Word: noun
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Dates: during 1880-1889
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...Semites in general have marked physiognomic and mental traits, so the languages which they spoke are sharply distinguished from the other great groups of languages. The triliteralism of stems, simplicity of verb forms, peculiar mode of expressing the genitive relation, close union of the personal pronouns with noun or verb, absence of a neuter gender-these are some of the distinguishing traits of Semitic languages. The Babylonian is closely related to its sisters and especially to the Hebrew. A Hebrew scholar on first looking at a translated Babylonian writing recognizes many familiar words. If Sennacherib's letters to Hezekiah...
Inasmuch as all nouns and verbs are declined and conjugated in this same way, it is easy to translate the sentence, selobs domis mane, we sell the house to the man. And as the adjective and adverb are always formed from the noun by the same ending, ik, iko, (fam, fame; famik, famous; famiko famously), there is never any irregularity; the whole language, after a few hours study, becomes merely a question of vocabulary...
Junior, parsing: "Nihil is a noun." Professor: "What does it come from?" Student: "It doesn't come at all." Professor (quizzing): "Doesn't it come from nihilo?" Student: "No, sir. Ex nihilo nihil...
...vocabulary is very slowly enlarged, . . . but once let a phrase become firmly established, and it is immortal." Such a convenient general word would scarcely have had time to spring up and die since 1856. The best of our original words is doggy, a very expressive term, which - with the noun dog, derived from it - is almost unknown out of Cambridge...