear;’ but in the writings of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries we often meet with ‘forfend,’ ‘fordrive,’ ‘forsay,’ ‘forspend,’ ‘forwither,’ ‘forwaste,’ &c., all of which are now dead and buried. One word of this class survives, though in a different form, viz. the Saxon verb ‘fordon.’ This verb, though given up, may be still seen in the familiar expression ‘to do for.’

This tendency towards raising the French at the expense of the Saxon portion of English may be accounted for by various circumstances of our history. First, there can be no doubt that the Norman conquest was mainly instrumental in producing this effect. This event could not have failed to be unfavourable to the prosperity of the Saxon. The relation in which the conquerors stood to the conquered was of itself sufficient to account for it, and though the enmity between the two races will explain how the two languages were kept so long separated, when the fusion did at length take place, the advantage was clearly in favour of the governing classes.