[55] [The identity of these two words, notwithstanding the analogy of corona and crown, is denied by Skeat, Kluge and Lutz.]
[56] Skinner (Etymologicon, 1671) protests against the word altogether, as purely French, and having no right to be considered English at all.
[57] It is curious how effectually the nationality of a word may by these slight alterations in spelling be disguised. I have met an excellent French and English scholar, to whom it was quite a surprise to learn that ‘redingote’ was ‘riding-coat’.
[58] [Compare French marsouin (= German meer-schwein), “sea-pig”, the dolphin; Breton mor-houc’h; Irish mucc mara, “pig of the sea”, the dolphin (W. Stokes, Irish Glossaries, p. 118); French truye de mer (Cotgrave); old English brun-swyne (Prompt. Parv.), “brown-pig”, the dolphin or seal.]
[59] He is not indeed perfectly accurate in this statement, for the Greeks spoke of ἐν κύκλῳ παιδεία and ἐγκύκλιος παιδεία, but had no such composite word as ἐγκυκλοπαδεία. We gather however from these expressions, as from Lord Bacon’s using the term ‘circle-learning’ (=‘orbis doctrinæ’, Quintilian), that ‘encyclopædia’ did not exist in their time. [But ‘encyclopedia’ occurs in Elyot, Governour, 1531, vol. i, p. 118 (ed. Croft); ‘encyclopædie’ in J. Sylvester, Workes, 1621, p. 660.]
[60] See the passages quoted in my paper, On some Deficiencies in our English Dictionaries, p. 38.
[61] [This prediction has been verified. ‘Ethos’ is used by Sir F. Palgrave, 1851, and in the ‘Encyclopædia Britannica’, 1875. N.E.D.]
[62] We may see the same progress in Greek words which were being incorporated in the Latin. Thus Cicero writes ἀντίποδες (Acad. ii, 39, 123), but Seneca (Ep. 122), ‘antipodes’; that is, the word for Cicero was still Greek, while in the period that elapsed between him and Seneca, it had become Latin: so too Cicero wrote εἴδωλον, the Younger Pliny ‘idolon’, and Tertullian ‘idolum’.
[63] [This rash prophecy has not been fulfilled. English speakers are still no more inclined to say ‘préstige’ than ‘pólice’.]
[64] See in Coleridge’s Table Talk, p. 3, the amusing story of John Kemble’s stately correction of the Prince of Wales for adhering to the earlier pronunciation, ‘obleege,’—“It will become your royal mouth better to say oblige.”