When a particular termination or suffix once acquired a special sense, it would be separated in thought from the stem to which it belonged, and attached in the same sense to other stems and other terminations. Thus in modern English we can attach the suffix -ize to almost any word whatsoever, in order to give the latter a transitive meaning, and the Gr. [Greek: podessi], quoted above, really contains no less than three suffixes, [Greek: -es], [Greek: -su] and [Greek: -i], the last two both denoting the locative, and coalescing, through [Greek: swi], into a single syllable [Greek: -si]. The latter instance shows us how two or more suffixes denoting exactly the same idea may be tacked on one to another, if the original force and signification of the first of them comes to be forgotten. Thus, in O. Eng. _sang-estre_ was the feminine of _sang-ere_, "singer," but the meaning of the termination has so entirely died out of the memory that we have to add the Romanic _-ess_ to it if we would still distinguish it from the masculine _singer_. A familiar example of the way in which the full sense of the exponent of a grammatical idea fades from the mind and has to be supplied by a new exponent is afforded by the use of expletives in conversational English to denote the superlative. "Very warm" expresses little more than the positive, and to represent the intensity of his feelings the Englishman has recourse to such expressions as "awfully warm" like the Ger. "schrecklich warm."
Such words as "very," "awfully," "schrecklich," illustrate a second mode in which Indo-European grammar has found means of expression. Words may lose their true signification and become the mere exponents of grammatical ideas. Professor Earle divides all words into _presentive_ and _symbolic_, the former denoting objects and conceptions, the latter the relations which exist between these. Symbolic words, therefore, are what the Chinese grammarians call "empty words"--words, that is, which have been divested of their proper signification and serve a grammatical purpose only. Many of the classificatory and some of the flexional suffixes of Indo-European speech can be shown to have had this origin. Thus the suffix _tar_, which denotes names of kinship and agency, seems to come from the same root as the Lat. _terminus_ and _trans_, our _through_, the Sans. _tar-ami_, "I pass over," and to have primarily signified "one that goes through" a thing. Thus, too, the Eng. _head_ or _hood_, in words like _godhead_ and _brotherhood_, is the A.-S. _hâd_, "character" or "rank"; _dom_, in kingdom, the A.-S. _dôm_, "judgment"; and _lock_ or _ledge_, in _wedlock_ and _knowledge_, the A.-S. _lâc_, "sport" or "gift." In all these cases the "empty words," after first losing every trace of their original significance, have followed the general analogy of the language and assumed the form and functions of the suffixes with which they had been confused.