King and queen are said by some (Skeat, among others) to be from the same root word, but the German etymologist Kluge says they are not.

Lord is said to be a worn-down form of the Old English hlaf-weard (loaf keeper), written loverd, lhauerd, or lauerd in Middle English.  Lady is from hloefdige (hloef meaning loaf, and dige being of uncertain origin and meaning).

Witch is the Old English wicce, but wizard is from the Old French guiscart (prudent), not immediately connected with witch, though both are ultimately from the same root.

Sir is worn down from the Old French sire (Latin senior).  Madam is the French ma dame, from Latin mea domina.

[Sidenote:  Two masculines from feminines.]

33.  Besides gander and drake, there are two other masculine words that were formed from the feminine:—­

Bridegroom, from Old English bryd-guma (bride’s man).  The r in groom has crept in from confusion with the word groom.

Widower, from the weakening of the ending _-a_ in Old English to _-e_ in Middle English.  The older forms, widuwa—­widuwe, became identical, and a new masculine ending was therefore added to distinguish the masculine from the feminine (compare Middle English widuer—­widewe).

Personification.

34.  Just as abstract ideas are personified (Sec. 16), material objects may be spoken of like gender nouns; for example,—­

     “Now, where the swift Rhone cleaves his way.”—­BYRON.

     The Sun now rose upon the right: 
     Out of the sea came he. 
     —­COLERIDGE.

     And haply the Queen Moon is on her throne,
     Clustered around by all her starry Fays. 
     —­KEATS,

Britannia needs no bulwarks, No towers along the steep; Her march is o’er the mountain waves, Her home is on the deep.  —­CAMPBELL

This is not exclusively a poetic use.  In ordinary speech personification is very frequent:  the pilot speaks of his boat as feminine; the engineer speaks so of his engine; etc.

[Sidenote:  Effect of personification.]

In such cases the gender is marked by the pronoun, and not by the form of the noun.  But the fact that in English the distinction of gender is confined to difference of sex makes these departures more effective.

NUMBER.

[Sidenote:  Definition.]

35.  In nouns, number means the mode of indicating whether we are speaking of one thing or of more than one.

36.  Our language has two numbers,—­singular and plural.  The singular number denotes that one thing is spoken of; the plural, more than one.