[12]
A boy therefore must
learn both the peculiarities and the common characteristics of letters and must know how they are
related to each other. Nor must he be surprised
that scabillum is formed from scamnus or that a
double-edged axe should be called bipennis from
pinnus, “sharp”: for I would not have him fall into
the same error as those who, supposing this word to
be derived from his and pennae, think that it is a
metaphor from the wings of birds.
Quintilian. With an English Translation. Harold Edgeworth Butler. Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1920.
The Annenberg CPB/Project provided support for entering this text.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.