27.  SEVENTH DEFINITION:—­“Prepositions serve to connect words with one another, and to show the relation between them.”—­Lowth, Murray, and others.  This is only an observation, not a definition, as it ought to have been; nor does it at all distinguish the preposition from the conjunction.  It does not reach the thing in question.  Besides, it contains an actual solecism in the expression.  The word “between” implies but two things; and the phrase “one another” is not applicable where there are but two.  It should be, “to connect words with each other, and to show the relation between them;”—­or else, “to connect words with one an other, and to show the relations among them.”  But the latter mode of expression would not apply to prepositions considered severally, but only to the whole class.

28.  EIGHTH DEFINITION:—­“A Conjunction is a part of speech that is chiefly used to connect sentences; so as, out of two or more sentences, to make but one:  it sometimes connects only words.”—­Murray, and others.  Here are more than thirty words, awkwardly and loosely strung together; and all that is said in them, might be much better expressed in half the number.  For example:  “A Conjunction is a word which connects other terms, and commonly of two sentences makes but one.”  But verbosity and want of unity are not the worst faults of this definition.  We have three others to point out. 1.  “A conjunction is” not “a part of speech;” because a conjunction is one conjunction, and a part of speech is a whole class, or sort, of words.  A similar error was noticed in Murray’s definition of an adverb; and so common has this blunder become, that by a comparison of the definitions which different authors have given of the parts of speech, probably it will be found, that, by some hand or other, every one of the ten has been commenced in this way. 2.  The words “or more” are erroneous, and ought to be omitted; for no one conjunction can connect more than two terms, in that consecutive order which the sense requires.  Three or more simple sentences may indeed form a compound sentence; but, as they cannot be joined in a cluster, they must have two or more connectives. 3.  The last clause erroneously suggests, that any or every conjunction “sometimes connects only words;” but the conjunctions which may connect only words, are not more than five, whereas those which connect only sentences are four times as many.

29.  NINTH DEFINITION:—­“Interjections are words thrown in between the parts of a sentence, to express the passions or emotions of the speaker; as, ‘O Virtue! how amiable thou art!’”—­Murray, and many others.  This definition, which has been copied from grammar to grammar, and committed to memory millions of times, is obviously erroneous, and directly contradicted by the example.  Interjections,