ete, or when they have any force or beauty that may deserve
revival.

As composition is one of the chief characteristics of a language, I
have endeavored to make some reparation for the universal negligence
of my predecessors, by inserting great numbers of compounded words,
as may be found under _after, fore, new, night, fair_, and many more.
These, numerous as they are, might be multiplied, but that use and
curiosity are here satisfied, and the frame of our language and modes
of our combination amply discovered.

Of some forms of composition, such as that by which _re_ is
prefixed to note _repetition_, and _un_ to signify _contrariety_ or
_privation_, all the examples cannot be accumulated, because the use
of these particles, if not wholly arbitrary, is so little limited,
that they are hourly affixed to new words as occasion requires, or is
imagined to require them.

There is another kind of composition more frequent in our language
than perhaps in any other, from which arises to foreigners the
greatest difficulty. We modify the signification of many verbs by a
particle subjoined; as to _come off_, to escape by a fetch; to _fall
on_, to attack; _fall off_, to apostatize; to _break off_, to stop
abruptly; to _bear out_, to justify; _to fall in_, to comply; to _give
over_, to cease; to _set off_, to embellish; to _set in_, to begin a
continual tenor; to _set out_, to begin a course or journey; to _take
off_, to copy; with innumerable expressions of the same kind, of which
some appear wildly irregular, being so far distant from the sense of
the simple words, that no sagacity will be able to trace the steps by
which they arrived at the present use. These I have noted with great
care; and though I cannot flatter myself that the collection is
complete, I believe I have so far assisted the students of our
language that this kind of phraseology will be no longer insuperable;
and the combinations of verbs and particles, by chance omitted, will
be easily explained by comparison with those that may be found.

Many words yet stand supported only by the name of Bailey, Ainsworth,
Philips, or the contracted _Dict._ for Dictionaries, subjoined; of
these I am not always certain that they are read in any book but the
works of lexicographers. Of such I have omitted many, because I had
never read them; and many I have inserted, because they may perhaps
exist, though they have escaped my notice: they are, however, to be
yet considere