APPENDIX 5 



NOTES ON SPELLING 



Acheta domesticus (the house-cricket). It appears from the Copen- 

 hagen decisions of the International Commission on Zoological 

 Nomenclature that the generic name Acheta is to be regarded 

 (provisionally at least) as masculine. The specific name must 

 therefore end in -us. 



Acidophil. See Basiphil. 



Aniline^ etc. As a general rule the names of basic organic sub- 

 stances such as aniline and quinine end in -ine, while those of 

 neutral ones such as dextrin end in -in. The first aniline dye to be 

 produced on a commercial scale was named by its inventor 

 mauveine. The ending of the word suggests the relationship with 

 the parent substance. Other dyes introduced soon afterwards 

 received names with the same ending (e.g. fuchsine). For the sake 

 of conformity the ending was applied to acid as w^ell as basic dyes. 

 The final -e is often omitted from the names of dyes, but it has 

 been retained in this book for the names of nearly all the synthetic 

 ones, because the derivation supports this spelling. 



Artifact. It was presumably a mere slip of the pen that caused 

 the poet Coleridge to w-rite artefact w^hen coining this term, for 

 English words do not include Latin ablatives such as arte. Ars 

 being a Latin noun of the third declension, its stem in compound 

 words is arti-. 



Basiphil. Ehrlich was interested in the classics as a young man 

 and frequently used Latin tags in conversation throughout his 

 life.^^* It is strange that he should not have recognized the error in 

 * basophil'. The Latin noun basis is of the third declension and its 

 stem in compound words is therefore basi-. 'Basophil' is as 

 wrong as 'basosphenoid', 'matroarchal', and 'regocide' would be. 

 There is no reason for adding -ic at the end of the word : it should 

 have the same termination as the English adjective 'Francophil'. 

 Similarly one should write 'acidophil', not 'acidophilic'. 



Supervital. Arnold ^^' ^^ made a careful study of the dyeing of 

 iiberlebender cells. He chose this very suitable term because the 

 cells, having been removed from the body, survived while being 



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