Change in Gender.—­Before any one could speak Anglo-Saxon correctly, he had first to learn the fanciful genders that were attached to nouns:  “trousers” was feminine; “childhood,” masculine; “child,” neuter.  During this period the English gradually lost these fanciful genders which the German still retains.  A critic thus illustrates the use of genders in that language:  “A German gentleman writes a masculine letter of feminine love to a neuter young lady with a feminine pen and feminine ink on masculine sheets of neuter paper, and incloses it in a masculine envelope with a feminine address to his darling, though neuter, Gretchen.  He has a masculine head, a feminine hand, and a neuter heart.”

Prefixes, Suffixes, and Self-explaining Compounds.—­The English tongue lost much of its power of using prefixes.  A prefix joined to a well-known word changes its meaning and renders the coining of a new term unnecessary.  The Anglo-Saxons, by the use of prefixes, formed ten compounds from their verb fl=owan, “to flow.”  Of these, only one survives in our “overflow.”  From sittan, “to sit,” thirteen compounds were thus formed, but every one has perished.  A larger percentage of suffixes was retained, and we still have many words like “wholesome-ness,” “child-hood,” “sing-er.”

The power of forming self-explaining compounds was largely lost.  The Saxon compounded the words for “tree,” and “worker,” and said tr=eow-wyrhta, “tree-wright,” but we now make use of the single word “carpenter.”  We have replaced the Saxon b=oc-craeft, “book-art,” by “literature”; _=aefen-gl=om_, “evening-gloom,” by “twilight”; mere-sw=in, “sea-swine,” by “porpoise”; _=eag-wraec_, “eye-rack,” by “pain in the eye”; leornung-cild, “learning-child,” by “pupil.”  The title of an old work, Ayen-bite of In-wit, “Again-bite of In-wit,” was translated into “Remorse of Conscience.” Grund-weall and word-hora were displaced by “foundation” and “vocabulary.”  The German language still retains this power and calls a glove a “hand-shoe,” a thimble a “finger-hat,” and rolls up such clumsy compound expressions as Unabhaengigkeits-erklaerung.

We might lament this loss more if we did not remember that Shakespeare found our language ample for his needs, and that a considerable number of the old compounds still survive, as home-stead, man-hood, in-sight, break-fast, house-hold, horse-back, ship-man, sea-shore, hand-work, and day-light.

Introduction of New Words and Loss of Old Ones.—­Since the Normans were for some time the governing race, while many of the Saxons occupied comparatively menial positions, numerous French words indicative of rank, power, science, luxury, and fashion were introduced.  Many titles were derived from a French source.  English thus obtained words like “sovereign,” “royalty,” “duke,” “marquis,” “mayor,” and “clerk.”  Many terms of government are from the French; for