The pronoun can be used as a verb, thus— Taunt him with the license of Inke: if thou thou'st him some thrice, it shall not be amisse.-Twelfe Night, iii. 2. 42. The substantive becomes an adjective. This is so common in our language that examples are offered not to establish the fact but to identify it. Main is a well-known old Saxon substantive, which appears in its original character in such an expression as 'might and main'; but it becomes an adjective in 'main force,' or in this : And on their heads Main promontories flung. John Milton, Paradise Lost, vi. 654. We have an example of a different kind in the word cheap. This originally was a substantive, meaning market, and the expression 'good cheap' meant to say that a person had made a good marketing, after the French bon marché. While it went with an adjective harnessed to it, it was manifestly regarded as a substantive. But since we no more speak of ' good cheap'; since we have changed it to 'very cheap'; and since the word has taken the degrees of cheaper and cheapest, —its adjectival character is established beyond question. 218. The adjective becomes a substantive. In such expressions as 'the young and the old,'' the good and the bad,' 'the rich and the poor,' 'the high and the low,' 'the strong and the weak,' we have adjectives used substantively. The adjective employed substantively sometimes takes the plural form; and then it is impossible to deny it the quality of a substantive; for the adjective has no plural form in English grammar. Therefore the words irrationals and comestibles in the following quotations, though adjectives by form and extraction, must be called grammatical substantives, not only on account of their substantival use, but also by reason of their grammatical form. Irrationals all sorrow are beneath. Edward Young, Night Thoughts, v. 538. What thousands of homes there are in which the upholstery is excellent, the comestibles costly, and the grand piano unexceptionable, both for cabinet work and tone, in which not a readable book is to be found in secular literature.-Intellectual Observer, October 1866. So the adjective worthy has become a substantive when we speak of a worthy and the worthies. Other grammatical structures, besides plurality, may demonstrate that an adjective has become a substantive. We call contemporary an adjective in the connection contemporary with; but it is a noun when we say a contemporary of. The word good considered by itself would be called an adjective, but it is an acknowledged substantive, not only in the plural form goods, but also in such a construction as 'the good of the land of Egypt,' Genesis xlv. 18. And specially must the whilom adjective be called a substantive when it is suited with an adjective of its own. The adjectives ancient, preventive, must be parsed as substantives in the following quotations: Still, however, I must remain a professed ancient on that head.--Goldsmith, Dedication of the Deserted Village. Those sanitary measures which experience has shown to be the best preventive.-Queen's Speech, 1867. More examples in 404, 413, 415, 417. 219. The same changeableness of grammatical character may be seen in the adverb. The commonest form of the adverb, namely -ly, was made out of an adjective, which was made out of a substantive; as will be fully explained below, 398, 438, 441. A substantive may suddenly by a vigorous stroke of art be transformed into an adverb, as forest in the following passage: "Twas a lay More subtle-cadenced, more forest wild John Keats, Endymion. In the following line the word ill appears first as an adverb and secondly as a substantive:— Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey. Oliver Goldsmith, The Leserted Village. The same word may appear as an adverb or as a conjunction. The word but sustains these two characters in one line, His yeares but young, but his experience old. The Two Gentlemen of Verona, ii. 4. Sometimes the employment of one and the same word in a diversity of grammatical powers leads to a modification of the form of the word. The old preposition URH has come to be employed as an adjective, in 'a thorough draught,' or, as in the following quotation : These two critics, Bentley and Lachmann, were thorough masters of their craft.-Dr. Lightfoot, Galatians, Preface. It has been a modern consequence of this adjectival use of thorough, that a different form has been established for the preposition, viz. through. But this variety of form does not interfere with the justice of the statement that here we have had the same word in two grammatical characters. 220. How easily the offices of preposition and conjunction glide into each other may be seen from one or two examples. In the Scotch motto, 'Touch not the cat but the glove,' but is the old preposition butan, signifying without.' This is the character and signification which it had in early times, and from which the better known uses of but are derivative. If however we expand this sentence a little without alteration to its sense, and write it thus-Touch not the cat but first put on the glove,' we perceive that but is no longer a preposition—it has become a conjunction. In the sentence, ‘I saw nobody else but him,' but is a preposition: if it be recast and expressed thus, 'I saw nobody else, but I saw him,' but is a conjunction. In the following quotation we have for in the two characters of conjunction and preposition: For for these things every friend will depart.-Ecclus. xxii. 22. In the sentence, 'I will attend to no one before you,' before is a preposition. But if the same thing be thus worded, 'I will attend to no one before I have attended to you,' before is a conjunction. In the sentence, 'He behaved like a scoundrel,' like is a preposition. But if we say it in provincial English, thus, He behaved like a scoundrel would,' like is a conjunction. 221. While was once a noun, signifying time. Indeed it is so still, as a long while. But it is better known as a conjunction: thus It is very well established that one man may steal a horse while another may not so much as look over the hedge. As is generally called a conjunction, but in the combination such as it is rather a relative pronoun than a conjunction; and it bears distinctly its old character of a relative pronoun in the following quotation : As far as I can see, 'tis them as is done wrong to as is so sorry and penitent and all that, and them as wrongs is as comferble as ever they can stick.-Lettice Lisle, ch. xxvii. In quoting a passage of this sort, I am liable I know to be challenged as if I had produced an arbitrary or unauthoritative illustration. But for me it is authority enough to know that this way of speaking is used by millions of speakers. And the present is a case in which the dialect supplies a link which the central language has lost. Herein lies the difference between a grammatical and a philological illustration, that the former requires literary authority, the latter only existence, as its warrant. I grant that if in any writing of my own I adopted this use of as, I might be justly confronted with the demand for my 'authority.' If I declined the challenge, and continued to use the expression, it would amount to a trial of strength on my part whether I had the power to introduce this provincialism. Occasionally a strange expression is admitted, but the privilege of ushering it belongs chiefly to those lawful lords of literature, the poets. I am under the ordinary rules of grammar in my composition, but not in my illustrations. Why, indeed, the best facts of language often lie beyond these formal props that fence the park of literature! Therefore I trust that the benevolent reader will not cavil about authority, but gratefully acknowledge the help which the dialects supply towards a completer view of our language. We will conclude this list of interchangeable functions by the remark that the interjection shares in this faculty of transformation. It may become a verb, as when we say 'to pooh-pooh a question'; or a noun, as— Many hems passed between them, now the uncle looking on the nephew, now the nephew on the uncle.-Sir Charles Grandison, Letter xvi. Or, as in the following from Cowper : Where thou art gone, Adieus and farewells are a sound unknown. 222. The difference of function which one and the same word may perform, often furnishes the ground of a playful turn of expression, something like a pun. But it is distinct from a pun, is more subtle, and is allowed to constitute the point of an epigram, as in that of Mrs. Jane Brereton on Beau Nash's full-length picture being placed between the busts of Newton and Pope: This picture placed these busts between, Gives satire its full strength; Wisdom and wit are little seen, But folly at full length. This is a play on two functions of the word little, which |