Nicknames. 
11 
ular in its development. Reed is the regular phonetic successor 
of the Middle-English word reed , in the indefinite form of the 
adjective, or rede in the definite form. Either of these spell¬ 
ings in a well-spelled Middle-English MS. means that the vowel 
-ee-, -e-, is long in quantity. This word should regularly give 
modern English *reed; as Middle-English green , grene , has given 
modern English green. During the eleventh and twelfth centuries 
especially, long accented vowels became shortened before two or 
more consonants. 5 Hence we have such different vowel sounds 
in words from the same stem as we find in: 
wise, wisdom, 
white, Whitsunday, Whitman, Whitefield. 
But the influence of analogy has been constantly at work to 
obliterate the traces of the working of this phonetic law. Us¬ 
ually we have what is called “leveling.” All the forms take 
the same vowel sound, either the long vowel of the simple word 
or the short vowel of the derivative or compound. Phonetic 
action is followed, so to speak, by a mental reaction, according 
to the law which Paul has fully illustrated in his Principien der 
Sprachgeschichte. In the following table, Anglo-Saxon forms 
are put in brackets; forms which have been altered by leveling 
are put in parentheses: 
Reed 
redness 
sheep 
shepherd 
(red) 
stone [stan] 
Stanton 
keep 
kept 
home [ham] 
Hamwell 
(friend) 
(homeward) 
Hampton 
friendly 
Hampden 
white 
(sick) 
The form hamward 
(whiteness) 
sickness 
occurs in Middle- 
house [hus] 
husband 
broad [brad] 
English. 
Bradshaw 
Braddon 
Bradford 
One word in the list calls for comment. Broad should regu¬ 
larly have the same vowel-sound as do stone and home. I would 
suggest that broad has been influenced by the vowel of long , 
with which word it is closely associated in popular speech. “It’s 
6 See Kluge, Hist, of Eng. Lang.; Paul’s Grundriss der germ. Phil- 
ologie, I, p. 868. 
