reek: meta], [Greek:
porthmos], [Greek: thygater], [Greek: megalos], [Greek: mignyo],
[Greek: mene], [Greek: xeros], [Greek: grapho], [Greek: holos]. Since
they received these immediately from the Greeks, without the
intervention of the Latin language, why may not other words be derived
immediately from the same fountain, though they be likewise found among
the Latins?

Our ancestors were studious to form borrowed words, however long, into
monosyllables; and not only cut off the formative terminations, but cropped
the first syllable, especially in words beginning with a vowel; and
rejected not only vowels in the middle, but likewise consonants of a weaker
sound, retaining the stronger, which seem the bones of words, or changing
them for others of the same organ, in order that the sound might become the
softer; but especially transposing their order, that they might the more
readily be pronounced without the intermediate vowels. For example in
expendo, spend; exemplum, sample; excipio, scape; extraneus, strange;
extractum, stretch'd; excrucio, to screw; exscorio, to scour; excorio, to
scourge; excortico, to scratch; and others beginning with ex: as also,
emendo, to mend; episcopus, bishop, in Danish bisp; epistola, epistle;
hospitale, spittle; Hispania, Spain; historia, story.

Many of these etymologies are doubtful, and some evidently mistaken.

The following are somewhat harder, Alexander, Sander; Elisabetha,
Betty; apis, bee; aper, bar; p passing into b, as in bishop; and by
cutting off a from the beginning, which is restored in the middle; but
for the old bar or bare, we now say boar; as for lang, long, for bain,
bane; for stane, stone; aprugna, brawn, p, being changed into b and a
transposed, as in aper, and g changed into w, as in pignus, pawn; lege,
law; [Greek: alopex], fox, cutting off the beginning, and changing p
into f, as in pellis, a fell; pullus, a foal; pater, father; pavor,
fear; polio, file; pleo, impleo, fill, full; piscis, fish; and
transposing o into the middle, which was taken from the beginning;
apex, a piece; peak, pike; zophorus, freese; mustum, stum; defensio,
fence; dispensator, spencer; asculto, escouter, Fr. scout; exscalpo,
scrape; restoring l instead of r, and hence scrap, scrabble, scrawl;
exculpo, scoop; exterritus, start; extonitus, attonitus, stonn'd;
stomachus, maw; offendo, fined; obstipo, stop; a