' May not the reason of this
exceptional form be looked for in that tendency to dodge what is hard to
pronounce, to which I have already alluded? If the letters were
distinctly uttered, as they should be, it would take too much time to
say _ill-ly_, _well-ly_, and it is to be observed that we have avoided
_smally_[26] and _tally_ in the same way, though we add _ish_ to them
without hesitation in _smallish_ and _tallish_. We have, to be sure,
_dully_ and _fully_, but for the one we prefer _stupidly_, and the other
(though this may have come from eliding the _y_ before _a_s) is giving
way to _full_. The uneducated, whose utterance is slower, still make
adverbs when they will by adding _like_ to all manner of adjectives. We
have had _big_ charged upon us, because we use it where an Englishman
would now use _great_. I fully admit that it were better to distinguish
between them, allowing to _big_ a certain contemptuous quality; but as
for authority, I want none better than that of Jeremy Taylor, who, in
his noble sermon 'On the Return of Prayer,' speaks of 'Jesus, whose
spirit was meek and gentle up to the greatness of the _biggest_
example.
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