Latin Forms. 355. In-ance and -ancy, from the Latin -antia; as circumstance, constancy, substance. The words acquaintance, cognisance, remembrance, obeisance, semblance, vengeance, and many others of this form, are rather French than Latin. cognisance. The honourable member ought himself to be aware that in this house we have no cognisance of what passes in debate in the other house.House of Commons, July 21, 1869. 356. In -ence and -ency, from the Latin -entia. Examples:-affluence, beneficence, benevolence, circumference, competence, confidence, conscience, consequence, difference, diffidence, eminence, evidence, exigence, experience, influence, licence, magnificence, munificence, negligence, opulence, preference, reticence, science, sequence. pubescence. Pubescence on the branches, peduncles, or tube of the calyx is the only invariable character I have discovered in Roses. Distinctions drawn from it I have every reason to consider absolute.-John Lindley, A Monograph of Roses (1820), p. xxiii. Here again we meet with that confluence of forms which we have already noticed; and we are obliged to admit into this set some examples which are of a different origin, being either from Latin nouns in -ensio, or from Latin participles in -ensus. Such are defence, expence (obsolete), offence, pretence. With these may be mentioned a few which have not succumbed to this assimilation, as incense, sense, suspense, and one which has recovered its original classical consonant, namely expense. Our spelling in this, as in many other instances, is a tradition from the French fashion of the fifteenth or sixteenth century. Cotgrave, in 1611, recognises offence, but gives the palm to offense, which has continued to the present day as the correct orthography in French. The -ancy -ency forms are peculiarly English. Clemency is in French clémence,' and constancy is constance.' The peculiarity arises from our surpassing the French themselves in our attachment to an old French form -ie, now become y, of whose various suffixment mention has been made above, 329. The two forms -ency and -ence are liable to clash in their plurals. It is questioned which is right, excellences or excellencies. Each has its place; the former in the sense of abstract quality, the latter for titles of distinction. In our old writers excellency is the prevalent form, and excellence is a mere duplicate variety, without a distinct sense. In recent times, excellence has become dominant in the singular number, but has not yet established its ascendancy in the plural. In fact the termination -ency is reluctantly yielding to -ence, and as we look back into our elder literature, we frequently meet with -ency where -ence is now usual. superintendency. Thus Her admonition was vain, the greater number declared against any other direction, and doubted not but by her superintendency they should climb with safety up the Mountain of Existence.-Samuel Johnson, The Vision of Theodore. 357. In -osity; as animosity, curiosity, impetuosity, pomposity, scrupulosity. The forms in -ity and -ty have been ranked under French products, 349, but osity came of Latin studies. Its boisterous youth was in the seventeenth century, when several examples were launched into currency, and soon stranded. Such were fabulosity, mulierosity, populosity, speciosity. So great a glory as all the speciosities of the world could not equalize.— Henry More, On Godliness, iv. 12. § 4. 358. In -ion, -tion, -ation, -ition, from the Latin -io, -atio, -ilio, genitive -ionis; as accusation, action, compassion, contrition, coronation, description, emulation, humiliation, investigation, occupation, procrastination, region, relation, reputation, situation, satisfaction, transaction. A very prolific formative. salutation. We behold men, to whom are awarded, by the universal voice, all the honours of a proud and unsullied excellence—and their walk in the world is dignified by the reverence of many salutations-and as we hear of their truth and their uprightness, and their princely liberalities, &c.-Thomas Chalmers, Sermon V. (1819). This abstract form is capable of a thundering eloquence. When a new ship of war of the most advanced and formidable class of turret-ships was announced by the name of ‘The Devastation,' it might well be said that the new cast of name was an apt exponent of the weight of metal by which the terrors of marine warfare had been enhanced. This is a form upon which new words have been made with great facility, as witness the off-hand words savation, starvation. When Mr. H. Dundas used the word starvation in the House of Commons, it was received with a roar of derision as a north-country barbarism. —J. B. Heard, The Tripartite Nature of Man, p. 83, note. A gardener once desiring to have his work admired— he had been moving some of the raspberry-canes, to make the rows more regular-'There, sir,' cried he, 'that's what I call row-tation now!' From this facility it has naturally followed that many have grown obsolete. Jeremy Taylor uses luxation to signify the disturbing, disjointing, disconcerting, shocking, of the understanding : An honest error is better than a hypocritical profession of truth, or a violent luxation of the understanding.-Liberty of Prophesying, ix. 2. It is a phenomenon which may as well be remarked generally and once for all, that in the prime of their vigour forms often overpass the area which they are permanently to occupy. Under each form we might collect a number of words that have perished, not from age and decay, but just because they were started rather in obedience to a strong formative impulse of the moment, than from any occasion the language had for their services1. 359. In our; as ardour, creditor, fervour, governour, honour, valour: In this class of words, derived at secondhand from the Latin words in -or, -ator, -itor, as fervor, ardor, gubernator, the u is a trace of the French medium. This u has moreover communicated itself even where there was previously nothing either of French or of Latin, as in the purely Saxon compound neighbour from neh nigh, and gebúr dweller. A partial disposition has manifested itself to drop this French u. Especially is this observable in American literature. But the general rule holds good through this whole series of nouns from the Latin, that what we call 'anglicising' them, is the reducing of them to a set of forms which we borrowed originally from French. And thus it is true that the French influence still accompanies us, even through the course of our latinising epoch. Latin scholarship was, however, continually nibbling away at these monuments of the French reign. The forms of many of our Romanesque nouns were too permanently fixed to be shaken; but wherever the classical scholar could make an English word more like Latin, he was fain to do it. Nobody now writes tenour or creditour as in the Bible of 1611 and governour is less usual than governor. 1 Dr. Trench, On some Deficiencies in our English Dictionaries (1857), made a collection of such words, from which we have just now derived our obsolete examples under -osity, and it is not less rich under -ation, -ition, as coaxation, conculcation, dehonestation, delinition, excarnification, quadripartition, subsannation. 360. In -al. This form, which is derived from the Latin adjectival formative -alis, -ale, has attached itself not only to words radically Latin, as acquittal, dismissal, disposal, proposal, recital, refusal, rental, reversal, revival, but also to others which are either French, as avowal, perusal, rehearsal, survival, or purely English, as uprootal and the familiar geological term upheaval. approval, refusal. I well remember his [O'Connell's] smile as he nodded good-humouredly to us as we passed him; and I must say it was one of approval rather than otherwise at our refusal to do him homage.-W. Steuart Trench, Realities of Irish Life, p. 39. The plural forms nuptials, espousals, are grammatically imitative of the Latin nuptiæ, sponsalia. A word which does not belong here, but which has assumed the guise of this set, is bridal, from the Saxon BRYD bride, and EALO ale; so that it really meant the ale or festivity of the bride. One or two other compounds on this model, such as church-ale, scot-ale, have become obsolete. Another word, which has an equally deceptive appearance of being formed with the Latin -al is burial. This is a pure Saxon word from its first letter to its last. The Saxon form is byrigels, a form which is of the singular number, though it end with s. The plural was byrigelsas. 361. In -ate, from the Latin -atus, participle or substantive. Examples: consulate, curate, episcopate, estimate, opiate, magnate, potentate, probate, syndicate, tribunate. In the language of chemistry this form has a fixed and definite area assigned to it:-carbonate, chlorate, muriate, sulphate. 362. In -tude, from the Latin substantives in -tudo, -tudinis. Examples:-altitude, beatitude, certitude, disquietude, exacti |