Thus, I think, we may trace a tendency in words ending in ‘some’, the Anglo-Saxon and early English ‘sum’, the German ‘sam’ (‘friedsam’, ‘seltsam’) to fall out of use. It is true that a vast number of these survive, as ‘gladsome’, ‘handsome’, ‘wearisome’, ‘buxom’ (this last spelt better ‘bucksome’, by our earlier writers, for its present spelling altogether disguises its true character, and the family to which it belongs); being the same word as the German ‘beugsam’ or ‘biegsam’, bendable, compliant{157}; but a larger number of these words than can be ascribed to accident, many more than the due proportion of them, are either quite or nearly extinct. Thus in Wiclif’s Bible alone you might note the following, ‘lovesum’, ‘hatesum’, ‘lustsum’, ‘gilsum’ (guilesome), ‘wealsum’, ‘heavysum’, ‘lightsum’, ‘delightsum’; of these ‘lightsome’ long survived, and indeed still survives in provincial dialects; but of the others all save ‘delightsome’ are gone; and that, although used in our Authorized Version (Mal. iii, 12), is now only employed in poetry. So too ‘mightsome’ (see Coleridge’s _Glossary_), ‘brightsome’ (Marlowe), ‘wieldsome’, and ‘unwieldsome’ (Golding), ‘unlightsome’ (Milton), ‘healthsome’ (_Homilies_), ‘ugsome’ and ‘ugglesome’ (both in Foxe), ‘laboursome’ (Shakespeare), ‘friendsome’, ‘longsome’ (Bacon), ‘quietsome’, ‘mirksome’ (both in Spenser), ‘toothsome’ (Beaumont and Fletcher), ‘gleesome’, ‘joysome’ (both in Browne’s _Pastorals_), ‘gaysome’ (_Mirror for Magistrates_), ‘roomsome’, ‘bigsome’, ‘awesome’, ‘timersome’, ‘winsome’, ‘viewsome’, ‘dosome’ (=prosperous), ‘flaysome’ (=fearful), ‘auntersome’ (=adventurous), ‘clamorsome’ (all these still surviving in the North), ‘playsome’ (employed by the historian Hume), ‘lissome’{158}, have nearly or quite disappeared from our English speech. They seem to have held their ground in Scotland in considerably larger numbers than in the south of the Island{159}. {Sidenote: _Words in ‘-ard’_} Neither can I esteem it a mere accident that of a group of depreciatory and contemptuous words ending in ‘ard’, at least one half should have dropped out of use; I refer to that group of which ‘dotard’, ‘laggard’, ‘braggard’, now spelt ‘braggart’, ‘sluggard’, ‘buzzard’, ‘bastard’, ‘wizard’, may be taken as surviving specimens; ‘blinkard’ (_Homilies_), ‘dizzard’ (Burton), ‘dullard’ (Udal), ‘musard’ (Chaucer), ‘trichard’ (_Political Songs_), ‘shreward’ (Robert of Gloucester), ‘ballard’ (a bald-headed man, Wiclif); ‘puggard’, ‘stinkard’ (Ben Jonson), ‘haggard’, a worthless hawk, as extinct.