Citations:particle

used to refer to affixes (but also other things)

 * 1764, Charles Wiseman, A Complete English Grammar on a New Plan:
 * page 135: Sometimes two Substantives come together, without the particle of, in the nature of a Compound, as, the chamber door, the garret window, [...]
 * page 280: The Adverbs of Order are not taken from the Numerals, one, two, three, &c. but from the Ordinal Numbers, first, second, third, &c. which last have the Particle ly, joined to them only up to the number 12, or twelfthly, but thirteenthly making too many syllables, sounds very harsh, and therefore it were better to express it by circumlocution, [...]
 * page 345: we usually set such Verb or Sentence after the other Verb, and put the Particle it before it, as, it is an evil thing to lie, i.e. to lie is an evil thing.


 * 1839, The Oberlin Evangelist (1839), page 47:
 * We have the particle ward in a few passages, as "to you ward;" "to God ward;" where the word toward is split into two parts.


 * 1849, John Stoddart, William Hazlitt, Philosophy of Language: Comprehending Universal Grammar:
 * page 234: The particle ly is an abbreviation of the adjective like; and the words wisely, gratefully, judiciously, &c., were originally the compound adjectives wiselike, gratefullike, judiciouslike, &c.
 * pages 278-279: [...] even the appellations "noun" and "verb," which are on all hands admitted to be applicable to the most necessary parts of speech, are differently understood by grammarians of note. It is not surprising, therefore, that the term Particle should be misapplied, as I think it is, when intended to signify those words which are at the same time recognized as accessorial parts of speech. To say, "there are eight parts of speech, but four of them are particles," is much like saying, there are [...] eight commissioned officers, but four of them are non-commissioned. The word particle, according to all analogies of derivation, ought to mean something less than the word part, a subdivision of a division, a part of a part [...]. These secondary parts I call particles, when so used in composition. Thus, I say that, in the word Johnson, son is a particle; in the word friendship, ship is a particle; in the word delightful, ful is a particle; and in the word learned, ed is a particle.


 * 1981, Roger M. Keesing, Cultural Anthropology: A Contemporary Perspective, page 299:
 * The morphological particle "-ful" on the end of "wonderful" or "awful" need not imply that there is a substance or entity one is "full" of (to say that something is "wonderful" doesn't mean it is full of "wonder";[...])