It will be readily felt that in expressions like a black and white dog, the group black and white really is in a similar state of fusion. We have but to separate the parts into two really independent words by the insertion of a second indefinite article, to see at once that ‘black and white’ is the description of one quality of one object, a compound word to express one (though not psychologically simple) conception.
So, again, the group one and all is sufficiently welded into one to resist, e.g., the insertion of the preposition of before its second part. Thus we should say It was for the good of one and all (i.e. for the entire community) and not of one and of all.
We may assume that complete fusion between the parts of such copulative groups would be more common if it were not checked by the connecting particle and. In some of the most common of these the accent of and has become so much depressed that the word becomes almost inaudible: cf. hare and hounds, half and half, etc. In combinations where the connecting particle has become unrecognisable in consequence of such phonetic sinking, it no longer resists the fusion. Thus, Jackanapes has become to all intents and purposes one word. It stands[196] with the common preposition on, instead of of (cf. the very frequent use of this ‘on’ in Shakespeare and contemporaries), for Jack-of-apes, i.e., originally, ‘the man of the (or with the) [performing] apes,’ just as Jack-a-lantern stands for ‘Jack of the (or with the) lantern,’ etc. Combinations without any such connecting link pass, of course, all the more easily into compounds: cf. Alsace-Lorraine, as against such combinations as Naples and Sicily.
In the period of the Indo-European languages before inflections had taken their rise, or when they were not yet indispensable, the fusion into a ‘copulative compound’ (dvand-va) must have been simple and easy.
When a substantive has been specialised in meaning by being combined with an attributive, as blackbird, the combination may pass through all the changes of signification described in Chapter IV. without the uncombined substantive as such being affected. The result is commonly to make the combination richer in contents than the simple combination of the parts. Thus, by ‘a blackbird’ we understand the familiar songster to which we give the name, and no longer understand such birds as rooks, crows, etc., which might have been classed under the name ‘blackbird.’[197] Further modifications may set in, which may cause the epithet, strictly interpreted, to become wholly inapplicable. Thus, ‘a butterfly’[198] is applied to a whole class of insects quite irrespective of their colours. When we talk of the Middle Ages, we mean a strictly defined period of time, though no such definition is involved in the word middle. Privy Councillor denotes a definite rank; and the idea of privacy hardly enters into our heads as we pronounce the word: cf. also such expressions as the Holy Scriptures; the fine Arts; cold blood; Black Monday; Passion Week; the High School; the wise men from the East. It must be observed that the substantival determinants are only able to fuse with the word defined if they are employed in an abstract sense. This restriction does not, however, apply in the case of proper names.
A subdivision of this great class of words, thus specialised, is formed by common place-names which have become proper nouns by the aid of some determinant, itself possibly also unspecific. Such are the Red Sea, the Black Forest, Broadway, the Sublime Porte, the Watergate, the Blue Mountains, High Town, Beechwood, Broadmeadows, Coldstream, Troutbeck, Dog-island. It is similar, too, when an epithet attached as a distinguishing mark to a proper name comes to be apprehended as an integral portion of the proper name—in fact, as attaching to the individual; as, Richard the Humpback, Charles the Bald, William the Conqueror, Alexandra Land, the Mackenzie River, Weston-super-mare.
Compare also such compounds as Oldham, Littleton, Hightown, Lower-Austria, Great Britain.
The metaphorical application of a word is generally rendered intelligible by the context; especially and chiefly by the addition of a determinant: cf. ‘the head of the conspirators;’ ‘the heart of the enterprise;’ ‘the life of the undertaking;’ ‘the sting of death.’ Similarly, a determinant forming an element in a compound helps to render the metaphorical application intelligible; indeed, we are able by the aid of such a determinant to give to compounds a metaphorical sense, which we could hardly venture upon for the undetermined word alone: so, for instance, we give the name of German-silver to a material which we should not call merely silver; the name of sea-horse to what we would not call a horse: cf. further, sea-cow, elder-wine, ginger-beer, etc.
There are some cases, again, in which the compound has a proper, as well as a metaphorical meaning, and only as a compound acquires its metaphorical use: such are swallow-tail, negro-head, mothers’ joy, cuckoo-spittle, woolly bear, etc.
We have now to consider how syntactical and formal isolation contributes to further the fusion of the determinant with the determinate. If we compare two combinations such as kinsman with man-of-war, or man of deeds, we shall find that whilst the one has become an undoubted composition, the others are still groups of more or less independent parts. This is of course due to the fact that even now the word man is inflected, and that consequently the plurals, men of war and men of deeds, remind us of the fact that the first member of the group is an independent word. Formerly, when the flection was far more elaborate, this was, naturally, much more the case, and this alone would have sufficed to establish the feeling that, in compounds, the genitive which remained the same in all ‘cases’ of the compound had to precede. Of course, as long as flection sufficiently indicated the cases, both orders could be used in any group, but as then only such groups in which the genitive did precede became ‘compounds,’ those compounds became models, and the practice arose gradually and gradually became a rule. Another force then came to exert its influence in the same direction. In such genitival combinations it is, as a rule, the genitive which has the accent. When, then, this genitive was placed first, the whole group thereby resembled in accent the existing composites of the oldest formation, and so was more easily considered in the same light as these. The main cause must, however, be sought in a syntactical isolation, i.e., in our examples, an isolation in the construction of the article. As long as flectional terminations existed in their entirety, the Teutonic languages could dispense with the article before declined cases of nouns; in fact we may say the article did not exist, the demonstrative pronoun not yet having been degraded into what it became later on—a mere sign of case. Hence it was in old Teutonic languages quite possible, and a frequent practice, to use the genitive case of a noun alone without an article at all. We may be sure that this has also been true for the other cases. Phonetic decay, however, levelled the terminations of the other cases of a noun long before the genitive; and accusative and dative had long been alike (or very nearly so) at a time when in the masculine and neuter singular the genitive s was still preserved: in fact, as we know, in English it is all that has remained to us of the old flectional endings, with the exception of those s’s, in the plural which are original and not due to analogy. In that older stage of the language it was common to express an idea like the son of man by constructions just as in Ancient Greek, where the genitive stood between the article and the noun, which were both, of course, in the same case. Thus we find in Old High German, ther (NOM. SING. masc.) mannes sun (= ‘the man’s son’[199]). In Anglo-Saxon, Heofona rice ys gelíc ðám hiredes ealdre (‘of heaven’s (the) Kingdom is like the (DAT. sing.) household’s prince’). Gradually, however, the use of a noun without the article, largely, no doubt, owing to the levelling of all other cases, became more and more rare even in the genitive. Such rare standing expressions as remained without article, naturally assumed the appearance of compounds, and, especially in the case where the article belonging to the second noun preceded the genitive, the fusion was complete: the + kin’s + man became the + kinsman.[200]