ABSTRACT
A bad or mistaken name may lead to wrong rules which may have a detrimental inBuence on the free use of language, especially in writing. Thus the term preposition, or rather the unfortunate knowledge of the Latin etymology of this word, is responsible for that absurd aversion to putting a preposition at the end of a sentence which many schoolmasters and newspaper editors profess in utter ignorance of the principles and history of their own language. These people do not consider the two possibilities which the most superficial knowledge of general linguistics would have brought to their notice, that the name may have been a misnomer from the very first, or else that the value of the word may have changed as has been the case with so many other words the etymology of which is not, or is no longer, understood by the ordinary users of the language. A ladybird is not a bird, nor a butterBy a By, and no one is the worse for it; blackberries are not black till they are ripe; a barn may be used for other things than barley (OE. bere-cern ' barley-house ') and a bishop has other occupations than to ' look at ' or ' overlook' (Gr. epi-skopos). Why not, then, admit postpositional prepositions,l just as one admits adverb8 which do not stand by the side of a verb' (As a matter of fact, very is always recognized as an adverb though it never guaIifies a. verb.)
Terminological difficulties are sometimes aggravated by the fact that languages change in course of time, and that therefore terms which may be adequate for one period are no longer so for a subsequent period. It is true that the case following the preposition to in OE. to donne was a dative, but that does not justify us in calling do in the modern to do a ' dative infinitive,' as the NED
