Note 18 — Chapter III · THE GROWTH OF LANGUAGE.
Reading edition
In English we have grind, grate, (s)cra(pe), grave (German graben, ‘to dig;’ Eng. ‘grub.’) All words for writing mean cutting, because all writing was originally graving on a stone: thus the Latin scribo (corrupted in the French to écris), in the Greek is grapho, in the German schreibe. These words, as well as the English write, are known to be all from the same root; it is not pretended that they are proofs of a natural selection of sound; but they may be instances of it.