verb. No etymological principle was followed he in some
cases it was the original noun that was chosen for retention, in other
cases the verb. Even where a noun and verb of kindred meaning were not
etymologically connected, one or other of them was frequently suppressed.
There was, for example, no such word as cut, its meaning being sufficiently
covered by the noun-verb knife. Adjectives were formed by adding the suffix
-ful to the noun-verb, and adverbs by adding -wise. Thus for example,
speedful meant 'rapid' and speedwise meant 'quickly'. Certain of our
present-day adjectives, such as good, strong, big, black, soft, were
retained, but their total number was very small. There was little need for
them, since almost any adjectival meaning could be arrived at by adding -
ful to a noun-verb. None of the now-existing adverbs was retained, except
for a very few already ending in -wise: the -wise termination was
invariable. The word well, for example, was replaced by goodwise.
In addition, any word -- this again applied in principle to every word
in the language -- could be negatived by adding the affix un-, or could be
strengthened by the affix plus-, or, for still greater emphasis,
doubleplus-. Thus, for example, uncold meant 'warm', while pluscold and
doublepluscold meant, respectively, 'very cold' and 'superlatively cold'.
It was also possible, as in present-day English, to modify the meaning of
almost any word by prepositional affixes such as ante-, post-, up-, down-,
etc. By such methods it was found possible to bring about an enormous
dimin