THE 



ENGLISH CYCLOPEDIA. 



ARTS AND SCIENCES. 



A'BACUS. 



A the first letter of the alphabet in the English, and many other 

 ** ) languages. As a sound, its power in the English language is at least 

 fourfold, as in the words father, rail, tame, and hat. The first of these 

 sounds is that which generally prevails in other languages. The modi- 

 fied pronunciation of the vowel in tame is partly due to the vowel e at 

 the end of the word ; in call and similar forms, the peculiarity arises 

 i'i iin the letter / / so that the only true sounds of the vowel are perhaps 

 the long sound in father, and the. short one in hat. The printed forms 

 of this letter, viz., the capital A, the small character a, and the italic , 

 are all derived from a common form, differing but slightly from the 

 first of the three. In the old Oreek and Latin alphabets, from which 

 our own hag descended, the following were the ordinary figures of this 

 letter : 



A A A 



A 



among which, the fourth and fifth only differ from the rest in the 

 rounding of the angle ; the form consisting of straight lines being well 

 adapted for writing on stone, metal, &c. ; the rounded letter, on the 

 other hand, being better suited for expeditious writing, with softer or 

 more flexible materials. From this last our two small characters are 

 easily deduced. For the explanation of the fact that this letter is 

 allowed the first place in the series of letters, see ALPHABET. 



A or AN, the indefinite article. Of the two, an is used before a 

 vowel. Where the following word begins with a consonant, it being 

 more troublesome to express the final n, this letter, from not being 

 pronounced ceased to be written. Thus we say an emperor, but 

 instead of an tin;/, we find it more convenient to say a Ha;/. Some- 

 times a virtual consonant exists at the beginning of a word without 

 being written, as in union and once, where the ear catches the initial 

 sounds of y and w, yoanlun and truncr. Before such words it is custo- 

 mary to drop the final letter of the article, at least in pronunciation, 

 and there can be no good reason for not writing a union, a once beloved 

 monarch. On the other hand, whenever h is mute, we should retain the 

 n both in writing and speaking, thus, a hiilory, but an historical 

 That an and not a is the primitive form of the article, is proved 

 by the Anglo-Saxon an, and the German tin ; indeed, our own numeral 

 mu is only another and fuller form of the same word. In such 

 phrases aa three ihillingt a pound, the article evidently has this 

 meaning. The double shape of our article has led to a corrupt mode 

 of writing certain words, thus from an eft was deduced a neft, a neivt ; 

 and the reverse seems to have taken place in the change of a nadder 

 to a*, adder. 



A, as a prefix in English words. 1 . In such words as afoot, atride, 

 aboard, we have simply, as Home Tooke observes, corrupted abbre- 

 viations of on fijte, on iyde, on borde, Ac. This on is an Anglo-Saxon 

 prepontion with the meaning of in. Thus, in the old translation of the 

 New Testament we have lie felt on sleep, for asleep. The same is the 

 origin of the a, which so often precedes our verbal nouns in in.'/, as he it 

 gone n-vaitin;/, the home trot to many years a-buildiny; and indeed it was 

 only by the suppression of this a that our imperfect participles in ing 

 came into use. A similar formation appears in the French en tortattf, . 

 Ac , and the Celtic languages generally form their imperfect participle, | 

 by prefixing a preposition of similar power to the infinitive, that is, 

 to an abstract noun expressing the idea of the verb. 2. But an a also ! 

 appears at times in the formation of the perfect participle. Thus ago, 

 formei i ,-,!, now dishonoured as a vulgarism, are \ 



ARTS A.S'D <iCI. MV. VOL I. 



the perfect participles of the verbs go, shame, and fear, the latter of 

 which meant in our old writers, to cause, not to feel fear. It was only 

 as a reflective verb / fear me, that we have the idea of the Latin 

 rereor, and our modern / fear. This non-accented a is but a variety 

 of the y, so familiar in the old participles yrlept, yieen , &c., and con- 

 sequently it represents the ye of the German ijt-i/angen, &c., which is 

 commonly allowed to be an old preposition signifying thoroughly. 3. 

 In some verbs of Saxon origin, the prefixed a represents the inseparable 

 preposition on of the Anglo-Saxon, a little word no way connected with 

 the preposition on already noticed, for it corresponds to the German 

 ent and Greek ova. Thus to a Kate, that is, to wake up, is the Anglo- 

 Saxon on-vacan ; and a-ctuoicledye is closely related to the Anglo- 

 Saxon on-cndiran, and the Latin a-ynosc-erc, whose prefix is of similar 

 origin, and no way related to the ordinary Latin preposition ad. 4. 

 On the other hand, in some of our Norman words, such as amount, 

 nd their compounds, so familiar in legal language, par-amount, 

 'I (See Mr. Ludlow's paper, ' Philolog. Soc. Trans.' for 1854, 

 p. 114), we have, as in the ordinary French preposition a, the repre- 

 sentative of the Latin ad, ad montem.up ; ad rallem, doirn. 5. Lastly, 

 our obsolete or Lowland-Scotch compound prepositions a-fure, a-yont, 

 "-liiiit, must be placed beside the current forms, be-fore,be-yod,be-/iind, 

 ab-aft, ab-out, all-ore ; forms which point to a disyllabic preposition abe. 

 In the same way, the Homeric m, appears in kindred languages some- 

 times as in or en, sometimes as ni or ne, and as i alone, as in fthe, &c. 



AB, the fifth month of the ancient Hebrew year, but now the 

 eleventh (or, in intercalary years, the twelfth), in consequence of the 

 transfer of the new year from spring to autumn. 



On the 1st day of Ab a fast is held in commemoration of the death 

 of Aaron. On the 9th a fast is observed in remembrance of the 

 destruction of the Holy Temple by Nebuchadnezzar in 588 B.C., and of 

 the destruction of the second Temple by Titus, A.D. 70. This fast is 

 considered the most mournful of the whole year. On the 18th another 

 fast is observed. All these fasts are postponed one day if they fall on 

 the Saturday. 



A little festival called Tub-ab, or the fifteenth Ab, is celebrated on 

 the 15th day, to commemorate an ancient custom, according to which 

 the young girls of each tribe came forth into the fields clothed in 

 white, and exhibited themselves in dances before the young men, with 

 the view of being selected by them in marriage. 



The month of Ab may begin in some years as early as the 10th of 

 July, in others as late as the 7th of August. 



Ab is the name of the twelfth month of the Syrian year, coinciding 

 with our August. 



ABACISCUS, in architecture, is a diminution of the architectural 

 term ABACUS, and is principally applied, when used at all, which is not 

 often, to the tiles or squares of a tessellated pavement. 



A'BACUS, a game among the Romans ; so called from its being 

 played on a board, somewhat in the manner of chess. 



A'BACUS, in architecture, is the level tablet, whether square or 

 oblong, which is almost always placed on the moulded or otherwise 

 enriched capital of a column, to support the horizontal entablature. 

 The architectural application of the term Abacus, which in the original 

 is applied to any rectangular tile-like figure, arises from a story which 

 Vitruvius tells of the manner in which the foliated capital called the 

 Corinthian originated. The modifications in its form in the various 

 orders of Greek and Roman architecture will be seen in the article 

 COI.UMX. In Gothic architecture, the abacus undergoes numerous 

 changes and modifications, not merely in the several styles, but also in 



B 



