Note 161 — III

Many languages have groups of words formed upon the same scheme, although, singularly enough, they are altogether absent from the Anglo-Saxon. (J. Grimm, Deutsche Gramm., vol. ii. p. 976). The Spaniards have a great many very expressive words of this formation. Thus with allusion to the great struggle in which Christian Spain was engaged for so many centuries, a vaunting braggart is a ‘matamoros’, a ‘slaymoor’; he is a ‘matasiete’, a ‘slayseven’; a ‘perdonavidas’, a ‘sparelives’. Others may be added to these, as ‘azotacalles’, ‘picapleytos’, ‘saltaparedes’, ‘rompeesquinas’, ‘ganapan’, ‘cascatreguas’.