PATH-OLOGY.
There once resided in Ayrshire a man who, like Leman, proposed to write an Etymological Dictionary of the English language. Being asked what he understood the word pathology to mean, he answered, with great readiness and confidence, “Why, the art of road-making, to be sure.”
THE PRONUNCIATION OF OUGH.
The difficulty of applying rules to the pronunciation of our language may be illustrated in two lines, where the combination of the letters ough is pronounced in no less than seven different ways, viz.: as o, uff, off, up, ow, oo, and ock:—
Though the TOUGH COUGH and HICCOUGH PLOUGH me THROUGH,
O’er life’s dark LOUGH my course I still pursue.
The following attempts to show the sound of ough, final, are ingenious:—
Though from rough cough or hiccough free,
That man has pain enough
Whose wounds through plough, sunk in a slough,