The process indicated in the second statement can also be accepted. These original meanings gradually fade and the words tend to become merely form or function words-auxiliaries of a future tense. The assumption, however, that this loss of full word meaning is the end of the process seems an invalid one and the statement that whatever connotations these expressions may still carry are 'glimmerings through' of previous meanings is plainly inadequate, for the three following reasons: (1) Although such an explanation would account for the meanings of desire or wish which might be suggested in a future phrase with will it does not account for the cases in which will with the second or third persons implies a compulsion to be brought upon the subject.'

(2) Although the explanation would account for any suggestions of compulsion which may attach to a future phrase with shall it does not account for the many cases in which the meanings of resolve or determination on the part of the subject attach to the future expression with shall.10

I am repeating here two sentences, and in the footnotes several examples from my article, "The Periphrastic Future with Shall and Will in Modern English', Pub. of Mdn. Lang. Ass. 40. 963-1024.

? Some examples of this use are the following:

'You will go to your room and stay there!' (The speaker's command.)

'A. He says that he has decided not to go to the court.

B. Well, he will go to the court even if we have to carry him.' (The subject is threatened with such pressure as will force him to act in direct opposition to his wish or resolve.)

In the following from Masefield's The Faithful, 1. 2. 51, the 'you will' expresses the speaker's not the subject's promise and determination.

‘Kurano—Kira taught you the wrong ritual?

Asano-Yes.

Kurano-You will not go unavenged.'

The 'you'll', etc., in the following from Jane Shore, V., p. 208, line, 393, implies a threat of the speaker against the subject.

'Shore-Infamy on thy head!

Catesby-You'll answer this at full.-Away with 'em.'

10 Some examples of this use are the following:

Masefield, The Faithful, I, 11, 11

'Lord Asano-This alters everything, I shall go at once to the Envoy's court and appeal against Kira.'

Cibber, Love's Last Shift, IV, 66

Damme! Sir, have a care! Don't give me the Lye, I shan't take it, Sir.'

(3) Even if one insists that the 'glimmering through' of the purposeexpressing infinitive with going and about sufficiently accounts for the ideas of intention and determination which attach to the expression of the future in the following examples:

'Paula-.

I am.'

Pinero, The Second Mrs. Tanqueray, III, 62

My tongue runs away with me, I'm going to alter, I swear

Masefield, The Faithful, II, 1, 62

'Kurano-Are they going to kill me?

4th Ronin-They said they were going to make sure of you.'

'He has bought up two of our neighbors and is about to buy us up too.'

yet such an explanation could hardly account for the suggestion of compulsion or necessity in the following example with the strongly stressed verb to be.

'X-I don't intend to allow anyone to see the books.

Y-But you are going to let us see them for we have the judge's order.'

Nor could it account for the fact that quite frequently the present form of the verb conveys not only a future meaning but also the suggestions of intention, resolve, or determination." Even in Old English we find such an example as the following:

Congreve, The Way of the World, V, 1, 65

'Sir Wilful-Therefore withdraw your instrument, sir, or by'r Lady, I shall draw mine.'

Taylor, The Babes in the Wood, III, 1, 69

'Beetle-There! but let this be a lesson to you, Arabella-the first time you forget it, I shall not return to the Queen's Bench, but I shall certainly apply to Mr. Justice Cresswell.'

11 Some examples of this use are the following:

Crothers, He and She

'Keith-Aren't you coming in to see the workroom?'

Pinero, The Second Mrs. Tanqueray, I, 40

'Misquith-I go up to Scotland tomorrow, and there are some little matters. .

Ibid. II, 52.

'Mrs. Cortelton-We go to town this afternoon at five o'clock and sleep tonight at Bayliss's.'

Ibid. II, 45.

'Aubrey-Well, she's going to town, Cayley says here, and his visit's at an end. He's coming over this morning to call on you. Shall we ask him to transfer himself to us?'

Alfred, Orosius EETS 1. 42. lines 6, 14, 17, 21

'Hwa is þat þe eall đa yfel þe hi donde wæron asecgean mæ ge odđe areccan?
Eac ic wille geswigian Tontolis & Philopes para scondlicestena spella; hu
manega bismerlica gewin Tontolus gefremede syđđan he cyning was;

'Ic sceall eac forlætan þa þe of Perseo & of Cathma gesæde syndon,
'Eac ic wille geswigian para mandæda þara Lemniađum & Ponthionis pas
cyninges,.

ic hit eall forlæte. Eac ic hit forlæte, Adipsus hu he ægber ofsloh ge his agenne fæder, .

In this example it seems impossible to take these three expressions as conveying differing shades of meaning. They all three seem to me to suggest with the future the purpose of the speaker—an idea which is in no way related to the primitive meanings of two of the three expressions used.

The suggestion, then, which I should offer as the means of accounting for the facts which we find concerning the expression of the future is this. The grounds upon which the future is usually predicted are desire, hope, intention, resolve, determination, compulsion, necessity, or possibility. Any locutions which express any of these ideas related to the future may be taken up and developed as future tense signs. The course of development is in the direction of their losing their full word meanings and thus also losing their limitation to the particular meanings suggested by their origin. They tend to become future tense signs but with colorings which range from an almost pure future sense to distinctly modal ideas. These colorings are not the glimmerings through of original meanings but may be any one of the grounds upon which the future is predicted, depending upon the context. These colorings are thus the inevitable connotations of the future idea. As such they will attach themselves to any locution developed as a device to express the future so that such a locution may suggest any of the ideas related to the future even if these ideas are wholly unrelated to or opposed to its original full word meaning. This process would thus tend to thwart the developing of any phrase or form into a mere sign of the simple future tense.

Of course in a rapid impression with an entirely unemphasized phrase the general future prediction may be all that registers, yet with more attention put upon the statement, directed by greater emphasis on some part of the word group or by the reader's attempted analysis, there often stand out more prominently some of the connotations of the grounds upon which the future is predicted.

In a very brief statement the process could be summarized as follows: A certain limited range of ideas furnish the grounds upon which the future is predicted. Any word or form with meanings within this range of ideas may be taken up and used as a device for the expression of future time. As it becomes such a device the emphasis gradually shifts from the full word meaning to the future idea. But now as a device for the expression of the future it may suggest (depending on the circumstances and without limitation of its original meanings) any of that range of ideas which are the bases of future predictions.

THE ETYMOLOGY OF AN ENGLISH EXPLETIVE

LOUISE POUND

UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA

Professor G. P. Krapp makes an attractive case for his derivation of darn, darned in the brief essay on this word in his recent The English Language in America. He discards the usual explanation that darn is a variant or minced form of damn,2 and believes that, although it now stands in intimate relation to damn, it had an independent origin. He takes as his starting point the Old English adjective dierne, 'secret,' Middle English derne, Elizabethan dern, and assumes a transition from a descriptive adjective or adverb to an imprecation. The adjective took on, he thinks, the form of a participial adjective, and thence developed verbal usage. Our occasional mild dern would then represent a more basic form than the commoner darn.

The earliest records of darn, darnation entered by lexicographers come from New England, and Dr. Krapp thinks that these forms are of New England Puritan origin. His last paragraph reads:

In brief then the explanation of darn, darned is that the word was originally Old English dierne which developed as an intensive adjective and adverb. As an adjective darn readily took on the form of a participial adjective, just as addle, originally an adjective became also addled, a participial adjective. From addled a finite verb was then formed, as 'to addle one's head over accounts'. So also from darned a verb darn was derived. As the New England social conscience was tender on this point of swearing it was the most natural thing in the world for the New Englander to secure the necessary relief which an imprecation affords by substituting the already familiar and inoffensive darn for the bolder but unequivocally profane word of the vocabulary.

Nevertheless, it is not easy to surrender the conviction that darn is no derivative of an adjective or adverb but is somehow to be asso

1 Vol. I, 119-26.

2 Entered in the Oxford Dictionary, the Century, Weekley's Etymological Dictionary, etc.

This is the adjective used by the American poet, Joseph Rodman Drake, in the tenth strophe of The Culprit Fay (1835):

"Through dreary beds of tangled fern

Through groves of nightshade dark and dern,'