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Richard Chenevix Trench. English Past and Present
English Past and Present
Table of Contents
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION
ENGLISH. PAST AND PRESENT
I
ENGLISH A COMPOSITE LANGUAGE
FOOTNOTES
II
GAINS OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE
FOOTNOTES
III
DIMINUTIONS OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE
FOOTNOTES
IV
CHANGES IN THE MEANING OF ENGLISH WORDS
FOOTNOTES
V
CHANGES IN THE SPELLING OF ENGLISH WORDS
FOOTNOTES
INDEX OF WORDS
Отрывок из книги
Richard Chenevix Trench
Published by Good Press, 2019
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Yet here, before I pass further, I would observe in respect of those which come from the Latin, that it will be desirable further to mark whether they are directly from it, and such might be marked L¹, or only mediately from it, and to us directly from the French, which would be L², or L at second hand—our English word being only in the second generation descended from the Latin, not the child, but the child’s child. There is a rule that holds pretty constantly good, by which you may determine this point. It is this—that if a word be directly from the Latin, it will not have undergone any alteration or modification in its form and shape, save only in the termination—‘innocentia’ will have become ‘innocency’, ‘natio’ will have become ‘nation’, ‘firmamentum’ ‘firmament’, but nothing more. On the other hand, if it comes through the French, it will generally be considerably altered in its passage. It will have undergone a process of lubrication; its sharply defined Latin outline will in good part have departed from it; thus ‘crown’ is from ‘corona’, but though ‘couronne’, and itself a dissyllable, ‘coroune’, in our earlier English; ‘treasure’ is from ‘thesaurus’, but through ‘trésor’; ‘emperor’ is the Latin ‘imperator’, but it was first ‘empereur’. It will often happen that the substantive has past through this process, having reached us through the intervention of the French; while we have only felt at a later period our want of the adjective also, which we have proceeded to borrow direct from the Latin. Thus, ‘people’ is indeed ‘populus’, but it was ‘peuple’ first, while ‘popular’ is a direct transfer of a Latin vocable into our English glossary. So too ‘enemy’ is ‘inimicus’, but it was first softened in the French, and had its Latin physiognomy to a great degree obliterated, while ‘inimical’ is Latin throughout; ‘parish’ is ‘paroisse’, but ‘parochial’ is ‘parochialis’; ‘chapter’ is ‘chapitre’, but ‘capitular’ is ‘capitularis’.
“Pity you was not druggerman at Babel”.
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