What steed to the desert flies frantic and far?"
The quick action is also signified in flay, flog, fling, flitter, and other vocables. Coriolanus portrays verbally the very deed, when he tells how,
"Like an eagle in a dovecot, he
Flutter'd their Volsces in Corioli."
G, by itself, is rather a soft consonant; and, followed by l, it has also a mild effect, as in the very expressive words, gleam, glide, glitter, glisten, gloom, and the like. Gr, again, is singularly heavy and harsh, as in the succeeding cases:—
"And grinn'd, terrific, a sardonic look."
"Grinn'd horribly a ghastly smile."
"Grapple him to thy soul with hooks of steel."
"In came Margaret's grimly ghost."
Of kindred force are grasp, gripe, grope, and others. Gnash and gnaw have a sort of convulsive twist in sense, and so should they have in sound, when rightly pronounced, and after the original mode. By the way, though grin be a strong word, in its old shape it is stronger; and that girn, still used in Scotland.