Existence, in speech, is use, and disuse is destruction. Whatever leads to disuse leads to loss […].
- Whitney (1875), a pag.98

The tendency to abbreviation for ease, for economy of effort in expression, is a universal and blind one; destruction lies everywhere in its path. The same process which, by a disguising fusion and integration of elements once independent, makes a word or form, goes straight on to its contraction and mutilation- and in early language as certainly, though not necessarily so rapidly, as in later.
- Whitney (1875), a pag.106