{159} Jamieson’s _Dictionary_ gives a large number of words with this termination which I should suppose were always peculiar to Scotland, as ‘bangsome’, i.e. quarrelsome, ‘freaksome’, ‘drysome’, ‘grousome’ (the German ‘grausam’) [Now in common use as ‘gruesome’.] {160} [A list of some of these reduplicated words was given by Dr. Booth in his “Analytical Dictionary of the English Language”, 1835; but a full collection of nearly six hundred was published by Mr. H. B. Wheatley in the _Transactions of the Philological Society_ for 1865.] {161} Many languages have groups of words formed upon the same scheme, although, singularly enough, they are altogether absent from the Anglo-Saxon. (J. Grimm, _Deutsche Gramm._, vol. ii. p. 976). The Spaniards have a great many very expressive words of this formation. Thus with allusion to the great struggle in which Christian Spain was engaged for so many centuries, a vaunting braggart is a ‘matamoros’, a ‘slaymoor’; he is a ‘matasiete’, a ‘slayseven’; a ‘perdonavidas’, a ‘sparelives’. Others may be added to these, as ‘azotacalles’, ‘picapleytos’, ‘saltaparedes’, ‘rompeesquinas’, ‘ganapan’, ‘cascatreguas’. {162} [This stands for ‘peak-goose’ (_peek goos_ in Ascham, _Scholemaster_, 1570, p. 54, ed. Arber), a _goose_ that _peaks_ or pines, used for a sickly, delicate person, and a simpleton. In Chapman, Cotgrave and others it appears as ‘pea-goose’.] {163} The mistake is far earlier; long before Cowper wrote the sound suggested first this sense, and then this spelling. Thus Stanihurst, _Description of Ireland_, p. 28: “They are taken for no better than _rakehels_, or _the devil’s black guard_”; and often elsewhere. {164} [i.e. in Joshua Sylvester’s translation of “Du Bartas, his Diuine Weekes and Workes”, 1621.] {165} As not, however, turning on a _very_ coarse matter, and illustrating the subject with infinite wit and humour, I might refer the Spanish scholar to the discussion between Don Quixote and his squire on the dismissal of ‘regoldar’, from the language of good society, and the substitution of ‘erutar’ in its room (_Don Quixote_, 4. 7. 43). In a letter of Cicero to Pætus (_Fam._ ix. 22) there is a subtle and interesting disquisition on forbidden words, and their philosophy. {166} _Literature of Greece_, p. 5. {167} [Notwithstanding the analogous instance of ‘abbess’ for ‘abbatess’ this account of ‘lass’ must be abandoned. It is the old English _lasce_ (akin to Swedish _lösk_), meaning (1) one free or disengaged, (2) an unmarried girl (N.E.D.)] {168} In Cotgrave’s _Dictionary_ I find ‘praiseress’, ‘commendress’, ‘fluteress’, ‘possesseress’, ‘loveress’, but have never met them in use.