Page:The Comic English Grammar.djvu/114

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.
110
THE COMIC ENGLISH GRAMMAR.

grace. Avoid such attempts, reader, on all occasions: and in particular never adventure either to nurse babies, or (when you shall have "gone up to the ladies") to pour water into the tea-pot from the kettle. A legal or medical student sometimes thinks proper, from a desire of appearing at once gallant and facetious, to usurp the office of pouring out the tea itself, on which occasions he is very apt to betray his uncivilised habits by an unconscious but very unequivocal manipulation used in giving malt liquor what is technically termed a "head."

Many polysyllables are regulated as to accent by the words from which they are derived: as, "Inexpréssibles, Súbstituted, Unobjéctionably, Désignated, Transatlántic, Délicacy, Decídedly, Unquéstionable."

Words ending in ator are commonly accented on the last syllable but one, let them be as long as they may: as, respirátor, regulátor, renovátor, indicátor, and all the other ators shat we see in the newspapers.

Many words ending in ion, ous, ly, ia, io, and cal, have their accent on the last syllable but two: as, "Con-si-de-rá-ti-on, pro-dí-gi-ous, im-pe-ne-tra-bíl-i-ty, en-cy-clo-pæ'-di-a, brag-ga-dó-ci-o, an-ti-mo-nárch-i-cal," all of which words we have divided into syllables, by way of a hint that they are to be pronounced (comically speaking) after the manner of Dominie Sampson.

Words that end in le usually have the accent on the first syllable: as, "A'micable, déspicable," &c.: although we have heard people say "despícable." "I never see such a despícable fellow, not in all my born days."

Words of this class, however, the second syllable of which has a vowel before two consonants, are often