heir
relation to the primitive being always the same, their significations
cannot be mistaken.

The verbal nouns in _ing_, such as the _keeping_ of the _castle_, the
_leading_ of the _army_, are always neglected, or placed only to
illustrate the sense of the verb, except when they signify things as
well as actions, and have, therefore, a plural number, as _dwelling,
living_; or have an absolute and abstract signification, as _colouring,
painting, learning_.

The participles are likewise omitted, unless, by signifying rather habit
or quality than action, they take the nature of adjectives; as a
_thinking_ man, a man of prudence; a _pacing_ horse, a horse that can
pace: these I have ventured to call _participial adjectives_. But
neither are these always inserted, because they are commonly to be
understood without any danger of mistake, by consulting the verb.

Obsolete words are admitted, when they are found in authors not
obsolete, or when they have any force or beauty that may deserve
revival.

As composition is one of the chief characteristicks of a language, I
have endeavoured to make some reparation for the universal negligence of
my predecessors, by inserting great numbers of compounded words, as may
be found under _after, fore, new, night, fair_, and many more. These,
numerous as they are, might be multiplied, but that use and curiosity
are here satisfied, and the frame of our language and modes of our
combination amply discovered.

Of some forms of composition, such as that by which _re_ is prefixed to
note _repetition_, and _un_ to signify _contrariety_ or _privation_, all
the examples cannot be accumulated, because the use of these particles,
if not wholly arbitrary, is so little limited, that they are hourly
affixed to new words, as occasion requires, or is imagined to require
them.

There is another kind of composition more frequent in our language than,
perhaps, in any other, from which arises to foreigners the greatest
difficulty. We modify the signification of many verbs by a particle
subjoined; as to _come off_, to escape by a fetch; to _fall on_, to
attack; to _fall off_, to apostatize; to _break off_, to stop abruptly;
to _bear out_, to justify; to _fall in_, to comply; to _give over_, to
cease; to _set off_, to embellish; to _set in_, to begin a continual
tenour; to _set out_, to begin a course or journey; to _take off_, to
copy; with innumerable expressions of the same kind, of which some
appe