The characteristics of nations, as of races, are fairly accurately reflected linguistically in the metaphors and idioms they choose, in their tricks of grammar, in their various ways of forming new words. It is, for obvious reasons, easier to apply this principle to other nations than to one’s own; nevertheless there are a few such points which English people can observe even in the English language. The number of words and expressions drawn from sport is a phenomenon which has already been touched upon, and it is at any rate a question whether humour has not played a larger part in the creation of English and American words than in those of other languages. The French ‘tête’[21] is humorous in origin, and there must be other French and Latin-French words with a similar history, but English has really quite a number of words in which humour has taken a hand. One way in which this comes about is the process known as back-formation. We realize the humorous intention when somebody invents from the noun _swashbuckler_ a verb to _swashbuckle_, or to _buttle_ and _cuttle_ from _butler_ and _cutler_, but it is not so well known that the same process (probably with the same humorous intent behind it) gave us such sober words as _burgle_, _sidle_, _edit_, _grovel_, _beg_, and _greed_. One of the most interesting back-formations is the verb to _maffick_, formed from the supposed present participle _mafficking_, which was coined to describe the festivities that greeted the arrival in London of the news of the relief of Mafeking during the Boer War. The well-known humorous device of understatement is responsible for the modern meaning of _hit_ and most of its synonyms. The notion of striking was once conveyed by the verb to _slay_; by Tudor times, however, _smite_, which in Old English meant to ‘smear’ or ‘rub over’, had become the commoner word. _Strike_ itself in Old English meant ‘to stroke’ or ‘to rub gently’, and _hit_, which is now universal in serious colloquial speech, meant to ‘meet with’ or ‘light upon’—‘not to miss’, in fact; just as to _win_ (‘not to lose’) something means, or recently meant, in the British Army, to _steal_ it. _Blow_ and _thrash_ are both sly agricultural metaphors, and the present popularity of such slang phrases as _wipe_, meaning a blow, and to _wipe out_, suggests that this pleasing and rather simple form of humour is still active in English word-formation.