ed_." But what sense he thought he had made of the
sacred record, I know not. The Greek text, rendered word for word, is
simply this: "_And his disciples hungered_." And that the sentences above,
taken either way, are _not good English_, must be obvious to every
intelligent reader. _An_, as I apprehend, is here a mere _prefix_, which
has somehow been mistaken in form, and erroneously disjoined from the
following word. If so, the correction ought to be made after the fashion of
the following passage from Bishop M'Ilvaine: "On a certain occasion, our
Saviour was followed by five thousand men, into a desert place, where they
were _enhungered_."--_Lectures on Christianity_, p. 210.

OBS. 21.--The word _a_, when it does not denote one thing of a kind, is not
an article, but a genuine _preposition_; being probably the same as the
French a, signifying _to, at, on, in_, or _of_: as, "Who hath it? He that
died _a_ Wednesday."--_Shak_. That is, _on_ Wednesday. So sometimes before
plurals; as, "He carves _a_ Sundays."--_Swift_. That is, _on_ Sundays. "He
is let out _a_ nights."--_Id._ That is, _on_ nights--like the following
example: "A pack of rascals that walk the streets _on_ nights."--_Id._ "He
will knap the spears _a_ pieces with his teeth."--_More's Antid._ That is,
_in_ pieces, or _to_ pieces. So in the compound word _now-a-days_, where it
means _on_; and in the proper names, Thomas _a_ Becket, Thomas _a_ Kempis,
Anthony _a_ Wood, where it means _at_ or _of_.

"Bot certainly the daisit blude _now on dayis_
Waxis dolf and dull throw myne unwieldy age."--_Douglas._

OBS. 22.--As a preposition, _a_ has now most generally become a _prefix_,
or what the grammarians call an inseparable preposition; as in _abed_, in
bed; _aboard_, on board; _abroad_, at large; _afire_, on fire; _afore_, in
front; _afoul_, in contact; _aloft_, on high; _aloud_, with loudness;
_amain_, at main strength; _amidst_, in the midst; _akin_, of kin; _ajar_,
unfastened; _ahead_, onward; _afield_, to the field; _alee_, to the
leeward; _anew_, of new, with renewal. "_A-nights_, he was in the practice
of sleeping, &c.; but _a-days_ he kept looking on the barren ocean,
shedding tears."--_Dr. Murray's Hist. of Europ. Lang._, Vol. ii, p. 162.
Compounds of this kind, in most instances, follow verbs, and are
consequently reckoned adverbs; as, _To go astray,--To turn aside,--To soar
aloft,--To fall asleep_. But sometimes the antecedent term is a noun or a
pr