PHILOLOGICAL GENIUS OF THE MODERN GREEK LANGUAGE. 11 
Mopern. ANCIENT, 
yevpa, dinner, taste, smack. 
Ta TwoTd, sense, wits, things saved. 
oupmTadea, pardon, sympathy. 
oKoTilo, stun, astonish, darken. 
Proposition XIII.—But these changes of meaning and application in old 
words, however strange, and however important to be noticed as presenting a 
practical difficulty to a student passing from the classical to the modern dialect, 
are only what must take place in any language, which for the space of more 
than a thousand years has been allowed to float freely on the surface of the 
popular mind without any central authoritative control. More characteristic 
of the peculiar genius of the Greek tongue, is the luxuriant growth of new 
terminations to old roots, especially verbal, which the living dialect presents. 
This habit of luxuriating in a variety of verbal forms differing nothing in signi- 
fication, but displaying only, to adopt a botanical phrase, a greater breadth of 
terminal blossom, was characteristic of Hellenic speech from the earliest times. 
Thus, from the adjective ouahos we have the three equivalent forms opadilo, 
opahvve, and duaddw, for which our meagre English is only too happy to find 
that it possesses the single equalise; and in the same way, from the root oeB, 
we have the verbal forms océBopa, ceBalopa, ceBilw, and later ccBacpudle (in 
ZONARAS), all perfectly identical in signification. And though, no doubt, it may 
seem that df, as In EdxvoTalw, and vlw as in éprvlw, had originally a frequenta- 
tive meaning, yet this distinctive feature was lost in the growth of the language; 
and between ord and orevdfw there is only a difference of sound, as, in 
Latin, between claritas and claritudo. Following out this instinct of rich ter- 
minational ramification and effloresence, the current Greek vocabulary presen t 
such varieties as the following :— 
Mopery. ANCIENT. 
apxile and apywile, apxYowar. 
daxpvlo, ; daxpto. 
Tacoyilo, TAoKXO. 
poBepila, poBéw. 
Tpom “Co, TPO[Lew. 
Evpadila, Evpw. 
apayvidla, dpayviow. 
haBow, to catch, hit, wound, Lap.Bavo. 
hoyialo, hoyiCopan. 
perarviala, pedaviCopat. 
oKoTewidlo, oKoTilomat 
XopTaive, xoprala. 
