Copula. A link or bond.
Correlative (words). Mate-words.
Crasis. Sound-blending, sound-welding.
Dactyl. Gr. daktylos. A foot (in verse) of one long and two short sounds, or of one high and two low sounds, as cheerily.
Dative. Giving.
Deciduous (plant). Fallsome. (Does it mean that only the leaves fall, or that the whole stem falls?) An elm is summer-green or leaved, and winter-sear. Holly is ever-green or winter-leaved. Parsley or the nettle is summer-stemm’d and winter-fallsome.
Decimate. To tithe:—‘Breech-loading rifles would so decimate columns.’ Decimate (decimo, from decem, ten, in Latin) was to take for death every tenth man of a body that had behaved very badly. The word decimate is now used very loosely, as meaning to cut up.
Defective. Wanting of something of its kind.
Defective (verb). Wanting of some time-shapes, as quoth, must, go. The foretime shape of go (gang) would be, as that of an unmoulded time-word, goed; and goed, a worn shape of the older ‘gaode,’ is found in northern folk-speech, with yowed (Saxon eode.) Gang makes ganged.
Deficiency. Underodds. Excess, overodds.