Notes and Queries, Number 36, July 6, 1850 | Page 2

adjectives made from nouns? I shall therefore waive my objection, and answer by saying that there is no analogy between the instances given and the case in point. They are, one and all, elliptical expressions signifying "black clothes, green vegetables, tight pantaloons, heavy dragoons, odd chances," &c. "Blacks" and "whites" are not in point, the singular of either being quite as admissible as the plural. The rule, if it be worth while to lay down a rule for the formation of such vulgarisms, appears to be {82} that characteristic adjective, in constant conjunction with a noun in common use, may be used alone, the noun being understood. Custom has limited in some measure the use of these abridged titles to classes or collective bodies, and the adjective takes the same form that the noun itself would have had; but, in point of fact, it would be just as good English to say "a heavy" as "the heavies" and they all become unintelligible when we lose sight of the noun to which they belong. If A.E.B. should assert that a glass of "cold without," _because_, by those accustomed to indulge in such potations, it was understood to mean "brandy and cold water, without sugar," was really a draught from some "well of purest English undefil'd," the confusion of ideas could not be more complete.
Indeed, I very much doubt whether our word "News" contains the idea of "new" at all. It is used with us to mean intelligence and the phrases, "Is there any thing new?" and "Is there any news?" present, in my opinion, two totally distinct ideas to the English mind in its ordinary mechanical action. "Intelligence" is not necessarily "new", nor indeed is "News:" in the oldest dictionary I possess, Baret's _Alvearie_, 1573, I find "Olde newes or stale newes." A.E.B. is very positive that "news" is plural, and he cites the "Cardinal of York" to prove it. All that I can say is, that I think the Cardinal of York was wrong: and A.E.B. thought so too, when his object was not to confound me, as may be seen by his own practice in bloc concluding paragraph of his communication:--"The newes WAS of the victory," &c. The word "means," on the other hand, is beyond all dispute plural. What says Shakspeare?
"Yet nature is made letter by no mean But nature makes that mean."
The plural was formed by the addition of "_s_:" yet from the infrequent use of the word except in the plural, the singular form has become obsolete, and the same form applies now to both numbers. Those who would apply this reasoning to "News," forget that there is the slight difficulty of the absence of the noun "new" to start from.
I do not feel bound to furnish proof of so obvious a fact, that many of the most striking similarities in language are mere coincidences. Words derived from the same root, and retaining the same meaning, frequently present the most dissimilar appearance, as "ev��que" and "bishop;" and the most distant roots frequently meet in the same word. When your correspondents, therefore, remind me that there is a French word, _noise_, I must remind them that it contains not one element of our English word. Richardson gives the French word, but evidently discards it, preferring the immediate derivation from "_noy_, that which noies or annoys." I confess I do not understand his argument; but it was referring to this that I said that our only known process would make a plural noun of it. I have an impression that I have met with "annoys" used by poetical license for "annoyances."
"Noise" has never been used in the sense of the French word in this country. If derived immediately from the French, it is hardly probable that it should so entirely have lost every particle of its original meaning. With us it is either _a loud sound_, or _fame, report, rumour_, being in this sense rendered in the Latin by the same two words, _fama, rumor_, as News. The former sense is strictly consequential to the latter, which I believe to be the original signification, as shown in its use in the following passages:--
"At the same time it was noised abroad in the realme"
Holinshed.
Cleopatra, catching but the least noise of this, dies instantly.
_Ant. and Cleo._, Act i. Sc. 2.
Cre. What was his cause of anger? Ser. The noise goes, this.
_Troil. and Cres._, Act. i. Sc. 2.
Whether I or your correspondents be right, will remain perhaps for ever doubtful; but the flight that can discover a relationship between this word and another pronounced[1] as nearly the same as the two languages will admit of, and which gives at all events one sense, if not, as I think, the primary one, is scarcely so eccentric as that which finds the origin