VARIATION OF ACCENT. 39 



frequently pronounced as eetis. So we have An'g7ist and 

 august', forms of the same word, where the name of the 

 month has suffered the general shift of accent, while the 

 adjective has resisted it b}' reason of the tendency of speech 

 to express a differentiation in meaning by some opportune 

 variation of form. 



Such apparent exceptions to the tendency we have been 

 illustrating are just sufficient in number to emphasize the fact 

 of the general shift of accent and to show that other tenden- 

 cies of development oppose, modify and check it under special 

 conditions. The consideration of these cases must be post- 

 poned to a future article. The object of this is attained if its 

 collation of specimens shows that the lexicographer, despite 

 his assumed authority to dictate a correct pronunciation, is 

 forced, by admitting these variant accentuations, to acknowl- 

 edge that in these cases neither is solely correct and, perhaps 

 unwillingly, to testify to that continuing change in the forms 

 of language which means thought, action and progress in its 

 speakers. 



It may be pertinent to the idea of this article to close with 

 citing the noun automobile as an example of a word that is 

 earnestly trying to adjust itself to the phonetic and significa- 

 tive laws of English accent. .Mobile, though an adopted 

 word, has long been established in English — long enough to 

 have produced the offspring mob, now, after long resistance 

 by the purists, thoroughly legitimated and adapted to a partic- 

 ular meaning needing a name. Much later appeared the sci- 

 entific word automd bile , accented on the third syllable because 

 the few speakers who used it were conscious of the signifi- 

 cance of its parts, auto and mobile. Now a locomotive 

 machine appears which is, compared with other carriages, 

 automobile. The word thus becomes used as a noun. But 

 the' accent of English nouns strenuously seeks the first sylla- 

 ble, and we now hear au'tomobilc. Yet the machine is inter- 



