BY JAMES C. FERNALD, L.H.D. AUTHOR OF "EXPRESSIVE ENGLISH"; "ENGLISH SYNONYMS, An- & WAGNALLS DESK STANDARD DICTIONARY"; ARY"; "CONCISE STANDARD DIC- GROSSET & DUNLAP PUBLISHERS • NEW YORK COPYRIGHT, 1921, BY FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY [Printed in the United States of America] Copyright Under the Articles of the Copyright Convention United States, August 11, 1910. FOREWORD “THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE is a power because it is a life-the life of a great people expressed in words that live. At each stage the language has enshrined, incarnated, the thought and deeds of its present to be the motive-power, the inspiration of the ages to come. The higher possibilities of language come through admiration, honor, and love for the English language as a great, beneficent, and living power. ... To put ourselves back in time, to let ourselves go, and mentally reproduce the conditions and thoughts of the men of other days, develops the imagination, broadens the range of thought, and makes the very words of our language rich with the content of centuries." These sentences, quoted from the author's last previous book, are the key to the present work. "Some time before I die," he had told his associates, "I am going to write a book which will show that the English language is what it is because of the way it came into being. No one can fully grasp the meaning, and completely master the use, of the English language without knowing the history of English as a language." His conception of it was always that it originated as a language of the common people, which grew and developed as their thought and life and power PE 1075 F4 1921 MAIN M549869 |