On clearness, it is to be feared that, notwithstanding the English may be clear in breath-sounds to the ear, there is often a want of clearness to the mind from the many pairs of words which have worn into the same sound, such as:—
| Bow, | bow, |
| Doe, | dough, |
| Lea, | lee, |
| Pale, | pail, |
| Sow, | sew, |
and others; and from the use of Latin and Greek and other foreign words, which are used in other than their true first meanings, or the meanings of which the common folk do not understand.
Teleology is a word which I have just seen in a Dorset paper, as for the matter of a lately given lore-speech, ‘the examination or the discussion of the purposes for which things are created.’ Now, in English the word end means both a forending, or termination, and a purpose; but I do not think that telos (end) or teleosis, in Greek, means a purpose. Prothesis would most likely have been put for it by a Greek.
The Latinish and Greekish wording is a hindrance to the teaching of the homely poor, or at least the landfolk. It is not clear to them, and some of them say of a clergyman that his Latinised preaching is too high for them, and seldom seek the church.
Swan is a clue to the meaning of swanling but none of cygnet; and if a man knew that kyknos was the Greek for swan he might still be at a loss for the meaning of -et, which is not a Greek ending.
For sound-sweetness or glibness, we should shun, as far as we can, the meeting of hard dead breath-pennings of unlike kinds. We have in our true English too many of them, and some of them from the dropping of the e from the word-ending -ed, as in slep’t and pack’d (lip and roof, and throat and roof pennings, and in both cases hard dead pennings); and then, as if we had not enough of them, we have brought in a host more of such ones from the Latin, as in act, tract, inept, rapt.
Now, forbend is a softer-sounded word than deflect, since ct (kt) are hard throat and root pennings, very unhandy together, and the n of -nd is a mild half-penning, and d is a mild dead penning. So dapper is better sounded than adept, since p is a single hard penning between two free breathings, and pt are a hard lip and a hard roof breathing, unfollowed by any softer breathing.
It was against such harshness of hard unlike breath-pennings that Celtic speech took its markworthy word-moulding.
As a token of the readiness of two kindred breath-pennings to run into one, we may give the words of the Liturgy, ‘Make clean our hearts within us,’ for which a clergyman will hardly, without a pause and a strong pushing of the breath, help saying ‘Make lean our hearts within us.’