to thrive, or flourish,”—­“Thihan, to thrive,”—­and “Thion, to flourish;” as well as the preterit “Theat, howled,” from “Theotan, to howl.”  And is it not plain, that the old verb “THE,” as used by More, is from Theon, to thrive, rather than from Thicgan, to take?  “Ill mote he THE”—­“Ill might he thrive,” not, “Ill might he take.”

OBS. 3.—­Professor Hart says, “The word the was originally thaet, or that.  In course of time [,] it became abbreviated, and the short form acquired, in usage, a shade of meaning different from the original long one. That is demonstrative with emphasis; the is demonstrative without emphasis.”—­Hart’s E. Grammar, p. 32.  This derivation of The is quite improbable; because the shortening of a monosyllable of five letters by striking out the third and the fifth, is no usual mode of abbreviation.  Bosworth’s Dictionary explains THE as “An indeclinable article, often used for all the cases of Se, seo, thaet, especially in adverbial expressions and in corrupt Anglo-Saxon, as in the Chronicle after the year 1138.”

OBS. 4—­Dr. Latham, in a section which is evidently neither accurate nor self-consistent, teaches us—­“that there exist in the present English two powers of the word spelled t-h-e, or of the so-called definite article;” then, out of sixteen Anglo-Saxon equivalents, he selects two for the roots of this double-powered the; saying, “Hence the the that has originated out of the Anglo-Saxon thy is one word; whilst the the that has originated out of the Anglo-Saxon the, [is] another.  The latter is the common article:  the former the the in expressions like all the more, all the better—­more by all that, better by all that, and the Latin phrases eo majus, eo melius.”—­Latham’s Hand-Book, p. 158.  This double derivation is liable to many objections.  The Hand-Book afterwards says, “That the, in expressions like all the more, all the better, &c., is no article, has already been shown.”—­P. 196.  But in fact, though the before comparatives or superlatives be no article, Dr. Latham’s etymologies prove no such thing; neither does he anywhere tell us what it is.  His examples, too, with their interpretations, are all of them fictitious, ambiguous, and otherwise bad.  It is uncertain whether he meant his phrases for counterparts to each other or not.  If the means “by that,” or thereby, it is an adverb; and so is its equivalent “eo” denominated by the Latin grammarians.  See OBS. 10, under Rule I.

SECTION II.—­DERIVATION OF NOUNS.

In English, Nouns are derived from nouns, from adjectives, from verbs, or from participles.

I. Nouns are derived from Nouns in several different ways:—­