i6o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



the most untrammeled and democratic tongue ever linked to an advanced 

 and progressive type of human culture. When the term sociology was 

 first introduced, narrow-minded classicists and other would-be guardians 

 of the purity of the language objected that, since it was not composed of 

 two Greek or of two Latin elements, but happened to be made up of one 

 part Latin and one part Greek, it could not be admitted into the vocab- 

 ularly of modern English. But how many " pure " words have filled 

 forgotten graves since it was born ! And this is but one example of the 

 attempts to make the classical tail wag the English dog. Did English 

 tolerate no hybrids, we should be without Christmas, dislike, grateful, 

 pastime, becalm, dishearten, and many more of our common words. 

 And where were the "purists" and the classicists when, in response to 

 the needs of the political or the scientific moments, as the case might 

 be, anti-Tammany, near-genius, re-tattooing, pre-totemic, pseudo-mug- 

 wump, semi-tahoo and other interesting terms came into being? 

 Hybridity is no efficient scarecrow for such a tongue as modern English. 

 A fair field and no favor is now the law of survival and entries are 

 welcome from all sources, known or unknown. The satisfying term 

 that appears at the psycholgical moment has to undergo no recherche 

 de paternite. English possesses some most remarkable hybrids — an 

 example or two must suffice, here. 



a. Remacadamizing. — In English one may speak of " remacadam- 

 izing " the road or, using the word as a noun, of its " remacadamizing." 

 It is certain that no other language in the world can boast a word of 

 such mixed and varied hybridity. Remacadamizing resolves itself into 

 the following components : ( 1 ) re-, a Latin prefix, signifying " a repeti- 

 tition, or doing over again"; (2) mac, a Gaelic word for "son," in 

 common use as a prefix for genealogical purposes; (3) Adam, the repre- 

 sentative in a number of European languages (including Gaelic and 

 English) of the Hebrew name of the first man, according to the Mosaic 

 account of the creation as given in the first book of our Bible; (4) -iz 

 (or -ize), the modern English representative, through French -iser, of 

 the Greek verbal terminal -t^etv; (5) -ing, the English suffix of the 

 participle present, verbal noun, etc. The word reinacadamizing thus 

 represents five languages: Latin, Gaelic, Hebrew, Greek and English. 

 The "root" {macadam) of this word exhibits also in another way the 

 vitality of our English speech and its ability to draft new words into its 

 vocabulary, whenever the need arises. The term macadam is really the 

 family name of the man, John Macadam, who, in 1819, devised the 

 well-known method of paving roads with small broken stones, etc. 

 Celtic and Semitic had already combined to produce Macadam, "son 

 of Adam," which the English language then took up and further molded 

 to suit its genius. 



&. Siouan. — ^When the late Major J. W. Powell, the anthropologist. 



