MEANINGS OF WORDS.—No. 6.

Words in ly (German, lich).

These words are sometimes adjectives, as in the following examples:—

Man-ly. Good-ly. Home-ly.

God-ly. Good-like, (provincial):

or they are used as adverbs, of which the following are a few samples:—

Wise-ly. Third-ly. Truly.

First-ly. Last-ly. Sick-ly, (adjective and adverb).

The word man-ly means like a man, and we believe that all such words were once written with the termination lic, or like, which means resemblance, or, in some cases, equality. As a proof of this position, we may observe, without quoting the authority of old printed books, that we still use several words in both forms: thus we have death-like, death-ly; god-like, god-ly; while in some instances we have retained the original termination like, without shortening it into ly, as in war-like. Custom has now assigned different meanings to such words as god-like and god-ly,—the former, a poetical kind of word, being used to signify resemblance to a god in actions, and the latter being applied to express the feeling of piety and devotion. In our older language a good-ly man signified handsome personage, and in some parts of this island the original phrase of a good-like man may be often heard in the mouths of the rustics. The word home-ly is now generally used in the sense of common, ordinary, as when we speak of homely fare or homely food; or it is applied to express our opinion of a person’s face, when we wish to say that it is rather ugly, without using so ugly a word. Milton explains this usage of the word in his Comus:—

“It is for homely features to keep home,

They had their name thence.”

The list of words in ly, which are used as adverbs, is rather numerous; very few of the class, we believe, are used both as adjectives and adverbs. We have, however, marked sick-ly as one instance of this double usage. Many of these adverbs in ly are derived from secondary forms, and from that class of words in ing commonly called participles; thus we have—

Play-ful-ly. Deceit-ful-ly.

Know-ing-ly. Will-ing-ly.

The mention of the words play-ful-ly, deceit-ful-ly, leads us to speak of the termination ful (German, voll).

Play-ful. Joy-ful. Care-ful.

Aw-ful. Cheer-ful. Wil-ful.

These words might perhaps be more properly called compound words, because they are compounded or made up of two distinct words. Play-ful is formed of play and full: one of the l’s in the compound word being now generally dropped in writing. It may be well to explain how the compound word health-ful differs from the derived word health-y. The former is, as we have remarked, made up of two distinct words, health and full, both of which are still in common use; while health-y is, made up of the same word health and a termination y, or suffix, as it is sometimes called, which may once have been a real word, but it is so no longer; and we can only form a kind of guess at its meaning, by comparing a number of words in which it occurs one with another, and by observing what kind of ideas these words are used to convey. Thus the word wil-ful appears to signify full of will; and when we speak of a wilful murder, we mean the death of one man caused by another with full will and intention. This is quite intelligible; but this word wilful is often used very vaguely and in various senses that we have tried to understand, but hitherto without success.

Words in less (German, los).

Care-less. Penni-less. Boot-less.

Cheer-less. Tooth-less. Worth-less.

These words, also, ought perhaps to be classed under the head of compounds, as the termination less is a real word in familiar use. Care-less, cheer-less, signify exactly the reverse of care-ful, cheer-ful, being used to express the absence or want of the thing signified by the noun prefixed. The word boot-less means without prey, booty, or profit; it has furnished occasion for one of Shakspeare’s worst puns, if we can venture to say which is the worst of the innumerable samples which that fertile brain produced. Glendower (Henry IV. Part 1st, Act iii. I) is telling Hotspur of his valorous exploits against Henry Bolingbroke, when he says—

⸻“Thrice from the banks of Wye, And sandy-bottomed Severn, have I sent him Bootless home, and weather-beaten back.

Hotspur. Home without boots and in foul weather too! How ’scapes he agues, in the devil’s name?”

The German word los is attached to many words like the English termination less, and appears to have exactly the same signification, as, for example, schlaf-los means sleep-less, and macht-los (might-less), without power or strength. Indeed the two terminations appear to be the same, both signifying to loose or take away: the German los is often prefixed to verbs, as well as put after nouns.

In our list of nouns we omitted to mention those in 223rick and wick, which ought to have been classed with nouns in dom. Their number is not large.

Nouns in ric and wick, such as—

Bishop-ric. Baili-wick.

Ric, the same as the German reich, means possession, wealth, dominion. The Germans call France, Frankreich,—the kingdom or dominion of the Franks. The old Saxon word for kingdom is rice, which frequently occurs in the Anglo-Saxon laws.^[2] Bailiwick is, properly, the space over which the jurisdiction of a bailiff extends. We do not mean to say the jurisdiction of a bailiff as known in ordinary practice, but according to the more creditable and proper import of the word, which means a deputy or agent who manages the affairs of a superior, or superintendent.