Stoffel, Intensives and Down-toners. 167 that his /ove was pure, but that his motive for doing it was love and nothing else. It may also be interesting to note that in Norwegian pur is used in this way only before nouns denoting a bad quality, as af pur ondskab, af pur egennytte. It would be impossible to say af pur kjærlighed, while ren can be used also before «bad» words: af ren ondskab. One of the most interesting chapters of the book is the one treating of guiie. Its original meaning as an adjective seems to be «completely released of, free from» (be quit of one); as an adverb it occurs from the time of Shakespeare in the sense of «completely, entirely», but besides this, it has from the 18th century developed into ἃ sentence-modifier. If we say, the ink is quite dry, we mean, of course, that it is completely dry, so that it cannot be used to write with; quite is here strong-stressed and a word-modifier. But if we say to a person who has just come in, «You are quite wet, I declare; I didn’t know it was raining», we don’t mean that the person is completely wet; what we want to express is our surprise at finding him to a certain degree wet, in other words, the adverb gutte, which is here weak-stressed, does not modify the sense of the adjective wet, but gives a special colouring to the whole sentence. Sometimes this sentence-modifying guite marks only the «incredible, surprising, or exaggerated», as in the example cited, in other cases it includes the idea of irony or sarcasm, e. g. he is quite an Apollo now to what he was when a boy, which really says that he does not look very well now, but that he was still uglier when a boy. Philologists have been fully aware of this modal function of quite before now; it is mentioned both by Flügel, Storm, and F. Hall, bnt no one has, to my knowledge, investigated the development of this use so fully and so satisfactorily as Mr. Stoffel. Of course guite is not the only fnglish adverb that can have this modal function. The same is the case with actually, which may often be substituted for qguite, even (even Homer sometimes nods), and only (only a fool would do that). Nor is English the only language that has developed this interesting shade of meaning in adjectives and adverbs. The same is found to a large degree in Norwegian, and I therefore subjoin some Norwegian examples suggested to me during the perusal of the book, though I have not had time to try and bring them under definite categories. The surprise-marking quite may often be given by rent: du er jo rent våd (you are quite wet); du er jo rent voksen (you are quite a woman), or by Żel: han er jo en hel taler (he is quite a speaker), which implies: who would ever have thought it?, or by virkelig (actually): hun er virkelig vakker, where the subaudition would be: I have not been aware of it before. The English it is guite cold this morning, meaning that the speaker finds it colder than he would expect from