ON ERRATA RECEPTA. 225 



we eee " stickers " sometimes notified not to affix. Towel, inter- 

 mediately French or Italian, is the Old High German twahilla, from 

 thwahan, to wash. Eiderdoivn is eider dunnen. Bolster is polster. 

 Spool is spide. Clock is glocke, really, the bell. Shuttle is an adap- 

 tation of schutteln, to vibrate. Can, a vessel to hold fluids, is the 

 same as the German Jeanne ; but with us, without doubt, it is the 

 . Anglo-Saxon canne. It may be recognized as the stem-syllable of 

 can-alis, and can-tka7'us. Fauteuil, generally held to be an arm-chair, 

 is the Old German faltstuol, properly a seat that folds up, like the 

 portable sella curulis of the Eoman magistrate. Our old English 

 word faldstool ii sometimes wrongly taken to be a kind of devo- 

 tional desk. 



Sleigh, the soft word which, in the United States and throughout 

 British America, has so fittingly improved upon and displaced the 

 heavy-sounding, inappropriate sledge, is a modification of sledge 

 under the influence of schlitten or schleife, German for the same 

 thing. In 1759, this word was written sley. Thus in "Journals of 

 Excursions in the Late "War in North America," London, 1765, by 

 Major liobert liogers, p. 161, we are told " My own sley was taken 

 with £1196, York currency, in cash." Again, at page 130, in a 

 letter from Col. Haldimand to Major Eogers, dated March 10th, 

 I7fj9, " I congratulate you heartily on your good success, and send 

 you twenty -two sleys to transport your sick." — It would have been 

 well, perhaps, had this form of the word continued. — Correctly 

 speaking. Sleigh is a proper name, of considerable antiquity in Eng- 

 land and Scotland, according to Burke's ** General Armory." Has 

 it, as such, like Dennet, Brougham, Hansom and the odious Buggy, 

 in parallel cases, had anything to do with the cis-Atlantic term for 

 our swiftly-gliding winter-vehicle ? 



2. Among names of edibles we have one or two Anglicised Ger- 

 man words. In sour-krout we simply write in an English form the 

 German satier-Jcrout ; just as the beverage which, a few years ago, 

 used to be advertised as lager-bier, is now generally announced in 

 the windows plainly as lager-beer. Out of sauer- kraut the French 

 have made chou-kroute, — a tautology, both syllables denoting the 

 same thing. — A certain preparation, or, to adopt an old English 

 term, a furmety, or frumenty, of Indian-corn-meal, is, with us, popu- 

 larly designated mush. This is the German mus, by which tooth- 

 some comestibles of various kinds are denoted. — Kruller, the curled 



