in part for caput, and bucca for os. On the other
hand, it employs certain words and phrases, for instance vulgar words and
expletives, which are not admitted into literature.

In its choice of words it shows a marked preference for certain suffixes
and prefixes. It would furnish an interesting excursion into folk
psychology to speculate on the reasons for this preference in one case and
another. Sometimes it is possible to make out the influence at work. In
reading a piece of popular Latin one is very likely to be impressed with
the large number of diminutives which are used, sometimes in the strict
sense of the primitive word. The frequency of this usage reminds one in
turn of the fact that not infrequently in the Romance languages the
corresponding words are diminutive forms in their origin, so that
evidently the diminutive in these cases crowded out the primitive word in
popular use, and has continued to our own day. The reason why the
diminutive ending was favored does not seem far to seek. That suffix
properly indicates that the object in question is smaller than the average
of its kind. Smallness in a child stimulates our affection, in a dwarf,
pity or aversion. Now we give expression to our emotion more readily in
the intercourse of every-day life than we do in writing, and the emotions
of the masses are perhaps nearer the surface and more readily stirred than
are those of the classes, and many things excite them which would leave
unruffled the feelings of those who are more conventional. The stirring of
these emotions finds expression in the use of the diminutive ending, which
indirectly, as we have seen, suggests sympathy, affection, pity, or
contempt. The ending -osus for adjectives was favored because of its
sonorous character. Certain prefixes, like de-, dis-, and ex-, were freely
used with verbs, because they strengthened the meaning of the verb, and
popular speech is inclined to emphasize its ideas unduly.

To speak further of derivation, in the matter of compounds and
crystallized word groups there are usually differences between a spoken
and written language. The written language is apt to establish certain
canons which the people do not observe. For instance, we avoid hybrid
compounds of Greek and Latin elements in the serious writing of English.
In formal Latin we notice the same objection to Greco-Latin words, and yet
in Plautus, and in other colloquial writers, such compounds are freely
used for com