324 ON ERRATA RECEPTA. 



word at length has become invested, in ordinary language, with its 

 present evil significance. 



In writing moiety for moitie we have perpetrated another Anglo- 

 gallicism ; but we have retained the derivative meaning of the word, 

 viz., medietas, i.e., half. — Out of piete we have made pity, and 

 assigned a new sense to the term, introducing, however, besides, the 

 original in its proper sense. — Propriete we have treated in a simi- 

 lar manner ; only, to the blundered form property we allow the right 

 sense of its original, viz., ownership, whilst to propriety, the later and 

 purer word, we assign a sense quite novel. 



Through some misapprehension, perhaps, at the moment of first 

 hearing, riviere has been converted into river, although it is really the 

 river's bank (ripd) and not the stream. So with us, grap has become 

 grape, although grap is the bunch and not the berry (raisin). 



Vignettes now seldom exhibit what vignette manifestly implies ; 

 nor are miniatures any longer little sketches in vermillion (minium), 

 any more than the rules commonly called rubrics are necessarily things 

 of red-letter. 



Promenade we confine to an exhibition of ourselves on foot. In 

 the Bois de Boulogne it is equally said of horseback or carriage air- 

 ings. The connexion of voyage with via might suggest travel by land 

 as well as by sea. To the latter however — in modern English at least 

 vre have chosen to restrict the application of the term.* 



In the United States the word trait has become English. This 

 jars upon our ears. The people of Plymouth in Devonshire have 

 made out of Haut, Hoe (i.e., if the latter be not indeed Hoo or How.) 

 It is almost a pity, since trait is to continue French in sound, that we 

 have not in some way manipulated it into English form.f — The same 

 thing may be said of dep6t — which among the mixed multitude on 

 the railway platform suffers violence in several ways. 



"We appear to have formed our familiar term Helot by phonetically 

 writing down the corresponding French Bote, which we do not, from 

 its appearance, readily recognize as the same word. So, however, it is. 

 In Livy (34, 27, 9,) also, we find Et'AwTes represented by llotae, 

 and Philemon Holland, in his translation of Plutarch's Morals (p. 

 469, ed. 1603), speaks of " Ilotes." Bote, it will be noticed, is 



* Dryden employs voyage in the general sense. Thus he makes the Sibyl say 

 to Aeneas in Tartarus, " Let us haste our voyage to pursue." (See Aen. vi.) 

 t Bacon hag " by the tracts of his countenance." See Essay vi. 



