Whole book · 6 sections
A
SELECT GLOSSARY
OF
ENGLISH WORDS USED FORMERLY IN SENSES DIFFERENT FROM THEIR PRESENT
BY
RICHARD CHENEVIX TRENCH, D.D.
ARCHBISHOP
‘Res fugiunt, vocabula manent’
SEVENTH EDITION
REVISED BY A. L. MAYHEW, M.A.
LONDON
KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, & CO., 1 PATERNOSTER SQUARE
1890
(The rights of translation and of reproduction are reserved)
This volume is intended to be a contribution, though a very slight one at best, to a special branch of the study of our own language. It proposes to trace in a popular manner and for general readers the changes of meaning which so many of its words have undergone; words which, as current with us as they were with our forefathers, yet meant something different on their lips from what they mean on ours. Of my success in carrying out the scheme which I had set before myself, it does not become me to speak, except to say that I have fallen a good deal below my hopes, and infinitely below my desires. But of the scheme itself I have no doubts. I feel sure that, if only adequately carried out, few works of the same compass could embrace matter of more manifold instruction, or in a region of knowledge which it would be more desirable to occupy. In the present condition of education in England, above all with the pressure upon young men, which is ever increasing, to complete their educational course at the earliest possible date, the number of those enjoying the inestimable advantages, mental and moral, which more than any other languages the Latin and the Greek supply, must ever be growing smaller. It becomes therefore a necessity to seek elsewhere the best substitutes within reach for that discipline of the faculties which these languages would better than any other have afforded. And I believe, when these two are set aside, our own language and literature will furnish the best substitutes; such as, even though they may not satisfy perfectly, are not therefore to be rejected. I am persuaded that in the decomposition, word by word, of small portions of our best poetry and prose, the compensations which we look for are most capable of being found; even as I have little doubt that in many of our higher English schools compensations of the kind are already oftentimes obtained. Lycidas suggests itself to me, in the amount of resistance which it would offer, as in verse furnishing more exactly what I seek than any other poem, perhaps some of Lord Bacon’s Essays in prose.
In such a decomposition, to be followed by a reconstruction, of some small portions of a great English Classic, matters almost innumerable, and pressing on the attention from every side, would claim to be noticed; but certainly not last nor least the changes in meaning which, on close examination, would be seen to have passed on many of the words employed. It is to point out some of these changes; to suggest how many more there may be, there certainly are, which have not been noticed in these pages; to show how slight and subtle, while yet most real, how easily therefore evading detection, unless constant vigilance is used, these changes often have been; to trace here and there the progressive steps by which the old meaning has been put off, and the new put on, the exact road which a word has travelled; this has been my purpose here; and I have desired by such means to render some small assistance to those who are disposed to regard this as a serviceable discipline in the training of their own minds or the minds of others.
The book is, as its name declares, a Select Glossary. There would have been no difficulty whatever in doubling or trebling the number of articles admitted into it. But my purpose being rather to arouse curiosity than fully to gratify it, to lead others themselves to take note of changes, and to account for them, rather than to take altogether this pleasant labour out of their hands and to do for them what they could more profitably do for themselves, I have consciously left much of the work undone, even as, unconsciously no doubt I have left a great deal more. At the same time it has not been mere caprice which has induced the particular selection of words which has been actually made. Various motives, but in almost every case such as I could give account of to myself, have ruled this selection. Sometimes the past use of a word has been noted and compared with the present, as usefully exercising the mind in the tracing of minute differences and fine distinctions; or, again, as helpful to the understanding of our earlier authors, and likely to deliver a reader of them from misapprehensions into which he might else very easily fall; or, once more, as opening out a curious chapter in the history of manners; or as involving some interesting piece of history, or some singular superstition; or, again, as witnessing for the good or for the evil which have been unconsciously at work in the minds and hearts of those who insensibly have modified in part or changed altogether the meaning of some word; or, lastly and more generally, as illustrating well under one aspect or another those permanent laws which are everywhere affecting and modifying human speech.
And as the words brought forward have been selected with some care, and according to certain rules which have for the most part suggested their selection, so also has it been with the passages adduced in proof of the changes of meaning which they have undergone. A principal value which such a volume as the present can possess, must consist in the happiness with which these have been chosen. Not every passage, which really contains evidence of the assertion made, will for all this serve to be adduced in proof; and this I presently discovered in the many which for one cause or another it was necessary to set aside. There are various excellencies which ought to meet in such passages, but which will not by any means be found in all.
In the first place they ought to be such passages as will tell their own story, will prove the point which they are cited to prove, quite independently of the uncited context, to which it will very often happen that many readers cannot, and of those who can, that the larger number will not, refer. They should bear too upon their front that amount of triumphant proof, which will carry conviction not merely to the student who by a careful observation of many like passages, and a previous knowledge of what was a word’s prevailing use in the time of the writer, is prepared to receive this conviction, but to him also, to whom all this is presented now for the first time, who has no predisposition to believe, but is disposed rather to be incredulous in the matter. Then, again, they should, if possible, be passages capable of being detached from their context without the necessity of drawing a large amount of this context after them to make them intelligible; like trees which will endure to be transplanted without carrying with them a huge and cumbrous bulk of earth, clinging to their roots. Once more, they should, if possible, be such as have a certain intrinsic worth and value of their own, independent of their value as illustrative of the point in language directly to be proved—some weight of thought, or beauty of expression, merit in short of one kind or other, that so the reader may be making a second gain by the way. I can by no means claim this for all, or nearly all, of mine. Indeed, it would have been absurd to seek it in a book of which the primary aim is quite other than that of bringing together a collection of striking quotations; any merit of this kind must continually be subordinated, and, where needful, wholly sacrificed, to the purposes more immediately in view. Still there will be many citations found in these pages which, while they fulfil the primary intention with which they were quoted, are not wanting also in this secondary worth.
In my citations I have throughout acted on the principle that ‘Enough is as good as a feast:’ and that this same ‘Enough,’ as the proverb might well be completed, ‘is better than a surfeit.’ So soon as that earlier meaning, from which our present is a departure, or which once subsisted side by side with our present, however it has now disappeared, has been sufficiently established, I have held my hand, and not brought further quotations in proof. In most cases indeed it has seemed desirable to adduce passages from several authors; without which a suspicion may always remain in the mind, that we are bringing forward the exceptional peculiarity of a single writer, who even in his day stood alone. I suspect that in some, though rare, instances I have adduced exceptional uses of this kind.
One value I may claim for my book, that whatever may be wanting to it, it is with the very most trifling exceptions an entirely independent and original collection of passages illustrative of the history of our language. Of my citations, I believe about a thousand in all, I may owe some twenty at the most to existing Dictionaries or Glossaries, to Nares or Johnson or Todd or Richardson. In perhaps some twenty cases more I have lighted upon and selected a passage by one of them selected before, and have not thought it desirable, or have not found it possible, to dismiss this and choose some other in its room. These excepted, the collection is entirely independent of all those which have previously been made; and in a multitude of cases notes uses and meanings of words which have never been noted before.
Westminster: May 25, 1859.
In the present edition the ‘Select Glossary’ has been carefully revised, and a few of the articles have been rewritten. In the work of revision special attention has been paid to two points, the etymologies and the Middle English quotations. The aim of the editor has been to bring this useful and interesting little book up to date, by purging it of obsolete or doubtful etymologies, and giving those which commend themselves to the best modern authorities on the subject. Nearly all the quotations from the works of Middle English authors have been collated with the best modern editions, and care has been taken to make the references in each case as clear and precise as possible. It is hoped that the Alphabetical Lists of Authors quoted, and of Philological Works referred to, may be found useful to the student.
A. L. MAYHEW.
Wadham College, Oxford: Oct. 28, 1889.
The references are to the pages of the ‘Select Glossary.’ Two dates separated by a hyphen denote the birth and death date of the author; a date preceded by an obelisk denotes the death date; a single date unmarked denotes the date of the work.
[Abandon. Now only used in the sense of to give up absolutely, to forsake, or desert; but in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries often found in the sense of to put to the ban, to proscribe, to cast out, reject. O. Fr. abandoner, to give up into the power of another, is due to the phrase mettre à bandon, to put under anyone’s jurisdiction; O. Fr. bandon (Low Lat. bandonem) is a derivative of Low Lat. bandum for older bannum; O. H. G. ban, an order, decree, proclamation. For O. Fr. bandon, used in the sense of free disposal, unfettered authority, compare Chanson de Roland, 2703: ‘All Spain will be to-day en lur bandun,’ i.e. in their power. The Germanic word bann, an open proclamation, survives in our ‘banns of marriage.’ The word bandit, It. bandito, means properly a proclaimed, proscribed man.]
Blessed shall ye be when men shall hate you, and abandon your name as evil [et ejecerint nomen vestrum tanquam malum, Vulg.] for the Son of man’s sake.—Luke vi. 22. Rheims.
Shakespeare, Taming of the Shrew, act i. sc. 1.
Achievement. Of ‘achievement’ and ‘hatchment’ it need hardly be said that the latter is a contracted and corrupted manner of pronouncing the former. This ‘achievement’ or ‘hatchment’ is an escutcheon or coat of arms erected when a person of distinction has died; originally so called from its being granted in memory of some ‘achievement’ or distinguished feat. In the Heralds’ College there are ‘achievements’ still, as there were for Milton two centuries ago; but in our common language we call them ‘hatchments,’ and have let any such employment of ‘achievement’ go.
As if a herald in the achievement of a king should commit the indecorum to set his helmet sideways and close; not full-faced and open, as the posture of direction and command.—Milton, Tetrachordon.
Act. The verb ‘to actuate’ seems of comparatively late introduction into the language. The first example of it which our Dictionaries give is drawn from the works of the Latinist, Sir Thomas Browne, of Norwich. I have also met it in Jeremy Taylor.1 But even for some time after ‘actuate’ was introduced—as late, we see, as Pope,—‘act’ did often the work which ‘actuate’ alone does now.
Within, perhaps, they are as proud as Lucifer, as covetous as Demas, as false as Judas, and in the whole course of their conversation act and are acted, not by devotion, but design.—South, Sermons, 1737, vol. ii. p. 391.
Many offer at the effects of friendship; but they do not last. They are promising at the beginning, but they fail and jade and tire in the prosecution. For most people in the world are acted by levity and humour, and by strange and irrational changes.—Id. Ib., vol. ii. p. 73.
Pope, Essay on Man, ep 2.
Adamant. It is difficult to trace the exact motives which induced the transferring of this name to the lodestone; but it is common enough in our best English writers, thus in Chaucer, Bacon, and Shakespeare; as is ‘aimant’ in French, and ‘iman’ in Spanish. See ‘Diamond,’ and the art. ‘Adamant’ in Appendix A to the Dictionary of the Bible.
Romaunt of the Rose, 1182 (ed. Morris).
Shakespeare, Midsummer Night’s Dream, act ii. sc. 1.
If you will have a young man to put his travel in little room, when he stayeth in one city or town, let him change his lodging from one end and part of the town to another; which is a great adamant of acquaintance.—Bacon, Essays, 18.
Admiral. This was a title often given in the seventeenth century to the principal and leading vessel in a fleet; the ‘admiral-galley’ North (Plutarch’s Lives) calls it.
Falstaff (to Bardolph).—Thou art our admiral; thou bearest the lantern in the poop—but ’tis the nose of thee; thou art the Knight of the Burning Lamp.—Shakespeare, 1 Henry IV., act iii. sc. 3.
Lincoln spake what was fit for comfort, and did what he was able for redress. He looked like the lanthorn in the admiral, by which the rest of the fleet did steer their course.—Hacket, Life of Archbishop Williams, part ii. p. 143.
Milton, Paradise Lost, i. 292.
The admiral of the Spanish Armada was a Flemish ship.—Hawkins, Observations, &c., 1622, p. 9.
| Admire, | } |
| Admirable, | |
| Admiration. |
It now always implies to wonder with approval; but was by no means restrained to this wonder in bonam partem of old.
Neither is it to be admired that Henry [the Fourth], who was a wise as well as a valiant prince, should be pleased to have the greatest wit of those times in his interests, and to be the trumpet of his praises.—Dryden, Preface to the Fables.
Milton, Paradise Lost, i. 690.
It may justly seem admirable how that senseless religion [Mahometanism] should gain so much on Christianity.—Fuller, Holy War, part i. c. 6.
In man there is nothing admirable but his ignorance and weakness.—Bishop Taylor, Dissuasive from Popery, part ii. b. i. § 7.
I understand that you be in great admirations of me, and take very grievously my manner of writing to you.—Latimer, Sermons and Remains, vol. ii. p. 419.
And I saw the woman drunken with the blood of the saints ... and when I saw her I wondered with great admiration.—Rev. xvii. 6. (A.V.)
Alchymy. By this we always understand now the pretended art of transmuting other metals into gold; but it was often used to express itself a certain mixed metal, which, having the appearance of gold, was yet mainly composed of brass. Thus the notion of falseness, of show and semblance not borne out by reality, frequently underlay the earlier uses of the word. Compare the second quotation under ‘Bullion.’
As for those gildings and paintings that were in the palace of Alcyna, though the show of it were glorious, the substance of it was dross, and nothing but alchymy and cosenage.—Sir J. Harington, A brief Allegory of Orlando Furioso.
Whereupon out of most deep divinity it was concluded, that they should not celebrate the sacrament in glass, for the brittleness of it; nor in wood, for the sponginess of it, which would suck up the blood; nor in alchymy, because it was subject to rusting; nor in copper, because that would provoke vomiting; but in chalices of latten, which belike was a metal without exception.—Fuller, Holy War, b. iii. c. 13.
Milton, Paradise Lost, ii. 516.
Such were his arms, false gold, true alchemy.—P. Fletcher, Purple Island, vii. 39.
| Allow, | } |
| Allowance, | |
| Allowable. |
‘To allow,’ from the French ‘allouer,’ and through it from the Latin ‘allaudare,’—and not to be confounded with another ‘allow,’ derived from another ‘allouer,’ the Latin ‘allocare,’—had once a sense very often of praise or approval, which may now be said to have departed from it altogether. Thus in Cotgrave’s French and English Dictionary, an invaluable witness of the force and meanings which words had two centuries ago, ‘allow’ is rendered by ‘allouer,’ ‘gréer,’ ‘approuver,’ ‘accepter,’ and ‘allowable’ by ‘louable.’
Mine enemy, say they, is not worthy to have gentle words or deeds, being so full of malice or frowardness. The less he is worthy, the more art thou therefore allowed of God, and the more art thou commended of Christ.—Homilies; Against Contention.
The hospitality and alms of abbeys is not altogether to be allowed, or dispraised.—Pilkington, The Burning of Paul’s, § 12.
Truly ye bear witness that ye allow [συνευδοκεῖτε] the deeds of your fathers.—Luke xi. 48. (A. V.)
Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida, act ii. sc. 3.
Though I deplore your schism from the Catholic Church, yet I should bear false witness if I did not confess your decency, which I discerned at the holy duty, was very allowable in the consecrators and receivers.—Hacket, Life of Archbishop Williams, part ii. p. 211.
Amiable. This and ‘lovely’ have been so far differentiated that ‘amiable’ never expresses now any other than moral loveliness; which in ‘lovely’ is seldom or never implied. There was a time when ‘amiable’ had no such restricted use, when it and ‘lovely’ were absolutely synonymous, as, etymologically, they might claim still to be.
Shakespeare, Midsummer Night’s Dream, act iv. sc. 1.
How amiable are thy tabernacles, O Lord of Hosts.—Ps. lxxxiv. 1. (A.V.)
Milton, Paradise Lost, iv. 248.
| Amuse, | } |
| Amusement. |
The notion of diversion, entertainment, is comparatively of recent introduction into the word. ‘To amuse’ was to cause to muse, to occupy or engage, and in this sense indeed to divert, the thoughts and attention. The quotation from Phillips shows the word in transition to its present meaning. [O. Fr. amuser is a compound of muser, to muse, study, linger about a matter, to sniff as a hound, from *muse, a muzzle, nose of an animal (whence Mod. Fr. museau). Compare Florio’s Italian Dictionary: ‘Musare, to muse, to muzzle, to gape, to hold one’s muzle or snout in the air.’ The O. Fr. *muse is the same word as the Lat. morsus, see Mayhew-Skeat, Dict. of Middle English.]
Camillus set upon the Gauls, when they were amused in receiving their gold.—Holland, Livy, p. 223.
Being amused with grief, fear, and fright, he could not find a house in London (otherwise well known to him), whither he intended to go.—Fuller, Church History of Britain, b. ix. § 44.
A siege of Maestricht or Wesel (so garrisoned and resolutely defended), might not only have amused, but endangered the French armies.—Sir W. Temple, Observations on the United Provinces, c. 8.
To amuse, to stop or stay one with a trifling story, to make him lose his time, to feed with vain expectations, to hold in play.—Phillips, New World of Words.
In a just way it is lawful to deceive the unjust enemy, but not to lie; that is, by stratagems and semblances of motions, by amusements and intrigues of actions, by ambushes and wit, by simulation and dissimulation.—Bishop Taylor, Ductor Dubitantium, b. iii. c. 2.
Anatomy. Now the act of dissection, but it was often used by our elder writers for the thing or object dissected, and then, as this was stripped of its flesh, for what we now call a skeleton. ‘Skeleton,’ which see, had then another meaning.
Here will be some need of assistants in this live, and to the quick, dissection, to deliver me from the violence of the anatomy.—Whitlock, Zootomia, p. 249.
Antiquity held too light thoughts from objects of mortality, while some drew provocatives of mirth from anatomies, and jugglers showed tricks with skeletons.—Sir T. Browne, Hydriotaphia.
Shakespeare, Comedy of Errors, act v. sc. 1.
Animosity. While ‘animosus’ belongs to the best period of Latin literature, ‘animositas’ is of quite the later silver age. It was used in two senses; in that, first, of spiritedness or courage (‘equi animositas,’ the courage of a horse), and then, secondly, as this spiritedness in one particular direction, in that, namely, of a vigorous and active enmity or hatred (Heb. xi. 27, Vulg.) Of these two meanings the latter is the only one which our ‘animosity’ has retained; yet there was a time when it had the other as well.
When her [the crocodile’s] young be newly hatched, such as give some proof of animosity, audacity, and execution, those she loveth, those she cherisheth.—Holland, Plutarch’s Morals, p. 977.
Doubtless such as are of a high-flown animosity affect fortunas laviniosas, as one calls it, a fortune that sits not strait and close to the body, but like a loose and a flowing garment.—Hacket, Life of Archbishop Williams, part i. p. 30.
In these cases consent were conspiracy; and open contestation is not faction or schism, but due Christian animosity.—Hales, Tract concerning Schism.
Cato, before he durst give the fatal stroke, spent part of the night in reading the Immortality of Plato, thereby confirming his wavering hand unto the animosity of that attempt.—Sir T. Browne, Hydriotaphia.
| Annoy, | } |
| Annoyance. |
Now rather to vex and disquiet than seriously to hurt and harm. But until comparatively a late day, it admitted no such mitigation of meaning. [The subst. annoy is the O. Fr. anoi (Mod. Fr. ennui), Sp. enojo, O. It. inodio, from Lat. in odio, lit. in hatred, used in the phrase in odio habui, I had in hatred, i.e. I was sick and tired of.]
For the Lord Almygti anoyede [nocuit, Vulg.] hym, and bitook him into the hondes of a womman.—Judith xvi. 7. Wiclif.
Thanne cometh malignité, thurgh which a man annoieth his neighebor, as for to brenne his hous prively, or empoysone him, or sleen his bestis, and semblable thinges.—Chaucer, The Persones Tale (Morris, p. 306).
Shakespeare, Julius Cæsar, act i. sc. 3.
Id. Macbeth, act v. sc. 1.
Antics. Strange gestures now, but the makers of these strange gestures once.
Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida, act v. sc. 4.
Milton, Samson Agonistes, 1323.
| Apparent, | } |
| Apparently. |
With the exception of the one phrase ‘heir apparent,’ meaning heir evident, manifest, undoubted, we do not any longer employ ‘apparent’ for that which appears, because it is, but always either for that which appears and is not, or for that which appears, leaving in doubt whether it is or no.
Shakespeare, King John, act iv. sc. 2.
At that time Cicero had vehement suspicions of Cæsar, but no apparent proof to convince him.—North, Plutarch’s Lives, p. 718.
The laws of God cannot without breach of Christian liberty, and the apparent injury of God’s servants, be hid from them in a strange language, so depriving them of their best defence against Satan’s temptations.—Fuller, Twelve Sermons concerning Christ’s Temptations, p. 59.
Milton, Paradise Lost, x. 111.
At that time [at the resurrection of the last day], as the Scripture doth most apparently testify, the dead shall be restored to their own bodies, flesh and bones.—Articles of the Church (1552).
Apprehensive. As there is nothing which persons lay hold of more readily than that aspect of a subject in which it presents matter for fear, ‘to apprehend’ has acquired the sense of to regard with fear; yet not so as that this use has excluded its earlier; but it has done so in respect of ‘apprehensive,’ which has now no other meaning than that of fearful, a meaning once quite foreign to it.
Webster, Appius and Virginius, act v. sc. 3.
She, being an handsome, witty, and bold maid, was both apprehensive of the plot, and very active to prosecute it.—Fuller, The Profane State, b. v. c. 5.
Beaumont and Fletcher, Philaster, act v. sc. 1.
Ark. The ark of Noah, and ark of the covenant, were not the only ‘arks’ of which our ancestors spoke. Indeed, in Lancashire at this day a press to keep clothes in is an ‘ark,’ a large bin for holding meal a ‘meal-ark.’
Spenser, Fairy Queen, iv. 4, 15.
Earl of Surrey, Poems, p. 35 (ed. 1717).
Herrick, Hesperides.
| Artificial, | } |
| Artificially. |
That was ‘artificial’ once which wrought, or which was wrought, according to the true principles of art. The word has descended into quite a lower sphere of meaning; such, indeed, as the quotation from Bacon shows, it could occupy formerly, though not then exactly the same which it occupies now.
Queen Elizabeth’s verses, some extant in the elegant, witty, and artificial book of The Art of English Poetry, are princely as her prose.—Bolton, Hypercritica.
Shakespeare, Midsummer Night’s Dream, act iii. sc. 2.
This is a demonstration that we are not in the right way, that we do not enquire wisely, that our method is not artificial. If men did fall upon the right way, it were impossible that so many learned men should be engaged in contrary parties and opinions.—Bishop Taylor, A Sermon preached before the University of Dublin.
This he did the rather, because having at his coming out of Britain given artificially, for serving his own turn, some hopes in case he obtained the kingdom, to marry Anne, inheritress to the duchy of Britany.—Bacon, History of Henry VII.
Artillery. Leaving the perplexed question of the derivation of this word,3 it will be sufficient to observe, that while it is now only applied to the heavy ordnance of modern warfare, in earlier use any engines for the projecting of missiles, even to the bow and arrows, would have been included under this term.
The Parthians, having all their hope in artillery, overcame the Romans ofter than the Romans them.—Ascham, Toxophilus, p. 106 (ed. 1761).
So the Philistines, the better to keep the Jews thrall and in subjection, utterly bereaved them of all manner of weapon and artillery, and left them naked.—Jewel, Reply to Mr. Harding, article xv.
Fairfax, Tasso, b. 17, s. 49.
And Jonathan gave his artillery (weapons, R.V.) unto his lad, and said unto him, Go, carry them to the city.—1 Sam. xx. 40. (A.V.)
| Artisan, | } |
| Artist, | |
| Artful. |
‘Artisan’ is no longer either in English or in French used of him who cultivates one of the fine arts, but only those of common life. The fine arts, losing this word, have now claimed ‘artist’ for their exclusive property; which yet was far from belonging to them always. An ‘artist’ in its earlier acceptation was one who cultivated, not the fine, but the liberal arts. The classical scholar was eminently the ‘artist.’ ‘Artful’ did not any more than ‘cunning,’ which see, imply art which had degenerated into artifice or trick.
He was mightily abashed, and like an honest-minded man yielded the victory unto his adversary, saying withal, Zeuxis hath beguiled poor birds, but Parrhasius hath deceived Zeuxis, a professed artisan.—Holland, Pliny, vol. ii. p. 535.
Waller, Lines to Van Dyck.
Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida, act i. sc. 3.
Nor would I dissuade any artist well grounded in Aristotle from perusing the most learned works any Romanist hath written in this argument. In other controversies between them and us it is dangerous, I must confess, even for well-grounded artists to begin with their writings, not so in this.—Jackson, Blasphemous Positions of Jesuits, Preface.
Some will make me the pattern of ignorance for making this Scaliger [Julius] the pattern of the general artist, whose own son Joseph might have been his father in many arts.—Fuller, Holy State, b. ii. c. 8.
Pope, Temple of Fame.
Ascertain. Now to acquire a certain knowledge of a thing, but once to render the thing itself certain. Thus, when Swift wrote a pamphlet having this title, ‘A Proposal for correcting, improving, and ascertaining the English Tongue,’ he did not propose to obtain a subjective certainty of what the English language was, but to give to the language itself an objective certainty and fixedness.
Sometimes an evil or an obnoxious person hath so secured and ascertained a mischief to himself, that he that stays in his company or his traffic must also share in his punishment.—Bishop Taylor, The Return of Prayers.
Success is intended him [the wicked man] only as a curse, as the very greatest of curses, and the readiest way, by hardening him in his sin, to ascertain his destruction.—South, Sermons, vol. v. p. 286.
Aspersion. Now only used figuratively, and in an evil sense; being that which one sprinkles on another to spot, stain, or hurt him: but subject to none of these limitations of old.
The book of Job, and many places of the prophets, have great aspersion of natural philosophy.—Bacon, Fiium Labyrinthi.
Shakespeare, Tempest, act iv. sc. 1.
| Assassin, | } |
| Assassinate. |
It is difficult to say at what date the name of ‘assassin,’ given first to the emissaries of the ‘Old Man of the Mountain,’ who were sent forth on his errands of blood, and who bore this name because maddened with ‘haschisch,’ a drink drawn from hemp, was transferred to other secret slayers. The word does not occur in Shakespeare (‘assassination’ once), and only once in Milton’s verse. Neither is it found in our English Bible; although it may be a question whether ‘assassins’ would not be an apter, as it would certainly be a closer, rendering of σικάριοι, on the one occasion of this word’s appearing (Acts xxi. 38), than the ‘murderers’ which we have actually adopted.4 The verb ‘to assassinate,’ as used by Milton, obtained a meaning which still survives in the French ‘assassiner’ and the Italian ‘assassinare,’ and signifies, as these often do, treacherously to assault, extremely to maltreat, without suggesting the actual taking away of life, which ‘to assassinate’ now always implies for us. Doubtless it was the Italian use of the word which influenced him.
These assassins were a precise sect of Mahometans, and had in them the very spirits of that poisonous superstition.—Fuller, Holy War, b. ii. c. 34.
As for the custom that some parents and guardians have of forcing marriages, it will be better to say nothing of such a savage inhumanity, but only thus, that the law which gives not all freedom of divorce to any creature endued with reason, so assassinated, is next in cruelty.—Milton, The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce, b. i. c. 12.
Milton, Samson Agonistes, 1108.
| Assure, | } |
| Assurance. |
Used often in our elder writers in the sense of ‘to betroth,’ or ‘to affiance.’ See ‘Ensure,’ ‘Sure.’
Shakespeare, King John, act ii. sc. 2.
I myself have seen Lollia Paulina, only when she was to go unto a wedding supper, or rather to a feast when the assurance was made, so beset and bedeckt all over with emeralds and pearls.—Holland, Pliny, vol. i. p. 256.
But though few days were before the day of assurance appointed, yet Love, that saw he had a great journey to make in a short time, hasted so himself, that before her word could tie her to Demagoras, her heart hath vowed her to Argalus.—Sir Philip Sidney, Arcadia, p. 17.
Astonish. ‘To astonish’ has now loosened itself altogether from its etymology. The man ‘astonished’ can now be hardly said to be ‘thunderstruck,’ either in a literal or a figurative sense. But continually in our early literature we shall quite fall below the writer’s intention unless we read this meaning into the word.5
Shakespeare, Lucrece.
The knaves that lay in wait behind rose up and rolled down two huge stones, whereof the one smote the king upon the head, the other astonished his shoulder.—Holland, Livy, p. 1124.
The cramp-fish [the torpedo] knoweth her own force and power, and being herself not benumbed, is able to astonish others.—Id. Pliny, vol. i. p. 261.
In matters of religion, blind, astonished, and struck with superstition as with a planet; in one word, monks.—Milton, History of England, b. ii.
| Astrology, | } |
| Astrologer. |
As ‘chemist’ only little by little disengaged itself from ‘alchemist,’ and that, whether we have respect to the thing itself, or the name of the thing, so ‘astronomer’ from ‘astrologer,’ ‘astronomy’ from ‘astrology.’ It was long before the broad distinction between the lying art and the true science was recognized and fixed in words.
If any enchantress should come unto her, and make promise to draw down the moon from heaven, she would mock these women and laugh at their gross ignorance, who suffer themselves to be persuaded for to believe the same, as having learned somewhat in astrology.—Holland, Plutarch’s Morals, p. 324.
The astrologer is he that knoweth the course and motion of the heavens, and teacheth the same; which is a virtue if it pass not his bounds, and become of an astrologer an astronomer, who taketh upon him to give judgment and censure of these motions and courses of the heavens, what they prognosticate and destiny unto the creature.—Hooper, Early Writings, Parker Society’s Edition, p. 731.
| Astronomy, | } |
| Astronomer. |
See ‘Astrology.’
Shakespeare, Sonnets, 14.
Bowe ye not to astronomyers, neither axe ye onything of fals dyvynours.—Levit. xix. 31. Wiclif.
If astronomers say true, every man at his birth by his constellation hath divers things and desires appointed him.—Pilkington, Exposition upon the Prophet Aggeus, c. i.
| Atone, | } |
| Atonement. |
The notion of satisfaction lies now in these words rather than that of reconciliation. An ‘atonement’ is the satisfaction of a wrong which one party has committed against another, not the reconciliation of two estranged parties. This last, however, was its earlier meaning; and is in harmony with its etymology; for which see the quotation from Bishop Hall.
Shakespeare, Coriolanus, act iv. sc. 6.
His first essay succeeded so well, Moses would adventure on a second design, to atone two Israelites at variance.—Fuller, A Pisgah Sight of Palestine, vol. ii. p. 92.
Having more regard to their old variance than their new atonement.—Sir T. More, History of King Richard III.
Bishop Hall, Sat. 3. 7.
If Sir John Falstaff have committed disparagements unto you, I am of the Church, and will be glad to do my benevolence, to make atonements and compromises between you.—Shakespeare, Merry Wives of Windsor, act i. sc. 1.
Attire. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries specially head-dress, head-gear. ‘Attired with stars’ in Milton’s beautiful lines On Time is not, clothed with stars, but, crowned with them; compare Rev. xii. 1: ‘upon her head a crown of twelve stars.’
She tore her attire from her head, and rent her golden hair.—The Seven Champions, b. ii. c. 13.
With the linen mitre shall he be attired.—Lev. xvi. 4. (A. V.)
Girded with girdles upon their loins, exceeding in dyed attire upon their heads.—Ezek. xxiii. 15 (A. V.)
The heralds call the Horns of a Stag or Buck his Attire.—Bradley, Fam. Dict. s. v.
Attorney. Seldom used now except of the attorney at law; being one, according to Blackstone’s definition, ‘who is put in the place, stead, or turn of another to manage his matters of law;’ and even in this sense it is going out of honour, and giving way to ‘solicitor.’ But formerly any who in any cause acted in the room, behalf, or turn of another would be called his ‘attorney;’ thus Phillips (New World of Words) defines attorney, ‘one appointed by another man to do anything in his stead, or to take upon him the charge of his business in his absence;’ and in proof of what high use the word might have, I need but refer to the quotation which immediately follows:
Our everlasting and only High Bishop; our only attorney, our mediator, only peacemaker between God and men.—A Short Catechism, 1553.
Shakespeare, King Richard II. act ii. sc. 3.
Tertullian seems to understand this baptism for the dead [1 Cor. xv. 29] de vicario baptismate, of baptism by an attorney, by a proxy, which should be baptized for me when I am dead.—Donne, Sermons, 1640, p. 794.
Authentic. A distinction drawn by Bishop Watson between ‘genuine’ and ‘authentic’ has been often quoted: ‘A genuine book is that which was written by the person whose name it bears as the author of it. An authentic book is that which relates matters of fact as they really happened.’ Of ‘authentic’ he has certainly not seized the true force, neither do the uses of it by good writers bear him out. The true opposite to αὐθεντικός in Greek is ἀδέσποτος, and ‘authentic’ is properly original, independent, and thus coming with authority, authoritative.6 Thus, an ‘authentic’ document is, in its first meaning, a document written by the proper hand of him from whom it professes to proceed. In all the passages which follow it will be observed that the word might be exchanged for ‘authoritative.’
Davenant, Gondibert, b. ii.
Should men be admitted to read Galen or Hippocrates, and yet the monopoly of medicines permitted to some one empiric or apothecary, not liable to any account, there might be a greater danger of poisoning than if these grand physicians had never written; for that might be prescribed them by such an authentic mountebank as a cordial, which the other had detected for poison.—Jackson, The Eternal Truth of Scriptures, b. ii. c. 23.
Which letter in the copy his lordship read over, and carried the authentic with him.—Hacket, Life of Archbishop Williams, part ii. p. 24.
It were extreme partiality and injustice, the flat denial and overthrow of herself [i.e. of Justice], to put her own authentic sword into the hand of an unjust and wicked man.—Milton, Εἰκονοκλάστης. c. 28.
[A father] to instil the rudiments of vice into the unwary flexible years of his poor children, poisoning their tender minds with the irresistible authentic venom of his base example!—South, Sermons, vol. ii. p. 190; cf. vol. viii. p. 171.
Men ought to fly all pedantisms, and not rashly to use all words that are met with in every English writer, whether authentic or not.—Phillips, New World of Words, Preface.
| Awful, | } |
| Awfulness. |
This used once to be often employed of that which felt awe; it is only employed now of that which inspires it.
Milton, On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity.
The highest flames are the most tremulous, and so are the most holy and eminent religious persons more full of awfulness, of fear and modesty and humility.—Bishop Taylor, Life of Christ, part i. § 5.
Awkward. In its present signification, unhandy, ungainly, maladroit; but formerly7 untoward, and that, whether morally or physically, perverse, contrary, sinister, unlucky.
Marlowe, Edward II. act iv. sc. 7.
Marlowe, The First Book of Lucan.
Shakespeare, 1 Henry VI. act iii. sc. 2.
Id., Pericles, Prince of Tyre, act v. sc. 1.
| Babe, | } |
| Baby. |
‘Doll’ is of late introduction into the English language, is certainly later than Dryden. ‘Babe,’ ‘baby,’ or puppet supplied its place.
True religion standeth not in making, setting up, painting, gilding, clothing, and decking of dumb and dead images, which be but great puppets and babies for old fools, in dotage and wicked idolatry, to dally and play with.—Homilies; Against Peril of Idolatry.
Babes of clouts are good enough to keep children from crying.—Fuller, Holy War, b. iv. c. 17.
Spenser, The Shepherd’s Calendar, May.
Think you that the child hath any notion of the strong contents of riper age? or can he possibly imagine there are any such delights as those his babies and rattles afford him?—Allestree, Sermons, part ii. p. 148.
Bacchanal. Used now generally of a drunken reveller or votary of Bacchus; but it was once more accurately applied to the ‘bacchanalia,’ or orgies celebrated in his honour.
Do not ye, like those heathen in their bacchanals, inflame yourselves with wine.—Hammond, Paraphrase on the N. T., Ephes. v. 18.
So bacchanals of drunken riot were kept too much in London and Westminster, which offended many, that the thanks due only to God should be paid to the devil.—Hacket, Life of Archbishop Williams, part i. p. 165.
Pope, Satires of Dr. Donne.
Baffle. Now to counterwork and to defeat; but once not this so much as to mock and put to shame, and, in the technical language of chivalry, it expressed a ceremony of open scorn with which a recreant or perjured knight was visited. [See quotation from Hall, Chron. in N.E.D.]
Spenser, Fairy Queen, v. 3, 37.
He that suffers himself to be ridden, or through pusillanimity or sottishness will let every man baffle him, shall be a common laughing-stock to flout at.—Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy, part ii. § 3.
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night, act v. sc. 1.
Banquet. At present the entire course of any solemn or sumptuous entertainment; but ‘banquet’ (O. Fr. banquet, cp. It. ‘banchetto,’ a small bench or table) used generally to be restrained to a slighter repast, to the lighter and ornamental dessert or refection, or the ‘banquet of wine’ (Esth. vii. 2), which followed and crowned the more substantial repast.
I durst not venture to sit at supper with you; should I have received you then, coming as you did with armed men to banquet with me? [Convivam me tibi committere ausus non sum; comissatorem te cum armatis venientem recipiam?]—Holland, Livy, p. 1066.
Then was the banqueting-chamber in the tilt-yard at Greenwich furnished for the entertainment of these strangers, where they did both sup and banquet.—Cavendish, Life of Cardinal Wolsey.
Massinger, The Unnatural Combat, act iii. sc. 1.
| Base, | } |
| Baseness. |
The aristocratic tendencies of speech (tendencies illustrated by the word ‘aristocracy’ itself), which reappear in a thousand shapes, on the one side in such words, and their usages, as καλοκἀγαθός, ἐπιεικής, ‘noble,’ on the other in such as ‘villain,’ ‘boor,’ ‘knave,’ ‘churl,’ and in this ‘base,’ are well worthy of accurate observation. Thus ‘base’ always now implies moral unworthiness; but did not so once. ‘Base’ men were no more than men of humble birth and low degree.
Spenser, Fairy Queen, v. 5, 25.
He that is ashamed of base and simple attire, will be proud of gorgeous apparel, if he may get it.—Homilies; Against Excess of Apparel.
By this means we imitate the Lord Himself, who hath abased Himself to the lowest degree of baseness in this kind, emptying Himself (Phil. ii. 8), that he might be equal to them of greatest baseness.—Rogers, Naaman the Syrian, p. 461.
Battle. Used, not as now, of the hostile shock of armies; but often of the army itself; or sometimes in a more special sense, of the main body of the army, as distinguished from the van and rear.
Shakespeare, King Henry V. act iv. Chorus.
Richard led the vanguard of English; Duke Odo commanded in the main battle over his French; James of Auvergne brought on the Flemings and Brabanters in the rear.—Fuller, Holy War, b. iii. c. 11.
Where divine blessing leads up the van, and man’s valour brings up the battle, must not victory needs follow in the rear?—Id., A Pisgah Sight of Palestine, vol. i. p. 174.
Bawd. Not confined once to one sex only, but could have been applied to pandar and pandaress alike.
Chaucer, The Freres Tale.
One Lamb, a notorious impostor, a fortune-teller, and an employed bawd.—Hacket, Life of Archbishop Williams, part ii. p. 81.
P. Fletcher, The Purple Island, c. viii.
| Beastly, | } |
| Beastliness. |
We translate σῶμα ψυχικόν (1 Cor. xv. 44) ‘a natural body;’ some have regretted that it was not rendered ‘an animal body;’ [so R.V. margin, Jude 19.] This is exactly what Wiclif meant when he translated the ‘corpus animale’ which he found in his Vulgate, ‘a beastly body.’ The word had then no ethical tinge; nor, when it first acquired such, had it exactly that which it now possesses; in it was rather implied the absence of reason, the prerogative distinguishing man from beast.
It is sowun a beestli bodi; it schal rise a spiritual bodi.—1 Cor. xv. 44. Wiclif.
These ben, whiche departen hemsilf, beestli men, not havynge spirit.—Jude 19. Wiclif.
Where they should have made head with the whole army upon the Parthians, they sent him aid by small companies; and when they were slain, they sent him others also. So that by their beastliness and lack of consideration they had like to have made all the army fly.—North, Plutarch’s Lives, p. 769.
Bedlam. An old pronunciation of Bethlehem. The Priory known by this name was in 1546 converted into a hospital for lunatics. But it was not the place only, but the unhappy occupants of it, to whom this name used often to be applied. Such a use has now quite died out.
Shakespeare, Henry V. act v. sc. 1.
Rogers, Naamam the Syrian, p. 30.
| Benefice, | } |
| Beneficial. |
[In Middle English benefice often occurs in the senses of kindness, favour, benefit, a gift, gratuity.] Persons are not now ‘beneficial,’ which word is reserved for things, but ‘beneficent.’
Richard Rolle de Hampole, Pricke of Conscience, 5582.
Nowe thanne, Lord, Thou art God, and hast spoke to thy servant so grete benefices.—1 Chron. xvii. 26. Wiclif.
The proper nature of God is always to be helpful and beneficial.—Holland, Plutarch’s Morals, p. 600.
Shakespeare, Henry VIII. act i. sc. 1.
Bring my soul out of prison, that I may praise thy name; then shall the righteous come about me when Thou art beneficial unto me.—Ps. cxlii. 7. Geneva.
Blackguard. The scullions and other meaner retainers in a great household, who, when progress was made from one residence to another, accompanied and protected the pots, pans, and other kitchen utensils, riding among them and being smutted by them, were contemptuously styled the ‘black guard.’ It is easy to trace the subsequent history of the word. With a slight forgetfulness of its origin, he is now called a ‘blackguard,’ who would have been once said to belong to the ‘black guard.’
Close unto the front of the chariot marcheth all the sort of weavers and embroderers; next unto whom goeth the black guard and kitchenry.—Holland, Ammianus, p. 12.
A lousy slave, that within this twenty years rode with the black guard in the Duke’s carriage, ’mongst spits and dripping-pans!—Webster, The White Devil.
Thieves and murderers took upon them the cross to escape the gallows; adulterers did penance in their armour. A lamentable case that the devil’s black guard should be God’s soldiers!—Fuller, Holy War, b. i. c. 12.
Where the apologist meets with this black guard, these factors for error and sin, these agitators for the Prince of darkness, God forbid he should give place to them, or not charge them home, and resist them to the face.—Gauden, Hieraspistes, To the Reader.
Dukes, earls, and lords, great commanders in war, common soldiers and kitchen boys were glad to trudge it on foot in the mire hand in hand, a duke or earl not disdaining to support or help up one of the black guard ready to fall, lest he himself might fall into the mire, and have none to help him.—Jackson, A Treatise of the Divine Essence and Attributes, b. vi. c. 28.
We have neither school nor hospital for the distressed children, called the black guard.—Nelson, Address to Persons of Quality, p. 214.
Bleak. This, a northern form, the equivalent of O.E. blāc (cp. O.N. bleikr, Mod. German bleich, pale, colourless), comes out clearly in its original relationship with ‘bleach’ in the following quotations.
When she came out, she looked as pale and as bleak as one that were laid out dead.—Foxe, Book of Martyrs; The Escape of Agnes Wardall.
And as I looked forth, I beheld a pale horse, whom I took for the universal synagogue of hypocrites, pale as men without health, and bleak as men without that fresh spirit of life which is in Christ Jesus.—Bale, The Image of Both Churches, P. S. p. 321.
Blunderbuss. In the 17th and 18th centuries a man who blunders in his work, does it in a boisterous violent way; transferred from the name given to a short, wide-mouthed, noisy gun. [This word for a gun is due to the Dutch donderbus, i.e. thunder-gun, perverted in form from sense association with blunder, perhaps with allusion to its random, casual firing.]
We could now wish we had a discreet and intelligent adversary, and not such a hare-brained blunderbuss as you, to deal with.—Milton, A Defence of the People of England, Preface.
Pope, Dunciad, b. iii. 150.
| Boistous, | } |
| Boisterous. |
The sense of noisy, turbulent, blustering, is a later superaddition on ‘boisterous,’ or ‘boistous,’ as was its earlier form. Of old it meant no more than rude, rough, strong, uncompliant; thus the ‘boisterous wind’ of Matt. xiv. 30, is simply a violent wind, ἄνεμος ἰσχυρός in the original.
No man putteth a clout of buystous clothe [panni rudis, Vulg.] into an elde clothing.—Matt. ix. 16. Wiclif.
Shakespeare, 3 Henry VI. act ii. sc. 1.
Sylvester, Du Bartas’ Weeks, The Magnificence, p. 460.
The greatest danger indeed is from those that are stolide feroces, full of those boisterous, rude, and brutish passions, which grow as bristles upon hogs’ backs, from ignorance, pride, rusticity, and prejudice.—Gauden, Hieraspistes. To the Reader.
Dryden, Sigismunda and Guiscardo, 159, 160.
The other thing in debate seemed very hard and boisterous to his Majesty, that sundry leaders in the House of Commons would provoke him to proclaim open war with Spain.—Hacket, Life of Archbishop Williams, part i. p. 79.
Bombast. Now inflated diction, words which, sounding lofty and big, have no real substance about them. This, which is now the sole meaning, was once only the secondary and the figurative, ‘bombast’ being literally the cotton wadding with which garments are stuffed out and lined, and often so used by our writers of the Elizabethan period, and then by a vigorous image transferred to what now it exclusively means.
Certain I am there was never any kind of apparel ever invented, that could more disproportion the body of man than these doublets, stuffed with four, five, or six pound of bombast at the least.—Stubbes, Anatomy of Abuses, p. 23.
Shakespeare, Love’s Labour’s Lost, act v. sc. 2.
Bombast, the cotton-plant growing in Asia.—Phillips, New World of Words.
Boot. Not the luggage, but the attendants, used once to ride in the ‘boot,’ or rather the boots, of a carriage, for there were two. Projecting from the sides of the carriage and open to the air, they derived, no doubt, their name from their shape.
His coach being come, he causeth him to be laid in softly, and so he in one boot, and the two chirurgeons in the other, they drive away to the very next country house.—Reynolds, God’s Revenge against Murder, b. i. hist.
He [James the First] received his son into the coach, and found a slight errand to leave Buckingham behind, as he was putting his foot in the boot.—Hacket, Life of Archbishop Williams, part i. p. 196.
Bounty. The tendency to accept freedom of giving in lieu of all other virtues, or at least to regard it as the chiefest of all, the same which has brought ‘charity’ to be for many identical with almsgiving, displays itself in our present use of ‘bounty,’ which, like the French ‘bonté,’ meant goodness once.
Chaucer, Clerkes Tale (Morris, p. 283).
Nourishing meats and drinks in a sick body do lose their bounty, and augmenteth malady.—Sir T. Elyot, The Governor, b. ii. c. 7.
Brat. This word is now used always in contempt, but was not so once.
Gascoigne, De Profundis.
Tusser, Points of Good Husbandry.
| Brave, | } |
| Bravery. |
The ultimate derivation of ‘brave’ is altogether uncertain (see N.E.D.); we obtained it in the fifteenth century, the Germans in the seventeenth, (Grimm [s. v. ‘brav’] says during the Thirty Years’ War,) from one or other of the Romance languages, probably from the It. bravo. I do not very clearly trace by what steps it obtained the meaning of showy, gaudy, rich, which once it so frequently had, in addition to that meaning which it still retains.
The habit also and attire of his body, manly and soldier-like, not brave nor tricked up daintily and delicately, much adorned and set him out.—Plutarch, Lives, 695.
His clothes [St. Augustine’s] were neither brave, nor base, but comely.—Fuller, Holy State, b. iv. c. 10.
If he [the good yeoman] chance to appear in clothes above his rank, it is to grace some great man with his service, and then he blusheth at his own bravery.—Id. ib. b. ii. c. 18.
Traffic encreaseth wonderfully here, with all kind of bravery and building.—Howell, Letters, i. 6, 36.
Man is a noble animal, splendid in ashes, and pompous in the grave, solemnizing nativities and deaths with equal lustre, not omitting ceremonies of bravery in the infamy of his nature.—Sir T. Browne, Hydriotaphia.
There is a great festival now drawing on, a festival designed chiefly for the acts of a joyful piety, but generally made only an occasion of bravery.—South, Sermons, vol. ii. p. 285.
| Bribe, | } |
| Bribery. |
‘To bribe’ was to rob, a ‘bribour’ a robber, and ‘bribery’ robbery, once. For an ingenious history of the steps by which the words left their former meaning, and acquired their present, see Marsh, Lectures on the English Language, 1st Series, p. 249.
They that delight in superfluity of gorgeous apparel and dainty fare, commonly do deceive the needy, bribe, and pill from them.—Cranmer, Instruction of Prayer.
Woe be to you, scribes and pharisees, hypocrites, for ye make clean the utter side of the cup and of the platter; but within they are full of bribery [ἁρπαγῆς, and in the E. V. ‘extortion’] and excess.—Matt. xxiii. 25. Geneva Version.
| Britain, | } |
| Britany. |
The distinction between these is perfectly established now: by the first we always intend Great Britain; by the second, the French duchy, corresponding to the ancient Armorica. But it was long before this usage was accurately settled and accepted by all. By ‘Britany’ Great Britain was frequently intended, and vice versâ. Thus, in each of the passages which follow, the other word than that which actually is used would be now employed.
He [Henry VII.] was not so averse from a war, but that he was resolved to choose it, rather than to have Britain carried by France, being so great and opulent a duchy, and situate so opportunely to annoy England, either for coast or trade.—Bacon, History of King Henry VII.
The letter of Quintus Cicero, which he wrote in answer to that of his brother Marcus, desiring of him an account of Britany.—Sir T. Browne, Musæum Clausum.
Cowley, The Extasy.
Brook. This, the O.E. brūcan (cp. German brauchen), has now obtained a special limitation, meaning not so much, as once it did, to use, as to endure to use.
Spenser, Fairy Queen, iii. 4, 44.
Forasmuch as many brooked divers and many laudable ceremonies and rites heretofore used and accustomed in the Church of England, not yet abrogated by the king’s authority, his Majesty charged and commanded all his subjects to observe and keep them.—Strype, Memorials of Archbishop Cranmer, vol. i. p. 412.
And, as a German writer well observes, the French kings might well brook that title of Christianissimi from that admirable exploit of Carolus Martellus, the next means under God’s providence that other parts of Europe had not Saracen tyrants instead of Christian princes.—Jackson, The Eternal Truth of Scriptures, b. i. c. 26.
Pinkerton, Scotch Comic Ballads, p. 149.
[Bullion. This word is now generally used in the sense of metal, specially precious metal in the mass: ‘gold or silver in the lump, as distinguished from coin or manufactured articles, also applied to coined or manufactured gold or silver when considered simply with reference to its value as raw material,’ N.E.D. The word was once frequently used of gold or silver below the standard purity. Bullion has no connexion etymologically either with Fr. billon or with Lat. bulla; it appears to be identical with Fr. bouillon, Late Lat. bullionem, a boiling, hence, a melting, a melted mass of metal. The Fr. billon, debased metal, meant originally mass, having the same stem as billet (of wood). No doubt the word billon has influenced the sense of the English bullion.]
Marlowe, Hero and Leander. First Sestyad.
William Hodgson, Verses on Ben Jonson.
Sylvester, Du Bartas’ Weeks, Babylon.
Milton, Paradise Lost, i. 699.
Burial. This designates now the act, but formerly the place, of interment, being the O.E. byrgels, a tomb, see N.E.D. (s. v. buriels).
And the kyng seide, What is this biriel which Y se? And the citeseyns of that citee answerèd ento him, It is the sepulcre of the man of God that cam fro Juda.—2 Kin. xxiii. 17. Wiclif.
And birielis weren openyd, and many bodies of seyntis that hadden slepte rysen up, and thei yeden out of her birielis.—Matt. xxvii. 51, 52. Wiclif.
It happed after that upon the buryels grewe a right fayr flourdelis.—Caxton, Legenda Aurea, 151. 2.
Butchery. Now a massacre where there is little or no resistance on the part of those who are its victims. It was used once as the place where animals were slaughtered. [But see N.E.D. for modern quotations of the word in this latter sense.]
Al thing that is seld in the bocherie ete ye, axynge nothing for conscience.—1 Cor. x. 25. Wiclif.
Whence came it that they call the shambles or butcherie at Rome where flesh is to be sold, macellum?—Holland, Plutarch’s Morals, p. 869.
Buxom. The modern spelling of ‘buxom’ (it was somewhat, though not much better, when it was spelt ‘bucksome’) has quite hidden its identity with the German ‘biegsam,’ ‘beugsam,’ bendable, pliable, and so obedient. Ignorant of the history of the word, and trusting to the feeling and impression which it conveyed to their minds, men spoke of ‘buxom health’ and the like, meaning by this, having a cheerful comeliness. The epithet in this application is Gray’s, and Johnson justly finds fault with it. [See N.E.D. for the two quotations.] Milton, when he joins ‘buxom’ with ‘blithe and debonair,’ and Crashaw, in his otherwise beautiful line,
show that already for them the true meaning of the word, common enough in our earlier writers, was passing away; yet Milton still uses it in its proper sense in Paradise Lost,—‘winnowing the buxom air,’ that is, the yielding air.
I submit myself unto this holy Church of Christ, to be ever buxom and obedient to the ordinance of it, after my knowledge and power, by the help of God.—Foxe, Book of Martyrs; Examination of William Thorpe.
Buxom, kind, tractable, and pliable one to the other.—Holland, Plutarch’s Morals, 316.
Spenser, Fairy Queen, iii. 2, 23.
By. The first clause in the quotation which follows from the Authorized Version of the Bible must often either fail to convey any meaning, or must convey a wrong meaning, to the English reader of the present day. The ‘nil conscire sibi’ is what the Apostle would claim for himself; and the other passages quoted show that this idiomatic use of ‘by,’ as equivalent to ‘concerning’ (it is probably related to ἀμφὶ), but with also a suggestion of ‘against,’ was not peculiar to our Translators.
I think S. Paul spake these words [‘who mind earthly things’] by the clergymen that will take upon them the spiritual office of preaching, and yet meddle in worldly matters too, contrary to their calling.—Latimer, Sermons, p. 529.
Foxe, Book of Martyrs; Examination of Elizabeth
Young by Martin Hussie.
This angry prior told the archbishop to his face, in a good audience, concerning what he had preached of the bishop of Rome’s vices, that he knew no vices by none of the bishops of Rome.—Strype, Memorials of Archbishop Cranmer, b. i. c. 8.
Shakespeare, Love’s Labour’s Lost, act iv. sc. 3.
I know nothing by myself [οὐδὲν ἐμαυτῷ σύνοιδα]; yet am I not hereby justified; but He that judgeth me is the Lord.—1 Cor. iv. 4 (A. V.) R. V. has here ‘against myself.’
God is said to be greater than our hearts, and knoweth all things. He knows more by us than we by ourselves.—Gurnall, The Christian in Complete Armour, iii. 2, 8.
By and by. Now a future more or less remote; but when our Version of the Bible was made, the nearest possible future. The inveterate procrastination of men has put ‘by and by’ farther and farther off. Already in Barrow’s time it had acquired its present meaning.
And some counselled the archbishop to burn me by and by, and some other counselled him to drown me in the sea, for it is near hand there.—Foxe, Book of Martyrs; Examination of William Thorpe.
Give me by and by [ἐξαυτῆς] in a charger the head of John the Baptist.—Mark vi. 25 (A.V.) [R. V. has forthwith.]
These things must first come to pass; but the end is not by and by [εὐθέως].—Luke xxi. 9 (A.V.) [R. V. has immediately.]
When Demophantus fell to the ground, his soldiers fled by and by [εὐθὺς ἔφυγον] upon it.—North, Plutarch’s Lives, p. 308.
[Caitiff. According to present usage the word expresses contempt, often involving strong moral disapprobation. It means a base, mean, despicable wretch, a contemptible villain. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the word has often a tinge of pity, meaning a wretched, miserable person. Originally caitiff meant a captive, a prisoner, being in fact the same word as captive, the latter being derived directly from the Latin captivus, while caitiff is its Anglo-Norman form caitif, used in the sense of captive, weak, miserable; cp. It. cattivo, captive, lewd, bad, and Mod. Fr. chétif, of little value, wretched, miserable.]
Aristark, myne evene caytyf [concaptivus meus, Vulg.], greetith you wel.—Col. iv. 10. Wiclif (earlier version).
Chaucer, The Knightes Tale.
Avarice doth tyrannize over her caitiff and slave, not suffering him to use what she commanded him to win.—Holland, Plutarch’s Morals, p. 208.
Shakespeare, Othello, act iv. sc. 1.
Capitulate. There is no reason why the reducing of any agreement to certain heads or ‘capitula’ should not be called to ‘capitulate,’ the victor thus ‘capitulating’ as well as the vanquished; and the present limitation of the word’s use, by which it means to surrender on certain specified terms, is quite of modern introduction.
Gelon the tyrant, after he had defeated the Carthaginians near to the city Himera, when he made peace with them, capitulated, among other articles of treaty, that they should no more sacrifice any infants to Saturn.—Holland, Plutarch’s Morals, p. 405.
He [the Emperor Charles V.] makes a voyage into England, and there capitulates with the King, among other things, to take to wife his daughter Mary.—Heylin, History of the Reformation.
Wonder He will condescend to it! To capitulate with dust and ashes! To article with his own creature, with whom He may do what He will!—Howe, The Redeemer’s Dominion, &c.
Captivate. This is not used any longer in a literal, but always in a more or less allegorical sense.
They that are wise had rather have their judgments at liberty in differences of readings, than to be captivated to the one when it may be the other.—The Translators [of the Authorized Version] to the Reader.
Shakespeare, 3 Henry VI. act i. sc. 4.
Herbert, The Temple.
| Careful, | } |
| Carefulness. |
Now, full of diligence and attention; but once of anxiety.
The stretes of Sion mourn; her priests make lamentacions, her maydens are carefull, and she herself is in great hevynesse.—Lament. i. 4. Coverdale.
He shall be as a tree planted by the waters, ... and shall not be careful in the year of drought.—Jer. xvii. 8. (A.V.)
Hamilton, The Braes of Yarrow.
This petition is a remedy against this wicked carefulness of men when they seek how to get their livings, in such wise like as if there was no God at all.—Latimer, Sermons, p. 400.
Carp. The Promptorium gives ‘fabulor,’ ‘confabulor,’ ‘garrulo’ as Latin equivalents; nor do we anywhere before the sixteenth century find the subaudition of fault-finding or detraction, which now is ever implied in the word.
Piers Plowman, B Passus, xix. 65 (Skeat).
Now we leven the kyng, and of Joseph carpen.—Joseph of Arimathie, 212.
Gower, Confessio Amantis, 1.
Carpet. The covering of floors only at present, but once of tables as well. It was in this sense that a matter was ‘on the carpet’ (i.e. of the council-table). For the etymology see N.E.D.
In the fray one of their spurs engaged into a carpet upon which stood a very fair looking-glass and two noble pieces of porcelain, drew all to the ground, broke the glass.—Harleian Miscellany, vol. x. p. 189.
Private men’s halls were hung with altar-cloths; their tables and beds covered with copes, instead of carpets and coverlets.—Fuller, Church History of Britain, b. vii. § 2, 1.
And might not these [copes] be handsomely converted into private uses, to serve as carpets for their tables, coverlids to their beds, or cushions to their chairs or windows?—Heylin, History of the Reformation, To the Reader.
Carriage. Now, that which carries, or the act of carrying; but once, that which was carried, and thus baggage. From ignorance of this, the Authorized Translation, at Acts xxi. 15, has been often found fault with, but unjustly.
Spartacus charged his [Lentulus’] lieutenants that led the army, gave them battle, overthrew them, and took all their carriage [τὴν ἀποσκευὴν ἅπασαν, LXX.].—North, Plutarch’s Lives, p. 470.
And David left his carriage [τὰ σκεύη αὐτοῦ, LXX.] in the hand of the keeper of the carriage.—1 Sam. xvii. 22 (A.V.)
An index is a necessary implement, and no impediment of a book, except in the same sense in which the carriages of an army are termed impedimenta.—Fuller, Worthies of England: Norfolk.
[Cattle. This and ‘chattel’ are only different forms of the same word. In Middle English as in Old French the forms catel and chatel are dialectal variants of the same Late Latin original capitale, the word in all its forms meaning simply capital, principal, property, substance, wealth. In the time of Chaucer and Wiclif catel was still used in the sense of wealth, substance generally, whereas now its equivalent cattle is only used to express property in living animals, the form chattel being reserved for non-living personal property. It may be here noted that we have in the word fee another interesting instance of the intimate connexion between the ideas of property generally and of cattle (live stock). The word fee means now a reward or payment in money, in Middle English it meant property in general, including money and live stock; the Old English feoh, the phonetic equivalent of the Latin pecus, meant originally cattle, live stock; see Kluge, s.v. vieh.]
Though a man give al the catel of his hous [omnem substantiam, domûs suæ, Vulg.] for love, he schal despise that catel as nought.—Cant. viii. 7. Wiclif.
A womman that hadde a flux of blood twelve yeer, and hadde spendid all hir catel [omnem substantiam suam, Vulg.] in leechis.—Luke viii. 43, 44. Wiclif.
The avarous man hath more hope in his catel than in Jhesu Crist.—Chaucer, The Persones Tale (Morris, p. 330).
Censure. It speaks ill for the charity of men’s judgments, that ‘censure,’ which designated once favourable and unfavourable judgments alike, is now restricted to unfavourable; for it must be that the latter, being by far the most frequent, have in this way appropriated the word exclusively to themselves.
Shakespeare, Hamlet, act i. sc. 3.
His [Richard, Earl of Cornwall’s] voyage was variously censured; the Templars, who consented not to the peace, flouted thereat, as if all this while he had laboured about a difficult nothing; others thought he had abundantly satisfied any rational expectation.—Fuller, Holy War, b. iv. c. 8.
Which could not be past over without this censure; for it is an ill thrift to be parsimonious in the praise of that which is very good.—Hacket, Life of Archbishop Williams, part ii. p. 13.
Chaffer. Once, simply to buy, to make a bargain, now to higgle or dispute about the making of a bargain.
That no man overgo, nethir disseyve his brothir in chaffaring [in negotio, Vulg.].—1 Thess. iv. 6. Wiclif.
He comaundide his servauntis to be clepid, to whiche he hadde yive monei; to wite hou myche ech hadde wonne bi chaffaryng.—Luke xix. 15. Wiclif.
Spenser, Shepherd’s Calendar, September.
Chaos. The earliest meaning of χάος in Greek, of ‘chaos’ in Latin, was empty infinite space, the yawning kingdom of darkness; only a secondary, that which we have now adopted, namely, the rude, confused, indigested, unorganized matter out of which the universe according to the heathen cosmogony was formed. But the primary use of ‘chaos’ was not strange to the scholars of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
Beside all these things, between us and you there is fixed a great chaos, that they which will pass from hence to you may not.—Luke xvi. 26. Rheims.
And look what other thing soever besides cometh within the chaos of this monster’s mouth, be it beast, boat, or stone, down it goeth incontinently that foul great swallow of his.—Holland, Plutarch’s Morals, p. 975.
Milton, Paradise Lost, vi. 51.
| Cheat, | } |
| Cheater. |
The steps by which ‘escheat’ has yielded ‘cheat,’ and ‘escheatour’ ‘cheater,’ are interesting to trace. The ‘escheatour’ was an officer in each county who took notice of fines and forfeitures technically called ‘escheats’ on the royal manors, which had fallen in to the Crown, and certified these to the Exchequer. But he had commonly such a reputation for fraud and extortion in the execution of his office, that by an only too natural transition the ‘escheatour’ passed into the ‘cheater,’ and ‘escheat’ into ‘cheat.’ The quotation from Gurnall is curious as marking the word in the very act of this transition.
And yet the taking off these vessels was not the best and goodliest cheat of their victory; but this passed all, that with one light skirmish they became lords of all the sea along those coasts.—Holland, Livy, p. 444.
This man who otherwise beforetime was but poor and needy, by these windfalls and unexpected cheats became very wealthy.—Id. Plutarch’s Morals, p. 1237.
Falstaff. Here’s another letter to her. She bears the purse too; she is a region in Guiana, all gold and bounty. I will be cheaters to them both, and they shall be exchequers to me.—Shakespeare, Merry Wives of Windsor, act i. sc. 2.
By this impudence they may abuse credulous souls into a belief of what they say, as a cheater may pick the purses of innocent people, by showing them something like the King’s broad seal, which was indeed his own forgery.—Gurnall, The Christian in Complete Armour, 1639, vol. ii. p. 201.
Cheer. Cicero, who loves to bring out superiorities, where he can find them, of the Latin language over the Greek, urges this as one, that the Greek has no equivalent to the Latin ‘vultus’ (Leg. i. 9, 27); the countenance, that is, ethically regarded, as the ever-varying index and exponent of the sentiments and emotions of the soul (‘imago animi vultus est,’ De Orat. iii. 59, 221). Perhaps it may be charged on the English, that it too is now without such a word. But ‘cheer,’ in its earlier uses, of which vestiges still survive, was exactly such.
In swoot of thi cheer thou schalt ete thi breed, till thou turne ayen in to the erthe of which thou art takun.—Gen. iii. 19. Wiclif.
And Cayn was wrooth greetli, and his cheer felde doun.—Gen. iv. 5. Wiclif.
Surrey, Ecclesiastes, c. 3.
| Chemist, | } |
| Chemistry. |
The distinction between the alchemist and the ‘chemist,’ that the first is the fond searcher after the philosopher’s stone or the elixir vitæ, the other the follower of a true and scientific method in a particular region of nature, is of comparatively recent introduction into the language. ‘Chemist’ is = ‘alchemist’ in the quotations which follow.
Five sorts of persones he [Sir Edward Coke] used to foredesign to misery and poverty; chemists, monopolizers, concealers,10 promoters, and rythming poets.—Fuller, Worthies of England: Norfolk.
I have observed generally of chymists and theosophists, as of several other men more palpably mad, that their thoughts are carried much to astrology.—H. More, A Brief Discourse of Enthusiasm, sect. 45.
Cowley, Use of Reason in Divine Matters.
Pope, The Dunciad, b. iii. 9-12.
He that follows chemistry must have riches to throw away upon the study of it; whatever he gets by it, those furnaces must be fed with gold.—South, Sermons, 1644, vol. ix. p. 277.
Chest. I am not aware that ‘cista’ was ever used in the sense of a coffin, but ‘chest’ is continually so used in our early English; and ‘to chest,’ for to place in a coffin, occurs in the heading of a chapter in our Bibles, Gen. l. 26: ‘He [Joseph] dieth, and is chested.’
Chaucer, The Clerkes Prologue.
Hawes, Pastime of Pleasure, cap. 14.
Chimney. This, which means now the gorge or vent of a furnace or fire, was once in frequent use for the furnace itself: in this more true to its origin; being derived from the Greek κάμινος, a furnace, as it passed into the Latin ‘caminus,’ whence the Late Latin caminata, a room with a stove, the French ‘cheminée.’ The fact that it is the ‘chimney,’ in the modern use of the word, which, creating a draught, alone gives activity or fierceness to the flame, probably explains the present limitation of the meaning of the word. In Scotland ‘chimney’ still is, or lately was, ‘the grate, or iron frame that holds the fire’ (Scoticisms, Edinburgh, 1787).
And hise feet [were] lijk to latoun as in a brennynge chymney.—Rev. i. 15. Wiclif.
The Son of Man shall send his angels, and shall gather all hindrances out of his kingdom and all that worketh unlawfulness, and shall cast them into the chimney of fire.—Matt. xiii. 50. Sir John Cheke.
Chivalry. It is a striking evidence of the extent to which in the feudal times the men-at-arms, the mounted knights, were esteemed as the army, while the footmen were regarded as little better than a supernumerary rabble,—another record of this contempt probably surviving at the other end in the word ‘infantry,’—that ‘chivalry,’ which of course is but a doublet of ‘cavalry,’ could once be used as convertible with army. It needed more than one Agincourt to teach that this was so no longer. ‘Knighthood’ in like manner is continually used by Wiclif as a rendering of ‘exercitus;’ thus Gen. xxi. 33.
Abymalach forsothe aroos, and Phicol, the prince of his chyvalrye [princeps exercitûs ejus, Vulg.], and turneden ayen into the loond of Palestynes.—Gen. xxi. 33. Wiclif.
Sobach, the prynce of chyvalrye [principem militiæ].—2 Kings x. 18. Wiclif.
Chouse. The history of the introduction of this word into the popular, or at all events the schoolboy, language of England, and the quarter from whence derived, are now sufficiently well known. A ‘chiaus,’ or interpreter, attached to the Turkish Embassy, in 1609 succeeded in defrauding the Turkish and Persian merchants resident in England of 4,000l. From the vast dimensions of the fraud, vast, that is, as men counted fraudulent vastness then, and the notoriety it acquired, a ‘chiaus’ (presently spelt ‘chouse’ to look more English) became equivalent to a swindler, and somewhat later to the act of swindling.11 It is curious that a correspondent of Skinner (Etymologicon, 1671), though quite ignorant of this story, suggests a connexion between ‘chouse’ and the Turkish ‘chiaus.’ The quotation from Ben Jonson gives us the word in its passage from the old meaning to the new; while the ‘errant chouse’ in Butler’s Hudibras, iii. 1, 1249, is rather the cheated than the cheater.
About this time the Turks proposed at the instigation of the French ambassador to send a chiaus into France, England, and Holland, to acquaint those princes with the advancement of Sultan Solyman to the throne.—Rycaut, History of the Turks, vol. iii. p. 261.
Ben Jonson, The Alchemist, act i. sc. 1.
| Christen, | } |
| Christendom. |
By ‘Christendom’ we now understand that portion of the world which makes profession of the faith of Christ, as contradistinguished from all heathen and Mahomedan lands. But it was often used by our early writers as itself the profession of Christ’s faith, or sometimes for baptism, inasmuch as in that this profession was made; which is also the explanation of the use of ‘christen’ as equivalent to ‘christianize’ below. In Shakespeare our present use of ‘Christendom’ very much predominates, but once or twice he uses it in its earlier sense, as do authors much later than he.
Most part of England in the reigne of King Ethelbert was christened, Kent onely except, which remayned long after in mysbeliefe and unchristened.—E. K., Glossary to Spenser’s Shepherd’s Calendar, September.12
Sothli we ben togidere biried with him bi christendom [per baptismum, Vulg.] in to death.—Rom. vi. 4. Wiclif (earlier version).
He that might have his body wrapped in one of their old coats at the houre of death, it were as good to him as his christendom.—Tyndale, Exposition upon Matthew VI.
Sir J. Harington, Orlando Furioso, b. xliii. c. 189.
The draughts of intemperance would wash off the water of my christendom; every unclean lust does as it were bemire and wipe out my contract with my Lord.—Allestree, Sermons, vol. ii. p. 161.
Church. Our Translators are often taxed with an oversight in that they have allowed ‘robbers of churches’ to remain at Acts xix. 37, as the rendering of ἱεροσύλους, sounding, as this does, like an anachronism on the lips of the town-clerk of Ephesus. Doubtless ‘spoilers of temples,’ or some such phrase, would have been preferable; yet was there not any oversight here. The title of ‘church,’ which we with a fit reverence restrain to a Christian place of worship, was in earlier English not refused to the Jewish, or, as in that place, even to a heathen, temple as well.
And, lo, the veil of the church was torn in two parts from the top downwards.—Matt. xxvii. 51. Sir John Cheke.
Golding, Ovid’s Metamorphosis, b. xi.
Marlowe, First Book of Lucan.
| Civil, | } |
| Civility, | |
| Civilian. |
The tendency which there is in the meaning of words to run to the surface, till they lose and leave behind all their deeper significance, is well exemplified in ‘civil’ and ‘civility’—words of how deep an import once, how slight and shallow now. A civil man now is one observant of slight external courtesies in the intercourse of society; a civil man once was one who fulfilled all the duties and obligations flowing from his position as a ‘civis,’ and his relations to the other members of that ‘civitas’ to which he belonged, and ‘civility’ the condition in which those were recognized and observed. The gradual departure of all deeper significance from ‘civility’ has obliged the creation of another word, ‘civilization,’ which only came up toward the conclusion of the last century. Johnson does not know it in his Dictionary, except as a technical legal term to express the turning of a criminal process into a civil one; and, according to Boswell, altogether disallowed it in the sense which it has now acquired. A ‘civilian’ in the language of the Puritan divines was one who, despising the righteousness of Christ, did yet follow after a certain civil righteousness, a ‘justitia civilis’ of his own.
That wise and civil Roman, Julius Agricola, preferred the natural wits of Britain before the laboured studies of the French.—Milton, Areopagitica.
As for the Scythian wandering Nomades, temples sorted not with their condition, as wanting both civility and settledness.—Fuller, The Holy State, b. iii. c. 24.
Then were the Roman fashions imitated and the gown; after a while the incitements also and materials of vice and voluptuous life, proud buildings, baths, and the elegance of banquetings; which the foolisher sort called civility, but was indeed a secret art to prepare them for bondage.—Milton, History of England, b. ii.
Let us remember also that civility and fair customs were but in a narrow circle till the Greeks and Romans beat the world into better manners.—Bishop Taylor, Ductor Dubitantium, b. ii. c. 1, § 19.
The last step in this [spiritual] death is the death of civility. Civil men come nearer the saints of God than others, they come within a step or two of heaven, and yet are shut out.—Preston, Of Spiritual Death and Life, 1636, p. 59.
I proceed to the second, that is to the mere naturalist or civilian; by whom I mean such an one as lives upon dregs, the very reliques and ruins of the image of God decayed.—Rogers, Naaman the Syrian, p. 104.
Clergy. [The use of clergy in the abstract for learning is quite obsolete. Strictly speaking, it is not the same word as clergy, the collective name for the ministers of God. Clergy (learning) represents Old French clergie, whereas clergy (ministers) is due to Old French clergié (now clergé) = Late Latin clericatum.]
Richard Rolle de Hampole, Pricke of Conscience, 4832.
Hawes, Pastime of Pleasure.
Also that every of the said landlords put their second sons to learn some clergy, or some craft, whereby they may live honestly.—State Papers, State of Ireland, 1515, vol. ii. p. 30.
Climate. At present the temperature of a region, but once the region itself, the region, however, contemplated in its slope or inclination from the equator toward the pole, and therefore, by involved consequence, in respect of its temperature; which circumstance is the point of contact between the present meaning of ‘climate’ and the past. We have derived the word from the mathematical geographers of antiquity. They were wont to run imaginary parallel lines, or such at least as they intended should be parallel, to the equator; and the successive ‘climates’ (κλίματα) of the earth were the spaces and regions between these lines. See Holland’s Pliny, vol. i. p. 150.
The superficialtee of the erthe is departed in 7 parties for the 7 planetes, and tho parties ben clept clymates.—Mandeville, p. 186.
The longitude of a clymat ys a lyne ymagined fro est to west, illike distant by-twene them alle.—Chaucer, Treatise on the Astrolabe, 2, 39, 17 (Skeat, E.E.T.S. xvi).
The Funerals of King Edward VI.
Shakespeare, Julius Cæsar, act i. sc. 3.
This climate of Gaul [hanc Galliarum plagam] is enclosed on every side with fences that environ it naturally.—Holland, Ammianus, p. 47.
Climate, a portion of the earth contained between two circles parallel to the equator.—Phillips, New World of Words.
Clumsy. Although of no very frequent use in our early literature (it does not once occur in Shakespeare), this word cannot be said to be very rare; and where it occurs, it is in a sense going before its present, namely, in that of stiff, rigid, contracted with cold. It is familiar to all how ‘clumsy,’ in our modern use of the word, the fingers are when in this condition, and thus it is easy to trace the growing of the modern meaning out of the old. On its probable etymology see Mätzner’s Dictionary (s. v. clumsen).
Rigido: Starke, stiffe, or num through cold, clumzie.—Florio, New World of Words (A.D. 1611).
Havi de froid: Stiffe, clumpse, benummed.—Cotgrave, A French and English Dictionary.
The Carthaginians followed the enemies in chase as far as Trebia, and there gave over; and returned into the camp so clumsy and frozen [ita torpentes gelu] as scarcely they felt the joy of their victory.—Holland, Livy, p. 425.
This bloome of budding beauty loves not to be handled by such nummed and so clomsie hands.—Florio, Montaigne’s Essays, b. iii. c. 5, p. 536 (ed. 1603).
Coffin. The Greek κόφινος, the Latin ‘cophinus,’ is not in our early English, exclusively a funeral chest for the dead, but as often used of any basket or maund.
And that that lefte to hem of brokun metis was takun up, twelve cofyns.—Luke ix. 17. Wiclif.
Tibin, a baskette or coffyn made of wyckers or bull-rushes, or barke of a tree; such oone was Moyses put in to by the daughter of Pharao.—Sir T. Elyot, quoted in Way’s Promptorium, p. 85.
| Comfort, | } |
| Comfortable. |
The verb ‘comfortare,’ not found in classical Latin, but so frequent in the Vulgate, is first, as is plain from the ‘fortis’ which it embodies, to make strong, to corroborate, and only in a secondary sense, to console. We often find it in our early literature employed in that its proper sense. In the truce between England and Scotland, in the reign of Richard III., it is provided that neither of the kings shall maintain, favour, aid, or comfort any rebel or traitor (Hall, Richard III.).
And the child wexide, and was coumfortid [confortabatur Vulg.] in spirit.—Luke i. 80. Wiclif.
And there appered an angell unto Hym from heven, confortynge Hym [ἐνισχύων αὐτόν].—Luke xxii. 43. Tyndale.
O comfortable friar! where is my lord?—Shakespeare, Romeo, act v. sc. 3.
Common sense. The manner is very curious in which the logical, metaphysical, and theological speculations, to which the busy world is indifferent, or from which it is entirely averse, do yet in their results descend to it, and are adopted by it; while it remains quite unconscious of the source from which they spring, and counts that it has created them for itself and out of its own resources. Thus, many would wonder if asked the parentage of this phrase ‘common sense,’ would count it the most natural thing in the world that such a phrase should have been formed, that it demanded no ingenuity to form it, that the uses to which it is now put are the same which it has served from the first. Indeed, neither Reid, Beattie, nor Stewart seems to have assumed anything else. But in truth this phrase, ‘common sense,’ meant once something very different from that plain wisdom, the common heritage of men, which now we call by this name; having been bequeathed to us by a very complex theory of the senses, and of a sense which was the common bond of them all, and which passed its verdicts on the reports which they severally made to it. This theory of κοινὸς νοῦς, familiar to the Greek metaphysicians (see Cicero, Tusc. Quæst. i. 20), is sufficiently explained by the interesting quotations from Henry More and Burton. In Hawes’ Pastime of Pleasure (cap. 24) the relation between the ‘common wit’ and the ‘five wits’ is at large set forth. For an interesting history of the phrase, see Sir William Hamilton’s edition of Reid’s Works, appendix A, especially pp. 757, &c.; and for some classical uses of it Horace, Sat. i. 3. 65; Juvenal, 8. 73; Seneca, Ep. 5. 3; 105. 4; De Benef. i. 12. 3; Quintilian, i. 2. 20.
The senses receive indifferently, without discretion and judgement, white and black, sweet and sour, soft and hard; for their office is only to admit their several objects, and to carry and refer the judgement thereof to the common sense.—North, Plutarch’s Lives, p. 732.
But for fear to exceed the commission of an historian (who with the outward senses may only bring in the species, and barely relate facts, not with the common sense pass verdict or censure on them), I would say they had better have built in some other place, especially having room enough besides, and left this floor, where the Temple stood, alone in her desolations.—Fuller, Holy War, b. i. c. 4.
That there is some particular or restrained seat of the common sense is an opinion that even all philosophers and physicians are agreed upon. And it is an ordinary comparison amongst them, that the external senses and the common sense considered together are like a circle with five lines drawn from the circumference to the centre. Wherefore, as it has been obvious for them to find out particular organs for the external senses, so they have also attempted to assign some distinct part of the body to be an organ of the common sense; that is to say, as they discovered sight to be seated in the eye, hearing in the ear, smelling in the nose, &c., so they conceived that there is some part of the body wherein seeing, hearing, and all other perceptions meet together, as the lines of a circle in the centre, and that there the soul does also judge and discern of the difference of the objects of the outward senses.—H. More, Immortality of the Soul, b. iii. c. 13.
Inner senses are three in number, so called because they be within the brain-pan, as common sense, phantasy, memory. Their objects are not only things present, but they perceive the sensible species of things to come, past, absent, such as were before in the sense. This common sense is the judge or moderator of the rest, by whom we discern all differences of objects; for by mine eye I do not know that I see, or by mine ear that I hear, but by my common sense, who judgeth of sounds and colours; they are but the organs to bring the species to be censured; so that all their objects are his, and all the offices are his. The fore part of the brain is his organ or seat.—Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy, part i. sect. 2.
Companion. This had once the same contemptuous use which its synonym ‘fellow’ still retains (for a curious use of this see 2 Pet. ii. 14, Geneva Version), and which ‘gadeling,’ a word of the same meaning, had, so long as it survived in the language. Clarendon speaks of the Privy Council as at one time composed of upstarts, factious, indigent companions (b. iv.). The notion originally involved in companionship, or accompaniment, would appear to have been rather that of inferiority than of equality. A companion was an attendant.
Shakespeare, Julius Cæsar, act iv. sc. 3
As that empty barren companion in St. James who bids the poor be warm and fed and clothed (as if he were all made of mercy), yet neither clothes, feeds, nor warms his back, belly, or flesh, so fares it with these lovers.—Rogers, Naaman the Syrian, p. 391.
The young ladies, who thought themselves too much concerned to contain themselves any longer, set up their throats all together against my protector. ‘Scurvy companion! saucy tarpaulin! rude, impertinent fellow! did he think to prescribe to grandpapa!’—Smollett, Roderick Random, vol. i. c. 3.
| Conceited, | } |
| Conceitedly. |
‘Conceit’ is so entirely and irrecoverably lost to the language of philosophy, that it would be well if ‘concept,’ used often by our earlier philosophical writers, were revived.13 Yet ‘conceit’ has not so totally forsaken all its former meanings (for there are still ‘happy conceits’ in poetry), as have ‘conceited,’ which once meant well conceived, and ‘conceitedly.’
Shakespeare, A Lover’s Complaint.
Drayton, The Miseries of Queen Margaret.
The edge or hem of a garment is distinguished from the rest most commonly by some conceited or costly work.—Cowell, The Interpreter, s. v. Broderess.
Cicero most pleasantly and conceitedly.—Holland, Suetonius, p. 21.
Concubine. Our Dictionaries do not notice that the male paramour no less than the female was sometimes called by this name; on the contrary, their definitions exclude this.
The Lady Anne did falsely and traiterously procure divers of the King’s daily and familiar servants to be her adulterers and concubines.—Indictment of Anne Boleyn.
Conjure. The quotation from Foxe shows that this use of ‘to conjure’ as to conspire is not, as one might at first suspect, one of Milton’s Latinisms, and as such peculiar to him.
Divers, as well horsemen as footmen, had conjured among themselves and conspired against the Englishmen, selling their horses and arms aforehand.—Foxe, Book of Martyrs, 1641, vol. i. p. 441.
Milton, Paradise Lost, ii. 689.
Contemptible. ‘Adjectives in “able” and “ible,” both positive and negative ones, are frequently used by old writers in an active sense’ (S. Walker, Criticisms on Shakespeare, vol. i. p. 183: whom see). ‘Contemptible’ where we should now use ‘contemptuous’ is one of these; ‘intenible’ (All’s Well that Ends Well, act i. sc. 3) another; ‘discernible’ a third.
Darius wrote to Alexander in a proud and contemptible manner.—Lord Sterling, Darius, 1603 (in the argument prefixed to the Play).
If she should make tender of her love, ’tis very possible he’ll scorn it, for the man, as you know all, hath a contemptible spirit.—Shakespeare, Much Ado about Nothing, act ii. sc. 3.
Beaumont and Fletcher, The Coxcomb, act v. sc. 2.
Convince. This and ‘convict’ have been usefully desynonymized. One is ‘convinced’ of a sin, but ‘convicted’ of a crime; the former word moving always in the sphere of moral or intellectual things, but the latter often in that of things merely external.
Your Italy contains none so accomplished a courtier to convince the honour of my mistress.—Shakespeare, Cymbeline, act i. sc. 4.
Webster, Appius and Virginia, act v. sc. 5.
There was none of you that convinced Job, or that answered his words.—Job xxxii. 12. (A. V.)
Copy. A more Latin use of ‘copy,’ as ‘copia’ or abundance, was at one time frequent in English. It is easy to trace the steps by which the word attained its present significance. The only way to obtain ‘copy’ (in this Latin sense) or abundance of any document, would be by taking ‘copies’ (in our present sense) of it. Then, too, it often meant the exemplar, and is so used in the quotations from Shakespeare and Jeremy Taylor.
We cannot follow a better pattern for elocution than God Himself. Therefore He using divers words in his Holy Writ, and indifferently for one thing in nature, we may use the same liberty in our English versions out of Hebrew or Greek, for that copy or store that He hath given us.—The Translators [of the Bible, 1611] to the Reader.
Shakespeare, Henry V. act iii. sc. 1.
Drayton’s Heroical Epistles are well worth the reading also, for the purpose of our subject, which is to furnish an English historian with choice and copy of tongue.—Bolton, Hypercritica, p. 235.
The sun, the prince of all the bodies of light, is the principal, the rule and the copy, which they in their proportions imitate and transcribe.—Bishop Taylor, Exhortation to the Imitation of Christ.
Coquet. At present all our ‘coquets’ are female. But, as in the case with so many other words instanced in this volume, what once belonged to both sexes is now restricted to one.
Cocquet; a beau, a gallant, a general lover; also a wanton girl that speaks fair to several lovers at once.—Phillips, New World of Words.
Corpse. Now only used for the body abandoned by the spirit of life, but once for the body of the living equally as of the dead; now only = ‘cadaver,’ but once ‘corpus’ as well. It will follow that ‘dead corpses’ (2 Kings xix. 35 and often) is not a tautology.
Surrey, On the Death of Sir T. Wyatt.
Butler, Hudibras, iii. 1. 1349.
Women and maids shall particularly examine themselves about the variety of their apparell, their too much care of their corps.—Richeome’s Pilgrim of Loretto, by G. W.
Ben Jonson, The Alchemist, act i. sc. 1.
Counterfeit. Now, to imitate with the purpose of passing off the imitation as the original; but no such dishonest intention was formerly implied in the word.
Chaucer, The Pardoner’s Prologue (Morris, p. 90).
Christ prayseth not the unrighteous stuard, neither setteth him forth to us to counterfeit, because of his unrighteousness, but because of his wisdom only, in that he with unright so wisely provided for himself.—Tyndale, The Parable of the Wicked Mammon.
But for the Greek tongue they do note in some of his epistles that he [Brutus] counterfeited that brief compendious manner of speech of the Lacedæmonians.—North, Plutarch’s Lives, p. 818.
Courtesan. The Low Latin ‘cortesanus’ was once one haunting the court, a courtier, ‘aulicus,’ though already in Shakespeare we often meet the word in its present use.
By the wolf, no doubt, was meant the Pope, but the fox was resembled to the prelates, courtesans, priests, and the rest of the spirituality.—Foxe, Book of Martyrs, ed. 1641, vol. i. p. 511.
Courtship. We now assign to this and to ‘courtesy’ their own several domains of meanings; but they were once promiscuously used. See for another example of the same the quotation from Fuller, s. v. ‘Defalcation.’
As he [Charles I.], to acquit himself, hath not spared his adversaries, to load them with all sorts of blame and accusation, so to him, as in his book alive, there will be used no more courtship than he uses.—Milton, Iconoclastes, The Preface.
| Cumber, | } |
| Cumbrous. |
This word, the Old French combrer, has lost much of the force which it once possessed; it means now little more than passively to burden. It was once actively to annoy, disquiet, or mischief. It was as possessing this force that our Translators rendered ἵνα τί καὶ τὴν γῆν καταργεῖ; ‘why cumbereth it the ground?’ (Luke xiii. 7.)
The archers in the forefront so wounded the footmen, so galled the horses, and so combred the men of arms that the footmen durst not go forward.—Hall, Henry V. fol. 17, 6.
We have herde that certayne of oures are departed, and have troubled you and have combred [ἀνασκευάζοντες] your myndes, sayenge, Ye must be circumcised and must keep the law.—Acts xv. 24. Coverdale.
But Martha was cumbered [περιεσπᾶτο, cf. ver. 41: μεριμνᾷs καὶ τυρβάζῃ] about much serving.—Luke x. 40. (A.V.)
Spenser, Fairy Queen, i. 1. 23.
Cunning. The fact that so many words implying knowledge, art, skill, obtain in course of time a secondary meaning of crooked knowledge, art that has degenerated into artifice, skill used only to circumvent, which meanings partially or altogether put out of use their primary, is a mournful witness to the way in which intellectual gifts are too commonly misapplied. Thus there was a time when the Latin ‘dolus’ required the epithet ‘malus,’ as often as it signified a treacherous or fraudful device; but it was soon able to drop this as superfluous, and to stand by itself. Other words which have gone the same downward course are the following: τέχνη, ‘astutia,’ ‘calliditas,’ ‘List,’ ‘Kunst,’ and our English ‘craft’ and ‘cunning,’—the last, indeed, as early as Lord Bacon, who says, ‘We take cunning for a sinister or crooked wisdom,’ had acquired what is now its only acceptation; but not then, nor till long after, to the exclusion of its more honourable use. How honourable that use sometimes was, my first quotation will testify.
I believe that all these three Persons [in the Godhead] are even in power and in cunning and in might, full of grace and of all goodness.—Foxe, Book of Martyrs; Examination of William Thorpe.
So the number of them, with their brethren, that were instructed in the songs of the Lord, even all that were cunning, was two hundred fourscore and eight.—1 Chron. xxv. 7. (A.V.)
Curate. Rector, vicar, every one having cure of souls in a parish, was a ‘curate’ once. Thus ‘bishops and curates’ in the Liturgy.
They [the begging friars] letten curats to know Gods law by holding bookes fro them, and withdrawing of their vantages, by which they shulden have books and lerne.—Wiclif, Treatise against the Friars, p. 56.
If there be any man wicked because his curate teacheth him not, his blood shall be required at the curate’s hands.—Latimer, Sermons, p. 525.
Henry the Second of England commanded all prelates and curates to reside upon their dioceses and charges.—Bishop Taylor, Ductor Dubitantium, b. iii. c. 1.
Curate, a parson or vicar, one that serves a cure, or has the charge of souls in a parish.—Phillips, New World of Words.
Customer. One sitting officially at the receipt of customs, that is, of dues customably paid, and receiving these, and not one repairing customably to a shop to purchase there, was a ‘customer’ two and three centuries ago.
He healeth the man of the palsye, calleth Levi the customer, eateth with open synners, and excuseth his disciples.—What S. Marke conteyneth. Coverdale.
The extreme and horrible covetousness of the farmers, customers, and Roman usurers devoured it [Asia].—North, Plutarch’s Lives, p. 432.
We hardly can abide publicans, customers, and toll-gatherers, when they keep a ferreting and searching for such things as be hidden.—Holland, Plutarch’s Morals, p. 138.
| Danger, | } |
| Dangerous. |
A feudal term, beset with many difficulties when we seek to follow it as it passes to its present use; but very well worth some study bestowed upon it. Ducange has written on the subject, and Diez, and Littré (Hist. de la Langue Franç. vol. i. p. 49). [The Old French dangier, dongier, power, lordship, refusal, danger, is of Late Latin origin, representing a form dominiarium (from Latin dominium) which signified properly the strict right of the suzerain in regard to the fief of the vassal]; thus, ‘fief de danger,’ a fief held under a lord on strict conditions, and therefore in peril of being forfeited (juri stricto atque adeo confiscationi obnoxium; Ducange). There is no difficulty here; but there is another early use of ‘danger’ and ‘dangerous’ which is not thus explained, nor yet the connexion between it and the modern meaning of the words. I refer to that of ‘danger’ in the sense of ‘coyness,’ ‘sparingness,’ ‘niggardliness,’ and of ‘dangerous’ in the sense of haughty, difficult to please.
Romaunt of the Rose, 2317.
We ourselves also were in times past unwise, disobedient, deceived, in danger to lusts [δουλεύοντες ἐπιθυμίαις].—Tit. iii. Tyndale.
Shakespeare, Venus and Adonis.
Chaucer, The Freres Tale (Morris, p. 250).
Romaunt of the Rose, 1480.
Deadly. This and ‘mortal’ (which see) are sometimes synonyms now; thus, ‘a deadly wound’ or ‘a mortal wound;’ but they are not invariably so; ‘deadly’ being always active, while ‘mortal’ is far oftenest passive, signifying not that which inflicts death, but that which suffers death; thus, ‘a mortal body,’ or body subject to death, but not now ‘a deadly body.’ It was otherwise once. ‘Deadly’ is the constant word in Wiclif’s Bible, wherever in the later Versions ‘mortal’ occurs.
Elye was a deedli man lijk us, and in preier he preiede that it schulde not reyne on the erthe, and it reynede not three yeeris and sixe monethis.—Jam. v. 17. Wiclif.
Many holy prophets that were deadly men were martyred violently in the Old Law.—Foxe, Book of Martyrs; Examination of William Thorpe.
| Debate, | } |
| Debater. |
This word was only true to its etymology (débattre) so long as an element of strife, of war waged by the tongue or by the sword, was included in it. Thus, in some memorable lines attributed to Queen Elizabeth, Mary Queen of Scots is described as ‘the daughter of debate.’ It has now a far more harmless meaning, the element of strife having quite gone out of the word.
It is not the possession of a man’s own, but the usurping of another man’s right that hath brought injustice, debate, and trouble into the world.—Holland, Plutarch’s Morals, p. 680.
Prevy bacbiteris, detractouris, hateful to God, debateris [contumeliosi, Vulg.], proude.—Rom. i. 30. Wiclif.
| Deceivable, | } |
| Deceivableness. |
So far as we use ‘deceivable’ at all now, we use it in the passive sense, as liable to be, or capable of being, deceived. It was active when counted exchangeable with ‘deceitful’ as at 2 Pet. i. 16, where the ‘deceivable’ of Tyndale appears as the ‘deceitful’ of Cranmer’s Bible. It has fared in like manner with ‘discernible,’ ‘contemptible,’ which see, and with other words which, active once, are passive now.
Richard Rolle de Hampole, Pricke of Conscience, 1088.
The most uncertain and deceivable proof of the people’s good will and cities’ toward kings and princes are the immeasurable and extreme honours they do unto them.—North, Plutarch’s Lives, p. 743.
For we folowed not decevable fables, when we openned unto you the power and commynge of our Lorde Jesus Christ.—2 Pet. i. 16. Geneva Version.
Whose coming is after the working of Satan with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish.—2 Thess. 9, 10. (A.V.)
Defalcation. A word at present of very slovenly and inaccurate use. We read in the newspapers of a ‘defalcation’ of the revenue, not meaning thereby an active lopping off (‘defalcatio’) of certain taxes with their proceeds, which would be the only correct use, but a passive falling short in its returns from what they previously were. Can it be that some confusion of ‘defalcation’ with ‘default,’ or at least a seeing of ‘fault’ and not ‘falx’ in its second syllable (there was once a verb ‘to defalk’), has led to this?
My first crude meditations, being always hastily put together, could never please me so well at a second and more leisurable review, as to pass without some additions, defalcations, and other alterations, more or less.—Sanderson, Sermons, 1671, Preface.
As for their conjecture that Zorobabel, at the building of this temple purposely abated of those dimensions assigned by Cyrus, as too great for him to compass, in such defalcation of measures by Cyrus allowed, he showed little courtship to his master the emperor, and less religion to the Lord his God.—Fuller, A Pisgah Sight of Palestine, b. iii. c. 2.
| Defend, | } |
| Defence. |
Now, to protect, but once to protect by prohibiting or fencing round, to forbid, as ‘défendre’ is still in French.
Now wol I you defenden hasardrye.—Chaucer, The Pardoneres Tale. (Clar. Press.)
Id., The Wife of Bath’s Tale.
And oure Lord defended hem that thei scholde not tell that avisioun till that He were rysen.—Sir John Mandeville, Voiage and Travaile, p. 114.
Milton, Paradise Lost, xi. 84.
Piers Plowman, B-text, Passus xviii. 193.
| Defy, | } |
| Defiance. |
This means now to dare to the uttermost hostility, and so, as a consequence which will often follow upon this, to challenge. But in earlier use ‘to defy’ is, according to its etymology, to pronounce all bonds of faith and fellowship which existed previously between the defier and the defied to be wholly dissolved, so that nothing of treaty or even of the natural faith of man to man shall henceforth hinder extremest hostility between them. But still, when we read of one potentate sending ‘defiance’ to another, the challenge to conflict did not lie necessarily in the word, however such a message might provoke and would often be the prelude to this: it meant but the releasing of himself from all which hitherto had mutually obliged; and thus it came often to mean simply to disclaim, or renounce.
No man speaking in the Spirit of God defieth Jesus [λέγει ἀνάθεμα Ἰησοῦν].—1 Cor. xii. 3. Tyndale.
Despise not an hungry soul, and defy not the poor in his necessity.—Ecclus. iv. 2. Coverdale.
Shakespeare, 1 Henry IV. act i. sc. 8.
There is a double people-pleasing. One sordid and servile, made of falsehood and flattery, which I defy and detest.—Fuller, Appeal of Injured Innocence, p. 38.
Now although I instanced in a question which by good fortune never came to open defiance, yet there have been sects formed upon lighter grounds.—Bishop Taylor, Liberty of Prophesying, § 3, 5.
Delay. Like the French ‘délayer,’ used often in old time where we should now employ ‘allay.’ Out of an ignorance of this, and assuming it a misprint, some modern editors of our earlier authors have not scrupled to change ‘delay’ into ‘allay.’ This is quite a different word from delay, to put off.
Wine delayed with water.—Holland’s Camden, p. 20.
Earl of Surrey, The Faithful Lover, p. 34 (ed. 1717).
Even so fathers ought to delay their eager reprehensions and cutting rebukes with kindness and clemency.—Holland, Plutarch’s Morals, p. 16.
Cup-bearers know well enough, and in that regard can discern and distinguish, when they are to use more or less water to the delaying of wines.—Id., Ib. p. 652.
| Delicacy, | } |
| Delicate, | |
| Delicately, | |
| Delicious, | |
| Deliciously. |
In the same way as self-indulgence creeps over us by unmarked degrees, so there creeps over the words that designate it a subtle change; they come to contain less and less of rebuke and blame; the thing itself being tolerated, nay allowed, it must needs be that the words which express it should be received into favour too. It has been thus, as I shall have occasion to note, with ‘luxury;’ it has been thus also with this whole group of words. See the quotation from Sir W. Raleigh, s. v. ‘Feminine.’
Thus much of delicacy in general; now more particularly of his first branch, gluttony.—Nash, Christ’s Tear’s over Jerusalem, p. 140.
Cephisodorus, the disciple of Isocrates, charged him with delicacy, intemperance, and gluttony.—Blount, Philostratus, p. 229.
The most delicate and voluptuous princes have ever been the heaviest oppressors of the people, riot being a far more lavish spender of the common treasure than war or magnificence.—Habington, History of King Edward IV., p. 196.
Piers Plowman, C-text, Passus vii. 166 (Skeat).
She that liveth delicately [σπαταλῶσα] is dead while she liveth.—1 Tim. v. 6. A.V. (margin).
Yea, soberest men it [idleness] makes delicious.—Sylvester, Du Bartas, Second Week, Eden.
How much she hath glorified herself and lived deliciously [ἐστρηνίασε], so much torment and sorrow give her.—Rev. xviii. 7. (A.V.)
Demerit. It was plainly a squandering of the wealth of the language, that ‘merit’ and ‘demerit’ should mean one and the same thing; however this might be justified by the fact that ‘mereor’ and ‘demereor,’ from which they were severally derived, were scarcely discriminated in meaning. It has thus come to pass, according to the desynonymizing processes ever at work in a language, that ‘demerit’ has ended in being employed only of ill desert, while ‘merit’ is left free to good or ill, having predominantly the sense of the former.
Shakespeare, Othello, act i. sc. 2.
By our profane and unkind civil wars the world is grown to this pass, that it is reputed a singular demerit and gracious act, not to kill a citizen of Rome, but to let him live.—Holland, Pliny, vol. i. p. 456.
But the Rhodians, contrariwise, in a proud humour of theirs, reckoned up a beadroll of their demerits toward the people of Rome.—Id., Livy, p. 1179.
| Demure, | } |
| Demureness. |
Used by our earlier writers without the insinuation, which is now always latent in it, that the external shows of modesty and sobriety rest upon no corresponding realities. On the contrary the ‘demure’ was the truly modest and virtuous and good. It is one of the many words to which the suspicious nature of man, with the warrants to a certain extent which these suspicions find, has given a turn for the worse.
These and other suchlike irreligious pranks did this Dionysius play, who notwithstanding fared no worse than the most demure and innocent, dying no other death than what usually other mortals do.—H. More, Antidote against Atheism, b. iii. c. 1.
Which advantages God propounds to all the hearers of the Gospel, without any respect of works or former demureness of life, if so be they will but now come in and close with this high and rich dispensation.—Id., Grand Mystery of Godliness, b. viii. c. 5.
True History of King Leir, 1605.
In like manner women also in comely attire; with demureness [cum verecundiâ, Vulg.] and sobriety adorning themselves.—1 Tim. ii. 9. Rheims.
Spenser, Fairy Queen, ii. 1, 6.
Depart. Once used as equivalent with ‘to separate’ (divido, partior, Promptorium Parvulorum)—a fact already forgotten, when, at the last revision of the Prayer-Book in 1662, the Puritan divines objected to the form as it then stood in the Marriage Service, ‘till death us depart;’ in condescension to whose objection the words, as we now have them, ‘till death us do part,’ were introduced.
And he schal departe hem atwynne, as a scheepherde departith scheep fro kidis.—Matt. xxv. 32. Wiclif.
And whanne he hadde seid this thing, dissencioun was maad bitwixe the Fariseis and the Saduceis, and the multitude was departid.—Acts xxiii. 7. Id.
If my neighbour neede and I geve him not, neyther depart liberally with him of that which I have, than withholde I from him unrighteously that which is hys owne.—Tyndale, Parable of the Wicked Mammon.
Neither did the apostles put away their wives, after they were called unto the ministry; but they continued with their wives lovingly and faithfully, till death departed them.—Becon, An Humble Supplication unto God (1554).
Deplored. It is well known that ‘deploratus’ obtained in later Latin, through a putting of effect for cause, the sense of desperate or past all hope, and was technically applied to the sick man given over by his physicians, ‘deploratus a medicis.’
The physicians do make a kind of scruple and religion to stay with the patient after the disease is deplored; whereas, in my judgement, they ought both to inquire the skill, and to give the attendances, for the facilitating and assuaging of the pains and agonies of death.—Bacon, Advancement of Learning, ii. 10. 5.
If a man hath the mind to get the start of other sinners, and desires to be in hell before them, he need do no more but open his sails to the wind of heretical doctrine, and he is like to make a short voyage to hell; for these bring upon their maintainers a swift destruction. Nay, the Spirit of God the more to aggravate their deplored state, brings on three most dreadful instances of divine justice that ever were executed upon any sinners.—Gurnall, The Christian in Complete Armour, pt. ii. p. 317.
Deprave. As ‘pravus’ is literally crooked, we may say that ‘to deprave’ was formerly ‘untruly to present as crooked,’ to defame; while it is now ‘wickedly to make crooked.’ See the quotation from Bacon, s.v. ‘Disable.’
Their intent was none other than to get him [Cardinal Wolsey] from the king out of the realm; then might they sufficiently adventure, by the help of their chief mistress, to deprave him with the king’s highness, and so in his absence to bring him in displeasure with the king.—Cavendish, Life of Cardinal Wolsey.
Shakespeare, Much Ado about Nothing, act v. sc. 1.
I am depraved unjustly; who never deprived the Church of her authority.—Fuller, Appeal of Injured Innocence, pt. i. p. 45.
Milton, Paradise Lost, vi. 174.
Derive. Tropical uses of the verb ‘to derive’ have quite superseded the literal, so that we now ‘derive’ anything rather than waters from a river.
An infinite deal of labour there is to lade out the water that riseth upon the workmen, for fear it choke up the pits; for to prevent which inconvenience they derive it by other drains.—Holland, Plutarch’s Morals.
Nor may the industry of the citizens of Salisbury be forgotten, who have derived the river into every street therein, so that Salisbury is a heap of islets thrown together.—Fuller, Worthies of England: Wiltshire.
Descry. This verb had a technical meaning in the seventeenth century, which it afterwards lost; its loss leading to the introduction of the French verb ‘to reconnoitre,’ ridiculed as an outlandish term by Addison (1711), and more than half a century later not admitted by Johnson into his Dictionary. It was exactly this which ‘to descry,’ as used by Shakespeare and by Milton, meant. [The verb is the equivalent of the Old French descrire, descrivre, Latin describere, to describe.]
Shakespeare, Richard III. act v. sc. 3.
The house of Israel sent to descry (to spy out, R.V.) Bethel.—Judg. i. 23. (A.V.)
Milton, Paradise Lost, vi. 530.
Desire. ‘To desire’ is only to look forward with longing now; the word has lost the sense of regret or looking back upon the lost but still loved. This it once possessed in common with ‘desiderium’ and ‘desiderare,’ from which more remotely, and ‘désirer,’ from which more immediately, we derive it.
He [Jehoram] reigned in Jerusalem eight years, and departed without being desired.—2 Chron. xxi. 20. (A.V.)
She that hath a wise husband must entice him to an eternal dearness by the veil of modesty and the grave robes of chastity, and she shall be pleasant while she lives, and desired when she dies.—Bishop Taylor, The Marriage Ring, Sermon 18.
Chapman, Homer’s Iliad, xvii. 379.
Detest. For the writers of the seventeenth century ‘to detest’ still retained often the sense of its original ‘detestari,’ openly to witness against, and not merely to entertain an inward abhorrence of, a thing; as in ‘attest’ and ‘protest’ the etymological meaning still survives. It is not easy to adduce passages which absolutely prove this against one who should be disposed to deny it. There can, however, be no doubt whatever of the fact. In Du Bartas’ Weeks, 1621, p. 106, an invective against avarice is called in the margin ‘Detestation of Avarice, for her execrable and cruel effects.’
Wherefore God hath detested them with his own mouth, and clean given them over unto their own filthy lusts.—Bale, The Image of both Churches, c. 11.
She cast herself upon him [her dead husband], and with fearful cries detested the governor’s inhuman and cruel deceit.—Grimeston, History of Lewis XI., 1614, p. 228.
Satyrs were certain poems, detesting and reproving the misdemeanours of people and their vices.—Holland, Explanation of certain obscure words.
Shakespeare, Cymbeline, act ii. sc. 5.
Diamond. This, or ‘diamant’ as it used to be spelt, is a popular form of ‘adamant.’ The Greek ἀδάμας, originally used of the hardest steel, was, about the time of Theophrastus, and, so far as we know, first in his writings, transferred to the diamond, as itself also of a hardness not to be subdued; the cutting or polishing of this stone being quite a modern invention; and the Latin ‘adamas’ continued through the Middle Ages to bear this double meaning. But if ‘adamant’ meant diamond, then ‘diamond,’ by a reactive process frequent in language, would be employed for adamant as well. So far as I know, Milton is the last writer who so uses it.
Romaunt of the Rose.
This little care and regard did at length melt and break asunder those strong diamond chains with which Dionysius the elder made his boast that he left his tyranny chained to his son.—North, Plutarch’s Lives, 1656, p. 800.
Spenser, Fairy Queen, i. 6. 4.
Spenser, ib. i. 9. 19.
Zeal, whose substance is ethereal, arming in complete diamond, ascends his fiery chariot drawn with two blazing meteors, figured like beasts, but of a higher breed than any the zodiack yields, resembling two of those four, which Ezekiel and St. John saw, the one visaged like a lion to express power, high authority, and indignation; the other of countenance like a man to cast derision and scorn upon perverse and fraudulent seducers; with these the invincible warrior Zeal shaking loosely the slack reins drives over the heads of scarlet prelates, and such as are insolent to maintain traditions, bruising their stiff necks under his flaming wheels.—Milton, Defence of Smectymnuus.
Id., Paradise Lost, vi. 363.
| Diffidence, | } |
| Diffidently. |
‘Diffidence’ expresses now a not unbecoming distrust of one’s own self, with only a slight intimation, such as ‘verecundia’ obtained in the silver age of Latin literature, that perhaps this distrust is carried too far; but it was once used for distrust of others, and sometimes for distrust pushed so far as to amount to an entire withholding of all faith from them, being nearly allied to despair; as indeed in The Pilgrim’s Progress Mistress Diffidence is Giant Despair’s wife.
Of the impediments which have been in the affections, the principal whereof hath been despair or diffidence, and the strong apprehension of the difficulty, obscurity, and infiniteness, which belongeth to the invention of knowledge.—Bacon, Of the Interpretation of Nature, c. 19.
Every sin smiles in the first address, and carries light in the face, and honey in the lip; but when we have well drunk, then comes that which is worse, a whip with ten strings, fears and terrors of conscience, and shame and displeasure, and a caitiff disposition, and diffidence in the day of death.—Bishop Taylor, Life of Christ.
That affliction grew heavy upon me, and weighed me down even to a diffidence of God’s mercy.—Donne, Sermons, 1640, vol. i. p. 311.
Mediators were not wanting that endeavoured a renewing of friendship between these two prelates, which the haughtiness, or perhaps the diffidence of Bishop Laud would not accept; a symptom of policy more than of grace, not to trust a reconciled enemy.—Hacket, Life of Archbishop Williams, pt. ii. p. 86.
It was far the best course to stand diffidently against each other, with their thoughts in battle array.—Hobbes, Thucydides, b. iii. c. 83.
Digest. Scholars of the seventeenth century often employ a word of their own language in the same latitude which its equivalent possessed in the Greek or the Latin; as though it entered into all the rights of its equivalent, and corresponded with it on all points, because it corresponded in one. Thus ‘coctus’ meaning ‘digested,’ why should not ‘digested’ mean all which ‘coctus’ meant? but one of the meanings of ‘coctus’ is ‘ripened;’ ‘digested’ therefore might be employed in the same sense.
Repentance is like the sun; it produces rich spices in Arabia, it digests the American gold, and melts the snows from the Riphæan mountains.—Bishop Taylor, Doctrine and Practice of Repentance, ch. 10, § 8.
Splendid fires, aromatic spices, rich wines, and well-digested fruits.—Id., Discourse of Friendship.
Disable. Our ancestors felt that to injure the character of another was the most effectual way of disabling him; and out of a sense of this they often used ‘to disable’ in the sense of to disparage, to speak slightingly of.
Farewell, mounsieur traveller. Look, you lisp, and wear strange suits: disable all the benefits of your own country.—Shakespeare, As You Like It, act. iv. sc. 1.
If affection lead a man to favour the less worthy in desert, let him do it without depraving or disabling the better deserver.—Bacon, Essays, 49.
Discourse. It is very characteristic of the slight acquaintance with our elder literature—the most obvious source for elucidating Shakespeare’s text—which was possessed by many of his commentators down to a late day, that the phrase ‘discourse of reason,’ which he puts into Hamlet’s mouth, should have perplexed them so greatly. Gifford, a pitiless animadverter on the real or imaginary mistakes of others, and who tramples upon Warburton for attempting to explain this phrase as though Shakespeare could have ever written it, declares ‘“discourse of reason” is so poor and perplexed a phrase that I should dismiss it at once for what I believe to be his genuine language;’ and then proceeds to suggest the obvious but erroneous correction ‘discourse and reason’ (see his Massinger, vol. i. p. 148); while yet, if there be a phrase of continual recurrence among the writers of our Elizabethan age and down to Milton, it is this. I have little doubt that it occurs fifty times in Holland’s translation of Plutarch’s Moralia. What our fathers intended by ‘discourse’ and ‘discourse of reason,’ the following passages will abundantly declare.
There is not so great difference and distance between beast and beast, as there is odds in the matter of wisdom, discourse of reason, and use of memory between man and man.—Holland, Plutarch’s Morals, p. 570; cf. pp. 313, 566, 570, 752, 955, 966, 977, 980.
If you mean, by discourse, right reason, grounded on Divine Revelation and common notions, written by God in the hearts of all men, and deducing, according to the never-failing rules of logic, consequent deductions from them; if this be it which you mean by discourse, it is very meet and reasonable and necessary that men, as in all their actions, so especially in that of greatest importance, the choice of their way to happiness, should be left unto it.—Chillingworth, The Religion of Protestants, Preface.
As the intuitive knowledge is more perfect than that which insinuates itself into the soul gradually by discourse, so more beautiful the prospect of that building which is all visible at one view than what discovers itself to the sight by parcels and degrees.—Fuller, Worthies of England: Canterbury.
Milton, Paradise Lost, v. 486.
You, being by nature given to melancholic discoursing, do easilier yield to such imaginations.—North, Plutarch’s Lives, p. 830.
Chapman, Homer’s Iliad, b. ii.
Discover. This word has lost the sense of uncover, which once it had, and in which it occurs several times in our Bible.
Whether any man hath pulled down or discovered any church, chancel or chapel, or any part of them.—Archbishop Grindal, Articles of Enquiry, 1576.
The voice of the Lord discovereth the forests.—Ps. xxix. 9. A.V. and P.B.V.
Disease. Our present limitation of ‘disease’ is a very natural one, seeing that nothing so effectually wars against ease as a sick and suffering condition of body. Still the limitation is modern, and by ‘disease’ was once meant any distress or discomfort whatever, and the verb had a corresponding meaning.
Wo to hem that ben with child, and norishen in tho daies, for a greet diseese [pressura magna, Vulg.] schal be on the erthe and wraththe to this puple.—Luke xxi. 23. Wiclif.
Thy doughter is deed; why diseasest thou the master eny further?—Mark v. 35. Tyndale.
This is now the fourteenth day they [the Cardinals] have been in the Conclave, with such pain and disease that your grace would marvel that such men as they would suffer it.—State Papers (Letter to Wolsey from his Agent at Rome), vol. vi. p. 182.
Spenser, Fairy Queen, ii. 2, 12.
Dismal. Minsheu’s derivation of ‘dismal,’ that it is ‘dies malus,’ the unlucky, ill-omened day, is exactly one of those plausible etymologies which one learns after a while to reject with contempt. Yet there can be no doubt that our fathers so understood the word, and that this assumed etymology often overrules their usage of it.
Why should we then be bold to call them evil, infortunate, and dismal days? If God rule our doings continually, why shall they not prosper on those days as well as on other?—Pilkington, Exposition on Aggeus, c. 1.
Then began they to reason and debate about the dismal days [tum de diebus religiosis agitari cœptum]. And the fifteenth day before the Kalends of August, so notorious for a twofold loss and overthrow, they set this unlucky mark upon it, that it should be reputed unmeet and unconvenient for any business, as well public as private.—Holland, Livy, p. 217.
The particular calendars, wherein their [the Jews’] good or dismal days are distinguished, according to the diversity of their ways, we find, Leviticus 26.—Jackson, The Eternal Truth of Scriptures, b. i. c. 22.
Disoblige. Release from obligation lies at the root of all uses, present and past, of this word; but it was formerly more the release from an oath or a duty, and now rather from the slighter debts of social life, to which kindness and courtesy on the part of another would have held us bound or ‘obliged;’ while the contraries to these are ‘disobliging.’
He did not think that Act of Uniformity could disoblige them [the Non-Conformists] from the exercise of their office.—Bates, Mr. Richard Baxter’s Funeral Sermon.
Many that are imprisoned for debt, think themselves disobliged from payment.—Bishop Taylor, Holy Dying, c. 5, § 3.
He hath a very great obligation to do that and more; and he can noways be disobliged, but by the care of his natural relations.—Id., Measures and Offices of Friendship.
Ditty. By the ‘ditty’ were once understood the words of a song as distinguished from the musical accompaniment.
They fell to challenge and defy one another, whereupon he commanded the musician Eraton to sing unto the harp, who began his song on this wise out of the works of Hesiodus:—
for which I commended him in that he knew how to apply the ditty of his song so well unto the present time.—Holland, Plutarch’s Morals, p. 786.
So that, although we lay altogether aside the consideration of ditty or matter, the very harmony of sounds being framed in due sort, and carried by the ear to the spiritual faculties of the soul, is by a native puissance and efficacy greatly available to bring to a perfect temper whatsoever is there troubled.—Hooker, Ecclesiastical Polity, b. v. c. 38.
Document. Now used only of the material, and not, as once, of the moral proof, evidence, or means of instruction.
They were forthwith stoned to death, as a document unto others.—Sir W. Raleigh, History of the World, b. v. c. 2, § 3.
This strange dejection of these three great apostles at so mild and gentle a voice [Matt. xvii. 6], gives us a remarkable document or grounded observation of the truth of that saying of St. Paul, Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God.—Jackson, Of the Primeval State of Man, b. ii. c. 12.
It was a rare document of divine justice to ordain, and of divine wisdom so to contrive, that the dogs should lap King Ahab’s blood in the same place where they had lapped the blood of Naboth.—Id., Of the Divine Essence and Attributes, b. vi. ch. iii. 3.
Dole. This and ‘deal’ are one and the same word, and answer to the German ‘Theil,’ a part or portion.14 It has now always the subaudition of a scanty portion, as ‘to dole’ is to deal scantily and reluctantly forth (‘pittance’ has acquired the same); but Sanderson’s use of ‘dole’ is instructive, as showing that ‘distribution or division’ is all which once lay in the word.
There are certain common graces of illumination, and those indeed are given by dole, knowledge to one, to another tongues, to another healings; but it is nothing so with the special graces of sanctification. There is no distribution or division here; either all or none.—Sanderson, Sermons, 1671, vol. ii. p. 247.
Draught. Many ‘draughts’ we still acknowledge, but not the ‘draught’ or drawing of a bow.
Chaucer, Dreame, 788.
Chapman, The Odysseis of Homer, xxi. 533.
Dreadful. Now that which causes dread, but once that which felt it. See ‘Frightful,’ ‘Hateful.’
Forsothe the Lord shall gyve to thee there a dreedful herte and faylinge eyen.—Deut. xxviii. 65. Wiclif.
Chaucer, The Knightes Tale.
Heywood, Translation of Seneca’s Hercules Furens.
Daniel, Panegyric to the King.
| Dreary, | } |
| Dreariness. |
This word has slightly shifted its meaning. In our earlier English it was used exactly as its German cognate ‘traurig’ is now, to designate the heaviness at once of countenance and of heart; very much the σκυθρωπός of the Greeks, though not admitting the subaudition of anger, which in that word is often contained. [Its Old English form was dréorig.]
And the king seide to me, Whi is thi chere dreri, sithen I see thee not sick?—2 Esdras ii. 2. Wiclif.
Chaucer, The Clerkes Tale, pt. 3.
Bowe down to the pore thin ere withoute dreryness [sine tristitiâ, Vulg.]—Ecclus. iv. 8. Wiclif.
Richard Rolle de Hampole, Pricke of Conscience, 1454.
Drench. As ‘to fell’ is to make to fall, and ‘to lay’ to make to lie, so ‘to drench’ is to make to drink, though with a sense now very short of ‘to drown;’ but ‘drench’ and ‘drown,’ though desynonymized in our later English, were once perfectly adequate to one another.
Havelok the Dane, 669.
Thei that wolen be maad riche, fallen in to temptacioun, and in to snare of the devil, and in to many unprofitable desiris and noyous, whiche drenchen men in to deth and perdicioun.—1 Tim. vi. 9. Wiclif.
Chaucer, The Man of Lawes Tale, 488 (Skeat).
Drift. A drove of sheep or cattle was once a ‘drift;’ so too the act of driving.
Hoc armentum, Anglice, a dryfte.—Wright-Wülcker, Vocab. 814. 11.
By reason of the foulness and deepness of the way divers of the said sheep died in driving; partly for lack of meat and feeding, but especially by mean of the said unreasonable drift the said sheep are utterly perished.—Trevelyan Papers, p. 130.
Scotch Ballad.
Duke. One of Shakespeare’s commentators charges him with an anachronism, the incongruous transfer of a modern title to an ancient condition of society, when he styles Theseus ‘Duke of Athens.’ It would be of very little consequence if the charge was a true one; but it is not, as his English Bible might have sufficiently taught him; Gen. xxxvi. 15-19. ‘Duke’ has indeed since Shakespeare’s time become that which this objector supposed it to have been always; but all were ‘dukes’ once who were ‘duces,’ captains and leaders of their people.
He [St. Peter] techith christen men to be suget to kyngis and dukis, and to ech man for God.—Wiclif, Prologe on the first Pistel of Peter.
Hannibal, duke of Carthage.—Sir T. Elyot, The Governor, b. i. c. 10.
Chapman, Homer’s Iliad, b. ii.
Dunce. I have sought elsewhere (Study of Words, 20th edit. p. 143) to trace at some length the curious history of this word. Sufficient here to say that Duns Scotus, whom Hooker styles ‘the wittiest of the school divines,’ has given us this name, which now ascribes hopeless ignorance, invincible stupidity, to him on whom it is affixed. The course by which this came to pass was as follows. When at the Reformation and Revival of Learning the works of the Schoolmen fell into extreme disfavour, alike with the Reformers and with the votaries of the new learning, Duns, a standard-bearer among those, was so often referred to with scorn and contempt by these, that his name gradually became that byeword which ever since it has been. See the quotation from Stanyhurst, s. v. ‘Trivial.’
Remember ye not how within this thirty years, and far less, and yet dureth unto this day, the old barking curs, Dunce’s disciples, and like draff called Scotists, the children of darkness, raged in every pulpit against Greek, Latin, and Hebrew?—Tyndale, Works, 1575, p. 278.
We have set Dunce in Bocardo and have utterly banished him Oxford for ever with all his blind glosses.... The second time we came to New College after we had declared your injunctions, we found all the great Quadrant Court full of the leaves of Dunce, the wind blowing them in every corner.—Wood’s Annals, A.D. 1535, 62.
What Dunce or Sorbonist cannot maintain a paradox?—G. Harvey, Pierce’s Supererogation, p. 159.
As for terms of honesty or civility, they are gibberish unto him, and he a Jewish Rabbin or a Latin dunce with him that useth any such form of monstrous terms.—Id., ib. p. 175.
Middleton, A Chaste Maid in Cheapside, act iii. sc. 1.
| Dutch, | } |
| Dutchman. |
Till late in the seventeenth century ‘Dutch’ (‘deutsch,’ lit. belonging to the people) meant generally ‘German,’ and a ‘Dutchman’ a native of Germany, while what we now term a Dutchman was then a Hollander. In America this with so many other usages is retained, and Germans are now often called ‘Dutchmen’ there.
Though the root of the English language be Dutch, yet she may be said to have been inoculated afterwards upon a French stock.—Howell, Lexicon Tetraglotton, Preface.
Germany is slandered to have sent none to this war [the Crusades] at this first voyage; and that other pilgrims, passing through that country, were mocked by the Dutch, and called fools for their pains.—Fuller, Holy War, b. i. c. 13.
At the same time began the Teutonic Order, consisting only of Dutchmen, well descended.—Id. ib. b. ii. c. 16.
| Eager, | } |
| Eagerness. |
The physical and literal sense of ‘eager,’ that is, sharp or acrid (Fr. aigre, Lat. acrem), has quite departed from the word. It occasionally retained this, long after it was employed in the secondary meaning which is its only one at present.
Romaunt of the Rose, 215.
Bees have this property by nature to find and suck the mildest and best honey out of the sharpest and most eager flowers.—Holland, Plutarch’s Morals, p. 43.
Chapman, Homer’s Iliad, b. x.
Asproso, full of sowrenesse or eagernesse.—Florio, New World of Words (A.D. 1611).
Ebb. Nothing ‘ebbs,’ unless it is figuratively, except water now. But ‘ebb,’ oftenest an adjective, was continually used in our earlier English with a general meaning of shallow. There is still a Lancashire proverb, ‘Cross the stream where it is ebbest.’
Orpiment, a mineral digged out of the ground in Syria, where it lieth very ebb.—Holland, Pliny, vol. ii. p. 469.
This you may observe ordinarily in stones, that those parts and sides which lie covered deeper within the ground be more frim and tender, as being preserved by heat, than those outward faces which lie ebb, or above the earth.—Id., Plutarch’s Morals, p. 747.
It is all one whether I be drowned in the ebber shore, or in the midst of the deep sea.—Bishop Hall, Meditations and Vows, cent. ii.
Ecstasy. We still say of madmen that they are beside themselves; but ‘ecstasy,’ or a standing out of oneself, is no longer used as an equivalent to madness.
Shakespeare, Hamlet, act iii. sc. 4.
Edify. ‘From the Christian Church being called the temple or house of God, this word acquired a metaphorical and spiritual meaning, and is applied in the N. T. and in modern language to mental or spiritual advancement. Old English writers used it in its original sense of build’ (Bible Word Book). For some quotations which mark the coming up of the secondary or metaphorical meaning see my English Past and Present, 14th edit. p. 186.
Piers Plowman, B-text, Passus xvi. 131 (Skeat).
And the Lord God edifiede the rib, the which he toke of Adam, into a woman.—Gen. ii. 22. Wiclif.
What pleasure and also utility is to a man which intendeth to edify, himself to express the figure of the work that he purposeth, according as he hath conceived it in his own fantasy.—Sir T. Elyot, The Governor, b. i. c. 8.
Spenser, Fairy Queen, i. 1, 34.
Egregious. This has generally now an uncomplimentary subaudition, which it was very far from having of old.
Marlowe, Tamburlaine the Great, part i. act i. sc. 1.
It may be denied that bishops were our first reformers, for Wickliffe was before them, and his egregious labours are not to be neglected.—Milton, Animadversions upon the Remonstrants’ Defence.
Elder. The German ‘eltern’ still signifies parents; as ‘elders’ did once with us, though now the word has quite let this meaning go.
And hise disciplis axiden hym, Maistir, what synnede, this man or hise eldris, that he schulde be borun blynd?—John ix. 2. Wiclif.
And his elders went to Jerusalem every year at the feast of Easter.—Luke ii. 41. Coverdale.
Disobedient to their elders [γονεῦσιν ἀπειθεῖς].—Rom. i. 30. Coverdale.
Sylvester, Du Bartas, The Handycrafts.
Element. The air, as that among the four elements which is most present everywhere, was frequently ‘the element’ in our earlier literature.
When Pompey saw the dust in the element, and conjectured the flying of his horsemen, what mind he was of then it was hard to say.—North, Plutarch’s Lives, p. 553.
The face therefore of the element you have skill to discern, and the signs of times can you not?—Matt. xvi. 3. Rheims.
Shakespeare, Julius Cæsar, act i. sc. 3.
Milton, Comus, 298.
Elephant. I have little doubt that ‘elephant’ as an equivalent for ivory is a Grecism not peculiar to Chapman, in whose translations from Homer it several times occurs; but I cannot adduce an example from any other. The use of ‘olifant’ in this sense is quite common in the older French (see Didot’s Glossary in Ducange, ed. 1887).
Chapman, The Odysseis of Homer, b. xxiii. l. 306.
Elevate. There are two intentions with which anything may be lifted from the place which it occupies; either with that of setting it in a more conspicuous position; or else of removing it out of the way, or, figuratively, of withdrawing all importance and significance from it. We employ ‘to elevate’ now in the former intention; our ancestors for the most part, especially those whose style was influenced by their Latin studies, in the latter.
Withal, he forgat not to elevate as much as he could the fame of the foresaid unhappy field fought, saying, That if all had been true, there would have been messengers coming thick one after another upon their flight to bring fresh tidings still thereof.—Holland, Livy, p. 1199.
Audience he had with great assent and applause; not more for elevating the fault and trespass of the common people, than for laying the weight upon those that were the authors culpable.—Id., ib. p. 1207.
Tully in his oration Pro Flacco, to elevate or lessen that conceit which many Romans had of the nation of the Jews, objects little less unto them than our Saviour in this place doth, to wit that they were in bondage to the Romans.—Jackson, Of the Primeval Estate of Man, b. x. c. 14.
Embezzle. A man can now only ‘embezzle’ another man’s property; he might once ‘embezzle’ his own. Thus, while we might now say that the Unjust Steward ‘embezzled’ his lord’s goods (Luke xvi. 1), we could not say that the Prodigal Son ‘embezzled’ the portion which he had received from his father, and which had thus become his own (Luke xv. 13); but the one would have been as free to our early writers as the other. There is a form, ‘to imbecile,’ used by Jeremy Taylor and others, which has the same meaning as this word.
Mr. Hackluit died, leaving a fair estate to an unthrift son, who embezzled it.—Fuller, Worthies of England: Herefordshire.
The collection of these various readings [is] a testimony even of the faithfulness of these later ages of the Church, and of the high reverence they had of these records, in that they would not so much as embesell the various readings of them, but keep them still on foot for the prudent to judge of.—H. More, Grand Mystery of Godliness, b. vii. c. 11.
If we are ambitious of having a property in somewhat, or affect to call anything our own, ’tis only by nobly giving that we can accomplish our desire; that will certainly appropriate our goods to our use and benefit; but from basely keeping or vainly embezzling them, they become not our possession and enjoyment, but our theft and our bane.—Barrow, The Duty and Reward of Bounty to the Poor.
Be not prodigal of your time on earth, which is so little in your power. ’Tis so precious a thing that it is to be redeemed; ’tis therefore too precious to be embezzled and trifled away.—Howe, The Redeemer’s Dominion over the Invisible World.
Emulation. South in one of his sermons has said excellently well, ‘We ought by all means to note the difference between envy and emulation; which latter is a brave and noble thing, and quite of another nature, as consisting only in a generous imitation of something excellent; and that such an imitation as scorns to fall short of its copy, but strives if possible to outdo it. The emulator is impatient of a superior, not by depressing or maligning another but by perfecting himself. So that while that sottish thing envy sometimes fills the whole soul, as a great fog does the air: this on the contrary inspires it with a new life and vigour, whets and stirs up all the powers of it to action.’ But ‘emulation,’ though sometimes used by our early writers in this nobler sense, to express an honourable and generous rivalry, was by no means always so; it was often an exact equivalent to envy.
Zeal to promote the common good is welcomed with suspicion instead of love, and with emulation instead of thanks.—The Translators’ Preface to the Authorized Version.
Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida, act i. sc. 3.
And the patriarchs through emulation [moved with envy, A.V.] sold Joseph into Egypt.—Acts vii. 9. Rheims.
Endeavour. This, connected with ‘devoir,’ is used as a reflexive verb in our version of the New Testament and in the Prayer Book. Signifying now no more than to try, it signified once to bend all our energies, not to the attempt at fulfilling, but to the actual fulfilment of a duty. The force of such passages as Ephes. iv. 3, ‘endeavouring to keep the unity of the Spirit,’ is greatly weakened by giving to ‘endeavour’ its modern sense. Attaching to it this, we may too easily persuade ourselves that the Apostle does no more than bid us to attempt to preserve this unity, and that he quite recognizes the possibility of our being defeated in this attempt.
This is called in Scripture ‘a just man,’ that endeavoureth himself to leave all wickedness.—Latimer, Sermons, p. 340.
One thing I do, I forget that which is behind, and endevour myself into that which is before.—Phil. iii. 13. Geneva.
Engrave. This word has now quite lost the sense of ‘to bury,’ which it once possessed. See ‘Grave.’
Spenser, Fairy Queen, ii. 1, 60.
Britain’s Ida, iv. 2.
Phineas Fletcher, Poetical Miscellanies.
Enjoy. Not, when Wiclif wrote, nor till some time later, distinguished from ‘rejoice,’ which see.
And the pees of Crist enioye [pax Christi exsultet, Vulgate] in youre hertis.—Col. iii. 15. Wiclif.
| Enormous, | } |
| Enormity. |
Now only applied to that which is irregular in excess, in this way transcending the established norm or rule. But departure from rule or irregularity in any direction might be characterised as ‘enormous’ once.
Beaumont and Fletcher, The Two Noble
Kinsmen, act v. sc. 1.
Milton, Paradise Lost, v. 297.
Pyramids, arches, obelisks, were but the irregularities of vain-glory, and wild enormities of ancient magnanimity.—Sir T. Browne, Hydriotaphia.
Ensure. None of our Dictionaries, as far as I can observe, have taken notice of an old use of this word, namely, to betroth, and thus to make sure the future husband and wife to each other. See ‘Assure,’ ‘Sure.’
After his mother Mary was ensured to Joseph, before they were coupled together, it was perceived she was with child.—Matt. i. 18. Sir John Cheke.
Albeit that she was by the king’s mother and many other put in good comfort to affirm that she was ensured unto the king; yet when she was solemnly sworn to say the truth, she confessed that they were never ensured.—Sir T. More, History of King Richard III.
Epicure. Now applied only to those who devote themselves, yet with a certain elegance and refinement, to the pleasures of the table; ‘gourmets’ rather than ‘gourmands.’ We may trace two earlier stages in its meaning. By Lord Bacon and others the followers of Epicurus, whom we should call Epicureans, are often called ‘Epicures,’ after the name of the founder of their sect. From them it was transferred to all who were, like them, deniers of a divine Providence; and this is the common use of it by our elder divines. But inasmuch as those who have persuaded themselves that there is nothing above them, will seek their good, since men must seek it somewhere, in the things beneath them, in sensual delights, the name has been transferred, by that true moral instinct which is continually at work in speech, from the philosophical speculative atheist to the human swine for whom the world is but a feeding-trough.
So the Epicures say of the Stoics’ felicity placed in virtue, that it is like the felicity of a player, who if he were left of his auditors and their applause, he would straight be out of heart and countenance.—Bacon, Colours of Good and Evil, 3.
Aristotle is altogether an Epicure; he holdeth that God careth nothing for human creatures; he allegeth God ruleth the world like as a sleepy maid rocketh a child.—Luther, Table-Talk, c. 73.
The Epicure grants there is a God, but denies his providence.—Sydenham, The Athenian Babbler, 1627, p. 7.
Equal. The ethical sense of ‘equal,’ as fair, candid, just, has almost, if not altogether, departed from it. Compare ‘Unequal.’
Ben Jonson, The Fox, act iv. sc. 2.
Hear now, O house of Israel; is not my way equal? are not your ways unequal?—Ezek. xviii. 25. (A. V.)
| Equivocal, | } |
| Equivocally, | |
| Equivocation. |
The calling two or more different things by one and the same name (æque vocare) is the source of almost all error in human discourse. He who wishes to throw dust in the eyes of an opponent, to hinder his arriving at the real facts of a case, will often have recourse to this artifice, and thus ‘to equivocate’ and ‘equivocation’ have attained their present secondary meaning, very different from their original, which was simply the calling of two or more different things by one and the same word.
This visible world is but a picture of the invisible, wherein as in a portrait, things are not truly, but in equivocal shapes, and as they counterfeit some real substance in that invisible fabric.—Sir T. Browne, Religio Medici.
Which [courage and constancy] he that wanteth is no other than equivocally a gentleman, as an image or a carcass is a man.—Barrow, Sermon on Industry in our several Callings.
He [the good herald] knows when indeed the names are the same, though altered through variety of writing in various ages; and where the equivocation is untruly affected.—Fuller, The Holy State, b. ii. c. 22.
All words, being arbitrary signs, are ambiguous; and few disputers have the jealousy and skill which is necessary to discuss equivocations; and so take verbal differences for material.—Baxter, Catholic Theology, Preface.
| Err, | } |
| Error. |
‘To err’ is still to wander; but it is now used always in a figurative and ethical sense, to deviate morally from the right way. In my first quotation from Chapman, it is Telemachus who speaks, and of course Ulysses of whom he speaks.
Chapman, Homer’s Odysseis, b. iv. 435.
Id., ib. xx. 323.
Shakespeare, Hamlet, act i. sc. 1.
Marlowe, Faustus, sc. 3.
Essay. There is no particular modesty now in calling a treatise or dissertation an ‘essay;’ but from many passages it is plain that there was so once; which indeed is only agreeable to the proper meaning of the word, an ‘essay’ being a trial, proof, specimen, taste of a thing, rather than the very and completed thing itself.
To write just treatises requireth leisure in the writer, and leisure in the reader; and therefore are not so fit neither in regard of your highness’ princely affairs, nor in regard of my continual service; which is the cause which hath made me choose to write certain brief notes, set down rather significantly than curiously, which I have called Essays. The word is late, but the thing is ancient.—Bacon, Intended Dedication of his Essays to Prince Henry.
Dryden, Epistle 5, To the Earl of Roscommon.
Exemplary. A certain vagueness in our use of ‘exemplary’ makes it for us little more than a loose synonym for excellent. We plainly often forget that ‘exemplary’ is strictly that which serves, or might serve, for an exemplar to others, while only through keeping this distinctly before us will passages like the following yield their exact meaning to us.
We are not of opinion, therefore, as some are, that nature in working hath before her certain exemplary draughts or patterns.—Hooker, Ecclesiastical Polity, b. i. c. 3.
When the English, at the Spanish fleet’s approach in eighty-eight [1588], drew their ships out of Plymouth haven, the Lord Admiral Howard himself towed a cable, the least joint of whose exemplary hand drew more than twenty men besides.—Fuller, The Holy State, b. iv. c. 17.
Exemplify. The use of ‘exemplify’ in the sense of the Greek παραδειγματίζειν (Matt. i. 19) has now passed away. Observe also in the passage quoted the curious use of ‘traduce.’
He is a just and jealous God, not sparing to exemplify and traduce his best servants [i.e. when they sin], that their blur and penalty might scare all from venturing.—Rogers, Matrimonial Honour, p. 337.
Explode. All our present uses of ‘explode,’ whether literal or figurative, have reference to bursting, and to bursting with noise; and it is for the most part forgotten that these are all secondary and derived; that ‘to explode,’ originally an active verb, means to drive off the stage with loud clappings of the hands: and that when one of our early writers speaks of an ‘exploded’ heresy, or an ‘exploded’ opinion, his image is not drawn from something which, having burst, has so perished; but he would imply that it has been contemptuously driven off from the world’s stage—the fact that ‘explosion’ in this earlier sense was with a great noise being the connecting link between that sense and our present.
A third sort explode this opinion as trespassing on Divine Providence.—Fuller, Holy War, b. iii. c. 18.
A man may with more facility avoid him that circumvents by money than him that deceives with glosing terms, which made Socrates so much abhor and explode them.—Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy; Democritus to the Reader.
Milton, Paradise Lost, x. 545; cf. xi. 699.
Shall that man pass for a proficient in Christ’s school, who would have been exploded in the school of Zeno or Epictetus?—South, Sermons, vol. i. p. 431.
| Exterminate, | } |
| Extermination. |
This now signifies to destroy, to abolish; but our fathers, more true to the etymology, understood by it to drive men out of and beyond their own borders.
Most things do either associate and draw near to themselves the like, and do also drive away, chase, and exterminate their contraries.—Bacon, Colours of Good and Evil, 7.
We believe it to be the general interest of us all, as much as in us lies, with our common aid and succour to relieve our exterminated and indigent brethren.—Milton, Letter written in Cromwell’s name on occasion of the persecutions of the Vaudois.
The state of the Jews was in that depression, in that conculcation, in that consternation, in that extermination in the captivity of Babylon.—Donne, Sermons, 19.
| Facetious, | } |
| Facetiousness. |
It is certainly not a little remarkable that alike in Greek, Latin, and English, words expressive of witty festive conversation should have degenerated, though not all exactly in the same direction, and gradually acquired a worse signification than that with which they began; I mean εὐτραπελία, ‘urbanitas,’ and our own ‘facetiousness;’ this degeneracy of the words warning us how easily the thing itself degenerates: how sure it is to do so, to corrupt and spoil, if it be not seasoned with the only salt which will hinder this. ‘Facetiousness’ has already acquired the sense of buffoonery, of the making of ignoble mirth for others; there are plain indications that it will ere long acquire the sense of indecent buffoonery: while there was a time, as the examples given below will prove, when it could be ascribed in praise to high-bred ladies of the court and to grave prelates and divines.
He [Archbishop Williams] demonstrated that his mind was the lighter, because his friends were about him, and his facetious wit was true to him at those seasons, because his heart was true to his company.—Hacket, Life of Archbishop Williams, part ii. p. 32.
A grave man, yet without moroseness, as who would willingly contribute his shot of facetiousness on any just occasion.—Fuller, Worthies of England: Oxfordshire.
The king easily took notice of her [Anne Boleyn]; whether more captivated by the allurements of her beauty, or the facetiousness of her behaviour, it is hard to say.—Heylin, History of Queen Mary, Introduction.
Fact. This and ‘act’ or ‘deed’ have been usefully desynonymized. An ‘act’ or ‘deed’ implies now always a person as the actor or doer; but it is sufficient for a ‘fact’ that it exists, that it has been done, the author or doer of it falling altogether out of sight.
All the world is witnesse agaynst you, yea, and also your owne factes and deedes.—Barnes, Works, 1572, p. 251.
Spenser, Fairy Queen, 1, iv. 34.
Icetes took but a few of them to serve his turn, as if he had been ashamed of his fact, and had used their friendship by stealth.—North, Plutarch’s Lives, 1656, p. 228.
Fairy. In whatever latitude we may employ ‘fairy’ now, this Romance word is generally restricted to the middle beings of Teutonic and Romanic popular mythology; being in no case applied, as it used to be, to the δαίμονες of classical antiquity.
Of the fairy Manto [daughter of Tiresias] I cannot affirm any thing of truth, whether she were a fairy or a prophetess.—Sir J. Harington, Orlando Furioso, b. lxiii.
So long as these wise fairies Μοῖρα and Λάχεσις, that is to say Portion and Partition, had the ordering of suppers, dinners, and great feasts, a man should never see any illiberal or mechanical disorder.—Holland, Plutarch’s Morals, p. 679.
Fame. This is now generally applied to the reputation derived from the report of great actions, but was constantly used in our Authorized Version (Gen. xlv. 16; 1 Kin. x. 7; Jer. vi. 24; Matt. ix. 26), and in contemporary writings, as equivalent to report alone. Compare the distinction in Quintilian (v. 3) between ‘fama’ and ‘rumor.’
The occasion which Pharaoh took to murder all the Hebrew males was from a constant fame or prenotion that about this time there should a Hebrew male be born that should work wonders for the good of his people.—Jackson, Christ’s Everlasting Priesthood, b. x. c. xl.
And his fame [ἡ ἀκοὴ αὐτοῦ] went throughout all Syria.—Matt. iv. 24. (A. V.)
Family. It is not a good sign that the ‘family’ has now ceased to include the servants; but for a long while the word retained the largeness of its classical use, indeed it has only very recently lost it altogether.
The same care is to extend to all of our family, in their proportions, as to our children: for as by S. Paul’s reasoning the heir differs nothing from a servant while he is in minority, so a servant should differ nothing from a child in the substantial part of the care.—Bishop Taylor, Holy Living, 3, 2.
He [Sir Matthew Hale] kept no greater a family than myself.—Baxter, Life, part 3, § 107.
A just master may have an unconscionable servant; and if he have a numerous family and keep many, it is a rare thing if he have not some bad.—Sanderson, Sermons, 1671, vol. i. p. 115.
Tusser, Hundred Points of Good Husbandry, 9.
Fancy. The distinction between ‘fancy’ and ‘imagination,’ for which Wordsworth so earnestly contended, has obtained full recognition. It was the more easy for it to find acceptance from the fact that it fell in with a certain clinamen, a disposition already obscurely working in the minds of men, to ascribe different domains of meaning to these several words. But while what has been thus done has been well done, it would be a mistake to regard this as an old distinction that was now recovered from the oblivion into which it had fallen. The Greeks ascribed no such subordination of φαντασία (‘phantasy,’ ‘phansy,’ ‘fancy’) to some other word, as we now ascribe to ‘fancy’ in its relation to ‘imagination.’ Φαντασία was for Plato and Aristotle (see too Longinus, c. 15), all that ‘imagination’ is for us, the power which summons up before the mind’s eye of the poet, and of as many as he can carry along with him, the forms of things not present, shaping and moulding, dissolving and reuniting and fusing these at his will; while ‘fancy,’ as we now understand the word, with the humbler offices assigned to it, as the aggregative and associated power, more playful but less earnest, dealing often in prettinesses rather than in beauties, had not obtained any special word to express it. At the Revival of Learning both words found themselves in our English vocabulary; but far down into the seventeenth century there was no sense of any distinction between them; they were simply duplicates, one from the Greek and one from the Latin. They are constantly employed by Henry More as absolutely convertible; and where Milton makes any difference between them, it is to the advantage of ‘fancy,’ which includes ‘imagination’ as a greater includes a less. At a later day it was felt to be a waste of wealth to have two words absolutely identical in meaning for one and the same mental operation; above all, while another went without any to designate it at all; and thus the instinct which is ever at work in a language for the making the most of its resources began to work for the desynonymizing of ‘imagination’ and ‘fancy.’ This could only be effected by the coming down of one or the other from its height of place. The lot naturally fell on ‘fancy,’ the grand φαντάζεσθαι, on which it rested, being far more obscured to such as were not scholars, than the Latin ‘imago,’ on which ‘imagination’ reposed.
Shakespeare, Midsummer Night’s Dream, act v. sc. 1.
Milton, Paradise Lost, v. 300.
The devil can act upon the soul by suggesting the ideas and spiritual pictures of things to the imagination. For this is the grand repository of all the ideas and representations which the mind of man can work either upon or by. So that Satan, our skilful artist, can as easily slide his injections into the fancy as present a deluding image to the eye.—South, Sermons, 1737, vol. i. p. 110.
Fastidious. Persons are ‘fastidious’ now, as feeling disgust; things, and indeed persons too, were ‘fastidious’ once, as occasioning disgust. The word has shifted from an objective to a subjective use. ‘Fastidiosus’ had both uses, but our modern quite predominated; indeed the other is very rare.
That thing for the which children be oftentimes beaten, is to them ever after fastidious.—Sir T. Elyot, The Governor, b. i. c. 9.
Feature. This, the Old French ‘faiture,’ Latin ‘factura,’ is always the part now of a larger whole, a ‘feature’ of the landscape, the ‘features’ of the face; but there was no such limitation once; anything made, any ‘fattura,’ was a ‘feature’ once. ‘Facies’ in Latin, according to Aulus Gellius (xiii. 29), underwent a not very dissimilar change of meaning. In addition to the examples which follow, see Spenser, Fairy Queen, iv. 2, 44; iii. 9, 21.
Ben Jonson, The Forest, xi.
We have not yet found them all [the scattered limbs of Truth], nor ever shall do, till her Master’s second coming; He shall bring together every joint and member, and shall mould them into an immortal feature of loveliness and perfection.—Milton, Areopagitica.
Id. Paradise Lost, x. 278.
But this young feature [a commentary on Scripture which Archbishop Williams had planned], like an imperfect embryo, was mortified in the womb by Star-chamber vexations.—Hacket, Life of Archbishop Williams, part ii. p. 40.
Feminine. The distinction between ‘feminine’ and ‘effeminate,’ that the first is ‘womanly,’ the second ‘womanish,’ the first what becomes a woman, and under certain limitations may without reproach be affirmed of a man, while the second under all circumstances dishonours a man, as ‘mannish’ would dishonour a woman, is of comparatively modern growth. Neither could ‘feminine’ now be used as an antithesis of ‘male,’ as by Milton (Paradise Lost, i. 423) it is.
Lydgate, Poem against Idleness.
But Ninias being esteemed no man of war at all, but altogether feminine, and subject to ease and delicacy, there is no probability in that opinion.—Sir W. Raleigh, History of the World, b. ii. c 1, § 1.
Commodus, the wanton and feminine son of wise Antoninus, gave a check to the great name of his father.—Bishop Taylor, Apples of Sodom.
Firmament. We now use ‘firmament’ only for that portion of the sky on all sides visible above the horizon, having gotten this application of the word from the Vulgate (Gen. i. 6), or at any rate from the Church Latin (‘firmamentum cæleste,’ Tertullian, De Bapt. 3), as that had derived it from the Septuagint. This by στερέωμα had sought to express the firmness and stability of the sky-tent, which phenomenally (and Scripture for the most part speaks phenomenally) is drawn over the earth; and to reproduce the force of the original Hebrew word,—in which, however, there is rather the notion of expansion than of firmness (see H. More, Defence of Cabbala, p. 60). But besides this use of ‘firmament,’ totally strange to the classical ‘firmamentum,’ being derived to us from the ecclesiastical employment of the word, there is also an occasional use of it by the scholarly writers of the seventeenth century in the original classical sense, as that which makes strong or confirms.
I thought it good to make a strong head or bank to rule and guide the course of the waters; by setting down this position or firmament, namely, that all knowledge is to be limited by religion, and to be referred to use and action.—Bacon, Of the Interpretation of Nature.
Religion is the ligature of all communities, and the firmament of laws.—Bishop Taylor, Ductor Dubitantium, iii. 3, 8.
Flicker. This, with its variant ‘flacker,’ can only be used now of the wavering motion of flames; but it was not so once.
Golding, Ovid’s Metamorphosis, b. vii.
And the Cherubins flackered with their wings, and lift themselves up from the earth.—Ezek. x. 19. Coverdale.
Flirt. This, or ‘flurt,’ as it used to be spelt, is a slightly contracted form of the French ‘fleureter,’ from ‘fleur,’ a flower, to flirt meaning to go as a bee from flower to flower, daintily sipping the sweets of one flower, and then passing on to another (see Cotgrave). At the same time much graver charges came to be often implied in the word than are implied at the present. See on it A. S. Palmer’s Leaves from a Word-hunter’s Note Book, pp. 33-40.
For why may not the mother be naught, a peevish, drunken flurt, a waspish choleric slut, a crazed piece, a fool, as soon as the nurse?—Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy, part i. sect. 2.
Gadrouillette, f. A minx, gigle, flirt, callet, Gixie; (a feigned word, appliable to any such cattell).—Cotgrave, A French and English Dictionary, ed. 1673.
Flounce. This word, meaning ‘to plunge about,’ must not be confused with ‘flounce’ (a part of a dress); see Skeat’s Dictionary.
After an exhortation to his army, he [the Emperor Conrad] commanded them all at once to flounce into the river.—Fuller, Holy War, b. ii. c. 28.
Launch now into the whirlpool, or rather flounce into the mud and quagmire.—Hacket, Life of Archbishop Williams, vol. ii. p. 200.
Fondling. ‘Fond’ retains to this day, at least in poetry, not seldom the sense of foolish; but a ‘fondling’ is no longer a fool.
An epicure hath some reason to allege, an extortioner is a man of wisdom, and acteth prudently in comparison to him; but this fondling [the profane swearer] offendeth heaven and abandoneth happiness he knoweth not why or for what.—Barrow, Sermon 15.
We have many such fondlings, that are their wives’ pack-horses and slaves.—Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy, part iii. sect. 3.
Forgetful. Exactly the converse of what has happened to ‘dreadful’ and ‘frightful’ (which see) has befallen ‘forgetful.’
Webster, A Cure for a Cuckold, act iii. sc. 1.
Milton, Paradise Lost, ii. 73.
| Forlorn, | } |
| Forlorn Hope. |
There are two points of difference between the past use of ‘forlorn hope’ and the present. The first, that it was seldom used,—I can recall no single example,—in that which is now its only application, namely, of those who, being the first to mount the breach, thus set their lives upon a desperate hazard; but always of the skirmishers and others thrown out in front of an army about to engage. Here, indeed, the central notion of the word may be affirmed to agree with that it has now. These first come to hand-strokes with the enemy; they bear the brunt of their onset; with less likelihood therefore that they will escape than those who come after. This is quite true, and it comes remarkably out in my first quotation from Holland; just as in a retreat they are the ‘forlorn hope’ (Swedish Intelligencer, vol. i. p. 163), who bring up the rear. But in passages innumerable this of the greater hazard to which the ‘forlorn hope’ are exposed, has quite disappeared, and the ‘forlorn’ (for ‘hope’ is often omitted) are simply that part of the army which, being posted in the front, is first engaged. The phrase is an importation from Holland, and ‘hope’ is the Dutch ‘hoop,’ a heap, band, troop. I find it first in Gascoigne’s Fruits of War, st. 74.
The fearful are in the forlorn [see Rev. xxi. 8] of those that march for hell.—Gurnall, The Christian in Complete Armour, c. 1.
They [the Enniskillen horse] offered with spirit to make always the forlorn of the army.—Dryden (Scott’s edition), vol. vii. p. 303.
These [the Roman Velites] were loose troops, answerable in a manner to those which we call now by a French name Enfans Perdues, but when we use our own terms, The Forlorn Hope.—Sir W. Raleigh, History of the World, v. 3, 8.
Before the main battle of the Carthaginians he sets the auxiliaries and aid-soldiers, a confused rabble and medley of all sorts of nations, who, as the forlorn hope, bearing the furious heat of the first brunt, might, if they did no other good, yet, with receiving many a wound in their bodies dull and turn the edge of the enemy’s sword.—Holland, Livy, p. 765.
Upon them the light-armed forlorn hope [qui primi agminis erant] of archers and darters of the Roman host, which went before the battle to skirmish, charged forcibly with their shot.—Id., ib. p. 641; cf. pp. 1149, 1150, 1195.
Christ’s descent into hell was not ad prædicandum, to preach; useless, where his auditory was all the forlorn hope.—Fuller, Worthies of England: Hampshire.
| Formal, | } |
| Formally, | |
| Formality. |
It has been observed already, s. v. ‘Common Sense,’ that a vast number of our words have descended to us from abstruse sciences and speculations, we accepting them often in a total unconsciousness of the quarter from which they came. Another proof of this assertion is here; only, as it was metaphysics there, it is logic here which has given us the word. It is curious to trace the steps by which ‘formality,’ which meant in the language of the Schools the essentiality, the innermost heart of a thing, that which gave it its form and shape, the ‘forma formans,’ should now mean something not merely so different, but so opposite.
Shakespeare, Comedy of Errors, act v. sc. 1.
Next day we behold our bride a formal wife.—Fuller, Of the Clothes and Ornaments of the Jews, § 6.
There are many graces required of us, whose material and formal part is repentance.—Bishop Taylor, Doctrine and Practice of Repentance, i. 3, 47.
It is not only as impious and irreligious a thing, but as senseless and as absurd a thing to deny that the Son of God hath redeemed the world, as to deny that God hath created the world; and he is as formally and as gloriously a martyr that dies for this article, The Son of God is come, as he that dies for this, There is a God.—Donne, Sermons, 1640, p. 69.
According to the rule of the casuists, the formality of prodigality is inordinateness of our laying out, or misbestowing on what we should not.—Whitlock, Zootomia, p. 497.
When the school makes pertinacy or obstinacy to be the formality of heresy, they say not true at all, unless it be meant the obstinacy of the will and choice; and if they do, they speak impertinently and inartificially, this being but one of the causes that make error become heresy; the adequate and perfect formality of heresy is whatsoever makes the error voluntary and vicious.—Bishop Taylor, Liberty of Prophesying, § 2, 10.
Strong and importunate persuasions have not the nature and formality of force: but they have oftentimes the effect of it; and he that solicits earnestly, sometimes determines as certainly as if he did force.—South, Sermons, 1744, vol. viii. p. 288.
| France, | } |
| Frenchman. |
We consider now, and consider rightly, that there was properly no ‘France’ before there were Franks; and, speaking of the land and people before the Frankish conquest, we use Gaul, Gauls, and Gaulish; just as we should not now speak of Cæsar’s ‘journey into England.’ Our fathers had not these scruples (North, Plutarch’s Lives). See the quotation from Milton, s. v. ‘Civil.’
Marlowe, First Book of Lucan.
A Frenchman together with a Frenchwoman, likewise a Grecian man and woman, were let down alive into the beast-market into a vault under the ground, stoned all about.—Holland, Livy, p. 467.
Fret. This, the A.S. ‘fretan,’ the German ‘fressen,’ to eat, is with us restricted now, though once it was otherwise, to the eating of the heart through care, according to an image which we all can only too well understand; and which has given the Pythagorean ‘Cor ne edito,’ the French ‘dévoré de chagrins.’
Piers Plowman, B-text, xviii. 193 (Skeat).
Chaucer, The Monkes Tale (Morris, iii. p. 205).
Id., Knightes Tale (Morris, ii. p. 64).
Thou makest his beauty to consume away, like as it were a moth fretting a garment.—Ps. xxxix. 12. P. B. V.
Frightful. Now always active, that which inspires fright; but formerly as often passive, that which is, or is liable to be, frightened. See ‘Dreadful,’ ‘Hateful.’
Drayton, Polyolbion, Song 13.
Frippery. Now such trumpery, such odds and ends of cheap finery, as one might expect to meet at an old-clothes shop; but in our early dramatists and others of their time, the shop itself where old clothes were by the ‘fripper’ or broker scoured, ‘interpolated,’ and presented anew for sale (officina vestium tritarum, Skinner); nor had ‘frippery’ then the contemptuous subaudition of worthlessness in the objects offered for sale which its present use would imply. See Littré, Dictionnaire, s. v. Friperie.
Shakespeare, The Tempest, act iv. sc. 1.
Massinger, The City Madam, act i. sc. 1.
Hast thou foresworn all thy friends in the Old Jewry? or dost thou think us all Jews that inherit there? Yet, if thou dost, come over, and but see our frippery. Change an old shirt for a whole smock with us.—Ben Jonson, Every Man in his Humour, act i. sc. 1.
| Fulsome, | } |
| Fulsomeness. |
I have seen it questioned whether in the first syllable of ‘fulsome’ we are to find ‘foul’ or ‘full.’ There should be no question on the matter; seeing that ‘fulsome’ is properly no more than ‘full,’ and then secondly that which by its fulness and overfulness produces first satiety, and then loathing and disgust. This meaning of ‘fulsome’ is still retained in our only present application of the word, namely to compliments and flattery, which by their grossness produce this effect on him who is their object; but the word had once many more applications than this. See the quotation from Pope, s. v. ‘Bacchanal.’
Golding, Ovid’s Metamorphosis, b. vii.
Beaumont, Psyche, b. xix. st. 210.
Chaste and modest as he [Persius] is esteemed, it cannot be denied but that in some cases he is broad and fulsome. No decency is considered; no fulsomeness omitted.—Dryden, Dedication of Translations from Juvenal.
Making her soul to loathe dainty meat, or putting a surfeit and fulsomeness into all which she enjoys.—Rogers, Naaman the Syrian, p. 32.
Garb. One of many words, all whose meaning has run to the surface. A man’s dress was once only a portion, and a very insignificant portion, of his ‘garb,’ which included his whole outward presentment to other men; now it is all.
Ben Jonson, Volpone, act iv. sc. 1.
The greatest spirits, and those of the best and noblest breeding, are ever the most respective and obsequious in their garb, and the most observant and grateful in their language to all.—Feltham, Resolves, lxxxv.
Quarles, History of Samson, sect. 19.
A σεμνοπρέπεια in his person, a grave and a smiling garb compounded together to bring strangers into a liking of their welcome.—Hacket, Life of Archbishop Williams, part ii. p. 32.
Denham, On the Death of Cowley.
Garble. Writings only are ‘garbled’ now; and ‘garbled’ extracts are extracts dishonestly made, so shifted, mutilated, or in other ways tampered with, that, while presented as fair specimens, they convey a false impression. It is not difficult to trace the downward progress of the word. It is derived from the Low Latin ‘garbellare,’ to sift or cleanse corn from any dust or rubbish which may have become mingled with it. It was then applied to any separation of the good from the bad, retaining that, rejecting this, and used most commonly of spices; then generally to picking and choosing, but without any intention to select the better and to dismiss the worse: and lastly, as at present, to picking and choosing with the distinct purpose of selecting that which should convey the worse impression, and dismissing that which should have conveyed a truer and a better. It is a very favourite word in its earlier uses with Fuller.
Garbling of bow-staves (anno 1 R. 3, cap. 11) is the sorting or culling out of the good from the bad.—Cowell, The Interpreter, s.v.
There was a fair hospital, built to the honour of St. Anthony in Bennet’s Fink, in this city; the protectors and proctors whereof claimed a privilege to themselves, to garble the live pigs in the markets of the city; and such as they found starved or otherwise unwholesome for man’s sustenance they would slit in the ear, tie a bell about their necks, and turn them loose about the city.—Fuller, Worthies of England: London.
Id., Worthies of England. A Panegyric on Charles II.
To garble, to cleanse from dross and dirt, as grocers do their spices, to pick or cull out.—Phillips, New World of Words.
Garland. At present we know no other ‘garlands’ but of flowers; but ‘garland’ was at one time a technical name for the royal crown or diadem, and not a poetical one, as might at first sight appear; as witness these words of Matthew of Paris in his Life of Henry III.: Rex veste deauratâ, et coronulâ aureâ, quæ vulgariter garlanda dicitur, redimitus.
In the adoption and obtaining of the garland, I being seduced and provoked by sinister counsel did commit a naughty and abominable act.—Grafton, Chronicle of King Richard III.
In whose [Edward the Fourth’s] time, and by whose occasion, what about the getting of the garland, keeping it, losing and winning again, it hath cost more English blood than hath twice the winning of France.—Sir T. More, History of King Richard III. p. 107.
Shakespeare, 2 Henry IV. act iv. sc. 4.
Garret. The Old French ‘garite,’ which is our ‘garret,’ is properly a place of refuge or safety, being derived from the verb ‘garir;’ thus ‘gagner la guérite,’ to save oneself by flight. But this place of safety would be often on a high wall, in a watch-tower, upon the tops of houses; and thus the notion of the ‘garret’ was connected with that of the highest stage or storey. The subaudition of its being the poorest and meanest place in the house is an afterthought, and certainly has no place in any of the following uses of the word.
Peres the Plowman’s Crede, l. 214 (Skeat).
Richard Rolle de Hampole, Pricke of Conscience, 9101-9104.
It is nat possible algate to have highe garettes, or toures, or highe places for watche men; therefor it nedethe to have out watche.—Vegetius, quoted in Way’s Promptorium, p. 187.
Gazette. The French form of an Italian word ‘gazzetta,’ designating a small piece of tin money current at Venice, of the value of less than a farthing (see Florio). This word ‘gazzetta’ may possibly be quite distinct in origin from ‘gazzetta,’ the name of a monthly bill of news printed commonly at Venice (see Skeat’s Dictionary). We see the word in this latter sense, but not as yet thoroughly at home in English, for it still retains [as it retained much later] an Italian termination, in Ben Jonson’s Volpone (act v. sc. 2), of which the scene is laid at Venice. Curiously enough the same play gives also an example, quoted below, of ‘gazette’ in the sense of a coin.
If you will have a stool, it will cost you a gazet, which is almost a penny.—Coryat, Crudities, vol. ii. p. 15.
Ben Jonson, Volpone, act ii. sc. 2.
Gelding. Restrained at present to horses which have ceased to be entire; but until ‘eunuch,’ which is of somewhat late adoption, had been introduced into the language, serving also the needs which that serves now.
Thanne Joseph was lad in Egepte, and bought him Potiphar, the gelding of Pharao.—Gen. xxxix. 1. Wiclif.
And whanne thei weren come up of the watir, the spirit of the Lord ravyschide Filip, and the gelding say hym no more.—Acts viii. 39. Wiclif.
Lysimachus was very angry, and thought great scorn that Demetrius should reckon him a gelding.—North, Plutarch’s Lives, p. 741.
Generosity. We still use ‘generous’ occasionally in the sense of highly or nobly born; but ‘generosity’ has quite lost this its earlier sense, and acquired a purely ethical meaning. Its history illustrates, as does the history of so many other words, what one may call the aristocratic tendencies of language.
Nobility began in thine ancestors and ended in thee: and the generosity that they gained by virtue, thou hast blotted by vice.—Lyly, Euphues and his England.
Their eyes are commonly black and small, noses little, nails almost as long as their fingers, but serving to distinguish their generosity.—Harris, Voyages, vol. i. p. 465.
Genial. It is curious to find ‘genial’ used in a sense not merely so different, but so directly opposed to that in which we employ it now, as in the quotation which follows we do. Whether there are other examples of the same use, I am unable to say.
There are not a few very much to be pitied, whose industry being not attended with natural parts, they have sweat to little purpose, and rolled the stone in vain, which chiefly proceedeth from natural incapacity and genial indisposition, at least to those particulars whereunto they apply their endeavours.—Sir T. Browne, Vulgar Errors, b. i. c. 5.
Gestation. Now a technical word applied only to the period during which the females of animals carry their young; but acknowledging no such limitation once.
Gestation in a chariot or wagon hath in it a shaking of the body, but some vehement, and some more soft.—Sir T. Elyot, Castle of Health, b. ii. c. 34.
Gestation, an exercise of the body, by being carried in coach, litter, upon horseback, or in a vessel on the water.—Holland, Pliny, Explanation of the Words of Art.
Ghost. It is only in the very highest acceptation of all that ‘Ghost’ and ‘Spirit’ are now synonymous and exchangeable. They once were so through the entire range of their several uses.
Piers Plowman, B-text, Passus ix. 45 (Skeat).
Chaucer, The Doctoures Tale (Morris, iii. p. 77).
He sawe that the heavens opened, and the goost as a dove commynge downe upon Him.—Mark i. 10. Coverdale.
Girl. A child, and this of either sex. In Middle English the phrase ‘knave gerlys’ occurs in the sense of boys. It fared in early English not otherwise with ‘wench’ (which see).
Piers Plowman, B-text, Passus i. 32 (Skeat).
Chaucer, Canterbury Tales, The Prologue, 663
(Morris, ii. p. 21).
Gist. This, the Old French ‘giste,’ from the old ‘gésir’ (Latin ‘jacēre’) meant formerly, as the French word ‘gîte’ means still, the place where one lodges for the night. A scroll containing the route and resting places of a royal party during a progress was sometimes so called. For the connexion between ‘gist’ in this sense and ‘gist’ as we use it now see Skeat’s Dictionary.
After he had sent Popilius before in spial, and perceived that the avenues were open in all parts, he marched forward himself, and by the second gist came to Dium [secundis castris pervenit ad Dium].—Holland, Livy, p. 1174.
The guides who were to conduct them on their way had commandment so to cast their gists and journeys that by three of the clock in the morning of the third day they might assail Pythoum.—Id., ib. p. 1193.
| Glory, | } |
| Glorious, | |
| Gloriously. |
‘Glory’ is never employed now in the sense of ‘vain-glory,’ nor ‘glorious’ in that of ‘vain-glorious,’ as once they often were.
In military commanders and soldiers, vain-glory is an essential point; for as iron sharpens iron, so by glory one courage sharpeneth another.—Bacon, Essays, 54.
So commonly actions begun in glory shut up in shame.—Bishop Hall, Contemplations, On Babel.
Lyndesay, The Monarchie.
Some took this for a glorious brag; others thought he [Alcibiades] was like enough to have done it.—North, Plutarch’s Lives, p. 183.
Likewise glorious followers, who make themselves as trumpets of the commendation of those they follow, are full of inconveniences. For they taint business through want of secrecy; and they export honour from a man, and make him a return in envy.—Bacon, Essays, 48 (Abbott, ii. p. 66).
He [Anselm] little dreamt then that the weeding-hook of Reformation would after two ages pluck up his glorious poppy [prelacy] from insulting over the good corn [presbytery].—Milton, Reason of Church Government, b. i. c. 5.
I speak it not gloriously, or out of affectation.—Ben Jonson, Every Man out of his Humour, act ii. sc. 1.
| Good-nature, | } |
| Good-natured. |
As metaphysics have yielded us ‘common sense,’ and logic ‘formal’ and ‘formality,’ so we owe to theology ‘good-nature.’ By it our elder divines understood far more than we understand by it now; even all which it is possible for a man to have, without having the grace of God. The contrast between grace and nature was of course unknown to the Greeks; but, this being kept in mind, we may say that the ‘good-nature’ of our theology two centuries ago was as nearly as possible expressed by the εὐφυΐα of Aristotle (Eth. Nic. iii. 7; compare the ‘heureusement né’ of the French); the genial preparedness for the reception of every high teaching. In the paper of The Spectator, quoted below, which treats exclusively of ‘good-nature,’ the word is passing, but has by no means passed, into its modern meaning. See ‘Ill-nature.’
Good-nature, being the relics and remains of that shipwreck which Adam made, is the proper and immediate disposition to holiness. When good-nature is heightened by the grace of God, that which was natural becomes now spiritual.—Bishop Taylor, Sermon preached at the Funeral of Sir George Dalstone.
Good-nature! alas, where is it? Since Adam fell, there was never any such thing in rerum naturâ; if there be any good thing in any man, it is all from grace. We may talk of this and that, of good-natured men, and I know not what; but the very truth is, set grace aside (I mean all grace, both renewing grace and restraining grace), there is no more good-nature in any man than there was in Cain and in Judas. That thing which we use to call good-nature is indeed but a subordinate means or instrument, whereby God restraineth some men more than others, from their birth and special constitution, from sundry outrageous exorbitances, and so is a branch of this restraining grace whereof we now speak.—Sanderson, Sermons, 1671, vol. i. p. 279.
If any good did appear in the conversation of some men who followed that religion [the Pagan], it is not to be imputed to the influence of that, but to some better cause; to the relics of good-nature, to the glimmerings of natural light, or (perhaps also) to secret whispers and impressions of divine grace on some men’s minds vouchsafed in pity to them.—Barrow, Sermon 14 on the Apostles’ Creed.
They [infidels] explode all natural difference of good and evil; deriding benignity, mercy, pity, gratitude, ingenuity; that is, all instances of good-nature, as childish and silly dispositions.—Id., Sermon 6 on the Apostles’ Creed.
Xenophon, in the Life of his imaginary Prince, is always celebrating the philanthropy or good-nature of his hero, which he tells us he brought into the world with him.—Spectator, no. 169.
Gospeller. Now seldom used save in ritual language, and there designating the priest or deacon who in the divine service reads the Gospel of the day; but employed once as equivalent to ‘Evangelist,’ and subsequently applied to adherents of the Reformed faith; both which meanings have since departed from it.
Marke, the gospeller, was the goostli sone of Petre in baptysm.—Wiclif, The Prologe of Marke.
The persecution was carried on against the gospellers with much fierceness by those of the Roman persuasion.—Strype, Memorial of Archbishop Cranmer, b. iii. c. 16.
Gossip. It would be interesting to collect instances in which the humbler classes of society have retained the correct use of a word, which has been let go by those of higher education. ‘Gossip’ is one, being still used by our peasantry in its first and etymological sense, namely as a sponsor in baptism—one sib or akin in God, according to the doctrine of the medieval Church, that sponsors contracted a spiritual affinity with the child for whom they stood. ‘Gossips,’ in this primary sense, would often be familiar with one another—and thus the word was applied to all familiars and intimates. At a later day it came to signify such idle talk, the ‘commérage’ (which word has exactly the same history), which too often would find place in the intercourse of such.
They had mothers as we had; and those mothers had gossips (if their children were christened), as we are.—Ben Jonson, The Staple of News, The Induction.
Thus fareth the golden mean, through the misconstruction of the extremes. Well-tempered zeal is lukewarmness; devotion is hypocrisy; charity, ostentation; constancy, obstinacy; gravity, pride; humility, abjection of spirit; and so go through the whole parish of virtues, where misprision and envy are gossips, be sure the child shall be nicknamed.—Whitlock, Zootomia, p. 3.
Should a great lady that was invited to be a gossip, in her place send her kitchen-maid, ’twould be ill-taken.—Selden, Table-Talk, Prayer.
Grave. The O.E. ‘grafan’ (compare German ‘graben,’ ‘to grave’) was once used in the senses which ‘graben’ still retains. See ‘Engrave.’
Chaucer, Legend of Good Women, 784 (Skeat, p. 50).
I wil laye sege to the rounde aboute, and grave up dykes against ye.—Isai. xxix. 3. Coverdale.
He hath graven and digged up a pit, and is fallen himself into the destruction that he made for other.—Ps. vii. 16. (P. B. V.)
Grope. Now to feel for, and uncertainly, as does a blind man or one in the dark; but once simply to feel, to grasp.
Tho han hondis, and schulen not grope [et non palpabunt, Vulg.]—Ps. cxiii. 7. Wiclif.
I have touched and tasted the Lord, and groped Him with hands, and yet unbelief hath made all unsavoury.—Rogers, Naaman the Syrian, p. 231.
Grudge. Now to repine at the good which others already have, or which we may be required to impart to them; but it formerly implied open utterances of discontent and displeasure against others, and did the work which ‘to murmur’ does now. Traces of this still survive in our English Bible.
And the Farisees and scribis grutchiden; seiynge, For this resseyveth synful men, and etith with hem.—Luke xv. 2. Wiclif.
After bakbytyng cometh grucching or murmuracioun, and somtyme it springith of impacience agayns God, and somtyme agains man.—Chaucer, The Persones Tale (Morris, iii. p. 305).
Yea without grudging Christ suffered the cruel Jews to crown Him with most sharp thorns, and to strike Him with a reed.—Foxe, Book of Martyrs: Examination of William Thorpe.
Use hospitality one to another without grudging [ἄνευ γογγυσμῶν].—1 Pet. iv. 9. (A.V.)
Guard. Is ‘guard,’ in the sense of welt or border to a garment, nothing more than a special application of ‘guard,’ as it is familiar to us all? or is it altogether a different word with its own etymology, and only by accident offering the same letters in the same sequence? I have assumed, though not with perfect confidence, the former; for indeed otherwise the word would have no right to a place here.
Antipater wears in outward show his apparel with a plain white welt or guard, but he is within all purple, I warrant you, and as red as scarlet.—Holland, Plutarch’s Morals, p. 412.
Then were the fathers of those children glad men to see their sons apparelled like Romans, in fair long gowns, garded with purple.—North, Plutarch’s Lives, p. 492.
Shakespeare, Merchant of Venice, act ii. sc. 2.
Hag. One of the many words applied formerly to both sexes, but now restrained only to one. See ‘Coquet,’ ‘Girl,’ ‘Harlot,’ ‘Hoyden,’ ‘Termagant,’ ‘Witch.’
Golding, Ovid’s Metamorphosis, b. iv.
Chapman, Byron’s Conspiracies, act iii.
| Handsome, | } |
| Handsomeness. |
Now referred exclusively to comeliness, either literal or figurative. It is of course closely connected with ‘handy,’ indeed differs from it only in termination, and in all early uses means having prompt and dexterous use of the hands, and then generally able, adroit. In Cotgrave’s Dictionary, ‘habile,’ ‘adroit,’ ‘maniable,’ take precedence of ‘beau,’ ‘belle,’ as its French equivalents. See ‘Unhandsome.’
Few of them [the Germans] use swords or great lances; but carry javelins with a narrow and short iron, but so sharp and handsome, that, as occasion serveth, with the same weapon they can fight both at hand and afar off.—Greenwey, Tacitus, vol. i. p. 259.
A light footman’s shield he takes unto him, and a Spanish blade by his side, more handsome to fight short and close [ad propiorem habili pugnam].—Holland, Livy, p. 255.
Philopœmen sought to put down all exercise, which made men’s bodies unmeet to take pains, and to become soldiers to fight in defence of their country, that otherwise would have been very able and handsome for the same.—North, Plutarch’s Lives, p. 306.
Golding, Ovid’s Metamorphosis, b. vi.
Harbinger. This word belongs at present to our poetical diction, and to that only; its original significance being nearly or quite forgotten: as is evident from the inaccurate ways in which it has come to be used; as though a ‘harbinger’ were merely one who announced the coming, and not always one who prepared a place and lodging, a ‘harbour,’ for another. He did indeed announce the near approach, but only as an accidental consequence of his office. Our Lord, if we may reverently say it, assumed to Himself precisely the office of a ‘harbinger,’ when He said, ‘I go to prepare a place for you’ (John xiv. 2).
There was a harbinger who had lodged a gentleman in a very ill room; who expostulated with him somewhat rudely; but the harbinger carelessly said, ‘You will take pleasure in it when you are out of it.’—Bacon, Apophthegms.
Shakespeare, Macbeth, act i. sc. 4.
The fame of Frederick’s valour and maiden fortune, never as yet spotted with ill success, like a harbinger hastening before, had provided victory to entertain him at his arrival.—Fuller, Holy War, b. iii. c. 31.
Bishop Taylor, On the Annunciation.
| Hardy, | } |
| Hardily. |
When used of persons, ‘hardy’ means now enduring, indifferent to fatigue, hunger, thirst, heat, cold, and the like. But it had once a far more prevailing sense of bold, which now only remains to it in connexion with things, as we should still speak of a ‘hardy,’ meaning thereby a bold, assertion; though never now of a ‘hardy,’ if we intended a bold or daring person. Lord Bacon’s Charles the Hardy is Charles le Téméraire, or Charles the Bold, as we always style him now.
Chaucer, Legend of Good Women (Skeat, p. 86).
It is not to be forgotten that Commineus observeth of his first master, duke Charles the Hardy, namely, that he would communicate his secrets with none.—Bacon, Essays, 27.
Hardily [audacter, Vulg.] he entride in to Pilat, and axide the body of Jhesu.—Mark xv. 43. Wiclif (earlier version).
Harlot. I have no desire to entangle myself in the question of this word’s etymology; it is sufficient to observe that it was used of both sexes alike; and though for the most part a word of slight and contempt, signifying generally a low fellow, vagabond, buffoon, acrobat (in the Promptorium ‘scurrus’ is the Latin equivalent of it), implied nothing of that special form of sin to which it now exclusively refers.
Morte Arthure, 2446.
Piers Plowman, B-text, Passus 18, 77 (Skeat).
Chaucer, Prologue, 647.
Thou lord (God) has done mare wondire than the herlot: he lerid to ga in a corde, thou makis men to ga abouen the watire.—Hampole, Psalm xxxix. 7 (ed. Bramley, 1884).
No man but he and thou and such other false harlots praiseth any such preaching.—Foxe, Book of Martyrs; Examination of William Thorpe.
About this time [A.D. 1264] a redress of certain sects was intended, among which one by name specially occurreth, and called the assembly of harlots,16 a kind of people of a lewd disposition and uncivil.—Id., ib. vol. i. p. 435.
Harness. In French the difference between the ‘harness’ of a man and of a horse is expressed by a slight difference in the spelling, ‘harnois’ in one case, ‘harnais’ in the other. In English we only retain the word now in the second of these uses.
But when a stronger then he cometh apon hym and overcommeth him, he taketh from him his harnes wherin he trusted, and devideth his gooddes.—Luke xi. 22. Tyndale.
When Abram herde that his brother was taken, he harnessed his bonde-servauntes, and followed after them untill Dan.—Gen. xiv. Coverdale.
Those that sleep in Jesus shall God bring with Him, and harness them with the bright armour of life and immortality.—H. More, Grand Mystery of Godliness, b. iv. c. 18.
Milton, On the Nativity.
Harvest. It is remarkable that while spring, summer, winter, have all their home-bred names, we designate the other quarter of the year by its Latin title ‘autumn,’ ‘hærfest’ (= the German ‘Herbst’) having been appropriated to the ingathering of the fruits of this season, not to the season itself. In this indeed we are truer to the proper meaning of ‘harvest’ than the Germans, who have transferred the word from the former to the latter; for it is closely related with the Greek καρπός. Occasionally, however, as in the passages which follow, ‘harvest’ assumes with us also the signification of autumn.
These ben hervest trees [arbores autumnales, Vulg.] with out fruyt, twies deed, drawun up bi the roote.—Jude 12. Wiclif.
Golding, Ovid’s Metamorphosis, b. ii.
Hassock. Already in Phillips’s New World of Words, 1706, the ‘hassock’ was what it is now, ‘a kind of straw cushion used to kneel upon in churches;’ and some of us may remember to have seen in country churches ‘hassocks’ of solid tufts of coarse black grass which had so grown and matted together that they served this purpose sufficiently well. But this is only the secondary and transferred use of the word. It was once the name by which this coarse grass growing in these rank tufts was itself called; and this name, as Forby tells us, in Norfolk it still bears. See Way’s Promptorium, s. v. ‘Hassok.’
Land so full of hassocks as to be impossible to find the deer among them.—Hutchinson, Drainage of Land.
These hassocks, in bogs, were formerly taken up with a part of the soil, matted together with roots, shaped, trimmed, and dressed, a sufficient part of their shaggy and tufted surface being left to make kneeling much easier than on the pavement of the church or the bare-boarded floor of a pew.—Forby, East Anglia.
Hateful. This has undergone exactly the same limitation of meaning as ‘Dreadful’ and ‘Frightful,’ which see.
Shakespeare, Richard II., act ii. sc. 2.
Pope, Messiah, 57.
Hear. Our scholars of the seventeenth century occasionally use the Latin idiom, ‘to hear well,’ or ‘to hear ill,’ i.e. concerning oneself (bene audire, male audire), instead of, to be praised, or to be blamed.
[Fabius] was well aware, that not only within his own camp, but also now at Rome, he heard ill for his temporizing and slow proceedings.—Holland, Livy, p. 441.
What more national corruption, for which England hears ill abroad, than household gluttony?—Milton, Areopagitica, p. 431.
The abbot made his mind known to the Lord Keeper, that he would gladly be present in the Abbey of Westminster on our Christmas-day in the morning, to behold and hear how that great feast was solemnized in our congregations, which heard very ill beyond the seas for profaneness.—Hacket, Life of Archbishop Williams, part i. p. 210.
Hearse. Now the carriage in which the dead are conveyed to the grave, but this was not the meaning from the first. The origin is the French ‘herse,’ a harrow; this implement in France being made in a triangular form, not square as with us. Hence the name of ‘herce’ or ‘herche’ was given to a triangular framework, generally of iron, used for holding a number of candles at funerals; and which, being elaborately fashioned and framed, was allowed afterwards to remain in the church for a longer or shorter period.
In the quer was a hersse mad of tymbur and covered with blake, and armes upon the blake.—Diary of Henry Machyn, 1550-1563, p. 44.
A cenotaph is an empty funeral monument or tomb, erected for the honour of the dead; in imitation of which our hearses here in England are set up in churches during the continuance of a year or for the space of certain months.—Weever, Ancient Funeral Monuments, p. 32.
Hearse, an empty tomb erected for the honour of the dead.—Phillips, New World of Words.
Bishop King, Poems, p. 19.
Help. ‘To help’ used not unfrequently to designate an assisting in one particular manner, in that namely of healing. A recent editor of Shakespeare, not having this present in his mind, has said of those lines first quoted below: ‘We cannot but believe Shakespeare wrote, Do wounds salve wounds, &c., or Do wounds heal wounds, &c.’ There is indeed nothing here needing to be set right.
Shakespeare, Lucrece.
Id., Two Gentlemen of Verona, act iv. sc. 2.
Milton, Comus, 842.
Hereafter. This word, while it looks on to a future, always looks on to one more or less divided by an interval of time from the present. But it was often employed as equivalent to ‘from this time forth’ in our Elizabethan literature; it is so in the examples which follow.
Hereafter [ἀπ’ ἄρτι] ye shall see heaven open and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of man.—St. John i. 51. (A.V.)
Shakespeare, Macbeth, act i. sc. 4.
Hide. This word is at present only contemptuously applied to the skin of man, being reserved almost exclusively for that of beasts; but it had once the same extent of meaning as by the German ‘haut’ is still retained, which is ‘cutis’ and ‘pellis’ both.
Eger and Grine, 263.
Ballad of John de Reeve, 226.
Hobby. The ‘hobby’ being the ambling nag ridden for pleasure, and then the child’s toy in imitation of the same, had in these senses nearly passed out of use, when the word revived, by a very natural transfer, in the sense which it now has, of a favourite pursuit which carries a man easily and pleasantly forward.
They have likewise excellent good horses (we term them hobbies), which have not the same pace that other horses in their course, but a soft and round amble, setting one leg before another very finely.—Holland, Camden’s Ireland, p. 63.
King Agesilaus, having a great sort of little children, was one day disposed to solace himself among them in a gallery where they played, and took a little hobby-horse of wood, and bestrid it.—Puttenham, Art of English Poesy, b. iii. c. 24.
Randolph, Poems, p. 19.
Homely. The etymology of ‘homely’ which Milton puts into the mouth of Comus,
witnesses that in his time it had the same meaning which it has in ours. At an earlier day, however, it much more nearly corresponded to the German ‘heimlich,’ that is, secret, inward, familiar, as those may be presumed to be that share in a common home. ‘Homeliness’ is more than once the word by which Wiclif translates ‘mansuetudo:’ thus, 2 Cor. x. 1; Jam. i. 21.
And the enemyes of a man ben thei that ben homeli with him.—Matt. x. 36. Wiclif. [Cf. Judg. xix. 4, and often.]
Chaucer, The Marchaundes Tale (Morris, ii. p. 335).
Such peple be able and worthi to be admytted into the homeli reding of Holi Writt.—Pecock, Repressor, c. 3.
With all these men I was right homely, and communed with them long time and oft.—Foxe, Book of Martyrs; Examination of William Thorpe.
Hoyden. Now and for a long time since a clownish ill-bred girl; what is vulgarly called in America a ‘gal-boy,’ yet it is only another form of ‘heathen.’ Remote as the words appear at starting, it will not be hard to bring them close together. In the first place, it is only by a superinduced meaning that ‘heathen’ has its present sense of non-christian; it is properly, as Grimm has abundantly shown, as indeed Piers Plowman had told us long ago, a dweller on the heath; then any living a wild savage life; thus we have in Wiclif (Acts xxviii. 1), ‘And the hethene men [barbari, Vulg.] diden to us not litil curtesie;’ and only afterwards was the word applied to those who resisted to the last the humanizing influences of the Christian faith. This ‘heathen’ is in Dutch ‘heyden’ (see Sewel); while less than two hundred years ago ‘hoyden’ was by no means confined, as it now is, to the female sex, the clownish ill-bred girl, but was oftener applied to men.
Shall I argue of conversation with this hoyden, to go and practise at his opportunities in the larder?—Milton, Colasterion.
Falourdin, m. A lusk, lowt, lurden, a lubberly sloven, heavy sot, lumpish hoydon.—Cotgrave, A French and English Dictionary.
Badault, m. A fool, dolt, sot, fop, ass, coxcomb, gaping hoydon.—Id. ib.
A rude hoidon; Grue, badault, falourdin, becjaune; Balordo, babionetto, rustico; Bouaron.—Howell, Lexicon Tetraglotton.
| Humour, | } |
| Humourous, | |
| Humourist. |
The four ‘humours’ in man, according to the old physicians, were blood, choler, phlegm, and melancholy. So long as these were duly tempered, all would be well. But so soon as any of them unduly preponderated, the man became ‘humourous,’ one ‘humour’ or another bearing too great a sway in him. As such, his conduct would not be according to the received rule of other men, but have something peculiar, whimsical, self-willed in it. In this the self-asserting character of the ‘humourous’ man lay the point of contact, the middle term, between the modern use of ‘humour’ and the ancient. It was his ‘humour’ which would lead a man to take an original view and aspect of things, a ‘humourous’ aspect, first in the old sense, which in some of our provincial dialects still lives on, and then in that which we now employ. The classical passage in English literature on ‘humour’ and its history is the Prologue, or ‘Stage,’ as it is called, to Ben Jonson’s Every Man out of his Humour; it is, however, too long to cite; an earlier occurs in Gower’s Confessio Amantis, lib. 7, in init. See ‘Temper.’ ‘Humourous’ has been sometimes used in quite another sense, as simply equivalent to moist; so in the passage from Chapman’s Homer, quoted below.
In which [kingdom of heaven] neither such high-flown enthusiasts, nor any dry churlish reasoners and disputers, shall have either part or portion, till they lay down those gigantic humours, and become (as our Saviour Christ, who is that unerring Truth, has prescribed) like little children.—H. More, Grand Mystery of Godliness, b. viii. c. 15.
Good Humour is not only the best security against enthusiasm, but the best foundation of piety and true religion. For if right thoughts and worthy apprehensions of the Supreme Being are fundamental to all true worship and adoration, ’tis more than probable we shall never miscarry in this respect except through Ill Humour only.—Shaftesbury, Works, 1727, vol. i. p. 22.
Shakespeare, As You Like It, act i. sc. 2.
The people thereof [Ephraim] were active, valiant, ambitious of honour; but withal hasty, humourous, hard to be pleased; forward enough to fight with their foes, and too forward to fall out with their friends.—Fuller, A Pisgah Sight of Palestine, b. ii. c. 9.
Or it may be (what is little better than that), instead of the living righteousness of Christ, he will magnify himself in some humourous pieces of holiness of his own.—H. More, Grand Mystery of Godliness, b. viii. c. 14.
Upon his sight of the first signs and experiments of the plagues which did accompany them, he [Pharaoh] demeaned himself like a proud phantastic humorist.—Jackson, Christ’s Everlasting Priesthood, b. x. c. 40.
The seamen are a nation by themselves, a humourous and fantastic people.—Clarendon, History of the Rebellion, b. ii. in init.
Wretched men, that shake off the true comely habit of religion, to bespeak them a new-fashioned suit of profession at an humourist’s shop!—Adams, The Devil’s Banquet, p. 52.
Chapman, Homer’s Odysseis, b. iv. l. 120.
Hunger. It was long before this and ‘famine’ were desynonymized, and indeed the great famine year is still spoken of in Ireland as ‘the year of the hunger.’ Still in the main the words are distinguished, ‘famine’ expressing an outward fact, the dearth of food, and ‘hunger’ the inward sense and experience of this fact.
And aftir that he hadde endid alle thingis, a strong hungre was maad in that cuntre.—Luke xv. 14. Wiclif.
Richard Rolle de Hampole, Pricke of Conscience, 4035.
Oon of hem roos up, Agabus bi name, and signefiede bi the spirit a greet hungur to comynge in al the world, which hungur was maad undur Claudius.—Acts xi. 28. Wiclif.
Behold the tyme commeth that I shal sende an hunger in to the earth; not the hunger of bread, nor the thyrst of water.—Amos viii. 11. Coverdale.
Husband. This, the Old Norse ‘hús-bondi,’ is much more nearly the Latin ‘paterfamilias’ than ‘vir.’ As the house, above all that of him who owns and tills the soil, stands by a wise and watchful economy, it is easy to see how ‘husband’ came to signify one who knows how prudently to spare and save.
All good husbands agree in this, That every work should have the due and convenient season.—Holland, Pliny, vol. i. p. 556.
They are too good husbands, and too thrifty of God’s grace, too sparing of the Holy Ghost, that restrain God’s general propositions, Venite omnes, Let all come, so particularly as to say that when God says all, he means some.—Donne, Sermon 33.
Cowley, The Shortness of Life and Uncertainty of Riches.
After we come once to view the seam or vein where the hidden treasure lies, we account all we possess besides as dross; for whose further assurance we alienate all our interest in the world, with as great willingness as good husbands do base tenements or hard-rented leases, to compass some goodly royalty offered them more than half for nothing.—Jackson, The Eternal Truth of the Scriptures, b. iv. c. 8.
| Idiot, | } |
| Idiotical. |
A word with a very interesting and instructive history, which, however, is only fully intelligible by a reference to the Greek. The ἰδιώτης or ‘idiot’ is first the private man as distinguished from the man sustaining a public office; then, inasmuch as public life was considered an absolutely necessary condition of man’s highest education, the untaught or mentally undeveloped, as distinguished from the educated; and only after it had run through these courses did ‘idiot’ come to signify what ἰδιώτης never did, the man whose mental powers are not merely unexercised but deficient, as distinguished from him in full possession of them. This is the only employment to which we now put the word; but examples of its earlier and more Greek uses are frequent in Jeremy Taylor and others. See my Synonyms of the N.T. § 79.
And here, again, their allegation out of Gregory the First and Damascene, That images be the laymen’s books, and that pictures are the Scripture of idiots and simple persons, is worthy to be considered.—Homilies; Against Perils of Idolatry.
It is clear, by Bellarmine’s confession, that S. Austin affirmed that the plain places of Scripture are sufficient to all laics, and all idiots or private persons.—Bishop Taylor, A Dissuasive from Popery, part ii. b. i. § 1.
Christ was received of idiots, of the vulgar people, and of the simpler sort, while He was rejected, despised, and persecuted even to death by the high priests, lawyers, scribes, doctors, and rabbies.—Blount, Philostratus, p. 237.
It [Scripture] speaks commonly according to vulgar apprehension, as when it tells of ‘the ends of the heaven;’ which now almost every idiot knows hath no ends at all.—John Smith, Select Discourses, vi., On Prophecy.
Truth is content, when it comes into the world, to wear our mantles, to learn our language: it speaks to the most idiotical sort of men in the most idiotical way. The reason of this plain and idiotical style of Scripture it may be worth our farther taking notice of.—Id., ibid.
| Ill-nature, | } |
| Ill-natured. |
This is now rather one special evil quality, as κακία is often in Greek; it was once the complex of all, or more properly the natural substratum on which they all were superinduced. See ‘Good-nature,’ and, in addition to the passage from South, quoted below, a very instructive discussion on both words in his Sermons, 1737, vol. vi. pp. 104-111.
I may truly say of the mind of an ungrateful person, that it is kindness-proof. It is inpenetrable, unconquerable; unconquerable by that which conquers all things else, even by love itself. And the reason is manifest; for you may remember that I told you that ingratitude sprang from a principle of ill-nature; which being a thing founded in such a certain constitution of blood and spirit, as being born with a man into the world, and upon that account called nature, shall prevent all remedies that can be applied by education.—South, Sermons, 1737, vol. i. p. 429.
King Henry the Eighth was an ill-natured prince to execute so many whom he had so highly favoured.—Sir T. Overbury, Crumbs fallen from King James’ Table.
He is the worst of men, whom kindness cannot soften, nor endearments oblige; whom gratitude cannot tie faster than the bands of life and death.—He is an ill-natured sinner.—Bishop Taylor, The Miracles of the Divine Mercy, serm. 27.
Imp. Employed in nobler senses formerly than now. ‘To imp’ is properly to engraft, and an ‘imp’ a graft, scion, or young shoot; and, even as we now speak of the ‘scions’ of a noble house, so there was in earlier English the same natural transfer of ‘imps’ from plants to persons.
Piers Plowman, B-text, Passus v. 136 (Skeat).
Chaucer, The Monkes Prologue (Morris, iii. p. 200).
The sudden taking away of those most goodly and virtuous young imps, the Duke of Suffolk and his brother, by the sweating sickness, was it not also a manifest token of God’s heavy displeasure towards us?—Becon, A Comfortable Epistle.
The king returned into England with victory and triumph; the king preferred there eighty noble imps to the order of knighthood.—Stow, Annals, 1592, p. 385.
| Impotent, | } |
| Impotence. |
The inner connexion between weakness and violence is finely declared in Latin in the fact that ‘impotens’ and ‘impotentia’ imply both; so once did ‘impotent’ and ‘impotence’ in English (see Spenser’s Fairy Queen, ii. 11, 23), though they now retain only the meaning of weak.
Massinger, The Unnatural Combat, act iii. sc. 2.
The Lady Davey, ever impotent in her passions, was even distracted with anger, that she was crossed in her will.—Hacket, Life of Archbishop Williams, part i. p. 194.
The truth is, that in this battle and whole business the Britons never more plainly manifested themselves to be right barbarous; such confusion, such impotence, as seemed likest not to a war, but to the wild hurry of a distracted woman, with as mad a crew at her heels.—Milton, History of England, b. ii.
If a great personage undertakes an action passionately and upon great interest, let him manage it indiscreetly, let the whole design be unjust, let it be acted with all the malice and impotency in the world, he shall have enough to flatter him, but not enough to reprove him.—Bishop Taylor, Holy Living, c. 2, § 6.
Improve. So long as the verb ‘to improve’ was directly connected in men’s thoughts with the Latin ‘improbare,’ it was inevitable that it should have a meaning very different from that which now attaches to it; and so we find it used as equivalent to the Greek ἐλέγχειν, the Latin ‘reprobare,’ to disapprove of, to disallow.
If tho thre [opinions] be sufficiently improved, that is to saie, if it be sufficiently schewen that the thre be nought and untrewe and badde, alle the othere untrewe opiniouns bilded upon hem muste needis therebi take her fal.—Pecock, Repressor, part 1, c. 1.
For love of the world the olde pharesies blasphemed the Holy Ghost, and persecuted the manifest truth which they could not improve.—Tyndale, Exposition on the First Epistle of S. John.
If ye cannot improve it [my doctrine] by God’s word, and yet of an hate and malicious mind that you bear to the truth, labour to resist it and condemn it that it should not spread, I ensure you your sin is irremissible and even against the Holy Ghost.—Frith, Works, 1572, p. 3.
Be instant in season and out of season; improve [ἔλεγξον], rebuke, exhort with all longsuffering and doctrine.—2 Tim. iv. 2. (Geneva Version.)
Incense. Now to kindle anger only; but once to kindle or inflame any passion, good or bad, in the breast. Anger, as the strongest passion, finally appropriated the word, just as in Greek it made θυμός and ὀργή its own.
He [Asdrubal] it was, that when his men were weary and drew back, incensed [accendit] them again, one while by fair words and entreaty, another while by sharp checks and rebukes.—Holland, Livy, p. 665.
Prince Edward struck his breast and swore, that though all his friends forsook him, yet he would enter Ptolemais, though only with Fowin, his horsekeeper. By which speech he incensed the English to go on with him.—Fuller, Holy War, b. iv. c. 28.
Incivility. See ‘Civil.’
By this means infinite numbers of souls may be brought from their idolatry, bloody sacrifices, ignorance, and incivility, to the worshipping of the true God.—Sir W. Raleigh, Of the Voyage for Guiana.
| Incredulous, | } |
| Incredulity. |
In Low Latin, and in ages of a blind unintelligent faith, ‘credulitas’ came to be regarded as equivalent to ‘fides,’ and ‘credulity’ to ‘faith.’ The two latter, with their negatives, ‘incredulity’ and ‘unbelief,’ have been usefully desynonymized in our later English; but the quotations which follow will show that this was not always the case.
For we also were sometime unwise, incredulous, erring, serving divers lusts and voluptuousnesses.—Tit. iii. 3. Rhemish Version.
And we see that they could not enter in because of incredulity.—Heb. iii. 19. The same version.
But let us take heed; as God hates a lie, so He hates incredulity, an obstinate, a foolish, and pertinacious understanding.—Bishop Taylor, Sermon at the Funeral of the Lord Primate.
| Indifferent, | } |
| Indifference, | |
| Indifferently. |
It is a striking testimony of the low general average which we assume common to most things, that a thing which does not differ from others, is therefore qualified as poor; a sentence of depreciation is pronounced upon it when it is declared to be ‘indifferent.’ When in Greek διαφέρειν means ‘præstare,’ and τὰ διαφέροντα ‘præstantiora,’ we have exactly the same feeling embodying itself at the other end. But this use of these words is modern. ‘Indifferent’ was impartial once, not making differences where none really were.
God receiveth the learned and unlearned, and casteth away none, but is indifferent unto all.—Homilies: Exhortation to the Reading of Holy Scripture.
If overseer of the poor, he [the good parishioner] is careful the rates be made indifferent, whose inequality oftentimes is more burdensome than the sum.—Fuller, Holy State, b. ii. c. 11.
Sir P. Sidney, Astrophel and Stella, 39.
Requesting that they might speak before the senate, and be heard with indifference.—Holland, Livy, p. 1214.
That they may truly and indifferently minister justice.—Book of Common Prayer.
Individual. Properly not capable of division; indivisible, as is an atom; then, undivided, inseparable, and so used in the quotations which follow. We, using ‘individual’ as = person, have in fact recurred to the earlier meaning.
Milton, On Time.
Holyday, Marriages of the Arts, act ii. sc. 6.
Indolence. ‘Indolentia’ was a word first invented by Cicero, when he was obliged to find some equivalent for the ἀπάθεια of certain Greek schools. That it was not counted one of his happiest coinages we may conclude from the seldom use of it by any other authors but himself, as also from the fact that Seneca, a little later proposing ‘impatientia’ as the Latin equivalent for ἀπάθεια, implied that none such had hitherto been found. The word has taken firmer root in English than it ever did in Latin. At the same time, meaning as it does now a disposition or temper of languid non-exertion, it has lost the accuracy of use which it had in the philosophical schools, where it signified a state of freedom from passion and pain; which signification it retained among our own writers of the Caroline period, and even later. To this day, indeed, surgeons call certain painless swellings ‘indolent tumours.’
Now, to begin with fortitude, they say it is the mean between cowardice and rash audacity, of which twain the one is a defect, the other an excess of the ireful passion; liberality between niggardise and prodigality, clemency and mildness between senseless indolence and cruelty.—Holland, Plutarch’s Morals, p. 69.
Now though Christ were far from both, yet He came nearer to an excess of passion than to an indolency, to a senselessness, to a privation of natural affections. Inordinateness of affections may sometimes make some men like some beasts; but indolency, absence, emptiness, privation of affections, makes any man, at all times, like stones, like dirt.—Donne, Sermons, 1640, p. 156.
The submission here spoken of in the text is not a stupid indolence, or insensibility under such calamities as God shall be pleased to bring upon us.—South, Sermons, 1744, vol. x. p. 97.
| Ingenious, | } |
| Ingenuous, | |
| Ingeniously, | |
| Ingenuity, | |
| Ingenuousness. |
We are now pretty well agreed in our use of these words; but there was a time when the uttermost confusion reigned amongst them. Thus, in the first and second quotations which follow, ‘ingenious’ is used where we should now use, and where oftentimes the writers of that time would have used, ‘ingenuous,’ and the converse in the third; while in like manner ‘ingenuity’ in each of the succeeding three quotations stands for our present ‘ingenuousness,’ and ‘ingenuousness’ in the last for ‘ingenuity.’ In respect of ‘ingenious’ and ‘ingenuous,’ the arrangement at which we have now arrived regarding their several meanings, namely that the first indicates mental, the second moral qualities, is good; ‘ingenious’ being from ‘ingenium’ and ‘ingenuous’ from ‘ingenuus.’ But ‘ingenuity,’ being from ‘ingenuous,’ should have kept the meaning, which it has now quite let go, of innate nobleness of disposition; while ‘ingeniousness,’ against which there can be no objection to which ‘ingenuousness’ is not equally exposed, might have expressed what ‘ingenuity’ does now.
Now as an ingenious debtor desires his freedom at his creditor’s hands, that thereby he may be capable of paying his debt, as well as to escape the misery which himself should endure by his imprisonment; so an ingenious soul (and such is every saint) deprecates hell, as well with an eye to God’s glory as to his own ease and happiness.—Gurnall, The Christian in Complete Armour, part ii. c. 54, § 2.
Shakespeare, Taming of the Shrew, act i. sc. 1.
An ingenious person will rather wear a plain garment of his own than a rich livery, the mark of servitude.—Bates, Spiritual Perfection, Preface.
Shakespeare, Timon of Athens, act ii. sc. 2.
Since heaven is so glorious a state, and so certainly designed for us, if we please, let us spend all that we have, all our passions and affections, all our study and industry, all our desires and stratagems, all our witty and ingenuous faculties, towards the arriving thither.—Bishop Taylor, Holy Dying, c. 2, § 4.
Christian simplicity teaches openness and ingenuity in contracts and matters of buying and selling.—Id., Sermon 24. part ii.
When a man makes use of the name of any simple idea, which he perceives is not understood, or is in danger to be mistaken, he is obliged by the laws of ingenuity and the end of speech, to declare his meaning, and make known what idea he makes it stand for.—Locke, An Essay concerning Human Understanding, b. iii. c. 11, § 14.
It [gratitude] is such a debt as is left to every man’s ingenuity (in respect to any legal coaction) whether he will pay it or no.—South, Sermons, vol. i. p. 410.
By his ingenuousness he [the good handicrafts-man] leaves his art better than he found it.—Fuller, Holy State, b. ii. c. 19.
Inn. This has always meant a lodging, a place to which one turns in; but it is now, and for a long time has been, restricted to one which yields food and shelter, or it may be only the last, in return for payment. Such terms as Lincoln’s Inn, Gray’s Inn, attest the older use of the word.
Chaucer, Knightes Tale, 1578 (Morris, ii. p. 75).
Sylvester, Du Bartas, his Divine Works,
The Capitaine, 369.
| Insolent, | } |
| Insolence. |
The ‘insolent’ is properly no more than the unusual. This, as the violation of the fixed law and order of society, is commonly offensive, even as it indicates a mind willing to offend; and thus ‘insolent’ has acquired its present meaning. But for the poet, the fact that he is forsaking the beaten track, that he can say,
in this way to be ‘insolent’ or original, as we should now say, may be his highest praise. The epithet ‘furious’ joined to ‘insolence’ in the second quotation is to be explained of that ‘fine madness’ which Spenser as a Platonist esteemed a necessary condition of the poet.
For ditty and amorous ode I find Sir Walter Raleigh’s vein most lofty, insolent, and passionate.—Puttenham, Art of English Poesy, b. i. c. 3.
Spenser, Colin Clout’s come Home again, 619
(Morris, v. p. 105).
| Institute, | } |
| Instituter, | |
| Institution. |
These all had once in English meanings coextensive with those of the Latin words which they represent. We now inform, instruct (the images are nearly the same), but we do not ‘institute,’ children any more.
Sylvester, Du Bartas; Seventh Day of the First Week.
Neither did he this for want of better instructions, having had the learnedest and wisest man reputed of all Britain, the instituter of his youth.—Milton, History of England, b. iii.
A Short Catechism for the institution of young persons in the Christian Religion.—Title of a Treatise by Jeremy Taylor.
| Intend, | } |
| Intention. |
The inveterate habit of procrastination has brought us to say now that we ‘intend’ a thing, when we mean hereafter to do it. Our fathers with a more accurate use of the word ‘intended’ that which they were at that moment actually and earnestly engaged in doing. The same habit of procrastination has made ‘by-and-bye’ mean not straightway, but at a comparatively remote period; and ‘presently’ not at this present, but in a little while. ‘Intention’ too, or ‘intension,’ for Jeremy Taylor in the same work spells the word both ways, was once something not future but present.
The Devil sleepeth not. He ever intendeth to withdraw us from prayer.—Latimer, Sermons, vol. i. p. 342.
So often as he [Augustus] was at them [the games], he did nothing else but intend the same.—Holland, Suetonius, p. 60.
He [Lord Bacon] saw plainly that natural philosophy hath been intended by few persons, and in them hath occupied the least part of their time.—Bacon, Filum Labyrinthi, 6.
It is so plain that every man profiteth in that he most intendeth, that it needeth not to be stood upon.—Id., Essays, 29.
Ben Jonson, Cynthia’s Revels.
Shirley, The Royal Master, act ii. sc. 1.
According as we neglect meditation, so are our prayers imperfect; meditation being the soul of prayer, and the intention of our spirit.—Bishop Taylor, Life of Christ, part i. § 5.
Jacobin. The great French Revolution has stamped itself too deeply and terribly upon the mind of Europe for ‘Jacobin’ ever again to have any other meaning than that which the famous Club, assembling in the hall of the Jacobin convent, has given it; but it needs hardly to say that a ‘Jacobin’ was once a Dominican friar, though this name did not extend beyond France.
Romaunt of the Rose, 6339 (Morris, vi. p. 193).
Marlowe, The Massacre at Paris, act iii. sc. 4.
A certain Jacobin offered himself to the fire to prove that Savonarola had true revelations, and was no heretic.—Bishop Taylor, The Liberty of Prophesying, The Epistle Dedicatory.
Jolly. For a long time after its adoption into the English language, ‘jolly’ kept the meaning of beautiful, which it brought with it from the French, and which ‘joli’ in French still retains.
William of Palerne, 5478.
Golding, Ovid’s Metamorphosis, b. 13.
Beaumont, Psyche, iv. 4.
Kindly. Nothing ethical was connoted in ‘kindly’ once; it was simply the adjective of ‘kind.’ But it is God’s ordinance that ‘kind’ should be ‘kindly,’ in our modern sense of the word as well; and thus the word has attained this meaning. See ‘Unkind.’
This Joon in the Gospel witnesseth that the kyndeli sone of God is maad man.—Wiclif, Prologe of John.
Forasmuch as his mind gave him, that, his nephews living, men would not reckon that he could have right to the realm, he thought therefore without delay to rid them, as though the killing of his kinsmen could amend his cause, and make him a kindly king.—Sir T. More, History of King Richard III.
The royal eagle is called in Greek Gnesios, as one would say, true and kindly, as descended from the gentle and right aëry of eagles.—Holland, Pliny, vol. i. p. 272.
Whatsoever as the Son of God He may do, it is kindly for Him as the Son of Man to save the sons of men.—Andrewes, Sermons, vol. iv. p. 253.
Where are they? Gone to their own place, to Judas their brother; and, as is most kindly, the sons, to the father, of wickedness, there to be plagued with him for ever.—Id., Of the Conspiracy of the Gowries, serm. 4.
What greater tyranny and usurpation over poor souls would he have than is now exercised, since the perjured prelates, the kindly brood of the Man of sin, have defiled and burdened our poor Church?—Jus Populi Vindicatum, 1665.
Knave. How many serving-lads must have been unfaithful and dishonest before ‘knave,’ which meant at first no more than boy, acquired the meaning which it has now! Note the same history in the German ‘Bube,’ ‘Dirne,’ ‘Schalk,’ and see ‘Varlet.’
If it is a knave child, sle ye him; if it is a womman, kepe ye.—Exodus i. 16. Wiclif.
Chaucer, The Man of Lawes Tale (Morris, ii. p. 192).
Shakespeare, Julius Cæsar, act iv. sc. 3.
Knuckle. The German ‘Knöchel’ is any joint whatsoever; nor was our ‘knuckle’ limited formerly, as now it well nigh exclusively is, at least in regard of the human body, to certain smaller joints of the hand.
Golding, Ovid’s Metamorphosis, b. 1.
But when
the pace of the verse told me that her maukin knuckles were never shapen to that royal buskin.—Milton, Apology for Smectymnuus, p. 186.
Lace. That which now commonly bears this name has it on the score of its curiously woven threads; but ‘lace,’ Old French ‘las,’ ‘laqs,’ identical with the Latin ‘laqueus,’ is commonly used by our earlier writers in the more original sense of a noose.
Earl of Surrey, The Restless State of a Lover, p. 2 (ed. 1717).
Yet if the polype can get and entangle him [the lobster] once within his long laces, he dies for it.—Holland, Plutarch’s Morals, p. 973.
Landscape. The second syllable in ‘landscape’ or ‘landskip’ is only a Dutch example of an earlier form of the same termination which we meet in ‘friendship,’ ‘lordship,’ ‘fellowship,’ and the like. As these mean the manner or fashion of a friend, of a lord, and so on, so ‘landscape’ the manner or fashion of the land; and in our earlier English this rather as the pictured or otherwise counterfeited model, than in its very self. As this imitation would be necessarily in small, the word acquired the secondary meaning of a compendium or multum in parvo; cf. Skinner, Etymologicon, s. v. Landskip: Tabula chorographica, primario autem terra, provincia, seu topographica, σκιαγραφία; Phillips, New World of Words, s. v.; and Earle, Philology of the English Tongue, § 327, who suggests that the word has been borrowed by us from the Dutch painters, which would account for the termination ‘-scape,’ ‘-skip’ instead of the native suffix ‘-ship.’ See Skeat’s Dictionary.
The sins of other women show in landskip, far off and full of shadow; her [a harlot’s] in statue, near hand and bigger in the life.—Sir Thomas Overbury, Characters.
London, as you know, is our Ἑλλάδος Ἑλλάς, our England of England, and our landskip and representation of the whole island.—Hacket, Life of Archbishop Williams, part ii. p. 59.
The detestable traitor, that prodigy of nature, that opprobrium of mankind, that landscape of iniquity, that sink of sin, and that compendium of baseness, who now calls himself our Protector.—Address sent by the Anabaptists to the King, 1658, in Clarendon’s History of the Rebellion, b. xv.
Latch. Few things now are ‘latched’ or caught except a door or casement; but the word was formerly of much wider use. It is the O.E. lœccan.
Those that remained threw darts at our men, and latching our darts, sent them again at us.—Golding, Cæsar, p. 60.
Peahens are wont to lay by night, and that from an high place where they perch; and then, unless there be good heed taken that the eggs be latched in some soft bed underneath, they are soon broken.—Holland, Pliny, vol. i. p. 301.
Lecture. Where words like ‘lecture’ and ‘reading’ exist side by side, it is very usual for one after a while to be appropriated to the doing of the thing, the other to the thing which is done. So it has been here; but they were once synonymous.
After the lecture of the law and of the prophets, the rulers of the synagogue sent unto them, saying, Good brethren, if ye have any sermon to exhort the people, say on.—Acts xiii. 15. Coverdale.
That may be gathered out of Plutarch’s writings, out of those especially where he speaketh of the lecture of the poets.—North, Plutarch’s Lives, p. 982.
In my lecture I often perceive how my authors commend examples for magnanimity and force, that rather proceed from a thick skin and hardness of the bones.—Florio, Montaigne’s Essays, p. 72.
Legacy. This now owns no relation except with ‘lēgatum,’ which meant in juristic Latin a portion of the inheritance by testamentary disposition withdrawn from the heir, and bestowed upon some other. It was formerly used as a derivative of ‘legatus,’ ambassador, in the sense of embassage.
They were then preaching bishops, and more often seen in pulpits than in princes’ palaces: more often occupied in his legacy, who said, Go ye into the whole world and preach the gospel to all men, than in embassages and affairs of princes.—Homilies, Against Peril of Idolatry.
Otherwise, while he is yet far off, sending a legacy, he asketh those things that belong to peace.—Luke xiv. 32. Rheims.
And his citizens hated him, and they sent a legacie after him, saying, We will not have this man to reign over us.—Luke xix. 14. Ibid.
Levy. Troops are now raised, or ‘levied,’ indifferently: but a siege is only raised, and not ‘levied,’ as it too once might have been.
Euphranor having levied the siege from this one city, forthwith led his army to Demetrias.—Holland, Livy, p. 1178.
| Lewd, | } |
| Lewdly, | |
| Lewdness. |
There are three distinct stages in the meaning of the word ‘lewd;’ of these it has entirely overlived two, and survives only in the third, namely in that of wanton or lascivious. Without discussing here its etymology or its exact relation to ‘lay,’ it is sufficient to observe, that, as ‘lay,’ it was often used in the sense of ignorant, or rather unlearned. Next, according to the proud saying of the Pharisees, ‘This people who knoweth not the law are cursed’ (John vii. 49), and on the assumption, which would have its truth, that those untaught in the doctrines, would be unexercised in the practices, of Christianity, it came to signify vicious, though without designating one vice more than others. While in its present and third stage, it has, like so many other words, retired from this general designation of all vices, to express one of the more frequent, alone.
Piers Plowman, B-text, Passus xii. 115 (Skeat).
For as moche as the curatis ben often so lewed, that thei understonden not bookis of Latyn for to teche the peple, it is spedful not only to the lewed peple, but also to the lewed curatis, to have bookis in Englisch of needful loore to the lewed people.—Wycliffe Mss., p. 5.
Chaucer, The Squieres Tale (Morris, ii. p. 361).
Joon was a lewde fischere and untaught in scolys.—Purvey, Preface to Epistles of St. Jerome, p. 65.
Neither was it Christ’s intention that there should be any thing in it [the Lord’s Prayer] dark or far from our capacity, specially since it belongeth equally to all, and is as necessary for the lewd as the learned.—A Short Catechism, 1553.
Milton, Paradise Lost, vi. 178.
If it were a matter of wrong or wicked lewdness [ῥᾳδιούργημα], O ye Jews, reason would that I should bear with you.—Acts xviii. 14. (A.V.)
Liberal. Often used by Shakespeare and his contemporaries as free of tongue, licentious or wanton in speech.
Shakespeare, Hamlet, act iv. sc. 7.
Desdemona [of Iago]: Is he not a most profane and liberal counsellor?—Id., Othello, act ii. sc. 1.
Webster, The Famous History of Sir Thomas Wyatt.
Libel. This, properly a little book, is with us any defamatory speech or writing; but was not formerly so restricted; indeed, in the legal language of Scotland, where an indictment is in technical language a ‘libel,’ it still retains a wider meaning.
Forsoothe, it is said, Who evere shal leeve his wyf, geve he to hir a libel.—Matt. v. 31. Wiclif.
Let the Allmightie geve me answere, and let him that is my contrary party sue me with a lybell.—Job xxxi. 35. Coverdale.
Ben Jonson, Catiline, act v. sc. 4.
Libertine. A striking evidence of the extreme likelihood that he who has no restraints on his belief will ere long have none upon his life, is given by this word ‘libertine.’ Applied at first to certain heretical sects, and intended to mark the licentious liberty of their creed, ‘libertine’ soon let go altogether its relation to what a man believed, and acquired the sense which it now has, a ‘libertine’ being one who has released himself from all moral restraints, and especially in his relations with the other sex.
That the Scriptures do not contain in them all things necessary to salvation, is the fountain of many great and capital errors; I instance in the whole doctrine of the libertines, familists, quakers, and other enthusiasts, which issue from this corrupted fountain.—Bishop Taylor, A Dissuasive from Popery, part ii. b. 1, § 2.
It is not to be denied that the said libertine doctrines do more contradict the doctrine of the Gospel, even Christianity itself, than the doctrines of the Papists about the same subjects do.—Baxter, Catholic Theology, part iii. p. 289.
It is too probable that our modern libertines, deists, and atheists, took occasion from the scandalous contentions of Christians about many things, to disbelieve all.—A Discourse of Logomachies, 1711.
Litigious. This word has changed from an objective to a subjective sense. Things were ‘litigious’ once, which offered matter for going to law; persons are ‘litigious’ now, who are prone to going to law. Both meanings are to be found in the Latin ‘litigiosus,’ though predominantly that which we have now made the sole meaning.
Dolopia he hath subdued by force of arms, and could not abide to hear that the determination of certain provinces, which were debatable and litigious, should be referred to the award of the people of Rome.—Holland, Livy, p. 1111.
Of the articles gainsaid by a great outcry, three and no more did seem to be litigious.—Hacket, Life of Archbishop Williams, part i. p. 140.
Dryden, Virgil’s Georgics, b. i. 193, 4.
Lively. This had once nearly, if not altogether, the same meaning as ‘living.’ We have here the explanation of a circumstance which many probably have noted and regretted in the Authorized Version of the New Testament, namely that while λίθον ζῶντα at 1 Pet. ii. 4 is ‘a living stone,’ λίθοι ζῶντες, which follows immediately, ver. 5, is only ‘lively stones,’ ‘living’ being thus brought down to ‘lively’ with no correspondent reduction in the original to warrant it. But when our Version was made, there was scarcely any distinction between the forces of the words. Still it would certainly have been better to adhere to one word or the other.
Mine enemies are lively (Heb. living), and they are strong.—Ps. xxxviii. 19. (A.V.)
Was it well done to suffer him, imprisoned in chains, lying in a dark dungeon, to draw his lively breath at the pleasure of the hangman?—Holland, Livy, p. 228.
Shakespeare, Titus Andronicus, act iii. sc. 1.
Massinger, The Fatal Dowry, act ii. sc. 1.
Livery. It need hardly be observed that the explanation of ‘livery’ which Spenser offers (see below) is perfectly correct; but we do not any longer recognize the second of those uses of the word there mentioned by him. It is no longer applied to the ration, or stated portion of food, delivered at stated periods (the σιτομέτριον of Luke xii. 42), either to the members of a household, to soldiers, or to others.
Ballad of John de Reeve, 155.
What Liverye is, we by common use in England knowe well enough, namelye, that it is, allowaunce of horse-meate, as they commonly use the woord in stabling, as to keepe horses at liverye, the which woord, I gess, is derived of livering or delivering foorth theyr nightlye foode. Soe in great howses the liverye is sayd to be served up for all night. And Liverye is also called the upper garment which serving-men weareth, soe called (as I suppose) for that it is delivered and taken from him at pleasure.—Spenser, View of the State of Ireland, p. 623 (Globe edition).
The emperor’s officers every night went through the town from house to house, whereat any English gentleman did repast or lodge, and served their liveries for all night; first the officers brought into the house a cast of fine manchet, and of silver two great pots, and white wine, and sugar, to the weight of a pound, &c.—Cavendish, Life of Cardinal Wolsey.
| Loiter, | } |
| Loiterer. |
Whatever may be the derivation of ‘to loiter,’17 it is certain that it formerly implied a great deal more and worse than it implies now. The ‘loiterer’ then was very much what the tramp is now.
God bad that no such strong lubbers should loyter and goe a begging, and be chargeable to the congregation.—Tyndale, Works, p. 217.
He that giveth any alms to an idle beggar robbeth the truly poor; as S. Ambrose sometimes complaineth that the maintenance of the poor is made the spoil of the loiterer.—Sanderson, Sermons, 1671. vol. i. p. 198.
Yf he be but once taken soe idlye roging, he [the Provost Marshal] may punnish him more lightlye, as with stockes or such like; but yf he be founde agayne soe loytring he may scourge him with whippes or roddes; after which yf he be agayne taken, lett him have the bitterness of the marshall lawe.—Spenser, View of the State of Ireland, p. 679 (Globe Edition).
They spend their youth in loitering, bezzling, and harlotting.—Milton, Animadversions on Remonstrants’ Defence.
Lover. This word has undergone two restrictions, of which formerly it knew nothing. A natural delicacy, and an unwillingness to confound under a common name things essentially different, has caused ‘lover’ no longer to be equivalent with friend, but always to imply a relation resting on the difference of sex; while further, and within these narrower limits, the ‘lover’ now is always the man, not as once the man or the woman indifferently. We may still indeed speak of ‘a pair of lovers,’ but then datur denominatio a potiori. ‘Leman’ had something of the same history, though that history ended in leaving this a designation of the woman alone.
If ye love them that love you, what thank have ye therefore? for sinners also love their lovers.—Luke vi. 32. Coverdale.
For Hiram was ever a lover of David.—1 Kin. v. 1. (A.V.)
Shakespeare, Cymbeline, act v. sc. 5.
Ben Jonson, The Poetaster.
Lucid interval. We limit this at present to the brief and transient season when a mind, ordinarily clouded and obscured by insanity, recovers for a while its clearness. It had no such limitation formerly, but was of very wide use, as the four passages quoted below, in each of which its application is different, will show.18
East of Edom lay the land of Uz, where Job dwelt, so renowned for his patience, when the devil heaped afflictions upon him, allowing him no lucid intervals.—Fuller, A Pisgah Sight of Palestine, b. iv. c. 2.
Dryden, Mac-Flecknoe.
Such is the nature of man, that it requires lucid intervals; and the vigour of the mind would flag and decay, should it always jog on at the rate of a common enjoyment, without being sometimes quickened and exalted with the vicissitude of some more refined pleasures.—South, Sermons, 1744, vol. viii. p. 403.
Thus he [Lord Lyttelton] continued, giving his dying benediction to all around him. On Monday morning a lucid interval gave some small hopes; but these vanished in the evening.—Narrative of the Physician, inserted in Johnson’s Life of Lord Lyttelton.
Lumber. As the Lombards were the bankers, so also they were the pawnbrokers of the Middle Ages; indeed, as they would often advance money upon pledges, the two businesses were very closely joined, would often run in, to one another. The ‘lumber’ room was originally the Lombard room, or room where the Lombard banker and broker stowed away his pledges; ‘lumber’ then, as in the passage from Butler, the pawns and pledges themselves. As these would naturally often accumulate here till they became out of date and unserviceable, the steps are easy to be traced by which the word came to possess its present meaning.
Lumber, potius lumbar, as to put one’s clothes to lumbar, i.e. pignori dare, oppignorare.—Skinner, Etymologicon.
Butler, Upon Critics.
They put up all the little plate they had in the lumber, which is pawning it, till the ships came.—Lady Murray, Lives of George Baillie and of Lady Grisell Baillie.
Lurch. ‘To lurch’ is seldom used now except of a ship, which ‘lurches’ when it makes something of a headlong dip in the sea; the fact that by so doing it, partially at least, hides itself, and so ‘lurks,’ explains this employment of the word. But ‘to lurch,’ generally as an active verb, was of much more frequent use in early English; and soon superinduced on the sense of lying concealed that of lying in wait with the view of intercepting and seizing a prey. After a while this superadded notion of intercepting and seizing some booty quite thrust out that of lying concealed; as in all three of the quotations which follow. See Skeat’s Dictionary.
It is not an auspicate beginning of a feast, nor agreeable to amity and good fellowship, to snatch or lurch one from another, to have many hands in a dish at once, striving a vie who should be more nimble with his fingers.—Holland, Plutarch’s Morals, p. 679.
I speak not of many more [discommodities of a residence]: too far off from great cities, which may hinder business; or too near them, which lurcheth all provisions, and maketh every thing dear.—Bacon, Essays, 45 (ed. Abbott, ii. p. 50).
At the beginning of this war [the Crusades] the Pope’s temporal power in Italy was very slender; but soon after he grew within short time without all measure, and did lurch a castle here, gain a city there from the emperor, while he was employed in Palestine.—Fuller, Holy War, b. i. c. 11.
Lust. Used at this present only in an ill sense, not as ἐπιθυμία, but as ἐπιθυμία κακή (Col. iii. 5), and this mainly in one particular direction. ‘Lust’ had formerly no such limitations, nor has it now in German. The same holds good of the verb.
Chaucer, Canterbury Tales, 192.
Through faith a man is purged of his sins, and obtaineth lust unto the law of God.—Tyndale, Prologue upon the Epistle to the Romans.
It was not because of the multitude of you above all nations that the Lord had lust unto you and chose you.—Deut. vii. 7. Coverdale.
My lust to devotion is little, my joy none at all.—Bishop Hall, Letters, Dec. 2, Ep. 1.
Thou mayest kill and eat flesh in all thy gates, whatsoever thy soul lusteth after.—Deut. xii. 15. (A.V.)
| Luxury, | } |
| Luxurious. |
‘Luxuria’ in classical Latin was very much what our ‘luxury’ is now. The meaning which in our earlier English was its only one, namely indulgence in sins of the flesh, it derived from the use of ‘luxuria’ in the medieval ethics, where it never means anything else but this. The weakening of the influence of the scholastic theology, joined to a more familiar acquaintance with classical Latinity, has probably caused its return to the classical meaning. In the definition given by Phillips (see below), we note the process of transition from its old meaning to its new, the old still remaining, but the new superinduced upon it.
Chaucer, The Man of Lawes Tale (Morris, ii. p. 198).
Luxury and lust fasten a rust and foulness on the mind, that it cannot see sin in its odious deformity, nor virtue in its unattainable beauty.—Bates, Spiritual Perfection, c. 1.
Luxury, all superfluity and excess in carnal pleasures, sumptuous fare or building; sensuality, riotousness, profuseness.—Phillips, New World of Words.
Shakespeare, Much Ado about Nothing, act iv. sc. 1.
Again, that many of their Popes be such as I have said, naughty, wicked, luxurious men, they openly confess.—Jackson, The Eternal Truth of Scriptures, b. ii. c. 14.
| Magnificent, | } |
| Magnificence. |
Frequently used by our elder writers where we should employ munificent or generous. Yet there lay in the word something more than in these; something of the μεγαλοπρέπεια of Aristotle; a certain grandeur presiding over and ordering this large distribution of wealth. Behind both uses an earlier and a nobler than either may be traced, as is evident from my first quotation.
Then cometh magnificence, that is to say when a man doth and performeth gret werkes of goodnesse.—Chaucer, The Persones Tale.
Every amorous person becometh liberal and magnificent, although he had been aforetime a pinching snudge; in such sort as men take more pleasure to give away and bestow upon those whom they love, than they do take and receive of others.—Holland, Plutarch’s Morals, p. 1147.
Massinger, The Emperor of the East, act ii. sc. 1.
Bounty and magnificence are virtues very regal; but a prodigal king is nearer a tyrant than a parsimonious.—Bacon, Essays, Of a King.
Maid. A word which, in its highest sense as = virgin, might once be applied to either sex, to Sir Galahad as freely as to the Pucelle, but which is now restricted to one. Compare παρθένος in Greek.
To him [John the Apostle] God hangyng in the cross bitook his modir, that a mayde schulde kepe a mayde.—Wiclif, Prolog of John.
Chaucer, Prologe of the Wyf of Bathe, 79.
Sir Galahad is a maid and sinner never; and that is the cause he shall achieve where he goeth that ye nor none such shall not attain.—Sir T. Malory, Morte D’Arthur, b. xiii. c. 16.
| Make, | } |
| Maker. |
The very early use of ‘maker,’ as equivalent to poet, and ‘to make’ as applied to the exercise of the poet’s art, is evidence that the words are of genuine home-growth, and not mere imitations of the Greek ποιητής and ποιεῖν, which Sir Philip Sidney, as will be seen below, suggests as possible. The words, like the French ‘trouvère’ and ‘troubadour,’ the O.H.G. ‘scof,’ and the O.E. ‘sceop,’ mark men’s sense that invention, and in a certain sense, creation, is the essential character of the poet. The quotation from Chaucer will sufficiently prove how entirely mistaken Sir John Harington was, when he affirmed (Apology for Poetry, p. 2) that Puttenham in his Art of English Poesy, 1589, was the first who gave ‘make’ and ‘maker’ this meaning. Sir Walter Scott somewhere claims them as Scotticisms; but exclusively such they certainly are not.
Chaucer, Compleynt of Venus, 79 (Skeat).
Spenser, The Shepherd’s Calendar, June.
The old famous poete Chaucer, for his excellencie and wonderful skil in making, his scholler Lidgate (a worthy scholler of so excellent a maister) calleth the Loadestarre of our language.—E. K., Epistle Dedicatory to Spenser’s Shepherd’s Calendar.
There cannot be in a maker a fouler fault than to falsify his accent to serve his cadence, or by untrue orthography to wrench his words to help his rhyme.—Puttenham, Art of English Poesy, b. ii. c. 8.
The Greeks named the poet ποιητής, which name, as the most excellent, hath gone through other languages. It cometh of this word ποιεῖν, to make; wherein I know not whether by luck or wisdom we Englishmen have met well with the Greeks in calling him a maker.—Sir P. Sidney, Defence of Poesy.
Mansion. This is a finely selected word, suggested no doubt by the ‘mansiones’ of the Vulgate, whereby our Translators, and Tyndale before them, rendered the μοναί of John xiv. 2. Knowing, however, as we do that μοναί never meant ‘mansions’ in our modern, or auctioneers’ sense of the word, we cannot doubt that by this word they intended places of tarrying, which might be for a longer or a shorter time; resting places which remained for the Christian traveller who should have reached at length his heavenly home. This use of ‘mansion’ as a place of tarrying is frequent enough in our early literature, although our modern use is by no means unknown.
They [the Angels] be pure minds and were never neither blinded through sin, ne hindered through any earthly mansion and corruptible body.—Hutchinson, Works, p. 160 (ed. 1842).
Milton, Comus, i. 4.
Manure. The same word as ‘manœuvre,’ to work with the hand; and thus, to till or cultivate the earth, this tillage being in earlier periods of society the great and predominant labour of the hands. We restrain the word now to one particular branch of this cultivation, but our ancestors made it to embrace the whole.
The manuring hand of the tiller shall root up all that burdens the soil.—Milton, Reason of Church Government.
It [Japan] is mountainous and craggy, full of rocks and stony places, so that the third part of this empire is not inhabited or manured.—Memorials of Japan (Hakluyt Society), p. 3.
A rare and excellent wit untaught doth bring forth many good and evil things together; as a fat soil, that lieth unmanured, bringeth forth both herbs and weeds.—North, Plutarch’s Lives, p. 185.
Every man’s hand itching to throw a cudgel at him, who, like a nut-tree, must be manured by beating, or else would never bear fruit.—Fuller, Holy War, ii. 11.
| Mean, | } |
| Meanness. |
O.E. ‘gemǽne,’ Goth. ‘gamains’ (compare Germ. ‘gemein’), cognate with Latin ‘communis’ (our ‘common’)—all with a history very closely corresponding to that of the Greek κοινός (see Acts x. 14). The connotation of moral baseness only accrued to the word by degrees.
And the mean man boweth down, and the great man humbleth himself.—Isai. ii. 9. (A.V.)
Spenser, Fairy Queen, iv. 7, 16.
| Mechanic, | } |
| Mechanical. |
A word which now simply expresses a fact, and is altogether untinged with passion or sentiment; but in its early history it ran exactly parallel to the Greek βάναυσος, which, expressing first one who plied a handicraft, came afterwards, in obedience to certain constant tendencies of language, to imply the man ethically illiberal. See the quotation from Holland, s. v. ‘Fairy.’
Base and mechanical niggardise they [flatterers] account temperate frugality.—Holland, Plutarch’s Morals, p. 93.
Shakespeare, 2 Henry VI., act i. sc. 3.
It was never a good world, since employment was counted mechanic, and idleness gentility.—Whitlock, Zootomia, p. 30.
Meddle. This had once no such offensive meaning of mixing oneself up in other people’s business as now it has. On the contrary, Barrow in one of his sermons draws expressly the distinction between ‘meddling’ and being meddlesome, and only condemns the latter.
In the drynke that she meddlid to you, mynge ye double to hir.—Apoc. xviii. 6. Wiclif.
How is it that thou, being a Jew, askest drink of me, which am a Samaritan? For the Jews meddle not [oὐ συγχρῶνται] with the Samaritans.—John iv. 9. Cranmer.
We beseech you, brethren, that ye study to be quiet, and to meddle with your own business.—1 Thess. iv. 10, 11. Tyndale.
Spenser, The Shepherd’s Calendar, May.
Mediterranean. Only seas are ‘mediterranean’ now, and for us only one Sea; but there is no reason why cities and countries should not be characterized as ‘mediterranean’ as well; and they were so once. We have preferred, however, to employ ‘inland.’
Their buildings are for the most part of tymber, for the mediterranean countreys have almost no stone.—The Kyngdome of Japonia, p. 6.
An old man, full of days, and living still in your mediterranean city, Coventry.—Henry Holland, Preface to Holland’s Cyropædia.
It [Arabia] hath store of cities, as well mediterranean as maritime.—Holland, Ammianus.
Medley. The same word as the French ‘mêlée.’ It is plain from the frequent use of the French ‘mêlée’ in the description of battles that we feel now the want of a corresponding English word. There have been attempts, though hardly successful ones, to naturalize ‘mêlée,’ and as ‘volée’ has become in English ‘volley,’ that so ‘mêlée’ should become ‘melley.’ Perhaps, as Tennyson has sanctioned these, employing ‘mellay’ in his Princess, they may now succeed. But there would have been no need of this, nor yet of borrowing the modern French form, if ‘medley’ had been allowed to keep this more passionate use, which once it possessed.
The consul for his part forslowed not to come to handfight. The medley continued above three hours, and the hope of victory hung in equal balance.—Holland, Livy, p. 1119.
Now began the conflict for the winning and defending of that old castle, which proved a medley of twelve hours long.—Swedish Intelligencer, vol. ii. p. 41.
Melancholy. This has now ceased, nearly or altogether, to designate a particular form of moody madness, the German ‘Tiefsinn,’ which was ascribed by the old physicians to a predominance of black bile mingling with the blood. It was not, it is true, always restrained to this particular form of mental unsoundness; thus Burton’s ‘Anatomy of Melancholy’ has not to do with this one form of madness, but with all. This, however, was its prevailing use, and here is to be found the link of connexion between its present use, as a deep pensiveness or sadness, and its past.
That property of melancholy, whereby men become to be delirious in some one point, their judgment standing untouched in others.—H. More, A Brief Discourse of Enthusiasm, sect. xiv.
Luther’s conference with the devil might be, for ought I know, nothing but a melancholy dream.—Chillingworth, The Religion of Protestants, Preface.
Though I am persuaded that none but the devil and this melancholy miscreant were in the plot [the Duke of Buckingham’s murder], yet in foro Dei many were guilty of this blood, that rejoiced it was spilt.—Hacket, Life of Archbishop Williams, part ii. p. 80.
Some melancholy men have believed that elephants and birds and other creatures, have a language whereby they discourse with one another.—Bishop Reynolds, Passions and Faculties of the Soul, c. 39.
| Mere, | } |
| Merely. |
There is a good note on these words, and on the changes of meaning which they have undergone, in Craik’s English of Shakespeare, p. 80. He there says: ‘Merely (from the Latin merus and mere) means purely, only. It separates that which it designates and qualifies from everything else. But in so doing the chief or most emphatic reference may be made either to that which is included, or to that which is excluded. In modern English it is always to the latter. In Shakespeare’s day the other reference was more common, that namely to what was included.’
With them all the people of Mounster went out, and many other of them which were mere English, thenceforth joined themselves with the Irish against the king, and termed themselves very Irish.—Spenser, View of the State of Ireland.
Our wine is here mingled with water and with myrrh; there [in heaven] it is mere and unmixed.—Bishop Taylor, The Worthy Communicant.
The great winding-sheets, that bury all things in oblivion, are two, deluges and earthquakes. As for conflagrations and great droughts, they do not merely dispeople and destroy. Phaeton’s car went but a day; and the three years’ drought, in the time of Elias, was but particular, and left people alive.—Bacon, Essays, 58.
Shakespeare, Hamlet, act i. sc. 2.
Mess. This used continually to be applied to a quarternion, or group of four persons or things. Probably in the distribution of food to large numbers, it was found most convenient to arrange them in fours, and hence this application of the word. A ‘mess’ at the Inns of Court still consists of four. A phrase-book published in London in 1617 bears this title, ‘Janua Linguarum Quadrilinguis, or A Messe of Tongues, Latine, English, French, and Spanish.’
There lacks a fourth thing to make up the mess.—Latimer, Sermon 5.
Shakespeare, 3 Henry VI. act i. sc. 4.
Amongst whom [converted Jews] we meet with a mess of most eminent men; Nicolaus Lyra, that grand commentator on the Bible; Hieronymus de Sanctâ Fide, turned Christian about anno 1412; Ludovicus Carettus, living in Paris anno 1553; and the never sufficiently to be praised Emmanuel Tremellius.—Fuller, A Pisgah Sight of Palestine, part ii. b. 5.
Metal. The Latin ‘metallum’ signified a mine before it signified the metal which was found in the mine; and Jeremy Taylor uses ‘metal’ in this sense of mine. This may be a latinism peculiar to him, as he has of such not a few; in which case it would scarcely have a right to a place in this little volume, which does not propose to note the peculiarities of single writers, but the general course of the language. I, however, insert it, counting it more probable that my limited reading hinders me from furnishing an example of this use from some other author, than that such does not somewhere exist.
It was impossible to live without our king, but as slaves live, that is, such who are civilly dead, and persons condemned to metals.—Bishop Taylor, Ductor Dubitantium, Epistle Dedicatory.
Methodist. This term is restricted at present to the followers of John Wesley; but it was once applied to those who followed a certain ‘method’ in philosophical speculation, or in the ethical treatment of themselves or others.
The finest methodists, according to Aristotle’s golden rule of artificial bounds, condemn geometrical precepts in arithmetic, or arithmetical precepts in geometry, as irregular and abusive.—G. Harvey, Pierce’s Supererogation, p. 117.
For physick, search into the writings of Hippocrates, Galen and the methodists.—Sanderson, Sermons, vol. ii. p. 135.
All of us have some or other tender parts of our souls, which we cannot endure should be ungently touched; every man must be his own methodist to find them out.—Jackson, Justifying Faith, b. iv. c. 5.
Militia. By this name, as the contests between Charles I. and his Parliament have made us all to know, the entire military force of the nation, and not a part of it only, was designated in the seventeenth century. It is true indeed that this force did much more nearly resemble our militia than our standing army, but it was never used for that to the exclusion of this.
It was a small thing to contend with the Parliament about the sole power of the militia, which we see him doing little less than laying hands on the weapons of God Himself, which are his judgements, to wield and manage them by the sway and bent of his own frail cogitations.—Milton, Iconoclastes, c. 26.
The king’s captains and soldiers fight his battles, and yet he is summus imperator, and the power of the militia is his.—Bishop Taylor, Ductor Dubitantium, iii. 3, 7.
Ye are of his flock and his militia; ye are now to fight his battles, and therefore to put on his armour.—Id., On Preparation for Confirmation, § 7.
Minion. Once no more than darling or dearling (mignon). It is quite a superaddition of later times that the ‘minion’ is an unworthy object, on whom an excessive fondness is bestowed.
Sylvester, Du Bartas’ Weeks, The Imposture.
Old Song.
Minute. ‘Minutes’ are now ‘minúte’ portions of time; they might once be ‘minúte’ portions of anything.
But whanne a pore widewe was comun, sche keste two mynutis, that is a ferthing.—Mark xii. 42. Wiclif.
Let us, with the poor widow of the Gospel, at least give two minutes.—Becon, The Nosegay, Preface.
An enquiry into the minutes of conscience is commonly the work of persons that live holily.—Bishop Taylor, Doctrine and Practice of Repentance, Preface.
And now, after such a sublimity of malice, I will not instance in the sacrilegious ruin of the neighbouring temples, which needs must have perished in the flame. These are but minutes, in respect of the ruin prepared for the living temples.—Id., Sermon on the Gunpowder Treason.
Miscreant. A settled conviction that to believe wrongly is the way to live wrongly has caused that in all languages words, which originally did but indicate the first, have gradually acquired a meaning of the second. There is no more illustrious example of this than ‘miscreant,’ which now charges him to whom it is applied not with religious error, but with extreme moral depravity; while yet, according to its etymology, it did but mean at the first misbeliever, and as such would have been as freely applied to the morally most blameless of these as to the vilest and the worst. In the quotation from Shakespeare York means to charge the Maid of Orleans, as a dealer in unlawful charms, with apostasy from the Christian faith, according to the low and unworthy estimate of her character, above which even Shakespeare himself has not risen.
We are not therefore ashamed of the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, because miscreants in scorn have upbraided us that the highest of our wisdom is, Believe.—Hooker, Ecclesiastical Polity, b. v.
One sort you say be those that believe not in Christ, but deny Christ and his Scripture; as be the Turks, paynims, and such other miscreants.—Frith, Works, 1572, p. 62.
Shakespeare, 1 Henry VI., act v. sc. 2.
The consort and the principal servants of Soliman had been honourably restored without ransom; and the emperor’s generosity to the miscreant was interpreted as treason to the Christian cause.—Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, c. 58.
| Miser, | } |
| Misery, | |
| Miserable. |
We may notice a curious shifting of parts in ‘miser,’ ‘misery,’ ‘miserable.’ There was a time when the ‘miser’ was the wretched man, he is now the covetous; at the same time ‘misery,’ which is now wretchedness, and ‘miserable,’ which is now wretched, were severally covetousness and covetous. They have in fact exactly reversed their uses. Men still express by some words of this group, although not by the same, by ‘miser’ (and ‘miserly’), not as once by ‘misery’ and ‘miserable,’ their deep moral conviction that the avaricious man is his own tormentor, and bears his punishment involved in his sin. A passage, too long to quote, in Gascoigne’s Fruits of War, st. 72-74, is very instructive on the different uses of the word ‘miser’ even in his time, and on the manner in which it was even then hovering between the two meanings.
Because thou sayest, ‘That I am rich and enriched and lack nothing;’ and knowest not that thou art a miser [et nescis quia tu es miser, Vulg.] and miserable and poor and blind and naked.—Rev. iii. 17. Rhemish Version.
Spenser, Fairy Queen, ii. 1, 8.
He [Perseus] returned again to his old humour which was born and bred with him, and that was avarice and misery.—North, Plutarch’s Lives, p. 215.
But Brutus, scorning his [Octavius Cæsar’s] misery and niggardliness, gave unto every band a number of wethers to sacrifice, and fifty silver drachmas to every soldier.—Id., ib., p. 830.
If avarice be thy vice, yet make it not thy punishment; miserable men commiserate not themselves; bowelless unto themselves, and merciless unto their own bowels.—Sir T. Browne, Letter to a Friend.
The liberal-hearted man is by the opinion of the prodigal, miserable; and by the judgment of the miserable, lavish.—Hooker, Ecclesiastical Polity, b. v. c. 65.
Miss. Now to be conscious of the loss of, and nearly answering to the Latin ‘desiderare,’ but once to do without, to dispense with.
Shakespeare, Tempest, act i. sc. 2.
Beaumont and Fletcher, The Mad Lover, act. ii.
Model. This is due to a French form from a late Latin diminutive of ‘modulus,’ a diminutive of ‘modus;’ but this diminutive sense which once went constantly with the word, and which will alone explain the quotations which follow, when it lies in the word now, exists only by accident of context.
Shakespeare, Henry V., act ii. Chorus.
Id., Richard II., act iii. sc. 2.
If Solomon’s Temple were compared to some structures and fanes of heathen gods, it would appear as St. Gregory’s to St. Paul’s (the babe by the mother’s side), or rather this David’s model would be like David himself standing by Goliath, so gigantic were some pagan fabrics in comparison thereof.—Fuller, A Pisgah Sight of Palestine, b. iii. c. 3.
Mood. It is hardly necessary to observe that there are two ‘moods’ in the English language, the one the Latin ‘modus,’ and existing in the two forms of ‘mood’ (grammatical) and ‘mode;’ the other the Anglo-Saxon ‘mód,’ the German ‘muth.’ It is this last with which we are dealing here. It would seem as if its homonym had influenced it so far as to take out in great part the force from it, though not from ‘moody;’ but it had not always so done.
Chaucer, The Knightes Tale, 900.
Chapman, Homer’s Odysseis, xxii. 518.
Golding, Ovid’s Metamorphosis, b. ii.
Morose. It is very curious that while the classical ‘mōrosus’ expressed one given overmuch to his own manners, habits, ways (mores), very nearly the Greek αὐθέκαστος, the medieval ‘mŏrosus’ was commonly connected with ‘mora,’ a delay;20 and in treatises of Christian ethics was the technical word to express the sin of delaying upon impure, wanton, or, as in the quotation from South, malignant thoughts, instead of rejecting them on the instant. See, for instance, Gerson, Opp., vol. i. p. 377, for evidence constantly recurring of its connexion for him with ‘mora.’ So long as the scholastic theology exerted more or less influence on our own, ‘morose’ was often employed in this sense; which, however, it has since entirely foregone. I owe the third quotation given below to Todd, who is so entirely unaware of this history of ‘morose,’ that he explains it there as ungovernable!
Here are forbidden all wanton words, and all morose delighting in venereous thoughts, all rolling and tossing such things in our minds.—Bishop Taylor, Doctrine and Practice of Repentance, c. 4, § 1.
All morose thoughts, that is, delaying, dwelling, or insisting on such thoughts, fancying of such unclean matters with delectation.—Hammond, Practical Catechism, b. ii. § 6.
In this [the seventh] commandment are forbidden all that feed this sin [adultery], or are incentives to it, as luxurious diet, inflaming wines, an idle life, morose thoughts, that dwell in the fancy with delight.—Nicholson, Exposition of the Catechism, 1662, p. 123.
For we must know that it is the morose dwelling of the thoughts upon an injury, a long and sullen meditation upon a wrong, that incorporates and rivets it into the mind.—South, Sermons, vol. x. p. 278.
Mortal. We speak still of a ‘mortal’ sin or a ‘mortal’ wound, but the active sense has nearly departed from the word, as the passive has altogether departed from ‘deadly,’ which see.
Shakespeare, 2 Henry VI., act iii. sc. 2.
Id., Antony and Cleopatra, act v. sc. 2.
Mountebank. Now any antic fool; but once restrained to the quack-doctor who at fairs and such places of resort, having mounted on a bank or bench, from thence proclaimed the virtue of his drugs; being described by Whitlock (Zootomia, p. 436) as ‘a fellow above the vulgar more by three planks and two empty hogsheads than by any true skill.’ See the quotation from Jackson, s. v. ‘Authentic.’
Such is the weakness and easy credulity of men, that a mountebank or cunning woman is preferred before an able physician.—Whitlock, Zootomia, p. 437.
Giving no cause of complaint to any but such as are unwilling to be healed of their shameful and dangerous diseases, who love ignorant and flattering mountebanks more than the most learned and faithful physicians of souls.—Gauden, Hieraspistes, p. 427.
Oldham, Third Satire upon the Jesuits.
Muse. There is a very curious use of ‘Muse’ in our earlier literature, according to which the female sex of this inspirer of song falls quite out of sight. This recurs too often and too deliberately to be explained away as the accidental inaccuracy of some single writer.
Marlowe, Dr. Faustus, 5, 6.
Shakespeare, Sonnet 21.
Milton, Lycidas, 19.
Dryden, Absalom and Achitophel, pt. 1.
Mutton. It is a refinement in the English language, one wanting in some other languages which count themselves as refined or more, that it has in so many cases one word to express the living animal, and another its flesh prepared for food; ox and beef, calf and veal, deer and venison, sheep and mutton. In this last instance the refinement is of somewhat late introduction. At one time they were synonyms.
Peucestas, having feasted them in the kingdom of Persia, and given every soldier a mutton to sacrifice, thought he had won great favour and credit among them.—North, Plutarch’s Lives, p. 505.
A starved mutton’s carcass would better fit their palates.—Ben Jonson, The Sad Shepherd, act i. sc. 2.
Namely. Now only designates; but, like the German ‘namentlich,’ once designated as first and chief, as deserving above all others to be named.
For there are many disobedient, and talkers of vanity, and deceivers of minds, namely [μάλιστα] they of the circumcision.—Tit. i. 10. Tyndale.
For in the darkness occasioned by the opposition of the earth just in the mids between the sun and the moon, there was nothing for him [Nicias] to fear, and namely at such a time, when there was cause for him to have stood upon his feet, and served valiantly in the field.—Holland, Plutarch’s Morals, p. 265.
Naturalist. At present the student of natural history; but in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the name was often given to the deist, as one who denied any but a religion of nature, ‘Natural religion men’ such were sometimes called. See the quotation from Rogers, s. v. ‘Civil.’
But that he [the atheist] might not be shy of me, I have conformed myself as near his own garb as I might, without partaking of his folly or wickedness; and have appeared in the plain shape of a mere naturalist myself, that I might, if it were possible, win him off from downright atheism.—H. More, Antidote against Atheism, Preface, p. 7.
This is the invention of Satan, that whereas all will not be profane, nor naturalists, nor epicures, but will be religious, lo, he hath a bait for every fish, and can insinuate himself as well into religion itself as into lusts and pleasures.—Rogers, Naaman the Syrian, p. 115.
Heathen naturalists hold better consort with the primitive Church concerning the nature of sin original than the Socinians.—Jackson, Of Christ’s Everlasting Priesthood, b. x. c. 8, § 4.
Needful. This was once often equivalent to ‘needy.’ The words, however, have in more recent times been discriminated in use, and ‘needy’ is active, and ‘needful’ passive.
These ferthinges shal be gaderid at everi moneth ende, and delid forth to the needful man in honor of Christ and his moder.—English Gilds, p. 38.
Grieve not the heart of him that is helpless, and withdraw not the gift from the needful.—Ecclus. iv. 2. Coverdale.
For thou art the poor man’s help, and strength for the needful in his necessity.—Isai. xxv. 3. Id.
Great variety of clothes have been permitted to princes and nobility, and they usually give those clothes as rewards to servants and other persons needful enough.—Bishop Taylor, Holy Living, iv. 8, 13.
Nephew. Restrained at this present to the son of a brother or a sister; but formerly of much laxer use, a grandson, or even a remoter lineal descendant. In East Anglia it is still so used in the popular language (see Nall, Dialects of the East Coast, s. v.). ‘Nephew’ in fact has undergone exactly the same change of meaning that ‘nepos’ in Latin underwent; which in the Augustan age meaning grandson, in the post-Augustan acquired the signification of ‘nephew’ in our present acceptation of that word. See ‘Niece.’
The warts, black moles, spots and freckles of fathers, not appearing at all upon their own children’s skin, begin afterwards to put forth and show themselves in their nephews, to wit, the children of their sons and daughters.—Holland, Plutarch’s Morals, p. 555.
With what intent they [the apocryphal books] were first published, those words of the nephew of Jesus do plainly enough signify: After that my grandfather Jesus had given himself to the reading of the law and the prophets, he purposed also to write something pertaining to learning and wisdom.—Hooker, Ecclesiastical Polity, b. v. c. 20.
If any widow have children or nephews [ἔκγονα], let them learn first to show piety at home, and to requite their parents.—1 Tim. v. 4. (A.V.)
Nice. The use of ‘nice’ in the sense of fastidious, difficult to please, still survives, indeed this is now, as in times past, the ruling notion of the word; only this ‘niceness’ is taken now much oftener in good part than in ill; nor, even when taken in an ill sense, would the word be used exactly as in the passage which follows.
A. W. [Anthony Wood] was with him several times, ate and drank with him, and had several discourses with him concerning arms and armory, which he understood well; but he found him nice and supercilious.—A. Wood, Athenæ Oxonienses, 1848, vol. i. p. 161.
Niece. This word has undergone the same change and limitation of meaning as ‘nephew,’ with indeed the further limitation that it is now applied to the female sex alone, to the daughter of a brother or a sister, being once used, as ‘neptis’ was at the first, for children’s children, male and female alike. See ‘Nephew.’
Laban answeride to hym: My dowytres and sones, and the flockis, and alle that thou beholdist, ben myne, and what may I do to my sones and to my neces?—Gen. xxi. 43 (cf. Exod. xxxiv. 7). Wiclif.
The Emperor Augustus, among other singularities that he had by himself during his life, saw, ere he died, the nephew of his niece, that is to say, his progeny to the fourth degree of lineal descent.—Holland, Pliny, vol. i. p. 162.
Within the compass of which very same time he [Julius Cæsar] lost by death first his mother, then his daughter Julia, and not long after his niece by the said daughter.—Id., Suetonius, p. 11.
| Noisome, | } |
| Noisomeness. |
At present offensive and moving disgust; but once noxious and actually hurtful; thus a skunk would be ‘noisome’ now; a tiger was ‘noisome’ then. In all passages of the Authorized Translation of the Bible where the word occurs, as at Ezek. xiv. 15, 21, it is used not in the present meaning, but the past. See ‘Annoy.’
They that will be rich fall into temptations and snares, and into many foolish and noisome [βλαβεράς] lusts, which drown men in perdition and destruction.—1 Tim. vi. 9. Geneva.
He [the superstitious person] is persuaded that they be gods indeed, but such as be noisome, hurtful, and doing mischief unto men.—Holland, Plutarch’s Morals, p. 260.
This noisome creature [the crocodile] is one of the greatest wonders we meet with, in that from so small a beginning as an egg, not much bigger than that of a turkey, they increase to eight or ten yards in length.—Herbert, Travels, 1636, p. 323.
They [the prelates] are so far from hindering dissension, that they have made unprofitable, and even noisome, the chiefest remedy we have to keep Christendom at one, which is, by Councils.—Milton, Reason of Church Government, b. i. c. 6.
Sad in his time was the condition of the Israelites, oppressed by the Midianites, who swarmed like grasshoppers for number and noisomeness, devouring all which the other had sown.—Fuller, A Pisgah Sight of Palestine, part i. b. ii. c. 8.
| Novel, | } |
| Novelist. |
‘Novels’ once were simply news, ‘nouvelles;’ and the ‘novelist’ not a writer of new tales, but an innovator, a bringer in of new fashions into the Church or State.
Townley Mysteries.
But, see and say what you will, novelists had rather be talked of, that they began a fashion and set a copy for others, than to keep within the imitation of the most excellent precedents.—Hacket, Life of Archbishop Williams, part ii. p. 36.
Every novelist with a whirligig in his brain must broach new opinions, and those made canons, nay sanctions, as sure as if a General Council had confirmed them.—Adams, The Devil’s Banquet, 1614, p. 52.
I can hardly believe my eyes while I read such a petit novelist charging the whole Church as fools and heretics for not subscribing to a silly heretical notion, solely of his own invention.—South, Animadversions on Dr. Sherlock’s Book, p. 3.
Nursery. We have but one use of ‘nursery’ at this present, namely as the place of nursing; but it was once applied as well to the person nursed, or the act of nursing.
A jolly dame, no doubt; as appears by the well battling of the plump boy, her nursery.—Fuller, A Pisgah Sight of Palestine, part i. b. ii. c. 8.
If nursery exceeds her [a mother’s] strength, and yet her conscience will scarce permit her to lay aside and free herself from so natural, so religious a work, yet tell her, God loves mercy better than sacrifice.—Rogers, Matrimonial Honour, p. 247.
Shakespeare, King Lear, act i. sc. 1.
Obelisk. The ‘obelus’ is properly a sharp-pointed spear or spit. With a sign resembling this, spurious or doubtful passages were marked in the books of antiquity, which sign bore therefore this name of ‘obelus,’ or sometimes of its diminutive ‘obeliscus.’ It is in this sense that we find ‘obelisk’ employed by the writers in the seventeenth century; while for us at the present a small pillar tapering towards the summit is the only ‘obelisk’ that we know.
The Lord Keeper, the most circumspect of any man alive to provide for uniformity, and to countenance it, was scratched with their obelisk, that he favoured Puritans, and that sundry of them had protection through his connivency or clemency.—Hacket, Life of Archbishop Williams, part i. p. 95.
I have set my mark upon them [i.e. affected pedantic words]; and if any of them may have chanced to escape the obelisk, there can arise no other inconvenience from it but an occasion to exercise the choice and judgment of the reader.—Phillips, New World of Words, Preface.
Obnoxious. This, in its present lax and slovenly use a vague unserviceable synonym for offensive, is properly applied to one who on the ground of a mischief or wrong committed by him is justly liable to punishment (ob noxam pœnæ obligatus); and is used in this sense by South (see below). But there often falls out of the word the sense of a wrong committed; and that of liability to punishment, whether just or unjust, only remains; it does so very markedly in the quotation from Donne. But we punish, or wish to punish, those whom we dislike, and thus ‘obnoxious’ has obtained its present sense of offensive.
They envy Christ, but they turn upon the man, who was more obnoxious to them, and they tell him that it was not lawful for him to carry his bed that day [John v. 10].—Donne, Sermon 20.
Examine thyself in the particulars of thy relations; especially where thou governest and takest accounts of others, and art not so obnoxious to them as they to thee.—Bishop Taylor, The Worthy Communicant, c. vi. sect. 2.
What shall we then say of the power of God Himself to dispose of men? little, finite, obnoxious things of his own making?—South, Sermons, 1744, vol. viii. p. 315.
He [Satan] is in a chain, and that chain is in God’s hand; and consequently, notwithstanding his utmost spite, he cannot be more malicious than he is obnoxious.—Id., ib. vol. vi. p. 287.
| Obsequious, | } |
| Obsequiousness. |
There lies ever in ‘obsequious’ at the present the sense of an observance which is overdone, of an unmanly readiness to fall in with the will of another; there lay nothing of this in the Latin ‘obsequium,’ nor yet in our English word as employed two centuries ago. See the quotation from Feltham, s. v. ‘Garb.’
Besides many other fishes in divers places, which are very obeisant and obsequious, when they be called by their names.—Holland, Plutarch’s Morals, p. 970.
I ever set this down, that the only course to be held with the Queen was by obsequiousness and observance.—Lord Bacon, Defence of Himself.
His corrections are so far from compelling men to come to heaven, as that they put many men farther out of their way, and work an obduration rather than an obsequiousness.—Donne, Sermon 45.
In her relation to the king she was the best pattern of conjugal love and obsequiousness.—Bates, Sermon upon the Death of the Queen.
| Occupy, | } |
| Occupier. |
He now ‘occupies’ who has in present possession; but the word involved once the further signification of using, employing, laying out that which was thus possessed; and by an ‘occupier’ was meant a trader or retail dealer.
He [Eumenes] made as though he had occasion to occupy money, and so borrowed a great sum of them.—North, Plutarch’s Lives, p. 505.
If they bind me fast with new ropes that never were occupied, then shall I be weak, and be as another man.—Judges xvi. 11. (A.V.)
Mercury, the master of merchants and occupiers [ἀγοραίων].—Holland, Plutarch’s Morals, p. 692.
Offal. This, bearing its derivation on its front, namely that it is that which, as refuse and of little or no worth, is suffered or caused to fall off, we restrict at the present to the refuse of the butcher’s stall; but it was once employed in a much wider acceptation, an acceptation which here and there still survives. Thus, as one who writes to me, ‘in all her Majesty’s dockyards there is a monthly sale by auction of “offal wood,” being literally that which falls off from the log under the saw, axe, or adze.’
Southwell, Lewd Love is Loss.
Of gold the very smallest filings are precious, and our Blessed Saviour, when there was no want of provision, yet gave it in charge to his disciples, the off-fall should not be lost.—Sanderson, Preface to the Clavi Trabales.
Poor Lazarus lies howling at his gates for a few crumbs; he only seeks chippings, offals; let him roar and howl, famish and eat his own flesh; he respects him not.—Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy, part iii. sect. 1.
| Officious, | } |
| Officiousness. |
Again and again we light on words used once in a good, but now in an unfavourable, sense. An ‘officious’ person is now a busy uninvited meddler in matters which do not belong to him; so late as Burke’s time he might be one prompt and forward in due offices of kindness. The more honourable use of ‘officious’ now only survives in the distinction familiar to diplomacy between an ‘official’ and ‘officious’ communication.
Milton, Paradise Regained, ii. 302.
Officious, ready to do good offices, serviceable, friendly, very courteous and obliging.—Phillips, New World of Words.
They [the nobility of France] were tolerably well bred, very officious, humane, and hospitable.—Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France, p. 251.
S. Johnson (A.D. 1782).
Which familiar and affectionate officiousness and sumptuous cost, together with that sinister fame that woman was noted with [Luke vii. 37], could not but give much scandal to the Pharisees there present.—H. More, Grand Mystery of Godliness, b. viii. c. 13.
Orient. This had once a beautiful use, as clear, bright, shining, which has now wholly departed from it. Thus, the ‘orient’ pearl of our earlier poets is not ‘oriental,’ but pellucid, white, shining. Doubtless it acquired this meaning originally from the greater clearness and lightness of the east, as the quarter whence the day breaks.
Those shells that keep in the main sea, and lie deeper than that the sunbeams can pierce unto them, keep the finest and most delicate pearls. And yet they as orient as they be, wax yellow with age.—Holland, Pliny, vol. i. p. 255.
He, who out of that dark chaos made the glorious heavens, and garnished them with so many orient stars, can move upon thy dark soul and enlighten it, though now it be as void of knowledge as the evening of the first day was of light.—Gurnall, Christian in Complete Armour, ii. 22, 1.
Sylvester, Du Bartas, Fifth Day.
Κόκκος βαφική, a shrub, whose red berries or grains gave an orient tincture to cloth.—Fuller, A Pisgah Sight of Palestine, b. iv. c. 6.
Ortolan. This, the name now of a delicate bird haunting gardens, was once the name of the gardener (‘hortolanus,’ ‘ortolano’) himself.
Though to an old tree it must needs be somewhat dangerous to be oft removed, yet for my part I yield myself entirely to the will and pleasure of the most notable ortolan.—State Papers, 1536, vol. vi. p. 534.
Ostler. Not formerly the servant of the inn having care of the horses, but the innkeeper or host, the ‘hosteller’ himself.
And another dai he brougte forth twey pans, and gaf to the ostiler [stabulario, Vulg].—Luke x. 35. Wiclif.
Corbet. Iter. Boreale.
Ought. Of the two perfects of the verb ‘to owe’ (see Morris, English Accidence, p. 189; and Earle, Philology of the English Tongue, § 289), namely ‘ought’ and ‘owed,’ the former has come now to be used of a moral owing or obligation only, never of a material; but it was not always so. In the passage from Spenser ‘ought’ is used in the sense of ‘possessed.’ Among the many tacit alterations which our Authorized Version has at various times undergone, the substitution in many places of ‘owed’ for ‘ought’ is one.
Spenser, Fairy Queen, i. 4, 39.
There was a certain creditor, who had two debtors. The one ought five hundred pence, and the other fifty.—Luke vii. 41. (A. V.)
Also we forgive the oversights and faults committed against us, and the crown-tax that ye ought us.—1 Macc. xiii. 39. Geneva Version.
Overture. Not now an aperture or opening, in the literal and primary sense of the word, as formerly it was; but always in some secondary and derived.
The squirrels also foresee a tempest coming; and look in what corner the wind is like to stand, on that side they stop up the mouth of their holes, and make an overture on the other side against it.—Holland, Pliny, b. viii. c. 38.
| Painful, | } |
| Painfulness, | |
| Painfully. |
‘Painful’ is now feeling pain, or inflicting it; it was once taking pains. Many things would not be so ‘painful’ in the present sense of the word, if they had been more ‘painful’ in the earlier,—as perhaps some sermons.
Within fourteen generations, the royal blood of the kings of Judah ran in the veins of plain Joseph, a painful carpenter.—Fuller, Holy War, b. v. c. 29.
I think we have some as painful magistrates as ever was in England.—Latimer, Sermons, p. 142.
Painfulness by feeble means shall be able to gain that which in the plenty of more forcible instruments is through sloth and negligence lost.—Hooker, Ecclesiastical Polity, b. v. § 22.
O the holiness of their living, and painfulness of their preaching!—Fuller, Holy State, b. ii. c. 6.
Whoever would be truly thankful, let him live in some honest vocation, and therein bestow himself faithfully and painfully.—Sanderson, Sermons, vol. i. p. 251.
Palestine. This is now a name for the entire Holy Land; but in the Authorized Version ‘Palestine,’ or ‘Palestina,’ as it is written three times out of the four on which it occurs, is used in a far more restricted sense, namely, as equivalent to Philistia, that narrow strip of coast occupied by the Philistines. This a close examination of the several passages (see Wright’s Dictionary of the Bible) will make abundantly clear. And it is also invariably so employed by Milton; thus see, besides the passage quoted below, Samson Agonistes, 144, and On the Nativity, 199.
Rejoice not thou, whole Palestina, because the rod of him that smote thee is broken.—Isai. xiv. 29. (A.V.)
Such their [the Philistines’] puissance, that from them the Greeks and Latins called all this land Palestina, because the Philistines lived on the sea coast, most obvious to the notice of foreigners.—Fuller, A Pisgah Sight of Palestine, ii. 10, 23.
Milton, Paradise Lost, i. 462.
| Palliate, | } |
| Palliation. |
‘To palliate’ is at this day to extenuate a fault through the setting out of whatever will best serve to diminish the estimate of its gravity; and does not imply any endeavour wholly to deny it; nay, implies rather a certain recognition and admission of the fault itself. Truer to its etymology once, it expressed the cloking of it, the attempt, successful or otherwise, entirely to conceal and cover it. Eve ‘palliates’ her fault in the modern sense of the word (Gen. iii. 13), Gehazi in the earlier (2 Kin. v. 25).
Daniel, The Tragedy of Philotas, act iv. sc. 2.
You see the Devil could fetch up nothing of Samuel at the request of Saul, but a shadow and a resemblance, his countenance and his mantle, which yet was not enough to cover the cheat, or to palliate the illusion.—South, Sermon on Easter Day.
The generality of Christians make the external frame of religion but a palliation for sin.—H. More, Grand Mystery of Godliness, p. ix.
Pantomime.—Now the mimic show itself, but at the first introduction of the word (Bacon’s constant use of ‘pantomimus’ and ‘pantomimi,’ and Ben Jonson’s as well, testify that it was new in their time), the player who presented the show.
I would our pantomimes also and stage-players would examine themselves and their callings by this rule.—Sanderson, Sermon on 1 Cor. vii. 24.
The hypocrite cometh forth in a disguise, and acteth his part, and because men applaud him, thinketh God is of their mind, as the pantomime in Seneca, who observing the people well pleased with his dancing, did every day go up into the Capitol and dance before Jupiter, and was persuaded that he was also delighted in him.—Faringdon, Sermon 10.
Butler, Hudibras, p. 3, can. 2.
| Pathetic, | } |
| Pathetical, | |
| Pathetically. |
The ‘pathetic’ is now only one kind of the passionate, that which, feeling pity, is itself capable of stirring it; but ‘pathetic’ or ‘pathetical’ and ‘passionate’ were once of an equal reach. When in a language like ours two words, derived from two different languages, as in this case from the Greek and from the Latin, exist side by side, being at the same time identical in signification, the desynonymizing process which we may note here, continually comes into play.
He [Hiel, cf. Josh. vi. 26 and 1 Kings xvi. 34] mistood Joshua’s curse rather for a pathetical expression than prophetical prediction.—Fuller, A Pisgah Sight of Palestine, b. ii. c. 12.
Beaumont, Psyche, c. i. st. 148.
For Truth, I know not how, hath this unhappiness fatal to her, ere she can come to the trial and inspection of the understanding; being to pass through many little wards and limits of the several affections and desires, she cannot shift it, but must put on such colours and attire as those pathetical handmaids of the soul please to lead her in to their queen.—Milton, Reason of Church Government, b. ii. c. 3.
But the principal point whereon our apostle pitcheth for evincing the priesthood of Christ to be far more excellent than the Levitical priesthood was, was reserved to the last, and pathetically though briefly avouched, ver. 20 [Heb. vii. 20].—Jackson, Of the Divine Essence and Attributes, b. ix. § 2.
Pattern. One is at first tempted to accuse our Translators of an inaccuracy at Heb. ix. 23, since, whatever ὑπόδειγμα may mean elsewhere, it is impossible that it can there mean ‘pattern,’ in our sense of exemplar or original from which a copy or sketch is derived, ‘patron’ upon whom the client forms and fashions himself. This is inconsistent with, and would indeed entirely defeat, the whole argument of the Apostle. The ὑποδείγματα there can be only the earthly copies and imitations of the heavenly and archetypal originals, ἀντίτυπα τῶν ἀληθινῶν. A passage, however, in the Homilies entirely relieves them from any charge of error. All that can be said is that they have employed ‘pattern’ in a somewhat unusual sense, but one which an analogous use of ‘copy’ in our own day sufficiently explains.
Which priests serve unto the patron [ὑποδείγματι] and shadow of heavenly things.—Heb. viii. 5. Geneva.
It was therefore necessary that the patterns of things in the heavens should be purified with these; but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these.—Heb. ix. 23. (A.V.)
Where most rebellions and rebels be, there is the express similitude of hell, and the rebels themselves are the very figures of fiends and devils; and their captain, the ungracious pattern of Lucifer and Satan, the prince of darkness.—Homilies, Against Wilful Rebellion.
| Peevish, | } |
| Peevishness. |
By ‘peevishness’ we now understand a small but constantly fretting ill-temper; yet no one can read our old authors, with whom ‘peevish’ and ‘peevishness’ are of constant recurrence, without feeling that their use of them is different from ours; although precisely to determine what their use was is anything but easy. Gifford (Massinger, vol. i. p. 71) says confidently, ‘peevish is foolish;’ but upon induction from an insufficient number of passages. ‘Peevish’ is rather self-willed, obstinate. That in a world like ours those who refuse to give up their own wills should be continually crossed, and thus should become fretful, and ‘peevish’ in our modern sense of the word, is inevitable; and here is the history of the change of meaning which it has undergone.
Shakespeare, Two Gentlemen of Verona, act iii. sc. 1.
We provoke, rail, scoff, calumniate, challenge, hate, abuse (hard-hearted, implacable, malicious, peevish, inexorable as we are), to satisfy our lust or private spleen.—Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy, part iii. § 1.
Pertinax hominum genus, a peevish generation of men.—Id., ib., part iii. § 4.
That grand document of keeping to the light within us they [the Quakers] borrow out of St. John’s Gospel; and yet they are so frantic and peevish, that they would fling away the staff without which they are not able to make one step in religion.—H. More, Grand Mystery of Godliness, b. viii. c. 12.
In case the Romans, upon an inbred peevishness and engraffed pertinacity of theirs, should not hear reason, but refuse an indifferent end, then both God and man shall be witness as well of the moderation of Perseus, as of their pride and insolent frowardness.—Holland, Livy, p. 1152.
We must carefully distinguish continuance in opinion from obstinacy, confidence of understanding from peevishness of affection, a not being convinced from a resolution never to be convinced.—Bishop Taylor, Liberty of Prophesying, § ii. 10.
Pencil. The distinction between ‘pencil’ and paint-brush is quite modern. The older use of ‘pencil’ (‘penecillus,’ or little tail) was etymologically more correct than the modern; the brush being so called because it hung and drooped as does that.
Shakespeare, King John, act iii. sc. 1.
Learning is necessary to him [the heretic], if he trades in a critical error; but if he only broaches dregs, and deals in some dull sottish opinion, a trowel will serve as well as a pencil to daub on such thick coarse colours.—Fuller, Profane State, b. v. c. 10.
The first thing she did after rising was to have recourse to the red-pot, out of which she laid it on very thick with a pencil, not only on her cheeks, chin, under the nose, above the eyebrows and edges of the ears, but also on the inside of her hands, her fingers, and shoulders.—The Lady’s Travels into Spain, Letter 8.
Penitentiary. It is curious that this word has possessed three entirely independent meanings, namely penitent, ordainer of penances in the Church, and place for penitents; only the last is current now.
So Manasseh in the beginning and middle of his reign filled the city with innocent blood, and died a penitentiary.—Jackson, Christ’s Session at God’s Right Hand, b. ii. c. 42.
’Twas a French friar’s conceit that courtiers were of all men the likeliest to forsake the world and turn penitentiaries.—Hammond, The Seventh Sermon, Works, vol. iv. p. 517.
Penitentiary, a priest that imposes upon an offender what penance he thinks fit.—Phillips, New World of Words.
| Pensive, | } |
| Pensiveness. |
He is ‘pensive,’ according to our present estimate of the word, in whom a certain mild and meditative sadness finds place; and in thus attaching to the word this meaning of a thoughtful sadness we are truer to its etymology than were our ancestors, when they used it, as they often did, to express the sharpest anguish of grief. Thus, in my first quotation, by ‘the pensive court’ is meant the Court of David, which has just received tidings of the slaughter by Absalom of all the king’s sons.
Fuller, Poem on David’s hainous Sin.
Golding, Ovid’s Metamorphosis, b. vi.
What is care and thought? a plain token of diffidence and distrust of God. It is an unfaithful care and pensiveness of the mind for meat, drink, clothing.—Becon, Works, vol. iii. p. 611.
Penury. This expresses now no more than the objective fact of extreme poverty; an ethical subjective meaning not lying in it, as would sometimes of old. This is now retained only in ‘penurious,’ ‘penuriousness.’
God sometimes punishes one sin with another; pride with adultery, drunkenness with murder, carelessness with irreligion, idleness with vanity, penury with oppression.—Bishop Taylor, The Faith and Patience of the Saints.
[Perseverance. This word frequently occurs in literature of the sixteenth and seventeenth century in the sense of perception, discernment. ‘Perseverance’=discernment should be carefully distinguished from ‘perseverance’ (French perseverance, Latin perseverantia)=persistency, constancy. The former in many texts is spelt with a c instead of an s, as ‘perceverance,’ ‘perceyverance,’ ‘perceiverance.’ This spelling gives the key to the etymology; the word is a derivative from Old French percevoir, percever=Latin percipere, to perceive. For a good collection of illustrative passages see Notes and Queries (1st S. vii. 400.)]
Golding (see N. and Q.)
She had more perceverance of the Hebrues law.—Langley’s Polidore Vergile (see N. and Q.)
For his dyet he [Ariosto] was verie temperate, and a great enemie of excesse and surfetting, and so carelesse of delicates as though he had no perseverance in the tast of meates.—Sir J. Harington, Life of Ariosto, p. 418.
He [Æmilius Paulus] suddenly fell into a raving (without any perseverance of sickness spied in him before, or any change or alteration in him [πρὶν αἰσθέσθαι καὶ νοῆσαι τὴν μεταβολήν]), and his wits went from him in such sort that he died three days after.—North, Plutarch’s Lives, p. 221.
Person. We have forfeited the full force of the statement, ‘God is no respecter of persons;’ from the fact that ‘person’ does not mean for us now all that it once meant. ‘Person,’ from ‘persona,’ the mask constantly worn by the actor of antiquity, is by natural transfer the part or rôle in the play which each sustains, as πρόσωπον is in Greek. In the great tragi-comedy of life each sustains a ‘person;’ one that of a king, another that of a peasant; one must play Dives, another Lazarus. This ‘person’ God, for whom the question is not what ‘person’ each sustains, but how he sustains it, does not respect.
Shakespeare, 2 Henry IV., act v. sc. 2.
Cæsar also is brought in by Julian attributing to himself the honour (if it were at all an honour to that person which he sustained), of being the first that left his ship and took land.—Milton, History of England, b. ii.
Id., Paradise Lost, x. 153.
Certain it is, that no man can long put on a person and act a part but his evil manners will peep through the corners of his white robe, and God will bring a hypocrite to shame even in the eyes of men.—Bishop Taylor, Apples of Sodom.
Perspective. ‘Telescope’ and ‘microscope’ are both as old as Milton; but for a long while ‘perspective’ (glass being sometimes understood, and sometimes expressed) did the work of these. It is sometimes written ‘prospective.’ Our present use of ‘perspective’ hardly dates farther back than Dryden.
Webster, Duchess of Malfi, act iv. sc. 2.
While we look for incorruption in the heavens, we find they are but like the earth, durable in their main bodies, alterable in their parts; whereof, beside comets and new stars, perspectives begin to tell tales; and the spots that wander about the sun, with Phaeton’s favour, would make clear conviction.—Sir T. Browne, Hydriotaphia.
Look through faith’s perspective with the magnifying end on invisibles (for such is its frame, it lesseneth visibles), and thou wilt see sights not more strange than satisfying.—Whitlock, Zootomia, p. 535.
Oldham, Eighth Satire of M. Boileau.
Pert. This word had once the meaning of brisk, lively, nimble; now it is this with a very distinct subaudition of sauciness and impertinence as well.
Shakespeare, Midsummer Night’s Dream, act i. sc. 1.
Milton, Comus, 117.
Pester. There is no greater discomfort or annoyance than extreme straitness or narrowness of room; out of which in Greek the word στενοχωρία, signifying this, has come to have a secondary signification of trouble or anguish. [In English, ‘to pester’ bears witness to the same fact, having first the meaning of to encumber or clog, then the second meaning of painfully cooping-up in a narrow and confined space, and lastly the meaning of to vex or annoy, which sense it still retains.]
Now because the most part of the people might not possibly have a sight of him, they gat up all at once into the theatre, and pestered it quite full.—Holland, Livy, p. 1055.
They within, though pestered with their own numbers, stood to it like men resolved, and in a narrow compass did remarkable deeds.—Milton, History of England, b. ii.
The calendar is filled, not to say pestered with them [that is, with Saints’ Days], jostling one another for room, many holding the same day in copartnership of festivity.—Fuller, Worthies of England, c. 3.
| Physical, | } |
| Physically. |
Though ‘physical’ has not dissociated itself from ‘physics,’ it has from ‘physic’ and ‘physician,’ being used now as simply the equivalent for ‘natural’ which the Greek language has supplied us; but it was not always so.
Shakespeare, Julius Cæsar, act ii. sc. 1.
Attalus, surnamed Philometer (to say, lover of his mother), would plant and set physical herbs, as helleborum.—North, Plutarch’s Lives, p. 739.
And for physic, he [Lord Bacon] did indeed live physically,21 but not miserably.—Rawley, Life of Lord Bacon.
Placard. Formerly used often in the sense of a license or permission, the ‘placard’ being properly the broad tablet or board on which this, as well as other edicts and ordinances, was exposed.
Tusser, Author’s Life.
Others are of the contrary opinion, and that Christianity gives us a placard to use these sports; and that man’s charter of dominion over the creatures enables him to employ them as well for pleasure as necessity.—Fuller, Holy State, b. iii. c. 13.
Plantation. We still ‘plant’ a colony, but a ‘plantation’ is now of trees only; and not of men. There was a time when ‘The Plantations’ was the standing name by which our transatlantic colonies were known. One of Bacon’s state-papers has this title, ‘Certain Considerations touching the Plantation in Ireland.’
It is a shameful and unblessed thing to take the scum of people and wicked condemned men to be the people with whom you plant: and not only so, but it spoileth the plantation.—Lord Bacon, Essays, 33.
Plantations make mankind broader, as generation makes it thicker.—Fuller, Holy State, b. iii. c. 16.
Platform. This word has lost much of its meaning, that is in England; for it is very far from having so done in America. The only ‘platforms’ which we know of here are structures of boards erected to serve a temporary need. But a ‘platform’ was once a scheme or pattern on which, as on a ground-plan, other things, moral or material, might be disposed. Statesmen had their ‘platform’ of policy; Churches their ‘platform’ of doctrine and discipline; and so is it still in America, where the word is in constant use.
They, [the courtiers of Dionysius] were every one occupied about drawing the platform of Sicilia, telling the nature of the Sicilian Sea, and reckoning up the havens and places looking towards Africk.—North, Plutarch’s Lives, p. 456.
The platform of this Tabernacle was by God delivered to Moses on the Mount, with a strict charge to make all things conformable thereunto.—Fuller, A Pisgah Sight of Palestine, b. iv. c. 4.
| Plausible, | } |
| Plausibly, | |
| Plausibility. |
That is ‘plausible’ now which presents itself as worthy of applause; yet always with a subaudition, or at least a suggestion, that it is not so really; it was once that which obtained applause, with at least the primâ facie likelihood that the applause which it obtained was deserved.
This John Bishop of Constantinople, that assumed to himself the title of Universal Bishop or Patriarch, was a good man, given greatly to alms and fasting, but too much addicted to advance the title of his see; which made a plausible bishop seem to be Antichrist to Gregory the Great.—Hacket, Life of Archbishop Williams, part ii. p. 66.
Shakespeare, Lucrece, 1854.
He was no sooner in sight than every one received him plausibly, and with great submission and reverence.—Stubbes, Anatomy of Abuses, p. 17.
Being placed in the upper part of the world, [he] carried on his dignity with that justice, modesty, integrity, fidelity, and other gracious plausibilities, that in a place of trust he contented those whom he could not satisfy, and in a place of envy procured the love of those who emulated his greatness.—Vaughan, Life and Death of Dr. Jackson.
| Poach, | } |
| Poacher. |
A ‘poacher’ is strictly speaking an intruder; one who intrudes or ‘poaches’ into land where he has no business; the fact that he does so with intention of spoiling the game is superadded, not lying in the word.
Pocher le labeur d’autruy. To poch into, or incroach upon another man’s imployment, practise or trade.—Cotgrave.
So that, to speak truly, they [the Spaniards] have rather poached and offered at a number of enterprises, than maintained any constantly.—Lord Bacon, Notes of a Speech concerning a War with Spain.
It is ill conversing with an ensnarer, delving into the bottom of your mind, to know what is hid in it. I would ask a casuist if it were not lawful for me not only to hide my mind, but to cast something that is not true before such a poacher.—Hacket, Life of Archbishop Williams, part ii. p. 113.
| Polite, | } |
| Politely. |
Between ‘polite’ and ‘polished’ this much of difference has now grown up and established itself, that ‘polite’ is always employed in a secondary and tropical sense, having reference to the polish of the mind, while it is free to use ‘polished’ in the literal and figurative sense alike.
Polite bodies, as looking-glasses.—Cudworth, Intellectual System, p. 731.
Polite; well-polished, neat.—Phillips, New World of Words.
In things artificial seldom any elegance is wrought without a superfluous waste and refuse in the transaction. No marble statue can be politely carved, no fair edifice built, without almost as much rubbish and sweeping.—Milton, Reason of Church Government, b. i. c. 7.
| Politics, | } |
| Politician. |
At the present ‘politics’ are always things, but were sometimes persons as well in times past. ‘Politician’ too had an evil subaudition. One so named was a trickster or underhand self-seeker and schemer in politics, or it might be, as it is throughout in the sermon of South, quoted below, in the ordinary affairs of life. Fuller calls his Life of the wicked usurper Andronicus, ‘The Unfortunate Politician.’
It did in particular exasperate Tacitus, and other politicks of his temper, to see so many natural Romans renounce their name and country for maintenance of Jewish religion.—Jackson, The Eternal Truth of Scriptures, b. i. c. 20.
Let them [spiritual persons] have the diligence and craft of fishers, the watchfulness and the care of shepherds, the prudence of politics, the tenderness of parents.—Bishop Taylor, Life of Christ, part ii. § 12.
If this arch-politician [the Devil] find in his pupils any remorse, any feeling or fear of God’s future judgment, he persuades them that God hath so great need of men’s souls that He will accept them at any time and upon any conditions.—Sir W. Raleigh, History of the World, b. i. c. 7, § 9.
Shakespeare, 1 Henry IV., act i. sc. 3.
Webster, Duchess of Malfi, act iii. sc. 2.
The politician, whose very essence lies in this, that he is a person ready to do anything that he apprehends for his advantage, must first of all be sure to put himself in a state of liberty, as free and large as his principles, and so to provide elbow-room enough for his conscience to lay about it, and have its full play in.—South, Sermons, 1744, vol. i. p. 324.
| Pomp, | } |
| Pompous, | |
| Pompously. |
‘Pomp’ is one of the many words which Milton employs with a strict classical accuracy, so that he is only to be perfectly understood when we keep in mind that a ‘pomp’ with him is always πομπή, a procession. He is not, however, singular here, as he often is, in the stricter use of a word. It is easy to perceive how ‘pomp’ obtained its wider application. There is no such favourable opportunity for the display of state and magnificence as a procession; this is almost the inevitable form which they take; and thus the word first applied to the most frequent display of these, came afterwards to be transferred to every display. In respect to ‘pompous’ and ‘pompously’ there is something else to note. There is in them always now the suggestion of that which is more in show than in substance, or, at any rate, of a magnificence which, if real, is yet vaingloriously and ostentatiously displayed. But they did not convey, and were not intended to convey, any such impression once.
[Antiochus] also provided a great number of bulls with gilt horns, the which he conducted himself with a goodly pomp and procession to the very gate of the city [ἄχρι τῶν πυλῶν ἐπόμπευσε].—Holland, Plutarch’s Morals, p. 417.
Milton, Paradise Lost, viii. 59.
Id., ib. vii. 563.
Beaumont, Psyche, can. xv. st. 299.
All expresses related that the entertainment [of Prince Charles at Madrid] was very pompous and kingly.—Hacket, Life of Archbishop Williams, part i. p. 119.
He [Hardecnute] gave his sister Gunildis, a virgin of rare beauty, in marriage to Henry the Alman Emperor; and to send her forth pompously, all the nobility contributed their jewels and richest ornaments.—Milton, History of England, b. vi.
| Popular, | } |
| Popularity. |
He was ‘popular’ once, not who had acquired, but who was laying himself out to acquire, the favour of the people. ‘Popularity’ was the wooing, not, as now, the having won, that favour; exactly the Latin ‘ambitio.’ The word, which is passive now, was active then.
Of a senator he [Manlius] became popular, and began to break his mind and impart his designs unto the magistrates of the commons, finding fault with the nobility.—Holland, Livy, 224.
P. Fletcher, Purple Island, c. 10.
Divers were of opinion that he [Caius Gracchus] was more popular and desirous of the common people’s good will and favour than his brother had been before him. But indeed he was clean contrary.—North, Plutarch’s Lives, p 690.
Cato the Younger charged Muræna, and indited him in open court for popularity and ambition.—Holland, Plutarch’s Morals, p. 243.
Harold, lifted up in mind, and forgetting now his former shows of popularity, defrauded his soldiers their due and well-deserved share of the spoils.—Milton, History of England, b. vi.
| Portly, | } |
| Portliness. |
There lies in ‘portly’ a certain sense of dignity of demeanour still, but always connoted with this a cumbrousness and weight, such as Spenser in his noble Epithalamion (see below) would never have ascribed to his bride, nor Shakespeare to the swift-footed Achilles (Troilus and Cressida, act iv. sc. 5), or to the youthful Romeo.
The chief and most portly person of them all was one Hasdrubal [Insignis tamen inter ceteros Hasdrubal erat].—Holland, Livy, p. 7.
Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, act i. sc. 5.
Spenser, Sonnet 5.
Pragmatical. This is always employed at the present in an ill sense; the ‘pragmatical’ man is not merely busy, but over-busy, officious, meddling; nay, more than this, with an assumption of bustling self-importance. The word’s etymology does not require this ill sense, which is merely superinduced upon it, and from which it was not indeed always, but often free in its earlier use.
It may appear at the first a new and unwonted argument, to teach men how to raise and make their fortune; but the handling thereof concerneth learning greatly both in honour and in substance. In honour, because pragmatical men may not go away with an opinion that learning is like a lark, that can mount and sing and please herself, and nothing else; but may know that she holdeth as well of the hawk, that can soar aloft, and also descend and strike upon the prey.—Lord Bacon, Advancement of Learning, b. ii.
We cannot always be contemplative or pragmatical abroad; but have need of some delightful intermissions wherein the enlarged soul may leave off her severe schooling.—Milton, Tetrachordon.
| Preposterous, | } |
| Preposterously. |
A word nearly or quite unserviceable now, being merely an ungraceful and slipshod synonym for absurd. But restore and confine it to its old use and to one peculiar branch of absurdity, the reversing of the true order and method of things, the putting of the last first, and the first last, and of what excellent service it would be capable!
It is a preposterous order to teach first, and to learn after.—The Translators [of the Bible, 1611] to the Reader.
King Asa justly received little benefit by them [physicians], because of his preposterous addressing himself to them before he went to God (2 Chron. xvi. 12).—Fuller, Worthies of England, c. ix.
To reason thus, I am of the elect, I therefore have saving faith, and the rest of the sanctifying qualities, therefore that which I do is good: thus I say to reason is very preposterous. We must go a quite contrary course, and thus reason: my life is good ... I therefore have the gifts of sanctification, and therefore am of God’s elect.—Hales, Sermon on St. Peter’s Fall.
Some indeed preposterously misplace these, and make us partake of the benefit of Christ’s priestly office in the forgiveness of our sins and our reconcilement to God, before we are brought under the sceptre of his kingly office by our obedience.—South, Sermons, 1744, vol. xi. p. 3.
| Pretend, | } |
| Pretence, | |
| Pretension. |
To charge one with ‘pretending’ anything is now a much more serious charge than it was once. Indeed it was not necessarily, and only by accident, a charge at all. That was ‘pretended’ which one stretched out before himself and in face of others: but whether it was the thing it affirmed itself to be, or, as at present, only a deceitful resemblance of this, the word did not decide. While it was thus with ‘to pretend,’ there was as yet no distinction recognized between ‘pretence’ and ‘pretension;’ they both signified the act of ‘pretending,’ or the thing ‘pretended;’ but whether truly or falsely it was left to the context, or to the judgment of the reader, to decide. ‘Pretence’ has since followed the fortunes of ‘pretend,’ and has fallen with it; while ‘pretension’ has disengaged itself from being a merely useless synonym of ‘pretence,’ and, retaining its relation to the earlier uses of the verb, now signifies a claim put forward which may or may not be valid, the word leaving this for other considerations to determine. Louis Napoleon assumed the dictatorship under the ‘pretence’ of resisting anarchy; the House of Orleans had ‘pretensions’ to the throne of France. But these distinctions are quite modern.
Being preferred by King James to the bishopric of Chichester, and pretending his own imperfectness and insufficiency to undergo such a charge, he caused to be engraven about the seal of his bishopric, those words of St. Paul, Et ad hæc quis idoneus?—Isaacson, Life and Death of Lancelot Andrewes.
[The Sabbath] is rather hominis gratiâ quam Dei; and though God’s honour is mainly pretended in it, yet it is man’s happiness that is really intended by it, even of God Himself.—H. More, Grand Mystery of Godliness, b. viii. c. 13.
Milton, Paradise Lost, ii. 822; cf. vi. 421.
This is the tree whose leaves were intended for the healing of the nations, not for a pretence and palliation for sin.—H. More, Grand Mystery of Godliness, b. viii. c. 1.
He [the Earl of Pembroke] was exceedingly beloved in the Court, because he never desired to get that for himself which others laboured for; but was still ready to promote the pretences of worthy men.—Clarendon, History of the Rebellion, b. i. c. 121.
It is either secret pride, or base faintness of heart, or dull sloth, or some other thing, and not true modesty in us if being excellently gifted for some weighty employment in every other man’s judgment, we yet withdraw ourselves from it with pretensions of unsufficiency.—Sanderson, Sermons, 1671, p. 208.
| Prevaricate, | } |
| Prevarication. |
This verb, often now very loosely used, had once a very definite meaning of its own. ‘To prevaricate’ is to betray the cause which one affects to sustain, the prevaricator is the feint pleader, as he used to be called, and, so far as I know, the words are always so used by our early writers. We have inherited the word from the Latin law-courts, which borrowed it from the life. The ‘prævaricator’ being one who halted on two unequal legs, the name was transferred to him who, affecting to prosecute a charge, was in secret collusion with the opposite party, and so managed the cause as to ensure his escape. Observe in the two following passages the accuracy of use which so habitually distinguishes our writers of the seventeenth century as compared with too many of the nineteenth.
I proceed now to do the same service for the divines of England; whom you question first in point of learning and sufficiency, and then in point of conscience and honesty, as prevaricating in the religion which they profess, and inclining to Popery.—Chillingworth, Religion of Protestants, Preface, p. 11.
If we be not all enemies to God in this kind [in a direct opposition], yet in adhering to the enemy we are enemies; in our prevarications, and easy betrayings and surrendering of ourselves to the enemy of his kingdom, Satan, we are his enemies.—Donne, On the Nativity. Sermon 7.
| Prevent, | } |
| Prevention. |
One may reach a point before another to help or to hinder him there; may anticipate his arrival either with the purpose of keeping it for him, or keeping it against him. ‘To prevent’ has slipped by very gradual degrees, which it would not be difficult to trace, from the sense of keeping for to that of keeping against, from the sense of arriving first with the intention of helping, to that of arriving first with the intention of hindering, and then generally from helping to hindering.
So it is, that if Titus had not prevented the whole multitude of people which came to see him, and if he had not got him away betimes, before the games were ended, he had hardly escaped from being stifled amongst them.—North, Plutarch’s Lives, p. 321.
Gentlemen that were brought low, not by their vices, but by misfortune, poveri vergognosi as the Tuscan calls them, bashful, and could not crave though they perished, he prevented their modesty, and would heartily thank those that discovered their commiserable condition to him.—Hacket, Life of Archbishop Williams, part i. p. 201.
That poor man had waited thirty and eight years [at the pool of Bethesda], and still was prevented by some other.—Bishop Taylor, Life of Christ, part iii. § 13.
Daniel, Civil Wars, b. ii. st. 56.
Milton, Paradise Lost, vi. 129.
Probable. Already in the best classical Latin ‘probabilis’ had passed over into the secondary meaning of ‘probatus;’ thus ‘probabilis orator’ (Cicero) is an approved orator. ‘Probable’ is often so used by our scholarly writers of the seventeenth century; though we now use it only in its original sense of ‘likely.’ On the distinction between ‘probable’ and ‘likely,’ ‘probability’ and ‘likelihood,’ see Garden, Dictionary of Philosophical Terms.
The Lord Bacon would have rewards given to those men who in the quest of natural experiments make probable mistakes. An ingenious miss is of more credit than a bungling casual hit.—Fuller, Mixt Contemplations, i. 26.
S. Ambrose, who was a good probable doctor, and one as fit to be relied on as any man else, hath these words.—Bishop Taylor, Doctrine and Practice of Repentance, Preface.
Probation. This is strictly speaking = δοκιμή, the process of proving; as ‘proof’ is = δοκίμιον or δοκιμεῖον, that by which this proving is carried out; thus toil is the δοκίμιον of soldiers (Herodian); and we now very properly keep the words apart according to this rule; but formerly this was not so.
Shakespeare, Cymbeline, act v. sc. 5.
Also Philip the Evangelist had three daughters. Neither can it help to say that these children were born before his election; for this is but a simple saying, and no probation.—Frith, Works, 1572, p. 325.
Prodigious. This notes little now but magnitude. Truer to its etymology once (from ‘prodigium’ = prōd + agium from ajo, see Brugmann, § 509), it signified the ominous or ominously prophetic.
Beaumont and Fletcher, Philaster, act v. sc. 1.
Without this comely ornament of hair, their [women’s] most glorious beauty appears as deformed, as the sun would be prodigious without beams.—Fuller, The Profane State, b. v. c. 5.
I began to reflect on the whole life of this prodigious man.—Cowley, On the Government of Oliver Cromwell.
| Promote, | } |
| Promoter, | |
| Promotion. |
‘To promote,’ that is, to further or set forward, a ‘promoter,’ a furtherer, are now words of harmless, often of quite an honourable, signification. They were once terms of extremest scorn; a ‘promoter’ being a common informer, and so called because he ‘promoted’ charges and accusations against men (promotor litium: Skinner).
There lack men to promote the king’s officers when they do amiss, and to promote all offenders.—Latimer, Last Sermon before Edward VI.
Sir J. Harington, Epigrams, ii. 98.
Aristogiton the sycophant, or false promoter, was condemned to death for troubling men with wrongful imputations.—Holland, Plutarch’s Morals, p. 421.
Tusser, Of an envious and haughty Neighbour.
Promoters be those which in popular and penal actions do defer the names or complain of offenders, having part of the profit for their reward.—Cowell, The Interpreter, s. v.
Covetousness and promotion and such like are that right hand and right eye which must be cut off and plucked out, that the whole man perish not.—Tyndale, Exposition of the Sixth Chap. of Matthew.
Propriety. All ‘propriety’ is now mental or moral; where material things are concerned, we employ ‘property,’ at the first no more than a different spelling or slightly different form of the same word.
But some man haply will say, That where private propriety is in place, public community is turned out of doors. Holland, Plutarch’s Morals, p. 680.
He [the good servant] provides good bounds and sufficient fences betwixt his own and his master’s estate (Jacob, Gen. xxx. 36, set his flock three days’ journey from Laban’s), that no quarrel may arise about their propriety, nor suspicion that his remnant hath eaten up his master’s whole cloth.—Fuller, The Holy State, b. i. c. 8.
Milton, Paradise Lost, iv. 751.
A propriety is nothing else but jus ad rem, when a man doth claim such a thing as his own, and has a power to use it and dispose of it in a lawful way for his own benefit and advantage.—Strong, Of the Two Covenants, b. iii. c. 1.
| Prose, | } |
| Proser. |
‘To prose’ is now to talk or to write heavily, tediously, without spirit and without animation; but ‘to prose’ was once the antithesis of to versify, and a ‘proser’ of a writer in metre. In the tacit assumption that vigour, animation, rapid movement, with all the precipitation of the spirit, belong to verse rather than to prose, lies the explanation of the changed uses of the words.
It was found that whether ought was imposed me by them that had the overlooking, or betaken to of mine own choice in English or other tongue, prosing or versing, but chiefly this latter, the style, by certain vital signs it had, was likely to live.—Milton, Reason of Church Government, b. ii.
Drayton, On Poets and Poesy.
Prune. At present we only ‘prune’ trees; but our earlier authors use the word where we should use ‘preen,’ which indeed is but another form of the word. With us only birds ‘preen’ their feathers, while women, as in the example which follows, might ‘prune’ themselves of old.
A husband that loveth to trim and pamper his body, causeth his wife by that means to study nothing else but the tricking and pruning of herself.—Holland, Plutarch’s Morals, p. 318.
Publican. Formerly one who gathered the taxes, and paid them into the publicum or treasury; but now—though, as Johnson assures us, ‘in low language’—a man that keeps a house of public entertainment.
The late king’s extorting publicans (whereof Ranolf Flambard, Bishop of Durham, the principal) were closely imprisoned.—Fuller, Church History, ii. 3, 13.
They would not suffer him to take that money out of the treasury which was pressed and ready for him, but assigned and ordained certain moneys from the publicans and farmers of the city’s customs and revenues to furnish him.—Holland, Plutarch, p. 435.
Pulpit. We distinguish now between the ‘pulpit’ and the rostrum; our ancestors did not so.
Shakespeare, Julius Cæsar, act iii. sc. 1.
He [Cicero] said that those orators who used to strain their voices and cry aloud in the pulpit were privy to their own weakness and insufficience otherwise.—Holland, Plutarch’s Morals, p. 439.
| Punctual, | } |
| Punctually. |
‘This word is now confined to the meagre denoting of accuracy in respect to time—fidelity to the precise moment of an appointment. But originally it was just as often and just as reasonably applied to space as to time. Nor only was it applied to time and space, but it had a large and very elegant figurative use’ (De Quincey, Note Book). Thus a ‘punctual’ narration was a narration which entered into minuter points of detail.
Milton, Paradise Lost, viii. 19-23.
Truly I thought I could not be too punctual in describing the animal life, it being so serviceable for our better understanding the divine.—H. More, Grand Mystery of Godliness, Preface, p. x.
All curious solicitude about riches smells of avarice; even the very disposing of it with a too punctual and artificial liberality is not worth a painful solicitude.—Cotton, Montaigne’s Essays, b. iii. c. 9.
Every one is to give a reason of his faith; but priests or ministers more punctually than any.—H. More, Grand Mystery of Godliness, b. x. c. 12.
Puny. The present use of ‘puny,’ as that which is at once weak and small, is only secondary and inferential. ‘Puny’ or ‘puisne’ (puis né) is born after another, therefore younger; and only by inference smaller and weaker.
It were a sign of ignorant arrogancy, if punies or freshmen should reject the axioms and principles of Aristotle, usual in the schools, because they have some reasons against them which themselves cannot answer.—Jackson, The Eternal Truth of Scriptures, c. i.
[The worthy soldier] had rather others should make a ladder of his dead corpse to scale a city by it, than a bridge of him whilst alive for his punies to give him the go-by, and pass over him to preferment.—Fuller, Holy State, b. iv. c. 17.
He is dead and buried, and by this time no puny among the mighty nations of the dead; for though he left this world not very many days past, yet every hour, you know, addeth largely unto that dark society.—Sir T. Browne, Letter to a Friend, p. 1.
Purchase. Now always to acquire in exchange for money, to buy; but much oftener in our old writers simply to acquire, being properly to hunt, ‘pourchasser;’ and then to take in hunting; then to acquire; and then, as the commonest way of acquiring is by giving money in exchange, to buy. The word occurs six times in our Version of the New Testament, Acts i. 18; viii. 10; xx. 28; Ephes. i. 14; 1 Tim. iii. 13; 1 Pet. ii. 9, margin; in none of these is the notion of buying involved. At Acts i. 18, this is especially noteworthy. It is there said: ‘This man purchased a field with the reward of iniquity.’ There will always remain certain difficulties in reconciling the different records of the death of Judas; but if St. Peter had here affirmed that Judas had bought this field of blood, these difficulties would be seriously increased, for the chief priests were the actual buyers (Matt. xxvii. 7). He affirms no such thing, neither did our Translators understand him to do so, but simply that Judas made that ominous potter’s field his own (ἐκτήσατο). The Revised Version has ‘obtained.’
And therefore true consideration of estate can hardly find what to reject, in matter of territory, in any empire, except it be some glorious acquists obtained sometime in the bravery of wars, which cannot be kept without excessive charge and trouble, of which kind were the purchases of King Henry VIII., that of Tournay, and that of Bologne.—Bacon, History of King Henry VII.
The purchases of our own industry are joined commonly with labour and strife.—Id., Colours of Good and Evil, 9.
Meditation considers anything that may best make us to avoid the place and to quit a vicious habit, or master and rectify an untoward inclination, or purchase a virtue or exercise one.—Bishop Taylor, Life of Christ, part i. § 5.
[Men] will repent, but not restore; they will say Nollem factum, they wish they had never done it; but since it is done, you must give them leave to rejoice in their purchase.—Id., Sermon preached to the University of Dublin.
As it is a happiness for us to purchase friends, so is it misery to lose them.—Reynolds, God’s Revenge against Murther, b. v. hist. 21.
Pursuer. ‘Pursue’ and ‘pursuer’ are older words in the language than ‘persecute’ and ‘persecutor’—earlier adoptions of ‘persequor’ and ‘persecutor,’ through Old French and not immediately from the Latin. Besides the meaning which they still retain, they once also covered the meanings which these later words have, since their introduction, appropriated as exclusively their own. In Scotch law the prosecutor is the ‘pursuer,’ ὁ διώκων.
That first was a blaspheme and pursuere.—1 Tim. i. 13. Wiclif.
If God leave them in this hardness of heart, they may prove as desperate opposites and pursuers of all grace, of Christ and Christians, as the most horrible open swine, as we see in Saul and Julian.—Rogers, Naaman the Syrian, p. 106.
| Quaint, | } |
| Quaintly. |
In ‘quaint,’ which is the Middle English ‘quaynt,’ ‘queynt,’ ‘coint,’ Old French ‘cointe,’ the same word as the Latin ‘cognitum,’ there lies always now the notion of a certain curiosity and oddness, however these may be subordinated to ends of beauty and grace, and indeed may themselves be made to contribute to these ends: pretty after some bygone standard of prettiness; but all this is of late introduction into the word, which had once simply the meaning of neat, graceful, skilful, subtle, knowing.
Chaucer, The Marchaundes Tale (Morris, ii. p. 343).
Greene, Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay, sc. 1.
Shakespeare, 2 Henry VI., act iii. sc. 2.
Whom evere I schal kisse, he it is; holde ye him, and lede ye warli, or queyntly.—Mark xiv. 44. Wiclif (earlier version).
Shakespeare, Two Gentlemen of Verona, act iii. sc. 1.
Querulous. Not formerly, as now, addicted to the making of complaints, but quarrelsome.
There inhabit these regions a kind of people, rude, warlike, ready to fight, querulous, and mischievous.—Holland, Camden’s Scotland, p. 39.
Not querulous, or clamorous in his discourse; ‘He shall not strive nor cry, neither shall any hear his voice in the streets;’ but meek and quiet.—Fuller, A Pisgah Sight of Palestine, b. iii. c. 6.
Race. Formerly ‘race,’ the Old French ‘raïs,’ the same word as the Latin ‘radicem,’ was used in the sense of a root.
A race of ginger.—Shakespeare, Winter’s Tale, act iv. sc. 3.
Raisin. It is conveniently agreed now that ‘raisin’ shall be employed only of the dried grape, but this does not lie in ‘racemus,’ of which ‘raisin’ is the French equivalent, nor yet in its earlier uses; indeed, ‘raisins of the sun’ (Sir J. Harington) was a phrase commonly employed when the dried fruit was intended.
Nether in the vyneyerd thou schalt gadere reysyns and greynes fallynge doun, but thou schalt leeve to be gaderid of pore men and pilgryms.—Lev. xix. 10. Wiclif.
| Rascal, | } |
| Rascality. |
The lean unseasonable members of the herd of deer were formerly so called; then the common people, the plebs as distinguished from the populus; it is only in comparatively modern English that the word is one of moral contempt. [In Anglo-French the word ‘rascaille’ was used in the sense of a rabble; for references and etymology see Mayhew-Skeat, Dict. of Middle English.]
And he smoot of the puple seventi men, and fifti thousandis of the raskeyl [Et percussit de populo septuaginta viros et quinquaginta millia plebis (Vulg.)].—1 Kin. vi. 19. Wiclif.
The common priests be not so obedient unto their ordinaryes that they will pay money except they know why. Now it is not expedient that every rascal should know the secretes of the very true cause, for many considerations.—Tyndale, The Practice of Popishe Prelates.
Juliana Berners, The Book of St. Albans.
As one should in reproach say to a poor man, Thou raskall knave, where raskall is properly the hunter’s term given to young deer, lean and out of season, and not to people.—Puttenham, Art of English Poesy, 1811, p. 150.
Drayton, Polyolbion, song 13.
The report which these roving hunters had made to their countrymen of that pleasant land, did invite the chief heads of their clans, with their several rascalities, to flock into Europe, like beggars dismissed out of prison, invited to a solemn banquet.—Jackson, A Treatise on the Divine Essence, b. vi. c. 25, § 6.
Rather. This survives for us now only as an adverb, but meets us often in Middle English as an adjective, as the comparative of ‘rathe,’ quick, swift, early.
This is he that Y seide of, aftir me is comun a man, which was maad bifor me; for he was rather than Y [quia prior me erat, Vulg.].—John i. 30. Wiclif.
If the world hatith you, wite ye that it hadde me in hate rather than you [me priorem vobis odio habuit, Vulg.].—John xv. 18. Wiclif.
The Sarazines maden another cytie more far from the see, and clepeden it the newe Damyete, so that now no man dwellethe at the rathere town of Damyete.—Sir John Mandeville, Voyage and Travaile, p. 46, Halliwell’s edition.
Whatsoever thou or such other say, I say that the pilgrimage that now is used is to them that do it, a praisable and a good mean to come the rather to grace.—Foxe, Book of Martyrs; Examination of William Thorpe.
Spenser, The Shepherd’s Calendar, February.
Receipt. At this present the act of receiving, or acknowledgment of having received; but not seldom once the place for receiving, or receptacle.
To conclude, his house was a common receipt for all those that came from Greece to Rome.—North, Plutarch’s Lives, p. 446.
Fountains I intend to be of two natures, the one that sprinkleth or spouteth water, the other a fair receipt of water, of some thirty or forty foot square, but without fish, or slime, or mud.—Bacon, Essays, 46.
Reclaim. A ‘reclamation’ is still sometimes a calling out against; but ‘to reclaim’ is never, I think, anything now but to call back again; never to disclaim.
Herod, instead of reclaiming what they exclaimed [Acts xii. 22], embraced and hugged their praises as proper to himself, and thereupon an angel and worms, the best and basest of creatures, met in his punishment, the one smiting, the other eating him up.—Fuller, A Pisgah Sight of Palestine, b. ii. c. 8.
Recognize. This verb means now to revive our knowledge of a person or thing; to reacquaint oneself with it; but in earlier usage to review, as in my first quotation, to reconnoitre, as in my second.
In recognizing this history I have employed a little more labour, partly to enlarge the argument which I took in hand, partly also to assay, whether by any painstaking I might pacify the stomachs, or to satisfy the judgments of these importune quarrellers.—Foxe, Book of Martyrs; Epistle Dedicatory [of the Second Edition] to the Queen’s Majesty.
In quartering either in village, field, or city, he [a commander] ought himself to recognize all avenues, whereby his enemies may come to him.—Monro, His Expedition, p. 9.
Reduce. That which is ‘reduced’ now is brought back to narrower limits, or lower terms, or more subject conditions, than those under which it subsisted before. But nothing of this lies of necessity in the word, nor yet in the earlier uses of it. According to these, that was ‘reduced’ which was brought back to its former estate, an estate that might be, and in all the following examples is, an ampler, larger, or more prosperous one than that which it superseded.
The drift of the Roman armies and forces was not to bring free states into servitude, but contrariwise, to reduce those that were in bondage to liberty.—Holland, Livy, p. 1211.
There remained only Britain [i.e. Britany] to be reunited, and so the monarchy of France to be reduced to the ancient terms and bounds.—Bacon, History of King Henry VII.
That he might have these keys to open the heavenly Hades to reduced apostates, to penitent, believing, self-devoting sinners, for this it was necessary He should put on man, become obedient to death, even that servile punishment, the death of the cross.—Howe, The Redeemer’s Dominion over the Invisible World.
Shakespeare, Richard III., act v. sc. 5.
Reign. This is now in the abstract what ‘kingdom’ is in the concrete, but there was no such distinction once between them.
Romaunt of the Rose, 448.
Rejoice. Formerly used in the sense of to enjoy.
Then was mad pes on this manere, that he and his puple schuld frely rejoyce all the lond of the other side of Seyne.—Capgrave, Chronicle of England, p. 112.
In special he [Constantine] assigned and bequathe the lordschip of the west parte, which was Rome, to his eeldist sone Constantyn, which sone rejoiced the same parte so to him devysid, and that thorugh al his liif.—Pecock, Repressor, c. xiii.
| Religion, | } |
| Religious. |
Not, as too often now, used as equivalent for godliness; but like θρησκεία, for which it stands Jam. i. 27, it expressed the outer form and embodiment which the inward spirit of a true or a false devotion assumed. In the Middle Ages a ‘religion’ was a monastic Order, and they were ‘religious’ who had entered into one of these.
We would admit and grant them, that images used for no religion, or superstition rather, we mean of none worshipped, nor in danger to be worshipped of any, may be suffered.—Homilies; Against Peril of Idolatry.
Milton, Paradise Lost, i. 367.
Romaunt of the Rose, 6152.
Gower, Confessio Amantis, b. viii.
Remark. There are no ‘remarks’ now but verbal ones. ‘To remark’ was once to point out, to designate.
They [the publicans and harlots] are moved by shame, and punished by disgrace, and remarked by punishments, and frighted by the circumstances and notices of all the world, and separated from sober persons by laws and an intolerable character.—Bishop Taylor, Of Lukewarmness and Zeal, Serm. 13, part ii.
Milton, Samson Agonistes, 1308.
| Remonstrate, | } |
| Remonstrance. |
Its present sense, namely to expostulate, was only at a late date superinduced on the word. ‘To remonstrate’ is properly to make any show or representation in regard to some step that has been taken. It is now only such show or representation as protests against this step; and always assumes this step to have been distasteful; but this limitation lies not of necessity in the word.
Properties of a faithful servant: a sedulous eye, to observe all occasions within or without, tending to remonstrate the habit within.—Rogers, Naaman the Syrian, p. 309.
It [the death of Lady Carbery] was not (in all appearance) of so much trouble as two fits of a common ague; so careful was God to remonstrate to all that stood in that sad attendance that this soul was dear to Him.—Bishop Taylor, Funeral Sermon on Lady Carbery.
I consider that in two very great instances it was remonstrated that Christianity was the greatest persecution of natural justice and equality in the whole world.—Id., Life of Christ, Preface, § 32.
When Sir Francis Cottington returned with our king’s oath, plighted to the annexed conditions for the ease of the Roman Catholics, the Spaniards made no remonstrance of joy, or of an ordinary liking of it.—Hacket, Life of Archbishop Williams, part i. p. 145.
No; the atheist is too wise in his generation to make remonstrances and declarations of what he thinks. It is his heart and the little council that is held there, that is only privy to his monstrous opinions.—South, Sermons, 1744, vol. ix. p. 78.
| Remorse, | } |
| Remorseful. |
In ‘remorseless’ and in the phrase ‘without remorse,’ we retain a sense of ‘remorse’ as equivalent with pity, which otherwise has quite passed away from it. It may thus have acquired this meaning. There is nothing which is followed in natures not absolutely devilish with so swift revulsion of mind as acts of cruelty. Nowhere does the conscience so quickly sting the guilty actor as in and after these; and thus ‘remorse,’ which is the penitence of the natural man, the penitence not wrought by the spirit of grace, while it means the revulsion of the mind and conscience against any evil which has been done, came to mean predominantly revulsion against acts of cruelty, the pity which followed close on these; and thus pity in general, and not only as in this way called out.
King Richard by his own experience grew sensible of the miseries which merchants and mariners at sea underwent. Wherefore, now touched with remorse of their pitiful case, he resolved to revoke the law of wrecks.—Fuller, Holy War, b. iii. c. 7.
Middleton, Wisdom of Solomon, c. v. 17.
Shakespeare, Two Gentlemen of Verona, act iv. sc. 2.
Repeal. ‘To repeal’ (compare Old French ‘rapeler’) is to recall, and seldom or never applied now except to some statute or law, but formerly of far wider use.
Shakespeare, 2 Henry VI., act iii. sc. 2.
Milton, Paradise Lost, vii. 59.
Sylvester, Du Bartas, Eden, The Second Week.
Reprove. Now ‘to rebuke,’ but once equivalent to ‘disprove,’ and convertible with it.
As it [the Apology] has been well allowed of and liked of the learned and godly, so hath it not hitherto, for ought that may appear, been anywhere openly reproved either in Latin or otherwise, either by any one man’s private writing, or by the public authority of any nation.—Jewel, Defence of the Apology.
Shakespeare, 2 Henry VI., act iii. sc. 1.
Require. This has now something almost imperative in it; being less to request or to entreat than to command; but it was not so always.
We do instantly require and desire the Blessed Virgin Mary with all the holy company of heaven, continually to pray for us.—Will of Henry VIII.
Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra, act iii. sc. 12.
| Resent, | } |
| Resentment. |
When first introduced into the language (this was in the seventeenth century; ‘vox nova in nostrâ linguâ:’ Junius), ‘to resent’ meant to have a sense or feeling of that which had been done to us; but whether a sense of gratitude for the good, or of enmity for the evil, the word itself did not decide, and was employed in both meanings. It has fared not otherwise with ‘ressentiment’ in French. Of this Génin, La Langue de Molière, writes, ‘Ce mot, dont l’usage a déterminé l’acception en mauvaise part, ne signifiait jadis que sentiment avec plus de force.’ Must we conclude from the fact that the latter is now the exclusive employment of it, that our sense of injuries is much stronger and more lasting than our sense of benefits?
Beaumont, Psyche, can. iv. st. 156.
Perchance as vultures are said to smell the earthliness of a dying corpse; so this bird of prey [the evil Spirit which personated Samuel] resented a worse than earthly savour in the soul of Saul, an evidence of his death at hand.—Fuller, The Profane State, b. v. c. 4.
The judicious prelate will prefer a drop of the sincere milk of the word before vessels full of traditionary pottage, resenting of the wild gourd of human invention.—Id., A Pisgah Sight of Palestine, b. iii. c. 1.
I resented as I ought the news of my mother-in-law’s death.—Sancroft, Variorum Shakespeare, vol. i. p. 518.
Sadness does in some cases become a Christian, as being an index of a pious mind, of compassion, and a wise, proper resentment of things.—Bishop Taylor, Sermon 23, part ii.
The Council taking notice of the many good services performed by Mr. John Milton, their Secretary for foreign languages, particularly for his book in vindication of the Parliament and people of England against the calumnies and invectives of Salmasius, have thought fit to declare their resentment and good acceptance of the same, and that the thanks of the Council be returned to Mr. Milton.—Extract from ‘The Council Book,’ 1651, June 18.
| Residence, | } |
| Resident. |
It will be seen from the quotations which follow that ‘residence’ in the seventeenth century meant something quite different from ordinary place of habitation, which is all the meaning which now it has.
Separation in it is wrought by weight, as in the ordinary residence or settlement of liquors.—Bacon, Natural History, § 302.
Of waters of a muddy residence we may make good use and quench our thirst, if we do not trouble them; yet upon any ungentle disturbance we drink down mud, instead of a clear stream.—Bishop Taylor, Sermon on the Gunpowder Treason.
The inexperienced Christian shrieks out whenever his vessel shakes, thinking it always a danger that the watery pavement is not stable and resident like a rock.—Id., Sermon 11, part 3.
| Restive, | } |
| Restiveness. |
Any one now invited to define a ‘restive’ horse would certainly put into his definition that it was one with too much motion; but in obedience to its etymology ‘restive’ would have once meant one with too little; determined to stand still when it ought to go forward. [It is the Old French restif, stubborn, drawing backward (see Cotgrave), from rester, Latin restare, to stand still.] Immobile, lazy, stubborn, are the three stages of meaning which the word went through, before it reached the fourth and present.
Bishops or presbyters we know, and deacons we know, but what are chaplains? In state perhaps they may be listed among the upper serving-men of some great man’s household, the yeoman ushers of devotion, where the master is too resty or too rich to say his own prayers, or to bless his own table.—Milton, Iconoclastes, c. xxiv.
Restive, or Resty, drawing back instead of going forward, as some horses do.—Phillips, New World of Words.
Nothing hindereth men’s fortunes so much as this: Idem manebat, neque idem decebat; men are where they were, when occasions turn. From whatsoever root or cause this restiveness of mind proceedeth, it is a thing most prejudicial.—Bacon, Advancement of Learning, b. ii.
The snake, by restiness and lying still all winter, hath a certain membrane or film growing over the whole body.—Holland, Pliny, part i. p. 210.
| Retaliate, | } |
| Retaliation. |
It has fared with ‘retaliate’ and ‘retaliation’ as it has with ‘resent’ and ‘resentment,’ that whereas men could once speak of the ‘retaliation’ of benefits as well as of wrongs, they only ‘retaliate’ injuries now.
Our captain would not salute the city, except they would retaliate.—Diary of Henry Teonge, Aug. 1, 1675.
[The king] expects a return in specie from them [the Dissenters], that the kindness which he has graciously shown them may be retaliated on those of his own persuasion.—Dryden, The Hind and the Panther, Preface.
His majesty caused directions to be sent for the enlargement of the Roman priests, in retaliation for the prisoners that were set at liberty in Spain to congratulate the prince’s welcome.—Hacket, Life of Archbishop Williams, part i. p. 166.
Revoke. This has now a much narrower range of meaning than the Latin ‘revocare;’ but some took for granted once that wherever the one word could have been used in Latin, the other might be used in English.
Golding, Ovid’s Metamorphosis, b. xi.
Chapman, The Odyssey of Homer, b. xxiii. l. 5.
Rig. A somewhat vulgar word, with the present use of which, however, we are probably all familiar from its occurrence in John Gilpin:
But a ‘rig’ in its earlier use was not so often a strange uncomely feat, as a wanton uncomely person.
Let none condemn them [the girls] for rigs because thus hoyting with the boys, seeing the simplicity of their age was a patent to privilege any innocent pastime.—Fuller, A Pisgah Sight of Palestine, b. iv. 6.
[Ripple. It is now in literary English a poetical word, and nothing is ‘rippled’ but the surface of the water. This is probably a distinct word from the ‘ripple’ of the Whitby dialect, which means to scratch slightly as with a pin upon the skin (see Robinson’s ‘Glossary,’ English Dialect Society, 1876). This is precisely the meaning of ‘ripple’ in the citation from Holland below. For cognates of this ‘ripple’ to scratch see Skeat’s ‘Dictionary’ (s. v. ‘rip’).]
On a sudden an horseman’s javelin, having slightly rippled the skin of his [Julian’s] left arm, pierced within his short ribs, and stuck fast in the nether lappet or fillet of his liver.—Holland, Ammianus, p. 264.
Rogue. There was a time when ‘rogue’ meant no more than wandering mendicant. What of dishonesty is implied now in the word was afterwards superinduced upon it; as has also been the case with ‘tramp’ and ‘vagabond.’
Shakespeare, King Lear, act iv. sc. 7.
Rogue signifieth with us an idle sturdy beggar, that, wandering from place to place without passport, after he hath been by justices bestowed upon some certain place of abode, or offered to be bestowed, is condemned to be so called; who for the first offence is called a rogue of the first degree, and punished by whipping, and boring through the gristle of the right ear with a hot iron an inch in compass, and for the second offence is called a rogue of the second degree, and put to death as a felon, if he be above eighteen years old.—Cowell, The Interpreter, s.v.
The third sort of those that live unprofitably and without a calling are our idle sturdy rogues and vagrant towns-end beggars. I mean such as are able to work, yet rather choose to wander abroad the country, and to spend their days in a most base and ungodly course of life.—Sanderson, Sermons, 1671, vol. i. p. 197.
Romantic. It is much rarer to find words which in lapse of time have mended their position than those which have seen theirs grow worse. But such there are, and this is one of them. Who would have expected two centuries ago that ‘romantic’ would have held the place of honour which now it does; would have divided with ‘classical’ the whole world of modern literature?
Can anything in nature be imagined more profane and impious, more absurd, and indeed romantic, than such a persuasion [namely that whenever in Scripture the Covenant is mentioned, the Scotch Covenant was intended]? and yet, as impious and absurd as it was, it bore down all before it, and overturned the equallest and best framed government in the world.—South, Sermons, 1737, vol. vi. p. 42.
Room. In certain connexions we still employ ‘room’ for place, but in many more it obtains this meaning no longer. Thus one who accepts the words, ‘When thou art bidden of any man to a wedding, sit not down in the highest room’ (Luke xiv. 8), according to the present use of ‘room,’ will probably imagine to himself guests assembling in various apartments, some more honourable than other; and not, as indeed the meaning is, taking higher or lower places at one and the same table.
Shakespeare, 3 Henry VI., act iii. sc. 2.
If he have but twelve pence in’s purse, he will give it for the best room in a playhouse.—Sir T. Overbury, Characters: A Proud Man.
| Ruffian, | } |
| Ruffianly. |
The Old French ‘ruffien,’ the Italian ‘ruffiano,’ the Spanish ‘rufian,’ all signify the setter-forward of an infamous traffic between the sexes; nor will the passages quoted below leave any doubt that this is the proper meaning of ‘ruffian’ in English, others being secondary and derived from it. At the same time the ‘ruffian’ is not merely the ‘leno,’ he is the ‘amasius’ as well. For some instructive English uses of the word, see Ascham’s Scholemaster, Wright’s edit. pp. 44, 215.
Let young men consider the precious value of their time, and waste it not in idleness, in jollity, in gaming, in banqueting, in ruffians’ company.—Homilies; Against Idleness.
Xenocrates, casting but his eye upon Polemon, who was come into his school like a ruffian, by his very look only redeemed him from his loose life.—Holland, Plutarch’s Morals, p. 112.
He [her husband] is no sooner abroad than she is instantly at home, revelling with her ruffians.—Reynolds, God’s Revenge against Murther, b. iii. hist. 11.
Who in London hath not heard of his [Greene’s] dissolute and licentious living; his fond disguising of a Master of Art with ruffianly hair, unseemly apparel, and more unseemly company?—G. Harvey, Four Letters touching Robert Greene, p. 7.
Some frenchified or outlandish monsieur, who hath nothing else to make him famous, I should say infamous, but an effeminate, ruffianly, ugly, and deformed lock.—Prynne, The Unloveliness of Love-locks, p. 27.
Rummage. At present so to look for one thing as in the looking to overturn and unsettle a great many others. It is a sea-term, and signified at first to dispose with such orderly method goods in the hold of a ship that there should be the greatest possible room, or ‘roomage.’ The quotation from Phillips shows the word in the act of transition from its former use to its present.
And that the masters of the ships do look well to the romaging, for they might bring away a great deal more than they do, if they would take pain in the romaging.—Hakluyt, Voyages, vol. i. p. 308.
To rummage (sea-term): To remove any goods or luggage from one place to another, especially to clear the ship’s hold of any goods or lading, in order to their being handsomely stowed and placed; whence the word is used upon other occasions, for to rake into, or to search narrowly.—Phillips, New World of Words.
| Sad, | } |
| Sadly, | |
| Sadness. |
This had once the meaning of earnest, serious, sedate. The passage from Shakespeare quoted below marks ‘sadly’ and ‘sadness’ in their transitional state from the old meaning to the new; Benvolio using ‘sadness’ in the old sense, Romeo pretending to understand him in the new. For the etymology of ‘sad’ see Mayhew-Skeat, Dict. of Middle English.
Chaucer, The Manciples Tale.
He may have one year, or two at the most, an ancient and sad matron attending on him.—Sir T. Elyot, The Governor, b. i. c. 6.
Earl of Surrey, The Faithful Lover, p. 33 (ed. 1717).
Chaucer, The Knightes Tale.
Therfor ye, britheren, bifor witynge kepe you silf, lest ye be disseyved bi errour of unwise men, and falle awei fro youre owne sadness [a propriâ firmitate, Vulg.].—2 Pet. iii. 17. Wiclif.
Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, act i. sc. 1.
Sampler. This has now quite dissociated itself in meaning from ‘exemplar,’ of which it is the popular form, as ‘sample’ has done from ‘example;’ not so, however, once.
Job, the sawmpler of pacience.—Preparatory Epistles of St. Jerome to Wiclif’s Bible.
Sash. At present always a belt or girdle of the loins; not so, however, when first introduced from the East. By the ‘sash,’ or ‘shash’ as it was then always spelt, was understood the roll of silk, fine linen, or gauze, worn about the head; in fact a turban. The word is of Persian origin.
Shash: Cidaris seu tiara, pileus Turcicus, ut doct. Th. H. placet, ab It. Sessa, gausapina cujus involucris Turcæ pileos suos adornant.—Skinner, Etymologicon.
So much for the silk in Judea, called Shesh in Hebrew, whence haply that fine linen or silk is called shashes, worn at this day about the heads of eastern people.—Fuller, A Pisgah Sight of Palestine, b. ii. c. 14.
He [a Persian merchant] was apparelled in a long robe of cloth of gold, his head was wreathed with a huge shash or tulipant of silk and gold.—Herbert, Travels, 1638, p. 191.
| Scarce, | } |
| Scarcely, | |
| Scarcity. |
Now expressing the fact that the thing to which this epithet is applied is rare, not easily to be come by; but in the time of Chaucer, Wiclif, and Gower, and till a later day, parsimonious or stingy. For the derivation see Skeat’s Dictionary.
Ye schul use the richesses the whiche ye han geten by youre witte and by youre travaile, in such a maner, that men holde yow not skarse ne to sparynge ne fool-large; for right as men blamen an avërous man bycause of his skarsite and chyncherie, in the same manere is he to blame that spendeth over largely.—Chaucer, The Tale of Melibœus.
A man is that is maad riche in doynge scarsli [parce agendo, Vulg.]—Ecclus. xi. 18. Wiclif.
For I seie this thing, he that sowith scarseli schal also repe scarseli.—2 Cor. ix. 6. Id.
Davison, Poetical Rhapsody, p. 256.
| Secure, | } |
| Securely, | |
| Security. |
In our present English the difference between ‘safe’ and ‘secure’ is hardly recognized, but once it was otherwise. ‘Secure’ (‘securus,’ from sē- + cura) was subjective; it was a man’s own sense, well grounded or not, of the absence of danger; ‘safe’ was objective, the actual fact of such absence of danger. A man, therefore, might not be ‘safe,’ just because he was ‘secure’ (thus see Judges xviii. 7, 10, 27, and Paradise Lost, iv. 791). I may observe that our use of ‘secure’ at Matt. xxviii. 14, is in fact this early, though we may easily read the passage as though it were employed in the modern sense. ‘We will secure you’ of our Version represents ἀμερίμνους ὑμᾶς ποιήσομεν of the original.
Quarles, Emblems, ii. 14.
We cannot endure to be disturbed or awakened from our pleasing lethargy. For we care not to be safe, but to be secure.—Bishop Taylor, Of Slander and Flattery.
Ben Jonson, The Forest, xi.
Shakespeare, Richard II., act ii. sc. 1.
Id., ibid., act iii. sc. 2.
The last daughter of pride is delicacy, under which is contained gluttony, luxury, sloth, and security.—Nash, Christ’s Tears over Jerusalem, p. 137.
Webster, Duchess of Malfi, act v. sc. 2.
| Sedition, | } |
| Seditious. |
There was an attempt on the part of some scholarly writers at the beginning of the seventeenth century to keep ‘sedition’ true to its etymology, and to the meaning which ‘seditio’ bears in the Latin. This is the explanation of its employment as a rendering of διχοστασίαι, Gal. v. 21, as quoted below; which in our present English would be more accurately rendered, secessions, dissensions, or divisions; in exactly which sense ‘seditious’ is there used by our Translators. So too, when Satan, in the quotation given below, addresses Abdiel ‘seditious Angel,’ this is to find the same explanation, as is clear from the words which immediately follow. He the one faithful, taking the Lord’s side, had in so doing divided the ranks of those who adhered to the fallen Archangel, and separated from them, being therein ‘seditious.’ The quotation from Bishop Andrewes not less evidently shows how distinct in his mind ‘seditions’ were from those overt acts of petty treason which we now call by this name; however, they might often lead to such.
Whom you find thus magnifying of changes and projecting new plots for the people, be sure they are in the way to sedition. For (mark it) they do sedire, that is seorsim ire, go aside; they have their meetings apart about their new alterations. Now of sedire comes sedition, side-going. For if that be not looked to in time, the next news is, the blowing of a trumpet, and Sheba’s proclamation, We have no part in David. It begins in Shimei, it ends in Sheba.—Andrewes, Of the Gunpowder Treason, Serm. 6.
Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these, ... seditions (in R.V. ‘divisions’).—Gal. v. 20, 21. (A.V.)
Milton, Paradise Lost, vi. 150.
See. Not always confined as now to the seat or residence of a bishop; nor indeed did it necessarily involve the notion of a seat of authority at all.
Chaucer, The Monkes Tale.
Id., The Hous of Fame, b. iii. (Skeat, p. 156).
The Lord smoot all the fyrst gotun in the loond of Egipte, fro the fyrst gotun of Pharao, that sat in his see, unto the fyrst gotun of the caitiff woman that was in prisoun.—Exod. xii. 29. Wiclif.
Spenser, Fairy Queen, iv. 10, 30.
Seedsman. Between the ‘seedsman’ and the ‘sower’ there is now a useful distinction. The one sells the seed; the other scatters it in the furrow; but the distinction is comparatively modern.
Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra, act ii. sc. 7.
| Sensual, | } |
| Sensuality. |
‘Sensual’ is employed now only in an ill meaning, and implies ever a predominance of sense in quarters where it ought not so to predominate. Milton, feeling that we wanted another word affirming this predominance where no such fault was implied by it, and that ‘sensual’ only imperfectly expressed this, employed, I know not whether he coined, ‘sensuous,’ a word which, if it had rooted itself in the language at once, might have proved of excellent service. ‘Sensuality’ has had always an ill meaning, but not always the same ill meaning which it has now. Any walking by sense and sight rather than by faith was ‘sensuality’ of old.
Hath not the Lord Jesus convinced thy sensual heart by sensual arguments? If thy sense were not left-handed, thou mightest with thy right hand bear down thine infidelity; for God hath given assurance sufficient by his Son to thy very sense, if though wert not brutish (1 John i. 1).—Rogers, Naaman the Syrian, p. 493.
There cannot always be that degree of sensual, pungent, or delectable affections towards religion as towards the desires of nature and sense.—Bishop Taylor, Life of Christ, part ii. § 12.
Pope, Essay on Man, b. i.
I do take him to be a hardy captain; but yet a man more meet to be governed than to govern; for all his enterprizes be made upon his own sensuality, without the advice and counsel of those that been put in trust by the King’s Majesty.—State Papers, 1538, vol. iii. p. 95.
He who might claim this absolute power over the soul to be believed upon his bare word, yet seeing the sensuality of man and our woful distrust, is willing to allow us all the means of strengthening our souls in his promise, by such seals and witnesses as confirm it.—Rogers, Naaman the Syrian, p. 483.
A great number of people in divers parts of this realm, following their own sensuality, and living without knowledge and due fear of God, do wilfully and schismatically abstain and refuse to come to their own parish churches.—Act of Uniformity, 1662.
Servant. A wooer, follower, admirer, lover, not of necessity an accepted one, was a ‘servant’ in the chivalrous language of two or three centuries ago.
Shakespeare, Two Gentlemen of Verona, act ii. sc. 1.
’Tis more than I know if Mr. Freeman be my servant.... I cannot brag much that he makes any court to me.—Letters from Dorothy Osborne, Lett. 22 (ed. 1889).
Servility. The subjective abjectness and baseness of spirit of one who is a slave, or who acts as one, is always implied by this word at the present; while once it did but express the objective fact of an outwardly servile condition in him of whom it was predicated, leaving it possible that in spirit he might be free notwithstanding.
Such servility as the Jews endured under the Greeks and Asiatics, have they endured under the Saracen and the Turk.—Jackson, The Eternal Truth of Scriptures, b. i. c. 26.
We are no longer under the servility of the law of Moses, but are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus.—H. More, The Grand Mystery of Godliness, b. viii. c. 6.
The same [faith] inclined Moses to exchange the dignities and delights of a court for a state of vagrancy and servility.—Barrow, Sermon 3, On the Apostles’ Creed.
[Shed. This verb was once in common use in the sense of to separate, divide, or part. This ‘shed’ is the representative of the O.E. ‘sceādan’ (scādan), the equivalent of the modern German ‘scheiden.’ With these words is connected the modern geographical term ‘watershed,’ i.e. water-divider. ‘To shed’ is still used in the North in the sense of to divide or separate (Halliwell). From this verb comes the word ‘sheeding,’ the name of a territorial division in the Isle of Man. Probably our modern ‘shed,’ to scatter, pour, may be the same word as ‘shed,’ to separate, with a development of meaning, but the relation of the two words has not been satisfactorily made out yet.]
They say also that the manner of making the shed [διακρίνεσθαι] of new-wedded wives’ hair with the iron head of a javelin came up then likewise.—North, Plutarch’s Lives, p. 22.
They were never so careful to comb their heads as when they should to the battle; for then they did noint their selves with sweet oils, and did shed their hair.—Id., ibid. p. 45.
Sheer. It is curious that Christopher Sly’s declaration that he was ‘fourteen pence on the score for sheer ale’ (Taming of the Shrew, Induction, sc. 2) should have given so much trouble to some of the early commentators upon Shakespeare. ‘Sheer,’ which is pure, unmixed, was used of things concrete once, although mostly of things abstract now.
They had scarcely sunk through the uppermost course of sand above, when they might see small sources to boil up, at the first troubled, but afterward they began to yield sheer and clear water in great abundance.—Holland, Livy, p. 1911.
Shakespeare, King Richard II., act v. sc. 3.
Massinger, A New Way to pay Old Debts, act iv. sc. 2.
Shelf. ‘To shelve’ as to shoal, still remains; but not so, except in mariners’ charts, ‘shelf’ as = shallow or sandbank. This ‘shelf’ is quite a distinct word from the ‘shelf’ (of a cupboard).
I thought fit to follow the rule of coasting maps, where the shelves and rocks are described as well as the safe channel.—Davenant, Preface to Gondibert.
Ben Jonson, The Forest, iii.
Dryden, Virgil’s Æneid, b. v.
Shrew. There are at the present no ‘shrews’ save female ones; but the word, like so many others which we have met with, now restrained to one sex, was formerly applied to both. It conveyed also of old a much deeper moral reprobation than now or in the Middle English it did. Thus Lucifer is a ‘shrew’ in Piers Plowman, and two murderers are ‘shrews’ in the quotation from Chaucer which follows.
Chaucer, The Pardoneres Tale.
If Y schal schewe me innocent, He schal preve me a schrewe [pravum me comprobabit, Vulg.].—Job ix. 20. Wiclif.
I know none more covetous shrews than ye are, when ye have a benefice.—Foxe, Book of Martyrs; Examination of William Thorpe.
| Shrewd, | } |
| Shrewdness. |
The weakness of the world’s moral indignation against evil causes a multitude of words which once conveyed intensest moral reprobation gradually to convey none at all, or it may be even praise. ‘Shrewd’ and ‘shrewdness’ must be numbered among these.
An ant is a wise creature for itself; but it is a shrewd thing in an orchard or garden.—Bacon, Essay 23.
Is he shrewd and unjust in his dealings with others?—South, Sermons, 1737, vol. vi. p. 106.
Forsothe the erthe is corupt before God, and is fulfilled with shrewdness [iniquitate, Vulg.].—Gen. vi. 12. Wiclif.
The prophete saith: Flee schrewednesse [declinet a malo, Vulg.], and doo goodnesse; seeke pees, and folwe it.—Chaucer, The Tale of Melibeus (Morris, iii. p. 187).
Siege. A ‘siege’ is now the sitting down of an army before a fortified place with the purpose of taking it; and has no other meaning but this. It had once the double meaning, abstract and concrete, of the French ‘siège,’ a seat.
Whanne mannus sone schal come in his majeste and alle hise aungels with hym, thanne he schal sitte on the sege of his majeste, and alle folkis schulen be gaderid bifor hym.—Matt. xxv. 31. Wiclif.
Spenser, Fairy Queen, ii. 7, 44.
Shakespeare, Measure for Measure, act iv. sc. 2.
Sight. The use of ‘sight’ to signify a multitude, a great quantity (that is, to see), has now a touch of vulgarity about it, which once it was very far from possessing.
A noble sighte of bookes (nobilissimam librorum bibliothecam).—Harleian translation of Higden, vi. 239. (Rolls Series, No. 41.)
Ye are come unto the mounte Sion, and to the citie of the livinge God, the celestiall Jerusalem, and to an innumerable sight of angels.—Heb. xii. 22. Tyndale.
Clodius was ever about him in every place and street he went, having a sight of rascals and knaves with him.—North, Plutarch’s Lives, p. 722.
| Silly, | } |
| Silliness. |
A deep conviction of men that he who departs from evil will make himself a prey, that none will be a match for the world’s evil who is not himself evil, has brought to pass the fact that a number of words, signifying at first goodness, signify next well-meaning simplicity; the notions of goodness and foolishness, with a strong predominance of the last, for a while interpenetrating one another in them; till at length the latter quite expels the former, and remains as the sole possessor of the word. I need hardly mention the Greek ἄκακος, εὐήθης, εὐήθεια: while the same has happened in regard of the O.E. ‘sǽlig,’ which (the same word as the German ‘selig’) has successively meant, (1) blissful, (2) innocent, harmless, (3) weakly foolish.
Chaucer, Troylus and Cryseyde (Morris, p. 258).
Chaucer, Legend of Fair Women, 1252.
This Miles Forest and John Dighton about midnight (the silly children lying in their beds) came into the chamber, and suddenly lapped them up among the clothes.—Sir T. More, History of King Richard III.
| Sincere, | } |
| Sincerity. |
The etymology of ‘sincerus’ being uncertain, it is impossible to say what is the primary notion of our English ‘sincere.’ These words belong now to an ethical sphere exclusively, and even there their meaning is not altogether what once it was; but the absence of foreign admixture which they predicate might be literal once.
The mind of a man, as it is not of that content or receipt to comprehend knowledge without helps and supplies, so again, it is not sincere, but of an ill and corrupt tincture.—Bacon, Of the Interpretation of Nature, c. xvi.
The Germans are a people that more than all the world, I think, may boast sincerity, as being for some thousands of years a pure and unmixed people.—Feltham, A brief Character of the Low Countries, p. 59.
Skeleton. Now the framework of bones as entirely denuded of the flesh; but in early English, and there in stricter agreement with the meaning of the word in Greek, the dried mummy.
Scelet; the dead body of a man artificially dried or tanned for to be kept or seen a long time.—Holland, Plutarch’s Morals; An Explanation of certain obscure Words.
Smug. One of many words which have been spoilt for poetic use through being drawn into our serio-comic vocabulary. It still means neat, trim, being connected with the German ‘schmuck,’ trim, spruce; but seeks to present the very neatness which it implies in a ridiculous ignoble point of view. Any such intention was very far from it once.
Shakespeare, 1 Henry IV., act iii. sc. 1.
Beaumont, Psyche, ix. 176.
I like the smugness of the Cathedral (Winchester), and the profusion of the most beautiful Gothic tombs.—Walpole, Letters, i. 442 (1755).
Snail. It is curious what different objects men will be content for long to confuse under a common name. Thus in some provincial dialects of Germany they have only one name, ‘padde’ (compare our ‘paddock’), for frog and toad. So too ‘snail’ (cochlea) and ‘slug’ (limax) with us were both to a comparatively recent period included under the former name. ‘Slug’ indeed, in the sense of slothful, is an old word in the language; but only at the end of the seventeenth or beginning of the eighteenth century was it transferred to that familiar pest of our gardens which we now call by this name. Indeed up to the present day in many of our provincial dialects slugs and snails are invariably both included under the latter name; the snail proper being sometimes distinguished from the other as the ‘shell-snail’ (see Holland’s Plutarch, p. 212). See an interesting discussion in the Philological Society’s Transactions, 1860-1, pp. 102-106.
There is much variety even in creatures of the same kind. See these two snails. One hath a house, the other wants it; yet both are snails, and it is a question whether case is the better. That which hath a house hath more shelter, that which wants it hath more freedom.—Bishop Hall, Occasional Meditations.
Snails, a soft and exosseous animal, whereof in the naked and greater sort, as though she would requite the loss of a shell on their back, nature near the head hath placed a flat white stone. Of the great grey snails I have not met with any that wanted it.—Sir T. Browne, Vulgar Errors, b. iii. c. 13.
Snub. To check or cut short; now never used save in a figurative sense and in familiar language; but this was not always so.
If we neglect them [the first stirrings of corruption] but a little, out of a thought that they can do no great harm yet, or that we shall have time enough to snub them hereafter, we do it to our own certain disadvantage, if not utter undoing.—Sanderson, Sermons, 1671, vol. ii. p. 241.
| Soft, | } |
| Softness. |
It is not an honourable fact that ‘soft’ and ‘softness’ should now be terms of slight, almost of contempt, when ethically employed; although indeed it is only a repetition of what we find in χρηστός, εὐήθης, ‘gutig,’ ‘bonhomie,’ and other words not a few.
That they speak evil of no man, that they be no fighters, but soft [ἐπιεικεῖς], showing all meekness unto all men.—Titus iii. 2. Tyndale.
The meek or soft shall inherit the earth; even as we say, Be still and have thy will.—Tyndale, Exposition on the Fifth Chapter of Matthew.
Let your softness [τὸ ἐπιεικὲς ὑμῶν] be known unto all men.—Phil. iv. 5. Cranmer.
Sonnet. A ‘sonnet’ now must consist of exactly fourteen lines, neither more nor less; and these with a fixed arrangement, though admitting a certain relaxation, of the rhymes; but ‘sonnet’ used often to be applied to any shorter poem, especially of an amatory kind.
He [Arion] had a wonderful desire to chaunt a sonnet or hymn unto Apollo Pythius.—Holland, Plutarch’s Morals, p. 343.
If ye will tell us a tale, or play a jig, or show us a play and fine sights, or sing sonnets in our ears, there we will be for you.—Rogers, Naaman the Syrian, p. 492.
| Sot, | } |
| Sottish, | |
| Sottishness. |
He only is a ‘sot’ now whose stupor and folly is connected with, and the result of, excessive drink; but any fool would once bear this name.
Oldham, Eighth Satire of Boileau.
I do not here speak of a legal innocence (none but sots and Quakers dream of such things), for as St. Paul says, ‘By the works of the law shall no flesh living be justified;’ but I speak of an evangelical innocence.—South, Sermons, vol. ii. p. 427.
He [Perseus] commanded those poor divers to be secretly murdered, that no person should remain alive that was privy to that sottish commandment of his.—Holland, Livy, p. 1177.
Milton, Paradise Lost, i. 471.
Sottishness and dotage is the extinguishing of reason in phlegm or cold.—H. More, Grand Mystery of Godliness, b. viii. c. 14.
[Sparkle. It is probable that ‘to sparkle’ in the sense of to scatter is not the same word as our modern ‘sparkle,’ the diminutive of ‘spark,’ a small particle of fire. I think that it is almost certain that the ‘sparkle’ in the passages given below is a later form of ‘sparple,’ to scatter, see Trevisa, v. 287 (Rolls Series), and Promptorium. The Middle English ‘sparplen’ is the same word as the French ‘esparpiller,’ to scatter, disparkle asunder (see Cotgrave); compare also Italian ‘sparpagliare’ (Florio). For the etymology of ‘sparple’ see Mayhew-Skeat, Dict. of Middle English (s. v. ‘disparplen’). For a late use of ‘disparple,’ to scatter, see Davies, Suppl. Gloss.]
The Lansgrave hath sparkled his army without any further enterprise.—State Papers, vol. x. p. 718.
Sackville, Induction to a Mirrour for Magistrates.
And awhile chawing all those things in his mouth, he spitteth it upon him whom he desireth to kill; who being sparkled therewith, dieth by force of the poison within the space of half an hour.—Purchas’s Pilgrims, part ii. p. 1495.
Specious. Like the Latin ‘speciosus,’ it simply signified beautiful once; it now means always presenting a deceitful appearance of that beauty which is not really possessed, and is never used in any but an ethical sense.
Metrical Romance of the Fourteenth Century.
And they knew him, that it was he which sate for alms at the Specious Gate of the temple.—Acts iii. 10. Rheims.
Ben Jonson, Epitaph on Master Vincent Corbet.
Which [almug-trees], if odoriferous, made that passage as sweet to the smell as specious to the sight.—Fuller, Α Pisgah Sight of Palestine, b. iii. c. 2, § 5.
Spice. We have in English a double adoption of the Latin ‘species,’ namely ‘spice’ and ‘species’. ‘Spice,’ the earlier form (Old French ‘espice’), is now limited to certain aromatic drugs, which, as consisting of various kinds, have this name of ‘spices.’ But ‘spice’ was once employed as ‘species’ is now.
Absteyne you fro al yvel spice [ab omni specie malâ, Vulg.]—1 Thess. v. 22. Wiclif.
The spices of envye ben these.—Chaucer, The Persones Tale (Morris, p. 304).
Justice, although it be but one entire virtue, yet is described in two kinds of spices. The one is named justice distributive, the other is called commutative.—Sir T. Elyot, The Governor, b. iii. c. 1.
Spill. Nothing appears so utterly and irrecoverably lost as liquid poured upon the ground; and thus it has come to pass that ‘to spill,’ the Ο. E. ‘spillan,’ which had once the meaning of to waste, to squander, to consume, to destroy, and that in any way, is now restricted to this single meaning.
Chaucer, The Man of Lawes Tale.
If the colors ... be not well tempered or not well laid, or be used in excess, or never so little disordered and misplaced, they disfigure the stuff, and spill the whole workmanship, taking away all beauty and good liking from it.—Puttenham, Art of English Poesy, b. iii. c. 1.
Spill not the morning, the quintessence of the day, in recreations.—Fuller, Holy State, b. iii. c. 13.
Spinster. A name that was often applied to women of evil life, in that they were set to enforced labour of spinning in the Spittle or House of Correction (it is still called ‘The Spinning House’ at Cambridge), and thus were ‘spinsters.’ None of our Dictionaries, so far as I have observed, take note of this use of the word.
Many would never be indicted spinsters, were they spinsters indeed, nor come to so public and shameful punishments, if painfully employed in that vocation.—Fuller, Worthies of England: Kent.
Beaumont and Fletcher, The Prophetess, act iii. sc. 1.
Spruce. The exploits of the Teutonic Knights against the Pruzzi, the stubborn heathen of Lithuania, made Prussia to be very familiar on the lips of men in the later Middle Ages (see Weigand, s. v. Preuszen). This Prussia, Sprutia very often in medieval Latin, appears now as ‘Pruce’ (so in Chaucer), and now as ‘Spruce’ (see Skeat’s Dictionary); and in this latter form it survives in our spruce fir, which was brought from Northern Europe, in spruce beer, and in spruce, more vaguely applied to a certain neatness and smartness of outward appearance; one which it is implied had reached us from those quarters.
They were apparelled after the fashion of Prussia or Spruce.—Hall, Chronicle, Henry VIII.
Norway in that age, the sprucest of the three kingdoms of Scandia, and best tricked up with shipping, sent her fleet of tall soldiers to Syria.—Fuller, Holy War, b. v. c. 22.
Squander. The examples which follow will show that ‘to squander’ had once, if not a different, yet a much wider use than it now, at least in our classical English, retains. In the northern dialects it is still used as equivalent to ‘disperse.’
He hath an argosy bound to Tripolis, another to the Indies; ... he hath a third at Mexico, a fourth for England, and other ventures he hath, squandered abroad.—Shakespeare, Merchant of Venice, act i. sc. 3.
The minister is not to come into the pulpit, as a fencer upon the stage, to make a fair flourish against sin, but rather as a captain into the field, to bend his forces specially against the strongest troops of the enemy, and to squander and break through the thickest ranks.—Sanderson, Sermon 2, ad Clerum.
Dryden, Annus Mirabilis, st. 67.
Staple. A curious change has come over this word. We should now say, Cotton is the great ‘staple,’ that is, the established merchandize, of Manchester; our ancestors would have reversed this and said, Manchester is the great ‘staple,’ or established mart, of cotton. We make the goods prepared or sold the ‘staple’ of the place; they made the place the ‘staple’ of the goods. See Cowell, The Interpreter, s. v.
Men in all ages have made themselves merry with singling out some place, and fixing the staple of stupidity and stolidity therein.—Fuller, Worthies of England: Nottinghamshire.
Staple; a city or town, where merchants jointly lay up their commodities for the better uttering of them by the great; a public storehouse.—Phillips, New World of Words.
Starve. This word, the O.E. ‘steorfan,’ the German ‘sterben,’ to die, is only by comparatively modern use restricted to dying by cold or by hunger; in this restriction of use, resembling the French ‘noyer,’ to kill by drowning, while ‘necare,’ from which it descends, is to kill by any manner of death. But innumerable words are thus like rivers, which once pouring their waters through many channels, have now left dry and abandoned them all, save one, or, as in the present instance it happens, save two.
Chaucer, The Marchaundes Tale.
Spenser, Fairy Queen, ii. 6, 34.
State. Used often by our old writers for a raised dais or platform, on which was placed a chair or throne with a canopy (the German ‘Thronhimmel’) above it; being the chiefest seat of honour; thus in Massinger’s Bondman, act i. sc. 3, according to the old stage-direction Archidamus ‘offers Timoleon the state.’ But there is another use of ‘state’ not unfrequent in the seventeenth century, though altogether unknown in our own. A ‘state’ was a republic, as contradistinguished from a monarchy. This usage, which the States of Holland may have contributed to bring about, does not seem to have lasted very long.
Beaumont, Psyche, can. xix. st. 170.
Their majesties were seated as is aforesaid under their canopies or states, whereof that of the Queen was somewhat lesser and lower than that of the King, but both of them exceeding rich.—History of the Coronation of King James II., 1687, p. 61.
When he went to court, he used to kick away the state, and sit down by his prince cheek by jowl. Confound these states, says he, they are a modern invention.—Swift, History of John Bull, part ii. c. 1.
What say some others? A government of states would do much better for you than a monarchy.—Andrewes, Sermon 6, Of the Gunpowder Treason.
Davenant, The Dream.
Dryden, Absalom and Achitophel, 66.
Stationer. There was a time when ‘stationer,’ meaning properly no more than one who had his station, that is, in the market-place or elsewhere, included the bookseller and the publisher, as well as the dealer in the raw material of books. But when, in the division of labour, these became separate businesses, the name was restrained to him who dealt in the latter articles alone.
Stacyonere, or he that sellythe bokys, stacionarius, bibliopola.—Promptorium.
I doubt not but that the Animadverter’s stationer doth hope and desire that he hath thus pleased people in his book, for the advancing of the price and quickening the sale thereof.—Fuller, Appeal of Injured Innocence, p. 38.
The right of the printed copies (which the stationer takes as his own freehold), was dispersed in five or six several hands.—Oley, Preface to Dr. Jackson’s Works.
Oldham, A Satire.
| Stickle, | } |
| Stickler. |
Now to stand with a certain pertinacity to one’s point, refusing to renounce or go back from it; but formerly to interpose between combatants and separate them, when they had sufficiently satisfied the laws of honour. Our present meaning of the word connects itself with the past in the fact that the ‘sticklers,’ or seconds, as we should call them now, often fulfilled another function, being ready to maintain in their own persons and by their own arms the quarrel of their principals, and thus to ‘stickle’ for it. [The word ‘stickle’ represents the Middle English ‘stightlen,’ to order, arrange; for an interesting account of its cognates see Skeat’s Dictionary.]
I styckyll betwene wrastellers, or any folkes that prove mastries to se that none do other wronge, or I parte folkes that be redy to fyght.—Palsgrave.
Drayton, Muses’ Elysium, Nymph. 6.
The same angel [in Tasso], when half of the Christians are already killed, and all the rest are in a fair way of being routed, stickles betwixt the remainders of God’s hosts and the race of fiends; pulls the devils backwards by the tails, and drives them from their quarry.—Dryden, Dedication of Translations from Juvenal, p. 122.
In ancient times they were wont to employ third persons as sticklers, to see no treachery nor disorder were used, and to bear witness of the combat’s success.—Florio, Montaigne, ii. 27.
Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida, act v. sc. 9.
Dryden, On the Death of Oliver Cromwell.
Stomach. Already in classical Latin ‘stomachus’ had all the uses, courage, pride, indignation, ill-will, which ‘stomach’ may be seen in the following quotations to have once possessed, but which at this day have nearly or quite departed from it.
And sence we herde therof oure hert hath failed us, neither is there a good stomache more in eny man, by the reasone of youre commynge.—Josh. ii. 11. Coverdale.
Shakespeare, Henry VIII., act iv. sc. 2.
Arius, discontented that one should be placed before him in honour, whose superior he thought himself in desert, became through envy and stomach prone unto contradiction, and bold to broach that heresy wherein the Deity of our Lord Jesus Christ was denied.—Hooker, Ecclesiastical Polity, b. v. § 42.
[Stout. This word is now generally used in the sense of corpulent, less frequently in the sense of strong, robust. In provincial use ‘stout’ has sometimes the meaning of proud, and this is probably the original meaning of the word. ‘Stout’ is the same word as the Old French estout, bold, proud, which represents a Germanic base stolto-; compare modern German stolz, proud (see Kluge, s. v.). In the passages below the word retains its old meaning.]
Commonly it is seen that they that be rich are lofty and stout.—Latimer, Sermons, p. 545.
Old Proverb.
Shakespeare, Coriolanus, act iii. sc. 2.
Stove. This word, which was probably introduced from Holland, has much narrowed its meaning. Bath, hothouse, any room where air or water was artificially heated, was a ‘stove’ once.
When a certain Frenchman came to visit Melanchthon, he found him in his stove, with one hand dandling his child in the swaddling-clouts, and the other holding a book and reading it.—Fuller, Holy State, b. ii. c. 9.
How tedious is it to them that live in stoves and caves half a year together, as in Iceland, Muscovy, or under the pole!—Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy, part i. sect. 2.
When most of the waiters were commanded away to their supper, the parlour or stove being nearly emptied, in came a company of musketeers, shot every one his man, and so proceeded to an apothecary’s house, where Wallenstein lay.—Letters and Despatches of Thomas Earl of Strafford, vol. i. p. 226.
Street. This, one of the words which the Romans left behind them when they quitted Britain, and which the Saxons learned from the Britons, is more properly a road or causeway (‘via strata’) than a street, in our present sense of the word; and as late as Coverdale was so used.
For they soughte them thorow every strete, and yet they founde them not.—Josh. ii. 22. Coverdale.
But when one sawe that all the people stode there still, he removed Amasa from the strete unto the felde.—1 Sam. xx. 12. Coverdale.
Sublime. There is an occasional use of ‘sublime’ by our earlier poets, a use in which it bears much the meaning of the Greek ὑπερήφανος, or perhaps approaches still more closely to that of μετέωρος, high and lifted up, as with pride; which has now quite departed from it.
Spenser, Fairy Queen, v. 8, 30.
Milton, Samson Agonistes, 1669.
Sue. One now ‘sues’ or follows another into the courts of law, being, as in the legal language of Greece, ὁ διώκων, the ‘pursuer;’ but ‘to sue’ was once to follow, without any such limitation of meaning.
If thou wolt be perfite, go, and sille alle thingis that thou hast, and come, and sue me.—Matt. xix. 21. Wiclif.
And anoon thei leften the nettis and sueden hym.—Mark i. 19. Id.
Sure. Used once in the sense of affianced, or, as it would be sometimes called, ‘hand-fasted.’ See ‘Assure,’ ‘Ensure.’
The king was sure to dame Elizabeth Lucy, and her husband before God.—Sir T. More, History of King Richard III.
| Suspect, | } |
| Suspicion. |
To ‘suspect’ is properly to look under, and out of this fact is derived our present use of the word; but in looking under you may also look up, and herein lies the explanation of an occasional use of ‘suspect’ and ‘suspicion’ which we find in our early writers.
Pelopidas being sent the second time into Thessaly, to make accord betwixt the people and Alexander, the tyrant of Pheres, was by this tyrant (not suspecting the dignity of an ambassador, nor of his country) made prisoner.—North, Plutarch’s Lives, p. 927.
If God do intimate to the spirit of any wise inferiors that they ought to reprove, then let them suspect their own persons, and beware that they make no open contestation, but be content with privacy.—Rogers, Naaman the Syrian, p. 330.
Cordeilla, out of mere love, without the suspicion of expected reward, at the message only of her father in distress, pours forth true filial tears.—Milton, History of England, b. i.
Sycophant. The early meaning of ‘sycophant,’ when it was employed as equivalent to informer, delator, calumniator, ‘promoter’ (which see), agreed better with its use in the Greek than does our present. Employing it now in the sense of false and fawning flatterer, we might seem at first sight to employ it in a sense not merely altogether unconnected with, but quite opposite to, its former. Yet indeed there is a very deep inner connexion between the two uses. It is not for nothing that Jeremy Taylor treats of these two, namely ‘Of Slander and Flattery,’ in one and the same course of sermons; seeing that, as the Italian proverb has taught us, ‘He who flatters me before, spatters me behind.’
The poor man, that hath nought to lose, is not afraid of the sycophant or promoter.—Holland, Plutarch’s Morals, p. 261.
He [St. Paul] in peril of the wilderness, that is of wild beasts; they [rich men] not only of the wild beast called the sycophant, but of the tame beast too, called the flatterer.—Andrewes, Sermon preached at the Spittle.
Sanders, that malicious sycophant, will have no less than twenty-six wain-load of silver, gold, and precious stones to be seized into the king’s hands by the spoil of that monument.—Heylin, History of the Reformation, 1849, vol. i. p. 20.
Symbol. The employment of ‘symbol’ in its proper Greek sense of contribution thrown into a common stock, as in a pic-nic or the like, is frequent in Jeremy Taylor, and examples of it may be found in other scholarly writers of the seventeenth century.
The consideration of these things hath oft suggested, and at length persuaded me to make this attempt, to cast in my mite to this treasury, my symbolum toward so charitable a work.—Hammond, A Paraphrase on the Psalms, Preface.
Christ hath finished his own sufferings for expiation of the world; yet there are ‘portions that are behind of the sufferings’ of Christ, which must be filled up by his body the Church; and happy are they that put in the greatest symbol; for ‘in the same measure you are partakers of the sufferings of Christ, in the same shall ye be also of the consolation.’—Bishop Taylor, The Faith and Patience of the Saints.
There [in Westminster Abbey] the warlike and the peaceful, the fortunate and the miserable, the beloved and the despised princes, mingle their dust and pay down their symbol of mortality.—Id., Holy Dying, c. i. § 2.
Table. The Latin ‘tabula’ had for one of its meanings picture or painting; and this caused that ‘table’ was by our early writers used often in the same meaning.
The table wherein Detraction was expressed, he [Apelles] painted in this form.—Sir T. Elyot, The Governor, b. iii. c. 27.
You shall see, as it were in a table painted before your eyes, the evil-favouredness and deformity of this most detestable vice.—Homilies: Against Contention.
Learning flourished yet in the city of Sicyon, and they esteemed the painting of tables in that city to be the perfectest for true colours and fine drawing, of all other places.—North, Plutarch’s Lives, p. 843.
Taint. This and ‘tint’ or ‘teint,’ the one connected more closely with the French, the other with the Italian form of the word, have divided off from one another, but own a common origin—‘tingo,’ ‘tinctus.’ The fact that discoloration commonly accompanies decay explains our present use of ‘taint.’
A most delicate and beautiful young lady, slender of body, tall of stature, fair of taynt and complexion.—Reynolds, God’s Revenge against Murther, b. i. hist. 1.
Greene, Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay, sc. 1.
Shakespeare, 3 Henry VI., act iii. sc. 1.
Talent. The original meaning, as of ‘talent’ in Old French, ‘talento’ in Italian, ‘talante’ in Spanish, was will, inclination, from ‘talentum’ (τάλαντον), balance, scales, and then inclination of balance; thus in Spenser (Fairy Queen, iii. 4, 61), ‘maltalent’ is grudge or ill-will (compare Old French ‘maltalant’ in the Chanson de Roland, 271). It is probably under the influence of the Parable of the Talents (Matt. xxv.) that it has travelled to its present meaning. Clarendon still employs it very distinctly in its older sense.
Whoso then wold wel understonde these peines, and bethinke him wel that he hath deserved these peines for his sinnes, certes he shold have more talent for to sighe and to wepe than for to singe and playe.—Chaucer, The Persones Tale.
The meaner sort rested not there, but creating for their leader Sir John Egremond, a factious person and one who had of a long time borne an ill talent towards the king, entered into open rebellion.—Bacon, History of King Henry VII.
Though the nation generally was without any ill talent to the Church, either in the point of the doctrine or the discipline, yet they were not without a jealousy that Popery was not enough discountenanced.—Clarendon, History of the Rebellion, b. i. c. 194.
Tall. [This word occurs in earlier English with a great variety of meanings. A very common meaning is seemly, fine, elegant; for examples see Oliphant’s New English (index). In old plays it often meant valiant, brave, great (Halliwell). In the Complaint of Mars ‘talle’ occurs, apparently in the sense of obedient, docile (see Skeat, Minor Poems of Chaucer, iv. 38). The word in the sense of lofty in stature may perhaps be distinct from the above ‘tall’; at any rate the modern sense of tall seems to be the primary one in the Welsh and Cornish tal, high. See Skeat’s Dictionary.]
Tal, or semely, Decens, elegans.—Promptorium.
He [the Earl of Richmond’s] companions being almost in despair of victory were suddenly recomforted by Sir William Stanley, which came to succours with three thousand tall men.—Grafton, Chronicle.
Marlowe, Tamburlaine the Great, part ii. act iv. sc. 4.
He [Prince Edward] would proffer to fight with any mean person, if cried up for a tall man.—Fuller, Holy War, b. iv. c. 29.
Tarpaulin. Not any longer used in the sense of sailor, except in the shorter form of ‘tar.’ See the quotation from Smollett, s. v. ‘Companion.’
The Archbishop of Bordeaux is at present General of the French naval forces, who though a priest, is yet permitted to turn tarpaulin and soldier.--Turkish Spy, Letter 2.
Tawdry. ‘Tawdry’ laces and such like were cheap and showy articles of finery bought at St. Etheldrida’s or St. Awdry’s fair; but it is only in later times that this cheapness, showiness, with a further suggestion of vulgarity, made themselves distinctly felt in the word. [The Old English form of ‘Etheldrida’ was ‘Æthelthry̅th,’ which means noble strength. See Sweet, Oldest English Texts, p. 638.]
Spenser, Shepherd’s Calendar, Fourth Eclogue.
Come, you promised me a tawdry lace and a pair of sweet gloves.—Shakespeare, Winter’s Tale, act iv. sc. 3.
Temper. What has been said under ‘Humour,’ which see, will also explain ‘Temper,’ and the earlier uses of it which we meet. The happy ‘temper’ would be the happy mixture, the blending in due proportions, of the four principal ‘humours’ of the body.
The exquisiteness of his [the Saviour’s] bodily temper increased the exquisiteness of his torment, and the ingenuity of his soul added to his sensibleness of the indignities and affronts offered to him.—Fuller, A Pisgah Sight of Palestine, vol. i. p. 345.
Concupiscence itself follows the crasis and temperature of the body. If you would know why one man is proud, another cruel, another intemperate or luxurious, you are not to repair so much to Aristotle’s ethics, or to the writings of other moralists, as to those of Galen, or of some anatomists, to find the reason of these different tempers.—South, Sermons, 1744, vol. ii. p. 5.
Temperament. The Latin ‘temperamentum’ had sometimes very nearly the sense of our English ‘compromise’ or the French ‘transaction,’ and signified, as these do, a middle term reached by mutual concession, by a tempering of the extreme claims upon either side. This same use of ‘temperament’ appears from time to time in such of our writers as have allowed their style to be modified by their Latin studies.
Safest, therefore, to me it seems that none of the Council be moved unless by death, or just conviction of some crime. However, I forejudge not any probable expedient, any temperament that can be found in things of this nature, so disputable on either side.—Milton, The Ready and Easy Way to establish a Free Commonwealth.
Many temperaments and explanations there would have been, if ever I had a notion that it [Observations on the Minority] should meet the public eye.—Burke, Letter to Lawrence.
Termagant. A name at this present applied only to women of fierce temper and ungoverned tongue, but formerly to men and women alike; and indeed predominantly to men; ‘Termagant’ in the popular notion being the name of one of the three gods of the Saracens. [See Mayhew-Skeat, Dict. of Middle English (s. v. ‘Tervagant’).]
Art thou so fierce, currish, and churlish a Nabal, that even when thou mightest live in the midst of thy people (as she told Elisha [2 Kings iv. 13]), thou delightest to play the tyrant and termagant among them?—Rogers, Naaman the Syrian, p. 270.
This would make a saint swear like a soldier, and a soldier like Termagant.—Beaumont and Fletcher, King or No King.
Thews. It is a remarkable evidence of the influence of Shakespeare upon the English language, that while, so far as yet has been observed, every other writer, one single instance excepted, employs ‘thews’ in the sense of manners, qualities of mind and disposition, his employment of it in the sense of nerves, muscular vigour, has quite overborne the other; which, once so familiar in our literature, has now quite passed away. See a valuable note in Craik’s English of Shakespeare, p. 117.
Chaucer, Legend of Good Women (Skeat, p. 118).
Spenser, Fairy Queen, ii. 1, 33.
Id., ib., 10, 59.
| Think, | } |
| Thought, | |
| Thoughtful. |
Many, as they read or hear in our English Bible these words of our Lord, ‘Take no thought for your life’ (Matt. vi. 25; cf. 1 Sam. ix. 5), are perplexed, for they cannot help feeling that there is some exaggeration in them, that He is urging here something which is impossible, and which, if possible, would not be desirable, but a forfeiting of the true dignity of man. Or perhaps, if they are able to compare the English with the Greek, they blame our Translators for having given an emphasis to the precept which it did not possess in the original. But neither is the fact. ‘Thought’ is constantly anxious care in our earlier English, as the examples which follow will abundantly prove; and ‘to think,’ though not so frequently, is to take anxious care. To this day they will say in Yorkshire, ‘it was thought that did for her,’ meaning that it was care that killed her.
Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra, act iii. sc. 13.
Skelton, Manerly Margery.
He so plagued and vexed his father with injurious indignities, that the old man for very thought and grief of heart pined away and died.—Holland, Camden’s Ireland, p. 120.
In five hundred years only two queens have died in childbirth. Queen Catherine Parr died rather of thought.—Somers’ Tracts (Reign of Elizabeth), vol. i. p. 172.
Harris, an alderman of London, was put in trouble, and died of thought and anxiety before his business came to an end.—Bacon, History of Henry VII.
Lydgate, Lyf of Our Lady.
Thrifty. The ‘thrifty’ is on the way to be the thriving; yet ‘thrifty’ does not mean thriving now, as once it did. It still indeed retains this meaning in provincial use; as I have heard a newly-transplanted tree, which was doing well, described as ‘thrifty.’ See ‘Unthrifty;’ and the quotation from Tusser, s. v. ‘Family.’
No grace hath more abundant promises made unto it than this of mercy, a sowing, a reaping, a thrifty grace.—Bishop Reynolds, Sermon 30.
Tidy. This, identical with the German ‘zeitig,’ has lost that reference to time which in ‘noontide,’ ‘eventide,’ and some other compounds still survives.
Genesis and Exodus, 2104.
Lo an erthetilier abidith preciouse fruyt of the erthe, paciently suffrynge til he resseyve tymeful and lateful fruit—that is tidi and ripe.—James v. 7. Wiclif.
Tinsel. This (the Old French ‘estincelle,’ a spark) is always now cheap finery, flashing like silver and gold, but at the same time pretending a value and a richness which it does not really possess. There lay no such insinuation of pretentious splendour in its earlier uses. A valuable note in Keightley’s Milton, vol. i. p. 126, makes it, I think, clear that by ‘tinsel’ was commonly meant ‘a silver texture, less dense and stout than cloth of silver;’ yet not always, for see my first quotation.
Under a duke, no man to wear cloth of gold tinsel.—Literary Remains of King Edward VI., 1551, 2.
Every place was hanged with cloth of gold, cloth of silver, tinsel, arras, tapestry, and what not.—Stubbes, Anatomy of Abuses, p. 18.
Gascoigne, The Steel Glass.
Spenser, Fairy Queen, iii. 1, 15.
Tobacconist. Now the seller, once the smoker, of tobacco.
Germany hath not so many drunkards, England tobacconists, France dancers, Holland mariners, as Italy alone hath jealous husbands.—Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy, part iii. sect. 3.
Hence it is that the lungs of the tobacconist are rotted.—Ben Jonson, Bartholomew Fair.
Sylvester, Tobacco Battered.
Tory. It is curious how often political parties have ended by assuming to themselves names first fastened on them by their adversaries in reproach and scorn. The ‘Gueux’ or ‘Beggars’ of Holland are perhaps the most notable instance of all; so too ‘tories’ was a name properly belonging to the Irish bogtrotters, who during our Civil War robbed and plundered, professing to be in arms for the maintenance of the royal cause; and from them transferred, about the year 1680, to those who sought to maintain the extreme prerogatives of the Crown. There is an Act of the 6th of Anne with this title: ‘For the more effectual suppressing Tories and Rapparees; and for preventing persons becoming Tories or resorting to them.’ For the best account of the ‘tories’ see Prendergast, Cromwellian Settlement of Ireland, pp. 163-183; and compare Carte’s Life of the Duke of Ormonde, vol. ii. p. 481.
That Irish Papists who had been licensed to depart this nation, and of late years have been transplanted into Spain, Flanders, and other foreign parts, have nevertheless secretly returned into Ireland, occasioning the increase of tories and other lawless persons.—Irish State Papers, 24th January, 1656.
Let such men quit all pretences to civility and breeding. They are ruder than tories and wild Americans.—Glanville, Sermons, p. 212.
In the open or plain countries the peasants are content to live on their labour; the woods, bogs, and fastnesses fostering and sheltering the robbers, tories, and woodkerns, who are usually the offspring of gentlemen, that have either misspent or forfeited their estates; who, though having no subsistance, yet contemn trade, as being too mean and base for a gentleman reduced never so low.—MS. Account of the State of the County of Kildare, of date 1684, in Trinity College Library, Dublin.
Mosstroopers, a sort of rebels in the northern part of Scotland, that live by robbery and spoil, like the tories in Ireland, or the banditti in Italy.—Phillips, New World of Words, ed. 1706.
Trade. Properly that path which we ‘tread,’ and thus the ever recurring habit and manner of our life, whatever this may be.
Earl of Surrey, Translation of the Æneid, b. ii. l. 592.
For him that lacketh nothing necessary, nor hath cause to complain of his present state, it is a great folly to leave his old acquainted trade of life, and to enter into another new and unknown.—North, Plutarch’s Lives, p. 53.
Teach a child in the trade of his way, and when he is old, he shall not depart from it.—Proverbs xxii. 6. Geneva.
Spenser, Fairy Queen, ii. 12, 30.
Ib., ii. 6, 39.
Treacle. This at present means only the sweet syrup of molasses, but was once of far wider reach and far nobler significance, having come to us from afar, and by steps which are curious to trace. They are these. The Greeks, in anticipation of modern homœopathy, called a fancied antidote to the viper’s bite, which was composed of the viper’s flesh, θηριακά—from θηρίον, a name often given to the viper (Acts xxviii. 5); of this came the Latin ‘theriaca,’ from the Old French form of which—namely, ‘triacle’—came our ‘triacle’ and ‘treacle.’ See Promptorium, and Mayhew-Skeat, Dict. of Middle English, p. 237.
For a most strong treacle against these venomous heresies wrought our Saviour many a marvellous miracle.—Sir T. More, A Treatise on the Passion, Works, p. 1357.
There is no more triacle at Galaad, and there is no phisician that can heale the hurte of my people.—Jer. viii. 22. Coverdale.
At last his body [Sir Thomas Overbury’s] was almost come by use of poisons to the state that Mithridates’ body was by the use of treacle and preservatives, that the force of the poisons was blunted upon him.—Bacon, Charge against Robert, Earl of Somerset.
The saints’ experiences help them to a sovereign treacle made of the scorpion’s own flesh (which they through Christ have slain), and that hath a virtue above all others to expel the venom of Satan’s temptations from the heart.—Gurnall, The Christian in Complete Armour, c. ix. § 2.
Wonderful therefore is the power of a Christian, who not only overcomes and conquers and kills the viper, but like the skilful apothecary makes antidote and triacle of him.—Hales, Sermon on Christian Omnipotence.
Treacle; a physical composition, made of vipers and other ingredients.—Phillips, New World of Words.
Tree. This might once have been used of the dead timber, no less than of the living growth; this use surviving still in ‘roodtree,’ ‘axletree,’ ‘saddletree.’
In a greet hous ben not oneli vessels of gold and of silver, but also of tree [lignea, Vulg.] and of erthe.—2 Tim. ii. 20. Wiclif.
He had a castel of tre, which he cleped Mategrifon.—Capgrave, Chronicle of England, p. 145.
Old Ballad.
Triumph. A name often transferred by our early writers to any stately show or pageantry whatever, not restricted, as now, to one celebrating a victory. See Bacon’s Essay, the 37th, with the heading ‘Of Masks and Triumphs,’ passim.
Pericles, Prince of Tyre, act ii. sc. 2.
You cannot have a perfect palace except you have two several sides, the one for feasts and triumphs, the other for dwelling.—Bacon, Essays, 45.
Milton, Samson Agonistes, 1311.
Trivial. A ‘trivial’ saying is at present a slight one; it was formerly an often-repeated one, or one containing an elementary truth; it might be trite, on the ground of the weight and wisdom which it contained; as certainly the maxim quoted by Hacket is anything but ‘trivial’ in our sense of the word. Gradually the notion of slightness was superadded to that of commonness, and thus an epithet once of honour has become one of dishonour rather. See Mayhew-Skeat, Dict. of Middle English (s. v. ‘Trivials’).
Others avouch, and that more truly, that he [Duns Scotus] was born in Downe, and thereof they guess him to be named Dunensis, and by contraction Duns, which term is so trivial and common in schools, that whoso surpasseth others either in cavilling sophistry or subtle philosophy is forthwith nicknamed a Duns.—Stanyhurst, Description of Ireland, p. 2.
Æquitas optimo cuique notissima, is a trivial saying, A very good man cannot be ignorant of equity.—Hacket, Life of Archbishop Williams, part i. p. 57.
These branches [of the divine life] are three, whose names though trivial and vulgar, yet, if rightly understood, they bear such a sense with them that nothing more weighty can be pronounced by the tongue of men or seraphims, and in brief they are these, Charity, Humility, and Purity.—H. More, Grand Mystery of Godliness, b. ii. c. 12.
Trumpery. That which is deceitful is without any worth; and ‘trumpery,’ which was formerly deceit, fraud (tromperie), is now anything which is worthless and of no account. Was Milton’s use of the word in his well-known line, ‘Black, white and gray, with all their trumpery’ (P. L. iii. 475), our present, or that earlier?
Sir J. Harington, Orlando Furioso, b. vii.
Britannicus was now grown to men’s estate, a true and worthy plant to receive his father’s empire; which a grafted son by adoption now possessed by the injury and trumpery of his mother.—Greenwey, Tacitus, p. 182.
Turk. It is a remarkable evidence of the extent to which the Turks and the Turkish assault upon Christendom had impressed themselves on the minds of men, of the way in which they stood as representing the entire Mahometan world, that ‘Turk,’ being in fact a national, is constantly employed by the writers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as a religious, designation, as equivalent to, and coextensive with, Mahometan; exactly as Ἔλλην in the New Testament means continually not of Greek nationality, but of Gentile religion.
Have mercy upon all Jews, Turks, infidels, and heretics.—Collect for Good Friday.
It is no good reason for a man’s religion, that he was born and brought up in it; for then a Turk would have as much reason to be a Turk as a Christian to be a Christian.—Chillingworth, Religion of Protestants, part i. c. 2.
| Tutor, | } |
| Tuition. |
The ‘tutor’ of our forefathers was rather a caretaker and guardian than an instructor: but seeing that one defends another most effectually who imparts to him those principles and that knowledge whereby he shall be able to defend himself, our modern use of the word must be taken as a deeper than the earlier.
This is part of the honour that the children owe to their parents and tutors by the commandment of God, even to be bestowed in marriage as it pleaseth the godly, prudent and honest parents or tutors to appoint.—Becon, Catechism, Parker Soc. ed., p. 871.
What shall become of the lambs under the tuition of wolves?—Adams, Sermons, vol. ii. p. 117.
Tutors and guardians are in the place of parents; and what they are in fiction of law they must remember as an argument to engage them to do in reality of duty.—Bishop Taylor, Holy Living, iii. 2.
As though they were not to be trusted with the king’s brother, that by the assent of the nobles of the land were appointed, as the king’s nearest friends, to the tuition of his own royal person.—Sir T. More, History of King Richard III., p. 36.
Afterwards turning his speech to his wife and his son, he [Scanderbeg] commended them both with his kingdom to the tuition of the Venetians.—Knolles, History of the Turks, vol. i. p. 274.
| Umbrage, | } |
| Umbrageous. |
‘To take umbrage’ is, I think, the only phrase in which the word ‘umbrage’ is still in use among us, the only one at least in which it is ethically employed; but ‘umbrage’ in its earlier use coincides in meaning with the old French ‘ombrage’ (see the quotation from Bacon), and signifies suspicion, or rather the disposition to suspect; and ‘umbrageous,’ as far as I know, is constantly employed in the sense of suspicious by our early authors; having now no other but a literal sense. Other uses of ‘umbrage,’ as those of Fuller and Jeremy Taylor which follow, must be explained from the classical sympathies of these writers; out of which the Latin etymology of the word gradually made itself felt in the meaning which they ascribed to it, namely as anything slight and shadowy. [For the development of meaning of the French ‘ombrage’ from shadow to suspicion, see Darmesteter, Vie des Mots, p. 77.]
I say, just fear, not out of umbrages, light jealousies, apprehensions afar off, but out of clear foresight of imminent danger.—Bacon, Of a War with Spain.
To collect the several essays of princes glancing on that project [a new Crusade], were a task of great pains and small profit; especially some of them being umbrages and state representations rather than realities, to ingratiate princes with their subjects, or with the oratory of so pious a project to woo money out of people’s purses.—Fuller, Holy War, b. v. c. 25.
You look for it [truth] in your books, and you tug hard for it in your disputations, and you derive it from the cisterns of the Fathers, and you inquire after the old ways; and sometimes are taken with new appearances, and you rejoice in false lights, or are delighted with little umbrages or peep of day.—Bishop Taylor, Sermon preached to the University of Dublin.
There being in the Old Testament thirteen types and umbrages of this Holy Sacrament, eleven of them are of meat and drink.—Id., The Worthy Communicant, c. ii. § 2.
At the beginning some men were a little umbrageous, and startling at the name of the Fathers; yet since the Fathers have been well studied, we have behaved ourselves with more reverence toward the Fathers than they of the Roman persuasion have done.—Donne, Sermons, 1640, p. 557.
That there was none other present but himself when his master De Merson was murdered, it is umbrageous, and leaves a spice of fear and sting of suspicion in their heads.—Reynolds, God’s Revenge against Murther, b. iii. hist. 13.
Uncouth. Now unformed in manner, ungraceful in behaviour; but once simply unknown. The change in signification is to be traced to the same causes which made ‘barbarous,’ meaning at first only foreign, to have afterwards the sense of savage and wild. Almost all nations regard with disfavour and dislike that which is outlandish, and generally that with which they are unacquainted; so that words which at first did but express this fact of strangeness, easily acquire a further unfavourable sense.
The vulgar instruction requires also vulgar and communicable terms, not clerkly or uncouth, as are all these of the Greek and Latin languages.—Puttenham, Art of English Poesy, b. iii. c. 10.
Spenser, The Shepherd’s Calendar, September.
‘Uncouthe, unkiste,’ sayde the old famous poete Chaucer; which proverb very well taketh place in this our new poete, who for that he is uncouthe (as said Chaucer) is unkist; and, unknown to most men, is regarded but of a few.—E. K., Epistle Dedicatory prefixed to Spenser’s Shepherd’s Calendar.
Unequal. From the constant use made of ‘unequal’ by our early writers, for whom it was entirely equivalent to unjust, unfair, one might almost suppose they were influenced by sense association with ‘iniquus’ in their naturalization of ‘inæqualis.’ At any rate they had no scruple in using it in a sense, which ‘inæqualis’ never has, but ‘iniquus’ continually.
Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra, act ii. sc. 5.
Ben Jonson, The Fox, act iii. sc. 1.
Jerome, a very unequal relator of the opinion of his adversaries.—Worthington, Life of Joseph Mede, p. xi.
Uneasy. This has lost the sense of ‘difficult,’ and means now restless or anxious. But the objective signification is to be found in our Bible and in Shakespeare.
The town was hard to besiege and uneasy to come unto.—2 Macc. xii. 21. (A.V.)
Shakespeare, The Tempest, act i. sc. 2.
Unhandsome. See ‘Handsome.’
A narrow straight path by the water’s side, very unhandsome [οὐ ῥᾳδίαν] for an army to pass that way, though they found not a man to keep the passage.—North, Plutarch’s Lives, p. 317; cf. p. 378.
The ships were unwieldy and unhandsome.—Holland, Livy, p. 1188.
| Unhappy, | } |
| Unhappiness. |
A very deep truth lies involved in the fact that so many words, and I suppose in all languages, unite the meanings of wicked and miserable, as the Greek σχέτλιος, our own ‘wretch’ and ‘wretched.’ So, too, it was once with ‘unhappy,’ although its use in the sense of ‘wicked’ has now passed away.
Fathers shall do well also to keep from them [their children] such schoolfellows as be unhappy, and given to shrewd turns; for such as they are enough to corrupt and mar the best natures in the world.—Holland, Plutarch’s Morals, p. 16.
Shakespeare, King Lear, act iv. sc. 6.
The servants of Dionyse, king of Sicily, which although they were inclined to all unhappiness and mischief, yet after the coming of Plato, perceiving that for his doctrine and wisdom the king had him in high estimation, they thus counterfeited the countenance and habit of the philosopher.—Sir T. Elyot, The Governor, b. ii. c. 14.
[Man] from the hour of his birth is most miserable, weak, and sickly; when he sucks, he is guided by others; when he is grown great, practiseth unhappiness and is sturdy; and when old, a child again and repenteth him of his past life.—Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy; Democritus to the Reader.
Union. The elder Pliny (H. N. ix. 59) tells us that the name ‘unio’ had not very long before his time begun to be given to a pearl in which all chiefest excellencies, size, roundness, smoothness, whiteness, weight, met and, so to speak, were united; and as late as Jeremy Taylor the word ‘union’ was often employed to designate a pearl of a rare and transcendent beauty. See Skeat’s Dictionary (s. v. ‘Onion’).
Shakespeare, Hamlet, act v. sc. 2.
Pope Paul II. in his pontifical vestments outwent all his predecessors, especially in his mitre, upon which he had laid out a great deal of money in purchasing at vast rates diamonds, sapphires, emeralds, crysoliths, jaspers, unions, and all manner of precious stones.—Sir Paul Rycaut, Platina’s History of the Popes, p. 114.
Perox, the Persian king, [hath] an union in his ear worth an hundred weight of gold.—Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy, mem. ii. sect. 3.
| Unkind, | } |
| Unkindness. |
‘Unkind’ has quite forfeited now its primary meaning, namely that which violates the law of kind, thus ‘unkind abominations’ (Chaucer), meaning incestuous unions and the like; and has taken up with the secondary, that which does not recognise the duties flowing out of this kinship. In its primary meaning it moves in a region where the physical and ethical meet; in its secondary in a purely ethical sphere. How soon it began to occupy this the passages which follow will show; for out of a sense that nothing was so unnatural or ‘unkind’ as ingratitude, the word early obtained use as a special designation of this vice.
Unkynde [ingrati, Vulg.], cursid, withouten affeccioun.—2 Tim. iii. 2, 3. Wiclif.
Gower, Confessio Amantis, b. v.
Richard Rolle de Hampole, Pricke of Conscience, 117.
The most damnable vice and most against justice, in mine opinion, is ingratitude, commonly called unkindness. He is unkind that denieth to have received any benefit, that indeed he hath received; he is unkind that dissimuleth; he is unkind that recompenseth not; but he is most unkind that forgetteth.—Sir T. Elyot, The Governor, b. ii. c. 13.
God might have made me even such a foule and unreasonable beast as this is; and yet was I never so kynde as to thancke Him that He had not made me so vile a creature; which thing I greatly bewayle, and my unkindenesse causeth me now thus to weepe.—Frith, Works, 1573, p. 90.
We have cause also in England to beware of unkindnesse, who have had in so fewe yeares the candel of Goddes woorde, so oft lightned, so oft put out; and yet will venture by our unthankfulnesse in doctrine, and sinfull life, to leese againe lighte, candle, candlesticke, and all.—Ascham, The Scholemaster, b. i.
| Unthrifty, | } |
| Unthriftiness. |
As the ‘thrifty’ will probably be the thriving, so the ‘unthrifty’ the unthriving; but the words are not synonymous any more, as once they were. See ‘Thrifty.’
What [is it] but this self and presuming of ourselves causes grace to be unthrifty, and to hang down the head? what but our ascribing to ourselves in our means-using, makes them so unfruitful?—Rogers, Naaman the Syrian, p. 146.
Staggering, non-proficiency, and unthriftiness of profession is the fruit of self.—Id., Index.
Unvalued. This and ‘invaluable’ have been usefully desynonymized; so that ‘invaluable’ means now having a value greater than can be estimated, ‘unvalued’ esteemed to have no value at all. Yet it was not so once; though in Shakespeare (see Hamlet, act i. sc. 3) our present use of ‘unvalued’ occasionally obtained.
Spenser, Sonnet 77.
Chapman, Dedication of Poems.
Milton, An Epitaph on Shakespeare.
| Usury, | } |
| Usurer. |
This, which is now the lending of money upon inordinate interest, was once the lending it upon any. The man who did not lend his money for nothing was then a ‘usurer,’ not he, as now, who makes unworthy profit by the necessities of the needy or the extravagance of the foolish. It is true that the word was as dishonourable then as it is now; and it could not be otherwise, so long as all receiving of interest was regarded as a violation at once of divine and of natural law. When at length the common sense of men overcame this strange but deep-rooted prejudice, the word was too deeply stained with dishonour to be employed to express the lawful receiving of a measurable interest; but ‘usury,’ taking up a portion only of its former meaning, was now restricted to that which still remained under a moral ban, namely the exacting of an excessive interest for money lent.
On the other side, the commodities of usury are: first, that howsoever usury in some respects hindereth merchandising, yet in some other it advanceth it; for it is certain that the greatest part of trade is driven by young merchants upon borrowing at interest; so as if the usurer either call in or keep back his money, there will ensue presently a great stand of trade.—Bacon, Essay, 41.
Wherefore then gavest not thou my money into the bank, that at my coming I might have required mine own with usury [σὺν τόκῳ]?—Luke xix. 23. (A.V.)
Brokers, takers of pawns, biting usurers I will not admit; yet because we converse here with men, not with gods, and for the hardness of men’s hearts, I will tolerate some kind of usury.—Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy; Democritus to the Reader.
Varlet. Littré, dealing with this very word, has truly said, ‘Les mots, soit en changeant de pays, soit en changeant de siècle, s’ennoblissent ou s’avilissent d’une façon singulière’ (Hist. de la Langue Française, vol. ii. p. 166). There could be no more signal proof of this than that which the word ‘varlet’ supplies. I continue to quote his words, ‘Vaslet, ou, par une substitution non rare de l’r à l’s, varlet, est un diminutif de vassal; vassal signifiait un vaillant guerrier, et varlet un jeune homme qui pouvait aspirer aux honneurs de la chevalerie.’ From this it fell to the use in which we find it in the passage quoted below from Shakespeare of squire or attendant, which is also the continually recurring use in the Old English translation of Froissart. In this sense it survives as ‘valet;’ but not pausing here, ‘varlet’ is now tinged with contempt, and implies moral worthlessness in him to whom it is applied.
Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida, act i. sc. 1.
Right so there came in a varlet; and told Sir Tristram how there was come an errant knight into the town with such colours upon his shield.—Sir T. Malory, Morte d’Arthur, b. x. c. 56.
Vassalage. This, like the Old French ‘vasselage,’ had once the meaning of courage, prowess, superiority. See in explanation the quotation from Littré under ‘Varlet.’
Chaucer, The Knightes Tale, 2189 (Clar. Press).
Lydgate, Minor Poems, Halliwell’s ed., p. 176.
Vermin. Now always noxious offensive animals of the smaller kind, but employed formerly with no such limitation.
But he shouke of the vermen into the fyre and felt no harme.—Acts xxviii. 5. Geneva Version.
This crocodile is a mischievous four-footed beast, a dangerous vermin used to both elements.—Holland, Ammianus, p. 212.
Wherein were all manner of four-footed beasts of the earth, and vermin [καὶ τὰ θηρία], and worms, and fowls of the air.—Acts x. 12. Geneva.
The Lord rectifies Peter, and frames him to go by a vision of all crawling vermin in a clean sheet.—Rogers, Naaman the Syrian, p. 42.
Vilify. This now implies a great deal more than to hold morally cheap, which was all that in the seventeenth century it involved.
Can it be imagined that a whole people would ever so vilify themselves, depart from their own interests to that degree as to place all their hopes in one man?—Milton, Defence of the People of England, c. 7.
The ears of all men will be filled with deceitful figments and gainful lies, the merits of Christ’s passion will be vilified and maimed.—H. More, The Mystery of Iniquity, b. ii. c. 7, § 11.
The more I magnify myself, the more God vilifies me.—Rogers, Naaman the Syrian, p. 469.
| Villain, | } |
| Villany. |
A word whose story, like that of ‘churl,’ is so well known that one may be spared the necessity of repeating it. It was, I think, with ‘villany’ that there was first a transfer into an ethical sphere, though it is noticeable how ‘villany’ till a very late day expressed words foul and disgraceful to the utterer much oftener than deeds.
Pour the blood of the villain in one basin, and the blood of the gentleman in another; what difference shall there be proved?—Becon, The Jewel of Joy.
We yield not ourselves to be your villains and slaves [non in servitutem nos tradimus], but as allies to be protected by you.—Holland, Livy, p. 935.
[He] was condemned to be degraded of all nobility, and not only himself, but all his succeeding posterity declared villains, and clowns, taxable and incapable to bear arms.—Florio, Montaigne, b. i. c. 15.
In our modern language it [foul language] is termed villany, as being proper for rustic boors, or men of coarsest education and employment, who, having their minds debased by being conversant in meanest affairs, do vent their sorry passions in such strains.—Barrow, Of Evil-speaking in general, Sermon 16.
Virtuous. Virtue is still occasionally used as equivalent to might or potency; but ‘virtuous’ has quite abdicated the meaning of valorous or potent which it once had, and which its etymology justified.
Chapman, Homer’s Iliad, xiii. 147.
Milton, Il Penseroso.
Spenser, Fairy Queen, ii. 12, 26.
| Vivacious, | } |
| Vivacity. |
‘Longevity’ is a comparatively modern word. ‘Vivacity,’ which has now acquired the mitigated sense of liveliness, served instead of it; keeping in English the original sense which ‘vivacitas’ had in the Latin.
James Sands, of Horborn in this county, is most remarkable for his vivacity, for he lived 140 years.—Fuller, Worthies of England: Staffordshire.
Fables are raised concerning the vivacity of the deer; for neither are their gestation nor increment such as may afford an argument of long life.—Sir T. Browne, Vulgar Errors.
Hitherto the English bishops had been vivacious almost to wonder. For, necessarily presumed of good years before entering on their office in the first year of Queen Elizabeth, it was much that but five died for the first twenty years of her reign.—Fuller, Church History of Britain, b. ix. § 27.
Voluble. This epithet always insinuates of him to whom it is now applied that his speech is freer and faster than is meet; but it once occupied that region of meaning which ‘fluent’ does at present, without any suggestion of the kind. Milton (P. L. ix. 436) recalls the word, as he does so many, to its primary meaning.
He [Archbishop Abbott] was painful, stout, severe against bad manners, of a grave and a voluble eloquence.—Hacket, Life of Archbishop Williams, part i. p. 65.
Voyage. All journeys, those alike by land and by water, were ‘voyages’ once. The word is restricted now to journeys made by water. ‘Voyage’ is the French form of the late Latin ‘viaticum.’
Holofernes went forth with his chariots and horses to go before King Nebuchodonosor in the voyage.—Judith ii. 19. (A.V.)
My life hath not been unexpensive in learning, and voyaging about.—Milton, An Apology for Smectymnuus.
Chaucer, Canterbury Tales, Prologue.
Wainscot. I transcribe a correction of the brief and inaccurate notice of this word in my first edition, which a correspondent, with the best opportunity of knowledge, has kindly sent me: ‘“Wainscot” is always in the building trade applied to oak only, but not to all kinds of oak. The wainscot oak grows abroad, chiefly, I think, in Holland, and is used for wainscoting, or wood lining, of walls of houses, because it works very freely under the tool, and is not liable to “cast” or rend, as English oak will do. It is consequently used for all purposes where expense is no object. Formerly all panelling to walls was done in wainscot, and was called “wainscoting.” It was never painted. In modern times it was imitated in deal, and was painted to represent real wainscot, or of any other colour, while the name of “wainscoting” adhered to it, though the material was no longer wainscot. At present, however, the word “wainscot” is always used to designate the real wainscot oak.’ It will be seen from this very interesting explanation that within the narrow limits of a particular trade, the old meaning of ‘wainscot,’ which has everywhere else disappeared, still survives. It would be curious to trace how much in this way of earlier English within limited technical circles lives on, having everywhere else died out. For a further account of ‘wainscot,’ see Skeat’s Dictionary, p. 833.
A wedge of wainscot is fittest and most proper for cleaving of an oaken tree.—Sir T. Urquhart, Tracts, p. 153.
Being thus arrayed, and enclosed in a chest of wainscot, he [Edward the Confessor] was removed into the before-prepared feretry.—Dart, History of St. Peter’s, Westminster, c. 3.
Want. Among other differences between ‘carere’ and ‘egere,’ this certainly is one, that the former may be said of things evil as well as good, as well of those whose absence is desirable as of those whose absence is felt as a loss, while ‘egere’ always implies not merely the absence but the painful sense of the absence. ‘To want,’ which had once the more colourless use of ‘carere,’ has passed now, nearly though not altogether, into this latter sense, and is = ‘egere.’
If he be lost, and want, thy life shall go for his life.—1 Kings xx. 39. Geneva.
The happy and fortunate want of these beasts [wolves] in England is universally ascribed to the politic government of King Edgar.—Harrison, Description of England, b. iii. c. 4.
In a word, he [the true gentleman] is such, that could we want him, it were pity but that he were in heaven; and yet I pity not much his continuance here, because he is already so much in heaven to himself.—Clement Ellis, Character of a True Gentleman.
Pope, Lines to Arbuthnot.
Wench. In Middle English this term (in the older form ‘wenchel’), like ‘girl,’ ‘coquette,’ ‘slut,’ ‘flirt,’ and so many more, might be ascribed to either sex; and when afterwards restrained to one, was rather a word of familiarity, or even of passion, than of slight and contempt, which now it has grown to be. See Mayhew-Skeat’s Dict. of Middle English.
Golding, Ovid’s Metamorphosis, b. vi.
Shakespeare, Othello, act v. sc. 2.
Id., Love’s Labours Lost, act v. sc. 2.
And going in, He saith to them: Why make ye this ado, and weepe? The wenche is not dead, but sleepeth.... And holding the wenches hand, He saith to her, Talitha Cumi.—Mark v. 39, 41. Rheims.
Whirlpool. Formerly used in the sense of some huge sea-monster of the whale kind. Thus in the margin of our Bible, there is on Job xli. 1 (‘Canst thou draw out leviathan?’) a gloss, ‘that is, a whale or whirlpool.’ In Harrison’s Description of England, b. iii. c. 5, the ‘thirlepole’ is mentioned with the porpoise and whale as among the great fishes of the sea. See Wright’s Bible Word Book.
The Indian Sea breedeth the most and the biggest fishes that are, among which the whales and whirlpools, called balænæ, take up in length as much as four acres or arpens of land.—Holland, Pliny, vol. i. p. 235.
Spenser, Fairy Queen, ii. 12, 23.
Sylvester, Du Bartas, First Day of the Week.
About sunset, coming near the Wild Island, Pantagruel spied afar off a huge monstrous physeter, a sort of whale, which some call a whirlpool.—Rabelais, Pantagruel, b. iv. c. 33. [This creature is suggested by ‘Leviathan descript par le noble prophete Moses en la vie du sainct home Job.’]
| Whisperer, | } |
| Whispering. |
There lay in ‘whisperer’ once, as in the ψιθυριστής of the Greeks, the ‘susurro’ of the Latins, the suggestion of a slanderer or false accuser, which has now quite passed away from the word.
Now this Doeg, being there at that time, what doeth he? Like a whisperer or man-pleaser goeth to Saul the king, and told him how the priest had refreshed David in his journey, and had given unto him the sword of Goliath.—Latimer, Sermons, Parker edit., p. 486.
A whisperer separateth chief friends.—Prov. xvi. 28; cf. Ecclus. v. 14. (A.V.)
Kings in ancient times were wont to put great trust in eunuchs. But yet their trust towards them hath rather been as to good whisperers than good magistrates and officers.—Bacon, Essay, 44, Of Deformity.
Lest there be debates, envyings, wraths, strifes, backbitings, whisperings, swellings, tumults.—2 Cor. xii. 20. (A. V.)
Whiteboy. Formerly a cockered favourite (compare Barnes’s use of ‘white son,’ Works, 1572, p. 192), but in later years one of the many names which the perpetrators of agrarian outrages in Ireland either assumed to themselves, or had given to them by others.
His first address was An humble Remonstrance by a dutiful son of the Church, almost as if he had said her whiteboy.—Milton, Prose Works, vol. i. p. 172.
The Pope was loath to adventure his darlings into danger. Those whiteboys were to stay at home with his Holiness, their tender father.—Fuller, Holy War, i. 13.
Wife. It is a very profound testimony, yielded by language, to the fact that women are intended to be wives, and only find the true completion of their being when they are so, that in so many languages there is a word which, meaning first a woman, means afterwards a wife, as γυνή, ‘mulier,’ ‘femme,’ ‘weib,’ and our English ‘wife.’ With us indeed the secondary use of the word has now overborne and swallowed up the first, which only survives in a few such combinations as ‘midwife,’ ‘fishwife,’ ‘huswife,’ and the like; but it was not always so; nor in our provincial dialects is it so now. An intelligent correspondent who has sent me a ‘Glossary of Words used in Central Yorkshire’ writes as follows: ‘In rural districts a grown woman is a young wife, though she be unmarried.’
Chaucer, The Wife of Bath’s Tale.
Like as a wife with childe, when hir travaile commeth upon her, is ashamed, crieth, and suffreth the payne, even so are we, O Lorde, in thy sight.—Isai. xxvi. 17. Coverdale.
Wight. The best discussion on this interesting word is in Grimm’s Teutonic Mythology, pp. 439-442, who has a chapter [ch. xvii.], ‘On Wights and Elves.’ ‘Wight’ has for us lost altogether its original sense of a preternatural or supernatural being, and is used, but always slightingly, of men. It is easy to see how, with the gradual contempt for the old mythology, the dying-out of the superstitions connected with it, words such as ‘elf’ and ‘wight’ should have lost their weight and honour as well.
Chaucer, The Miller’s Tale.
The poet Homer speaketh of no garlands and chaplets but due to the celestial and heavenly wights.—Holland, Pliny, vol. i. p. 456.
A black horse cometh, and his rider hath a balance, and a voice telleth among the four wights that corn shall be dear [Rev. vi. 6].—Broughton, Of Consent upon Apocalypse.
When the four wights are said to have given glory, honour, and thanks to Him that sate upon the throne [Rev. v. 14], what was their ditty but this?—Mede, Sermons.
| Wilful, | } |
| Wilfully. |
‘Wilful’ and ‘willing,’ ‘wilfully’ and ‘willingly,’ have been conveniently desynonymized by later usage in our language; so that in ‘wilful’ and ‘wilfully’ there now lies ever the sense of will capriciously exerted, deriving its motives merely from itself; while the examples which follow show there was once no such implication of self-will in the words.
Alle the sones of Israel halewiden wilful thingis to the Lord.—Exod. xxxv. 29. Wiclif.
A proud priest may be known when he denieth to follow Christ and his apostles in wilful poverty and other virtues.—Foxe, Book of Martyrs; Examination of William Thorpe.
Fede ye the flok of God, that is among you, and purvey ye, not as constreyned, but wilfulli.—1 Pet. v. 2. Wiclif.
And so, through his pitiful nailing, Christ shed out wilfully for man’s life the blood that was in his veins.—Foxe, Book of Martyrs; Examination of William Thorpe.
Wince. Now to shrink or start away as in pain from a stroke or touch; but, as far as I know, used always by our earlier authors in the sense of to kick.
Poul, whom the Lord hadde chosun, long tyme wynside agen the pricke.—Wiclif, Prolog on the Dedis of Apostlis.
For this flower of age, having no forecast of thrift, but set altogether upon spending, and given to delights and pleasures, winseth and flingeth out like a skittish and frampold horse in such sort that it had need of a sharp bit and short curb.—Holland, Plutarch’s Morals, p. 14.
| Wit, | } |
| Witty. |
The present meaning of ‘wit’ as compared with the past, and the period when it was in the act of transition from one to the other, cannot be better marked than in the quotation from Bishop Reynolds which is given below. It is a protest, an impotent one, as such invariably are, against a change in the word’s meaning, going on before his eyes. Cowley’s Ode, Of Wit, is another very important document, illustrating the history of the word.
Who knew the wit of the Lord, or who was his counselour?—Rom. xi. 34. Wiclif.
I take not wit in that common acceptation, whereby men understand some sudden flashes of conceit whether in style or conference, which, like rotten wood in the dark, have more shine than substance, whose use and ornament are, like themselves, swift and vanishing, at once both admired and forgotten. But I understand a settled, constant, and habitual sufficiency of the understanding, whereby it is enabled in any kind of learning, theory, or practice, both to sharpness in search, subtilty in expression, and despatch in execution.—Reynolds, Passions and Faculties of the Soul, c. xxxix.
Richard Rolle de Hampole, Pricke of Conscience, 1092.
I confess notwithstanding, with the wittiest of the school divines, that if we speak of strict justice God could no way have been bound to requite man’s labours in so large and ample manner.—Hooker, Ecclesiastical Polity, b. i. c. 11.
Witch. This was not restrained formerly, as it now is, to the female exerciser of unlawful magical arts, but would have been as freely applied to Balaam or Simon Magus as to her whom we call ‘the Witch of Endor.’ ‘She-witch’ was not uncommon in our Elizabethan literature, when such was intended. In the dialect of Northumbria ‘witches’ are of both sexes still (Atkinson).
There was a man in that citee whos name was Symount, a witche.—Acts viii. 9. Wiclif.
Item, he is a witch, asking counsel at soothsayers.—Foxe, Book of Martyrs; Appeal against Boniface.
Then the king commanded to call together all the soothsayers, charmers, witches, and Caldees, for to shew the king his dream.—Dan. ii. 2. Coverdale.
Who can deny him a wisard or witch, who in the reign of Richard the Usurper foretold that upon the same stone where he dashed his spur riding toward Bosworth field he should dash his head in his return?—Cotta, The Trial of Witchcraft, p. 49.
Wizard. A title not necessarily used in times past with any dishonourable subaudition of perverted wisdom on his part to whom it was given, as is now the case.
Then Herod, calling the wisards privily, did narrowly search of them the time of the star’s appearing.—Matt. ii. 7. Sir J. Cheke.
Drayton, Elegies, To Mr. G. Sandys.
Milton, On the Nativity.
Womb. This is now only the ὑστέρα, but once could be ascribed to both sexes, having as wide a meaning as the κοιλία of the Greeks.
And he coveitide to fille his wombe of the coddis that the hoggis eeten, and no man gaf hym.—Luke xv. 16. Wiclif.
Chaucer, Pardoneres Tale (Clar. Press).
Falstaff. An I had but a belly of any indifferency, I were simply the most active fellow in Europe. My womb, my womb, my womb undoes me.—Shakespeare, 2 Henry IV., act iv. sc. 3.
Worm. This, which designates at present only smaller and innoxious kinds of creeping and crawling things, once, as the German ‘wurm,’ was employed of all the serpent kind; and indeed in some of our northern dialects all snakes and serpents are ‘worms’ to the present day. In ‘blindworm,’ ‘slowworm,’ ‘hagworm,’ we have tokens of the earlier use.
There came a viper out of the heat and leapt on his hand. When the men of the country saw the worm hang on his hand, they said, This man must needs be a murderer.—Acts xxviii. 3, 4. Tyndale.
Shakespeare, Cymbeline, act iii. sc. 4.
Milton, Paradise Lost, ix. 1067.
Worship. At present we ‘worship’ none but God; there was a time when the word was employed in so much more general a sense that it was not profane to say that God ‘worshipped,’ that is honoured, man. This, of course, is the sense of the word in the Marriage Service, ‘with my body I thee worship.’
If ony man serve me, my fadir schal worschipe hym.—John xii. 26. Wiclif.
Chaucer, The Clerkes Tale, 108.
Man, that was made after the image and likeness of God, is full worshipful in his kind; yea, this holy image that is man God worshippeth.—Foxe, Book of Martyrs; Examination of William Thorpe.
Wretched. What has been observed on ‘Unhappy’ explains and accounts also for the use of ‘wretched’ as = wicked. ‘Wretch’ still continues to cover the two meanings of one miserable and one wicked, though ‘wretched’ does so no more.
Nero regned after this Claudius, of alle men wrechidhest, redy to alle maner vices.—Capgrave, Chronicle of England, p. 62.
To do evil gratis, to do evil for good, is the wretchedest wickedness that can be.—Andrewes, Of the Conspiracy of the Gowries, serm. 4.
Younker. Now, as far as it is used at all, equivalent to ‘youngster;’ but the ‘younker’ of our Elizabethan and earlier literature was much more nearly the German ‘junker,’ or Jung Herr, the young lord,—or perhaps ‘squire’ would be nearer the mark,—or youthful gallant. [We borrowed the word from the Dutch ‘jonker’ or ‘jonkheer’ (= ‘jong’ young + ‘heer’ gentleman). See Skeat’s Dictionary.]
Yf some of them can get a fox tale or two, or that he may have a capons feder or a goose feder, or any long feder on his cap, than he is called a yonker.—Boorde, The Boke of the Introduction of Knowledge, 1547.
Shakespeare, Merchant of Venice, act ii. sc. 6.
Id., 3 Henry VI., act ii. sc. 1.
Venus loved the younker Adonis better than the warrior Mars.—Dodoen, History of Plants, p. 656.
As Rehoboam’s yonkers carried that weighty business of his kingdom and overthrew it, so do the unruly and rebellious humours of most youth miscarry this.—Rogers, Matrimonial Honour, p. 31.
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