One sundriness of tale, the marking of things under speech—as onely (singular) or somely (plural)—is by an onputting to the thing-name for someliness a mark-ending, or by a moulding of the name into another shape or sound.
By mark-endings, -es, -s, -en, -n.
| Lash, | lashes. |
| Cat, | cats. |
| House, | housen. |
| Shoe, | shoon. |
By for-moulding, as foot, feet—tooth, teeth; or by both word-moulding or sound-moulding and an ending, as brother, brethren.
When the singular shape ends in -sh, -ss, or -x, -ks, it takes on -es for the somely, as lash, lashes; kiss, kisses; box, boxes.
And surely, when the singular shape ends in -st, our Universities or some high school of speech ought to give us leave to make it somely by the old ending -en or -es instead of -s—fist, fisten, fistes; nest, nesten, nestes.
What in the world of speech can be harsher than fists, lists, nests?
It is unhappy that the old ending in -en, which is yet the main one in West Friesic, should have given way to the hissing s.
Where common names with the definite mark-word become names of places they are wont to lose the article, as The Bath, in Somerset, is now Bath; The Wells, in Somerset, Wells; Sevenoaks, not The Seven Oaks, in Kent.
In our version of Acts xxvii. 8, we have a place which is called The Fair Havens, instead of Fairhavens without the mark-word, as the Greek gives the name.