Old English Bulldog The word 'Mastiff' was eventually dropped when describing these smaller Mastiffs, as the Mastiff proper was found too slow for bull-baiting. Eventually, the Greyhound was crossed into the breed, increasing the Mastiff's speed without losing the breed's ferocity. This step reduced the Old English Bulldog's size and weight, with the Greyhound's features seen in specimens of that time. Two other recognized members of the breed can be seen in the 1817 painting "Crib and Rosa", with Rosa exemplifying the form and size of the ideal type of Old English Bulldog, albeit deficient in wrinkles about the head and neck and
Old English phonology fronting of the open vowel to in certain cases. It also underwent vowel shifts that were not shared with Frisian: smoothing, diphthong height harmonization, and breaking. Diphthong height harmonization and breaking resulted in the unique Old English diphthongs , , , . Palatalization yielded some Modern English word-pairs in which one word has a velar and the other has a palatal or postalveolar. Some of these were inherited from Old English ("drink" and "drench", "day" and "dawn"), while others have an unpalatalized form loaned from Old Norse ( and ). Old English had four major dialect groups: Kentish, West Saxon,