[22]
His way is the
right way. Who doubts it? But there is an easier
and more frequented path close by. There is,
however, nothing which annoys me more than their
habit not merely of inferring the nominative from
the oblique cases, but of actually altering it. For
instance in ebur and robur, the forms regularly used
both in writing and speech by the best authors,
these gentlemen change their second syllable to o,
because their genitives are roboris and eboris, and because sulpur and guttur keep the u in the genitive. So
too femur and iecur give rise to similar controversy.
[p. 123]
Quintilian. With an English Translation. Harold Edgeworth Butler. Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1920.
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