A SELECT GLOSSARY OF ENGLISH WORDS. 
 
Worlcs by R. C. TRENCH, D. D., Dean of Westminster. 
 
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 PAST AND PRESENT. 
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 PUBLISHED BY J. S. REDFIELD, NEW YORK 
 
SELECT GLOSSAEY 
 
 OF 
 
 ENGLISH WORDS USED FORMERLY IN SENSES 
 DIFFERENT FROM THEIR PRESENT. 
 
 BY 
 
 RICHARD CHENEVIX TRENCH, D. D. 
 
 DEAN OF WESTMINSTER, 
 
 AUTHOR OF " THE STUDY OF WOKDS" " ENGLISH, PAST AND PRESENT" " THB 
 LESSONS IN PKOTERBS" " SYNONYMS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT," BTC. 
 
 BEDFIELD 
 
 34 BKEKMAN STREET, NEW YORK 
 
 1859 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 THIS volume is intended to be a contribution, I am 
 aware a very slight one, 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 under 
 gone ; words which, as current with us as they were 
 with our forefathers, yet mean something different on 
 our lips from what they meant upon theirs. 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 iny desires. But of the scheme 
 itself I have no doubts I feel sure that, if only ade 
 quately 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 edu 
 cation 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, 
 
VI PREFACE. 
 
 mental and moral, which more than any other lan 
 guages the Latin and the CJreek supply, must ever be 
 growing smaller. It becomes, therefore, a duty 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 lan 
 guage and literature will furnish the best substitutes ; 
 which, even though they may not satisfy perfectly, are 
 not, therefore, to be rejected. I am persuaded that the 
 decomposition, word by word, of small portions of 
 our best poetry and prose Lycidas suggests itself 
 to me as in verse offering more exactly what I seek 
 than any other poem, perhaps some of Bacon s Essays 
 in 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 com 
 pensations of the kind are already oftentimes obtained. 
 In such a decomposition, to be followed by a recon 
 struction, of some small portions of a great English 
 Classic, matters almost innumerable, and pressing on 
 the attention from every side, would claim to be no 
 ticed ; but certainly not last nor least the changes 
 which, on close examination, would be seen to have 
 overcome 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 
 
PREFACE. Vii 
 
 detection, unless conduit 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 doub 
 ling 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 labor out of their 
 hands and to do for them what they could more prof 
 itably 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 par 
 ticular 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 differ 
 ences and fine distinctions ; or again, as helpful to the 
 understanding of our earlier authors, and likely to 
 
viii PREFACE. 
 
 deliver the readers of them^from misapprehensions 
 into whicli they might 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 
 every where affecting and modifying human speech. 
 
 And as the words brought forward have been se 
 lected with some care, and according to certain rules 
 which have for the most part indicated their selection, 
 so also has it been with the passages adduced in proof 
 of the changes of meaning which they have undergone. 
 The principal value which a volume of such humble 
 pretensions 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 ad 
 duced 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 whicli 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, prove the point which they 
 
PREFACE. ix 
 
 are cited to prove, quite independently of the uncited 
 context, to which it will very often happen that many 
 readers can not, 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 
 it, 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 about it. 
 Then, again, they should, if possible, be passages ca 
 pable of being detached from their context without 
 the necessity of drawing a large amount of this con 
 text after them for the making 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 il 
 lustrative of the point in language directly to be 
 proved some weight of thought, or beauty of ex 
 pression, or merit of some other kind, 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 aim is quite other than that of 
 the bringing together a collection of striking quota- 
 
X PREFACE. 
 
 tions ; 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 sec 
 ondary 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 may 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 may have now disappeared, has been suffi 
 ciently 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 two or three authors ; without which a suspicion 
 may always remain in the mind, that we are dealing 
 with the exceptional peculiarity of a single writer, 
 who even in his day stood alone. I do not feel confi 
 dent that in some, though rare, instances I have not 
 brought forward exceptional uses of this kind. 
 
 Two words I will add in conclusion. Seeing that 
 I have had some share, though a small one, in the 
 suggestion of a new English Dictionary to be pub 
 lished by the Philological society, I may be permitted 
 to say that I considered it became me to use no por 
 tion whatever of the materials which are being col- 
 
PREFACE. XI 
 
 lected for it in the composition of this volume of 
 those contributions for a public object, to a private 
 end. Indeed those materials have never so much as 
 come under my eye, except some exceedingly small 
 portions of them, which by accident passed through 
 my hands on their way to those of the Editor ; not to 
 say that this little Glossary was in all essential parts 
 completed two years ago, before that great work was 
 so much as contemplated. 
 
 And as I owe nothing to these MS. collections, in 
 valuable help as I have no doubt they would have 
 rendered, so next to nothing in the way of citation to 
 any other source. This value I may claim for my 
 book, that 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 Diction 
 aries 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 desira 
 ble, or have not found it possible, to choose some other 
 in its room. These excepted, the collection is entire 
 ly independent of all those which have previously 
 been made. 
 
 WESTMINSTER, May 25, 1859. 
 
SELECT GLOSSARY, 
 
 ETC. 
 
 A. 
 
 ABANDON. Bann, a word common to all the Ger 
 manic languages, and surviving in our banns of mar 
 riage, is open proclamation. In Low Latin it takes 
 the forms of < bannus, l bannum, edict or interdict ; 
 while in early French we have bandon, almost al 
 ways with the particle a prefixed, a bandon ; thus 
 4 vendre a bandon, to sell by outcry. From this we 
 have the verb * abandonare, which has passed into all 
 the Romance languages ; it is to proclaim, announce, 
 but more often denounce (a bandit, bandetto, is 
 a denounced man, a proclaimed outlaw). Here is the 
 point of contact between the present use of < abandon 
 and its past. What you denounce, you loosen all the 
 ties which bind you to it, you detach yourself from 
 it, you forsake, in our modern sense of the word, you 
 abandon it. 
 
 Blessed shall ye be when men shall hate you, and abandon your 
 
 1 
 
2 ABANDON - ALCHYM Y. 
 
 name as evil [et ejecerint nomcn vcstrum tanquam malum, Vulg.] for 
 
 the Son of man s sake. 
 
 Luke vi. 22. Tlheims. 
 
 Beggar. Madame wife, they say that I have dreamed 
 And slept above some fifteen years or more. 
 
 Lady. Aye, and the time seems thirty unto me, 
 Being all this time abandoned from thy bee!. 
 
 Shakespeare, The Taming of the Shrew, Act i. Sc. 1. 
 
 ACHIEVEMENT. I doubt whether this, the fuller 
 form of the word, is ever used now, where hatch 
 ment is intended. 
 
 As if a herald in the atchievement of a king, should commit the in 
 decorum to set his helmet sideways and close ; not full-faced and open, 
 
 as the posture of direction and command. 
 
 Milton, Tetrachordon. 
 
 ADMIRE, 
 
 ADMIRABLE. 
 
 It now always implies to wonder with 
 approval; but was by no means re 
 
 strained to this wonder in lonam partcm 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 prefixed to the fables. 
 
 In man there is nothing admirable but his ignorance and weakness. 
 J. Taylor, Dissuasive from Popery, part ii. b. i. sect. 7. 
 
 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 
 
ALCHYMY ALLOW. 3 
 
 mainly composed of brass. Thus the notion of false 
 ness, of show and semblance not borne out by reality, 
 frequently underlay the earlier uses of the word. 
 
 As for those gildings and paintings that were in the palace of Al- 
 cyna, though the show of it were glorious, the substance of it was 
 dross, and nothing but alchymy and cosenage. 
 
 Sir J. Harrington, A brief Allegory of Orlando Furloso. 
 
 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, be 
 cause that would provoke vomiting; but in chalices of latten, which 
 belike was a metal without exception. 
 
 Fuller, The Holy War, b. iii. c. 13. 
 
 Towards the four winds four speedy cherubim 
 Put to their mouths the sounding alchemy. 
 
 Milton, Paradise Lost, b. ii. 
 
 ALLOW, ^ To allow, from the French i allouer, 
 ALLOWANCE, > and through it from the Latin * allau- 
 ALLOWABLE. J dare, had once a, sense very often of 
 praise or approval, which may now be said to have 
 departed from it altogether. Tims in Cotgrave s 
 French and English Dictionary, an invaluable testi 
 mony of the force and meanings which words had two 
 centuries ago, allow is rendered by < allouer, < greer, 
 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 com 
 mended of Christ. 
 
 Homilies ; Sermon against Contention. 
 
4 ALLOW AMUSE. 
 
 Truly ye bear witness that ye allow [awcvcoKEtrc] the deeds of your 
 
 fathers. 
 
 Matt, xxiii. 28. Authorized Version. 
 
 A stirring dwarf we do allowance give 
 Before a sleeping giant. 
 
 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. 
 
 Ilacket, The Life of Archbishop Williams, part ii. p. 211. 
 
 AMUSE, 1 The attempt which Coleridge makes 
 AMUSEMENT, j to bring amuse into some connection 
 with the Muses is certainly an error ; from whence 
 we have obtained the word is harder to say. For 
 two suggestions about it, neither of which seem to 
 me very happy, see Diez, Wort. d. Roman. Sprachen, 
 p. 236, and Proceedings of the Philological Society, 
 vol. v. p. 82. Sufficient here to observe that the no 
 tion 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 tran 
 sition to its present meaning. 
 
 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, The Church History of Uritain, b. ix. $ 44. 
 
AMUSE ANIMOSITY. 5 
 
 A siege of Maestricht or Wesel (so garrisoned and resolutely de 
 fended), 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 pla}\ 
 
 Phillips, The 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 dis 
 simulation. 
 
 J. 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 (#. v.) 
 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, HydriotapMa 
 
 ANIMOSITY. While i 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 J 
 the courage of a horse), and then, secondly, as this 
 spiritedness in one particular direction, in that, name- 
 
ANIMOSITY APPARENT. 
 
 ly, 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 also 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 arc of a high-flown animosity affect fortunas la- 
 ciniosas, as one calls it, a fortune that sits not strait and close to the 
 body, but like a loose and a flowing garment. 
 
 Hacket, The Life of Archbishop Williams, part i. p. 30. 
 
 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. 
 
 APPARENT, ) With the exception of the one phrase 
 APPARENTLY, j heir apparent, meaning heir evident, 
 manifest, undoubted, we do not any longer employ 
 apparent* fur that which appears, because it is, but 
 always either for that which appears and is not, or 
 for that which appeal s, leaving in doubt whether it is 
 or no. Thus we might say with truth in the modern 
 sense of the word, that there are apparent contradic 
 tions in Scripture ; we could not say it in the earlier 
 sense without denying its inspiration. 
 
 It is apparent foul-play; and tis shame 
 That greatness should so grossly offer it. 
 
 Shakespeare, King John, Act iv. Sc. 2. 
 
APPARENT ARTILLERY. 7 
 
 The laws of God cunnot 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. 
 
 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, 4 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. 
 
 She, being an handsome, witty, and bold maid, was both apprehen 
 sive of the plot, and very active to prosecute it. 
 
 Fuller, The Profane State, b. v. c. 5. 
 
 My father would oft speak 
 Your worth and virtue ; and, as I did grow 
 More and more apprehensive, I did thirst 
 To see the man so praised. 
 
 Beaumont and Fletcher, Philaster, Act v. Sc. 1. 
 
 ARTILLERY. Leaving the perplexed question of the 
 derivation of this word, it will he sufficient to observe, 
 that while it is now only applied to the heavy ord 
 nance of modern warfare, in earlier use any engines 
 
8 ARTILLERY ARTISAN. 
 
 for the projecting of missiles, even to the bow and 
 arrows, would have been included under this term. 
 
 Ships heavily charged, carrying artillery, ordinance, and engines 
 
 of battery. 
 
 Holland, Livy, p. 745. 
 
 So the Philistines, the better to keep the Jews thrall and in sub 
 jection, utterly bereaved them of all manner of weapon and artillery, 
 
 and left them naked. 
 
 Jewel, Reply to M. Harding, Article xv. 
 
 And Jonathan gave his artillery unto his lad, and said unto him, 
 
 Go, carry them to the city. 
 
 1 Sam. xx. 40. Authorized Version. 
 
 ARTISAN, ) Both these words have partially changed 
 ARTIST, j their meaning. Artisan is no longer 
 used of him who cultivates one of the fine arts, but 
 those of common life. The fine arts, losing this word, 
 have now claimed artist for their exclusive proper 
 ty ; which yet was far from belonging to them always. 
 An 4 artist in its earlier acceptation was one who cul 
 tivated not the fine, but the liberal, arts. The clas 
 sical scholar was eminently the artist. 
 
 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, part ii. p. 535. 
 Rare artisan, whose pencil moves 
 Not our delights alone, but loves ! 
 
 Waller, Lines to Van Dyck. 
 
 For then, the bold and coward, 
 The wise and, fool, the artist and unread, 
 The hard and soft, seem all affined and kin. 
 
 Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida, Act i. Sc. 3. 
 
ARTISAN ASSASSINATE. 9 
 
 Nor would I dissuade any artist well grounded in Aristotle from 
 perusing the most learned works any Komanist hath written in this 
 argument. In other controversies between them and us it is danger 
 ous, 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 Scali- 
 ger [Julius] the pattern of the general artist, whose own son Joseph 
 might have been his father in many arts. 
 
 Fuller, The Holy State, b. ii. c. 8. 
 
 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 ascertain 
 ing- 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. 
 
 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. 
 
 ASSASSINATE. Once used, by Milton at least, as is 
 now the French assassiner, the Italian assassinare, 
 in the sense of to assault treacherously and with mur 
 derous intent, even where the murderous purpose is 
 not accomplished ; and then, secondly, to extremely 
 maltreat. 
 
 As for the custom that some parents and guardians have of forcing 
 marriages, it will be better to say nothing of such a savage inhumani- 
 
 1* 
 
10 ASSASSINATE ASTONISH. 
 
 ty, but only tlius, 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. 
 
 Such usage as your honorable lords 
 Afford me, assassinated and betrayed 
 
 Id., Samson Agonistes. 
 
 ASSURE, 1 Both this and to ensure (q. v.) are 
 ASSURANCE. J often used in our elder writers in the 
 sense of to betroth or to affiance. 
 
 King Philip. Young princes, close your hands. 
 Austria. And your lips too ; for I am well assured 
 That I did so, when I was first assured. 
 
 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, 
 BO beset and bcdeckt all over with emeralds and pearls. 
 
 Holland, Pliny, part i. p. 256. 
 
 ASTONISH. To astonish has now loosened itself 
 altogether from its etymology, attonare and attoni- 
 tus. The man astonished can now be hardly said 
 to be thunderstruck, either in a literal or a figura 
 tive sense. But in several passages of Paradise Lost 
 we shall quite fall below the poet s intention unless 
 we read this meaning into the word ; as no less in the 
 prose quotation from Milton which follows. 
 
 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, Liry, 1124. 
 
ASTONISH ATONE. 11 
 
 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 supersti 
 tion as with a planet ; in one word, monks. 
 
 Milton, The History of England, b. ii. 
 
 ASTROLOGY. As chemist only little by little dis 
 engaged itself from alchemist, and that, whether we 
 have respect to the thing itself, or the name of the 
 thing, so astronomer from l astrologer, astronomy 
 from astrology. It was long before the broad dis 
 tinction 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. 
 
 ASTRONOMER. See what has been said on the word 
 preceding. 
 
 Bowe ye not to astronomyers, neither axe ye ony thing 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, ) The notion of satisfaction lies now in 
 ATONEMENT, j these words rather than that of recon- 
 
1 2 ATONE ATTORNEY. 
 
 ciliation. An atonement is the satisfaction of a 
 wrong which one party has committed against anoth 
 er, not the reconciliation of two estranged parties. 
 This last, however, was its earlier meaning ; and if 
 the word may be divided at-one-ment, as probably 
 it may, is in harmony with its etymology. Possibly 
 men s sense of the great Atonement of all, as resting 
 on a satisfaction, may have ruled the use of the word. 
 
 lie and Aufidius can no more atone 
 Than violentest contrarieties. 
 
 Shakespeare, Coriolanus, Act iv. Sc. 6. 
 
 His first essay succeeded so well, Moses would adventure on a sec 
 ond 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 attonement. 
 Sir T. More, The History of King Richard III. 
 
 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, The Merry Wives of Windsor, Act i. Sc. 1. 
 
 ATTORNEY. Seldom used now except of the attor 
 ney 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 honor, and giving way to 
 4 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 
 
ATTORNEY AUTHENTIC. 13 
 
 man to do any thing in his stead, or to take upon him 
 the charge of his business in his absence ;" and in 
 proof of what honorable use the word might have, I 
 need but refer to the quotation which immediately 
 follows : 
 
 Our everlasting and only High Bishop ; our only attorney, only 
 mediator, only peacemaker between God and men. 
 
 A Short Catechism, 1553. 
 
 Attornies are denied me, 
 And therefore personally I lay my claim 
 To my inheritance of free descent. 
 
 Shakespeare, King Richard II. Act ii. Sc. 3. 
 
 Tertullian seems to understand this baptism for the dead, de vica- 
 rio 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 Wat 
 son between i 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 ausv<nxoV in Greek is oWe dVoroc, and * authen 
 tic is properly having an author, and thus coming with 
 authority, authoritative ; the connection of i author 
 and authority in our own language giving us the 
 key to its successive meanings. Thus, an i authentic 
 document is, in its first meaning, a document written 
 
14 AUTHENTIC AWKWARD. 
 
 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 au 
 thoritative. 
 
 As doubted tenures, which long pleadings try, 
 Autkentick grow by being much withstood. 
 
 Davenant, Gondibert, b. ii. 
 
 Which letter in the copy his lordship read over, and carried the 
 authentic with him. 
 
 Hackct, The Life of Archbishop Williams, part ii. p. 24. 
 
 It were extreme partiality and injustice, the flat denial and over 
 throw of herself [i. e. of Justice], to put her own authentic sword into 
 the hand of an unjust and wicked man. 
 
 Milton, EiicovoK\,iffTi}s, 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 irre 
 sistible authentic venom of his base example ! 
 
 South, Sennons, 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, The J\eiv World of Words, Preface to 3d edit. 
 
 AWKWARD. In its present signification, unhandy, 
 ungainly, maladroit; which yet is by no means its 
 earlier. There is good reason to think that the same 
 Anglo-Saxon < awcg * appears equally in the first syl- 
 
 * The awk end of a rod is the away end: thus, in Golding s 
 
 Ovid, p. 179: 
 
 She sprinkled us with bitter juice of uncouth herbs, and strakc 
 The awk end of her charmed rod upon, our heads. 
 
 Or, in the original : 
 
 Percutimurque caput converse vcrberc virgaa. 
 
AWKWARD BABE. 15 
 
 lable of < awkward and c wayward ; that the two 
 words, therefore, are identical in meaning, signifying 
 alike, untoward, and that, whether morally or physi 
 cally, perverse, contrary, sinister, unlucky ;* all ear 
 lier uses of the word bearing out this view of it. 
 
 With awkward wind and with sore tempest driven 
 
 To fall on shore. 
 
 Marlowe, Edward II. Act iv. Sc. 6. 
 
 The beast long struggled, as being like to prove 
 
 An awkward sacrifice,! but by the horns 
 
 The quick priest pulled him on his knees and slew him. 
 
 Id., The First Book of Lucan. 
 
 Was I for this nigh wrecked upon the sea, 
 
 And twice by awkward wind from England s bank 
 
 Drove back again unto my native clime ? 
 
 Shakespeare, 2 Henry VI. Act iii. Sc. 2. 
 
 But time hath rooted out my parentage, 
 And to the world and awkward casualties 
 
 Bound me in servitude. 
 
 Pericles, Act v. Sc. 1 . 
 
 B. 
 
 BABE, ) Doll is of late introduction into the Eng- 
 BABY. J lish language, is certainly later than Dry- 
 den. Babe, 4 baby, or puppet, supplied its place. 
 
 * What makes matter, say they, if a bird sing auke or crow cross 
 
 [si occinuerit avis ] ? 
 
 Holland, Livy, o. 247. 
 
 t Non grati victima sacri. 
 
16 BABE BAFFLE. 
 
 True religion . . . stamleth 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 idola 
 try, to dally and play with. 
 
 Homilies ; Sermon against Peril of Idolatry. 
 
 But all as a poor pedlar did he wend, 
 Bearing a truss of trifles at his back, 
 As bells, and babes, and glasses, in his pack. 
 
 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. This would, I suppose, be used now 
 only of the votaries of Bacchus ; but it was once more 
 accurately applied to the orgies celebrated in his 
 honor. 
 
 They perform there certain bacchanals or rites in the honour of 
 
 Bacchus. 
 
 Holland, Plutarch s Morals. 
 
 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, The Life of Archbishop Williams, part i. p. 165. 
 
 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. 
 
BAFFLE BASE. 17 
 
 First he his beard did shave and foully shent, 
 Then from him reft his shield, and it reversed, 
 And blotted out his arms with falsehood blent, 
 And himself baffled, and his arms unhersed, 
 And broke his sword in twain, and all his armour spersed. 
 
 Spenser, The Fairy Queen, \. 3, 37. 
 
 He that suffers himself to be ridden, or thro pusillanimity or sot- 
 tishness will let every man baffle him, shall be a common laughing 
 stock to flout at. 
 
 Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy, part ii. sec. 3, mem. 7. 
 
 Alas, poor fool, how have they baffled thee ! 
 
 Shakespeare, Twelfth-Night, Act v. Sc. 1 . 
 
 BANQUET. At present the entire course of any sol 
 emn or splendid entertainment ; but banquet used 
 generally to be restrained to the lighter and ornamen 
 tal dessert or confection with wine, which followed 
 the more substantial repast. 
 
 I durst not venture to sit at supper with you ; should I have re 
 ceived 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, The Life of Cardinal Wolsey. 
 
 "We 11 dine in the great room ; but let the music 
 And banquet be prepared here. 
 
 Massinger, The Unnatural Combat, Act iii. Sc. 1 . 
 
 BASE, 1 The aristocratic tendencies of speech 
 BASENESS, j (tendencies illustrated by the word ar- 
 
18 BASE BATTLE. 
 
 istocracy itself), which reappear in a thousand shapes, 
 on the one side in such words, and their usages, as 
 xaXoxctyatfo c;, eVieixfo, f noble, on the other in such as 
 4 villain, i boor, knave, 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. 
 
 But virtuous women wisely understand 
 
 That they were born to base humility, 
 
 Unless the heavens them lift to lawful sovereignty. 
 
 Spenser, The Fairy Queen, v. 5, 25. 
 
 He that is ashamed of base and simple attire, will be proud of gor 
 geous apparel, if he may get it. 
 
 Homilies; Sermon against Excess of Apparel. 
 
 By this means we imitate the Lord Himself, who hath abased Him 
 self to the lowest degree of baseness in this kind, emptying Himself 
 (Phil. ii. 8), that Pie might he equal to them of greatest l>aseness. 
 
 Rogers, Naaman the Syrian, p. 461. 
 
 BATTLE. Once 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. 
 
 Each battle sees the other s umbered face. 
 
 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 Auvcrgne brought on the 
 Flemings and Brabanters in the rear. 
 
 Fuller, The Holy War, book iii. c. 11. 
 
BATTLE BEASTLY. 19 
 
 Where divine blessing leads up the van, and man s valour brings 
 up the battle, must not victory needs follow in the rear? 
 
 Fuller, 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. 
 
 He was, if I shal ycven him his laud, 
 A theef, and eke a sompnour and a baud. 
 
 Chaucer, The Freres Tale. 
 
 One Lamb, a notorious impostor, a fortune-teller, and an employed 
 
 bawd. 
 
 Racket, The Life of Archbishop Williams, part ii. p. 81. 
 
 A carrion crow he* is, a gaping grave, 
 
 The rich coat s moth, the court s bane, trencher s slave, 
 
 Sin s and hell s winning bated, the devil s factoring knave. 
 
 P. Fletcher, The Purple Island, c. viii. 
 
 BEASTLY, 1 We translate tfoj^a 4^xo v (1 Cor. xv. 
 
 BEASTLINESS, j 44) a natural body ; some have re 
 gretted that it was not rendered an animal body. 
 This is exactly what Wiclif meant when he translated 
 the i corpus animale which he found in his Vulgate, 
 4 a beastly body. The word had then no ethical col 
 oring ; nor, when it first acquired such, had it exactly 
 that which it now possesses. 
 
 It is sowen a beestli bodi ; it shal rise a spiritual bodi. 
 
 1 Cor. xv. 44. Wiclif. 
 
 Where they should have made head with the whole army upon the 
 Parthians, they sent him aid by small companies; and when they 
 
 * The flatterer. 
 
20 BEASTLY BLACKGUARD. 
 
 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. 
 
 BLACKGUARD. The scullions and other meaner re 
 tainers 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 be 
 long to the black guard. 
 
 Close unto the front of the chariot marchcth all the sort of weavers 
 and embroderers ; next unto whom goeth the black guard and kitch- 
 enry. 
 
 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 blackguard should be God s soldiers ! 
 
 Fuller, The Holy War, b. i. c. 12. 
 
 Dukes, earls, and lords, great commanders in war, common sol 
 diers and kitchin 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 full into the mire, 
 and have none to help him. 
 
 Jackson, A Treatise of the Divine Essence and Attributes, b. vi. c. 28. 
 
BLEAK BOOT. 21 
 
 BLEAK. It is not often that bleak (=the German 
 i bleich, pale, white) comes out so clearly in its ori 
 ginal identity with bleach as in the following quota 
 tion. I do not myself remember to have met another 
 passage of the kind. 
 
 When she came out, she looked as pale and as bleak as one that 
 were laid out dead. 
 
 Foxe, The Book of Martyrs ; the Escape of Agnes WardalL 
 
 BOMBAST. Now inflated diction, words which, sound 
 ing 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 lit 
 erally 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 im 
 age 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. 
 
 Stubs, The Anatomy of Abuses, p. 23. 
 
 The foresaid merchants transport thither ermines and grey furs, 
 with other rich and costly skins ; others carry clothes made of cotton 
 
 or bombast. 
 
 Hackluyt, Voyages, vol. i. p. 93. 
 
 Bombast, the cotton-plant growing in Asia. 
 
 Phillips, The New World of Words. 
 
 BOOT. I do not know the history of the word boot 
 as describing one part of a carriage ; but it is plain 
 
22 BOOT BRAT. 
 
 that not the luggage, but the chief persons, used once 
 to ride in the boot. 
 
 His coach being come, lie causeth him to he laid in softlv, 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 Murther, b. i. hist. 1. 
 
 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, The Life of Archbishop Williams, part i. p. 196. 
 
 BOUNTY. The tendency to accept freedom of giv 
 ing in lieu of all other virtues, or at least to regard it 
 as the chiefest of all, the same which lias brought 
 * charity to be for many identical with almsgiving, 
 displays itself in our present use of bounty, which, 
 like the French bonte, meant goodness once. 
 
 For tho the peple have no gret insight 
 In virtue, he considered ful right 
 Hire bountee, and disposed that he wold 
 Wedde hire only, if ever he wcdden shold. 
 
 Chaucer, The Clerkcs Tale. 
 
 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, the same word as brood, is now used always 
 in contempt, but was not so once. 
 
 O Israel, O household of the Lord, 
 
 O Abraham s brats, O brood of blessed seed, 
 
 O chosen sheep, that loved the Lord indeed. 
 
 Gascoigne, DP Profundls. 
 
BRAT BRITAIN. 23 
 
 Take heed how thou layest the bane for the rats, 
 For poisoning thy servant, thyself, and thy brats. 
 
 Tusser, Points of Good Husbandry. 
 
 BRAVE, ) The derivation of 4 brave is altogether 
 BRAVERY, J uncertain (Diez, p. 67) ; we obtained it 
 in the sixteenth century, the Germans in the seven 
 teenth (Grimm [s. v. brav ] says during the Thirty 
 Years War), from one or other of the Romance lan 
 guages. 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. 
 
 His clothes [St. Augustine s] were neither brave, nor base, but 
 
 comely. 
 
 Fuller, The 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., 76. b. ii. c. 18. 
 
 Man is a noble animal, splendid in ashes, and pompous in the 
 grave, solemnizing nativities arid deaths with equal lustre, not omit 
 ting 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, bufr generally made only an occasion of 
 
 bravery. 
 
 South, Sermons, vol. ii. p. 285. 
 
 BRITAIN, ^ The distinction between these is perfect- 
 BRITANY. j ly established now : by the first we al 
 ways intend Great Britain ; by the second, the French 
 
24 BRITAIN BULLION. 
 
 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 versa. Thus, in 
 each of the passages which follow, the other word 
 than that which actually is used would be now em 
 ployed. 
 
 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, Musceum Clausum. 
 
 And is it this, alas ! which we 
 
 (O irony of words !) do call Great Britany ? 
 
 Cowley, The Extasy. 
 
 BULLION. Now uncoined, unstamped gold or silver, 
 but with no intimation in the word that it is of a lower 
 standard than that which has passed through the Mint. 
 It is otherwise, as is well known, with the French 
 * billon, which is " toute mitiere d or ou d argent 
 decriee, et qui se trouve a plus bas titre que celui 
 d ordonnance." It was otherwise also once with our 
 own 4 bullion. The globular hollow buttons now re 
 tained only on the dress of pages, but formerly an 
 ornament of gallants, and which certainly would not 
 have been, even then, of any very precious metal, 
 
BULLION BUXOM. 25 
 
 were also called bullions ; it is just possible that a 
 recollection of < bulla, a bubble, may have cooperated 
 here. 
 
 In his French doublet with his blistered bullions. 
 
 Beaumont and Fletcher, The Beggars Bush, Act iv. Sc. 4. 
 
 Words, whilom flourishing, 
 Pass now no more, but, banished from the court, 
 Dwell with disgrace among the vulgar sort ; 
 And those which eld s strict doom did disallow, 
 And damn for bullion, go for current now. 
 
 Sylvester, Divine Weeks of Du Bartas, Babylon. 
 
 BUXOM. The modern spelling of buxom (it was 
 somewhat, though not much better, when it was spelt 
 4 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 con 
 veyed to their minds, men spoke of * buxom health 
 and the like, meaning by this, having a cheerful come 
 liness. The epithet in this application is Gray s, and 
 Johnson justly finds fau. with it. Milton, when he 
 joins buxom with < blithe and debonair, and Cra- 
 shaw, in his otherwise beautiful line 
 
 " I am born 
 Again a fresh child of the buxom, morn" 
 
 show that already for them the true meaning of the 
 word, common enough in our earlier writers, had 
 passed away. 
 
 2 
 
26 BUXOM BY AND BY. 
 
 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, Fhitarch x Morals, p. 316. 
 
 [Love] tyrannizeth in the bitter smarts 
 Of them that to him buxom are and prone. 
 
 Spenser, The Fairy Queen, iii. 2, 23. 
 
 BY AND BY. Now a future more or less remote 
 from the actual present ; but when our Version of the 
 Bible was made, the nearest possible future. The in 
 veterate 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 [e^avrTu] in a charger the head of John the 
 
 Baptist. 
 
 Mark vi. 25. Authorized Version. 
 
 These things must first come to pass; but the end is not by and 
 
 by [cv0u$J. 
 
 Luke xxi. 9. Authorized Version. 
 
 When Demophantus fell to the ground, his soldiers fled by and by 
 
 \cv9i>( tfnyov] upon it. 
 
 North, Plutarch s Liven, p. 308. 
 
-*-**^-- 
 
 CAITIFF CAPITULATE. /f 27 
 
 //"V 
 
 C Library. 
 
 uV 
 
 CAITIFF. The same word as c captive ; the only 
 difference being that i captive is derived directly from 
 the Latin * caitiff, through the interposition of the 
 Norman-French ; it had once the same meaning with 
 it. The deep-felt conviction of men that slavery breaks 
 down the moral character, a chief argument against 
 it, but unhappily also a chief difficulty in removing it, 
 this, so grandly unfolded by Horace ( Carm. iii. 5), 
 and speaking out in the Italian cattivo, in the French 
 * chetif, speaks out with no less distinctness in the 
 change of meaning which c caitiff has undergone, sig 
 nifying, as it now does, one of a base, abject disposi 
 tion, while there was a time when it had nothing of 
 this in it. 
 
 Aristark, myne evene caytyf [concaptivus metis, Vulg.], greetith 
 
 you wcl. 
 
 Col iv. 10. Wiclif. 
 
 The riche Croesus, caitif in servage. 
 
 Chaucer, The Knightes Tale. 
 
 Avarice doth tyrannize over her caitife and slave, not suffering him 
 to use what she commanded him to win 
 
 Holland, Plutarch s Morals, p. 208. 
 
 CAPITULATE. There is no reason why the reducing 
 of any agreement to certain heads or capital a should 
 not be called < to capitulate, the victor thus capitn- 
 
28 CAPITULATE CARRIAGE. 
 
 lating 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 mod 
 ern introduction. 
 
 Gclon 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. 
 
 CARPET. The covering only of floors at present, 
 but once of tables as well. 
 
 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. 
 
 Ilarleian 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, The Church History of Britain, b. vii. 2, 1. 
 
 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 xvii. 22, 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 [T)IV 
 
 dnoaKtVriv STrurruf]. 
 
 North, Plutarch s Lives, p. 470. 
 
CARRIAGE CENSURE. 29 
 
 And David left his carriage [ra ontin avrov, LXX., rightly] in the 
 hand of the keeper of the carriage. 
 
 1 Sam. xvii. 22. Authorized Version. 
 
 CATTLE. This and * chattel are only different forms 
 of the same word. At a time when wealth mainly 
 consisted in the number of heads of cattle (capita, 
 capitalia), the word which designated them easily 
 came to signify all other kinds of property as well. 
 (Note the well-known parallel in pecus, and pecu- 
 nia, and in the fact that our English i fee is the Ger 
 man Vieh. ) At a later day this was found to have 
 its inconveniences ; which some of the writers of the 
 Elizabethan age sought to remedy by using the term 
 4 quick cattle, when they intended live stock ; so Sir 
 J. Harrington (Epigrams, i. 91), and Puttenham 
 (Art of English Poesy, b. i. c. 18). The distinction, 
 however, was more effectually asserted by the appro 
 priating of the several forms cattle and < chattel, 
 one to the living, the other to the dead. 
 
 A woraman that hadde a flux of blood twelve yeer, and hadde 
 spendid all hir catcl [omnem substantiam suam, Vulg.] in leechis. 
 
 Luke viii. 43, 44. Wiclif. 
 
 The avaricious man hath more hope in his catel than in Jesu 
 
 Christ. 
 
 Chaucer, The Persones Tale. 
 
 CENSURE. It does not speak well for the charity 
 of men s judgments, that censure, which designated 
 once favorable and unfavorable judgments alike, is 
 
30 CENSURE CHAOS. 
 
 now restricted to unfavorable ; for it must be that the 
 latter, being by far the most frequent, have in this 
 way appropriated the word exclusively to themselves. 
 
 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, The 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. 
 
 Hucket, TJie Life of Archbishop Williams, part ii. p. 13. 
 
 CHAFFER. Once, to buy, to make a bargain, to hig 
 gle or dispute about the making of a bargain, it has 
 at length seen the buying or bargaining quite disap 
 pear from it ; so that to chaffer is now to talk much 
 and idly. 
 
 That no man overgo, nether disceyve his brother in chaffaringe [in 
 
 negotio, Vulg.l. 
 
 1 Thess. iv. 6. Wiclif. 
 
 He comaundid his servauntis to be clepid, to whiche he hadde gevo 
 money : to witte how mvche ech had wonne by chaffarynge. 
 
 Luke xix. 15. Wiclif. 
 
 Where is the fair flock thou was wont to lead ? 
 Or been they chajfred, or at mischief dead ? 
 
 Spenser, The Shepherd s Calendar, Eel. 9. 
 
 CHAOS. The earliest meaning of ^ao^ in Greek, of 
 chaos in Latin, was, empty infinite space, the yawn 
 ing kingdom of darkness ; only a secondary, that 
 which we have now adopted, namely, the rude, con- 
 
CHAOS CHEER. 31 
 
 fused, inorganizcd matter out of which the universe 
 according to the heathen cosmogony was formed. 
 But there are evidences that the primary use of 
 4 chaos was not strange to the literature of the six 
 teenth century. 
 
 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. 
 
 CHEER. Cicero, who loves to bring out superiori 
 ties, 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, as the ever-varying exponent 
 of the sentiments and passions of the soul. 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 certain 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. m. 19. Wiclif. 
 
 And Cayn was wrooth greetli, and his cheer felde doun. 
 
 Gen. iv. 5. Wiclif. 
 
 Each froward threatening cheer of fortune makes us plain ; 
 And every pleasant show revives our woful hearts again. 
 
 Surrey, Ecclesiastes, c. 3. 
 
32 CHEMIST CHEST. 
 
 CHEMIST, ) The distinction between the alchemist 
 CHEMISTRY, j and the chemist, that the first is the 
 dreamer, the insane searcher after the philosopher s 
 stone or the elixir vitae, 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 quo 
 tations which follow. 
 
 Five sorts of persons he [Sir Edward Coke] used to foredesign to 
 misery and poverty; chemists, monopolizers, concelers, promoters, 
 
 and rythming poets. 
 
 Fuller, The Worthies of England, Norfolk. 
 
 I have observed generally of chymists and theosophists, as of sev 
 eral other men more palpably mad, that their thoughts are carried 
 much to astrology. 
 
 H. More, A brief Discourse of Enthusiasm, sect. 45. 
 
 Hence the fool s paradise, the statesman s scheme, 
 The air-built castle, and the golden dream, 
 The maid s romantic wish, the chejnist s flame, 
 The poet s vision of eternal fame. 
 
 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, 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. 1. 26 : " He [Joseph] dieth, and is chest 
 ed." 
 
CHEST CHIVALRY. 33 
 
 He is now ded, and nailed in his cheste. 
 
 Chaucer, The Clerkes Prologue. 
 
 Your body is now wrapt in chest, 
 I pray to God to give your soul good rest. 
 
 Hawes, The Pastime of Pleasure, cap. 14. 
 
 CHIMNEY. This, which means now the gorge or 
 vent of a furnace or fire, was once used often for the 
 furnace itself ; in this more true to its origin ; being 
 derived from the Greek xajuuvo^, as it passed into the 
 Latin 4 caminus, and the French l cheminee. The 
 fact that it is the chimney, in the modern use of the 
 word, which, creating a draught, alone gives fierce 
 ness or activity 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, Edin 
 burgh, 1787). 
 
 And his feet [were] like to latoun as in a brennynge chymeney. 
 
 Rev. i. 15. Wiclif. 
 
 The Son of Man shall send his angels, and shall gather all hin 
 drances 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 su 
 pernumerary rabble another record of this contempt 
 2* 
 
34 CHIVALRY CHRISTEN. 
 
 probably surviving in the word infantry that 
 4 chivalry, which of course is but a different form of 
 4 cavalry, could once be used as convertible with 
 army. It needed more than one Agincourt to teach 
 that this was so no longer. 
 
 Abymalach forsothe aroos, and Phicol, the prince of his chyvalrye 
 [princeps exercitus ejus, Vulg.], and turneden ayen into the loond of 
 Palestynes. 
 
 Gen. xxi. 33. Wiclif. 
 
 CHRISTEN, ) By < Christendom we now under- 
 CHRISTENDOM. j stand that portion of the world which 
 makes profession of the faith of Christ, as contradis 
 tinguished 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 bap 
 tism, inasmuch as in that this profession was made ; 
 which is also the explanation of the use of i christen 
 as equivalent to christianize below. In Shakespeare 
 our present use of Christendom very much predomi 
 nates, but once or twice he uses it in its earlier sense, 
 as do authors much later than he. 
 
 Most part of England in the reign of King Ethelbert was christened, 
 Kent only excepted, which remained long after in misbelief and un- 
 christencd. 
 
 E. K., Gloss, to Spenser s Shepherd s Calendar, Septeml>er. 
 
 Sothli we ben togidere biried with him bi Christendom [per baptis- 
 mum, Vulg.] in to death. 
 
 Rom. vi. 4. Wiclif. 
 By my Christendom, 
 
 So I were out of prison and kept sheep, 
 I should be merry as the day is long. 
 
 Shakespeare, Kiuy John, Act iv. Sc. 1. 
 
CHKLSTKN CIVIL. 35 
 
 They all do come to him with friendly face, 
 When of his Christendom they understand. 
 
 Sir J. Harrington, Orlando Furioso, b. xliii. c. 189. 
 
 The draughts of intemperance would wash off the water of my 
 Christendom ; every unclean lust docs as it were bemire and wipe out 
 
 my contract with my Lord. 
 
 Allestree, Sermons, vol. ii. p. 161. 
 
 CHURCH. It is in general accounted a pure over 
 sight on the part of our Translators that they have 
 allowed " robbers of churches " to remain at Acts xix. 
 37, as the rendering of isporfuXous, sounding, as it does, 
 like an anachronism on the lips of the town-clerk of 
 Ephesus. Doubtless u 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 tit 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. 
 
 And, lo, the veil of the church was torn in two parts from the top 
 
 downwards. 
 
 Matt, xxvii. 51. Sir John Cheke. 
 
 To all the gods devoutly she did offer frankincense, 
 
 But most above them all the church of Juno she did cense. 
 
 Golding, Ovid s Metamorphosis, b. xi. 
 
 These troops should soon pull down the church of Jove. 
 
 Marlowe, The First Book of Lucan. 
 
 CIVIL, ) The tendency which there is in the mean- 
 CIVILITY. ) ing of words to run to the surface, till 
 
36 CIVIL. 
 
 they lose and leave behind all their deeper signifi 
 cance, is well exemplified in the words civil and 
 civility words of how deep an import once, how 
 slight and shallow now ! A civil man now is one ob 
 servant of slight external courtesies in the mutual in 
 tercourse between man and man ; 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 be 
 longed, and < civility the condition in which those 
 were recognized and observed. The gradual depart 
 ure of all deeper significance from the word < civility 
 has obliged the creation of another word, civiliza 
 tion/ 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. 
 
 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 banquet ings ; which the 
 foolisher sort called civility, but was indeed a secret art to prepare 
 
 them for bondage. 
 
 Milton, The History of Enyland, b. ii. 
 
CIVIL CLUMSY. 37 
 
 Let us remember also that civility and lair customs were but in a 
 narrow circle till the Greeks and Romans beat the world into better 
 
 manners. 
 
 J. Taylor, Ductor Dubitantittm, 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, Description of Spiritual Death and Life, 1636, p. 59. 
 
 CLERGY. The use of clergy in the abstract for 
 learning or for a learned profession, is, it needs hard 
 ly be said, the result of the same conditions which 
 made 4 clerk equivalent to scholar. 
 
 Was not Aristotle, for all his clergy, 
 
 For a woman wrapt in love so marvellously, 
 
 That all his cunning he had soon forgotten 1 
 
 Hawes, The 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. 
 
 CLUMSY. A word about which little satisfactory 
 has as yet found its way into our dictionaries ; but 
 although of no very frequent use in our early litera 
 ture (it does not once occur in Shakespeare), neither 
 can it 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, clumped and 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 
 
CLUMSY CLIMATE. 
 
 meaning out of the old. There arc some observations 
 on the probable etymology of the word in the Proceed 
 ings of the Philological Society, vol. v. p. 146. 
 
 Rigido ; Stark, stiffe, or num through cold, chtmzie. 
 
 Florio, New World of Words. 
 
 Havidefroid; Stiffe, clwnpse, benummcd. 
 
 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 
 [et ita torpentes gelu in castra rediere] as scarcely they felt the joy of 
 
 their victory. 
 
 Holland, Livy, p. 425. 
 
 This bloom of budding beauty loves not to be handled by such 
 nummed and so chmsie hands. 
 
 Florio, Montaign s Essays, b, iii. c. 5. 
 
 CLIMATE. At present the temperature of a region, 
 but once the region itself the region, however, con 
 templated in its slope or inclination from the equator 
 toward the pole, and therefore, by involved conse 
 quence, in respect of its temperature ; which circum 
 stance is the point of contact between the present 
 meaning of climate and the past. We have derived 
 the word from the mathematical geographers of anti 
 quity. They were wont to run imaginary parallel 
 lines, or such at least as they intended should be par 
 allel, to the equator ; and the successive climates 
 (xXif/.ctTa) of the earth were the spaces and regions 
 between these lines. 
 
 When these prodigies 
 Do so conjointly meet, let not men say, 
 
CLIMATE COMMON-SENSE. 39 
 
 "These are their causes they arc natural;" 
 For, I believe, they are portentous things 
 Unto the climate that they point upon. 
 
 Shakespeare, Julius Citsar, Act. i. Sc. 3. 
 
 This climate of Gaul [hanc Galliarum pfagam] 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 par 
 allel to the equator. 
 
 Phillips, The New World of Words. 
 
 COMFORT, | The verb < confortare, not found in 
 COMFORTABLE. J classical Latin, but so frequent in 
 the Vulgate, is first, as is plain from the 4 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. 
 
 And the child wexed, and was counfortid [confortabatur, Vulg.] in 
 spirit. 
 
 Luke i. 80. Wiclif. 
 
 And there appeared an angel unto Him from heaven, comforting 
 
 Him [si to ^ucji atfrdvl. 
 
 Luke xxii. 43. Tyndale. 
 
 Thy conceit is nearer death than thy powers ; for my sake, be com 
 fortable; hold death awhile at the arm s end. 
 
 Shakespeare, As you like it, Act ii. Sc. 6. 
 
 COMMON-SENSE. The manner is very curious in which 
 the metaphysical or theological speculations, to which 
 the busy world was indifferent, or from which it was 
 entirely averse, do yet in their results descend to it, 
 
40 COMMON-SENSE. 
 
 and arc adopted by it ; while it remains quite uncon 
 scious of the source from which they spring, and counts 
 that it has created them for itself and out of its own 
 resources. Thus, probably most persons would al 
 most 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, seem to have assumed any 
 thing else. But in truth this phrase, i 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 a xoivo^ vou.c, familiar to the Greek 
 metaphysicians, is sufficiently explained by the inter 
 esting quotation from Henry More. In Hawes Pas 
 time of Pleasure (cap. 24) the relation between the 
 
 * common wit and the five wits is at large set forth. 
 
 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, The Holy War, b. i. c. 4. 
 
COMMON-SENSE CONCEITED. 41 
 
 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 ex 
 ternal senses and the common sense considered together are like a circle 
 with five lines drawn from the circumference to the centre. Where 
 fore, as it has been obvious for them to find out particular organs for 
 the external senses, so they have also attempted to assign some dis 
 tinct 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. 
 
 COMPANION. " The term companion was formerly 
 used contemptuously, in the same way in which we 
 still use its synonyme fellow. The notion originally 
 involved in companionship, or accompaniment, would 
 appear to have been rather that of inferiority than of 
 equality. A companion (or comes) was an attend 
 ant." Craik, English of Shakespeare, p. 255. 
 
 I scorn you, scurvy companion. 
 
 Shakespeare, 2 Henry IV. ii. 4. 
 
 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, imperti 
 nent fellow ! did he think to prescribe to grandpapa !" 
 
 Smollett, Roderick Random, vol. i. c. 3. 
 
 CONCEITED, ) Conceit is so entirely and irrecov- 
 CONCEITEDLY. J erably lost to the language of phi- 
 
42 CONCEITED COPY. 
 
 losophy, that it would be well if concept, used often 
 by our earlier philosophical writers, were revived. 
 Yet conceit has not so totally forsaken all its for 
 mer meanings (for there are still happy conceits in 
 poetry), as have 4 conceited, which once meant well 
 conceived, and conceitedly. 
 
 Oft did she heave her napkin to her cync, 
 Which had on it conceited characters. 
 
 Shakespeare, A Lover s Complaint. 
 
 Triumphal arches the glad town doth raise, 
 And tilts and tourneys are performed at court, 
 Conceited masques, rich banquets, witty plays. 
 
 Dray ton, The Miseries of Queen Margaret. 
 
 Cicero most pleasantly and conceitedly. 
 
 Holland, Suetonius, p. 21. 
 
 CONCUBINE. No notice is taken in our dictionaries 
 that the male paramour as well as the female was 
 sometimes called by this name ; on the contrary, their 
 definitions exclude this. 
 
 The Lady Anne did falsely and traitcrouslv procure divers of the 
 King s daily and familiar servants to he her adulterers and concubines. 
 
 Indictment of Anne Boleyn. 
 
 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 
 4 copy (in this Latin sense) or abundance of any doc- 
 
COPY COURTESAN. 43 
 
 ument, would be by taking copies (in our present 
 sense) of it. 
 
 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. 
 
 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. 
 
 CORPSE. Now only used for the body abandoned 
 by the spirit of life, but once for the body of the liv 
 ing man equally as of the dead ; now only = cadaver, 
 but once * corpus as well. 
 
 A valiant corpse, where force and beauty met. 
 
 Surrey, On the Death of Sir T. Wyatt. 
 
 But naked, without needful vestiments 
 To clad his corpse with meet habiliments, 
 He cared not for dint of sword or spear. 
 
 Spenser, The Fairy Queen, b. vi. c. 4. 
 
 Your conjuring, cozening, and your dozen of trades 
 Could not relieve your corps with so much linen 
 Would make you tinder, but to see a fire. 
 
 Ben Jonson, The Alchemist, Act i. Sc. 1 . 
 
 COURTESAN. The Low Latin cortesanus was once 
 one haunting the court, a courtier, aulicus, though 
 already in Shakespeare we often meet the present ap 
 plication of the word. 
 
44 COURTESAN CUNNING. 
 
 By the wolf, no doubt, was meant the Pope, but the fox was re 
 sembled to the prelates, courtesans, priests, and the rest of the spiritu 
 ality. 
 
 Foxe, The Book of Martyrs, ed. 1641, vol. i. p. 511. 
 
 CUNNING. The fact that so many words implying 
 knowledge, art, skill, obtain in course of time a sec 
 ondary meaning of crooked knowledge, art which has 
 degenerated into artifice, skill used only to circum 
 vent, which meanings partially or altogether put out 
 of use their primary, is a mournful witness to the way 
 in which intellectual gifts arc too commonly misap 
 plied. Thus, there was a time when the Latin do- 
 lus required the epithet rnalus, as often as it signi 
 fied a treacherous or fraud ful device ; but it was 
 soon able to drop this as superfluous, and to stand by 
 itself. Other words which have gone the same down 
 ward course are the following : T=pv*j, i astutia, cal- 
 liditas, List, Kunst, and our English i 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 honorable use. How honorable that use some 
 times 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 mi^ht, full of grace and of all goodness. 
 Foxe, The Book of Martyrs ; Confession of Faith, 
 by William Thorpe. 
 
 So the number of them, with their brethren, that were instructed 
 
CUNNING DANGER. 45 
 
 in the songs of the Lord, even all that were cunning, was two hundred 
 
 fourscore and eight. 
 
 1 Chron. xxv. 3. Authorized Version. 
 
 CURATE. Rector, vicar, every one having cure of 
 souls, was a * curate once. Thus, bishops and cu 
 rates in the Liturgy. 
 
 They [the begging friars] letten cnrats to know Gods law by hold 
 ing bookes fro them, and withdrawing of their vantages, by which 
 they shulden have books and lerne. 
 
 Wiclif, Treatise against the Friars, p. 56. 
 
 Henry the Second of England commanded all prelates and curates 
 to reside upon their dioceses and charges. 
 
 J. 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, The New World of Words. 
 
 D. 
 
 DANGER, ) A feudal term, beset witl? 
 
 DANGEROUS, j culties in its passage to its present use. 
 Du Cange has written upon it, and Diez, and there is 
 a careful article in Richardson. It is a Low Latin 
 word, dangerium, of which the etymology is uncer 
 tain, signifying the strict right of the suzerain in re 
 gard to the fief of the vassal ; thus, * fief de danger? 
 a fief held under strict and severe conditions, and 
 therefore in danger of being forfeited (juri stricto 
 
46 DANCER DEADLY. 
 
 atque adeo confiscation! obnoxium ; Du Cange). There 
 is no difficulty here ; but there is another early use of 
 4 danger and dangerous which is not thus explained, 
 nor yet the connection between it and the modern 
 meaning of the words. I refer to that of danger in 
 the sense of 4 coyness, sparingness, i niggardliness, 
 and of dangerous with the adjectival uses corre 
 sponding. 
 
 And if thy voice is faire and clere, 
 Thou shall maken no great daungere, 
 When to singcn they goodly pray ; 
 It is thy worship for to obay. 
 
 Chaucer, The Romaunt of the Rose, 2317-2320. 
 
 We ourselves also were in times past unwise, disobedient, deceived, 
 in daunger to lusts [3ov\evovres enflv/iuHj]. 
 
 Tit. iii. 3. Tyndale. 
 
 Come not within his danger by thy will. 
 
 Shakespeare, Venus and Adonis. 
 
 My wages ben full streyt and eke ful smale ; 
 My lord to me is hard and daungerous. 
 
 Chaucer, The Friars Tale. 
 But nathelesse, for his beaute 
 So fierce and dangerous was he, 
 That he nolde graunten her asking, 
 For weeping, ne for faire praying. 
 
 Id., The Romaunt of the Rose, 1480-1484. 
 
 DEADLY. This and mortal* are often synonymes 
 now ; thus, < a deadly wound or * a mortal wound : 
 but they arc not invariably so ; deadly being always 
 active, while mortal is often passive, and signifying 
 
DEADLY DEFALCATION. 47 
 
 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 lyk 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, The Book of Martyrs; William Thorpe s Examination. 
 
 DEFALCATION. A word at present of very slovenly 
 and inaccurate use. We read in the newspapers of a 
 4 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 
 4 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 tem 
 ple purposely abated of those dimensions assigned by Cyrus, as too 
 great for him to compass, in such defalcation of measures by Cyrus 
 
48 DEFALCATION DEFY. 
 
 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. Now to protect, but once to protect by 
 prohibiting, or fencing round, to forbid, as < defendre 
 is still in French. 
 
 The sin of maumetrie is the first that is defended in the Ten Com 
 mandments. 
 
 Chaucer, The Parsons Tale. 
 
 When can you say in any manner age 
 That ever God defended marriage ? 
 
 Id., The Wife of Baths Tale. 
 
 DEFY, ) This means now to dare to the utter- 
 DEFIANCE. j most 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 deficr and the defied 
 to be wholly dissolved, so that nothing of treaty or 
 even of the natural faith of man to man shall hence 
 forth hinder extrcmest hostility between them. But 
 still, when we read of one potentate sending i defi 
 ance 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. 
 
DEFY DELICACY. 49 
 
 No man speaking in the Spirit of God defieth Jesus [\iyct (ivade^a. 
 
 1 Iff oil]. 
 
 1 Cor. xii. 3. Tyndale. 
 
 All studies here I solemnly defy, 
 
 Save how to gall and pinch this Bolingbroke. 
 
 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, The 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. 
 
 J. Taylor, The Liberty of Prophesying, 3. 5. 
 
 DELAY. Like the French * delayer, 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. 
 
 The watery showers delay the raging wind. 
 
 Surrey, The Faithful Lover. 
 
 Even so fathers ought to delay their eager reprehensions and cut 
 ting 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, ^ In the same way as self-indulgence 
 DELICATELY, I creeps over us by unmarked degrees, 
 DEMCIOUS, [so there creeps over the words that 
 LY. J designate it a subtle change ; they 
 3 
 
50 DELICACY DEMERIT. 
 
 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 bo 
 received into favor too. It has been thus, as I shall 
 have occasion to note, with luxury ; it lias been thus 
 also with this whole group of words. 
 
 Thus much of (l-Hcary in general; now more particularly of his 
 
 first branch, gluttony. 
 
 Nash, Christ s Tears over Jerusalem, p. 140. 
 
 Cephisodorus, the disciple of Isocrates, charged him with delicacy, 
 
 intemperance, and glutton} . 
 
 Blount, Philostratus, p. 229. 
 
 She that liveth delicately [vxaTn\<~<ra\ is dead while she liveth. 
 
 1 Tim. v. 6. Authorized Version (margin). 
 
 Yea, soberest men it [idleness] makes delicious. 
 
 Sylvester, Du Dartas, Second Week, Eden. 
 
 How much she hath glorified herself and lived deliriously [iarprivlaae], 
 so much torment and sorrow give her. 
 
 Rev. xviii. 7. Authorized Version. 
 
 DEMERIT. It was plainly an inconvenient arrange 
 ment, 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 dcmcrcor, from which they 
 were severally derived, were scarcely discriminated 
 in meaning. It has thus come to pass, according to 
 the dcsynonyrnizing processes ever at work in a lan 
 guage, 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. 
 
DEMERIT DEMURE. 51 
 
 I fetch my life and being 
 From men of royal siege ; and my demerits 
 May speak, unbonneted, to as proud a fortune 
 As this that I have reached. 
 
 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, reck 
 oned up a beadroll of their demerits toward the people of Rome. 
 
 Id., Livy. 1179. 
 
 DEMURE, ) Used by our earlier writers without 
 DEMURENESS. j 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 the good. It is one of the many words 
 to which the suspicious nature of man, with the war 
 rants 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, The 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 dispensa 
 tion. 
 
 Id., On Godli m-fts, b. viii. c. 5. 
 
52 DEMURE DEPRAVE. 
 
 In like manner women also in comely attire ; with demureness [cum 
 verecundiu, Vulg.] and sobriety adorning themselves. 
 
 1 Tim. ii. 9. Rheims. 
 
 DEPART. Once used as equivalent with i to sepa 
 rate a fact already forgotten, when, at the last re 
 vision of the Prayer-Book in 1661, 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, 
 1 till death us do partj were introduced. 
 
 And he schal departe hem atwynne, as a schepherde departith 
 
 scheep fro kid us. 
 
 Matt. xxv. 32. Wiclif. 
 
 And \yhanne he hadde seid this thing, discencioun was made be- 
 twixe the furisies and the saduceis, and the multitude was departid. 
 
 Acts xxiii. 7. Id. 
 
 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 
 
 DEPRAVE. As i 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. 
 
 That lie, and cog, and flout, deprave, and slander. 
 
 Shakespeare, Much Ado about Nothing, Act v. 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. 
 
 Uncoil, Essays, 49. 
 
DEPRAVE DIGESTED. 53 
 
 lam depraved unjustly; who never deprived the Church of her 
 
 authority. 
 
 Fuller, The Appeal of Injured Innocence, part i. p. 45. 
 
 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 de- 
 siderare, from which more remotely, and desirer, 
 from which more immediately, we derive it. 
 
 He [Jehoram] reigned in Jerusalem eight years, and departed 
 
 without being desired. 
 
 2 Chron. xxi. 20. Authorized Version. 
 
 She that hath a wise husband must entice him to an eternal dear- 
 ness by the veil of modesty and the grave robes of chastity, and she 
 shall be pleasant while she lives, and desired when she dies. 
 
 J. Taylor, The Marriage Ring, Sermon 18. 
 
 DIGESTED. 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 digest 
 ed mean all which l coctus meant ? But one of the 
 meanings of coctus is ripened ; k digested there 
 fore might be employed in the same sense. 
 
 Splendid fires, aromatic spices, rich wines, and well-digested fruits. 
 J. Taylor, Discourse on Friendship. 
 
5-4 DISABLE DISCOURSE. 
 
 DISABLE. Our ancestors felt that to injure the char 
 acter of another was the most effectual way of disa 
 bling him ; and out of a sense of this they often used 
 6 disable in the sense of to disparage, to speak slight 
 ingly 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 descrver. 
 
 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 rea 
 son, which he puts into Hamlet s mouth, should have 
 perplexed them so greatly. Gilford, a pitiless ani- 
 madverter on the real or imaginary mistakes of oth 
 ers, and who tramples upon Warburton for attempting 
 to explain this phrase as though Shakespeare had ever 
 written it, declares, " discourse / reason is so poor 
 and perplexed a phrase that 1 should dismiss it at 
 once for what I believe to be his genuine language ;" 
 and then proceeds to suggest the obvious but errone 
 ous correction " discourse and reason" (see his Mas- 
 singef) vol. i. p. 14$) ; while yet, if there be a phrase 
 of frequent recurrence among the writers of our Eliz 
 abethan age and down to Milton, it is this. I have 
 
DISCOURSE. 55 
 
 very 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; of. pp. 313, 566, 
 
 570, 752, 955, 966, 977, 980. 
 You, being by nature given to melancholic discoursing, do easilier 
 
 yield to such imaginations. 
 
 North, Plutarch s Lives, p. 830. 
 
 The other gods, and knights-at-arms, all slept, but only Jove 
 Sweet slumber seized not ; he discoursed how best he might approve 
 
 His vow made for Achilles grace. 
 
 Chapman, Homer s Iliad, b. ii. 
 
 As the intuitive knowledge is more perfect than that which insin 
 uates 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, The Worthies of England, Canterbury. 
 
 Whence the soul 
 
 Reason receives, and reason is her being, 
 Discursive or intuitive ; discourse 
 Is oftest yours, the latter most is ours. 
 
 Milton, Paradise Lost, b. v. 
 
 If you mean, by discourse, right reason, grounded on Divine Reve 
 lation 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 ac 
 tions, so especially in that of greatest importance, the choice of their 
 way to happiness, should be left unto it. 
 
 Chillingworth, The Religion of Protestants a Safe Way 
 to Salvation, Preface. 
 
56 DISEASE DISMAL. 
 
 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 * dis 
 ease was once meant any malease, distress, or dis 
 comfort whatever. 
 
 Wo to hem that ben with child, and nurishen in tho daies, for a 
 greet disese [pressura magna, Vulg.] schal be on the erthe, and wrathe 
 
 to tliis peple. 
 
 Luke xxi. 23. Wiclif. 
 
 Thy daughter is dead; why diseasest thou the master any 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 mar 
 vel that such men as they would suffer it. 
 
 State Papers (Letter to Wolsey from his Agent at Rome), vol. vi. p. 182. 
 
 DISMAL. Minshew s derivation of dismal, that it 
 is dies malus, the unlucky, ill-omened day, is exactly 
 one of those plausible etymologies to which one learns 
 after a while to give no credit. Yet there can be no 
 doubt that our fathers so understood the word, and 
 that this assumed etymology often overrules their 
 usage of it. 
 
 A buiterar or a maker of dismal days. 
 
 Dent, xviii. 10. Tyndale. 
 
 Then began they to reason and debate about the dismal days [turn 
 dc dicbus religiosis agitari coeptum]. 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 unconvcnient for any business, as well public as private. 
 
 Holland, Livy, p. 217 
 
DISMAL DIFFIDENCE. 57 
 
 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. 
 
 DIFFIDENCE, I c Diffidence expresses now a not un- 
 DIFFIDKNTLY. j becoming distrust of one s own self, 
 with only a slight intimation, such as vcrecundia 
 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 with 
 holding of all faith from them, being nearly allied to 
 despair ; as, indeed, in The Pilgrim s Progress, Mis 
 tress Diffidence is Giant Despair s wife. 
 
 Of the impediments which have been in the affections, the principle 
 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. 
 
 Needless diffidences, banishment of friends. 
 
 Shakespeare, King Lear, Act i. Sc. 2. 
 
 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. 
 
 J. Taylor, The Life of Christ. 
 
 Mediators were not wanting that endeavoured a renewing of friend 
 ship 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, The Life of Archbishop Williams, part ii. p. 86 
 
 3* 
 
58 DIFFIDKNT DOLK. 
 
 It was by far the host course to stand diffidently against each other, 
 with their thoughts in buttle array. 
 
 Hobbes, Thucydidc.s, b. iii. c. 83. 
 
 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 con 
 traries 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. 
 
 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. 
 
 J. Taylor, Measures and Offices of Friendship. 
 
 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, The History of the World, b. v. c. 2. 3. 
 
 Utterly to extirpate all trust in riches, where they abound, is only- 
 possible to the Omnipotent Power, and a rare document of divine 
 mercy. 
 
 Jackson, Justifying Faith, b. iv. c. 6. 
 
 DOLE. This and deal are of course one and the 
 same word, and answer to the German Theil, a part 
 
DOLE DllENCII. 59 
 
 or portion. 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 show 
 ing 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 sanctih cation. 
 There is no distribution or division here ; either all or none. 
 
 Sanderson, Sermons, 1671, vol. ii. p. 247. 
 
 DREADFUL. Now that which causes dread, but once 
 that which felt it. 
 
 Forsothe the Lord shall gyve to thee there a dreedful herte and 
 
 faylinge eyen. 
 
 Deut. xxviii. 65. Wiclif. 
 
 And to a grove faste ther beside 
 
 With dredful foot than stalketh Palamon. 
 
 Chaucer, The Knightes Tale. 
 
 DRENCH. As to felV is to make to /a//, and to 
 lay* to make to lie] so to drench is to make to 
 drink J though with a sense now very short of to 
 drown ; but drench and drown, though desynony- 
 mized in our later English, were once perfectly ade 
 quate to one another. 
 
 They that wolen be maad riche, fallen in to temptacioun, and in 
 to snare of the devil, and in to many unprofitable desiris and noyous, 
 
 which drenchen men in to deth and perdicioun. 
 
 1 Tim. vi. 9. Wiclif. 
 
60 DRENCH DUNCE. 
 
 Well may men know it was no wi<Jit hut he 
 That kept the peple Ebraikc fro drenching, 
 With dryc feet throughout the see passing. 
 
 Chaucer, The Man of Lawes Tale. 
 
 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 gives to Theseus the style of Duke of Athens. 
 It would be of very little consequence if the charge 
 were a true one ; but it is not. Duke has indeed 
 since Shakespeare s time become that which this ob 
 jector supposed it to have been always ; but all were 
 4 dukes once who were 4 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. 
 
 Prologe on the first Pistel of Peter. Wiclif. 
 
 Hannibal, duke of Carthage. 
 
 Sir T. Elyot, The Governor, b. i. c. 10. 
 
 These were the dukes and princes of avail, 
 That came from Greece. 
 
 Chapman, Homer s Iliad, b. ii. 
 
 DUNCE. I have sought elsewhere (Study of Words, 
 p. 90) to trace somewhat at large the very 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 
 
DUNCE DUTCH. fil 
 
 him on whom it is affixed. The course by which this 
 came to pass was as follows. When at the Reforma 
 tion and Revival of Learning the works of the School 
 men fell into extreme disfavor, at once with all the 
 Reformers and with all 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 now it is. 
 
 Remember ye not how whhin 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 pul 
 pit against Greek, Latin, and Hebrew ? 
 
 Tyndale, Works, 1575, p. 278. 
 
 What Dunce or Sorbonist cannot maintain a parodox ? 
 
 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. 
 Maud. Is this your tutor? 
 
 Tutor. Yes surely, lady; 
 
 I am the man that brought him in league with logic, 
 And read the Dunces to him. 
 
 Middleton, A Chaste Maid in Cheapside, Act iii. Sc. 1. 
 
 DUTCH, ) Till late in the seventeenth century 
 DUTCHMAN, j Dutch ( deutsch or teutsch, theo- 
 tiscus ) meant generally German, and a i Dutchman 
 a native of Germany, while what we should now term 
 a Dutchman would have been named then a Hollander. 
 I observe it stated in a recent volume of travels in 
 America, that in many parts there, Germans are now 
 
62 DUTCH EAGER. 
 
 called < Dutchmen, the retention of an old usage, 
 even as we find so many examples of this in America. 
 
 Though the root of the English language be Dutch, yet she may he 
 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, The 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. 10. 
 
 E. 
 
 EAGER, ) The physical and literal sense of 
 EAGERNESS, j eager, that is, sharp or acrid (aigre, 
 acris), has quite departed from the word ; which, how 
 ever, occasionally retained this, long after it was em 
 ployed in the secondary meaning which is its only one 
 at present. 
 
 She was like thing for hunger dead, 
 That lad her life only by bread 
 Kneden with eisell* strong and eyre, 
 
 Chaucer, The Romaunt of the Rose, 145-147. 
 
 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 Morak, p. 43. 
 Now on the eager razor s edge for life or death we stand. 
 
 Chapman, Homer s Iliad, 6-10- 
 * Vinegar. 
 
EAGER EGREGIOUS. 63 
 
 Asproso, full of sourness or eagerness. 
 
 Florio, New World of Words. 
 
 EBB. Nothing * ebbs, unless it be figuratively, ex 
 cept water now. But ebb, oftener an adjective than 
 any thing else, 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 ebbfst. 
 
 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 mad 
 ness. 
 
 This is the very coinage of your brain, 
 This bodiless creation ecstasy 
 Is very cunning in. 
 
 Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act iii. Sc. 4. 
 
 EGREGIOUS. This has always now an ironical sub 
 audition, which it was very far from having of old. 
 
64 EGREGIOUS EMBEZZLE. 
 
 It may be denied that bishops were our first reformers, for "VVick- 
 liffe was before them, and his fgnr/ions labours are not to be neglected. 
 Milton, Animadversions upon the Remonstrants Defence. 
 Egregious viceroys of these eastern parts ! 
 
 Marlowe, Tamlurlaine the Great, Part ii. Act i. Sc. 1. 
 
 ELEVATE. There are two intentions with which 
 any thing may be lifted from the place which now it 
 occupies ; either with the intention of setting it in a 
 more conspicuous position ; or else of removing it out 
 of the way, or, figuratively, of withdrawing all im 
 portance 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., 76. 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 t<> the Romans. 
 
 Jackson, Of the Primeval Estate of the First Man, b. x. c. 14. 
 
 EMBEZZLE. We should say now that the Unjust 
 Steward embezzled his lord s goods ( Luke xvi. 1) ; 
 
EMBEZZLE ENORMOUS. 65 
 
 but not that the Prodigal Son embezzled the sub 
 stance which he had received from his father (Luke 
 xv. 13) : yet the one would have been as free to our 
 early writers as the other. 
 
 Go over towns and countries, tell the choice buildings, lands, and 
 inheritances of them, and ask whose these were ; all will tell you such 
 a name, such a house enjoyed them, but now all is gone and embezzled 
 away, not one acre remaining of four or five thousand pound lands 
 by the year. 
 
 Rogers, Matrimonial Honour, p. 343. 
 
 Mr. Hackluit died, leaving a fair estate to an un thrift son, who 
 embezzled it. 
 
 Fuller, The 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 rev 
 erence they had to 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, On Godliness, b. vii. c. 11. 
 
 ENORMOUS, ) Now only applied to that which is ir- 
 ENORMITY. J regular in excess, in this way trans 
 cending the established morm or rule. But departure 
 from rule or regularities in any direction might be 
 characterized as enormous once. 
 
 Oh great corrector of enormous times, 
 Shaker of o er-rank states, thou grand decider 
 Of dusty and old titles, that healst with blood 
 The earth when it is sick. 
 Beaumont and Fletcher, The Two Noble Kinsmen, Actv. Sc. 1. 
 
 Wild, without rule or art, enormous bliss. 
 
 Milton, Paradise Lost. 
 
G6 ENORMOUS EPICURE. 
 
 Pyramids, arches, obelisks, were but the irregularities of vain-glory, 
 and wild enormities of ancient magnanimity. 
 
 Sir T. Browne, Ilydriotaphia. 
 
 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. 
 
 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, The 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. 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, dcniers 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 
 
EPICURE EQUIVOCAL. 67 
 
 delights, tlie 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, can 
 did, just, has almost, if not altogether, departed from 
 it. 
 
 my most equal hearers, if these deeds 
 May pass with sufferance, what one citizen 
 But owes the forfeit of his life, yea, fame, 
 To him that dares traduce him. 
 
 Ben Jonson, The Fox, Act iv. Sc. 2. 
 
 Hear now, house of Israel ; is not my way equal ? are not your 
 
 ways unequal 7 
 
 Ezek. xviii. 25. Authorized Version. 
 
 EQUIVOCAL, "^ The calling two or more different 
 EQUIVOCALLY. V thing s by one and the same name 
 EQUIVOCATION. ) (aeque vocare) is the source of al 
 most all error in human discourse. He who wishes 
 to throw dust in the eyes of an opponent, to hinder 
 
68 EQUIVOCAL ESSAY. 
 
 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 naming 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 can-ass 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 dispu- 
 ters have the jealousy and skill which is necessary to discuss equivoca 
 tions; and so take verbal differences for material. 
 
 Baxter, Catholic Theology, Preface. 
 
 ESSAY. There is no particular modesty now in cal 
 ling 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 
 tiling 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 
 
ESSAY EXEMPLIFY. 69 
 
 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 
 JSssays. The word is late, hut the thing is ancient. 
 
 Bacon, Intended Dedication of his Essays to Prince Henry. 
 
 Yet modestly he does his work survey, 
 And calls a finished poem an essay. 
 
 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 opinon therefore, as some are, that nature in work 
 ing 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 Plymo.uth 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 irapafcr/^ari^v (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 
 
TO EXEMPLIFY EXTERMINATE. 
 
 his best servants [i. e. when they sinj, that their blur and penalty 
 might scare all from venturing. 
 
 Kogers, Matrimonial Honour, p. 337. 
 
 EXPLODE. All our present uses of explode, 
 whether literal or figurative, have reference to burst 
 ing, and to bursting with noise ; and it is for the most 
 part forgotten, I should imagine, 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 
 1 exploded opinion, his image is not drawn from some 
 thing which, having burst, has perished so ; 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 Provi 
 dence. 
 
 Fuller, The Ilohj 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 Soc 
 rates so much abhor and explode them. 
 
 Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy ; Democritus to the Reader. 
 
 Shall that man pass for a proficient in Christ s school, who would 
 have been exploded in the school of Zeno or Epictctus ? 
 
 South, Sermons, vol. i. p. 431. 
 
 EXTERMINATE, J^ It now signifies to destroy, to 
 EXTERMINATION, j abolish ; but our fathers, more true 
 
EXTERMINATE FACETIOUS. 71 
 
 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, Colors 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, Letters written in Cromwell s name to the Evangelic cities 
 of Switzerland, 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, ) It is certainly not a 
 
 FACETIOUSNESS. j able that alike in 
 and English, words expressive of witty festive conver 
 sation should have degenerated, though not all ex 
 actly in the same direction, and gradually acquired a 
 worse signification than that with which they began ; 
 I mean surpcwrjXi a, ; urbanitas, and our own facetious- 
 ness ; 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 7 
 has already acquired the sense of buffoonery, of the 
 making of ignoble mirth for others ; there are plain 
 
72 FACETIOUS FASTIDIOUS. 
 
 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 [Archbighop 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 com 
 pany. 
 
 Hacket, The Life of Archbishop Williams, part ii. p. 32. 
 
 A grave man, yet without moroseness, as who would willingly 
 contribute his shot of facetiousne ss on any just occasion. 
 
 Fuller, The Worthies of England, Oxfordshire. 
 
 The king easily took notice of her [Anne Boleyn] ; whether more 
 captivated by the allurements of her beauty, or the facetiousmss of her 
 behaviour, it is hard to say. 
 
 Heylin, The History of Queen Mary, Introduction. 
 
 FAIRY. In whatever latitude we may employ fairy 
 now, it is always restricted to the middle beings of 
 the Gothic mythology ; being in no case applied, as 
 it used to be, to the <5ai |xove of classical antiquity. 
 
 Of the Jhiry Manto [daughter of Tiresias] I cannot affirm any 
 thing of truth, whether she were a fairy or a prophetess. 
 
 Sir J. Harrington, Orlando Furioso, b. Ixiii. 
 
 So long as these wise fairies Moron and A<ryTK, 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. 
 
 FASTIDIOUS. Persons are fastidious now, as feel 
 ing disgust ; things, and indeed persons too, were 
 
FASTIDIOUS FEMININE. 73 
 
 4 fastidious once, as occasioning disgust. The word 
 has shifted from an objective to a subjective use. 
 i Fastidiosus had both uses, but our modern quite pre 
 dominated ; 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 Italian < fattura, is always the 
 part now of a larger whole, a feature of the land 
 scape, the 6 features of the face ; but there was no 
 such limitation once ; any thing made, any fattura/ 
 was a i feature once. 
 
 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 to 
 gether every joint and member, and shall mould them into an immor 
 tal feature of loveliness and perfection. 
 
 Milton, Areopagitica. 
 
 So scented the grim feature, and upturned 
 His nostril wide into the murky air. 
 
 Id., Paradise Lost, x. 278. 
 
 But this young feature [a commentary on Scripture which Arch 
 bishop Williams had planned], like an imperfect embryo, was morti 
 fied in the womb by Star-chamber vexations. 
 
 Racket, The 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 may 
 under certain limitations without reproach be affirmed 
 of a man, while the second is that which under all 
 
 4 
 
74 FEMININE FIRMAMENT. 
 
 circumstances dishonors a man, as mannish would 
 dishonor a woman, is of comparatively modern growth. 
 
 Till at the last God of veray right 
 
 Displesed was with his condiciouns, 
 
 By cause he [Sardanapalus] was in every manncs sight 
 
 So femyiiyne in his afFcctiouns. 
 
 Lydgate, Poem against Idleness. 
 
 But Ninias being esteemed no man of Avar at all, but altogether 
 feminine, and subjected to ease and delicacy, there is no probability 
 in that opinion. 
 
 Sir W. Haluigh, The 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. 
 
 J. Taylor, Apples of Sodom. 
 
 FIRMAMENT. We now use firmament only for that 
 portion of the sky on all sides visible above the hori 
 zon, having gotten this application of the word from 
 the Vulgate ( Gen i. 6), or at any rate from the Church 
 Latin ( firm amentum celeste, Tertullian, De Bapt. 
 iii.), as that had derived it from the Septuagint. 
 This by rr-spfw^a 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 firm 
 ness (see H. More, Defence of Cabbuta, p. 60). Hut 
 beside this use of firmament, totally strange to the 
 classical iirmamentum, being derived to us from the 
 
FIRMAMENT FONDLING. 75 
 
 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 
 generally 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 re 
 ferred to use and action. 
 
 Bacon, Of the Interpretation of Nature. 
 
 Custom is the sanction, or the firmament of the law. 
 
 J. Taylor, Apples of Sodom. 
 
 FLICKER. This and < flutter are thoroughly desy- 
 nonymized now ; a flame flickers, a bird flutters ; 
 but it was not so once. 
 
 But being made a swan, 
 With snowy feathers in the air to flicker he began. 
 
 Golding, Ovid s Metamorphosis, b. vii. 
 
 FLIRT. Much more serious charges were implied 
 once in this name than are at the present, as will be 
 sufficiently clear from the quotations which follow. 
 
 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, The Anatomy of Melancholy, part i. sect. 2. 
 
 Gadrouillette, /. A minx, giggle, flirt, callet, gixie; (a feigned 
 word, applicable to any such cattellj. 
 
 Cotgrave, A French and English Dictionary, 1660. 
 
 
 
 FONDLING. Fond retains to this day, at least in 
 
76 FONDLING FORLORN HOPE. 
 
 poetry, not seldom the sense of foolish ; but a l fond 
 ling is no longer a fool. 
 
 An epicure hath some reason to allege, an extortioner is a man 
 of wisdom, and actcth prudently in comparison to him ; but this 
 fond/ing [the profane swearer] offendeth heaven and abandoneth hap 
 piness he knoweth not why or for what. 
 
 Barrow, Sermon 15. 
 
 We have many such fondlinys, that are their wives pack-horses 
 
 and slaves. 
 
 Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy, part iii. sect. 3. 
 
 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 not myself 
 recall a 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 des 
 perate 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 
 said to be the same as it is now. These first come to 
 hand-strokes with the enemy ; they bear the brunt of 
 their onset ; and there may therefore seem less likeli 
 hood that they will escape than those who come after. 
 This is quite true, and it comes remarkably out in one 
 of my quotations from Holland. But in passages in 
 numerable this of the greater hazard to which the 
 4 forlorn hope are exposed, lias noticeably enough 
 quite disappeared from the phrase, and they are sim 
 ply that part of the army which, being posted in the 
 
FORLORN HOPE FORMALITY. 77 
 
 front, commences the engagement. In this sense it is 
 often merely the forlorn, hope being omitted.* It 
 would be curious to know when forlorn hope first 
 appeared in the language. The first example I find 
 of it is in Gascoigne s Fruits of War, st. 74. 
 
 These [the Roman Velites] were loose troops, answerable in a 
 manner to those which we call now by a French name Enfans Per- 
 dues, but when we use our own terms, The Forlorn Hope. 
 
 Sir W. Raleigh, The History of the World, b. v. c. 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, Livij, p. 765. 
 
 U| on them the light-armed forlorn hope [qui primi agminis crant] 
 of archers and darters of the Roman host, which went before the bat 
 tle to skirmish, charged forcibly with their shot. 
 
 Id., 76. p. 641 ; cf. 1149, 1150, 1195. 
 
 Christ s descent into hell was not ad pradicandum, to preach ; 
 useless, where his auditory was all the forlorn hope. 
 
 Fuller, The Worthies of England, Hampshire. 
 
 FORMALITY. It was observed above on the phrase, 
 i common sense, that a vast number of our words 
 have descended to us from abstruse sciences and spec 
 ulations, we accepting them often in a total uncon- 
 
 * The fearful are in the forlorn 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 s Works (Scott s edition), vol. vii. p. 303. 
 
78 FORMALITY FRANCE. 
 
 sciousncss of the quarter from which they come. 
 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, should 
 now mean something not merely so different, but so 
 opposite. 
 
 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 I hey do, they speak impertinently and 
 inartincially, this being but one of the causes that makes error become 
 heresy ; the adequate and perfect formality of heresy is whatsoever 
 makes the error voluntary and vicious. 
 
 J. Taylor, The Liberty of Prophesying, 2. 10. 
 
 FRANCE, ) We consider now, and consider right- 
 FRENCHMAN. I ly, that there was properly no France 
 before they were Franks ; and, speaking of the land 
 or people before the Frankish immigration, we use 
 Gaul, Gauls, and Gaulish ; just as we speak of Caesar s 
 invasion of Britain, not his invasion of England: our 
 fathers had no such scruples. 
 
 When Caesar saw his army prone to war, 
 And fates so bent, lest sloth and long delay 
 Might cross him, he withdrew his troops from France, 
 And in all quarters musters men for Rome. 
 
 Marlowe, The First Book of Lucan. 
 
FRANCE FRIPPERY. 79 
 
 A Frenchman together with a Frenchwoman, likewise a Grecian 
 man and woman, were let down alive in the beast-market into a vault 
 
 under the ground, stoned all about. 
 
 Holland, Livy, p. 467. 
 
 FRIGHTFUL. Now always active, that which inspires 
 fright ; but formerly as often passive , that which is, 
 or is liable to be, frightened. 
 
 The wild and frightful herds, 
 Not hearing other noise but this of chattering bird , 
 
 Feed fairly on the lawns. 
 
 Drayton, Polyolbion. 
 
 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 scoured, interpolated, and presented anew for 
 sale (officina vestium tritarum, Skinner) ; nor had 
 frippery then the contemptuous subaudition of worth- 
 lessness in the objects offered for sale which its pres 
 ent use would imply. 
 
 Enter Luke, with shoes, garters, fans, and roses. 
 Gold. Here he comes, sweating all over, 
 He shows like a walking frippery. 
 
 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 inhabit 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. 
 
80 FULSOME. 
 
 FULSOME, 1 I have seen it questioned whether in 
 FCLSOMENESS. J 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 overfulncss 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. 
 
 His lean, pale, hoar, and withered corpse grew fulsome, fair, and 
 
 fresh. 
 
 Golding, Grid s Metamorphosis, b. vii. 
 
 The next is Doctrine, in whose lips there dwells 
 A spring of honey, sweeter than its name, 
 Honey which never fulsome is, yet Jills 
 
 The widest souls. 
 
 Beaumont, Psyche, b. xix. st. 210. 
 
 Making her soul to loathe dainty meat, or putting a surfeit and 
 fulsomeness into all which she enjoys. 
 
 Rogers, Naaman the Syrian, p. 32. 
 
 Chaste and modest as he [Persius] is esteemed, it cannot be denied 
 but that in some places he is broad and fulsome. No decency is con 
 sidered; no fulsomeness omitted. 
 
 Drydcn, Dedication of Translations from Juvenal. 
 
GARB GARBLE. 81 
 
 G. 
 
 GARB. This is one of many words, whereof all the 
 meaning has run to the surface. A man s dress was 
 once only a portion, and a very small portion of his 
 i garb, which included his whole outward presentment 
 to other men ; now it is all. 
 
 First, for your garb, it must be grave and serious, 
 Very reserved and locked ; not tell a secret 
 On any terms, not to your father. 
 
 Ben Jonson, The Fox, 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, Ixxv. 
 
 A vtjjivonpiirtia in his person, a grave and a smiling garb compound 
 ed together to bring strangers into a liking of their welcome. 
 
 Racket, The Life of Archbishop Williams, part ii. p. 32. 
 
 GARBLE. Books only are garbled now ; and gar 
 bled extracts are extracts which have been dishon 
 estly made, which have been so shifted, mutilated, 
 and otherwise dealt with, that, while they are pre 
 sented as fair specimens, they convey a false impres 
 sion. It is not difficult to trace the downward prog 
 ress of the word. It is derived from the low Latin 
 garba, a wheatsheaf, and garbellare, to sift or 
 cleanse corn from any dust or rubbish which may have 
 become mingled with it. It was then applied to any 
 
 4* 
 
82 GARBLING GARLAND. 
 
 separation of the good from the bad, retaining that, 
 rejecting this, and used thus especially 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 the worse, and dis 
 missing the better. It is a very favorite word in its 
 earlier uses with Fuller. 
 
 Garbling of bow-staves (anno 1 R. 3, cap. 11 ) is the sorting or cul 
 ling 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 
 Bennct 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, The Worthies of England, London. 
 
 Garbling men s manners you did well divide, 
 To take the Spaniards wisdom, not their pride. 
 With French activity you stored your mind, 
 Leaving to them their fickleness behind ; 
 And soon did learn, your temperance was such, 
 A sober industry even from the Dutch. 
 
 Id., The 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, The New World of Words. 
 
 GARLAND. At present we know no other * garlands 
 but of flowers ; but garland was at one time a tech 
 nical name for the royal crown or diadem, and not a 
 poetical one, as might at first sight appear ; as witness 
 
GARLAND GAZETTE. 83 
 
 these words of Matthew of Paris in his Life of Hen 
 ry III. : Rex veste deaurata, et coronuLi aurea, qua3 
 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, The History of King Richard HI., p. 107. 
 
 What in me was purchased, 
 Falls unto thee in a more fairer sort ; 
 So thou the garland wear st successively. 
 
 Shakespeare, 2 Henry IV. Act iv. Sc. 4. 
 
 GAZETTE. An Italian word, signifying originally, as 
 is well known, a small piece of tin money current at 
 Venice ; which being the price at which the flying sheets 
 of news, first published there, were sold, in this way 
 gave to them their name ; and they also were called 
 4 gazettes. We see the word in this its secondary 
 sense, but not as yet thoroughly at home in English, 
 for it still retains an Italian termination, in Ben Jon- 
 son 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 the word in its 
 earlier use. 
 
 If you will have a stool, it will cost you a gazet, which is almost a 
 
 penny. 
 
 Coryat, Crudities, vol. ii. p. 15. 
 
84 GAZETTE GENEROSITY. 
 
 What monstrous and most painful circumstance 
 Is here to get some three or four gazettes, 
 Some threepence in the whole. 
 
 Ben Jonson, Volpone, Act ii. Sc. 1. 
 
 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 the turns which that serves 
 now. 
 
 Thanne Joseph was lad into Egepte, and bought him Potiphar, 
 the gelding of Pharao. 
 
 Gen. xxxix. 1. Wiclif. 
 
 And whanne thei weren come up of the water, the spirit of the 
 Lord ravyschid Filip, and the geldynge say hym no more. 
 
 Acts viii. 39. Wiclif. 
 
 Lysimachus was very angry, and thought great scorn that Deme 
 trius 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. 
 
 Nobility began in thine ancestors, and ended in thee ; and the gen 
 erosity that they gained by virtue, thou hast blotted by vice. 
 
 Lyly, Kuphucs and his England. 
 
 Their eyes are commonly black and small, noses little, nails almost 
 as long as their ringers, but serving to distinguish their generosity. 
 
 Harris, Voyages, vol. i. p. 465. 
 
GESTATION GLORY. 85 
 
 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, The Castle o/ 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, The Explanation of the Words of Art. 
 
 GLORY. ) < Glory is never employed now in the 
 GLORIOUS, j sense of vatw-glory, nor < glorious in 
 that of ; vaiw-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 
 
 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 inconvenience ; 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. 
 
 He [Anselm] little dreamt then that the weeding-hook of Refor 
 mation would after two ages pluck up his glorious poppy [prelacy] 
 from insulting over the good corn [presbytery]. 
 
 Milton, The Reason of Church Government, b. i. c 5. 
 
86 GOOD NATURE. 
 
 GOOD NATURE. As Metaphysics have yielded us 
 common sense, and logic formality, so we owe to 
 theology good nature. By it our elder divines un 
 derstood far more than we understand by it now ; 
 even all which it is possible for a man to have with 
 out 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 old theology was as 
 as nearly as possible expressed by the su<puta of Aris 
 totle (Eth. NIC. iii. 7). the genial preparedness for 
 the reception of every high teaching. 
 
 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 bv the grace of God, that which was 
 natural becomes now spiritual. 
 
 J. 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 natura; if there be any good thing in any 
 man, it is all from grace. That thing which we use to call <jood na 
 ture 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 fol 
 lowed that religion [the Pagan], it is not to be imputed to the influ 
 ence of that, but to some better cause ; to the relics of qcod 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 differences of good and evil ; 
 
GOOD NATURE GOSSIP. 87 
 
 deriding benignity, mercy, pity, gratitude, ingenuity; that is, all in 
 stances of good nature, as childish and silly dispositions. 
 
 Id., Sermon 6 on the Apostles Creed, 
 
 GOSPELLER. Now seldom used save in ritual lan 
 guage, and there designating the priest or deacon 
 who in the divine service reads the Gospel of the 
 day ; but once used as equivalent to Evangelist, and 
 subsequently applied to adherents of the Reformed 
 faith ; both which meanings have since departed from 
 it. 
 
 Mark, 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, Memorials 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 who would rather claim to be guardians of the 
 purity of their native tongue. c Gossip is one, being 
 still used by our peasantry in its first and etymologi 
 cal sense, namely, as a sponsor in baptism one sib 
 or akin in God, according to the doctrine of the me 
 dieval Church, that sponsors contracted a spiritual 
 affinity with one another, with the parents, and with 
 the child itself. Gossips, in this primary sense, 
 would ordinarily be intimate and familiar with one 
 another would have been so already, or through 
 
88 GOSSIP GRUDGE. 
 
 this affinity would have become so ; and thus the word 
 was next applied to all familiars and intimates. At 
 a later day it obtained the meaning which is now pre 
 dominant in it, namely, the idle, profitless talk, the 
 4 commeragc (which word has exactly the same his 
 tory), that too often finds 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 hypoc 
 risy ; charity, ostentation ; constancy, obstinacy ; gravity, pride ; hu 
 mility, abjection of spirit ; and so go through the whole parish of vir 
 tues, 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. 
 
 GRAVEL. This verb has lost now any but a second 
 ary and figurative meaning. But the way in which 
 to be gravelled should mean to be utterly perplexed 
 and brought to an intellectual standstill, the passage 
 quoted below will show. 
 
 And when we were fallen into a place between two seas, they 
 gravelled the ship [iinpcgerunt navem, Vulg.]. 
 
 Acts xxvii. 41. Rheims. 
 
 GRUDGE. Now to repine at the good which others 
 already have, or which we may be required to impart 
 
GRUDGE GUARD. 89 
 
 to them ; but it formerly implied open utterances of 
 discontent and displeasure with others, and did the 
 work which to murmur does now. Traces of this 
 still survive in our English Bible. 
 
 And the farisies and scribis gruechiden ; seiynge for this resceyveth 
 
 synful men and eteth with hem. 
 
 Luke xv. 2. Wiclif. 
 
 Yea without grudging Christ suffered the cruel Jews to crown Him 
 with most sharp thorns, and to strike Him with a reed. 
 
 Foxe, The Book of Martyrs; Examination of William Thorpe. 
 
 Use hospitality one to another without grudging [avev yoyywr^wy]. 
 
 1 Pet. iv. 9. Authorized Version. 
 
 GROPE. Now to feel /or, and uncertainly, as does 
 a blind man or one in the dark ; but once simply to 
 feel, to gripe or grasp. 
 
 Handis thei hav, and thei shal 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 have made all unsavoury. 
 
 Rogers, Naaman the Syrian, p. 231. 
 
 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 alto 
 gether 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. 
 
90 GUARD HANDSOME. 
 
 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, yarded with purple. 
 
 North, Plutarch s Lives, p. 492. 
 
 Give him a livery 
 More guarded than his fellows. 
 
 Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice, Act ii. Sc. 2. 
 
 H. 
 
 HAG. One of the many words which, applied for 
 merly to both sexes, arc now restrained only to one. 
 Our Dictionaries take no notice of the wider use of 
 the word. 
 
 And that old hag [Silenus] that with a staff his staggering limbs 
 
 doth stay, 
 Scarce able on his ass to sit for reeling every wa}\ 
 
 Golding, Ovid s Metamorphosis, b. iv. 
 
 HANDSOME, ) Now referred exclusively to come- 
 HANDSOMENESS. j liness, either literal or figurative. 
 It is of course closely connected witli 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 
 French and English Dictionary, habile, adroit, 
 
HANDSOME HARBINGER. 91 
 
 maniable, take precedence of 4 beau, < belle, as 
 French equivalents of it. 
 
 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 sarne weapon they can fight both 
 
 at hand and afar off. 
 
 Greenwey, Tacitus, vol. i. 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. 
 
 Philopoemen 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 hand 
 some for the same. 
 
 North, Plutarch s Lives, p. 306. 
 
 Both twain of them made haste, 
 
 And girding close for handsomeness their garments to their waist, 
 Bestirred their cunning hands apace. 
 
 Golding, Ovid s Metamorphosis, b. vi. 
 
 HARBINGER. This word belongs at present to our 
 poetical Xf gi?, and to that only ; its original signifi 
 cance 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 pre 
 pared a place and lodging, a harbor, 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, precisely assumed to Him 
 self the office of a harbinger, when He said, " I go 
 to prepare a place for you" (John xiv. 2). 
 
92 HARBINGER HARDY. 
 
 There was a harbinger who had lodged a gentleman in a very ill 
 room ; who expostulated with him somewhat rudely ; but the harbin 
 ger carelessly said, " You will take pleasure in it when you are out 
 of it." 
 
 Bacon, Apothegms. 
 
 I ll be myself the harbinger, and make joyful 
 The hearing of my wife with your approach. 
 
 Shakespeare, Macbeth, Act i. Sc. 4. 
 
 The fame of Frederick s valour and maiden fortune, never as yet 
 spotted with ill success, like a liarbint/cr hastening before, had pro 
 vided victory to entertain him at his arrival. 
 
 Fuller, The Holy War, b. iii. c. 31. 
 
 HARDY, j When used of persons, < hardy* means 
 HARDILY. } always now enduring, indifferent to fa 
 tigue, 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 connection with things, as 
 we should still speak of a i hardy, meaning thereby 
 a bold, assertion ; though never now of a hardy, if 
 we intended a bold or daring person. In respect of 
 the quotation from Lord Bacon, the reader must bear 
 in mind that his Charles the Hardy is Charles le 
 Temeraire, or Charles the Bold, as we always style 
 him now. 
 
 Hap helpeth Itardy man alway, quoth he. 
 
 Chaucer, The Legend of Good Women. 
 
 It is not to be forgotten what Commineus observeth of his first 
 master, duke Charles the Hardy, riamely, that he would communi 
 cate his secrets with none. 
 
 Bacon, Ettaya, 27. 
 
HARDY HARNESS. 93 
 
 Hardily [audactcr, Vulg.] he entride in to Pilat, and axide the 
 
 bodv of Jhesu. 
 
 Mark xv. 43. Wiclif. 
 
 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 con 
 tempt, implied nothing of that special form of sin to 
 which it exclusively refers at the present. 
 
 A sturdy harlot went hem ay behind, 
 That was his hostes man, and bare a sakke, 
 And what men gave him, laid it on his bakke. 
 
 Chaucer, The Sompnoures Tale. 
 
 No man but he and thou and such other false harlots praiseth any 
 such preaching. 
 
 Foxe, The Book of Martyrs ; The 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 assem 
 bly of harlots,* a kind of people of a lewd disposition and uncivil. 
 
 Id., Ib. vol. i. p. 435. 
 
 HARNESS. In French the difference between the 
 4 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 it 
 now in the second of these applications. 
 
 * Qui so harJotos appellant are the important words in Henry the 
 Third s letter to the Sheriff of Oxfordshire, requiring their disper 
 sion. 
 
94 HARNESS HEAR. 
 
 But when a stronger than lie comctli upon him and ovcrcomcth 
 him, he taketh from him his harness wherein he trusted, and divideth 
 his goods. 
 
 Luke xi. 22. Tyndale. 
 
 Those that sleep in Jesus shall God bring witli Him, and harness 
 them with the bright armour of life and immortality. 
 
 H. More, The Grand Mystery of Godliness, b. iv. c. 18. 
 
 HARVEST. It is remarkable that while spring, sum 
 mer, winter, have all their Anglo Saxon names, we 
 designate the other quarter of the year by its Latin 
 title autumn ; the word which should have designa 
 ted it, harvest, hearfest ( 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 har 
 vest than the Germans, who have transferred the 
 word from the former to the latter ; for it is closely 
 related with the Greek xap*ro .c and the Latin carpo. 
 Occasionally, however, as in the passage which fol 
 lows, harvest assumes with us also the signification 
 of autumn. 
 
 There stood the Springtime with a crown of fresh and fragrant 
 
 flowers ; 
 
 There waited Summer naked stark, all save a wheaten hat; 
 And Harvest smeared with treading grapes late at the pressing fat; 
 And lastly quaking for the cold stood Winter all forlorn. 
 
 Golding, Ovid s Metamorphosis, b. ii. 
 
 HEAR. Our scholars of the seventeenth century 
 occasionally use the Latin idiom, i to hear well, or 
 
HEAR HOBBY. 95 
 
 * 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 proceed 
 ings- 
 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 Christ 
 mas-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. 
 
 Bucket, The Life of Archbishop Williams, part i. p. 210 
 
 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 trans 
 fer, in the sense which it now has, of a favorite pur 
 suit which carries a man easily and pleasantly for 
 ward. 
 
 The French lackey and Irish footboy shrugging at the door, with 
 their master s hobby-horses, to ride to the new play. 
 
 Decker, The Gull s Hornbook, c. 5. 
 
 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, The Art of English Poesy, b. iii. c. 24. 
 
 A hobby-horse, or some such pretty toy, 
 A rattle would befit you better, boy. 
 
 Randolph, Poems, p. 19. 
 
96 HOMELY HOYDEN. 
 
 HOMELY. The etymology of homely which Mil 
 ton puts into the mouth of Comus 
 
 "It is for homely features to keep home; 
 They had their name hence" 
 
 witnesses that in his time it had the same meaning 
 which it now has. At an earlier day, however, it 
 much more nearly corresponded to the German i heim- 
 lich, that is, secret, inward, familiar, as those may 
 be presumed to be that share in a common home. 
 
 And the enemyes of a man ben thei that ben homeli with him. 
 
 Matt. x. 36. Wiclif ; cf. Judges xix. 4, and often. 
 
 God grant thee thine homly fo to espie ; 
 For in this world n is worse pestilence 
 Than homly fo, all day in thy presence. 
 
 Chaucer, The Merchantes Tale. 
 
 With all these men I was right homely, and communed with them 
 long time and oft. 
 
 Foxe, The Book of Martyrs ; The Examination of William Tliorpe. 
 
 HOYDEN. Now and for a long time since a clown 
 ish, ill-bred girl; yet I cannot doubt that Skinner is 
 right when he finds in it only another form of hea 
 then. 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, a 
 dweller on the heath ; then any living a wild, savage 
 life : thus, we have in Wiclif (Acts xxviii. 1), "And 
 Ik f then men [barbari, Vulg.] dide unto us not litil 
 
HOYDEN HUMOUR. 97 
 
 curtcsie ;" and only afterward was the word applied 
 to those who resisted to the last the humanizing influ 
 ences of the Christian faith. This * heathen is in 
 Dutch heyden ; 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 wench, 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 bucke, 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, babi- 
 
 onetto, rustico ; Bouaron. 
 
 Howell, Lexicon Tetraglotton. 
 
 HUMOUR, ^ The four c humours in a man, accord- 
 HUMOUROUS, > ing to the old physicians, were blood, 
 HUMOURIST. J choler, phlegm, and melancholy. So 
 long as these were duly mixed, all would be well. 
 But so soon as any of them unduly preponderated, the 
 man became humourous, one 4 humour or another 
 bearing too great a sway in him. As such, his con 
 duct 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 
 
 5 
 
98 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, 
 and then in that which we now employ. 
 
 In which [kingdom of heaven] neither such high-flown enthusiasts, 
 nor any dry churlish reasoncrs and disptitcrs, 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, The Grand Mystery of Gcdliness, b. viii. c. 15. 
 
 Yet such is now the duke s condition, 
 
 That he misconstrues all that you have done ; 
 
 The duke is humourous. 
 
 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 (wl^at is little better than that), instead of the living 
 righteousness of Christ, lie will magnify himself in some humourous 
 pieces of holiness of his own. 
 
 H. More, The Grand Mystery of Godliness, b. viii. c. 14. 
 
 The seamen arc a nation by themselves, a humourous and fantastic 
 people. 
 
 Clarendon, The History of the Great Rebellion. 
 
 Wretched men, that shake oil the true comely habit of religion, to 
 bespeak them a new-fashioned suit of profession at an humourist s 
 shop ! 
 
 Adams, The DrviVs Banquet, p 52. 
 
IDIOT. 99 
 
 I. 
 
 IDIOT. A word with a very interesting and instruc 
 tive history, which, however, is only fully intelligible 
 by a reference to the Greek. The ISibrrg 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 un 
 developed, as distinguished from the educated ; and 
 only after it had run through these courses did idiot 
 come to signify what /Wir^c never did, the man whose 
 mental powers are not merely unexercised but defi 
 cient, 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. 
 
 And here, again, their allegation out of Gregory the First and 
 Damascene, That images be the laymen s hooks, and that pictures 
 are the Scripture of idiots and simple persons, is worthy to he con 
 sidered. 
 
 Homilies ; Sermon against Peril of Idolatry. 
 
 It is clear, hy Bellarmine s confession, that S. Austin affirmed that 
 the plain places of Scripture are sufficient to all laics, and all idiots or 
 private persons. 
 
 J. Taylor, A Dissuasive from Popery, part ii. b. i. 1. 
 
 Christ was received of idiots, of the vulgar people, and of the sim 
 pler sort, while He was rejected, despised, and persecuted even to 
 death by the high priests, lawyers, scribes, doctors, and rabbies. 
 
 Blount, Philostrntufi. p. 237. 
 
100 IMP IMPOTENT. 
 
 IMP. Employed in nobler senses formerly than 
 now. To imp is properly to engraft, and an imp 
 a scion or engrafted 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. 
 
 Of fehlc trees there comen wretched impes. 
 
 The Monkes Prologue. 
 
 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 toward 
 
 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, | The inner connection between weak- 
 
 IMPOTENCE. j ness and violence is finely declared in 
 
 Latin in the fact that impotens implies both ; so 
 
 once did impotent in English, though it now retains 
 
 only the meaning of weak. 
 
 An impotent lover 
 
 Of women for a flash ; but his fires quenched, 
 Hating as deadly. 
 
 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. 
 
 Hocket, The 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 
 
IMPOTENT INDIFFERENT. 101 
 
 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, The 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. 
 
 J. Taylor, Holy Living, c. 2. 6. 
 
 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 ap 
 propriated the word, as in Greek it made dujxfc and 
 op7j 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 en 
 treaty, 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, The Holy War, b. iv. c. 28. 
 
 INCIVILITY. See < CIVIL, CIVILITY. 
 
 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. 
 
 INDIFFERENT, "j It is a striking testimony of the low 
 INDIFFERENCE, > general average which we have 
 
 INDIFFERENTLY. J Come to assume common to most 
 
102 INDIFFERENT INDOLENCE. 
 
 tilings, that a thing which docs not differ from others, 
 is thereby qualified as poor ; a sentence of deprecia 
 tion is pronounced upon it when it is declared to be 
 indifferent. When in Greek oVx^ psjv means praes- 
 tare, and TO. hacpipwra. praestantiora, we have exact 
 ly the same feeling embodying itself at the other end. 
 But this use of these words is modern. c Indifferent 
 was impartial once, not making" differences, where 
 none really were. 
 
 God recoiveth 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 burden 
 some than the sum. 
 
 Fuller, The Holy State, b. ii. c. 11. 
 
 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. 
 
 The Book of Common Prayer. 
 
 INDOLENCE. Indolentia was a word first invented 
 by Cicero, when he was obliged to find some equiva 
 lent for the airadgia 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 au 
 thors but himself, as also from the fact that Seneca a 
 little later proposed i impatientia as the Latin equiv 
 alent for diecL&eta, implying that none such had hitherto 
 
INDOLENCE INGENIOUS. 103 
 
 been found. The word lias taken firmer root in Eng 
 lish than it ever did in Latin ; at the same time it has 
 lost the accuracy of use which it had in the philo 
 sophical schools, where it signified a state of freedom 
 from passion and pain, as it also did among our own 
 writers of the Caroline period, and even later; and 
 means now a condition of languid non-exertion. 
 
 Now, to begin with fortitude, they say it is the mean between coward 
 ice and rush audacity, of which twain the one is a defect, the other an 
 excess of the ireful passion ; liberality between niggardise and prodi 
 gality, 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 priva 
 tion of natural affections. Inordinateness of affections may some 
 times make some men like some beasts ; but indolency, absence, emp 
 tiness, privation of affections, makes any man, at all times, like stones, 
 
 like dirt. 
 
 Donne, Simons, 1640, p. 156. 
 
 Indolence or indolency, a being insensible to pain or grief. 
 
 Phillips, The New World of Words. 
 
 INGENIOUS, ^ We are now pretty well agreed in 
 INGENUOUS, I respect of the use of these words ; 
 INGENUITY, [but there was a time when the ut- 
 IXGENUOUSNESS. j termost confusion reigned amongst 
 them. Thus, in the first and second quotations be 
 low, 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 three 
 
104 INFENIOUS. 
 
 quotations which follow stands for our present in 
 genuousness/ and ingenuousness in the last for in 
 genuity. In respect of ingenious and ingenuous, 
 the arrangement at which we have now arrived re 
 garding their several meanings namely, that the 
 first indicates mental, the second moral qualities is 
 good ; ingenious being from ingenium, and ingen 
 uous from ingenuus. But ingenuity, being from 
 6 ingenuous, should have kept the meaning, which it- 
 has now quite let go, of innate nobleness of disposi 
 tion ; while ingeniousness, against which there could 
 have been no objection to which ingenuousness is 
 not equally exposed, might have expressed what in 
 genuity does now. 
 
 He is neither wise nor faithful, but a flatterer, that denies his spirit 
 ingenious freedom. 
 
 Hacket, The Life of Archbishop Williams, part i. p. 150. 
 
 An ingenious person will rather wear a plain garment of his own 
 than a rich livery, the mark of servitude. 
 
 Bates, Spiritual Perfection ; Preface. 
 
 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. 
 
 J. 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. 
 
 It is the part of ingenuity to acknowledge by whom a man hath 
 
 profited. 
 
 Oley, Preface to Dr. Jackson s Works, vol. i. p. 25. 
 
INGKNIOUS INSOLENT. 105 
 
 It [gratitude] is such a debt as is left to every man s ingenuity (in 
 respect of 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, The Holy State, b. ii. c. 19. 
 
 INSOLENT, 1 The i insolent is properly no more 
 INSOLENCE, j than the unusual. This, as the viola 
 tion 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 
 
 " peragro loca, nullius ante 
 Trita jugo" 
 
 in this way to be insolent or original, as we should 
 now say, may be his highest praise. The epithet fu 
 rious 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, The Art of English Poesy, b. i. c. 31. 
 
 Her great excellence 
 
 Lifts me above the measure of my might, 
 That being filled with furious insolence 
 I feel myself like one yrapt in spright. 
 
 Spenser, Colin Clout s come home again, 
 
 5* 
 
106 INSTITUTE JACOBIN. 
 
 INSTITUTE, ^ These all had once in English mcan- 
 
 INSTITUTEU, > ings coextensive with those of the 
 
 INSTITUTION. J Latin words which they represent. 
 
 We now inform, instruct (the images are nearly the 
 
 same), but we do not institute, children any more. 
 
 A painful schoolmaster, that hath in hand 
 To institute the flower of all a land, 
 Gives longest lessons unto those, where Heaven 
 The ablest wits and aptest wills hath given. 
 
 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 instltuter of his 
 
 youth. 
 
 Milton, The History of England, b. iii. 
 
 A Short Catechism for the institution of young persons in the Chris 
 tian Religion. 
 
 Title of a Treatise by Jeremy Taylor. 
 
 J. 
 
 JACOBIN. The great French Revolution has stamped 
 itself too deeply and terribly upon the mind of Europe 
 for Jacobin 1 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 fc Jacobin was once a Dominican 
 friar, though this name did not extend beyond France. 
 
 Now am I young and stout and bold, 
 Now am I Robert, now Robin, 
 Now frcro Alinour, now Jacobin. 
 
 Chaucer, The Romaunt of the Rose, 6339. 
 
JACOBIN KNAVE. 107 
 
 Agent for England, send thy mistress word 
 What this detested Jacobin hath done. 
 
 Marlowe, The Massacre at Paris, Act iii. Sc. 4. 
 
 K. 
 
 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. 
 
 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 kins 
 men could amend his cause, and make him a kindly king. 
 
 Sir T. More, The 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 aery 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. 
 
 Andrews, Sermons, vol. iv. p. 253. 
 
 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 
 
108 KNAVE LACE. 
 
 it has now ! Note the same history in the German 
 4 Bube, Dime, * Schalk. 
 
 If it is a knave child, sle ye him; if it is a womman, kepe ye. 
 
 Exodus i. 16. Wiclif. 
 
 The time is come ; a knave childe she bare. 
 
 Chaucer, Tfie Man of Lawes Tale. 
 
 murderous slumber, 
 Lay st thou thy leaden mace upon my boy, 
 That plays thee music? gentle knave, good night. 
 
 Shakespeare, Julius Ccesar, Act. iv. Sc. 3. 
 
 KNUCKLE. The German Knochel 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. 
 
 Thou, Nilus, wert assigned to stay her pains and travels past, 
 To which as soon as lo came with much ado, at last 
 With weary knuckles on thy brim she kneeled sadly down. 
 
 Golding, Ovid s Metamorphosis, b. i. 
 But when 
 
 " his scornful muse could ne er abide 
 
 With tragic shoes her ancles for to hide" 
 
 the pace of the verse told me that her maukin knuckles were never 
 
 shapen to that royal buskin. 
 
 Milton, Apology for Smectymnuus, p. 186. 
 
 L. 
 
 LACE. That which now commonly bears this name 
 has it 011 the score of its curiously-woven th reads ; 
 
LACE LANDSCAPE. 109 
 
 but lace, probably identical with the Latin ; lacque- 
 us, tliough it has not reached us through the Latin, 
 being the same word, only differently spelt, as latch, 
 is mostly used by our earlier writers in the more prop 
 er sense of a snare. 
 
 And in my mind I measure pace by pace, 
 To seek the place where I myself had lost, 
 That day that I was tangled in the lace 
 In seeming slack, that knitteth ever most. 
 
 Surrey, The Restless State of a Lover. 
 
 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 
 * lands&i// is only a solitary example of an earlier 
 form of the same termination which we meet in friend- 
 shipj lords/tip, fellows/4 1/?, and the like. As these 
 mean the manner or fashion of a friend, of a lord, 
 and so on, so 4 landscape the manner or fashion of 
 the land ; and in our earlier English this rather as 
 the pictured or otherwise imitated 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, Etymo- 
 logicon, s. v. Landskip : Tabula chorographica, pri- 
 mario autem terra, provincia, seu topographica tfxiaypa- 
 (p/a. 
 
 The sins of other women show in landslip, far off and full of shad 
 ow ; hers [a harlot s] in statue, near hand and bigger in the life. 
 
 Sir Thomas Overbury, Characters. 
 
110 LANDSCAPE LEWD. 
 
 London, as YOU know, is our EXX<W0s EXXaj, our England of Eng 
 land, and our landslip and representation of the whole island. 
 
 Hacket, The Life of Archbishop Williams, part ii. p. 59. 
 
 That detestable traitor, that prodigy of nature, that opprobrium of 
 mankind, that landscape of iniquity, that sink of sin, and that compen 
 dium of baseness, who now calls himself our Protector. 
 
 An Address sent by the Anabaptists to the King, 1658, in 
 Clarendon, The History of the Great Rebellion, b. xv. 
 
 LATCH. Few things now are latched or caught 
 except a door or casement ; but the word, being the 
 same as to lace, was once of much wider use. 
 
 Those that remained threw darts at our men, and latchtng our darts, 
 
 sent them again at us. 
 
 Golding, Caesar, 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. 
 
 LEVY. Troops are now raised, or levied. indiffer 
 ently ; 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, Liry, p. 1178. 
 
 LEWD, ) There are three distinct stages in the 
 
 LEWDNESS. j 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. With- 
 
LEWD. Ill 
 
 out 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 un 
 learned. 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 doc 
 trines, would be unexercised in the practices, of Chris 
 tianity, 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. 
 
 Archa Dei in the olde law Levytes it kepte ; 
 
 Had never lewed men leve to leggen honde on that cheste. 
 
 Piers Ploughman, 7668. 
 
 For as moche as the curatis ben often so lewed, that thei under- 
 stonden 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 peple. 
 
 Wycliffe Mss., p. 5. 
 
 Of sondry doutes thus they jangle and trcte, 
 As lewed people demen comunly 
 Of thinges that ben made more subtilly 
 Than they can in hir lewednesse comprehend. 
 
 Chaucer, The Squieres Tale. 
 
 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. 
 
112 LEWD LITIGIOUS. 
 
 If it were a matter of wrong or wicked lewdness [/fadcotipyityia], O 
 ye Jews, reason would that I should bear with you. 
 
 Acts xviii. 14. Authorized Version. 
 
 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 re 
 lation to what a man believed, and acquired the sense 
 which it now has, a libertine being one who has re 
 leased himself from all moral restraints, and especial 
 ly 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, fumilists, quakers, and other 
 enthusiasts, which issue from this corrupted fountain. 
 
 J. Taylor, A Dissuasive from Popery, part ii. b. 1. 2. 
 
 It is not to be denied that the said libertine doctrines do more con 
 tradict 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 object 
 ive to a subjective sense. Things were litigious 
 once, which offered matter of litigation ; persons are 
 
LITIGIOUS LIVELY. 113 
 
 litigious now, who are prone to litigation. 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. 1 1 1 1 . 
 
 Of the articles gainsaid by a great outcry, three and no more did 
 seem to be litigious. 
 
 Hacket, The Life of Archbishop Williams, part i. p. 140. 
 
 No fences parted fields, nor marks nor bounds 
 Distinguished acres of litigious grounds. 
 
 Dryden, Virgil s Georgics, b. i. 193, 4. 
 
 LIVELY. This was once nearly, if not altogether, 
 equipollent with living. We have here the explana 
 tion of a circumstance which many probably have 
 noted and regretted in the Authorized Version of the 
 New Testament, namely, that while XWov ^wv-ra at 
 1 Pet. ii. 4 is a living stone, X/4o wvr5cr, which fol 
 lows immediately, ver. 5, is only lively stones, liv 
 ing being thus brought down to 4 lively, with no cor 
 respondent 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. 
 
 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. 
 
LIVELY LUCID INTERVAL. 
 
 Had I but seen thy picture in this plight, 
 It would have madded me ; what shall I do 
 Now I behold thy lively body so ? 
 
 Shakespeare, Titus Andronicus, Act iii. Sc. 1. 
 
 That his dear father might interment have, 
 See, the young man entered a lively grave. 
 
 Massinger, The Fatal Dowry, Act ii. Sc. 1. 
 
 LIVERY. It need hardly be observed that the ex 
 planation of livery which Spenser offers (see below), 
 is perfectly correct ; but we do not any longer recog 
 nize the second of those uses of the word there men 
 tioned by him. It is no longer applied to the ration, 
 or stated portion of food, delivered at stated periods 
 (the (TiTOfxsVpiov of Luke. xii. 42), either to the members 
 of a household, to soldiers, or to others. 
 
 What livery is, we by common use in England know well enough, 
 namely, that is, allowance of horse-meat, as to keep horses at livery, 
 the which word, I guess, is derived of livering or delivering forth their 
 nightly food. So in groat houses the livery is said to be served up for 
 all night. And livery is also the upper weed which a servant-man 
 wen re th, so called, as I suppose, for that it was delivered and taken 
 from him at pleasure. 
 
 Spenser, View of the State of Ireland. 
 
 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 mam-bet, and of silver two great pots with 
 white wine, and sugar, to the weight of n pound, c. 
 
 Cavendish, The Li fe of Cardinal HW.sry 
 
 LUCID INTERVAL. We limit this at present to the 
 brief and transient season when a mind, ordinarily 
 
LUCID INTERVAL LUMBER. 115 
 
 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 be 
 low, in each of which its application is different, will 
 show. 
 
 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 Pisyah Sight of Palestine, b. iv. c. 2. 
 
 Some beams of wit on other souls may fall, 
 Strike through, and make a lucid interval: 
 But Shadwell s genuine night admits no ray, 
 His rising fogs prevail upon the day. 
 
 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 pleasure. 
 
 South, Sermons, 1744, vol. viii. p. 403. 
 
 Thus he [Lord Lyttleton] 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 Lyttleton. 
 
 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 
 
116 LUMBER LURCH. 
 
 the Lombard banker and broker stored his pledges ; 
 lumber then, as in the passage from Butler, the 
 pawns and pledges themselves. As these would nat 
 urally 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 mean- 
 
 Lumber, potius lumbar, as to put one s clothes to lumbar, i. e. pig- 
 
 nori dare, oppignorare. 
 
 Skinner, Etymologicon. 
 
 And by an action falsely laid of trover 
 The lumber for their proper goods recover. 
 
 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 BaiUie and of Lady Griscll 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 4 lurks, for lurk 
 and lurch are identical, 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. 
 
LURCH LUXURY. 117 
 
 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 he more nim 
 ble 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. 
 
 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, The Holy War, b. i. c. 11. 
 
 LUXURY, I Luxuria in classical Latin was very 
 LUXURIOUS, j much what our luxury is now. The 
 meaning which in our earlier English was its only one, 
 namely, indulgence in sins of the flesh, is derived from 
 its use in the medieval ethics, where it never means 
 anything else but this. The weakening of the influ 
 ence of the scholastic theology, joined to a nearer ac 
 quaintance with classical Latinity, has probably caused 
 its return to the classical meaning. In the definition 
 given by Phillips (see below), the word may be no 
 ticed in the process of transition from its old meaning 
 to its new, the old still remaining, but the new super 
 induced upon it. 
 
 O foule lust of luxurie, to thin ende 
 Not only that thou taintest mannes mind, 
 But veraily thou wolt his body shende. 
 
 Chaucer, The Man of Lawes Tale. 
 
118 LUXURY MAGNIFICENT. 
 
 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, The New World of Words. 
 
 She knows the heat of a luxurious bed. 
 
 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. 
 
 M. 
 
 MAGNIFICENT, ) Frequently used by our elder wri- 
 MAGNIFICENCE. / ters where we should employ mu 
 nificent or generous. In their employment of the 
 word, as well as in ours, lies the notion of cost and 
 large outlay, only in theirs this as bestowed by men 
 upon others, in ours on themselves. There lay behind 
 both uses an earlier and a nobler than either, 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 bccometh 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 to take and receive of others. 
 
 Holland, Plutarch s Morals, p. 1147. 
 
MAGNIFICENT MAKE. 119 
 
 Am I close-handed, 
 Because I scatter not among you that 
 I must not call my own ? know, you court-leeches, 
 A prince is never so magnificent 
 As when he s sparing to enrich a few 
 With the injuries of many. 
 
 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. 
 
 MAKE, ) It would be curious to determine whether 
 MAKER, j maker, as equivalent to poet, and to 
 make as applied to the exercise of the poet s art, are 
 words of genuine home-growth, or mere imitations of 
 the Greek wr^s and -rroisrv, a point which Sir P. Sid 
 ney, as will be seen below, declines to determine. 
 There are so many words and in so many languages 
 which mark men s sense that invention, and in a cer 
 tain sense creation, is the essential character of the 
 poet, such as the Saxon song-smith, the French 
 4 trouvere, troubadour, that one might be almost 
 tempted to think of the words not as introduced from 
 without, but as a spontaneous birth of our own tongue. 
 At the same time it must be owned as against this is 
 the fact, that the words are not found in any book 
 anterior to the revival of the study of the Greek lit 
 erature and language in England ; and Sir J. Harring 
 ton affirms (Apology of Poetry, p. 2), though in this 
 he is certainly mistaken, that Puttenham in his Art 
 
120 MAKE MANURE. 
 
 of English Poesy, 1589, was the first who gave make 
 and maker this meaning. 
 
 The God of shepherds, Tityrus, is dead, 
 Who taught me, homely as I can, to make. 
 
 Spenser, The Shepherd s Calendar, June. 
 
 The old famous poet Chaucer, whom for his excellency and won 
 derful skill in making, his scholar Lidgate (a worthy scholar of so 
 excellent a master) calleth the lode-star 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, The Art of English Poesy, b. ii. c. 8. 
 
 The Greeks named the poet TTO^TJ??, which name, as the most ex 
 cellent, hath gone through other languages. It cometh of this word 
 noutv, 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, The Defence of Poetry. 
 
 MANURE. This is the same word as manoeuvre, 
 to work with the hand ; and thus, to till or cultivate 
 the earth ; this tillage being in earlier periods of so 
 ciety the great and predominant labor of the hands. 
 We restrain the word now to one particular branch 
 of this cultivation, but our ancestors made it to em 
 brace the whole. 
 
 It [Japan] is mountainous and craggy, full of rocks and stony 
 places, so that the third part of this empire is not inhabited or ma 
 nured 
 
 Memorials of Japan (Hackluyt Society), p. 3. 
 
 A rare and excellent wit untaught doth bring forth many good 
 
MANURE MECHANICAL. 121 
 
 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, The Holy War, b. ii. c. 11. 
 
 MEASLES. This has only been by later use restrained 
 to one kind of spotted sickness ; but meazel (it is 
 spelt in innumerable ways) was once leprosy, or more 
 often the leper himself, and the disease, meselry. 
 
 Forsothe he was a stronge man and riche, but mesell. 
 
 4 Kings v. 1. Wiclif. 
 
 In this same year the mysseles thorow oute Cristendom were slaun- 
 dered that thei had mad covenaunt with Sarasenes for to poison all 
 
 Christen men. 
 
 Capgrave, Chronicle of England, p. 186. 
 
 He [Pope Deodatus] kissed a mysel, and sodeynly the mysel was 
 
 whole. 
 
 Id., Ib., p. 95. 
 
 MECHANICAL. This 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 /Suvauox, which, expressing first the sitting by 
 the stove, as one plying a handicraft might do, came 
 afterward, in obedience to certain constant tendencies 
 of language, to imply the man ethically illiberal. 
 
 Base and mechanical niggardise they [flatterers] account temperate 
 
 frugality. 
 
 Holland, Plidarch s Morals, p. 93. 
 
 6 
 
122 MECHANICAL MEDITERRANEAN. 
 
 Base dunghill villain, and mechanical. 
 
 Shakespeare, 2 Henry VI. Act i. Sc. 3. 
 
 It was never a good world, since employment was counted me- 
 
 chanick, 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 
 1 meddling and being meddlesome, and only condemns 
 the latter. 
 
 In the drynke that she mcddlid to you, mynge ye double to her. 
 
 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 [<iv avy^p^vrai] with the Sa 
 maritans. 
 
 John iv. 9. Cranmer. 
 
 We beseech you, brethren, that ye study to be quiet, and to meddle 
 with your own business. 
 
 1 T/tcss. iv. 10, 11. Tyndale. 
 
 Tho he, that had well y-conned his lere, 
 Thus medled his talk with many a tear. 
 
 Spenser, The Shepherd s Calendar, May. 
 
 MEDITERRANEAN. Only seas are mediterranean 
 now, and indeed we may say, only one Sea ; but there 
 is no reason why cities and countries should not be 
 characterized as mediterranean as well. We have 
 preferred, however, to employ inland. 
 
 An old man, full of days, and living still in your mediterranean 
 
 city, Coventry. 
 
 Henry Holland, Preface to Holland s Cyropadia, 
 
MEDITERRANEAN MELANCHOLY. 123 
 
 It [Arabia] hath store of cities as well mediterranean as maritime. 
 
 Holland, Ammiamts. 
 
 MEDLEY. It is plain from the frequent use of the 
 French c melee in the description of battles that we 
 feel the want of a parallel English word. There 
 have even been attempts, though hardly successful 
 ones, to naturalize melee, and as i voice has become 
 in English i volley, that so i melee should become 
 melley. Perhaps, as Tennyson has sanctioned these, 
 employing mellay in his Princess, they may now suc 
 ceed. But there would have been no need of this, 
 nor yet of borrowing a foreign word, 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 hand-fight. The 
 medley continued above three hours, and the hope of victory hung in 
 
 equal balance. 
 
 Holland, Livg, p. 1119. 
 
 MELANCHOLY. This has now ceased, nearly or al 
 together, 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, al 
 ways restrained to this peculiar form of mental un- 
 soundness; thus, Burton s Anatomy of Melancholy 1 
 has not to do with this one form of madness, but with 
 all. This, however, was its prevailing use, and here 
 
124 MELANCHOLY MERE. 
 
 is to be found the link of connection between its pres 
 ent use, as a deep pensiveness or sadness, and its past. 
 
 That property of melancholy, whereby men become to be delirous 
 in some one point, their judgment standing untouched in others. 
 
 H. More, A brief Discourse of Enthusiasm , sect. 14. 
 
 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 melan 
 choly miscreant were in the plot [the Duke of Buckingham s murder], 
 }-et in foro Dei many were guilty of this blood, that rejoiced it was 
 
 spilt. 
 
 Hackct, The 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 an 
 other. 
 
 Bishop Reynolds, The Passions and Faculties of 
 
 the Soul of Man, c. 39. 
 
 MERE, 1 There is a good note on these words, and 
 MERELY, j on the changes of meaning which they 
 have undergone, in Craik s English of Shakespeare, 
 p. 80. lie there says : " Merely (from the Latin 
 merus and mere) means purely, only. It separates 
 that which it designates and qualifies from every thing 
 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." 
 
ME RE -METAL. 125 
 
 Our wine is here mingled with water and with myrrh ; there [in 
 the life to come] it is mere and unmixed. 
 
 J. Tavlor, Tlie 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. Phaethon s car went but 
 a day ; and the three years drought, in the time of Elias, was but par 
 ticular, and left people alive. 
 
 Bacon, Essays, 58. 
 
 Fve on t ! O fve ! tis an unweeded garden, 
 
 That grows to seed ; things rank and gross in nature 
 
 Possess it merely. 
 
 Shakespeare, Hamlet. Act i. Sc. 2. 
 
 MESS. This used continually to be applied to a 
 quaternion, or group of four persons or things. Prob 
 ably 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. 
 
 Where are your mess\ of sons to back yon now ? 
 
 Shakespeare, 3 Henry VI. Act i. Sc. 4. 
 
 There lacks a fourth thing to make up the mess. 
 
 Latimer, Sermon 5. 
 
 METAL. The Latin ( metallum signified a mine be 
 fore it signified the metal which was found in the 
 mine ; and Jeremy Taylor uses metal in this sense 
 of mine. I am not certain whether this may not be 
 a latinism peculiar to him, as he has of such not a 
 
 * A recent editor of Bacon, I need hardly say not the most recent, 
 has made a hopeless confusion by changing the and into but, evi 
 dently from not understanding the old use of merely. 
 
 t Edward, George, Richard, and Edmund. 
 
126 METAL MINUTE. 
 
 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 some 
 where 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. 
 
 J. 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 philosoph 
 ical speculation, or in the ethical treatment of them 
 selves or others. 
 
 The finest methodists, according to Aristotle s golden rule of artifi 
 cial bounds, condemn geometrical precepts in arithmetic, or arithmet 
 ical precepts in geometry, as irregular and abusive. 
 
 G. Harvey, Pierce s Supererogation, p. 117. 
 
 All of us have some or other tender parts of our souls, which we 
 cannot endure should be ungcntly touched ; every man must be his 
 own methodist to find them out. 
 
 Jackson, Justifying Faith, b. iv. c. 5. 
 
 MINUTE. i Minutes are now minute portions of 
 time ; they might once be minute portions of any 
 tiling. i Mite, as the quotation from Wiclif plainly 
 
MINUTE MISCREANT. 127 
 
 shows, is contracted from minute, being a minute 
 portion of money. 
 
 But whanne a pore widcwe was come, sche cast two mynutis, that 
 
 is a fcrthing. 
 
 Mark xii. 42. Wiclif. 
 
 Let us, with the poor widow of the Gospel, at least give^ two 
 
 minutes. 
 
 Becon, The Nosegay, 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. 
 
 J. Taylor, 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 in 
 dicate 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. 
 
128 MISCREANT MISER. 
 
 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. 
 
 Curse, miscreant, when thou comest to the stake. 
 
 Shakespeare, 1 Henry VI. Act v. Sc. 2. 
 
 The consort and the principal servants of Soliman had been hon 
 ourably restored without ransom ; and the emperor s generosity to 
 the miscreant was interpreted as treason to the Christian cause. 
 
 Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, c. 58. 
 
 MISER, "| We may notice a curious shifting of 
 MISERY, > parts in the words miser, misery, 
 MISERABLE. J miserable. There was a time when 
 the iniser was the wretched man, he is now the cov 
 etous ; at the same time i misery, which is now wretch 
 edness, 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 i 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. I may mention here 
 that 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 noth- 
 
MISER MODEL. 129 
 
 ing; 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. Kheims. 
 
 Vouchsafe to stay your steed for humble miser s sake. 
 
 Spenser, The 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 Caesar s] misery and niggardli 
 ness, gave unto every band a number of wethers to sacrifice, and fifty 
 silver drachmas to every soldier. 
 
 Id., 76. 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, miser 
 able; and by the judgment of the miserable, lavish. 
 
 Hooker, Ecclesiastical Polity, b. v. c. 65. 
 
 Miss. Now to be conscious of the loss of, nearly 
 answers to the Latin 4 desiderare, but once to do with 
 out, to dispense with. 
 
 But as tis, 
 
 We cannot miss him ; he does make our fire, 
 Fetch in our wood, and serves in offices 
 
 That profit us. 
 
 Shakespeare, The Tempest, Act i. Sc. 2. 
 
 I will have honest valiant souls about me : 
 I cannot miss thee. 
 
 Beaumont and Fletcher, The Mad Lover, Act ii. 
 
 MODEL. It needs hardly to be observed that 4 model* 
 is module/ or < modulus, a diminutive of modus ; 
 
 6* 
 
130 MODEL MOUNTEBANK. 
 
 but this diminutive sense which once went constantly 
 with the word, and which will alone explain the quo 
 tations which follow, when it lies in the word now, 
 lies in it only by accident. 
 
 O England, model to thy inward greatness, 
 Like little body with a mighty heart. 
 
 Shakespeare, Henry V., Act ii. Chorus. 
 
 And nothing can we call our own but death, 
 And that small model of the barren earth 
 Which serves as paste and cover to our bones. 
 
 Id , Richard If., 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, J. Pisgah Sight of Palestine, b. iii. c. 3. 
 
 MOUNTEBANK. Now any antic fool; but once re 
 strained 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 : " a 
 fellow above the vulgar more by three planks and two 
 empty hogsheads than by any true skill" (Whitlock, 
 Zootomia, p. 436). 
 
 Much like to these mount-bank chirurgians, who for to have the 
 greater practice make show of their cunning casts and operations of 
 their art in public theatres. 
 
 Holland, Plutarch s Morals, p. 111. 
 
 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. 
 
MOUNTEBANK NAMELY. 131 
 
 Above the reach of antidotes, the power 
 Of the famed Pontic mountebank to cure. 
 
 Oldham, Third Satire upon the Jesuits. 
 
 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 
 respect of this last pair the refinement is of somewhat 
 late introduction. At one time they were mere sy 
 nonyms. 
 
 Peucestas, having feasted them in the kingdom of Persia, and given 
 every soldier a mutton to sacrifice, thought he had won great favor and 
 
 credit among them. 
 
 North, Plutarch s Lives, p. 505. 
 
 A starved mutton s carcass would hotter fit their palates. 
 
 B. Jonson, The Sad Shepherd, Act i. Sc. 2. 
 
 N. 
 
 NAMELY. Now only designates ; but, like the Ger 
 man namentlich, once designated as first and chief, 
 as above all. 
 
 Sir Richard Ratclife and Sir William Catesby, which, longing for 
 no more partners of the prince s favour, and namely not for him [Sir 
 James Tyrell], whose pride they wist would bear no peer, kept him 
 by secret drifts out of all secret trust. 
 
 Sir T. More, The History of King Richard III. 
 
132 NAMELY NEPHEW. 
 
 For there are many disobedient, and talkers of vanity, and deceiv 
 ers of minds, namely [udXn] 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. He is at present the scientific student 
 of nature ; but in the sixteenth and seventeenth cen 
 turies the name was often given to the deist, as one 
 who denied Revelation and any but a religion of na 
 ture. " Natural religion men" such were sometimes 
 called. 
 
 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 natu 
 ralist myself, that I might, if it were possible, win him off from down 
 right atheism. 
 
 H. More, An 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, A Treatise of Christ s Everlasting Priesthood, b. x. c. 8. 4. 
 
 NEPHEW. Restrained in our present use to the son 
 of a brother or a sister ; but formerly of much laxer 
 
NEPHEW NICE. 133 
 
 use, a grandson, or even a remoter lineal descendant. 
 4 Nephew in fact has undergone exactly the same 
 change of meaning that ncpos 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. 
 
 The warts, black moles, spots and freckles of fathers, not appear 
 ing 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 I he 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. 
 
 f 
 
 If any widow have children or nephews [IVyo>a], let them learn first 
 to show piety at home, and to requite their parents. 
 
 1 Tim. v. 4. Authorized Version. 
 
 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 
 i 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. [Antony a Wood] was with him several times, ate and 
 drank with him, and had several discourses with him concerning arms 
 
134 NICE NOISOME. 
 
 and armory, which ho understood well ; but he found him nice and 
 supercilious. 
 
 Anthony a Wood, Athcnce Ojconienses, 1848, vol. i. p. 161. 
 
 NIECE. This word has undergone the same change 
 and limitation of meaning as i nephew (q. v.) 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. 
 
 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. xxxi. 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 Csesar] 
 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. At present offensive and moving disgust ; 
 but once noxious and actually hurtful. In all pas 
 sages of the Authorized Translation of the Bible 
 where the word occurs, it is used not in its present 
 meaning, but its past. 
 
 The} that will be rich fall into temptations and snares, and into 
 many foolish and noisome [/?Aa/?tpuj] lusts, which drown men in perdi 
 tion and destruction. 
 
 1 Tim. vi. 9. Geneva. 
 
NOISOME NURSERY. 135 
 
 He [the superstitious person] is persuaded that they he gods in 
 deed, but such as be noisome, hurtful, and doing mischief unto men. 
 
 Holland, Plutarch s Morals, p. 260. 
 
 They [the prelates] are so far from hindering 1 dissension, that they 
 have made unprofitable, and even noisome, the chiefest remedy we 
 have to keep Christendom at one, which is, by Councils. 
 
 Milton, The Reason of Church Government, b. i. c. 6. 
 
 NOVELIST. He now is, or ought to be, the writer 
 of new tales ; he was once an innovator, a bringer-in 
 of new fashions into the Church or State. 
 
 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, The Life of Archbishop Williams, part ii. p. 36. 
 
 Every novelist with a whirligig in his brain must broach new opin 
 ions, and those made canons, nay sanctions, as sure as if a General 
 Council had confirmed them. 
 
 Adams, The Devil s Banquet, 1614, p. 52. 
 
 NURSERY. We have but one use of i 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. 
 
136 OBELISK OBNOXIOUS. 
 
 0. 
 
 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 an 
 tiquity, 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 wri 
 ters in the seventeenth century ; while for us at the 
 present a small pillar tapering toward the summit is 
 the only obelisk that we know. 
 
 The Lord Keeper, the most circumspect of any man alive to pro 
 vide for uniformity, and to countenance it, was scratched with their 
 obelisk, that he favoured Puritans, and that sundry of them had pro 
 tection through his connivency or clemency. 
 
 Hacket, The 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, The New World of Words, Preface. 
 
 OBNOXIOUS. In its present lax and slovenly use, a 
 vague unserviceable synonym for offensive, it is prop 
 erly applied to one who on the ground of a mischief 
 or wrong committed by him is justly liable to punish 
 ment (ob noxam pocna) obligatus) ; and is used in this 
 sense by South (see below). But there often falls 
 
OBNOXIOUS OBSEQUIOUS. 137 
 
 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 quota 
 tion from Donne. But we punish or wish to punish 
 those whom we dislike, and thus i obnoxious had ob 
 tained 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. 
 
 J. 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. vin. p. SID. 
 
 OBSEQUIOUS, ) There lies ever in obsequious* at 
 OBSEQUIOUSNESS. J the present the sense of an observ 
 ance 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. 
 
 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. 
 
 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 ob- 
 
 duration rather than an obsequiousness. 
 
 Donne, Sermon 45. 
 
138 OBSEQUIOUS OFFAL. 
 
 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, | He now occupies, who has in present 
 OCCUPIER, j possession ; but the word involved once 
 the further signification of using, employing, laying 
 out that which was thus possessed ; and by an 4 occu 
 pier was meant a trader or retail dealer. 
 
 He [Kumenes] 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. Authorized Version. 
 
 Mercury, the master of merchants aud occupiers [-lyjpuiMi-]. 
 
 Holland, Plutarch s Morals, p. G92. 
 
 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 re 
 strict at the present to the refuse of the butcher s 
 stall ; but it was once employed in a much wider ac 
 ceptation. 
 
 Glean not in barren soil these offal ears, 
 
 Sith reap thou mav st whole harvests of delight. 
 
 Southwell, Lcicd Love is Loss. 
 
 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, The Anatomy of Melancholy, part iii. sect. 1. 
 
OFFICIOUS ORIENT. 189 
 
 OFFICIOUS, ) Again and again we light on words 
 OFFICIOL-SNESS. { used once in a good, but now in an 
 unfavorable, sense. An officious person is now a 
 busy uninvited meddler in matters which do not be 
 long to him ; so late as Burke s time he might be one 
 prompt and forward in due offices of kindness. The 
 more honorable use of 4 officious now only survives in 
 the distinction familiar to diplomacy between an offi 
 cial and officious communication. 
 
 With granted leave officious I return. 
 
 Milton, Paradise Regained, b. ii. 
 
 Officious, ready to do good offices, serviceable, friendly, very cour 
 teous and obliging. 
 
 Phillips, The New World of Words. 
 
 They [the nobility of France] were tolerably well bred, very offi 
 cious, humane, and hospitable. 
 
 Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France, p. 251. 
 
 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 pres 
 ent. 
 
 H. More, On Godliness, b. viii. c. 13. 
 
 ORIENT. There was once a beautiful use of orient 
 as clear, bright, shining, which has now wholly de 
 parted from it. So entirely was all notion of eastern 
 sometimes dropped from the word, that in Milton s 
 sublime Ode on the Nativity, the setting sun is said 
 to " pillow his chin upon an orient wave." In like 
 manner orient, as so often applied to the pearl by 
 
140 ORIENT OSTLER. 
 
 our earlier poets, does not in this connection mean 
 oriental, but pellucid, white, shining. It is not of 
 course denied that the meaning here claimed for ori 
 ent accrued to it originally from the greater clearness 
 and lightness of the east, as the quarter whence the 
 day broke. 
 
 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, part i. p. 255. 
 
 Her wings and train of feathers, mixed fine 
 Of orient azure and incarnadine. 
 
 Sylvester, Du Bartas, Fifth Day. 
 
 KOKKOS 0a<}>iKfi, a shrub, whose red berries or grains gave an orient 
 
 tincture to cloth. 
 
 Fuller, A Pisgah Sight of Palestine, b. iv. c. 6. 
 
 OSTLER. Not formerly, as now, the servant of the 
 inn, having care of the horses, but the innkeeper or 
 host, the hosteller himself. 
 
 And another dai he broughte forth tweie pens, and gaf to the ostler 
 
 [stabulario, Vulg.]. 
 
 Luke x. 35. Wiclif. 
 
 The innkeeper was old, fourscore almost; 
 Indeed an emblem, rather than an host ; 
 In whom we read how God and Time decree 
 To honour thrifty ostlers, such as he. 
 
 Corbet, Iter Boreale. 
 
PAINFUL, ^ l Painful is now feeling pain, or in- 
 PAINFULNESS, > flicting it ; it was once taking pains. 
 PAINFULLY. J Many things would not be so pain-^ 
 ful in the present sense of the word, if they had been 
 more painful in the earlier, as perhaps some ser 
 mons. 
 
 Within fourteen generations, the royal blood of the kings of Judah 
 ran in the veins of plain Joseph, a painful carpenter. 
 
 Fuller, The Holy War, b. v. c. 29. 
 
 O the holiness of their living, and painfulness of their preaching. 
 
 Id., The Holy State, b. ii. c. 6. 
 
 Whoever would be truly thankful, let him live in some honest vo 
 cation, and therein bestow himself faithfully and painfully. 
 
 Sanderson, Sermons, vol. i. p. 251. 
 
 PALLIATE, ) i To palliate is at this day to extenu- 
 PALLIATION. J ate a fault through the setting out of 
 whatever will best serve to diminish the estimate of 
 its gravity ; and does not imply any endeavor wholly 
 to deny it ; nay, implies rather a certain recognition 
 and admission of the fault itself. Truer to its ety 
 mology once, it expressed the cloking of it, the at 
 tempt, 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 Kings v. 25). 
 
142 PALLIATE PATHETIC. 
 
 You cannot palliate mischief, but it will 
 Through nil the fairest coverings of deceit 
 Be always seen. 
 
 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, The 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 testifies that it was 
 new in his time), the player who presented the show. 
 
 You shall have a buffoon or pantomimus shall express as many 
 [voices] as he pleaseth. 
 
 Bacon, The Advancement of Learning, b. ii. 
 
 I would our pantomimes also and stage-players would examine 
 themselves and their callings by this rule. 
 
 Sanderson, Sermon on 1 Cor. vii. 24. 
 Not that I think those pantomimes 
 Who vary action with the times, 
 Are less ingenious in their art 
 Than those who dully act one pnrt. 
 
 Butler, Hudibras, part iii. c. 2. 
 
 PATHETIC. ^ The 4 pathetic is now only one kind 
 PATHKTICAL, > of the passionate, that which, feeling 
 PATHETICALLY. ) pity, is itself capable of stirring it ; 
 
PATHETIC PEEVISH. 143 
 
 but c 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. 1 Kings xvi. 34] mistook Joshua s curse rather for a 
 pathetical expression than prophetical prediction. 
 
 Fuller, A Pisgah Sight of Palestine, b. ii. c. 12. 
 
 Whatever word enhanceth Joseph s praise, 
 Her echo doubles it, and doth supply 
 Some more pathetic and transcendent phrase 
 To raise his merit. 
 
 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 at 
 tire as those pathetical handmaids of the soul please to lead her in to 
 their queen. 
 
 Milton, The 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. 
 
 PEEVISH, ) By peevishness we now understand 
 PEEVISHNESS. ) a small but constantly fretting ill- 
 temper ; yet no one can read our old authors, with 
 whom 4 peevish and peevishness are of constant re- 
 
144 PEEVISH. 
 
 currence, without feeling that their use of them is dif 
 ferent from ours ; although precisely to determine 
 what their use was is any thing but easy. Gilford 
 ( Massing er, 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 i peevish 
 in our modern sense of the word, is inevitable ; and 
 here is the history of the change of meaning which it 
 has undergone. 
 
 Valentine. Cannot your grace win her to fancy him? 
 Duke. No, trust me; she is peevish, sullen, forward, 
 
 Proud, disobedient, stubborn, lacking duty. 
 
 Shakespeare, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Act iii. Sc. 1. 
 
 We provoke, rail, scoff, calumniate, challenge, hate, abuse (hard 
 hearted, implacable, malicious, peevish, inexorable as we arc), to sat 
 isfy our lust or private spleen. 
 
 Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy, part iii. 1. 
 Pertinax hominum genus, a peevish generation of men. 
 
 Id., lb. part iii. 4. 
 
 That grand document of keeping to the light within us they [tho 
 Quakers] borrow out of S. John s Gospel ; and yet they are so fran 
 tic and peevish, that they would fling away the staff without which 
 they are not able to make one step in religion. 
 
 H. More, The Grand Mystery of Godliness, b. viii. c. 12. 
 In case the Romans, upon an inbred peevishness and engrafted 
 pertinacity of theirs, should not hear reason, but refuse an indifferent 
 end, then both God and man shall be witness as well of the modera 
 tion of Perseus, as of their pride and insolent frowardness. 
 
 Holland, Livy, p. 1152. 
 
PEEVISH PENITENTIARY. 145 
 
 We must carefully distinguish continuance in opinion from obsti 
 nacy, confidence of understanding from peevishness of affection, a not 
 being convinced from a resolution never to be convinced. 
 
 J. Taylor, The Liberty of Prophesying, ii. 10. 
 
 PENCIL. The distinction between * pencil and paint 
 brush, with the employment of pencil in any other 
 sense than that of brush, is quite of modern introduc 
 tion. The older use of the word, it needs hardly to 
 say, was etymologically more correct than the modern, 
 pencil being i pencillus, or little tail ; and the brush 
 was so called because it hung and drooped as this does. 
 
 Heaven knows, they were besmeared and overstained 
 With slaughter s pencil, where revenge did paint 
 The fearful difference of incensed kings. 
 
 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, TJie 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 shoul 
 ders. 
 
 The Lady s Travels in Spain, Letter 8. 
 
 PENITENTIARY. It is curious that this word has pos 
 sessed three entirely independent meanings, penitent, 
 ordainer of penances in the Church, and place for 
 penitents ; only the last survives. 
 
 7 
 
146 PENITENTIARY PERSEVERANCE. 
 
 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 the Ri<jht Hand of God, 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, IVorks, vol. iv. p. 517. 
 
 Penitentiary, a priest that imposes upon an offender what penance 
 
 he thinks fit. 
 
 Phillips, The Xno World of Words. 
 
 PENURY. This expresses now no more than the ob 
 jective fact of extreme poverty ; an ethical subjective 
 meaning not lying in it, as would sometimes of old, 
 but no\v only retained in penurious. 
 
 God sometimes punishes one sin with another; pride with adul 
 tery, drunkenness with murder, carelessness with irreligion, idleness 
 with vanity, penury with oppression. 
 
 J. Taylor, The Faith and Patience of the Saints. 
 
 PERSEVERANCE. It is difficult to connect the uses 
 of perseverance whereof examples are given below, 
 and they might easily be multiplied, with its more 
 frequent use of old, and its sole use at present. In 
 deed I have sometimes doubts whether it be the same 
 word at all, and whether we are not to look to i sep- 
 erare, sevrer, severance (it might thus be the 
 power of dividing and distinguishing), for its root 
 rather than to perseverantia. None of our Diction 
 aries give any assistance in the matter ; indeed they 
 have not noted this use of the word ; but there is a 
 
PERSEVERANCE PERSON. 147 
 
 good collection of illustrative passages in Notes and 
 Queries, No. 182. 
 
 For his diet he [Ariosto] was very temperate, and a great enemy 
 of excess and surfeiting, and so careless of delicates as though he had 
 no perseverance for the taste of meats. 
 
 Sir J. Harington, Life of Ariosto, p. 418. 
 
 He [JSmilius Paulus] suddenly fell into a raving (without any 
 perseverance of sickness spied in him before, or any change or altera 
 tion in him [-rrplv ala6iadat ical vonam TV/I/ ^ra8o\i]v\ ), 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 role in the play which 
 each sustains, as cpdrfwroy is in Greek. In the great 
 tragi-comedy of life each sustains a person ; one that 
 of a king, another that of a hind ; 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 regard. 
 
 King. What, rate, rebuke, and roughly send to prison 
 The immediate heir of England ! was this easy ? 
 May this be washed in Lethe, and forgotten ? 
 
 Chief Justice. I then did use the person of your father; 
 The image of his power lay then in me. 
 
 Shakespeare, 2 Henry TV. Act v. Sc. 2. 
 
148 PERSON PESTER. 
 
 Caesar also is brought in by Julian attributing to himself the hon 
 our (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, The History of England, b. ii. 
 
 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. 
 
 J. Taylor, Apples of Sodom. 
 
 PERSPECTIVE. Telescope and microscope are 
 both as old as Milton ; but for a long while perspec 
 tive (glass being sometimes understood, and sometimes 
 expressed) did the work of these. It is sometimes 
 written prospective. Our present use of perspec 
 tive does not, I suppose, date farther back than Dry- 
 den. 
 
 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 magnifving end on invisi 
 bles (for such is its frame, it lesseneth visibles), and thou wilt see 
 
 sights not more strange than satisfying. 
 
 Whitlock, Zootomia, p. 535. 
 
 A tiny mite which we can scarcely see 
 Without a perspective. 
 
 Oldham, Eighth Satire of M. Boileau. 
 
 PESTER. There is no greater discomfort or annoy 
 ance than extreme straightness or narrowness of room ; 
 
PESTER PLACARD. 149 
 
 out of which in Greek tfrsvop/wp/a, signifying this, has 
 come to have a secondary signification of trouble or 
 anguish. In English, to i pester bears witness to the 
 same fact, though it has travelled in exactly the oppo 
 site direction, and having first the meaning of to vex 
 or annoy, which meaning it still retains, had also once 
 a second meaning of painfully cooping-up in a narrow 
 and confined space ; which, however, it now has let 
 go- 
 
 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. 
 
 i 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, The History of England, b. ii. 
 
 The calendar is filled, not to say, pestered with them, jostling one 
 another for room, many holding the same day in copartnership of 
 festivity. 
 
 Fuller, The Worthies of England, c. 3. 
 
 PLACARD. Formerly used often in the sense of a 
 license or permission, the i placard being properly 
 the broad tablet or board on which this, as well as 
 other edicts and ordinances, was exposed. 
 
 Then for my voice I must (no choice) 
 Away of force, like posting horse, 
 For sundry men had placards then 
 
 Such child to take. 
 
 Tusser, The 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 
 
150 PLACARD PLAUSIBLE. 
 
 over the creatures enables him to employ them as well for pleasure as 
 necessity. 
 
 Fuller, The Holy State, b. iii. c. 13. 
 
 PLANTATION. We still i plant a colony, but a plan 
 tation is now of trees only ; and not of men, as it 
 was when i The Plantations was the standing name 
 by which our transatlantic colonies were known. 
 
 It is a shameful and unblessed tiling 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. 
 
 Bacon, Essays, 33. 
 
 Plantations make mankind broader, as generation makes it thicker. 
 Fuller, The Holy Stale, b. iii. c. 16. 
 
 PLAUSIBLE, ^ That is plausible now which pre- 
 
 PLAUSIBLY, > sents itself as worthy of applause ; 
 
 PLAUSIBILITY. J 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 primd 
 
 facie likelihood that the applause which it obtained 
 
 it deserved. ^ . t> v % /I, ^ N 
 
 This John, Bishop of Constantinople, that assumed to himself the 
 title of Universal Bishop or Patriarch, was a pood man, {riven 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, The Life of Archbishop Williams, part ii. p. 66. 
 
 The Romans plausibly did give consent 
 For Tarquin s everlasting banishment. 
 
 Shakespeare, The Rape of Lucrece. 
 
PLAUSIBLE POLITICS. 151 
 
 He was no sooner in sight than every one received him plausibly, 
 and with great submission and reverence. 
 
 Stubs, TJie 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 gra 
 cious 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, The Life and Death of Dr. Jackson. 
 
 POACH, ) It sounds strange to say that poker and 
 POACHER, j poacher* are in fact one and the same 
 word ; which, doubtless, they are. A poacher is, 
 strictly speaking, an intruder, the word means nothing 
 more ; one who intrudes, pokes, or poaches into 
 land where he has no business ; the fact that he does 
 so with the intention of spoiling the game is super- 
 added, not lying in the word. 
 
 So that, to speak truly, they [the Spaniards] have rather poached 
 and offered at a number of enterprises, than maintained any con 
 stantly. 
 
 Bacon, Notes of a Speech concerning a War ivith 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 some 
 thing that is not true before such a poacher. 
 
 Hacket, The Life of Archbishop Williams, part ii. p. 113. 
 
 POLITICS, ) At the present polities are always 
 
 POLITICIAN, j things, but were sometimes persons as 
 
 well in times past. Politician 1 also had mostly an 
 
w ._ MM 
 
 POLITICS POMP. 
 
 evil subaudition. One so named was a trickster or 
 underhand self-seeker in politics, or it might be, as it 
 is throughout in the sermon of South, quoted below, 
 in the ordinary affairs of life. 
 
 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. 
 
 Why, look you, I am whipped and scourged with rods, 
 Nettled and stung with pismires, when I hear 
 Of this vile politician Bolingbroke. 
 
 Shakespeare, 1 Henry IV., Act i. Sc. 8. 
 
 The politician, whose very essence lies in this, that he is a person 
 ready to do any thing 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. "i Pomp is one of the many words which 
 POMPOUS, > Milton employs with a strict classical 
 POMPOUSLY. ) accuracy, so that he is only to be per 
 fectly understood when we keep in mind that a 4 pomp 
 with him is always iro^-ifr,, a procession. He is not, 
 however, singular, as lie often is, in the stricter and 
 more rigorous use of this word. It is easy to per 
 ceive how pomp obtained its wider application. 
 There is no such favorable opportunity for the display 
 of state and magnificence as a procession ; this is al 
 most the inevitable form which they take ; and thus 
 the word, which was first applied to the most frequent 
 
POMP POLITE. 153 
 
 display of these, came afterwards to be transferred to 
 every display. 
 
 In respect of l pompous and pompously there is 
 something else to note. There is in them always now 
 the subaudition 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 conveyed, and were intended to convey, no 
 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 \*x9 l T ^ v ^> v eir6nircvai\. 
 
 Holland, Plutarch s Morals, p. 417. 
 
 With goddess-like demeanour forth she went, 
 Not unattended ; for on her, as queen, 
 A pomp of winning graces waited still. 
 
 Milton, Paradise Lost, b. viii. 
 
 What pompous powers of ravishment were here, 1 * 
 What delicate extremities of pleasure. 
 
 Beaumont, Psyche, can. xv. St. 299. 
 
 All expresses related that the entertainment [of Prince Charles at 
 Madrid] was very pompous and kingly. 
 
 Racket, The Life of Archbishop Williams, part i. p. 119. 
 
 He [HardecnuteJ 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 orna 
 ments. 
 
 Milton, TJie History of England, b. vi. 
 
 POLITE, ) Between < polite and polished this 
 POLITELY, j much of difference has now grown up 
 
 * In heaven. 
 
 7* 
 
154 POLITE POPULAR. 
 
 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 pol 
 ished in the literal and figurative sense alike. 
 
 Polite bodies, as looking-glasses. 
 
 Cudworth, The Intellectual System, p. 731. 
 
 Polite; well polished, neat. 
 
 Phillips, The New World of Words. 
 
 In things artificial seldom any elegance is wrought without a su 
 perfluous waste and refuse in the transaction. No marble statue can 
 be politely carved, no fair edifice built, without almost as much rubbish 
 and sweeping. 9 
 
 Milton, The Reason of Church Government, b. i. c. 7. 
 
 POPULAR, 1 He was popular once, not who had 
 POPULARITY, j acquired, but who was laying himself 
 out to acquire, the favor of the people. Popularity 
 was the wooing, not as now the having won, that fa 
 vor. The word which is passive now was active then. 
 
 Of a senator he [Manilas] 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, p. 224. 
 
 And oft in vain his name they closely bite, 
 As popular and flatterer accusing. 
 
 P. Fletcher, The Purple Island, c. 10. 
 
 Cato the Younger charged Muracna, 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, The History of England, b. vi. 
 
PORTLY PRAGMATICAL. 155 
 
 PORTLY. There lies in portly a certain sense of 
 dignity of demeanor still, but always connoted with 
 this a certain cumbrousness and weight, such as Spen 
 ser in his noble Epithet! amion (see below) would never 
 have ascribed to his bride, as little 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 
 [Insignia tanien inter cetcros Hasdrubal erat]. 
 
 Holland, Liry, p. 770. 
 
 Lo, where she comes along with portly pace, 
 Like Phoebe from her chamber of the east. 
 
 Spenser, Epithalamion, 148. 
 
 He [Romeo] bears him like a portly gentleman. 
 
 Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, Act i. Sc. 5. 
 
 PRAGMATICAL. This is always employed at the pres 
 ent in an ill sense ; not merely busy, but over-busy, 
 officious, meddling ; nay, more than this, with an as 
 sumption of bustling self-importance. The etymology 
 of pragmatical 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 j lease her 
 self, and nothing else ; but may know that she holdeth as well of the 
 
156 PRAGMATICAL PRETEND. 
 
 hawk, that can soar aloft, and also descend and strike upon the 
 
 prey. 
 
 Bacon, The 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, Tetrackordon. 
 
 PREPOSTEROUS, ") A word nearly or quite unservice- 
 PREPOSTEUOUSLY. j able now, being merely an ungrace 
 ful 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. 
 
 Bible, 1611, The Translators to the Reader. 
 
 King Asa justly received little benefit by them [physicians], be 
 cause of his preposterous addressing himself to them before he went to 
 God (2 Chron. xvi. 12). 
 
 Fuller, TJie Worthies of England, c. ix. 
 
 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 scep 
 tre of his kingly office by our obedience. 
 
 South, Sermons, 1744, vol. ix. p. 3. 
 
 PRETEND, ^ To charge one with pretending any 
 
 PRETENCE, > thing is now a much more serious 
 
 PRETENSION. J charge than it was once. Indeed, it 
 
 was not necessarily, and only by accident, a charge 
 
PRETEND. 157 
 
 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 pres 
 ent, only a deceitful resemblance of this, the word did 
 not decide. While it was thus with c to pretend/ 
 there was as yet no distinction recognized between 
 6 pretence and i 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 it 
 self from being a merely useless synonym of pretence, 
 and, retaining its relations to the earlier uses of the 
 verb, now signifies a claim put forward which may be 
 valid, or may be invalid, the word leaving this for 
 other considerations to determine. Louis Napoleon 
 assumed the dictatorship under the pretence, of re 
 sisting anarchy ; the House of Orleans has preten 
 sions 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 hsec quis idoneus ? 
 
 Henry Isaacson, The Life and Death of Lancelot Andrews. 
 
 [The Sabbath] is rather hominis gratia 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, The Grand Mystery of Godliness, b. viii. c. 13. 
 
158 PRETEND PREVARICATE. 
 
 Or crafty malice might pretend this praise, 
 And think to ruin, where it seemed to praise. 
 
 B. Jonson, To the Memory of Shakespeare, 
 
 This is the tree whose leaves were intended for the healing of the 
 nations, not for a pretence and palliation for sin. 
 
 H. More, The Grand Mystery of Godliness, b. viii. c. 1. 
 
 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 unstifficiency. 
 
 Sanderson, Sermons, 1671, p. 208. 
 
 PREVARICATE, ^ This verb, often now very loosely 
 PREVARICATION. ( used, had once a very definite mean 
 ing of its own. To prevaricate is to betray the 
 cause which one affects to sustain, and, so far as I 
 know, is always so used by our early writers. We 
 have inherited the word from the Latin law-courts, 
 which borrowed it from the life. The prevaricator 
 being one who halted on two unequal legs, the name 
 was transferred to him who, affecting to prosecute a 
 charge, wtfs 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 possess, and inclining to Popery. 
 
 Cbillingworth, The Religion of Protestants, Preface, p. 11. 
 
PREVARICATE PREVENT. 159 
 
 If we be not all enemies to God in this kind [in a direct opposi 
 tion], yet in adhering to the enemy we are enemies; in our prevarica 
 tions, and easy betravings and surrendering of ourselves to the enemy 
 of his kingdom, Satan, we are his enemies. 
 
 Donne, Sermon 7, On the Nativity. 
 
 PREVENT. One may reach a point before another to 
 help or to hinder him there ; may anticipate his arri 
 val 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 keep 
 ing 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 help 
 ing 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 be 
 times, 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 mis 
 fortune, 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, The Life of Archbishop Williams, part i. p. 201. 
 
 There he beheld how humbly diligent 
 
 New Adulation was to be at hand ; 
 
 How ready Falsehood stept; how nimbly went 
 
 Base pick-thank Flattery, and prevents command. 
 
 Daniel, Civil Wars, b. ii. st. 56. 
 
160 PRODIGIOUS PROMOTE. 
 
 PRODIGIOUS. This notes little now but magnitude. 
 Truer to its etymology once ( prodigium = pro- 
 dicium, and that from prodico ), it signified the 
 ominous, or ominously prophetic. 
 
 Blood shall put out your torches, and instead 
 Of gaudy flowers about your wanton necks, 
 An axe shall hang, like a prodigious meteor, 
 Ready to crop your loves sweets. 
 
 Beaumont and Fletcher, Philastcr, Act v. Sc. 1. 
 
 Without this comely ornament of hair, their [women s] most glo 
 rious 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. ^ 4 To promote, that is, to further or set 
 PROMOTER, > forward, a i promoter, a furtherer, are 
 PROMOTION. J now words of harmless, often of quite 
 an honorable, signification. They were once terms 
 of extremes! scorn ; a promoter being a common in 
 former, and so called because he promoted charges 
 and accusations against men (promoter litium : Skin 
 ner). 
 
 Thou Linus, that lov st still to be promoting, 
 Because I sport about King Henry s marriage, 
 Think st this will prove a matter worth the carriage. 
 
 Sir J. Harington, Epigrams, ii. 98. 
 
 Aristogiton the sycophant, or false projuotor, was condemned to 
 death for troubling men with wrongful imputations. 
 
 Holland, Plutarch s Morals, p. 421. 
 
PROMOTE PROSE. 161 
 
 His eyes be promoters, some trespass to spy. 
 
 Tusser, Description 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 re 
 ward. 
 
 Cowell, The Interpreter, 1637. 
 
 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, i property is the 
 word which we use. It needs hardly to say that pro 
 priety and i property were at the first no more than 
 different spellings or slightly different forms of one 
 and the same word ; which now, however, have been 
 thus usefully desynonymized. 
 
 He 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 pro 
 priety, nor suspicion that his remnant hath eaten up his master s 
 
 whole cloth. 
 
 Fuller, The Holy State, b. i. c. 8. 
 
 Hail, wedded love, mysterious law, true source 
 Of human offspring, sole propriety 
 In Paradise of all things common else. 
 
 Milton, Paradise Lost, b. v. 
 
 PROSE, 1 l To prose is now to talk or to write 
 PROSER. ) heavily, tediously, without spirit and with 
 out animation ; but to prose was once the antithesis 
 of to versify, and a proser of a writer in metre. 
 
162 PROSE PUNCTUAL. 
 
 In the tacit assumption that vigor, animation, rapid 
 movement, with all the precipitation of the spirit, be 
 long to verse rather than to prose, lies the explana 
 tion 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, T/ic Reason of Church Government, b. ii. 
 
 And surely Nash, though he a proser were, 
 A branch of laurel yet deserves to bear. 
 
 Drayton, On Poets and Poesy. 
 
 PRUNE. At present we only c prune trees ; but our 
 earlier authors use the word where we should use 
 preen, which indeed is but another form of the word ; 
 nay, with a wider signification ; for with us only birds 
 4 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 bodv, rauscth his 
 wife by that means to study nothing else but the tricking and pruning 
 
 of herself. 
 
 Holland, Plutarch s Morals, p. .318. 
 
 PUNCTUAL, | Restricted now to the accurate ob- 
 
 PUNCTUALLY. j serving of fixed points of time. It 
 
 had once a wider use ; a punctual narration being a 
 
 narration which entered into minuter points of detail. 
 
 Truly I thought I could not be too punctual in describing the ani 
 mal life, it being so serviceable for our better understanding the divine. 
 II. More, The Grand Mystery of Godliness, Preface, p. x. 
 
PUNCTUAL PURSUER. 163 
 
 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, The 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 in 
 ferential. Puny or puisne (puis ne) 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, be 
 cause 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, The 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. 
 
 PURSUER. Pursue and i pursuer are older words 
 in the language than persecute and persecutor 
 earlier adoptions of persequor and persecutor, and 
 not, as these last, immediately from the Latin. Be- 
 
164 PURSUER QUAINT. 
 
 side the meaning which they still retain, they once 
 also covered the meanings which these later words 
 have, since their introduction, appropriated as exclu 
 sively their own. 
 
 I first was a blasphemer and pursuwer. 
 
 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, 2\ T aaian the Syrian, p. 106. 
 
 Q. 
 
 QUAINT, | In i quaint, which is the Latin comp- 
 QUAINTLY. j tus, there lies always now the notion 
 of a certain curiosity and oddness, however these may 
 be subordinated to ends of beauty and grace, and in 
 deed may themselves be made to contribute to these 
 ends ; but all this is of late introduction into the word, 
 which had once simply the meaning of elegant, grace 
 ful, skilful, subtle. 
 
 O brotel joye, swete poison queinte, 
 O monstre that so sotilly canst peinte 
 Thy giftes, under hewe of stcdfastness, 
 That thou deceives! bothe more and less. 
 
 Chaucer, The Merchantes Tale. 
 
 But you, my lord, were glad to be employed 
 To show how quaint an orator vou are. 
 
 Shakespeare, 2 Henry VI., Act iii. Sc. 2. 
 
QUAINT RAISIN. 165 
 
 Whom evere I schal kisse, he it is ; holdc ye him, and lede ye 
 
 warli, or queyntly. 
 
 Mark xiv. 44. Wiclif. 
 
 A ladder quaintly made of cords. 
 
 Shakespeare, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Act iii. Sc. 1. 
 
 QUERULOUS. Not once, as now, complaining, but 
 quarrelsome. As there is no querulosus in Latin, I 
 am inclined to think that quarrellous was the earlier 
 form, though I do not remember to have met it. 
 
 There inhabit these regions a kind of people, rude, warlike, ready 
 to fight, querulous, and mischievous. 
 
 Holland, Camden s Scotland, p. 39. 
 
 R. 
 
 RACE. * Racy still exists as an epithet applied to 
 that which, growing out of a strong and vigorous 
 root, tastes of that root out of which it grows ; but 
 race, in the sense of root imparting these qualities, 
 is not any longer in use. 
 
 I think the Epistles of Phalaris to have more race, more spirit, 
 more force of wit and genins, than any other I have ever seen, either 
 
 ancient or modern. 
 
 Sir William Temple, Works, vol. iii. p. 463. 
 
 RAISIN. It is conveniently agreed now that c raisin 
 shall be employed only of the dried grape, but this 
 does not lie in racemus, from which it is descended, 
 
166 RAISIX RECOGNIZE. 
 
 nor yet in its earlier uses ; indeed, " raisins of the sun" 
 (Sir J. Harington) was the phrase commonly em 
 ployed when our dried fruit was intended. 
 
 Nether in the vyneycrd thou schalt gadere rei/syns and groynes 
 fallynge doun, but thou schalt leeve to be gaderid of pore men and 
 pilgryms. 
 
 Lev. xix. 10. Wiclif. 
 
 RATHER. This survives for us now only as an ad 
 verb, that part of speech to which so many others 
 seem to tend ; but meets us often in old English in 
 its prior form, that is, as an adjective ; being properly 
 the comparative of rathe, 1 a synonym for early. 
 
 This is he that I seide of, aftir me is comen a man, whiche was 
 made bifor me, for he was rather than I [quiapr/or 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. 
 
 Whatsoever thou or such other say, I say that the pilgrimage that 
 now is used is to them that do it, a praiseable and a good mean to 
 come the rather to grace. 
 
 Foxe, Book of Martyrs ; Examination of William Thorpe. 
 
 The rather lambs been starved with cold. 
 
 Spenser, The Shepherd s Calendar, February. 
 
 RECOGNIZE. This verb means now to revive our 
 knowledge of a person or thing and nothing more. 
 But in earlier usage there was something further im- 
 
RECOGNIZE REDUCE. 167 
 
 ported into it. It was to revive this knowledge with 
 a purpose as in the passage below, with the purpose 
 of revision. 
 
 In recognizing this history I have employed a little more labour, part 
 ly 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 qtiarrellers. 
 
 Foxe, The Book of Martyrs; Epistle Dedicatory [of the Second 
 Edition} to the Queen s Majesty. 
 
 REDUCE. That which is c reduced* now is brought 
 back to narrower limits, or lower terms, or more sub 
 ject 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. Brittany] to be reunited, and so 
 
 the monarchy of France to be reduced to the ancient terms and bounds. 
 
 Bacon, The 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. 
 
168 RELIGION REMONSTRATE. 
 
 RELIGION. Not, as too often now, used as equivalent 
 for godliness ; but like fy^rfxeia, for which it stands 
 Jam. i. 27, it expressed the outer form and embodi 
 ment which the inward spirit of a true or a false de 
 votion assumed. 
 
 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; Sermon against Peril of Idolatry. 
 
 By falsities and lies the greatest part 
 Of mankind they corrupted to forsake 
 God their Creator, and the invisible 
 Glory of Him that made them to transform 
 Oft to the image of a brute, adorned 
 With gay religions full of pomp and gold. 
 
 Milton, Paradise Lost, b. i. 
 
 REMONSTRATE, ) Its present sense, namely, to ex- 
 REMONSTRANCE. j postulate, was only at a very late 
 date superinduced on the word. t To remonstrate is 
 properly to make any 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 ; nor 
 did it lie in its earlier uses. 
 
 Properties of a faithful servant : a sedulous eye, to observe all occa 
 sions within or without, tending to remonstrate the habit within. 
 
 Kogers, Naaman the Syrian, p. 309. 
 
 When Sir Francis Cottington returned with our king s oath, 
 plighted to the annexed conditions for the ease of the Roman Catho- 
 
REMONSTRATE REMORSE. 169 
 
 lies, the Spaniards made no remonstrance of joy, or of an ordinary 
 
 liking to it. 
 
 Racket, The Life of Archbishop Williams, part i. p. 145. 
 
 REMORSE. In the single phrase "without remorse," 
 as in < remorseless, we still retain a sense of remorse 
 which otherwise has quite passed away from it ; em 
 ploying it as equivalent with pity. It was thus, as I 
 am inclined to think, that the word acquired this 
 meaning. There is nothing which is followed in na 
 tures not absolutely devilish with so swift revulsion 
 of mind as acts of cruelty. No where does the con 
 science so quickly remord, if one may use the word, 
 the guilty actor as in and after these ;* and thus i re 
 morse, which is the penitence of the natural man, 
 
 * A passage of wonderful beauty in one of the Scotch ballads ex 
 emplifies what is said above. The Gordon has surrounded and set fire 
 to the castle of an enemy. The daughter, as a last hope of escape, is 
 let down from the wall : 
 
 They rowd her in a pair of sheets, 
 
 And towd her owre the wa ; 
 But on the point of Gordon s spear 
 
 She gat a deadly fa . 
 
 Then wi his spear he turned her owre, 
 
 0, gin her face was wan ! 
 He said, " Ye are the first that eir 
 
 I wished alive again." 
 
 He turned her owre and owre again, 
 
 Oh, gin her face was white ! 
 " I might ha* spared that bonnie face 
 
 To hae bin some man s delight \" 
 
 8 
 
170 REMORSE RESENT. 
 
 the penitence not wrought by the spirit of grace, 
 while it means the revulsion of the mind and con 
 science 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 bv 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, The Holy War, b. iii. c. 7. 
 
 His helmet, justice, judgment, and remorse. 
 
 Middle ton, The Wisdom of Solomon, e. v. 17. 
 
 RESENT, ") When first introduced into the lan- 
 RESENTMENT. J guage (this was in the seventeenth 
 century; c vox nova in nostra lingmi ; Jnnius), 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 it 
 self said nothing, and was employed in both meanings. 
 Must we gather from the fact that the latter is now 
 the exclusive employment of it, that our sense of in 
 juries is much stronger and more lasting than our 
 sense of benefits ? 
 
 Tis by my touch alone that you resent 
 What objects yield delight, what discontent. 
 
 Beaumont, Psyche, can. iv. st. 156. 
 
 Perchance as vultures are snid to smell the earthliness of a dying 
 corpse; so this bird of prey [the evil Spirit which personated Samuel] 
 
RESENT RESTIVE. 171 
 
 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 palate 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. 
 
 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. 
 
 J. Taylor, Sermon 23, part ii. 
 
 The Council taking notice of the many good services performed 
 by Mr. John Milton, their Secretary for foreign languages, particu 
 larly f-r his book in A indication of the Parliament and people of Eng 
 land 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. 
 
 RESTIVE, 1 Any one now invited to define a 
 RESTIVENESS. ) restive horse would certainly put 
 into his definition that it was one with too much mo 
 tion ; but in obedience to its etymology restive would 
 have once meant one with too little ; determined to 
 continue at rest when it ought to go forward. Immo 
 bile, lazy, stubborn, are the three stages of meaning 
 which the word went through, before it reached its 
 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 yeomen ushers of de 
 votion, where the master is too resty or too rich to say his own prayers, 
 
 or to bless his own table. 
 
 Milton, Iconoclasts, c. xxiv. 
 
172 RESTIVE RIG. 
 
 Restive, or Rcsty, drawing back instead of going forward, as some 
 horses do. 
 
 Phillips, The Xew World of Words. 
 
 Nothing hindereth men s fortunes so much as this : Idem mancbat, 
 neque idem decebat; men are where they were, when occasions turn. 
 . . . From whatsoever root or cause this restiveness of mind proceed- 
 eth, it is a thing most prejudicial. 
 
 Bacon, The 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, 1 It has fared with retaliate and * re- 
 
 RETALIATION. j taliation as it has with resent 1 and 
 
 4 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 retali 
 ated on those of his own persuasion. 
 
 Dryden, Preface to The Hind and the Panther. 
 
 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, The Life of Archbishop Williams, part i. p. 166. 
 
 RIG. A somewhat vulgar word, with the present 
 use of which, however, we are probably all familiar 
 from its occurrence in John Gi/pin : 
 
RIG RUFFIAN. 173 
 
 " He little guessed when he set out 
 
 Of running such a rt</." 
 
 n 
 
 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 privi 
 lege any innocent pastime. 
 
 Fuller, A Pisgah Sight of Palestine, b. iv. c. 6. 
 
 ROOM. In certain connections we still employ 
 1 room for place, but in many more, having this mean 
 ing once, it has it no longer. Thus the reader who 
 accepts the words of our Authorized Version, " When 
 thou art bidden of any man to a wedding, sit not do\vn 
 in the highest room" (Luke xiv. 8), according to the 
 present use of room may easily fall into a slight 
 misunderstanding, and imagine to himself guests as 
 sembling in various apartments, some more honorable 
 than other ; and not, as indeed the meaning is. taking 
 higher or lower places at one and the same table. 
 
 Is Clarence, Henry, and his son, young Edward, 
 And all the unlooked-for issue of their bodies, 
 To take their rooms, ere I can place myself? 
 
 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, ) The Italian ruffiano, the Spanish 
 RUFFIANLY, j rufian, the French ; ruffien, all signi- 
 
174 RUFFIAN RUMMAGE. 
 
 fy 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 
 1 leno, he is the amasius as well ; and the frequent 
 allusions to long and elaborately curled hair which go 
 along with the word make one suspect a connection 
 with the Spanish rufo, not as it means red, but crisp 
 or curled. On the possible derivations see Diez, 
 Roman. Spr. p. 299. 
 
 Our English ruffians are metamorphosed into women in their de 
 formed grizzled locks and hair. 
 
 Prynnc, Histriomastix, b. i. 
 
 A bawd s furniture, the first a stout ruffian to guard her. 
 
 Holland s Leaguer, 1632, no pagination. 
 
 He [her husband] is no sooner abroad than she is instantly at 
 home, revelling with her ruffians. 
 
 Reynolds, God s Revenge against Murder, 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. 
 
 1 rynne, The Unloveliness of Love-Locks, p. 27. 
 
 RUMMAGE. This means at present in the looking 
 for one thing to overturn and unsettle a great many 
 others. It is a sea-term, and signified at first to dis- 
 
RUMMAGE SAD. 175 
 
 pose 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 die ships do look wi-Il to the romaging, for 
 they might bring away a great deal more than they do, if they would 
 
 take pain in the romafjiny. 
 
 Ilackluyt, Voyages, vol. i. p. 308. 
 
 To rummage (sea-term) : To remove any floods or luggage from 
 one place to another, especially to clear the ship s hold of any goods 
 or lading, in order to their heing handsomely stowed and placed ; 
 whence the word is used upon other occasions, for to rake into, or to 
 
 search narrowly. 
 
 Phillips, The Ntw World of Words. 
 
 s. 
 
 SAD, "| This had once the meaning of earnest, 
 
 SADLY, > serious, sedate, set, this last being only 
 
 SADNESS. ) another form of the same word. The 
 
 passage from Shakespeare quoted below marks sadly 
 
 and sadness in their transitional state from the old 
 
 meaning to the new ; Benvolio using 4 sadness in the 
 
 old sense, Romeo pretending to understand him in the 
 
 new. 
 
 O dere wif, o gemme of lustyhede, 
 
 That were to me so sade, and eke so trewe. 
 
 Chaucer, The Manciple* 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. 
 
176 SAD SASH. 
 
 For when I think how far this earth doth us divide, 
 
 Alas, meseems, love throws me down ; I feel how that I slide. 
 
 But then I think again, Why should I thus mistrust 
 
 So sweet a wight, so sad and wise, that is so true and just ? 
 
 Surrey, The Faithful Lover. 
 
 In go the speres sadly in the rest. 
 
 Chaucer, The Knightes Tale. 
 
 Therefor ye, britheren, bifor witynge kepe you silf, lest ye be dis- 
 sey ved hi errour of unwise men, and falle awei fro youre owne sadness 
 
 [a propria, firmitate Vulg.]. 
 
 2 Pet. iii. 17. Wiclif. 
 
 Ben. Tell me in sadness who she is you love ? 
 Rom. What, shall I groan, and tell you ? 
 Ben. Groan ? why, no ; 
 
 But sadly tell me who ? 
 
 Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, Act i. Sc. 1. 
 
 SASH. At present always a belt or girdle of the 
 loins ; not so, however, when first introduced from the 
 East. By the 4 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. 
 
 Shash: Cidaris seu tiara, pileus, Turcicus, ut Doct. Th. H. placet, 
 ab It. Sessa, gausapina cujus involucris Turca? pileos suos adornnnt. 
 
 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, .-1 Pisgah Sight of Palestine, b. ii. c. 14. 
 
 He [a Persian merchant] was apparelled in a long robe of cloth of 
 
SASH SECURE. 177 
 
 gold, liis head was wreathed with a huge shash or tulipant of silk and 
 
 gold. 
 
 Thomas Herbert, Travels into divers parts of Asia and Afriqne, 
 
 1638, p. 191. 
 
 SECURE, ) In our present English the difference 
 SECURITY, j between safe and secure is hardly 
 recognized, but once it was otherwise. Secure 
 ( securus = sine 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 
 1 safe, just because he was i secure (thus see Judges 
 xviii. 7, 10, 27, Authorized Version). I may observe 
 that our use of i 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 d 
 of the original. 
 
 We cannot endure to be disturbed or awakened from our pleasing 
 lethargy. For we care not to be safe, but to be secure. 
 
 J. Taylor, Of Slander and Flattery. 
 
 They [wicked men] are not secure, even when they are safe. 
 
 Id., Apples of Sodom. 
 
 He means, my lord, that we are too remiss, 
 
 While Bolingbroke, through our security, 
 
 Grows strong and great in substance and in friends. 
 
 Shakespeare, King Richard IT., 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. 
 8* 
 
178 SEE SENSUAL. 
 
 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. 
 
 At Bubiloine was his soveraine see. 
 
 Chaucer, The Monkcs Tale. 
 And small harpers \\ iiii hir uUv.s 
 Sate under hem in divers sc-c-s. 
 
 Id., The. House of Fame, b. iii. 
 
 The Lord smoot nil 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. 
 
 SENSUAL, ) Sensual is employed now only in an 
 SENSUALITY, j ill meaning, and implies ever a pre 
 dominance of sense in provinces 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, might have proved of 
 excellent service. Sensuality has had always an ill 
 meaning, but at the same time it was not once the 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 bv sensual ar 
 guments? If thy sense were not left-handed, thou mitihtest with thy 
 right hand bear down thine infidelity ; for God hath given assurance 
 sufficient by his Son to thy very sense, if tliou wert not brutish (1 John 
 i. 1). 
 
 Rogers, Naaman the Syrian, p. 493. 
 
SENSUAL SHEER. 179 
 
 He who might claim this absolute power over the soul to be be 
 lieved upon his bare word, yet seeing the MMUality 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. 
 
 M., Ib. 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, 1661. 
 
 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 out 
 wardly servile condition in him to whom it was as 
 cribed, 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 Scripture, b. i. c. 26. 
 
 The same [faith] inclined Moses to exchange the dignities and de 
 lights of a court for a state of vagrancy and servility. 
 
 Barrow, Sermon 3, On the Apostles Creed. 
 
 SHEER. It is curious that Christopher Sly s decla 
 ration that he was " fourteen pence on the score for 
 sheer ale" ( Taming of the Sfirew, Induction, Sc. 2) 
 should have given so much trouble to some of our 
 early commentators. Sheer, which is pure, unmixed, 
 
180 SHEER SHREW. 
 
 was used of things concrete once, but more 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. 1191. 
 
 Thou sheer, immaculate, and silver fountain, 
 From whence this stream through muddy passages 
 Hath held his current. 
 
 Shakespeare, King Richard II., Act v. Sc. 3. 
 
 Thou never hadst in thy house, to stay men s stomachs, 
 
 A piece of Suffolk cheese, or gammen of bacon, 
 
 Or any esculent, but sheer drink only, 
 
 For which gross fault I bore do damn thy license. 
 
 Massinger, A New Way to pay Old Debts, Act iv. Sc. 2. 
 
 SHELF. i To shelve as = to shoal, still remains ; 
 but not so shelf as - shallow or sand-bank. 
 
 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. 
 
 The watchful hero felt the knocks, and found 
 The tossing vessel sailed on shoaly ground. 
 Sure of his pilot s loss, he takes himself 
 The helm, and steers aloof, and shuns the shelf. 
 
 Drydon, Virgil s ^Eneid, 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 
 
SHREWD SIEGE. 181 
 
 much deeper moral reprobation than now or than in 
 the middle English it did Thus Lucifer is a shrew 
 in Piers Ploughman, arid two murderers are shrews 
 in the quotation from Chaucer which follows. 
 
 And thus accorded ben this shrewes twcye 
 To slea the thridde, as ye han herd me seyc. 
 
 Chaucer, The Pardoneres Tale. 
 
 If I schal schewe me innocent, He schal preve me a schreive [pra- 
 
 vnm me comprobabit, Vulg.]. 
 
 Job ix. 20. Wiclif. 
 
 I know none more covetous shreics than ye are, when ye have a 
 benefice. 
 
 Foxe, The Book of Martyrs; Examination of William Thorpe. 
 
 SHREWD, ) The weakness of the world s moral 
 SHREWDNESS, j 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. 
 
 Is he shrewd and unjust in his dealings with others? 
 
 South, Sermons, 1737, vol. vi. p. 106. 
 
 Forsothe the erthe is corrupt before God, and is fulfilled with 
 schrewdnes [iniquitate, Vulg.]. 
 
 Gen. vi. 12. Wiclif. 
 
 The prophete saith : Flee shrewdnesse [declinet a malo, Vulg.], and 
 do goodnesse ; seek pees, and folwe it. 
 
 Chaucer, The Tale of Melibeits. 
 
 SIEGE. We employ < siege now only of the sitting- 
 down of an army before a fortified place with the pur- 
 
182 SIEGE SILLY. 
 
 pose of taking it ; but it had once the double meaning, 
 abstract and concrete, of the French siege, a seat. 
 
 Whannc marines sone schal come in liis majeste and alle liisc 
 aungelis with hym, thanne he schal sitte on the scge of his majestc, 
 and ulle folkis schal he gaderidc bifore hym. 
 
 Matt. xxv. 31, 32. Wiclif. 
 
 A stately sitge of soveraine majesty, 
 And thereon sat a woman gorgeous gav. 
 
 Spenser, The Fairy Queen, ii. 7, 44. 
 
 Besides, upon the very si?qe of justice 
 Lord Angelo hath to the common ear 
 Professed the contrary. 
 
 Shakespeare, Measure for Measure, Act iv. Sc. 2. 
 
 SILLY. A deep conviction of men that he who de 
 parts 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 hrst goodness, signify next wcll- 
 meaning simplicity, the notions of goodness and fool 
 ishness, 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 s-Jvj^, eJ-^sia: while the same has 
 happened in regard of our own l silly, which (the 
 same word as the German sclig, ) has successively 
 meant, (1) blessed, (2) innocent, (3) harmless, (4) 
 weakly foolish. 
 
 Iloloferncs, a valiant and mighty captain, being overwhelmed with 
 
SILLY SKELETON. 183 
 
 wine, had his head stricken from his shoulders l>v that ailli/ woman 
 Judith. 
 
 Homilies ; Sermon against Gluttony and Drunkenness. 
 
 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, The History of King Richard III. 
 
 Strange it was thought, and absurd above the rest, to chase and 
 keep out of the house silly swallows, harmless and gentle creaUircs. 
 
 Holland, Plutarch s Morals, p. 776. 
 
 SINCERE, | The etymology of sincerus being un- 
 SINCERITT. j certain, it is impossible to say what is 
 the primary notion of our English c sincere. It and 
 1 sincerity no less belong now to an ethical sphere 
 exclusively ; 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 com 
 prehend 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 complex of bones as entirely 
 denuded of the flesh ; but in early English, and there 
 in stricter agreement with its etymology, ihe dried 
 mummy. 
 
184 
 
 SKELETON SONNET. 
 
 Scelet ; the dead body of a man artificially dried or tanned for to 
 be kept or seen a long time. 
 
 Holland, Plutarch s ft [orals ; An Explanation of certain 
 obscure Words. 
 
 SOFT, | It is not an honorable fact that soft 
 SOFTNESS. / 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 xp^-roV, elrfas;, gutig, bonhomie, and other words 
 
 not a few. 
 
 That they speak evil of no man, that they be no fighters, but soft 
 [iTTutxeis], 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 v., vi., vii. Chapters of St. Matthew. 
 Let your softness [TO founds fyoh] 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 re 
 laxation, of the rhymes; but sonnet used often to 
 be applied to any shorter poem, especially of an ama 
 tory kind. 
 
 He [Arion] had a wonderful desire to chaunt & sonnet or hymn unto 
 Apollo Pythias. 
 
 Holland, Plutarch s Morals, p. 343. 
 
 If ye wi 1 tell us a tale, or play a jig, or show us a play and fine 
 sights, or &ing sonnets in our ears, there we will be for you. 
 
 Rogers, Nuaman th? Syrian, p. 492. 
 
SOT SPARKLE. 185 
 
 SOT, "v He only is a sot now whose stupor 
 
 SOTTISH, > and folly is connected with, and the 
 SOTTISHNESS. J result of, excessive drink. But any 
 
 fool would once bear this name. 
 
 * 
 
 In Egypt oft has seen the sot bow down, 
 And reverence some deified baboon. 
 
 Oldham, The Eighth Satire of Boileau. 
 
 He [Perseus] commanded those poor divers to be secretly mur 
 dered, that no person should remain alive that was privy to that sottish 
 
 commandment of his. 
 
 Holland, Livy, p. 1177. 
 
 A leper once he lost, and gained a king, 
 Ahaz his sottish conqueror, whom he drew 
 God s altar to disparage and displace 
 
 For one of Syrian mode. 
 
 Milton, Paradise Lost, b. i. 
 
 Sottishness and dotage is the extinguishing of reason in phlegm or 
 cold. 
 
 H. More, The Grand Mystery of Godliness, b. viii. c. 14. 
 
 SPARKLE. "Water sparkles most when it is scat 
 tered. This must explain the transition of the word 
 from its former meaning, as indicated in the passages 
 given below, to its present. 
 
 The Lansgrave hath sparkled his army without any further enter 
 prise. 
 
 State Papers, vol. x. p. 718. 
 
 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. 
 
 Purchases Pilgrims, part ii. p. 1495. 
 
186 SPECIOUS SPINSTER. 
 
 SPECIOUS. Like the Latin speciosns it simply sig 
 nified 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 ethi 
 cal sense. 
 
 This prince hadde a dowter dere, Asneth was her name, 
 A virgine ful specious, and sernely of stature. 
 
 Metrical Romance of the Fourteenth Century. 
 
 Which [aim ug- trees], if odoriferous, made that passage as sweet to 
 the smell as specious to the sight. 
 
 Fuller, A Pisgah Sight if 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 in which we made the word 
 our own, is now limited to aromatic drugs, which, as 
 consisting of various kinds, have this name of spices. 
 But spice was once employed as species is now. 
 
 Abstevne you fro al vvel spice [ah oinni specie mala, Vulg.]. 
 
 1 Tlicss. v. 22. Wiclif. 
 
 The spices of penance hen three. That on of hem is solempne, 
 another is commune, and the thridde privio. 
 
 Chaucer, The Peraoncs Tale. 
 
 Justice, although it he hut one entire virtue, yet is described in 
 two kinds of spices. The one is named justice distributive, the other 
 
 is called commutative. 
 
 Sir T. Elvot, The Governor, b. iii. c. 1. 
 
 SPINSTER. A name that used to be not uncommonly 
 applied to women of evil life, in that they were set to 
 
SPINSTER STAPLE. 187 
 
 enforced labor of spinning in the spittle or House of 
 Correction, and thus were spinsters. None of our 
 Dictionaries, so far as I have observed, take note of 
 this use of the word. 
 
 Munv would never be indicted spinsters, were they spinsters indeed, 
 nor come to so public and shameful punishments, if painfully em 
 ployed in that vocation. 
 
 Fuller, The Worthies of England, Kent. 
 
 Geta. These women are still troublesome ; 
 
 There be houses provided for such wretched women, 
 
 And some small rents to set ye a spinning. 
 Drusilla. Sir, 
 
 We are no spinsters, nor, if you look upon us, 
 
 So wretched as you take us. 
 
 Beaumont and Fletcher, The Prophetess, Act iii. Sc. 1. 
 
 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 
 fathers 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. 
 
 Men in all ages have made themselves merry with singling out 
 some place, and fixing the staple of stupidity and stolidity therein. 
 
 Fuller, The Worthies of England, Nottinghamshire. 
 
 Staple; a city or town, where merchants jointly lay up their com 
 modities for the better uttering of them by the great ; a public store 
 house. 
 
 Phillips, The New World of Words. 
 
188 STARVE STATE. 
 
 STARVE. The Anglo-Saxon * steorfan, the German 
 1 sterben, to die, it is only by comparatively modern 
 use restricted to perishing by cold or by hunger ; in 
 this restriction of use, resembling somewhat the French 
 4 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 land and abandoned them all, save 
 one, or as in the present instance it happens, save two. 
 
 For wcle or wo she n ill him not forsake : 
 She n is not wery him to love and serve, 
 Though that he lie bedrede til that lie sterre. 
 
 Chaucer, The Merchantes Tale. 
 
 But, if for me ye fight, or me will serve, 
 Not this rude kind of battle, nor hese arms 
 Are meet, the which do men in bale to sterve. 
 
 Spenser, The 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 ThronhimmeF) 
 above it ; being the chiefest seat of honor ; thus in 
 Massinger s Bondman, Act i. Sc. 3, according to the 
 old stage-direction Archidamus " offers Timoleon the 
 stale." 
 
 But for a canopy to shade her head, 
 
 No state which lasts no longer than tis stayed, 
 
 And fastened up by cords and pillars aid. 
 
 Beaumont, Psyche, can. xix. St. 170. 
 
STATE STICKLE. 189 
 
 Tlieir 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. 
 
 STATIONER. There was a time when * stationer, 
 meaning properly no more than one who had his sta 
 tion, 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 di 
 vision of labor, these became separate businesses, the 
 name was restrained to him who dealt in the latter 
 articles alone. 
 
 I doubt not but that the Animadvertor s stationer doth hope and de 
 sire that he hath thus pleased people in his book, for the advancing 
 of the price and quickening the sale thereof. 
 
 Fuller, The 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. 
 
 STICKLE, ) Now to stand with a certain pertinacity 
 STICKLER. J to one s point, refusing to renounce or 
 go back from it ; but formerly equivalent to the em 
 phatic decharpir, a word which the French language 
 has now let go, to interpose between combatants and 
 
190 STICKLE STOUT. 
 
 separate them, when they had sufficiently satisfied the 
 laws of honor ; some deriving it from the wands, 
 sceptres, or sticks with which the heralds engaged in 
 this office separated the combatants. 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. 
 
 Betwixt which three a question grew, 
 Which should the worthiest be ; 
 Which violently they pursue, 
 And would not stickled be. 
 
 Drayton, Muses Elysium, Xymph. 6. 
 
 The same angel [in Tasso], when half of the Christians arc already 
 killed, and all the rest arc in a fair way of being routed, stickles be 
 twixt the remainders of God s hosts and the race of fiends ; pulls the 
 devils backwards by the tails, and drives them from their quarry. 
 
 Dry den, Dedication of Translations from Juvenal, p. 122. 
 
 The dragon wing of night o erspreads the earth, 
 And, slickler-Vike, the armies separates. 
 
 Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida, Act v. Sc. 9. 
 
 Our former chiefs, like sticklers of the war, 
 First fought to inflame the parties, then to poise; 
 
 The quarrel loved, but did the cause abhor, 
 And did not strike to hurt, but make a noise. 
 
 Dry den, On tlie Death of Oliver Cromwell. 
 
 STOUT, ) The temptation to the strong to be also 
 STOUTNESS, j the proud is so natural, so difficult to 
 
STOUT SUBLIME. 191 
 
 resist, and resisted by so few, that it is nothing won 
 derful when words, first meaning the one, pass over 
 into the sense of the other. Stout, however, has 
 not retained, except in some provincial use, the sense 
 of proud, nor * stoutness of pride. 
 
 For had not Eumenes been so ambitious and stout to strive against 
 Antigonus for tlie chiefest place of authority, but could have been 
 contented with the second, Antigonus would have been right glad 
 thereof. 
 
 North, Plutarch s Lives, p. 509. 
 
 Come all to ruin ; let 
 
 Thy mother rather feel thy pride, than fear 
 Thy dangerous stoutness ; for I mock at death 
 With as big heart as thou. 
 
 Shakespeare, Coriolanus, Act iii. Sc. 2. 
 
 STOVE. This word has much narrowed its meaning. 
 Bath, hothouse, any room where air or water were 
 artificially heated, was a l stove once. 
 
 When a certain Frenchman came to visit Melancthon, 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, The 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 ! 
 
 Barton, The Anatomy of Melancholy, part i. sect. 2. 
 
 SUBLIME. There is an occasional use of * sublime 
 by our earlier poets, a use in which it bears much the 
 meaning of the Greek l-rsrirywix, or perhaps approaches 
 
192 SUBLIME SUSPECT. 
 
 still more closely to that of lurr^poc, high and lifted 
 up as with pride ; which has now quite departed from 
 it. 
 
 For the proud Soldan with presumptuous cheer, 
 And countenance sublime and insolent, 
 Sought only slaughter and avengement. 
 
 Spenser, The Fairy Queen, b. v. c. 8. 
 
 Their hearts were jocund and sublime, 
 Drunk with idolatry, drunk with wine. 
 
 Milton, Samson Agonistes. 
 
 SURE. Used once in the sense of affianced, or 
 6 hand-fasted. See ASSURE, ENSURE. 
 
 The king was sure to dame Elizabeth Lucy, and her husband be 
 fore God. 
 
 Sir T. More, The History of King Richard III. 
 
 SUSPECT, 1 To suspect is properly to look under, 
 SUSPICION, (and out of this fact is derived our pres 
 ent 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 ac 
 cord 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. 
 
SUSPECT SYMBOL. 193 
 
 Cordeilla out of mere love, without the suspicion of expected re 
 ward, at the message only of her father in distress, pours forth true 
 
 filial tears. 
 
 Milton, The History of England, b. i. 
 
 SYCOPHANT. The early meaning of sycophant, 
 when it was employed as equivalent to informer, de 
 lator, calumniator, promoter, agreed better with its 
 assumed derivation, and undoubted use, in the Greek, 
 than does our present. Employing it as we now do 
 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 con 
 nection between the two uses. It is not for nothing 
 that Jeremy Taylor treats of these two, " Of Slander 
 and Flattery," in one and the same sermon. 
 
 The poor man that hath nought to lose is not afraid of the syco 
 phant 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. 
 
 Andrews, 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, The History of the Reformation, ed. 1849, vol. i. p. 20. 
 
 SYMBOL. The employment of < symbol in its proper 
 Greek sense of contribution thrown into a common 
 
 9 
 
194 SYMBOL TABLE. 
 
 stock, as in a pic-nic, or the like, is frequent in Jere 
 my Taylor, and examples of it may be found in other 
 scholarly writers of the seventeenth century. 
 
 The consideration of these tilings hath oft suggested, and at length 
 persuaded me to make this attempt, to east in my mite to this treas 
 ury, my symbohiin toward so charitable a work. 
 
 Hammond, A Paraphrase and Annotations on the Psalms, Preface. 
 
 Christ hath finished his own sufferings for expiation of the world ; 
 yet there are "portions that arc 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." 
 
 J. Taylor, The Faith and Patience of the Saints. 
 
 T. 
 
 TABLE. The Latin tabula had for one of its 
 meanings picture or painting ; and this caused that 
 1 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 ; Sermon against Contention. 
 
 Learning flourished yet in the city of Sicyon, and they esteemed 
 the painting of tables in that city to be the perfectcst for true colours 
 and fine drawing, of all other places. 
 
 North, Plutarch s Lives, p. 843. 
 
TALL TEMPER. 195 
 
 TALL. Our ancestors superinduced on the primary 
 meaning of tall a secondary, resting on the assump 
 tion that tall men would be also brave, and this often 
 with a dropping of the notion of height altogether. 
 
 His [the Earl of Richmond s] companions being almost in despair 
 of victory were suddenly recomforted by Sir William Stanley, which 
 
 rame to succours with three thousand tall men. 
 
 Grafton, Chronicle. 
 
 Tambnrlaine. Where are my common soldiers now, that fought 
 
 So lionlike upon Asphaltis plains? 
 Soldier. Here, my lord. 
 
 Tamburlaine. Hold ye, tall soldiers, take ye queens apiece. 
 
 Marlowe, Tamburlaine the Great, part ii., Act iv. Sc. 4. 
 
 He [Prince Edward] would proffer to fight with any mean person, 
 if cried up by the volge for a tall man. 
 
 Fuller, The Holy War, b. iv. c. 29. 
 
 TARPAULIN. Not any longer used except in the 
 shorter form of tar for sailor. 
 
 The Archbishop of Bourdeaux is at present General of the French 
 naval forces, who though a priest, is yet permitted to turn tarpaulin 
 
 and soldier. 
 
 The Turkish Spy, Letter 2. 
 
 TEMPER. What has been said under the word hu 
 mour 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. 
 
196 TEMPER TERMAGANT. 
 
 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 Pisijah Siylit 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, an 
 other 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 has 
 sometimes very nearly the sense of our English com 
 promise, signifying, as this does, a middle term 
 reached by mutual concession, by a tempering of the 
 extreme claims upon either side. I am indisposed to 
 think that the use of temperament in this same mean 
 ing is peculiar to Milton, though I have no second 
 example at hand. 
 
 Safest, therefore, to me it seems that none of the Council be moved 
 unless by death, or just conviction of some crime. However, I fore 
 judge not any probable expedient, any temperament that can be found 
 in things of this nature, so disputable on either side. 
 
 Milton, The Ready and Ka&y Way to establish a 
 Free Commonwealth. 
 
 TERMAGANT. This would now be applied only to 
 females of fierce temper and ungoverned tongue, but 
 formerly to male and female alike ; and indeed pre 
 dominantly to the first. 
 
TERMAGANT THOUGHT. 197 
 
 Art thou so fierce, currish, and churlish a Nnbal, that even when 
 thou mightest live in the midst of thy people (as she told Elisha 
 [2 Kings iV. 13J), thou delightest to play the tyrant and termagant 
 
 among them ? 
 
 Rogers, Naaman the Syrian, p. 270. 
 
 THEWS. It is a remarkable evidence of Shake 
 speare s influence 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 dispo 
 sition, the fact that, as often as he employs it, it is in 
 the sense of nerves, muscular vigor, has quite over 
 borne the other use ; which, once so familiar in our 
 literature, has now quite passed away. See a valua 
 ble note in Craik s English of Shakespeare, p. 117. 
 
 To all good thewes born was she; 
 
 As liked to the goddes or she was born, 
 
 That of the shefe she should be the come. 
 
 Chaucer, The Legend of Hypermestre. 
 
 For everv thing to which one is inclined 
 
 Doth best become and greatest grace doth gain; 
 
 Yet praise likewise deserve good thewes enforced with pain. 
 
 Spenser, The Fairy Queen, b. ii. 2. 
 
 THOUGHT. Many, as they read or hear in our 
 English Bible these words of our Lord, " Take no 
 thought for your life" (Matt. vi. 25), are perplexed, 
 for they can not help thinking that there is some ex 
 aggeration in them, that He is urging here something 
 which is impossible, and which, if possible, would not 
 
198 THOUGHT TINSEL. 
 
 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. 
 
 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. 
 
 Tracts during the Reign of Queen Elizabeth ; 
 Somers Tracts, 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, The History of King Henry VII. 
 
 THRIFTY. The thrifty is on the way to be the 
 thriving ; yet 4 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. 
 
 No grace hath more abundant promises made unto it than this of 
 mercy, a sowing, a reaping, a thrifty grace. 
 
 Bishop Reynolds, Sermon 30. 
 
 TINSEL. This is always now cheap finery, glistening 
 like silver and gold, but at the same time pretending 
 
TINSEL TORY. 199 
 
 a value and a. richness which it does not really possess. 
 There was no such habitual insinuation of pretentious 
 finery in its earlier uses. 
 
 Every place was hanged with cloth of gold, cloth of silver, tinsel, 
 
 arras, tapestry, and what not. 
 
 Stubs, The Anatomy of Abuses, p. 18. 
 
 [Hej never cared for silks or sumptuous cost, 
 
 For cloth of gold, or tinsel figurie, 
 
 For baudkin, broidery, cutworks, nor conceits. 
 
 Gascoigne, The Steel Glass. 
 
 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, The Anatomy of Melancholy, part iii. sect. 3. 
 
 But let it be of any truly said, 
 
 He s great, religious, learned, wise or staid, 
 
 But he is lately turned tobacconist, 
 
 Oh what a blur ! what an abatement is t ! 
 
 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 4 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 Wars robbed and plundered, profes 
 sing to be in arms for the maintenance of the royal 
 
200 TORY TREACLE. 
 
 cause; and from them transferred, about the year 
 1680, to those who sought to maintain the extreme 
 prerogatives of the Crown. 
 
 Mosstroopers, a sort of rebels in the northern part of Scotland, that 
 live by robbery and spoil, like the lories in Ireland, or the banditi in 
 
 Italy. 
 
 Phillips, The Neiv World of Words, ed. 1706. 
 
 TREACLE. At present it means only the sweet syrup 
 of molasses, but a word once of far wider reach and 
 far nobler significance, haying come to us from afar, 
 and by steps which arc curious to be traced. They 
 are these : the Greeks, in anticipation of modern ho 
 moeopathy, called a supposed antidote to the viper s 
 bite, which was composed of the viper s flesh, Ar^iv/.r,, 
 from ^pi ov, a name often given to the viper (Acts 
 xxviii. 5) ; of this came the Latin tlieriaca, and our 
 theriac, of which, or rather of the Latin form, i trea 
 cle is but a popular corruption. 
 
 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. 
 
 At last his body [Sir Thomas Overbury s] was almost come by use 
 
 of poisons to the state that Mithridatcs 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 other to expel the venom of Satan s 
 temptations from the heart. 
 
 Gurnall, The Christian in Cowhide Annnr, c. ix. ?. 
 
TREACLE TRIVIAL. 201 
 
 Treacle ; a physical composition, made of vipers and other inirre- 
 
 dients. 
 
 Phillips, The New World of Words. 
 
 TRIUMPH. A name often transferred by our early 
 writers to any stately shows and pageantries whatever, 
 not restricted, as now, to those which celebrate a vic 
 tory. See Lord Bacon s Essay, the 37th, with the 
 heading, Of Masks and Triumphs, passim. 
 
 Our daughter, 
 
 In honour of whose birth these triumphs are, 
 Sits here, like beauty s child. 
 
 Pericles, Prince of Tyre, Act ii. Sc. 2. 
 
 You cannot have a perfect palace except you have two several 
 bides, the one for feasts and triumphs, the other for dwelling. 
 
 Bacon, Essays, 45. 
 
 TRIVIAL. A trivial saying is at present a slight 
 one ; it was formerly a well-worn or often-repeated 
 one, or, as we should now say, one that was trite ; but 
 this, it might be, on the ground of the weight and 
 wisdom which it contained ; as certainly the maxim 
 quoted by Hacket is any thing but trivial in our 
 sense of the word. Gradually the notion of slight- 
 ness was superadded to that of commonness, and thus 
 an epithet once of honor has become one of dishonor 
 rather. 
 
 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 
 
 9* 
 
202 TRIVIAL TUITION. 
 
 the schools, that whoso surpasseth others either in cavilling sophistry 
 or suhtlc philosophy is forthwith nicknamed a Duns. 
 
 Stanyhnrst, The Description of Ireland, p. 2. 
 
 .^Equitas optimo cuiqne notissima, is a trivial saying, A very good 
 man cannot be ignorant of equity. 
 
 Hncket, The 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 ean he pronounced by the 
 tongue of men or scraphims, and in brief they are these, Charity, 
 Humility, and Purity. 
 
 H. More, The Grand ^Mystery of Godliness, b. ii. c. 12. 
 
 TRUMPERY. That which is deceitful is without any 
 worth ; and trumpery, which was at first deceit, 
 fraud (tromperie), is now any thing which is worth 
 less and vile. 
 
 When truth appeared, Tvogero hated more 
 Alcyna s trumperies, and did them detest, 
 Than he was late enamoured before. 
 
 Sir J. Harington, Orlando Furioso, b. vii. 
 
 Britannicus was now grown to man s estate, a true and worthy 
 plant to reeeive his father s empire ; which a grafted son by adoption 
 now possessed by the injury and trumpery of his mother. 
 
 Greenway, Tacitus, p. 182. 
 
 TUITION. One defends another most effectually who 
 imparts to him those principles and that knowledge 
 whereby he shall l>o able to defend himself; and there 
 fore our modern use of tuition as teaching is a deeper 
 one than the earlier, which made it to mean external 
 rather than this internal protection. 
 
TUITION TURK. 203 
 
 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, The History of King Richard III., p. 36. 
 
 Afterwards turning his speech to his wife and son, he [Scanderbcg] 
 commended them both with his kingdom to the tuition of the Vene 
 tians. 
 
 Knolles, The History of the Turks, vol. i. p. 274. 
 
 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 re 
 ligious, designation, as equivalent to, and coextensive 
 with, Mahometan ; exactly as "EXXrjv in the New Tes 
 tament means continually not Greek, but Gentile. 
 
 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, The Religion of Protestants a safe Way 
 unto Salvation, part i. c. 2. 
 
204 TTMBRAfiE. 
 
 u. 
 
 UMBRAGE, ) To take umbrage is, I think, the 
 UMBRAGEOUS. J only phrase in which the word um 
 brage is still in use among us, the only one at least 
 in which it is ethically employed ; but i 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 con 
 stantly 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 Jere 
 my Taylor which follow, must be explained from the 
 classical sympathies of these writers ; out of which 
 the Latin etymology of the word gradually made it 
 self felt in the meaning which they ascribed to it, 
 namely, as any thing slight and shadowy. 
 
 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 ; espe 
 cially 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, The Hob/ War, h. 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 
 
UMBRAGE UNCOUTH. 205 
 
 new appearances, and you rejoice in r alse lights, or are delighted with 
 little umbrages or peep of day. 
 
 J. Taylor, A Sermon preached to the University of Dublin, 
 
 At the beginning some men were a little umbrageous, and startling 
 at the name of the Fathers ; yet since the Fathers have been well stud 
 ied, 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 Murder, b. iii. hist. 13. 
 
 UNCOUTH. Now unformed in manner, ungraceful 
 in behavior ; 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 disfavor 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 unfavorable 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, The Art of English Poesy, b. iii. c. 10. 
 
 Wel-away the while I was so fond, 
 To leave the good that I had in bond, 
 In hope of better that was uncouth ; 
 So lost the dog the flesh in his mouth. 
 
 Spenser, The Shepherd s Calendar, September. 
 
206 UNCOUTH UNKIND. 
 
 " Uncouth, unktst," said the old famous poet, Chaucer; which prov 
 erb very well taketh place in this our new poet, who for that he is 
 uncouth (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 une 
 qual by our early writers, for whom it was entirely 
 equivalent to unjust, unfair, one might almost suppose 
 they saw in it iniquus rather than ina3qualis. At 
 any rate they had no scruple in using it in this sense, 
 which inaequalis never has, but iniquus continually. 
 
 Is not my way equal ? are not your ways unequal ? 
 
 Ezek. xviii. 25. Authorized Version. 
 
 These imputations are too common, sir, 
 And easily stuck on virtue, when she s poor: 
 You are unequal to me. 
 
 Ben Jonson, The Fox, Act iii. Sc. 1. 
 
 Jerome, a very unequal relator of the opinion of his adversaries. 
 
 Worthington, The Life of Joseph Mtde, p. xi. 
 
 UNHANDSOME. See HANDSOME. 
 
 A narrow straight path by the water s side, very unhandsome [>v 
 fatten] for an army to pass that way, though they found not a man 
 
 to keep the passage. 
 
 North, Plutarch s Lii is, p. 317. 
 
 The ships were unwieldy and unhandsome. 
 
 Holland, Liry, p. 1188. 
 
 UNKIND, ) * Unkind has quite forfeited now its 
 UNKINDNESS ) primary meaning, namely, that which 
 
UNKIND UNHAPPY. 207 
 
 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 recognize 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, it early obtained use as a special designa 
 tion of this vice. 
 
 Unkynde [ingrati], cursid, withouten affeccioun. 
 
 2 Tim. iii. 2, 3. Wiclif. 
 
 It is all one to sey unktnde, 
 
 As thing vvhiche doone is againe kinde, 
 
 For it with kinde never stoode 
 
 A man to yelde evill for goode. 
 
 Gower, Confessio Amantis, b. v. 
 
 The most damnable vice and most against justice, in mine opinion, 
 is ingratitude, commonly called unkindness. He is unkind that de- 
 nieth 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. 
 
 UNHAPPY, ) A very deep truth lies involved in 
 
 UNHAPPINESS. j the fact that so many words, and I 
 
 suppose in all languages, unite the meanings of wicked 
 
 and miserable, as the Greek tf^eVXof, our own wretch 
 
 and wretched. So, too, it was once with unhappy, 
 
208 UNHAPPY UNION. 
 
 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. 
 Thou old unhappy traitor, 
 Briefly thyself remember ; the sword is out 
 That must destroy thee. 
 
 Shakespeare, King Lear, Act iv. Sc. 6. 
 
 The servants of Dionyse, king of Sicily, which although they were 
 inclined to all nnhappincss 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. gir T Elyot) The Goi . ernor> b iL 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, The 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 
 by our best writers in this sense, namely, that of a 
 pearl of a rare and transcendent beauty. 
 
 And in the cup an union shall he throw, 
 Richer than that which four successive kings 
 In Denmark s crown have worn. 
 
 Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act v. Sc. 2 
 
UNION USURY. 209 
 
 Pope Paul II. in his pontifical vestments outwent all his predeces 
 sors, 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 hun 
 dred weight of gold. 
 
 Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy, mem. ii. sect. 3. 
 
 USURY, 1 This, which is now the lending of money 
 USURER, j upon inordinate interest, was once the 
 lending it upon any. The man who did not lend his 
 money for nothing was then a i 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 dishonorable 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 di 
 vine 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 dis 
 honor 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 whicli 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 howso 
 ever usury in some respect hindercth merchandizing, yet in some other 
 it advanceth it ; for it is certain that the greatest part of trade is driven 
 by voung merchants upon borrowing at interest; so as if the usurer 
 
210 USURY UNVALUED. 
 
 either call in or keep back his money, there will ensue presently a 
 great stand of trade. Bacon> 
 
 Wherefore then gavest not thou my money into the hank, that at 
 my coining I might have required mine own with usury [ii>i> r6x^] ? 
 
 Luke xix. 23. Authorized Version. 
 
 Brokers, takers of pawns, biting usurers I will not admit; yet be 
 cause we converse here with men, not with gods, and for the hardness 
 of men s hearts, I will tolerate some kind of usury. 
 
 Burton, Tlie Anatomy of Melancholy ; Deinocritus to the Reader. 
 
 UNTHRIFTY, ) As the thrifty will probably be 
 UNTHRIFTINESS. j the thriving, so the unthrifty the 
 
 unthriving ; but the words are not synonymous any 
 
 more, as once they were. 
 
 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 unthrijliness of profession is the 
 
 fruit of self. 
 
 Id., Index. 
 
 UNVALUED. This and invaluable have been use 
 fully desynonymized ; so that invaluable means now 
 having a value greater than can be estimated, un 
 valued esteemed to have no value at all. 
 
 Two golden apples of unvalued price. 
 
 Spenser, Sontiet 77. 
 
 Go, unvalued book, 
 
 Live, and be loved ; if any envious look 
 Hurt thy clear fame, learn that no state more high 
 Attends on virtue than pined envy s eve. 
 
 Chapman, Dedication of Poems. 
 
UNVALUED VILLAIN. 211 
 
 Each heart 
 
 Hath from the leaves of thy unvalued hook 
 Those Delphic lines with deep impression took. 
 
 Milton, An Epitaph on Shakespeare. 
 
 V. 
 
 VERMIN. Now always noxious offensive animals of 
 the smaller kind ; but employed formerly with no such 
 limitation. 
 
 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 [vat TO. drjpla], 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. 
 
 Kogers, Naaman the Syrian, p. 42. 
 
 VILLAIN, 1 A word of which the story is so well 
 VILLA.NY. j known that one may be spared the ne 
 cessity of repeating it. It was, I think, with < villany 
 that there was first a transfer into an ethical sphere, 
 though it is very noticeable how villany till a very 
 late day expressed words of infamy much oftener than 
 deeds. 
 
 Pour the blood of the villain in one basin, and the blood of the 
 gentleman in another ; what difference shall here be proved ? 
 
 Becon, The Jewel of Joy. 
 
212 VILLAIN VOLUBLE. 
 
 We yield not ourselves to be your villains and slaves [non in ser- 
 vitutem 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 bis succeeding posterity declared villains and clowns, 
 taxable and incapable to bear arms. 
 
 Florio, Essays of 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 em 
 ployment, 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. 
 
 VIVACIOUS, ) Longevity, as one might expect to 
 VIVACITY. j find it, is a comparatively modern 
 word in the language. Vivacity, which has now 
 acquired the mitigated sense of liveliness, served in 
 stead 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, The Worthies of England, Staffordshire. 
 
 Hitherto the English bishops had been vivacious almost to wonder. 
 For, necessarily presumed of good years before entering on their office 
 ia the first year of Queen Elizabeth, it was much that but five died 
 for the first twenty years of her reign. 
 
 Id., The Church History of Britain, b. ix. 27. 
 
 VOLUBLE. This epithet always insinuates of him 
 to whom it is applied now that his speech is freer and 
 faster than is meet ; hut it once occupied that region 
 
VOLUBLE WIGHT. 213 
 
 of meaning which fluent does at present, without any 
 suggestion of the kind. 
 
 He [Archbishop Abbott] was painful, stout, severe against bad 
 manners, of a grave and a voluble eloquence. 
 
 Racket, The Life of Archbishop Williams, part i. p. 65. 
 
 w. 
 
 WAINSCOT. This was very commonly restrained to 
 oaken timber or oaken boarding alone. 
 
 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, b. ii. c. 3. 
 
 WHIRLPOOL. None of our Dictionaries, as far as I 
 am aware, have noticed the use of < whirlpool to 
 designate some huge sea-monster of the whale kind. 
 
 The Indian Sea breedeth the most and the biggest fishes that are ; 
 among which the whales and whirlpools, called balaenae, take up in 
 length as much as four acres or arpens of land. 
 
 Holland, Pliny, vol i. p. 235. 
 
 The ork, whirlpool, whale, or huffing physeter. 
 
 Sylvester, Du Bartas, First Day of the Week. 
 
 WIGHT. The best discussion on this interesting 
 word is to be found in Grimm s Deutsche Mythologie, 
 
214 WIGHT WILFUL. 
 
 pp. 408-410, who has a chapter, On "Wights and Elves. 
 * Wight has lost altogether now with us 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 my 
 thology, the dying-out of the superstitions connected 
 with it, the words of it, such as elf and wight/ 
 should have lost their weight and honor as well. 
 
 I crouche thee from elves and from wights. 
 
 Chaucer, TJic Millers Tale. 
 
 The poet Homer speakcth of no garlands and chaplets but due to 
 
 the celestial and heavenly wiijJds. 
 
 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. 
 
 Broughton, Of Consent upon Apocalypse. 
 
 When the four u-iglils are said to have given glory, honour, and 
 thanks to Him that sate upon the throne [Rev. \. 14], what was their 
 
 ditty but this ? 
 
 Mede, Sermons. 
 
 WILFUL, )< Wilful and willing, wilfully and 
 WILFULLY. ) willingly, have been conveniently de- 
 synonymized by later usage in our language ; so that 
 in wilful and wilfully there now lies ever the sense 
 of will capriciously exerted, finding its motives merely 
 in itself; while the examples which follow show there 
 was once no such implication of se/f-\\ \\\ in the words. 
 
 Alle the sones of Israel halewidcn wilful thingi>< to the Lord. 
 
 Erod. xxxv. 29. Wiclif. 
 
WILFUL WIT. 215 
 
 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, The Book of Martyrs ; Examination of William Thorpe. 
 
 A proud priest may be known when he denieth to follow Christ 
 
 and his apostles in wilful poverty and other virtues. 
 
 Id., 76. 
 
 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 ofAposUis. 
 
 For this flower of age, having no forecaste of thrift, but set alto 
 gether 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 MoroJs, p. 14. 
 
 WIT, 1 The present meaning of wit as compared 
 
 WITTY, j with the past, and the period of transition 
 
 from one to the other, can not be better marked than 
 
 in the quotation from Bishop Reynolds which is given 
 
 below. 
 
 Who kncwe the witte of the Lord, or who was his counceilour ? 
 
 Rom. xi. 34. Wiclif. 
 
 I take not wit in that common acceptation, whereby men under 
 stand some sudden flashes of conceit whether in style or conference, 
 which, like rotten wood in the dark, have more shine than substance, 
 
216 WIT WOMB. 
 
 whose use ami ornament are, like themselves, swift and vanishing, at 
 once both admired and forgotten. But I understand a settled, con 
 stant, and hal.itual 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, The Passions and Faculties of the Soul, c. xxxix. 
 
 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. 
 
 Rare epicures and gluttons, fit to be presidents of a Greek sympo- 
 
 siac, not for their skill in philosophy, but their icilty arts of drinking. 
 
 J. Taylor, The Doctrine and Practice of Repentance, c. iv. 1. 
 
 WITCH. This was not once restrained, 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. 
 
 There was a man in that citie whose name was Symount, a wicehe. 
 
 Acts viii. 9. Wielif. 
 
 Item he is a witch, asking counsel at soothsayers. 
 
 Foxe, The Book ofMarti/rs; Appeal against Boniface. 
 
 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 ? 
 
 John Cotta, The Trial of Witchcraft, p. 49. 
 
 WOMB. This is now only the ioWpa, but once had 
 as wide a meaning as the ;foi\/, of the Greeks. 
 
WOMB WORSHIP. 217 
 
 And he coveitide to fille his icombe of the coddis that the hoggis 
 
 eeten, and no man gaf hym. 
 
 Luke xv. 16. Wiclif. 
 
 Of this matere, o Poule, well canst thou trete ; 
 Mete unto wombe, and wombe eke unto mete. 
 
 Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales. 
 
 Falstajff. An I had but a belly of any indiflferency, I were simply 
 the most active fellow in Europe. My womb, my womb, my womb 
 
 undoes me. 
 
 Shakespeare, 2 King Henry IV., Act iv. Sc. 3. 
 
 WORM. This, which designates at present only the 
 smaller and innoxious kinds of creeping and crawling 
 things, once, as the German Wurm to the present 
 day, was employed of all the serpent kind. 
 
 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, thev said, 
 
 This man must needs be a murderer. 
 
 Acts xxviii. 3, 4. Tyndale. 
 
 Tis slander, 
 
 Whose edge is sharper than the sword ; whose tongue 
 Outvenoms all the worms of Nile. 
 
 Shakespeare, Cymbeline, Act iii. Sc. 4. 
 
 
 
 O Eve, in evil hour didst thou give ear 
 To that false worm, of whomsoever taught 
 
 To counterfeit man s voice. 
 
 Milton, Paradise Lost, b. ix. 
 
 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 honored, man. 
 
 10 
 
218 WORSHIP WRETCHED. 
 
 Tliis, of course, was the sense of the word when those 
 words found place in the Marriage Service, " with my 
 body I thee worship" 
 
 If ony man serve me, my fadir schal worschip hym. 
 
 John xii 26. Wiclif. 
 
 That they show all good faithfulness, that they may do worship to 
 
 the doctrine of our Saviour God in all things. 
 
 Tit. ii. 10. Tyndale. 
 
 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 wor- 
 shippeth. 
 
 Foxe, The 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 or one wicked, though 
 wretched does so no more. 
 
 Nero reigned after this Claudius, of alle men wrcchidhest. redy to 
 
 alle mancr vices. 
 
 Capgrave, Chronicle of England, p. 62. 
 
n 
 en. 
 
 I change of ngautoMMn in a word makes what was < 
 ! highly appropriate and reverent appear now absoh 
 profane. The word "cunning" formerly meant not 
 sinister or underhanded ; and in Thorpe s confessioi 
 Fox s " Book of Martyrs," is the sentence: "I bel 
 that all these three Persons [in the Godhead] are eve 
 power, and in cunning, and in might, full of grace an 
 all goodness." 
 
 It is a somewhat noticeable fact that the changes in 
 signification of words have generally been to their de 
 I oration ; that is, words that heretofore had no sini 
 meaning have acquired it. We have given above an 
 euiplification of this in the word "cunning." " D.-un 
 in another of this class. It was used by earlier \\ i i 
 i without the insinuation, which is now almost latent it 
 { that the external hhows of modesty and sobriety rent 01 
 corresponding realities. "Explode" formerly nn-an 
 drive oft" the stage with loud clappings of the hand*, 
 gradually became exaggerated into its present signih cat 
 "Facetious," too, originally meant urbane, but now ha 
 degenerated as to have acquired the sense of buffoon 
 and Mr. French sees indications that it will ere long 
 quire the sense of indecent buffoonery. " Frippery" i 
 means trumpery and odds and ends of cheap finery, 
 oii.-o it meant old clothes of value, and not of the wo 
 lessness the term at present implies. The word " gosi 
 formerly meant only sponsors in baptism. They were i 
 posed to become acquainted at the baptismal, and by t 
 sponsorial act to establish an indefinite affinity towj 
 each other and the child. Thus the word was appliet 
 all familiar and intimate, and later obtained meaning wl 
 is now predominant in it. " Grope" once meant merel 
 feel for, but latterly the idea of feeling in the dark, or 
 blind man, was attached to it. " Harlot," though alw 
 a word expressive of contempt, once implied nothing 
 that special form of sin to which it exclusively re fen 
 present. "Homely" once meant secret and famii 
 though in the time of Milton it had acquired the same s( 
 as at present. " Idiot," from the Greek, originally si 
 fied only a private man as distinguished from one in pu 
 office, and from that it has degenerated till it has com* 
 designate a person of defective mental power*. " Incer 
 once meant to kindle not only auger, but good passions 
 well; Fuller uses it in the sense of "to incite." " Ii 
 lence" originally signified a freedom from passion or p 
 but now implies a condition of languid non-exertion. " 
 solent" was once only " unusual." " Knave" meant m 
 ly a boy ; ,aud many other words might be mentioned 
 significations of which have in time become so altered 
 exaggerated as to require a skilled philologist to trace 
 their original meaning. 
 
 The derivation of "lumber" is peculiar. As the L 
 bards were the bankers so they were also the pawnbrol 
 of the middle ages. The " lumber-room" was then 
 place where Lombard banker and broker stored 
 pledges, and " lumber" gradually became to mean 
 pledges themselves. As these naturally accumulated 
 they got out of date or unserviceable, it is easy to trace 
 steps by which the word descended to its present mean 
 
 "Obsequious" is another instance of degeneration in 
 
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