Читать книгу The Grammar of English Grammars - Goold Brown - Страница 133

Monosyllables ending in f, l, or s, preceded by a single vowel, double the final consonant; as staff, mill, pass—muff, knell, gloss—off, hiss, puss.

EXCEPTIONS.—The words clef, if, and of, are written with single f; and as, gas, has, was, yes, his, is, this, us, pus, and thus, with single s. So bul, for the flounder; nul, for no, in law; sol, for sou or sun; and sal, for salt, in chemistry, have but the single l.

OBS.—Because sal, salis, in Latin, doubles not the l, the chemists write salify, salifiable, salification, saliferous, saline, salinous, saliniform, salifying, &c., with single l, contrary to Rule 3d. But in gas they ought to double the s; for this is a word of their own inventing. Neither have they any plea for allowing it to form gases and gaseous with the s still single; for so they make it violate two general rules at once. If the singular cannot now be written gass, the plural should nevertheless be gasses, and the adjective should be gasseous, according to Rule 3d.