48 ERRATA RECEPTA. 



used to give the first syllable of the word as syn ; and, it was argued 

 that, ia a just division of the contents of a hive, the honej with the 

 comb must, in exact proportion, be distributed : it was a fraud to 

 withhold any share of the wax. On the other hand, Donatus taught 

 that this syn was sin ; interpreting sincere as purus sine fuco et sim- 

 plex, ut mel sine cerd. — Linguists have now changed all that. In 

 -cerus is, perhaps, involved the root-element oi cre-o, with a reference, 

 consequently, to the hy-le — the stuff of which things ultimately consist. 



In the phrase, "art and mystery," an unauthorized etymology, it ' 

 id to be feared, is insinuated by the y. It was inistery, anciently, 

 and this from ministerium ; which is, also, the French metier. Some, 

 with less plausibility, will have it to be maistery, and mastery ; that 

 is, magisterium. — Menial has been, also, attributed to a Latin origin 

 -. — to mcBnia, a form of munia : official duties and service. But, in 

 reality, it is the adjective of meinie, or meignee, Norman-French for 

 a nobleman's retinue. Our many, when used as a noun, appears to 

 be the same word. — It would be wrong to assign to consanguineus 

 the word by which our French neighbours designate the mosquito ; 

 viz., cousin. The eagerness of the creature to claim a share of our 

 blood might lead to the supposition. But cousin, in this sense, is 

 from culicinus, a diminutive of cidex, a gnat. — The grotesque term, 

 bogus, to be heard in the United States, sounds very much like one 

 of those slang expressions which spring up, sometimes, at Universi- 

 ties, and then find their way into the general ciiculatiou. Before 

 becoming aware of Mr. Bartlett's statement, in his " Dictionary of 

 Americanisms," to the eiFect that the word is a corruption of the 

 proper name, Borgliese, borne by a man infamous for the manufac- 

 ture of counterfeit bank-notes, I had formed a theory, thus : Strabo, 

 in the Introduction to his Geography (ii. 314), refers to Posidonius's 

 account of the repeated attempts of a certain Eudoxus to circumna- 

 visate Africa. The narrative of what this early Vasco de Gama did 

 and suffered, in the kingdom of Bogus, while urging his fixed idea 

 on the monarch of that name, is considered, by Strabo, as especially 

 incredible. Although, in all probability, founded on sober truth, 

 like Bruce's Abyssinian marvels, at a later date, he stigmatizes the 

 whole as " Bergsean nonsense" — as a trumped-up traveller's tale. 

 May not a joke among the youth of the Massachusetts' Cambridge, 

 involving the name of the above-mentioned royal personage, have 

 given rise to tlie vocable in question ? 



