branchlet.

I have found it necessary to make a distinction between branches and branchlets, understanding by the latter term the lateral shoots which are produced in the same season as those from which they spring.-John Lindley, A Monograph of Roses (1820), p. xxi.

islet, ringlet.

Nor for yon river islet wild
Beneath the willow spray,

Where, like the ringlets of a child,

Thou weav'st thy circle gay ;—

John Keble, Christian Year, Tuesday in Easter Week.

335. In-age, a French form from Latin -aticum: as average, baggage, bondage, carnage, carriage, cottage, damage, espionage, foliage, herbage, language, lineage, marriage, message, passage, plumage, poundage, tonnage, vicarage, village, voyage.

use.

These words had for the most part an abstract meaning in their origin, and they have often grown more concrete by The word cottage, as commonly understood, is concrete, but there was an older and more abstract use, according to which it signified an inferior kind of tenure, a use in which it may be classed with such words as burgage, soccage. The following is from a manuscript of the seventeenth century.

The definition of an Esquire and the severall sortes of them according to the Custome and Vsage of England.

An Esquire called in latine Armiger, Scutifer, et homo ad arma is he that in times past was Costrell to a Knight, the bearer of his sheild and helme, a faithful companion and associate to him in the Warrs, serving on horsebacke, whereof euery knight had twoe at the least in attendance upon him, in respect of the fee, For they held their land of the Knight by Cottage as the Knight held his of the King by Knight service.-Ashmole MS. 837, art. viii. fol. 162.

A beautiful abstract use of the word personage, in the sense of personal appearance, occurs in The Faery Queene, iii. 2.

26:

The Damzell wel did vew his Personage.

Carriage now signifies a vehicle for carrying; but in the Bible of 1611 it occurs eight times as the collective for things carried, impedimenta. In Numbers iv. 24 it is a marginal reading for 'burdens,' which is in the text. In Acts xxi. 15, 'We tooke vp our cariages' is in the Great Bible (1539) we toke vp oure burthenes,' and in the Geneva version (1560) we trussed vp our fardeles.'

The abstract glides easily into the collective, and this is seen in many of the instances, as baggage, carnage, foliage, herbage, plumage. I asked a girl in Standard III, the lesson being Campbell's Parrot, what plumage meant? She answered, 'A nice lot of feathers, Sir.'

336. Next to -age we naturally come to the form -ager, as in the French passager, messager. Above, 71, we find messager in an English letter of the year 1402. It has been altered in English to -enger, as passenger, messenger; and -inger, as harbinger, porringer, pottinger, wharfinger. Wallinger is the name of a class of labourers in the salt-works at Nantwich, and it may perhaps be connected with Saxon weallan to boil. Muringer is the title of the officers who are charged with the repairs of the walls at Chester, and it may be seen on a tablet over an archway near the Water Tower.

In the fourteenth century there was a public officer known as the King's aulneger, who was a sort of inspector of the measuring of all cloths offered for sale, and his title was derived from the French aulne an ell, aulnage measuring with the ell-measure.

And here belongs also that great medieval word danger, as if danager, from dan dominus, as in 'Dan Chaucer.' It was used to signify lord's rights, lordship, sway, mastery.

In the Romaunt of the Rose 3015 it is a man's name:

F

But than a chorle, foul him betide,
Beside the roses gan him hide,
To keepe the roses of that rosere,
Of whom the name was DAUNGERE :
This chorle was hid there in the greves,
Covered with grasse and with leves,
To spie and take whom that he fond
Unto that roser put an hond.

337. In or, -our, -er, Old French -eór (disyllabic), New French -eur, from Latin -tor -oris: as, chanter chanteór (cantator), emperor empereór (imperator), governour (gubernator), traitor (traditor), saviour salveór (salvator). The form saviour is intelligible not from New French sauveur, but from the Old French salveór trisyllabic 1.

338. In -er, -or, -ar, French -ier (Latin -arius); as, bachelor bachelier (baccalarius), butcher, carpenter, Fletcher, gardener, grocer, usher huissier (ostiarius), vintner. This French -ier is perhaps the most productive' of all the French nounforms 2. It is the constant type of word for expressing a man's trade, and in this function it sustained and enlarged the Saxon -ere, 319. In the Prologue we have four of them in two lines :

An Haberdasshere and a Carpenter,

A Webbe, a Dyere, and a Tapycer.

In French this -ier was moreover the prevalent type for tree-naming; but this has passed into English, as far as I remember, in only one instance, poplar peuplier.

339. -ier, -yer, -er, from French -ière, the fem. of the above; as, barrier barrière, prayer prière, river rivière.

In -or, -er, from French -oir (Latin -orius); as, counter comptoir, mirror miroir, razor rasoir.

1 Friedrich Diez, Grammatik der Romanischen Sprachen, ii. 49, 350 (ed. 1871).

2

Auguste Brachet, Grammaire Historique, p. 276 (p. 184 of Mr. Kitchin's Translation, Clarendon Press Series).

Here we may observe in a series of examples how a variety of original forms run down into -er. And there are more than these. Thus, from French -aire (Lat. -arium), as dower douaire (dotarium); and -eoire, as manger mangeoire.

This became an absorbing type. Saxon words of like import but unlike form were drawn into it; thus CUMA became comer, HUNTA hunter.

340. Another form, -eer, is modern as to orthography, but perhaps it may be the true living representative of the French -ier, as auctioneer, buccaneer, charioteer, mountaineer, muleteer, pamphleteer, pioneer, privateer.

This form is sometimes used half-playfully :

fellow-circuiteer.

The enormous gains of my old fellow-circuiteer, Charles Austin, who is said to have made 40,000 guineas by pleading before Parliament in one session. Henry Crabb Robinson, Diary, 1818.

341. In -ee. This termination is from the French passive participle.

Examples:-devotee, feoffee, grandee, grantee, guarantee, legatee, levee, mortgagee, nominee, patentee, payee, referee, refugee, trustee.

The original passive character of the form still shines out in most of the examples; and often there is an active substantive as a counterpart. Thus grantor, grantee; lessor, lessee; mortgagor, mortgagee.

Assimilated are decree décret (decretum), degree; also such names as Chaldee, Pharisee, Sadducee, Manichee (for which Manichean is now more general), and Yankee.

342. In-ard, -art. Examples:-bastard, braggart,buzzard, bustard, coward, dastard, dotard (Spenser, Faery Queene, iii. 9. 8), drunkard, dullard, haggard a sort of hawk, laggard, mallard, niggard, pollard, sluggard, standard, tankard (a little tank, French étang, Latin stagnum), wizard.

Y

Here should be mentioned also the national designations Nizzard, Savoyard, Spaniard.

In -on, -ion, -oon, French -on, as in maçon, mouton, salon; Latin masculines in -0, -io, genitive ōnis:-balloon, buffoon, capon, champion, dungeon, escutcheon, falcon, felon, glutton, harpoon, lion, mutton, pavilion, pigeon, salmon, stallion, saloon.

These are to be distinguished from those in -son, 332, from Latin feminines in -tio, -tiōnis.

343. In -ine, in, after the French from the Latin -inus, -ina. Examples:-basin, cousin, famine, florin, libertine, matins, rapine, resin, routine, ruin, vermin.

Altered forms :-canteen Latin cantina = cellar, curtain, don Latin dominus, garden jardin, paten, venom venin. 344. In -ure, Latin -ura, as mensura.

Examples :-adventure, capture, caricature, censure, culture, departure, embrasure, expenditure, failure, fissure, furniture, garniture, imposture, indenture, juncture, manure, measure, miniature, mixture, nature, nomenclature, nurture, overture, pasture, picture, posture, portraiture, pressure, primogeniture, procedure, rapture, scripture, seizure, signature, stature, suture, torture, verdure.

Assimilated are leisure, treasure, from the French loisir,

trésor.

closure.

And for his warlike feates renowmed is,

From where the day out of the sea doth spring,
Until the closure of the Evening.

The Faery Queene, iii. 3. 27.

disclosure.

It follows, then, that Man is the great disclosure of design in Nature; that Man lets out the great secret of the authorship of Nature; and that Man is the revelation of a God in Nature.-J. B. Mozley, The Argument of Design,' Essays, ii. 370.