The term INTERJECTION is applied to those inarticulate sounds employed both by men and brutes, not to express distinct ideas, but emotions, passions, or feelings.  The sounds employed by human beings in groaning, sighing, crying, screaming, shrieking, and laughing, by the dog in barking, growling, and whining, by the horse in snorting and neighing, by the sheep in bleating, by the cat in mewing, by the dove in cooing, by the duck in quacking, and by the goose in hissing, we sometimes attempt to represent by words; but, as written words are the ocular representatives of articulate sounds, they cannot be made clearly to denote inarticulate or indistinct noises.  Such indistinct utterances belong to natural language; but they fall below the bounds of regulated speech.  Hence, real interjections are not a part of written language.

    The meaning of those words commonly called interjections, is easily
    shown by tracing them to their roots.

    Pish and pshaw are the Anglo-Saxon paec, paeca; and are
    equivalent to trumpery! i.e. tromperie, from tromper.

Fy or fie is the imperative, foe, the past tense, and foh or faugh, the past part. of the Saxon verb fian, to hate. Lo is the imperative of look.  Halt is the imperative of healden, to hold. Farewell—­fare-well, is a compound of faran, to go, and the adverb well.  It means, to go well.  Welcome—­well-come, signifies, it is well that you are come.  Adieu comes from the French a Dieu, to God; meaning, I commend you to God.

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LECTURE XI.

OF THE MOODS AND TENSES OF VERBS.

You have now acquired a general, and, I may say, an extensive, knowledge of nine parts of speech; but you know but little, as yet, respecting the most important one of all; I mean the VERB.  I will, therefore, commence this lecture by giving you an explanation of the Moods and Tenses of verbs.  Have the goodness, however, first to turn back and read over Lecture II., and reflect well upon what is there said respecting the verb; after which I will conduct you so smoothly through the moods and tenses, and the conjugation of verbs, that, instead of finding yourself involved in obscurities and deep intricacies, you will scarcely find an obstruction to impede your progress.

I. OF THE MOODS.

The MOOD or MODE of a verb means the manner in which its action, passion, or being, is represented.

When I wish to assert a thing, positively, I use the declarative or indicative mode; as, The man walks; but sometimes the action or occurrence of which I wish to speak, is doubtful, and then I must not declare it positively, but I must adopt another mode of expression; thus, If the man walk, he will refresh himself with the bland breezes.  This second mode or manner of representing the action, is called the subjunctive or conditional mode.