Oct. 26. 1850.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



361 



ON THE WOBD " GRADELY." 



Permit me to make a few remarks on the word 

 grudely : — 



1. It secins to have no connexion with the 

 Latin nonn gradu-i, Angl. grade, step. 



2. Its first s}'liabk', grade, is both a substantive 

 and an adjective ; ami gradely itself botli adjec- 

 tive anil adverb, as wculdy, sickly, godly, &c. 



3. It is not coiifiiieil to Laiicasliire or to Enj^- 

 lanil, but appears in Scotland as graith (ready), 

 gruith (furniture); whence graithly (rea<lily), to 

 grait/i, grathe, or gruid (prepare), &c. See Jamie- 

 son's Sc. Did. and >Sii/)j)lemciit. 



4. It is in fact the Aiijjlo-Saxon gerud, which is 

 both substantive and adjective. As a substantive 

 it means condition, arranj^einent, plan, reason, &c. 

 As an ailjective, it ujeans prudent, well-])reparc(i, 

 expert, exact, &c. 'I'he gc ((jolhic ga) is merely 



who accepted the invitation were expected to 

 bring with them the money due on account of 

 their sons, which, postquam exempta fames epulis, 

 they paid into the head-master's hands. Tlie 

 mast^ir would thus retire to rest with a consider- 

 able sum in his possession. On one of these occa- 

 sions, after he had gone to his chamber and sup- ; 

 posed that all the farady were in bed, he heard a i 

 noise in a passage not tar distant, and, going out : 

 to see what was the cause of it, found Aram 

 groping about in the dark, who, on being asked 

 what he wanted, said that he had been oblij^ed to 

 leave his room on a necessary occasion, and had 

 missed his way to the place which he sought. The 

 passage was not one into which he was likely to 

 wander by mistake, but the master accepted his 

 excuse, and thought no more of the matter til 

 Aram was arrested lor the robbery and miu-der of 

 Clarke, when he immediately recollected the cir- 

 cumstance, and suspected that he had intended on 

 that night to commit another robbery or murder. 

 I have not the number of the Literary Gazette in 

 which this statement was given to refer to, but I 

 am sure that I have repeated the substance of it 

 correctly, and remember that it was inserted as 

 being worthy of credit. It is another illustration of 

 the fact that the nature of a man is unchangeable. 



Buhver's novel, which elevates Aram from a 

 school-assistant into a private gentleman, may 

 have pleased those, if there were such, who knew 

 nothing of Aram's acts before they began to read 

 it. But all who knew what Aram was, must be 

 disgusted at the threshold. I regarded the book, 

 at the time of its appearance, as one of the most 

 presumptuous falsifications of biography that had 

 ever been attempted. It is not easy to see why 

 Bulwer might not have made an ecpaally interest- 

 ing story, if he had kept Aram in his proper 

 station. J. S. W. 



Stockwell. 



the intensive prefix ; the root being rad or rath. 

 The form in ly (adjective or adverb), without the 

 prefix g, appears in the Anglo-Saxon raedlic, pru- 

 dent, expert ; raedlice, expertly. This interesting 

 root, which appears as ?•«, ra, red, rad, rath, &c. ; 

 sometimes by transposition, as er, ar, erd, «&c. 

 (perhaps also as reg, rag, erg, arc, &c.), seems to 

 represent the nobler (pialities of man : thought, 

 reason, counsel, speech, deliberate action; and 

 perhaps, also, government. 



Thus in the Semitic family of languages we 

 have the radicals raa (saw, foresaw, counselled) ; 

 rudhd (heli)ed, ruled) ; ruthud (arranged) ; ruto 

 (directed, instructed); and others, with their 

 numerous derivatives. 



i he Indo-European family gives us, in Sanscrit, 

 ru or rue (ponder, experience) ; rat (speak) ; 

 rudh (accomplish) ; raj (excel) ; ragh (attain, 

 reach) ; and others, with derivatives. In Greek, 

 rheu (speak), transp. erd or wero (whence 

 verbum, wort, word) ; rhero or rhedo (do), transp. 

 erdu, also ergo (whence werke, work) ; archo 

 (rule), and others, with derivatives. In Latin, 

 rear (thhik), whence ratus and ratio (reason) ; 

 res (thuig, action) ; rego (rule), with derivatives 

 {rex, regida, rectus, &c.). In Celtic (Welsh), rhe 

 (active); rheswiu (reason); rhaith (judgment, 

 right) ; ?•/«' (j)rince); rhug (van, before). In 

 Sclavonic, rada, rade (counsel) ; redian (to 

 direct), &c. 



In the Teutonic dialects (Gothic, Anglo-Saxon, 

 German, Dutch, Swedish, Danish, Icelandic, 

 Scotch, and English) the forms of this i"oot are 

 ver;' numerous. Tims we have, in Anglo-Saxon, 

 rad, rued (counsel) ; raedlich, grad, as above, 

 whence geradieu (to prepare), and other words. 

 In German, rede (discourse) ; rath (counsel) ; reden 

 (to speak) ; regel (a rule) ; recht (right) ; gerecht 

 (just) ; gerade (exactly), &c. ; bereiten (prepare), 

 &c. In Knglish, ready, read, rule, right, riddle, 

 reason, rather, to whicli we must add gradely. In 

 Scotch, red, rade, rade, rath, &c., with the words 

 mentioned above ; of which graith (furniture) is 

 the German geriith. Your readers will derive 

 much inlbi-mation on this class of words by refer- 

 ence to Jamieson, under 7-cd, rede, i-ath, graith, 

 &c. Benj. H. Kennedy. 



Shrewsbury, Oct. 19. 



Gradely. — It seems rather a rash step to differ 

 from the mass of critical authorily with which your 

 last number lias brought this shy, old-fashioned 

 provincial word into a blaze of literary notoriety. 

 Yet I caiuiol hell) conceiviii<T the oriirinal form 

 of this advert) to be gruthedly (sepa'Slic, root iia'5, 

 with the ])reteritive jnefix se) or gei-athdy. 

 In onr Yorkshire dialectt, to grathe (pronounced 

 gradhc) means, to make ready, to put in a state of 

 07-der ov Jitness. A man inconveniently accoutred 

 or furnished with implements for the performance 

 of some operation on which he was employed, 



