Mark Twain passage of boat, was a measure on the sounding line. Twain is an archaic term for "two", as in "The veil of the temple was rent in twain." The riverboatman's cry was "mark twain" or, more fully, "by the mark twain", meaning "according to the mark [on the line], [the depth is] two [fathoms]", that is, "The water is deep and it is safe to pass." Twain said that his famous pen name was not entirely his invention. In "Life on the Mississippi", he wrote: Captain Isaiah Sellers was not of literary turn or capacity, but he used to jot
Old English grammar feminine nominative article "sēo", yielding "she"; whereas the "h" in plural forms such as "hīe" was replaced with "þ" under Norse influence as it evolved (a slower development that was not complete until well into the Middle English period), yielding "they, them, their". Prepositions (like Modern English words "by", "for", and "with") often follow the word which they govern, in which case they are called "postpositions". Also, if the object of a preposition was marked in the dative case, a preposition may conceivably be located anywhere in the sentence. The following is a list of prepositions in the Old English