A Perplexing Word
In the “Reminiscences of Holland House” is the following anecdote of Voltaire: “While learning the English language (which he did not love), finding that the word plague, with six letters, was monosyllabic, and ague, with only the last four letters of plague, dissyllabic, he expressed a wish that the plague might take one-half of the English language, and the ague the other.”