to meritorious; 'untellable' for ineffable; 'dearworth'
for precious; Chaucer has 'forword' for promise; Sir John Cheke
'freshman' for proselyte; 'mooned' for lunatic; 'foreshewer' for
prophet; 'hundreder' for centurion; Jewel 'foretalk', where we now
employ preface; Holland 'sunstead' where we use solstice; 'leechcraft'
instead of medicine; and another, 'wordcraft' for logic; 'starconner'
(Gascoigne) did service once, if not instead of astrologer, yet side by
side with it; 'halfgod' (Golding) had the advantage over 'demigod', that
it was all of one piece; 'to eyebite' (Holland) told its story at least
as well as to fascinate; 'shriftfather' as confessor; 'earshrift'
(Cartwright) is only two syllables, while 'auricular confession' is
eight; 'waterfright' is a better word than our awkward Greek
hydrophobia. The lamprey (lambens petram) was called once the
'suckstone' or the 'lickstone'; and the anemone the 'windflower'.
'Umstroke', if it had lived on (it appears as late as Fuller, though
our dictionaries know nothing of it), might have made 'circumference'
and 'periphery' unnecessary. 'Wanhope', as we saw just now, has given
place to despair, 'middler' to mediator; and it would be easy to
increase this list.

{Sidenote: _Local and Provincial English_}

I had occasion just now to notice the fact that many words survive in
our provincial dialects, long after they have died out from the main
body of the speech. The fact is one connected with so much of deep
interest in the history of language that I cannot pass it thus slightly
over. It is one which, rightly regarded, may assist to put us in a just
point of view for estimating the character of the local and provincial
in speech, and rescuing it from that unmerited contempt and neglect with
which it is often regarded. I must here go somewhat further back than I
could wish; but only so, only by looking at the matter in connexion with
other phenomena of speech, can I hope to explain to you the worth and
significance which local and provincial words and usages must oftentimes
possess.

Let us then first suppose a portion of those speaking a language to have
been separated off from the main body of its speakers, either through
their forsaking for one cause or other of their native seats, or by the
intrusion of a hostile people, like a wedge, between them and the
others, forcibly keeping them asunder, and cutting off their
communications one with the other, as the Saxons intr