ied, or that the author has, in my opinion, pronounced
wrong. Short directions are sometimes given, where the sound of letters
is irregular; and if they are sometimes omitted, defect in such minute
observations will be more easily excused, than superfluity.

In the investigation both of the orthography and signification of words,
their ETYMOLOGY was necessarily to be considered, and they were,
therefore, to be divided into primitives and derivatives. A primitive
word is that which can be traced no further to any English root; thus
_circumspect, circumvent, circumstance, delude, concave_, and
_complicate_, though compounds in the Latin, are to us primitives.
Derivatives are all those that can be referred to any word in English of
greater simplicity.

The derivatives I have referred to their primitives, with an accuracy
sometimes needless; for who does not see that _remoteness_ comes from
_remote, lovely_ from _love, concavity_ from _concave_, and
_demonstrative_ from _demonstrate_? But this grammatical exuberance the
scheme of my work did not allow me to repress. It is of great
importance, in examining the general fabrick of a language, to trace one
word from another, by noting the usual modes of derivation and
inflection; and uniformity must be preserved in systematical works,
though sometimes at the expense of particular propriety.

Among other derivatives, I have been careful to insert and elucidate the
anomalous plurals of nouns and preterites of verbs, which in the
Teutonick dialects are very frequent, and, though familiar to those who
have always used them, interrupt and embarrass the learners of our
language.

The two languages from which our primitives have been derived are the
Roman and Teutonick: under the Roman I comprehend the French and
provincial tongues; and under the Teutonick range the Saxon, German, and
all their kindred dialects. Most of our polysyllables are Roman, and our
words of one syllable are very often Teutonick.

In assigning the Roman original, it has, perhaps, sometimes happened
that I have mentioned only the Latin, when the word was borrowed from
the French; and, considering myself as employed only in the illustration
of my own language, I have not been very careful to observe whether the
Latin word be pure or barbarous, or the French elegant or obsolete.

For the Teutonick etymologies, I am commonly indebted to Junius and
Skinner, the only names which I have forborne to quote when I