through French via Latin, or are newly manufactured scientific terms, often most unscientifically constructed.

Gamut contains the Gk. gamma and the Latin conjunction ut. Guy d'Arezzo, who flourished in the 11th century, is said to have introduced the method of indicating the notes by the letters a to g. For the note below a he used the Gk. gamma. To him is attributed also the series of monosyllables by which the notes are also indicated. They are supposed to be taken from a Latin hymn to St John—

Do is sometimes substituted for ut in French, and always in modern English.

In considering the Old French element in English, one has to bear in mind a few elementary philological facts. Nearly all French nouns and adjectives are derived from the accusative. I give, for simplicity, the nominative, adding the stem in the case of imparisyllabic words. The foundation of French is Vulgar Latin, which differs considerably from that we study at school. I only give Vulgar Latin forms where it cannot be avoided. For instance, in dealing with culverin (p. 38), I connect Fr. couleuvre, adder, with Lat. cólŭber, a snake. Every Romance philologist knows that it must represent Vulgar Lat. *colóbra; but this form, which, being conjectural, is marked with an asterisk, had better be forgotten by the general reader.

Our modern English words often preserve a French form which no longer exists, or they are taken from dialects, especially those of Normandy and Picardy, which differ greatly from that of Paris. The word caudle illustrates both these points. It is the same word as modern Fr. chaudeau, "a caudle; or, warme broth" (Cotgrave), but it preserves the Old French[9] -el for -eau, and the Picard c- for ch-. An uncomfortable bridle which used to be employed to silence scolds was called the branks. It is a Scottish word, originally applied to a bridle improvised from a halter with a wooden "cheek" each side to prevent it from slipping—

These cheeks correspond to the two parallel levers called the "branches" of a bridle, and brank is the Norman branque, branch. All the meanings of patch answer to those of Fr. pièce. It comes from the Old French dialect form peche, as match comes from mèche, and cratch, a manger, from crèche, of German origin, and ultimately the same word as crib. Cratch is now replaced, except in dialect, by manger, Fr. mangeoire, from manger, to eat, but it was the regular word in Mid. English—

Pew is from Old Fr. puy, a stage, eminence, Lat. podium, which survives in Puy de Dôme, the mountain in Auvergne on which Pascal made his experiments with the barometer. Dupuy is a common family name in France, but the Depews of the West Indies have kept the older pronunciation.

Many Old French words which live on in England are obsolete in France. Chime is Old Fr. chimbe from Greco-Lat. cymbalum. Minsheu (1617) derived dismal from Lat. dies mali, evil days. This, says Trench, "is exactly one of those plausible etymologies which one learns after a while to reject with contempt." But Minsheu is substantially right, if we substitute Old Fr. dis mal, which is found as early as 1256. Old Fr. di, a day, also survives in the names of the days of the week, lundi, etc. In remainder and remnant we have the infinitive and present participle of an obsolete Old French verb derived from Lat. remanēre. Manor and power are also Old French infinitives, the first now only used as a noun (manoir), the second represented by pouvoir. Misnomer is the Anglo-French infinitive, "to misname."

In some cases we have preserved meanings now obsolete in French. Trump, in cards, is Fr. triomphe, "the card game called ruffe, or trump; also, the ruffe, or trump at it" (Cotgrave), but the modern French word for trump is atout, to all. Rappee is for obsolete Fr. (tabac) râpé, pulverised, rasped. Fr. talon, heel, from Vulgar Lat. *talo, talon-, for talus, was applied by falconers to the heel claw of the hawk. This meaning, obsolete in French, has persisted in English. The mizen mast is the rearmost of three, but the Fr. mât de misaine is the fore-mast, and both come from Ital. mezzana middle, "also the poop or mizensail[10] in a ship" (Torriano).

As in the case of Latin, we have some inflected French forms in English. Lampoon is from the archaic Fr. lampon, "a drunken song" (Miège, French Dict., 1688). This is coined from the imperative lampons, let us drink, regularly used as a refrain in seditious and satirical songs. For the formation we may compare American vamose, to skedaddle, from Span. vamos, let us go. The military revelly is the French imperative réveillez, wake up, but in the French army it is called the diane. The gist of a matter is the point in which its importance really "lies." Ci-gît, for Old Fr. ci-gist, Lat. jacet, here lies, is seen on old tombstones. Tennis, says Minsheu, is so called from Fr. tenez, hold, "which word the Frenchmen, the onely tennis-players, use to speake when they strike the ball." This etymology, for a long time regarded as a wild guess, has been shewn by recent research to be most probably correct. The game is of French origin, and it was played by French knights in Italy a century before we find it alluded to by Gower (c. 1400). Erasmus tells us that the server called out accipe, to which his opponent replied mitte, and as French, and not Latin, was certainly the language of the earliest tennis-players, we may infer that the spectators named the game from the foreign word with which each service began. In French the game is called paume, palm of the hand; cf. fives, also a slang name for the hand. The archaic assoil—