OLD ARYAN WORDS 



and louer, "to praise." Some philological 

 dreamer tried to show that these words might 

 be connected, because you praise your lodgings 

 or horses when you wish to induce some one to 

 hire them ! In fact, the one word has been 

 clipped down from Latin locare, " to hire," and 

 the other from Latin laudare, "to praise." In 

 striking contrast to this, let us observe how two 

 English words, pen and feather, are closely con- 

 nected in origin, in spite of their entire dissimi- 

 larity. There was an Old Aryan verb paf, " to 

 fly," which still appears in the Greek 7rero/w,cu. 

 There were also such suffixes as tra and na, de- 

 noting the instrument with which an act is ac- 

 complished. Pat-tra thus meant " a wing," and 

 a Hindu might perhaps thus understand it ; but 

 in Gothic we find fath-thra, and in English 

 feather, just as Grimm's law has taught us to 

 expect. Pat-na had the same meaning, and 

 passed into old Latin zspes-na, which later Latin 

 clipped down to penna, a wing or feather, and 

 finally the quill-feather with which you write. 

 In these days we have applied the word to little 

 implements of gold or steel which have nothing 

 to do with flying, unless the soaring of Peg- 

 asus be supposed to keep up the association of 

 ideas. 



This example of pen and feather is a very 

 trite one, but I have cited it because it further 

 illustrates a very important point, toward which 

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