l899-'00 TRANSACTIONS III 



Or take such words as " aid," "aim," "spy," "daub," "van" 

 or "rest.". They look simple enough, but every one is a com- 

 pound : "Aid" is from I^atin adjti^are through French aider; 

 ' ' aim ' ' from lyatin adestimare , through obsolete French esnier; 

 " spy " from Latin a^/spicari through French epier; "daub" from 

 Latin dealbare through French dauber; " van " from the two 

 Latin words fl;^ «??/£' through the French avant; and "rest" 

 from the Latin restare through the French rester. Who would 

 suppose that "aim" contained three distinct elements, the preposi- 

 tion <a;^, the substantive aes, meaning "copper," and the termina- 

 tion timo or himo seen in such words as aestimo, auiumo, optinius, 

 etc. ? Or that " spy " involved the Latin word for " bird," avis 

 and the root spec meaning "to see" or "to watch for " ? Or that 

 " daub " meant originally to cover over thoroughly with white, 

 having the same origin as the beautiful French word aube, meaning 

 the dawn, as well as the ecclesiastical term "alb' ' ? Were it not for 

 the link supplied by the French language, it is very doubtful 

 whether the compound character of a single one of these words 

 could be recognized. It is not only in the English language that 

 such contractions occur. The German language contains a very 

 short word " amt," meaning "ofl&ce," which no one would 

 readily suspect of being a compound ; yet, barring the personal 

 ending "or," it contains all the stuff of the very imposing word 

 "ambassador." We may judge from these examples of the 

 extreme difficulty of determining whether certain very ancient 

 Latin or Greek words are simple or compound. 



Most suffixes, Brugmann remarks, serve a variety of pur- 

 poses. This we may observe in English. At a very early date 

 the suffix " ing " was invented, how we do not know. Earle in 

 his "English Philology' ' says that it originally signified extraction, 

 like the Greek termination "z'^^j" in such names as Simonides, 

 Euripides, etc. ; but if so it greatly widened its scope in the 

 sequel. Picking up an "1" by being added to words ending in 

 that letter, it sallied forth with this addition, and we soon find 

 it doing dut}^ as a diminutive ending, an entirely new function. 

 Apart, however, from its achievements as " ling," we find it 

 employed to give a collective sense as in the word shipping,, to 

 express the material of which a thing consists, such, as towelling, 

 shirtijtg, planking, etc. In like manner the Indo-Germanic suffix 



