An Outline of English Speech-craft

Attraction may be misdrawing.

Augment. An eking, eking on or out.

Auxiliary. Outeking or helping.

Be- (a fore-eking, meaning by, to, about). Bebutton a coat, to put buttons to it; becloke school-children, give them clokes; becloud, obnubilate; beflood, inundate; behem, bebound or circumscribe; bereek, fumigate.

Belligerent. War-waging.

Bibulous. Soaksome.

Bicornous. Twy-horned.

Bidental. Two-teeth, two-teethed.

Bilateral. Two-sided: – ‘These articles would be considered a public bilateral contract, and would form the subject of an agreement with the Powers having Catholic subjects.’ Bilateral contract is put for bipartite, a contract by or between two sides, or of men of two sides; but it would seem that the Romans did not call the two sides in a contract or cause latera, but partes– ‘Parte utrâque auditâ.’ —Plin. Jun.

Latera are the sides of a body or space.

Binocular. Two-sighted.

Bipennated (as an axe). Twy-bladed.

Botany. Wortlore.

Cardinal (numbers). Tale-numbers; as, one, two, three.

Catachresis. A misuse (of a word); as, an iron milestone; a parricide for one who has killed his mother; dilapidated for a ragged coat.

Chemistry. Matter-lore, the science of matter.

Chronology. Time-lore.

Cinereous. Ash-grey.

Circular (a trade-circular). A touting-sheet or – bill.

Circumference. Rim, rimreach.

Circumflex. A roundwinding, a winding of the voice up and down again.

Clause. A word-cluster in a thought-wording.

Cognate. Kin, akin. Cognate breath-pennings; as, T, D, both on the roof.

Collective (name). That of a cluster or a many or a body of single things; as, a club, a herd.

Colon. Gr. kōlon, a limb or member. A mark for a limb, or marked share of a thought-bewording.

Colophon. Book-end.

Comma. Gr. komma, a cut or share. A mark for the offcutting of small shares of a discourse.

Complement. An upfilling or outfilling in words.

Compound. Clustered or a cluster, a clustered word, as horseman, or a thought-wording of two or more smaller ones.

Concord. A matching.

Concrete. Matterly.

Conditional (mood). Hinge-mood (p. 34 (#Page_34)).

Conjugation (of a time-word). The forfitting of it, the fortrimming of it.

Conjunction. A link-word.

Conjunctive. Linked, byholding.

Consonant. A letter for any breath-penning.

Construction. A word-setting, speech-trimming (see p 36).

Contraction. An updrawing: —I’ll for I will, sinn’d for sinnèd.

Co-ordinate. Rank-mate, row-mate.

Copula. A link or bond.

Correlative (words). Mate-words.

Crasis. Sound-blending, sound-welding.

Dactyl. Gr. daktylos. A foot (in verse) of one long and two short sounds, or of one high and two low sounds, as cheerily.

Dative. Giving.

Deciduous (plant). Fallsome. (Does it mean that only the leaves fall, or that the whole stem falls?) An elm is summer-green or leaved, and winter-sear. Holly is ever-green or winter-leaved. Parsley or the nettle is summer-stemm’d and winter-fallsome.

Decimate. To tithe: – ‘Breech-loading rifles would so decimate columns.’ Decimate (decimo, from decem, ten, in Latin) was to take for death every tenth man of a body that had behaved very badly. The word decimate is now used very loosely, as meaning to cut up.

Defective. Wanting of something of its kind.

Defective (verb). Wanting of some time-shapes, as quoth, must, go. The foretime shape of go (gang) would be, as that of an unmoulded time-word, goed; and goed, a worn shape of the older ‘gaode,’ is found in northern folk-speech, with yowed (Saxon eode.) Gang makes ganged.

Deficiency. Underodds. Excess, overodds.

Define. L. de, off; finio, to mark. To offmark.