POLYNESIAN LEXICON. 293 



duced by way of illustration ; but it did not enter into the plan of the 

 work to make any reference to other languages of the Malay family. 

 Had this been done, many terms which are here given as primitives, 

 would have been referred to still simpler roots. Thus there is little 

 doubt that the words mahaki, sick, mataku, fear, and atua, god, are 

 derived from the Malay sakit, takut, and tuhan. In the Lexicon, 

 however, the Polynesian is regarded as a primitive speech, and the 

 simplest form in which any word occurs in it is considered the 

 ground-form. Thus, in onr own tongue, the root of the word discern- 

 ment is not properly the Latin cerno, but the English discern. 



Less attention has been paid to the particles, numerals, and pro- 

 nouns, than to words of other classes, as the former have been already 

 given in the Comparative Grammar, and their nature and connexion 

 more fully elucidated than would here be possible. It will be suffi- 

 cient, therefore, to refer, in each case, to the sections of the Grammar, 

 in which these explanations will be found. 



The abbreviations employed in the Lexicon are such as will be 

 easily understood. Fak., Haw., Mang., Nuk., N. Z., Pau., Rar., Sam., 

 Tah., Tahu., Tar., Tong., signify, respectively, the dialects of Fakaafo, 

 Hawaii, Mangareva, Nukuhiva, New Zealand, Paumotu, Rarotonga, 

 Samoa, Tahiti, Tahuata, Tarawa, and Tonga. Ubiq. (for ubique) 

 means " throughout Polynesia," or, in all the dialects, (of course, with 

 the regular permutation of letters, as given in the Grammar, $ 9.) Sam. 

 et cat. (Samoa et caetera) signifies "the Samoan and the rest of the 

 dialects." Pron., adv., prep., part., stand for pronoun, adverb, prepo- 

 sition, particle. The mark (qu. ?) indicates that the origin, or mean- 

 ing, of a word is doubtful. 



74 



