On the other hand, one who accepts a challenge is said also to take the dare.] [Footnote 6: Most bad English was once good English.

_Ketch_ was used by writers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries for _catch_.

A New Hampshire magistrate in the seventeenth century spells it _caitch_, and probably pronounced it in that way.

_Ketch_, a boat, was sometimes spelled _catch_ by the first American colonists, and the far-fetched derivation of the word from the Turkish may be one of the fancies of etymologists.] [Footnote 7: The derivation of _raccoon_ from the French _raton_, to which Mr.Skeat gives currency, still holds its place in some of our standard dictionaries.

If American lexicographers would only read the literature of American settlement they would know that Mr.Skeat's citation of a translation of Buffon is nearly two centuries too late.