reputed a _niding_, they swarmed to him immediately from all sides
in such numbers that he had in a few days an infinite army, and the
rebels therewith were so terrified that they forthwith yielded."
(_Remains concerning Britain._)

_Derring-do_ is used several times by Spenser, who explains it as
"manhood and chevalrie." It is due to his misunderstanding of a passage
in Lidgate, in which it is an imitation of Chaucer, complicated by a
misprint. Scott took it from Spenser--

"'Singular,' he again muttered to himself, 'if there be two who can
do a deed of such _derring-do_.'"
(_Ivanhoe_, Ch. 29.)

and from him it passed to Bulwer Lytton and later writers.

Such words as these, the illegitimate offspring of genius, are to be
distinguished from the "ghost-words" which dimly haunt the dictionaries
without ever having lived (see p. 201). Speaking generally, we may say
that no word is ever created _de novo_. The names invented for
commercial purposes are not exceptions to this law. _Bovril_ is
compounded of Lat. _bos_, ox, and _vril_,[15] the mysterious power which
plays so important a part in Lytton's _Coming Race_, while _Tono-Bungay_
suggests _tonic_. The only exception to this is _gas_, the arbitrary
coinage of the Belgian chemist Van Helmont in the 17th century. But even
this is hardly a new creation, because we have Van Helmont's own
statement that the word _chaos_ was vaguely present to his mind.
_Chortle_ has, however, secured a limited currency, and is admitted by
the _New English Dictionary_--

"O frabjous day! Callooh! callay!
He _chortled_ in his joy."
(_Through the Looking-Glass._)

and, though an accurate account of the _boojum_ is lacking, most people
know it to be a dangerous variety of _snark_.

FOOTNOTES:

[6] _Abominable_ is regularly spelt _abhominable_ in late Old French and
Mid. English, as though meaning "inhuman," Lat. _homo_, _homin-_, a man.

[7] This etymology is doubted by some authorities.

[8] But the word comes to us from French. In the 16th century such
puzzles were called _rebus de Picardie_, because of their popularity in
that province.

[9] For simplicity the term Old French is used here to include all words
not in modern use. Where a modern form exists it is given in
parentheses.

[10] The name was thus applied to a sa