because the sense of the word has changed, fossil expressions are misleading. Consider the oft-quoted statement "the exception proves the rule." Most people take this to mean that the exception confirms the rule, though when you ask them to explain the logic in that statement, they usually cannot. After all, how can an exception prove a rule? It can't. The answer is that an earlier meaning of prove was to test (a meaning preserved in proving ground) and with that meaning the statement suddenly becomes sensible—the exception tests the rule. A similar misapprehension is often attached to the statement "the proof of the pudding is in the eating."
Sometimes words change by becoming more specific. Starve originally meant to die before it took on the more particular sense of to die by hunger. A deer was once any animal (it still is in the German tier) and meat was any food (the sense is preserved in
"meat and drink" and in the English food mincemeat, which con-tains various fruits but no meat in the sense that we now use it). A forest was any area of countryside set aside for hunting, whether or not it was covered with trees. (In England to this day, the Forest of Bowland in Lancashire is largely treeless, as are large stretches of the New Forest in Hampshire.) And worm was a term for any crawling creature, including snakes.
5. WORDS ARE CREATED BY ADDING OR SUBTRACTING SOMETHING.
English has more than a hundred common prefixes and suffixes-
-able, -ness, -ment, pre-, dis-, anti-, and so on—and with these it can form and reform words with a facility that yet again sets it apart from other tongues. For example, we can take the French word mutin (rebellion) and turn it into mutiny, mutinous, mutinously, mutineer, and many others, while the French have still just the one form, mutin.
We are astonishingly indiscriminate in how we form our corn-8o WHERE WORDS COME FROM
pounds, sometimes adding an Anglo-Saxon prefix or suffix to a Greek or Latin root (plainness, sympathizer), and sometimes vice versa (readable, disbelieve). [Examples cited by Burchfield, The English Language, page 112]. This inclination to use affixes and infixes provides gratifying flexibility in creating or modifying words to fit new uses, as strikingly demonstrated in the word incompre- hensibility, which consists of the root -hen- and eight affixes and infixes: in, -corn-, -pre-, -s-, -ib-, -il-, -it-, and -y. Even more melodic is the musical term quasihemidemisemiquaver, which de-scribes a note that is equal to 128th of a semibreve.
As well as showing flexibility it also promotes confusion. We have six ways of making labyrinth into an adjective: labyrinthian, labyrinthean, labyrinthal, labyrinthine, labyrinthic, and labyrin- thical. We have at least six ways of expressing negation with pre-fixes: a-, anti-, in-, , im- , it-, un-, and non-. It is arguable whether this is a sign of admirable variety or just untidiness. It must be exasperating for foreigners to have to learn that a thing unseen is not unvisible, but invisible, while something that cannot be re-versed is not inreversible but irreversible and that a thing not possible is not nonpossible or antipossible but impossible. Further-more, they must learn not to make the elementary mistake of assuming that because a word contains a negative suffix or prefix it is necessarily a negative word. In-, for instance, almost always implies negation but not with invaluable, while -less is equally negative, as a rule, but not with priceless. Things are so confusing that even native users have shown signs of mental fatigue and left us with two forms meaning the same thing: flammable and in- flammable, iterate and reiterate, ebriate and inebriate, habitable and inhabitable, durable and perdurable, fervid and perfervid, gather and forgather, ravel and unravel.
Some of our word endings are surprisingly rare. If you think of angry and hungry, you might conclude that -gry is a common ending, but in fact it occurs in
Sometimes words change by becoming more specific. Starve originally meant to die before it took on the more particular sense of to die by hunger. A deer was once any animal (it still is in the German tier) and meat was any food (the sense is preserved in
"meat and drink" and in the English food mincemeat, which con-tains various fruits but no meat in the sense that we now use it). A forest was any area of countryside set aside for hunting, whether or not it was covered with trees. (In England to this day, the Forest of Bowland in Lancashire is largely treeless, as are large stretches of the New Forest in Hampshire.) And worm was a term for any crawling creature, including snakes.
5. WORDS ARE CREATED BY ADDING OR SUBTRACTING SOMETHING.
English has more than a hundred common prefixes and suffixes-
-able, -ness, -ment, pre-, dis-, anti-, and so on—and with these it can form and reform words with a facility that yet again sets it apart from other tongues. For example, we can take the French word mutin (rebellion) and turn it into mutiny, mutinous, mutinously, mutineer, and many others, while the French have still just the one form, mutin.
We are astonishingly indiscriminate in how we form our corn-8o WHERE WORDS COME FROM
pounds, sometimes adding an Anglo-Saxon prefix or suffix to a Greek or Latin root (plainness, sympathizer), and sometimes vice versa (readable, disbelieve). [Examples cited by Burchfield, The English Language, page 112]. This inclination to use affixes and infixes provides gratifying flexibility in creating or modifying words to fit new uses, as strikingly demonstrated in the word incompre- hensibility, which consists of the root -hen- and eight affixes and infixes: in, -corn-, -pre-, -s-, -ib-, -il-, -it-, and -y. Even more melodic is the musical term quasihemidemisemiquaver, which de-scribes a note that is equal to 128th of a semibreve.
As well as showing flexibility it also promotes confusion. We have six ways of making labyrinth into an adjective: labyrinthian, labyrinthean, labyrinthal, labyrinthine, labyrinthic, and labyrin- thical. We have at least six ways of expressing negation with pre-fixes: a-, anti-, in-, , im- , it-, un-, and non-. It is arguable whether this is a sign of admirable variety or just untidiness. It must be exasperating for foreigners to have to learn that a thing unseen is not unvisible, but invisible, while something that cannot be re-versed is not inreversible but irreversible and that a thing not possible is not nonpossible or antipossible but impossible. Further-more, they must learn not to make the elementary mistake of assuming that because a word contains a negative suffix or prefix it is necessarily a negative word. In-, for instance, almost always implies negation but not with invaluable, while -less is equally negative, as a rule, but not with priceless. Things are so confusing that even native users have shown signs of mental fatigue and left us with two forms meaning the same thing: flammable and in- flammable, iterate and reiterate, ebriate and inebriate, habitable and inhabitable, durable and perdurable, fervid and perfervid, gather and forgather, ravel and unravel.
Some of our word endings are surprisingly rare. If you think of angry and hungry, you might conclude that -gry is a common ending, but in fact it occurs in
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