QUO' WARRANTO is a writ or information issued from the court of queen's bench in Westminster, calling upon a person or body of persons to show by what warrant they a public office or privilege. It is the legal mode of remedying any usurpation of privilege or of office.
eighteenth letter in the English and other western alphabets, is one of the A group of liquids. See LETTERS. Its name in Hebrew was resh, meaning fore ' head, and the rude outline of a head is thought to be yet recognizable in the Phenidian form of the letter. Of all the consonants, R approaches most nearly to the vowels. In Sanskrit, there is an R-vowel distinguished from the R-consonant by a dif ferent The Greek, also, had two varieties of R, one with the "spiritus riper• (fi), or rough breathing, at the beginning of words, and when following another R; and another with the weaker breathing (fi) in other positions. The Romans in spelling Greek words represented the by rh, and hence we still write Rhode, rheumatism. catarrh. This rh was probably of too guttural kind commonly called a " burr." This pronuncia tion of roceurs as a peculiarity of individuals every-where, but it is universal in North umberladd and Durham, and characterizes the pronunciation of the letter iu certain positions throughout Germany and Scandinavia. The normal pronunciation of R in English and in the IlKintanic tongues (and it appears to have been the same in Latin) is a vibratory sound produced by applying the tip of the tongue near the roots of the nivel fore-teeth. From the resemblance to the growl of an angry dog, It was called by the ancients the dog's letter. In modern English, there is an increasing tendency to smooth down the roughness of the vibration, until, in such words as far, serf, world. the r has dwindled to a kind of nondescript vowel, modifying the preceding vowel. This emas culating process—for such it undoubtedly is—is in so far only the operation of the universal law of phonetic decay, arising from the natural tendency to spend as little energy as possible; but it has been accelerated in this case by a fashion which is apt to mistake languor and indifference for refinement. This affectation goes so far as to turn words
like very, rare, into racy, waaw. It is one of the most difficult articulations; children are long in learning it, and some individuals never can pronounce it. Whole nations (e.g., the Chinese and some Polynesian tribes) have no such consonant in their language, using / instead. The interchanges of r with I are noticed under L. A more remarkable sub stitution is that of r for d, which was very prevalent in early Latin, as we learn from Priscian and from inscriptions. Ex. for adcocatos. The Latin of the literary miriod lied returned from this corruption, except in arbiter (from an old verb, adbitere, to go to. to intervene), areesso, and meridies (for medidies, from medius). The substitu tion is easily accounted for, when we consider that in both sounds the tongue is applied to the same part of the palate; only in the one it is applied firmly; in the other, loosely, so as to vibrate. • A very common phenomenon, especially in Latin, is the sinking or degradation of an original s between two vowels into r. On inscriptions we fineLoses, arms, esum, for what at a later period was written Lases, eras, erain. As, mos, became in the genitive wris, instead ofjusis, mosis. Even final s was sometimes degraded to r, as in the double forms; arbor = arbos, honor honor. Curiously, we know the date when the ten dency to change s between two vowels into r set in; for Cicero remarks that L. Papirius Crassus, who was consul MO' was the first that was called Papirius, the ancestral name having been Papisius. The interchange in question occurs also to some extent in the Teutonic tongues. Compare Eng. forlorn with lose (Ger. rerlicren), aces with were; Ger. groat (to bC) with war (was); Goth. haujan with Ger. Koren (to hear); Eng. hare with Ger. hose. The unstable nature of this, articulation is manifested in its frequently changing its place with regard to an adjoining vowel; compare board with broad; bird with old brid; grass with A.-S. gars.
RA. See EGYPT.