The Grammar of English Grammars eBook

Goold Brown
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 4,149 pages of information about The Grammar of English Grammars.

The Grammar of English Grammars eBook

Goold Brown
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 4,149 pages of information about The Grammar of English Grammars.

8.  EITHER, one of the two, like the pronominal adjective EITHER, is from the Anglo-Saxon AEther, or Egther, a word of the same uses, and the same import.

9.  EKE, also, (now nearly obsolete,) is from “Eac, the imperative of Eacan, to add.”

10.  EVEN, whether a noun, an adjective, an adverb, or a conjunction, appears to come from the same source, the Anglo-Saxon word Efen or AEfen.

11.  EXCEPT, which, when used as a conjunction, means unless, is the imperative, or (according to Dr. Johnson) an ancient perfect participle, of the verb to except.

12.  FOR, because, is from the Saxon preposition For; which, to express this meaning, our ancestors combined with something else, reducing to one word some such phrase as, For that, For this, For this that; as, “Fortha, Fortham, Forthan, Forthamthe, Forthan the.”—­See Bosworth’s Dict.

13.  IF, give, grant, allow, is from “Gif, the imperative of the Anglo-Saxon Gifan, to give.”—­Tooke’s Diversions, Vol. i, p. 111.

14.  LEST, that not, dismissed, is from “Lesed, the perfect participle of Lesan, to dismiss.”

15.  NEITHER, not either, is a union and contraction of ne either:  our old writers frequently used ne for not; the Anglo-Saxons likewise repeated it, using ne—­ne, in lieu of our corresponsives neither—­nor; and our modern lexicographers still note the word, in some of these senses.

16.  NOR, not other, not else, is supposed to be a union and contraction of ne or.

17.  NOTWITHSTANDING, not hindering, is an English compound of obvious formation.

18.  OR, an alternative conjunction, seems to be a word of no great antiquity.  It is supposed to be a contraction of other, which Johnson and his followers give, in Saxon characters, either as its source, or as its equivalent.

19.  PROVIDED, the perfect participle of the verb provide, becomes occasionally a disjunctive conjunction, by being used alone or with the particle that, to introduce a condition, a saving clause, a proviso.

20.  SAVE, anciently used with some frequency as a conjunction, in the sense of but, or except is from the imperative of the English verb save, and is still occasionally turned to such a use by the poets.

21.  SEEING, sometimes made a copulative conjunction, is the imperfect participle of the verb see.  Used at the head of a clause, and without reference to an agent, it assumes a conjunctive nature.

22.  SINCE is conjectured by Tooke to be “the participle of Seon, to see,” and to mean “seeing, seeing that, seen that, or seen as.”—­Diversions of P., Vol. i, pp. 111 and 220.  But Johnson and others say, it has been formed “by contraction from sithence, or sith thence, from sithe, Sax.”—­Joh.  Dict.

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