In a great many words essentially belonging to the same class both in meaning and in mode of formation, the _-th_ has, for the sake of euphony or from other causes, given place to _t_ or _d_. Thus _mood_ corresponds to Goth. _mo-th_, and means a motion (Lat. _motus_) or affection (of the mind); _blood_, to Goth. _blo-th_; _theft_, is in Ang. Sax. _theof-th_. _Mur-ther_, from a root akin to Lat. _mori_; _burthen_, from the root of to _bear_, are of similar formation, with additional affixes.
All these considerations would seem to put Horne Tooke's proposed derivation of these abstracts from the third person singular of the present indicative of the verb, completely out of court. The famous case of _truth_ from _troweth_ is especially absurd. For one thing the Ang. Sax. verb _treowan_ does not mean "to think," but "to trust," "rely on," "believe." This implies a ground for the trust, and that ground lies in the quality expressed by the adjective, true. _Truth_ has the same relation, logically and etymologically, to _true_, that _dearth_ has to _dear_, _health_ to _hale_. Remarking on the identity in form between the Ang. Sax. _treow_, "trust," "a treaty," and _treow_, "a tree," Jacob Grimm suggests that they are radically related, and that the idea common to _tree_ and _true_ is firmness, fixedness. Thus the "true" would be the "firm" the "fixed"--what may be relied on. This view is supported by the analogy of the Lat. _robur_, which means both an oak and strength.--_F._]
{ 311} It would be interesting to give a systematic account of the non-connotatives, derived from English { 312} verbs; and this ought to be done; but for the present inquiry it would be an operation misplaced. The nature of the words, and the mode of their signification, is all which here is necessary to be understood.
One grand class of connotative terms is composed of such words as the following: walking, running, flying, reading, striking; and we have seen that, for a very obvious utility, a generical name was invented, the word ACTING, which includes the whole of these specific names; and to which the non-connotative, or abstract term ACTION corresponds. There was equal occasion for a generical name to include all the specific names belonging to the other class of connotative terms; such as coloured, sapid, hard, soft, hot, cold, and so on. But language has by no means been so happy in a general name for this, as for the other class. The word SUCH, is a connotative term, which includes them all, and indeed the other class along with them; for when we apply the word SUCH to any thing, we comprehend under it all the ideas of which the cluster { 313} is composed. But this is not all which is included under the word such. It is a relative term, and always connotes so much of the meaning of some other term. When we call a thing _such_, it is always understood that it is such _as_ some other thing. Thus we say, John is such as James. Corresponding with our "such as," the Latins had _talis qualis_. If we could suppose _qualis_ to have been used without any connotation of _talis_, _qualis_ would have been such a word as the occasion which we are now considering would have required. The Latins did not use _qualis_, in this sense, as a general concrete, including all the other names of the properties of objects other than actions. But they made from it, as if used in that very sense, a non-connotative or abstract term, the word QUALITY, which answers the same purpose with regard to both classes, as action does to one of them. That is to say; it is a very general non-connotative term, including under it the non-connotatives or abstracts of hot, cold, hard, soft, long, short; and not only of all other words of that description, but of acting, and its subordinates also.
