168 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and, Letters . 
used to form adjectives from substantives. In Old English -ig was first 
shortened to -ig, and in the inflected cases weakened to -eg. In conse¬ 
quence of this weakening, the two suffixes -ag and -eg coincided in the in¬ 
flected cases, and, by the law of analogy, there occur not only nominative 
cases with original -ig, but also such with -ig for -eg, from original -ag ; 
an example is our Old English adjective *riomig. A similar case of con¬ 
fusion is that of Old English io from i, and eo from e, a fact supported by 
numerous examples. It is owing to this double confusion that Old English 
reomig stands for *riomeg; hence, Old English reomig is derived from 
* rime = Gothic rimis. 
