It is a question, we believe, not yet set at rest by the learned in these sort of matters, whether the word devil be singular or plural, that is to say, whether it be the name of a personage so called, standing by himself, or a noun of multitude.

But without necessity or authorityone of the two, I would not throw away a word; and suggest therefore that Shakspere had here the French idiom de son chef in his mind, and qualifies the noun in it with adjectives of his own.

Another thing to avoid is the use of words in the wrong parts of speech, as a noun for a verb, or an adjective for an adverb.

This professor is really Carlyle himself; but the disguise gave him an excuse for writing in a strange style and for beginning many of his nouns with capitals, after the German fashion.

A Jew or a woman might travel alone from Oudjda to the Oued Noun without any one's asking their business.

2. We often use the possessive case with some common noun after it; as, Behring's Straits, Baffin's Bay, Cook's Inlet, Van Diemen's Land, Martha's Vineyard, Sacket's Harbour, Glenn's Falls.

Which and what, with their compounds, whichever or whichsoever, whatever or whatsoever, though sometimes put before nouns as adjectives, are, for the most part, relative or interrogative pronouns.

It reduces the general idea of the common noun to any one individual of the class: as, "A man;" that is, "One man, or any man."

In defining nouns by the genus-and-species method, restrict the genus to the narrowest possible bounds.

The word in Maya for rainbow is chel or cheel; ix is the feminine prefix, which also changes the noun from the inanimate to the animate sense.

33.In the use of the English infinitive, as well as of the participle in ing, the distinction of voice is often disregarded; the active form being used in what, with respect to the noun before it, is a passive sense: as, "There's no time to waste.

In his grammar it stands thus: "When an entire clause of a sentence, beginning with a participle of the present tense, is used as one name, or to express one idea, or circumstance, the noun on which it depends may be put in the genitive case.

But our men of nine parts of speech innovated yet more: they added the Article, as did the Greeks; divided the Noun into Substantive and Adjective; and, without good reason, suppressed the Participle.

Let it here be observed that scientific definitions are of things, and not merely of words; or if equally of words and things, they are rather of nouns than of the other parts of speech.

"Declension means putting a noun through the different cases.

This amender of grammars omits the of which Murray and others scrupulously insert to govern the noun servant, and boldly avows at once, what their rule implies, that, "Participles are sometimes used both as verbs and as nouns at the same time; as, 'By the mind's changing the object,' &c."Ib., p. 134; so Emmons's Gram., p. 64.

Now to point out nouns among the parts of speech, and to point out things as individuals of their class, are very different matters; and which of these is the purpose for which articles are used, according to Lowth and Murray?

It stands thus: "Person is a distinction which is made in a noun between its representation of its object, either as spoken to, or spoken of.