Varro: On the Latin Language (De Lingua Latina)

[And] even if I cannot track them down, I will not be the slower for it, but rather the faster, if I should be [able]. For the darkness is not mediocre in the forest where these things must be caught, nor are the paths by which we wish to arrive beaten [paths], nor are there not certain things in the byways which could hold back one who is going. The conflict of which words, both new and old, is all in common usage; [and] whoever notices in how many ways the changing of letters has been made will find it easier to examine the origins of words. For I have found them to be changed, as I showed in the previous books, mostly for these four causes: it happens by the taking away or addition of letters, and by their rearrangement or change. Likewise by the lengthening of syllables. Having sufficiently demonstrated in the previous books what sort these were with examples, I thought I should only warn of it here. Now I shall explain the origins of individual words, of which there are four degrees of explanation. The lowest, in which the people also come: for who does not see from where aretofodine a mining of virtue and uiocurus life-care [come]? The second, where ancient grammar descends, which shows how each poet fashioned a word, what he fashioned, [and] what he declined. Here Pacuvius' Ruddertails...