ing, they dreaded asking, is found in Old English, as geendude bebeôdende, ondrêdon âcsigende. Hê hœfde hine geworhtne, ‘he had him wrought,’ common enough with us, is not often found in Greek or Latin.[1]
Bu is used just as we employ both in phrases like both he and I.[2] We have lost certain other old forms for expressing this.
The Latin non solum appears in Old English as nâ þœt ân. We now omit the word in the middle.
Our same was never used except adverbially; thus, sam hit sŷ sumer sam winter, the same in summer and winter.[3] Beasts have natures swâ same swâ men.[4] The Latin idem was expressed, not by same, but by ylc; this lingers in Scotland, as in the phrase, Redgauntlet of that Ilk. Same (idem) began to come into vogue only about the year 1200.
We still employ though at the end of a sentence, in the sense of the Latin tamen, and now in the sense of quoniam; just as our forefathers did. We have had a sad loss in for þam, the Latin quia, which we began to replace in 1300 by an ugly French compound.
I give from King Alfred a sentence which contains two peculiar English idioms: ‘Elpendes hŷd myle drincan wœtan gelice and spinge dêð, Elephant's hide will soak water like a sponge doth.’[5]
The well-known Latin phrase, quo plus . . . eo plus, becomes in English bið þŷ heardra, þe swîðôr beâtað, it becomes the harder, the stronger they beat.[6] This
