where the sound of letters is irregular; and if they are sometimes
omitted, defect in such minute observations will be more easily
excused, than superfluity.

In the investigation both of the orthography and signification of
words, their ETYMOLOGY was necessarily to be considered, and they
were therefore to be divided into primitives and derivatives.
A primitive word, is that which can be traced no further to any
English root; thus circumspect, circumvent, circumstance, delude,
concave and complicate, though compounds in the Latin, are to us
primitives. Derivatives are all those that can be referred to any
word in English of greater simplicity.

The derivatives I have referred to their primitives, with an
accuracy sometimes needless; for who does not see that remoteness
comes from remote, lovely from love, concavity from concave, and
demonstrative from demonstrate? but this grammatical exuberance
the scheme of my work did not allow me to repress. It is of great
importance in examining the general fabrick of a language, to trace
one word from another, by noting the usual modes of derivation and
inflection; and uniformity must be preserved in systematical works,
though sometimes at the expence of particular propriety.

Among other derivatives I have been careful to insert and elucidate
the anomalous plurals of nouns and preterites of verbs, which in
the Teutonick dialects are very frequent, and though familiar to
those who have always used them, interrupt and embarrass the learners
of our language.

The two languages from which our primitives have been derived are