in Grammar, a particle added at the close of a word, either to diversify its form or alter its signification. We meet with affixes in the Saxon, the German, and other northern languages, but more especially in the Hebrew, and other oriental tongues. The Hebrew affixes are single syllables, frequently single letters, subjoined to nouns and verbs, and contribute not a little to the brevity of that language. The oriental languages are much the same as to the radicals, and differ chiefly from each other as to affixes and prefixes.

AFFLATUS literally denotes a blast of wind, breath, or vapour, striking with force against another body. The word is Latin, formed from ad, to, and flare, to blow. Naturalists sometimes speak of the afflatus of serpents. Tully uses the word figuratively, for a divine inspiration; in which sense he ascribes all great and eminent accomplishments to a divine afflatus. The Pythian priestess being placed on a tripod or perforated stool, over a holy cave, received the divine afflatus, as a late author expresses it, in her belly; and being thus inspired, fell into agitations, like a phrenetic; during which she pronounced, in hollow groans and broken sentences, the will of the Deity. This afflatus is supposed by some to have been a subterraneous fume or exhalation, wherewith the priestess was literally inspired. Accordingly, it had the effects of a real physical disease, the paroxysm of which was so vehement, that, Plutarch observes, it sometimes proved mortal. Van Dale supposes the pretended enthusiasm of the Pythia to have arisen from the fumes of aromatics.