I think that some of us have not noticed that 'humble', which started life as an adjective, has now Pam Petered its way into the kingdom of verbs. One does not add 'ed' to adjectives - only to verbs to form past participles. One of the major problems with the Macquarie dictionary is that it seldom shows etymology. And when pressed, its authors refer to the 'corpus' of deposited usage, as though in some strange way, use of a language follows democratic, or even statistical rules. I suppose with the Boards of Studies in each state having eschewed their students' needing to learn grammar, we can no longer point to any possible known 'first cause' for changes in the language. It just happens by magic, or osmosis - or bastardry? Or am I being too old fashioned to believe that there is such a thing as grammar? Brian. ************************************************** To view the austechwriter archives, go to www.freelists.org/archives/austechwriter To unsubscribe, send a message to austechwriter-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with "unsubscribe" in the Subject field (without quotes). To manage your subscription (e.g., set and unset DIGEST and VACATION modes) go to www.freelists.org/list/austechwriter To contact the list administrator, send a message to austechwriter-admins@xxxxxxxxxxxxx **************************************************