Dictionary of the English Language ...1854 |
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accent ancient animal Athens beat belonging bird body Boeotia called cant language celebrated Ceres cloth coarse coin Colchis color consisting contract corrupt cover Crete daughter denoting derived diphthong disease draw dress female fish flower French fruit give Greek head Hence heraldry Hercules horse insect instrument Julius Cæsar Jupiter kind king language Latin letter light liquor loose manner mark marriage means medicine ment metal motion move musical ness noise one's ornament orthography p. t. and p. p. Pelops person pertaining Phrenology Phrixus Phrygia piece plant Pluto prep Priam Procne pronounced pronunciation quadruped relating resembling round rude sharp ship short skilled soft soldiers sound species stone substance syllable term Thebes Theseus Thessaly thin thing Thrace tion tree turn verb vessel vowel wild wind woman wood words writing
Popular passages
Page xxxviii - In words, as fashions, the same rule will hold; Alike fantastic, if too new, or old: Be not the first by whom the new are tried, Nor yet the last to lay the old aside.
Page xvi - I remember an instance ; when I published the Plan for my Dictionary, Lord Chesterfield told me that the word great should be pronounced so as to rhyme to state ; and Sir William Yonge sent me word that it should be pronounced so as to rhyme to seat, and that none but an Irishman would pronounce it grait. Now here were two men of the highest rank, the one, the best speaker in the House of Lords, the other, the best speaker in the House of Commons, differing entirely.
Page xxxviii - Words of one syllable or words of more than one syllable accented on the last syllable, ending in a single consonant preceded by a single vowel, double the final consonant when adding a suffix beginning with a vowel.
Page xxxvii - Of these reformers some have endeavoured to accommodate orthography better to the pronunciation, without considering that this is to measure by a shadow, to take that for a model or standard which is changing while they apply it.
Page xvi - ... affectation. The solemn pronunciation, though by no means immutable and permanent, is yet always less remote from the orthography and less liable to capricious innovation. They have, however, generally formed their tables according to the cursory speech of those with whom they happened to converse, and concluding that the whole nation combines to vitiate language in one manner, have often established the jargon of the lowest of the people as the model of speech.
Page xxxvii - Such would be the orthography of a new language to be formed by a synod of grammarians upon principles of science. But who can hope to prevail on nations to change their practice, and make all their old books useless? or what advantage would a new orthography procure equivalent to the confusion and perplexity of such an alteration?
Page 361 - CHIMERA ; a fabulous monster, breathing flames, with the head of a lion, the body of a goat, and the tail of a dragon, which laid waste the fields of Lycia, and was at last destroyed by Bcllerophon.
Page 72 - The measure of length containing three fourths of an inch ; the twelfth part of the diameter of the sun and moon; any of the numbers expressed by single figures.
Page 49 - The term colony, signifies nothing more than a body of people drawn from the mother country, to inhabit some distant place, or the country itself so inhabited.