because, though full of learning and interesting detail, it was a curious
and general disquisition calculated to divert attention from the practical
points. What the Society asks for is not a list of lost words that are
interesting in themselves: we need rather definite instances of good
dialect words which are not homophones and which would conveniently supply
wants. That is, any word proposed for rehabilitation in our practical
vocabulary should be not only a good word in itself, but should fall into
some definite place and relieve and enrich our speech by its usefulness.
It is evident that no one person can be expected to supply a full list of
such words, but on the other hand there must be very many of our members
who could contribute one or two; and such contributions are invited.

Exempli gratia. Here are two words with very different titles and claims,
_nesh_ and _hyppish_.

_Nesh_, which has two columns in the Oxford Dictionary, begins in A.D.
888, and is still heartily alive in Yorks. and North Derbyshire, where it
is used in the sense of being _oversensitive to pain and especially to
cold_. In this special signification, to which it has locally settled down
after a thousand years of experience, it has no rival; and its restoration
to our domestic vocabulary would probably have a wholesome moral and
physical effect on our children.

_Hyppish_ is the Englished form of hypochondriacal, its suffix carrying
its usual diminutive value, so that its meaning is 'somewhat
hypochondriacal'. Berkeley, Gray, and Swift used _hyps_ or _the hyp_ for
hypochondriasis, and the adjective was apparently common. It would seem
that _hypochondria_ was then spoken, as _hypocrisy_ still is, with the
correct and pleasant short vowels of the Greek prefix, not as now with a
long alien diphthong _haipo-_. It was presumably this short y that