It must not, however, be concealed that several well established words are hybrid; and that, even in the writings of the classical Roman authors, there is hybridism between the Latin and the Greek.
Nevertheless, the etymological view of every word of foreign origin is, not that it is put together in England, but that it is brought whole from the language to which it is vernacular. Now no derived word can be brought whole from a language unless, in that language, all its parts exist. The word penetrability is not derived from the English word penetrable, by the addition of -ty. It is the Latin word penetrabilitas imported.
In derived words all the parts must belong to one and the same language, or, changing the expression, every derived word must have a possible form in the language from which it is taken. Such is the rule against hybridism.
[§ 93]. A true word sometimes takes the appearance of
a hybrid without really being so. The -icle, in icicle, is apparently the same as the -icle in radicle. Now, as ice is Gothic, and -icle classical, hybridism is simulated. Icicle, however, is not a derivative but a compound; its parts being is and gicel, both Anglo-Saxon words.[[39]]
[§ 94]. On incompletion of the radical.—Let there be in a given language a series of roots ending in -t, as sæmat. Let a euphonic influence eject the -t, as often as the word occurs in the nominative case. Let the nominative case be erroneously considered to represent the root, or radical, of the word. Let a derivative word be formed accordingly, i.e., on the notion that the nominative form and the radical form coincide. Such a derivative will exhibit only a part of the root; in other words, the radical will be incomplete.
Now all this is what actually takes place in words like hæmo-ptysis (spitting of blood), sema-phore (a sort of telegraph). The Greek imparisyllabics eject a part of the root in the nominative case; the radical forms being hæmat- and sæmat-, not hæm-and sæm-.
Incompletion of the radical is one of the commonest causes of words being coined faultily. It must not, however, be concealed, that even in the classical writers, we have in words like δίστομος examples of incompletion of the radical.
[§ 95]. The preceding chapters have paved the way for a distinction between the historical analysis of a language, and the logical analysis of one.