[Footnote: 'Alcoran'
supplies another example of this curious annexation of the article.
Examples of a like absorption or incorporation of it are to be found in
many languages; in our own, when we write 'a newt,' and not an ewt, or
when our fathers wrote 'a nydiot' (Sir T. More), and not an idiot; in
the Italian, which has 'lonza' for onza; but they are still more
numerous in French. Thus 'lierre,' ivy, was written by Ronsard,
'l'hierre,' which is correct, being the Latin 'hedera.' 'Lingot' is our
'ingot,' but with fusion of the article; in 'larigot' and 'loriot' the
word and the article have in the same manner grown together. In old
French it was l'endemain,' or, le jour en demain: 'le lendemain,' as
now written, is a barbarous excess of expression. 'La Pouille,' a name
given to the southern extremity of Italy, and in which we recognize
'Apulia,' is another variety of error, but moving in the same sphere
(Genin, _Recreations Philologiques_, vol. i. pp. 102-105); of the same
variety is 'La Natolie,' which was written 'L'Anatolie' once. An Irish
scholar has observed that in modern Irish 'an' (='the') is frequently
thus absorbed in the names of places, as in 'Nenagh, 'Naul'; while
sometimes an error exactly the reverse of this is committed, and a
letter supposed to be the article, but in fact a part of the word,
dropt: thus 'Oughaval,' instead of 'Noughhaval' or New Habitation. [See
Joyce, _Irish Local Names_.]]
Less honourable causes than some which I have mentioned, give birth to
new words; which will sometimes reflect back a very fearful light on
the moral condition of that epoch in which first they saw the light.
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