grateful for small mercies

Today's post is prompted by this cringe-worthy misspelling "greatfull". It is wrong on 2 counts. Regular readers of this blog will know that when full is tagged on to another word it becomes -ful; so wrong ending, but also wrong root. Grateful has nothing to do with great or greatness but everything to do with gratitude. Italian "grazie" for thank you is in the same word family.

It often surprises me that people do not make the connection between words such as grateful and gratitude.

Test yourself

Can you think of the noun that is related to each of the following adjectives? By that I mean a word from the same family. For example

happy - happiness

angry - anger

elegant - elegance

1. beautiful
2. mysterious
3. clean
4. wide
5. hot
6. young
7. proud
8. high
9. jealous
10. relieved
11. fragile
12. nutritious
13. equal
14. unequal
15. antique

Answers:

1. beautiful beauty
2. mysterious mystery
3. clean cleanliness
   
4. wide width
5. hot heat
   
6. young youth (youngster is also a noun)
7. proud pride
8. high height
9. jealous jealousy
   
10. relieved relief
11. fragile fragility
    
12. nutritious nutrition
13. equal equality
14. unequal inequality
    
15. antique antiquity

Yours and mine

What's yours is mine and what's mine's my own. (a favourite saying of my mother)

We saw in an earlier post how the apostrophe is used for possession. Note that the apostrophe for possession is only used for nouns.

These are the possessive adjectives  - no apostrophes!

my

our

your

his 

her

its

their

my book
your bike
his house
their car

And these are the possessive pronouns   - still no apostrophes!!

mine
ours

yours

his

hers

its

theirs

your friend and mine
my town and yours
hers is the white one

It's stands for "it is", see this earlier post

Similarly mine's in the adage at the beginning of this post stands for "mine is".