(Allestree), ‘moliminously’ (Cudworth), ‘luciferously’ (Sir Thomas
Browne), ‘immarcescible’ (Bishop Hall), ‘exility’, ‘spinosity’,
‘incolumity’, ‘solertiousness’, ‘lucripetous’, ‘inopious’, ‘eluctate’,
‘eximious’ (all in Hacket), ‘arride’{50} (ridiculed by Ben Johnson),
with the hundreds of other words like these, and even more monstrous
than are some of these, not to speak of such Italian as ‘leggiadrous’ (a
favourite word in Beaumont’s _Psyche_), ‘amorevolous’ (Hacket), had not
been rejected and disallowed by the true instinct of the national mind.
{Sidenote: _Naturalization of Words_}
A great many too _were_ allowed and adopted, but not exactly in the shape
in which they first were introduced among us; they were made to drop
their foreign termination, or otherwise their foreign appearance, to
conform themselves to English ways, and only so were finally incorporated
into the great family of English words{51}. Thus of Greek words we have
the following: ‘pyramis’ and ‘pyramides’, forms often employed by
Shakespeare, became ‘pyramid’ and ‘pyramids’; ‘dosis’ (Bacon) ‘dose’;
‘distichon’ (Holland) ‘distich’; ‘hemistichion’ (North) ‘hemistich’;
‘apogæon’ (Fairfax) and ‘apogeum’ (Browne) ‘apogee’; ‘sumphonia’
(Lodge) ‘symphony’; ‘prototypon’ (Jackson) ‘prototype’; ‘synonymon’
(Jeremy Taylor) or ‘synonymum’ (Hacket), and ‘synonyma’ (Milton, prose),
became severally ‘synonym’ and ‘synonyms’; ‘syntaxis’ (Fuller) became
‘syntax’; ‘extasis’ (Burton) ‘ecstasy’; ‘parallelogrammon’ (Holland)
‘parallelogram’; ‘programma’ (Warton) ‘program’; ‘epitheton’ (Cowell)
‘epithet’; ‘epocha’ (South) ‘epoch’; ‘biographia’ (Dryden) ‘biography’;
‘apostata’ (Massinger) ‘apostate’; ‘despota’ (Fox) ‘despot’;
‘misanthropos’ (Shakespeare) if ‘misanthropi’ (Bacon) ‘misanthrope’;
‘psalterion’ (North) ‘psaltery’; ‘chasma’ (Henry More) ‘chasm’; ‘idioma’
and ‘prosodia’ (both in Daniel, prose) ‘idiom’ and ‘prosody’; ‘energia’,
‘energy’, and ‘Sibylla’, ‘Sibyl’ (both in Sidney); ‘zoophyton’ (Henry
More) ‘zoophyte’; ‘enthousiasmos’ (Sylvester) ‘enthusiasm’; ‘phantasma’
(Donne) ‘phantasm’; ‘magnes’ (Gabriel Harvey) ‘magnet’; ‘cynosura’
(Donne) ‘cynosure’; ‘galaxias’ (Fox) ‘galaxy’; ‘heros’ (Henry More)
‘hero’; ‘epitaphy’ (Hawes) ‘epitaph’.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account