different tribes, or by men in different counties, who speak different dialects; or by men of different nations.
[49.] Differences in Pronunciation.—From this source we have parson and person (the parson being the person or representative of the Church); sop and soup; task and tax (the sk has here become ks); thread and thrid; ticket and etiquette; sauce and souse (to steep in brine); squall and squeal.
[50.] Differences in Spelling.—To and too are the same word—one being used as a preposition, the other as an adverb; of and off, from and fro, are only different spellings, which represent different functions or uses of the same word; onion and union are the same word. An union[10] comes from the Latin unus, one, and it meant a large single pearl—a unique jewel; the word was then applied to the plant, the head of which is of a pearl-shape.
[51.] Contractions.—Contraction has been a pretty fruitful source of doublets in English. A long word has a syllable or two cut off; or two or three are compressed into one. Thus example has become sample; alone appears also as lone; amend has been shortened into mend; defend has been cut down into fend (as in fender); manœuvre has been contracted into manure (both meaning originally to work with the hand); madam becomes ’m in yes ’m[11]; and presbyter has been squeezed down into priest.[12] Other examples of contraction are: capital and cattle; chirurgeon (a worker with the hand) and surgeon; cholera and choler (from chŏlos, the Greek word for bile); disport and sport; estate and state; esquire and squire; Egyptian and
gipsy; emmet and ant; gammon and game; grandfather and gaffer; grandmother and gammer; iota (the Greek letter i) and jot; maximum and maxim; mobile and mob; mosquito and musket; papa and pope; periwig and wig; poesy and posy; procurator and proctor; shallop and sloop; unity and unit. It is quite evident that the above pairs of words, although in reality one, have very different meanings and uses.
[52.] Difference of English Dialects.—Another source of doublets is to be found in the dialects of the English language. Almost every county in England has its own dialect; but three main dialects stand out with great prominence in our older literature, and these are the Northern, the Midland, and the Southern. The grammar of these dialects[13] was different; their pronunciation of words was different—and this has given rise to a splitting of one word into two. In the North, we find a hard c, as in the caster of Lancaster; in the Midlands, a soft c, as in Leicester; in the South, a ch, as in Winchester. We shall find similar differences of hardness and softness in ordinary words. Thus we find kirk and church; canker and cancer; canal and channel; deck and thatch; drill and thrill; fan and van (in a winnowing-machine); fitch and vetch; hale and whole; mash and mess; naught, nought, and not; pike, peak, and beak; poke and pouch; quid (a piece of tobacco for chewing) and cud (which means the thing chewed); reave and rob; ridge and rig; scabby and shabby; scar and share; screech and shriek; shirt and skirt; shuffle and scuffle; spray and sprig; wain and waggon—and other pairs. All of these are but different modes of pronouncing the same word in different parts of England; but the genius of the language has taken advantage of these different ways of pronouncing to make different words out of them, and to give them different functions, meanings, and uses.
[ CHAPTER III.]
HISTORY OF THE GRAMMAR OF ENGLISH.
[1.] The Oldest English Synthetic.—The oldest English, or Anglo-Saxon, that was brought over here in the fifth century, was a language that showed the relations of words to each other by adding different endings to words, or by synthesis. These endings are called inflexions. Latin and Greek are highly inflected languages; French and German have many more inflexions than modern English; and ancient English (or Anglo-Saxon) also possessed a large number of inflexions.
[2.] Modern English Analytic.—When, instead of inflexions, a language employs small particles—such as prepositions, auxiliary verbs, and suchlike words—to express the relations of words to each other, such a language is called analytic or non-inflexional. When we say, as we used to say in the oldest English, “God is ealra cyninga cyning,” we speak a synthetic language. But when we say, “God is king of all kings,” then we employ an analytic or uninflected language.