IN THEIR excellent college texts on the history of the English language, both Professor Baugh and Professor 3tobertson seem to me to underrate the persistent and amazing vitality of English, from the seventh century to the twentieth in the important matter of full-word compounds. The implication in both books is that the Middle and Modern English way of borrowing words directly from other languages, especially from French and Latin, has operated to slow down if not to halt entirely, the Old English way of making full-word compounds. Professor Krapp's non^ committal statement that this method of formation shas existed from very early times and is still actively employed in the English languag,e,'l is certainly on less treacherous ground. Says Professor Baugh: 'One further habit which was somewhat weakened, although by no means broken, was that of combining native words into self-interpreting compounds. The extent to which words like bookhouse or boatswain entered into Old English has been pointed out above (§ 49). The practice was not abandoned in Middle English . . . but the method is much less universal than it once was because of new habits introduced after the Norman Conquest.'2 Says Professor Robertson: 'Frequent as compounds are in Modern English, it-is nevertheless the fact that the language has lost much of the ability it once possessed of forming compounds with absolute freedom. It is evident that in this respect aS in so many others, German i$ nearer than Modern English to the state of afEairs in Old English.'3 But to say that, in compounding Modern German is closer to Old English than is Modern English, is not necessarily to say that Modern English has lost its native ability to form compounds at will. It is only to say that Modern German, like Old English, makes comparatively little use of borrowing to enrich its vocabulary,4 whereas in Modern English the sky is the limit. When Middle English married Old French, Old English did