1873 ought to restore forthwith. The English privative un comes often where we now use the Latin in. We find such old words as anon, chapman, halt, knap, let, list, neesing, trow, ward, wax, wot, still struggling for life. What fine old idioms we have preserved to us in well is thee, woe is me, woe worth the day, the gate opened of his own accord, the more part of them,[1] do you to wit, to have an evil will at Zion, I was shapen, whether (uter) of the two, set them at one again! The phrase would God! which we owe to Manning in 1303, is a thoroughly English idiom, and is not sanctioned by the Hebrew.[2] The Douay Bible has had a lot widely different from that of Tyndale's Version; already in 1583 Fulke was railing against the foreign work and its authors; he branded ‘affected novelties of terms, such as neither English nor Christian ears ever heard in the English tongue — scandal, prepuce, neophyte, depositum, gratis, parasceve, paraclete, exinanite, repropitiate, and a hundred such like ink horn terms.’[3] Fulke further on protests against azymes, schisms, zelators: ‘these and such other be wonders of words that wise men can give no good reason why they should be used.’ Why not talk of gazophilace and the encœnes? Fulke's book, reprinted by the Parker Society, should be in the hands of all philologers; it is to be wished that he could come to life
- ↑ This sense of more (major) lingers in our ‘more's the pity.’
- ↑ I have been guided here by Eastwood and Wright. May the Revisors of 1873 hold fast to the Teutonic element in our Version, whatever else they do!
- ↑ Fancy such words as exinanite and repropitiate being read out in our parish churches! Dî meliora piis erroremque hostibus illum!
