ious circumlocutions. Nor has 'rathest'
been so long out of use, that it would be playing the antic to attempt
to revive it. It occurs in the _Sermons_ of Bishop Sanderson, who in the
opening of that beautiful sermon from the text, "When my father and my
mother forsake me, the Lord taketh me up", puts the consideration, "why
these", that is, father and mother, "are named the _rathest_, and the
rest to be included in them"{156}.

It is sometimes easy enough, but indeed oftener hard, and not seldom
quite impossible, to trace the causes which have been at work to bring
about that certain words, little by little, drop out of the language of
men, come to be heard more and more rarely, and finally are not heard
any more at all--to trace the motives which have induced a whole people
thus to arrive at a tacit consent not to employ them any longer; for
without this tacit consent they could never have thus become obsolete.
That it is not accident, that there is a law here at work, however
hidden it may be from us, is plain from the fact that certain families
of words, words formed on certain patterns, have a tendency thus to fall
into desuetude.

{Sidenote: _Words in '-some'_}

Thus, I think, we may trace a tendency in words ending in 'some', the
Anglo-Saxon and early English 'sum', the German 'sam' ('friedsam',
'seltsam') to fall out of use. It is true that a vast number of these
survive, as 'gladsome', 'handsome', 'wearisome', 'buxom' (this last
spelt better 'bucksome', by our earlier writers, for its present
spelling altogether disguises its true character, and the family to
which it belongs); being the same word as the German 'beugsam' or
'biegsam', bendable, compliant{157}; but a larger number of these words
than can be ascribed to accident, many more than the due proportion of
them, are either quite or nearly extinct. Thus in Wiclif's Bible alone
you might note the following, 'lovesum', 'hatesum', 'lustsum', 'gilsum'
(guilesome), 'wealsum', 'heavysum', 'lightsum', 'delightsum'; of these
'lightsome' long survived, and indeed still survives in provincial
dialects; but of the others all save 'delightsome' are gone; and that,
although used in our Authorized Version (Mal. iii, 12), is now only
employed in poetry. So too 'mightsome' (see Coleridge's _Glossary_),
'brightsome' (Marlowe), 'wieldsome', and 'unwieldsome' (Golding),
'unlightsome' (Milton), 'healthsome' (_Homilies_), 'ugsome' and
'ugglesome' (both in Foxe), 'labourso