•179^' granwjatical disquisitio*is. 283 



names, may be easily interchanged for one another-; 

 or, that an object which in one language has a simple 

 name appropriated to it, may afsume, in another 

 language, one of these inflected genitives as a consti- 

 tuent part of that name. The Pantheon, in the lan- 

 guage of ancient Rome, was the name of a particular 

 building well known in that city. The same building 

 still remains, and has been known by two different 

 names, viz. the rotunda, alluding to its form ; but it 

 is now more commonly called the church of all saints. 

 As these are only different names for the same ob- 

 ject, they must be accounted word^ of the same clafs ; 

 that is, nouns properly so called. 



In the same manner scalpellum, in Latin, is the 

 name of a particular implement, which we call in 

 Eiiglifli 2i pen-knife, both which we must equally rank 

 in the clafs of nouns. Again, in Englifh we denote 

 a certain part of the human body by the word toe^ 

 which in French is called finger of the foot. And 

 that part of drefs which wc call a glove, is, in the 

 German language, called Jhoe for the hand. Who 

 doubts, but as these different phrases convey the 

 same idea to the mind of the persons who hear 

 them used in either language, they are all words be- 

 longing to the same general clafs ? Each of them is 

 evidently ihe. proper name of a particular object, and 

 as such must be clafsed among nouns, each of which 

 nouns admit of the same construction as other nouns 

 iu the same language. 



It will perhaps be objected, that those words which. 

 have been called Englifti genitives, differ not in this 

 'respect from the genitive of the Latins, in certain 



