a. The -a- in black-a-moor is possibly such a connecting element.
b. The -in- in night-in-gale is most probably such a connecting element. Compare the German form
nacht-i-gale, and remember the tendency of vowels to take the sound of -ng before g.
[§ 368]. Improper compounds.—The -s- in words like Thur-s-day, hunt-s-man, may be one of two things.
a. It may be the sign of the genitive case, so that Thursday = Thoris dies. In this case the word is an improper compound, since it is like the word pater-familias in Latin, in a common state of syntactical construction.
b. It may be a connecting sound, like the -i- in nacht-i-gale. Reasons for this view occur in the following fact:—
In the modern German languages the genitive case of feminine nouns ends otherwise than in -s. Nevertheless, the sound of -s- occurs in composition equally, whether the noun it follows be masculine or feminine. This fact, as far as it goes, makes it convenient to consider the sound in question as a connective rather than a case. Probably, it is neither one nor the other exactly, but the effect of a false analogy.
[§ 369]. Decomposites.—"Composition is the joining together of two words."—See § [357].
Words like mid-ship-man, gentle-man-like, &c., where the number of verbal elements seems to amount to three, are no exception to this rule; since compound radicals like midship and gentleman, are, for the purposes of composition, single words. Compounds wherein one element is compound are called decomposites.
[§ 370]. There are a number of words which are never found by themselves; or, if so found, have never the same sense that they have in combination. Mark the word combination. The terms in question are points of combination, not of composition: since they form not the