Elementary Lessons in Historical English Grammar: Containing Accidence and Word-formation |
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adjectives adverbs alphabet archaic auxiliary become blind-e century we find CHAUCER compounds conjugation consonant Cursor Cursor Mundi dative declension derivatives ending feminine Flat fourteenth century gender Goth Greek GRIMM'S LAW Husbondrie hwat IMPERATIVE MOOD indefinite pronouns INDICATIVE MOOD infinitive inflexions intransitive verbs language late Latin lost M.E. we find marks Masc masculine modern English modern form modern French Neut neuter Norman-French Northern dialects nouns O.E. Plays O.Fr occurs Old English older oldest English originally passive participle PAST PASS past tense Piers Plowman Plur prefix prepositions Pres Present Tense reduplication replaced root scip-e seventeenth century Shakespeare Sharp silf Sing singular sixteenth century sometimes sounds Spenser strong verbs Subj subjunctive mood substantive suffix swâ syllable Teutonic thai the-re thine thirteenth century thou Trevisa verbal vowel vowel change weak verbs Wicliffe words
Popular passages
Page 175 - In the first Person simply shall foretells ; In will a Threat, or else a Promise dwells. Shall, in the second and the third, does threat ; Will simply, then, foretells the future feat.
Page 116 - Two principles in human nature reign, Self-love to urge, and reason to restrain; Nor this a good, nor that a bad we call, Each works its end, to move or govern all: And to their proper operation still, Ascribe all good: to their improper, ill.
Page 105 - What the actual position of the compellation 'thou' was at that time, we may perhaps best learn from this passage in Fuller's Church History, Dedication of Book vii. : " In opposition whereunto [_i. e. to the Quaker usage] we maintain that thou from superiors to inferiors is proper, as a sign of command; from equals to equals is passable, as a note of familiarity; but from inferiors to superiors, if proceeding from ignorance, hath a smack of clownishness ; if from affectation, a tone of contempt.
Page 57 - Such spokes as the ancient of the parish use ; With " Neighbour, it is an old proverb and a true, Goose giblets are good meat, old sack better than new:" Then says another,
Page 170 - The man, who is the lord of the land, spake roughly to us, and took us for spies of the country. And we said unto him, We are true men; we are no spies: we be twelve brethren, sons of our father; one is not, and the youngest is this day with our father in the land of Canaan.
Page 24 - Calvinism, it can easily be demonstrated that during the second half of the sixteenth century and the first half of the seventeenth century...
Page 121 - Nebuchadnezzar the king made an image of gold, whose height was threescore cubits, and the breadth thereof six cubits : he set it up in the plain of Dura, in the province of Babylon.
Page 23 - Among other lessons this should first be learned, that we never affect any strange ink-horn terms, but...
Page 114 - Raised by thy breath, has quench'd the orb of day? To-morrow he repairs the golden flood And warms the nations with redoubled ray. Enough for me : with joy I see The different doom our fates assign : Be thine Despair and sceptred Care, To triumph and to die are mine.
Page 63 - Be thou a reveller and a mistress-server all the year by wearing feathers in thy hair; whose length before the rigorous edge of any puritanical pair of scissors should shorten the breadth of a finger, let the three housewifely spinsters of Destiny rather curtail the thread of thy life.