nor the persistence of the first y in pygmy. Here we have plain vagaries, surviving in spite of attack by orthographers. Web- ster, in one of his earlier books, denounced the k in skeptic as "a mere pedantry," but later on he adopted it. In the same way pygmy, gray and mollusk have been attacked, but they still remain sound American. The English themselves have many more such illogical forms to account for. In the midst of the our-words they cling to a small number in or, among them, stupor. Moreover, they drop the u in many derivatives, for example, in arboreal, armory, clamorously, clangorous, odorifer- ous, humorist, laborious and rigorism. If it were dropped in all derivatives the rule would be easy to remember, but it is re- tained in some of them, for example, colourable, favourite, mis- demeanour, coloured and labourer. The derivatives of honour exhibit the confusion clearly. Honorary, honorarium and hon- orific drop the u, but honourable retains it. Furthermore, the English make a distinction between two senses of rigor. When used in its pathological sense (not only in the Latin form of rigor mortis, but as an English word) it drops the u; in all other senses it retains the u. The one American anomaly in this field is Saviour. In its theological sense it retains the u; but in that sense only. A sailor who saves his ship is its savior, not its saviour.
§3
The Influence of Webster—At the time of the first settlement of America the rules of English orthography were beautifully vague, and so we find the early documents full of spellings that would give an English lexicographer much pain today. Now and then a curious foreshadowing of later American usage is encountered. On July 4, 1631, for example, John Winthrop wrote in his journal that "the governour built a bark at Mistick, which was launched this day." But during the eighteenth cen- tury, and especially after the publication of Johnson's diction- ary, there was a general movement in England toward a more inflexible orthography, and many hard and fast rules, still sur- viving, were then laid down. It was Johnson himself who es-
