noticed above.  Such are bordel, chapel, duel, fardel, gabel, gospel, gravel, lamel, label, libel, marvel, model, novel, parcel, quarrel, and spinel.  Accordingly we find, that, in his work of expulsion, Dr. Webster has not unfrequently contradicted himself, and conformed to usage, by doubling the l where he probably intended to write it single.  Thus, in the words bordeller, chapellany, chapelling, gospellary, gospeller, gravelly, lamellate, lamellar, lamellarly, lamelliform, and spinellane, he has written the l double, while he has grossly corrupted many other similar words by forbearing the reduplication; as, traveler, groveling, duelist, marvelous, and the like.  In cases of such difficulty, we can never arrive at uniformity and consistency of practice, unless we resort to principles, and such principles as can be made intelligible to the English scholar.  If any one is dissatisfied with the rules and exceptions which I have laid down, let him study the subject till he can furnish the schools with better.

OBS. 17.—­We have in our language a very numerous class of adjectives ending in able or ible, as affable, arable, tolerable, admissible, credible, infallible, to the number of nine hundred or more.  In respect to the proper form and signification of some of these, there occurs no small difficulty. Able is a common English word, the meaning of which is much better understood than its origin.  Horne Tooke supposes it to have come from the Gothic noun abal, signifying strength; and consequently avers, that it “has nothing to do with the Latin adjective habilis, fit, or able, from which our etymologists erroneously derive it.”—­Diversions of Purley, Vol. ii, p. 450.  This I suppose the etymologists will dispute with him.  But whatever may be its true derivation, no one can well deny that able, as a suffix, belongs most properly, if not exclusively, to verbs; for most of the words formed by it, are plainly a sort of verbal adjectives.  And it is evident that this author is right in supposing that English words of this termination, like the Latin verbals in bilis, have, or ought to have, such a signification as may justify the name which he gives them, of “potential passive adjectives;” a signification in which the English and the Latin derivatives exactly correspond.  Thus dis’soluble or dissolv’able does not mean able to dissolve, but capable of being dissolved; and divisible or dividable does not mean able to divide, but capable of being divided.