MEANINGS OF WORDS.—No. 4.

Nouns in ing (German, ung).

Build-ing. Draw-ing.

Walk-ing. See-ing.

These nouns are formed from verbs, and generally by the simple addition of the syllable ing. They denote the general act of doing something, and often retain the same place in the sentence with respect to the word following them, that the verb itself does: thus, when we say, “the building of a house,” we express in a slightly modified manner the idea of “to build a house.”

Some nouns in ing express a collection of things, as—

Cloth-ing. Stabl-ing. Fir-ing—(fuel).

Nouns in tion.

Calculate, calcula-tion. Educate, educa-tion.

Na-tion. Sta-tion. Ora-tion.

This termination has been introduced into our language from the Latin, and in some instances differs in meaning very little, or not at all, from that in ing. Thus we could say, calculating, educating, as well as calculation, education. Words like nation, station, &c. are pure Latin words, differing from the nominative case of those in the language from which they are derived, only in having an n at the end of the word.

Nouns in hood, (German, heit).

Man-hood. Priest-hood.

Hardi-hood. Boy-hood.

These words express the abstract notion, as it is called, of the word from which they are formed; that is, they express in the most general way possible the state or condition of being a man, a priest, &c. They are not very numerous, nor, indeed, are they much used, though they are well adapted to convey that general notion which we have assigned to them.

All languages contain certain classes of nouns which are called diminutives, from their being used to express “things of a less kind or degree.”

Nouns in ling (German, lein, in some cases, ling).

Gos-ling. Found-ling. Dar-ling. Wit-ling.

(Goose-ling). Suck-ling. (Dear-ling). Duck-ling.

In all these examples a notion of some smallness in the object mentioned, is clearly recognized by common usage. A duck-ling is a little duck; and a wit-ling is a man of little wit.

It may here be necessary to make a remark, in order to caution those who are new at this kind of classification from putting words in the same class merely because they happen to terminate with certain letters that are the same. Thus it would be absurd to class under the head of diminutives such words as, doubling, tippling, troubling, merely because they appear to terminate in ling; they clearly belong to the words in ing, and are formed from the words double, tipple, trouble.

Nouns in kin (German, chen).

Mannikin, a little man, or dwarf.

Wilkin, little Will or William.

Lamb-kin.

Peter-kin, little Peter.

Nouns in th.

Strong, strength. Wide, width. Warm, warmth.

Long, length. Deep, depth. Moon, month.

True, truth.

This is a tolerably large class of words, which may be considered as formed from adjectives by the addition of th, and in some cases by also changing the sound of the vowel, as, strong, strength; deep, depth. The meaning of these nouns requires no explanation. But though they belong to the old and genuine forms of our language, we cannot say much in their favour as far as the ear is concerned. Foreigners occasionally, as well as some of our own countrymen, find a difficulty in pronouncing strength, a word containing eight letters, with only one vowel to keep the consonants from quarrelling. It is sometimes incorrectly pronounced strenth.

These words in th may be formed from verbs also, as birth, from the verb to bear; but some, as worth, have no corresponding word in our own language from which they may be derived, though in the case of this word, worth, there is in the Latin language a word (vir), and in the Anglo-Saxon a word (were), which are the parents of our word worth. From the word ear (to plough), we have the word earth, signifying ploughed land, and still correctly pronounced in many parts of England as a word of two syllables, e-arth. It is written e-orth in the Anglo-Saxon books, which is exactly the pronunciation that the word still has in some parts of Lancashire.

Words in ght, (German, cht).

Flight. Might. Night.

Sight. Tight. Right.

These words are not easy to explain without entering into considerations foreign to the kind of inquiry that we have thought proper to adopt; nor is it quite certain that all the words we have given strictly belong to the same class, though they happen to terminate with the same letters. We may, however, observe that there is the same relationship between fly or flee, and flight, that there is between see and sight, tie and tight. The reason why these and other similar words contain a g, is, because the words from which they are formed originally contained a g, or at least some letter akin to g. Thus, in German there is a word flug, meaning flight, from which is formed another word flucht, which is nearer in form to our own word flight.