The percentage of classical words among them is great—­greater indeed than in the body of Shakespeare’s writings.  According to the analysis of Weisse, in an average hundred of Shakespearian words one-third are classical and two-thirds Saxon.  But then all the classical elements have inherent meaning, while half of the Saxon have none.  We may hence infer that of the significant words in Shakespeare one-half are of classical derivation.  Now, of the apa? ?e?? mue?a with initial a, I call 262 words out of 364 classical, and with initial m, 152 out of 310; that is, 414 out of 674, or about four-sevenths of the whole Shakespearian host beginning with those two letters.  In doubtful cases I have considered those words only as classical the first etymology of which in Webster is from a classical or Romance root.  In the biblical words used once only the classical portion is enormous—­namely, not less than sixty-nine per cent.—­while the classical percentage in Shakespearian words of the same class is no more than sixty-one.

Among the 674 a and m Shakespearian words occurring once only the proportion of words now obsolete is unexpectedly small.  Of 310 such words with initial m, only one-sixth, or 51 at the utmost, are now disused, either in sense or even in form.  Of this half-hundred a few are used in Shakespeare, but not at present, as verbs; thus, to maculate, to miracle, to mud, to mist, to mischief, to moral—­also merchandized and musicked.  Another class now wellnigh unknown are misproud, misdread, mappery, mansionry, marybuds, masterdom, mistership, mistressship.

Then there are slight variants from our modern orthography or meanings, as mained for maimed, markman for marksman, make for mate, makeless for mateless, mirable, mervaillous, mess for mass, manakin, minikin, meyny for many, momentarry for momentary, moraler, mountainer, misgraffing, misanthropos, mott for motto, to mutine, mi’nutely for every minute.

None seem wholly dead words except the following eighteen:  To mammock, tear; mell, meddle; mose, mourn; micher, truant; mome, fool; mallecho, mischief; maund, basket; marcantant, merchant; mun, sound of wind; mure, wall; meacock, henpecked; mop, grin; militarist, soldier; murrion, affected with murrain; mammering, hesitating; mountant, raised up; mered, only; man-entered, grown up.

About one-tenth of the remaining apa? ?e?? mue?a with initial m are descriptive compounds.  Among them are the following adjectives:  Maiden-tongued, maiden-widowed, man-entered (before noted as obsolete), many-headed, marble-breasted, marble-constant, marble-hearted, marrow-eating, mean-apparelled, merchant-marring, mercy-lacking, mirth-moving, moving-delicate, mock-water, more-having, mortal-breathing, mortal-living, mortal-staring, motley-minded, mouse-eaten, moss-grown, mouth-filling, mouth-made, muddy-mettled, momentary-swift, maid-pale.  From this list, which is nearly complete, it is evident that such compounds as may be multiplied at will form but a small fraction of the words that are used once only by Shakespeare.