words hitherto unused in Scriptural translations; such as, at all, nor, lyke wyse, ado, God forbid: this last replaces Wickliffe's ‘fer be it.’ Whole (sanus) takes the hideous interloping letter that begins the word; the Salopian won is used for unus. The word abroad had been used earlier in a sense like the Latin latè: since 1525 we have used it to express also the Latin foris. This last meaning comes, not from the Old English brad, but from the Norse braut, a way.[1] We see a few new terms; thus, the word already was beginning to come in, and was employed twice in the Gospels. Wickliffe's wawes (fluctus) are now turned into waves. The adjective sad had hitherto meant nothing more than gravis; it now began to take its new meaning, tristis. What was called unróte in the year 1000, and sorwful in 1380, is here called sadde; but this new sense comes only twice in the Four Gospels. Wickliffe had translated volvere by walew (wallow); but Tyndale uses this English verb in an intransitive sense only; he writes roll for volvere. The verb werian (induere) had been of old a Weak verb, and made its Perfect werode; but Tyndale turns this into a Strong Perfect, a change most seldom found in English. In his translation of St. Luke viii. 27, we read that the man which had a devil ‘ware noo clothes.’ We still say wore and worn. He gave us a few words hardly ever used before his time, such as immediatly (he has also the old anon, to which he should have stuck), exceedingly, and streyght waye. He stands almost at the end of the old school of writers,
- ↑ Dasent, Jest and Earnest, ii. 63.
