l899-'00 TRANSACTIONS 113 



er longs to mingle with his words something of character or of 

 humour or of good fellowship — in a word something personal and 

 emotional. Now, it is plain without reasoning that to call each 

 thing by the name that everybody calls it, without any little 

 twist or twirl, is apt to seem commonplace and vapid. Conse- 

 quently there has been found in most languages a faculty of 

 shaping certain words to the temper of the speaker, or, so to say, 

 of giving them a moral coloring. Emotional substantives have 

 been commonly called "diminutives" because the sentiments that 

 have been most active in this work have been those of affection- 

 ate partiality on the one hand, or of contempt on the other ; and 

 therefore the idea of little has been much felt in this strain of 

 words." This statement of the case may be aptly illustrated 

 by a passage from Robert Louis Stevenson's recently published 

 correspondence. Speaking of Sir Walter Scott he says : "With 

 all that immensity of work and study his mind kept flexible, 

 glancing to all points of natural interest. But the lean , hot 

 spirits, such as mine, become hypnotized with their bit occupations 

 if I may use Scotch to you — it is so far more scornful than any 

 English idiom." The word "bit" prefixed to "occupations" 

 makes a perfect diminutive, and conveys a delightfully humorous 

 sense of disparagement. The same word "bit," otherwise ap- 

 plied, will be a term of endearment, as in such phrases as "a bit 

 lassie," "a wee bit doggie." In Latin the well-known dying ad- 

 dress of the Emperor Hadrian to his soul is a good example of 

 the tenderness of which diminutive forms are capable : 



"Animula, vag-ula, blandula 

 Hospes, comesque corporis, 

 Quae nunc abibis in loca, 

 Pallidula, rig-ida, nudula ; 

 Nee, ut soles, dabis jocos ?" 



Lai:in, upon the whole, is richer in diminutive forms than 

 Greek, yet the Greeks coined many beautiful words of this kind, 

 .such as "erotulos" darling, and " eidullion " an idyll. Such 

 words as ' ' nearos ' ' young, with its feminine form ' ' neaira, ' ' may 

 also be accounted diminutive. Who does not remember the 

 lines in which Milton introduces two diminutive proper names : 



" Were it not better done, as others use, 

 To sport with Amaryllis in the shade 

 Or in the tangles of Neaera's hair? " 



