e word _mo['u]ntain wave_ is often pronounced with a visible
diminution of accent on the last syllable. In this case there is a
disparity of accent, and the word is compound.

s. 361. The following quotation indicates a further cause of perplexity in
determining between compound words and two words:--

1.

A wet sheet and a blowing gale,
A breeze that follows fast;
That fills the white and swelling sail,
And bends the _gallant mast_.--ALLAN CUNNINGHAM.

2.

Britannia needs no bulwarks,
No towers along the steep;
Her march is o'er the _mountain-wave_,
Her home is on the deep.--THOMAS CAMPBELL.

To speak first of the term _gallant mast_. If _gallant_ mean _brave_, there
are _two words_. If the words be two, there is a stronger accent on _mast_.
If the accent on _mast_ be stronger, the rhyme with _fast_ is more
complete; in other words, the metre favours the notion of the words being
considered as _two_. _Gallant-mast_, however, is a compound word, with an
especial nautical meaning. In this case the accent is stronger on _gal-_
and weaker on -mast. This, however, is not the state of things that the
metre favours. The same applies to _mountain wave_. The same person who in
prose would throw a stronger accent on _mount-_ and a weaker one on _wave_
(so dealing with the word as a compound), might, in poetry, the words
_two_, by giving to the last syllable a parity of accent.

The following quotation from Ben Jonson may be read in two ways; and the
accent may vary with the reading:

1.

Lay thy bow of pearl apart,
And thy _silver shining_ quiver.

2.

Lay thy bow of pearl apart,
And thy _silver-shining_ quiver.--_Cynthia's Revels._

s. 362. _On certain words wherein the fact of their being compound is
obscured._--Composition is the addition of a word to a word, derivation is
the addition of certain letters or syllables to a word. In a compound form
each element has a separate and independent existence; in a derived form,
only one of the elements has such. Now it is very possible that in an older
stage of a language two words may exist, may be put together, and may so
form a compound, each word having, then, a separate and independent
existence. In a later stage of language, however, only one of these words
may have a separate and independent existence, the other having become
obsolete. In this case a compound word would tak