Etyma Latina. By Edward Ross Wharton, M.A.. (Rivingtons.) —Mr. Wharton
cannot expect to find an implicit following on the part of the students whom he addresses in this book, but he will certainly find gratitude. It is a courageous, sometimes, we may say, a too courageous effort to deal with the subject. In the first place, he shirks nothing. There are, he says, 4,320 words in Latin literature, taking the death of Trajan as the latest limit, that need etymological explanation. (But does not much of Juvenal lie
beyond this limit ?) Of these, he deals with 3,055, being those found in sixteen authors of the first rank. The results of his in- vestigations may be thus stated : There are— (1), 1,130 " inherited" words,—i.e., "manufactured" words having cognates in other languages of the same family; (2), 930 derivatives or compounds of these ; (3), 615 " imported " words, borrowed, i.e., from other
languages ; (4), 380 that cannot be classified. Sometimes he is, we think, a little paradoxical, as when he says : " Verbs indo, abdo, Re., are (except credo) formed from adjectives. So condo is from condus, one who lays up.' " Why invent these non-existent adjectives ?
Previous page
