xii. 42), either to the members of a household, to soldiers, or to

others.

To bed they busked them anon, Their _liveryes_ were served them up soone, With a merry cheer.

_Ballad of John de Reeve_, 155.

What _Liverye_ is, we by common use in England knowe well enough, namelye, that it is, allowaunce of horse-meate, as they commonly use the woord in stabling, as to keepe horses at _liverye_, the which woord, I gess, is derived of livering or delivering foorth theyr nightlye foode. Soe in great howses the _liverye_ is sayd to be served up for all night. And _Liverye_ is also called the upper garment which serving-men weareth, soe called (as I suppose) for that it is delivered and taken from him at pleasure.--SPENSER, _View of the State of Ireland_, p. 623 (Globe edition).

The emperor’s officers every night went through the town from house to house, whereat any English gentleman did repast or lodge, and served their _liveries_ for all night; first the officers brought into the house a cast of fine manchet, and of silver two great pots, and white wine, and sugar, to the weight of a pound, &c.--CAVENDISH, _Life of Cardinal Wolsey_.

=LOITER=, } LOITERER. }

Whatever may be the derivation of ‘to loiter,’[17] it is certain that it formerly implied a great deal more and worse than it implies now. The ‘loiterer’ then was very much what the tramp is now.

God bad that no such strong lubbers should _loyter_ and goe a begging, and be chargeable to the congregation.--TYNDALE, _Works_, p. 217.

He that giveth any alms to an idle beggar robbeth the truly poor; as S. Ambrose sometimes complaineth that the maintenance of the poor is made the spoil of the _loiterer_.--SANDERSON, _Sermons_, 1671. vol. i. p. 198.

Yf he be but once taken soe idlye roging, he [the Provost Marshal] may punnish him more lightlye, as with stockes or such like; but yf he be founde agayne soe _loytring_ he may scourge him with whippes or roddes; after which yf he be agayne taken, lett him have the bitterness of the marshall lawe.--SPENSER, _View of the State of Ireland_, p. 679 (Globe Edition).

They spend their youth in _loitering_, bezzling, and harlotting.--MILTON, _Animadversions on Remonstrants’ Defence_.

=LOVER.= This word has undergone two restrictions, of which formerly it knew nothing. A natural delicacy, and an unwillingness to confound under a common name things essentially different, has caused ‘lover’ no longer to be equivalent with friend, but always to imply a relation resting on the difference of sex; while further, and within these narrower limits, the ‘lover’ now is always the man, not as once the man or the woman indifferently. We may still indeed speak of ‘a pair of lovers,’ but then datur denominatio a potiori. ‘Leman’ had something of the same history, though that history ended in leaving this a designation of the woman alone.

If ye love them that love you, what thank have ye therefore? for sinners also love their _lovers_.--_Luke_ vi. 32. COVERDALE.

For Hiram was ever a _lover_ of David.--_1 Kin._ v. 1. (A.V.)

This Posthumus, Most like a noble lord in love, and one That had a royal _lover_, took his hint.

SHAKESPEARE, _Cymbeline_, act v. sc. 5.

If I freely may discover What would please me in a _lover_, I would have _her_ fair and witty, Savouring more of court than city.

BEN JONSON, _The Poetaster_.

=LUCID INTERVAL.= We limit this at present to the brief and transient season when a mind, ordinarily clouded and obscured by insanity, recovers for a while its clearness. It had no such limitation formerly, but was of very wide use, as the four passages quoted below, in each of which its application is different, will show.[18]

East of Edom lay the land of Uz, where Job dwelt, so renowned for his patience, when the devil heaped afflictions upon him, allowing him no _lucid intervals_.--FULLER, _A Pisgah Sight of Palestine_, b. iv. c. 2.

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 pleasures.--SOUTH, _Sermons_, 1744, vol. viii. p. 403.

Thus he [Lord Lyttelton] continued, giving his dying benediction to all around him. On Monday morning a _lucid interval_ gave some small hopes; but these vanished in the evening.--_Narrative of the Physician, inserted in Johnson’s Life of Lord Lyttelton._

=LUMBER.= As the Lombards were the bankers, so also they were the pawnbrokers of the Middle Ages; indeed, as they would often advance money upon pledges, the two businesses were very closely joined, would often run in, to one another. The ‘lumber’ room was originally the Lombard room, or room where the Lombard banker and broker stowed away his pledges; ‘lumber’ then, as in the passage from Butler, the pawns and pledges themselves. As these would naturally often accumulate here till they became out of date and unserviceable, the steps are easy to be traced by which the word came to possess its present meaning.

_Lumber_, potius _lumbar_, as to put one’s clothes to _lumbar_, _i.e._ pignori dare, oppignorare.--SKINNER, _Etymologicon_.

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 Baillie and of Lady Grisell Baillie_.

=LURCH.= ‘To lurch’ is seldom used now except of a ship, which ‘lurches’ when it makes something of a headlong dip in the sea; the fact that by so doing it, partially at least, hides itself, and so ‘lurks,’ explains this employment of the word. But ‘to lurch,’ generally as an active verb, was of much more frequent use in early English; and soon superinduced on the sense of lying concealed that of lying in wait with the view of intercepting and seizing a prey. After a while this superadded notion of intercepting and seizing some booty quite thrust out that of lying concealed; as in all three of the quotations which follow. See Skeat’s Dictionary.

It is not an auspicate beginning of a feast, nor agreeable to amity and good fellowship, to snatch or _lurch_ one from another, to have many hands in a dish at once, striving a vie who should be more nimble with his fingers.--HOLLAND, _Plutarch’s Morals_, p. 679.

I speak not of many more [discommodities of a residence]: too far off from great cities, which may hinder business; or too near them, which _lurcheth_ all provisions, and maketh every thing dear.--BACON, _Essays_, 45 (ed. Abbott, ii. p. 50).

At the beginning of this war [the Crusades] the Pope’s temporal power in Italy was very slender; but soon after he grew within short time without all measure, and did _lurch_ a castle here, gain a city there from the emperor, while he was employed in Palestine.--FULLER, _Holy War_, b. i. c. 11.

=LUST.= Used at this present only in an ill sense, not as ἐπιθυμία, but as ἐπιθυμία κακή (_Col._ iii. 5), and this mainly in one particular direction. ‘Lust’ had formerly no such limitations, nor has it now in German. The same holds good of the verb.

Of prikyng and of huntyng for the hare Was al his _lust_, for no cost wolde he spare.

CHAUCER, _Canterbury Tales_, 192.

Through faith a man is purged of his sins, and obtaineth _lust_ unto the law of God.--TYNDALE, _Prologue upon the Epistle to the Romans_.

It was not because of the multitude of you above all nations that the Lord had _lust_ unto you and chose you.--_Deut._ vii. 7. COVERDALE.

My _lust_ to devotion is little, my joy none at all.--Bishop HALL, _Letters_, Dec. 2, Ep. 1.

Thou mayest kill and eat flesh in all thy gates, whatsoever thy soul _lusteth_ after.--_Deut._ xii. 15. (A.V.)

=LUXURY=, } LUXURIOUS. }

‘Luxuria’ in classical Latin was very much what our ‘luxury’ is now. The meaning which in our earlier English was its only one, namely indulgence in sins of the flesh, it derived from the use of ‘luxuria’ in the medieval ethics, where it never means anything else but this. The weakening of the influence of the scholastic theology, joined to a more familiar acquaintance with classical Latinity, has probably caused its return to the classical meaning. In the definition given by Phillips (see below), we note the process of transition from its old meaning to its new, the old still remaining, but the new superinduced upon it.

O foule luste, O _luxurie_, lo thin ende! Nought oonly that thou feyntest mannes mynde, But verrayly thou wolt his body schende.

CHAUCER, _The Man of Lawes Tale_ (Morris, ii. p. 198).

_Luxury_ and lust fasten a rust and foulness on the mind, that it cannot see sin in its odious deformity, nor virtue in its unattainable beauty.--BATES, _Spiritual Perfection_, c. 1.

_Luxury_, all superfluity and excess in carnal pleasures, sumptuous fare or building; sensuality, riotousness, profuseness.--PHILLIPS, _New World of Words_.

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.

=MAGNIFICENT=, } MAGNIFICENCE. }

Frequently used by our elder writers where we should employ munificent or generous. Yet there lay in the word something more than in these; something of the μεγαλοπρέπεια of Aristotle; a certain grandeur presiding over and ordering this large distribution of wealth. Behind both uses an earlier and a nobler than either may be traced, as is evident from my first quotation.

Then cometh _magnificence_, that is to say when a man doth and performeth gret werkes of goodnesse.--CHAUCER, _The Persones Tale_.

Every amorous person becometh liberal and _magnificent_, although he had been aforetime a pinching snudge; in such sort as men take more pleasure to give away and bestow upon those whom they love, than they do take and receive of others.--HOLLAND, _Plutarch’s Morals_, p. 1147.

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_.

=MAID.= A word which, in its highest sense as = virgin, might once be applied to either sex, to Sir Galahad as freely as to the _Pucelle_, but which is now restricted to one. Compare παρθένος in Greek.

To him [John the Apostle] God hangyng in the cross bitook his modir, that a _mayde_ schulde kepe a mayde.--WICLIF, _Prolog of John_.

I wot wel that thapostil was a _mayde_; But natheles, though that he wrot or sayde He wold that every wight were such as he, All nys but counseil to virginité.

CHAUCER, _Prologe of the Wyf of Bathe_, 79.

Sir Galahad is a _maid_ and sinner never; and that is the cause he shall achieve where he goeth that ye nor none such shall not attain.--Sir T. MALORY, _Morte D’Arthur_, b. xiii. c. 16.

=MAKE=, } MAKER. }

The very early use of ‘maker,’ as equivalent to poet, and ‘to make’ as applied to the exercise of the poet’s art, is evidence that the words are of genuine home-growth, and not mere imitations of the Greek ποιητής and ποιεῖν, which Sir Philip Sidney, as will be seen below, suggests as possible. The words, like the French ‘trouvère’ and ‘troubadour,’ the O.H.G. ‘scof,’ and the O.E. ‘sceop,’ mark men’s sense that invention, and in a certain sense, creation, is the essential character of the poet. The quotation from Chaucer will sufficiently prove how entirely mistaken Sir John Harington was, when he affirmed (_Apology for Poetry_, p. 2) that Puttenham in his _Art of English Poesy_, 1589, was the first who gave ‘make’ and ‘maker’ this meaning. Sir Walter Scott somewhere claims them as Scotticisms; but exclusively such they certainly are not.

And eke to me hit is a greet penaunce, Sith rym in English hath swich scarsitee, To folowe word by word the curiositee Of Graunson, flour of hem that _make_ in Fraunce.

CHAUCER, _Compleynt of Venus_, 79 (Skeat).

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 poete Chaucer, for his excellencie and wonderful skil in _making_, his scholler Lidgate (a worthy scholler of so excellent a maister) calleth the Loadestarre of our language.--E. K., _Epistle Dedicatory to Spenser’s Shepherd’s Calendar_.

There cannot be in a _maker_ a fouler fault than to falsify his accent to serve his cadence, or by untrue orthography to wrench his words to help his rhyme.--PUTTENHAM, _Art of English Poesy_, b. ii. c. 8.

The Greeks named the poet ποιητής, which name, as the most excellent, hath gone through other languages. It cometh of this word ποιεῖν, to make; wherein I know not whether by luck or wisdom we Englishmen have met well with the Greeks in calling him a _maker_.--Sir P. SIDNEY, _Defence of Poesy_.

=MANSION.= This is a finely selected word, suggested no doubt by the ‘mansiones’ of the Vulgate, whereby our Translators, and Tyndale before them, rendered the μοναί of John xiv. 2. Knowing, however, as we do that μοναί never meant ‘mansions’ in our modern, or auctioneers’ sense of the word, we cannot doubt that by this word they intended places of tarrying, which might be for a longer or a shorter time; resting places which remained for the Christian traveller who should have reached at length his heavenly home. This use of ‘mansion’ as a place of tarrying is frequent enough in our early literature, although our modern use is by no means unknown.

They [the Angels] be pure minds and were never neither blinded through sin, ne hindered through any earthly _mansion_ and corruptible body.--HUTCHINSON, _Works_, p. 160 (ed. 1842).

Before the starry threshold of Jove’s court My _mansion_ is, where those immortal shapes Of bright aerial spirits live unsphered, In regions mild of calm and serene air.

MILTON, _Comus_, i. 4.

=MANURE.= The same word as ‘manœuvre,’ to work with the hand; and thus, to till or cultivate the earth, this tillage being in earlier periods of society the great and predominant labour of the hands. We restrain the word now to one particular branch of this cultivation, but our ancestors made it to embrace the whole.

The _manuring_ hand of the tiller shall root up all that burdens the soil.--MILTON, _Reason of Church Government_.

It [Japan] is mountainous and craggy, full of rocks and stony places, so that the third part of this empire is not inhabited or _manured_.--_Memorials of Japan_ (Hakluyt Society), p. 3.

A rare and excellent wit untaught doth bring forth many good and evil things together; as a fat soil, that lieth _unmanured_, bringeth forth both herbs and weeds.--NORTH, _Plutarch’s Lives_, p. 185.

Every man’s hand itching to throw a cudgel at him, who, like a nut-tree, must be _manured_ by beating, or else would never bear fruit.--FULLER, _Holy War_, ii. 11.

=MEAN=, } MEANNESS. }

O.E. ‘gemǽne,’ Goth. ‘gamains’ (compare Germ. ‘gemein’), cognate with Latin ‘communis’ (our ‘common’)--all with a history very closely corresponding to that of the Greek κοινός (see _Acts_ x. 14). The connotation of moral baseness only accrued to the word by degrees.

And the _mean_ man boweth down, and the great man humbleth himself.--_Isai._ ii. 9. (A.V.)

But, for his _meannesse_ and disparagement, My Sire, who me too dearely well did love, Unto my choice by no meanes would assent.

SPENSER, _Fairy Queen_, iv. 7, 16.

=MECHANIC=, } MECHANICAL. }

A word which now simply expresses a fact, and is altogether untinged with passion or sentiment; but in its early history it ran exactly parallel to the Greek βάναυσος, which, expressing first one who plied a handicraft, came afterwards, in obedience to certain constant tendencies of language, to imply the man ethically illiberal. See the quotation from Holland, _s. v._ ‘Fairy.’

Base and _mechanical_ niggardise they [flatterers] account temperate frugality.--HOLLAND, _Plutarch’s Morals_, p. 93.

Base dunghill villain and _mechanical_.

SHAKESPEARE, _2 Henry VI._, act i. sc. 3.

It was never a good world, since employment was counted _mechanic_, and idleness gentility.--WHITLOCK, _Zootomia_, p. 30.

=MEDDLE.= This had once no such offensive meaning of mixing oneself up in other people’s business as now it has. On the contrary, Barrow in one of his sermons draws expressly the distinction between ‘meddling’ and being meddlesome, and only condemns the latter.

In the drynke that she _meddlid_ to you, mynge ye double to hir.--_Apoc._ xviii. 6. WICLIF.

How is it that thou, being a Jew, askest drink of me, which am a Samaritan? For the Jews _meddle_ not [oὐ συγχρῶνται] with the Samaritans.--_John_ iv. 9. CRANMER.

We beseech you, brethren, that ye study to be quiet, and to _meddle_ with your own business.--_1 Thess._ iv. 10, 11. TYNDALE.

Tho he, that had well y-cond his lere, Thus _medled_ his talke with many a teare.

SPENSER, _The Shepherd’s Calendar, May_.

=MEDITERRANEAN.= Only seas are ‘mediterranean’ now, and for us only one Sea; but there is no reason why cities and countries should not be characterized as ‘mediterranean’ as well; and they were so once. We have preferred, however, to employ ‘inland.’

Their buildings are for the most part of tymber, for the _mediterranean_ countreys have almost no stone.--_The Kyngdome of Japonia_, p. 6.

An old man, full of days, and living still in your _mediterranean_ city, Coventry.--HENRY HOLLAND, _Preface to Holland’s Cyropædia_.

It [Arabia] hath store of cities, as well _mediterranean_ as maritime.--HOLLAND, _Ammianus_.

=MEDLEY.= The same word as the French ‘mêlée.’ It is plain from the frequent use of the French ‘mêlée’ in the description of battles that we feel now the want of a corresponding English word. There have been attempts, though hardly successful ones, to naturalize ‘mêlée,’ and as ‘volée’ has become in English ‘volley,’ that so ‘mêlée’ should become ‘melley.’ Perhaps, as Tennyson has sanctioned these, employing ‘mellay’ in his _Princess_, they may now succeed. But there would have been no need of this, nor yet of borrowing the modern French form, if ‘medley’ had been allowed to keep this more passionate use, which once it possessed.

The consul for his part forslowed not to come to handfight. The _medley_ continued above three hours, and the hope of victory hung in equal balance.--HOLLAND, _Livy_, p. 1119.

Now began the conflict for the winning and defending of that old castle, which proved a _medley_ of twelve hours long.--_Swedish Intelligencer_, vol. ii. p. 41.

=MELANCHOLY.= This has now ceased, nearly or altogether, to designate a particular form of moody madness, the German ‘Tiefsinn,’ which was ascribed by the old physicians to a predominance of _black bile_ mingling with the blood. It was not, it is true, always restrained to this particular form of mental unsoundness; thus Burton’s ‘Anatomy of _Melancholy_’ has not to do with this one form of madness, but with all. This, however, was its prevailing use, and here is to be found the link of connexion between its present use, as a deep pensiveness or sadness, and its past.

That property of _melancholy_, whereby men become to be delirious in some one point, their judgment standing untouched in others.--H. MORE, _A Brief Discourse of Enthusiasm_, sect. xiv.

Luther’s conference with the devil might be, for ought I know, nothing but a _melancholy_ dream.--CHILLINGWORTH, _The Religion of Protestants_, Preface.

Though I am persuaded that none but the devil and this _melancholy_ miscreant were in the plot [the Duke of Buckingham’s murder], yet in foro Dei many were guilty of this blood, that rejoiced it was spilt.--HACKET, _Life of Archbishop Williams_, part ii. p. 80.

Some _melancholy_ men have believed that elephants and birds and other creatures, have a language whereby they discourse with one another.--Bishop REYNOLDS, _Passions and Faculties of the Soul_, c. 39.

=MERE=, } MERELY. }

There is a good note on these words, and on the changes of meaning which they have undergone, in Craik’s _English of Shakespeare_, p. 80. He there says: ‘Merely (from the Latin merus and mere) means purely, only. It separates that which it designates and qualifies from everything else. But in so doing the chief or most emphatic reference may be made either to that which is included, or to that which is excluded. In modern English it is always to the latter. In Shakespeare’s day the other reference was more common, that namely to what was included.’

With them all the people of Mounster went out, and many other of them which were _mere_ English, thenceforth joined themselves with the Irish against the king, and termed themselves very Irish.--SPENSER, _View of the State of Ireland_.

Our wine is here mingled with water and with myrrh; there [in heaven] it is _mere_ and unmixed.--Bishop TAYLOR, _The Worthy Communicant_.

The great winding-sheets, that bury all things in oblivion, are two, deluges and earthquakes. As for conflagrations and great droughts, they do not _merely_ dispeople and destroy. Phaeton’s car went but a day; and the three years’ drought, in the time of Elias, was but particular, and left people alive.--BACON, _Essays_, 58.

Fye on’t; O fye! ’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 quarternion, or group of _four_ persons or things. Probably in the distribution of food to large numbers, it was found most convenient to arrange them in _fours_, and hence this application of the word. A ‘mess’ at the Inns of Court still consists of four. A phrase-book published in London in 1617 bears this title, ‘Janua Linguarum _Quadrilinguis_, or A Messe of Tongues, Latine, English, French, and Spanish.’

There lacks a fourth thing to make up the _mess_.--LATIMER, _Sermon_ 5.

Where are your _mess_[19] of sons to back you now?

SHAKESPEARE, _3 Henry VI._ act i. sc. 4.

Amongst whom [converted Jews] we meet with a _mess_ of most eminent men; Nicolaus Lyra, that grand commentator on the Bible; Hieronymus de Sanctâ Fide, turned Christian about anno 1412; Ludovicus Carettus, living in Paris anno 1553; and the never sufficiently to be praised Emmanuel Tremellius.--FULLER, _A Pisgah Sight of Palestine_, part ii. b. 5.

=METAL.= The Latin ‘metallum’ signified a mine before it signified the metal which was found in the mine; and Jeremy Taylor uses ‘metal’ in this sense of mine. This may be a latinism peculiar to him, as he has of such not a few; in which case it would scarcely have a right to a place in this little volume, which does not propose to note the peculiarities of single writers, but the general course of the language. I, however, insert it, counting it more probable that my limited reading hinders me from furnishing an example of this use from some other author, than that such does not somewhere exist.

It was impossible to live without our king, but as slaves live, that is, such who are civilly dead, and persons condemned to _metals_.--Bishop TAYLOR, _Ductor Dubitantium, Epistle Dedicatory_.

=METHODIST.= This term is restricted at present to the followers of John Wesley; but it was once applied to those who followed a certain ‘method’ in philosophical speculation, or in the ethical treatment of themselves or others.

The finest _methodists_, according to Aristotle’s golden rule of artificial bounds, condemn geometrical precepts in arithmetic, or arithmetical precepts in geometry, as irregular and abusive.--G. HARVEY, _Pierce’s Supererogation_, p. 117.

For physick, search into the writings of Hippocrates, Galen and the _methodists_.--SANDERSON, _Sermons_, vol. ii. p. 135.

All of us have some or other tender parts of our souls, which we cannot endure should be ungently touched; every man must be his own _methodist_ to find them out.--JACKSON, _Justifying Faith_, b. iv. c. 5.

=MILITIA.= By this name, as the contests between Charles I. and his Parliament have made us all to know, the entire military force of the nation, and not a part of it only, was designated in the seventeenth century. It is true indeed that this force did much more nearly resemble our militia than our standing army, but it was never used for that to the exclusion of this.

It was a small thing to contend with the Parliament about the sole power of the _militia_, which we see him doing little less than laying hands on the weapons of God Himself, which are his judgements, to wield and manage them by the sway and bent of his own frail cogitations.--MILTON, _Iconoclastes_, c. 26.

The king’s captains and soldiers fight his battles, and yet he is _summus imperator_, and the power of the _militia_ is his.--Bishop TAYLOR, _Ductor Dubitantium_, iii. 3, 7.

Ye are of his flock and his _militia_; ye are now to fight his battles, and therefore to put on his armour.--Id., _On Preparation for Confirmation_, § 7.

=MINION.= Once no more than darling or dearling (mignon). It is quite a superaddition of later times that the ‘minion’ is an unworthy object, on whom an excessive fondness is bestowed.

Map now an Adam in thy memory, By God’s own hand made with great majesty; No idiot fool, nor drunk with vain opinion, But God’s disciple, and his dearest _minion_.

SYLVESTER, _Du Bartas’ Weeks, The Imposture_.

Whoso to marry a _minion_ wife Hath had good chance and hap, Must love her and cherish her all his life, And dandle her in his lap.

_Old Song._

=MINUTE.= ‘Minutes’ are now ‘minúte’ portions of _time_; they might once be ‘minúte’ portions of anything.

But whanne a pore widewe was comun, sche keste two _mynutis_, that is a ferthing.--_Mark_ xii. 42. WICLIF.

Let us, with the poor widow of the Gospel, at least give two _minutes_.--BECON, _The Nosegay_, Preface.

An enquiry into the _minutes_ of conscience is commonly the work of persons that live holily.--Bishop TAYLOR, _Doctrine and Practice of Repentance_, Preface.

And now, after such a sublimity of malice, I will not instance in the sacrilegious ruin of the neighbouring temples, which needs must have perished in the flame. These are but _minutes_, in respect of the ruin prepared for the living temples.--Id., _Sermon on the Gunpowder Treason_.

=MISCREANT.= A settled conviction that to believe wrongly is the way to live wrongly has caused that in all languages words, which originally did but indicate the first, have gradually acquired a meaning of the second. There is no more illustrious example of this than ‘miscreant,’ which now charges him to whom it is applied not with religious error, but with extreme moral depravity; while yet, according to its etymology, it did but mean at the first misbeliever, and as such would have been as freely applied to the morally most blameless of these as to the vilest and the worst. In the quotation from Shakespeare York means to charge the Maid of Orleans, as a dealer in unlawful charms, with apostasy from the Christian faith, according to the low and unworthy estimate of her character, above which even Shakespeare himself has not risen.

We are not therefore ashamed of the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, because _miscreants_ in scorn have upbraided us that the highest of our wisdom is, Believe.--HOOKER, _Ecclesiastical Polity_, b. v.

One sort you say be those that believe not in Christ, but deny Christ and his Scripture; as be the Turks, paynims, and such other _miscreants_.--FRITH, _Works_, 1572, p. 62.

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 honourably restored without ransom; and the emperor’s generosity to the _miscreant_ was interpreted as treason to the Christian cause.--GIBBON, _Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_, c. 58.

=MISER=, } MISERY, } MISERABLE. }

We may notice a curious shifting of parts in ‘miser,’ ‘misery,’ ‘miserable.’ There was a time when the ‘miser’ was the wretched man, he is now the covetous; at the same time ‘misery,’ which is now wretchedness, and ‘miserable,’ which is now wretched, were severally covetousness and covetous. They have in fact exactly reversed their uses. Men still express by some words of this group, although not by the same, by ‘miser’ (and ‘miserly’), not as once by ‘misery’ and ‘miserable,’ their deep moral conviction that the avaricious man is his own tormentor, and bears his punishment involved in his sin. A passage, too long to quote, in Gascoigne’s _Fruits of War_, st. 72-74, is very instructive on the different uses of the word ‘miser’ even in his time, and on the manner in which it was even then hovering between the two meanings.

Because thou sayest, ‘That I am rich and enriched and lack nothing;’ and knowest not that thou art a _miser_ [et nescis quia tu es _miser_, Vulg.] and miserable and poor and blind and naked.--_Rev._ iii. 17. Rhemish Version.

Vouchsafe to stay your steed for humble _miser’s_ sake.

SPENSER, _Fairy Queen_, ii. 1, 8.

He [Perseus] returned again to his old humour which was born and bred with him, and that was avarice and _misery_.--NORTH, _Plutarch’s Lives_, p. 215.

But Brutus, scorning his [Octavius Cæsar’s] _misery_ and niggardliness, gave unto every band a number of wethers to sacrifice, and fifty silver drachmas to every soldier.--Id., _ib._, p. 830.

If _avarice_ be thy vice, yet make it not thy punishment; _miserable_ men commiserate not themselves; bowelless unto themselves, and merciless unto their own bowels.--Sir T. BROWNE, _Letter to a Friend_.

The liberal-hearted man is by the opinion of the prodigal, _miserable_; and by the judgment of the _miserable_, lavish.--HOOKER, _Ecclesiastical Polity_, b. v. c. 65.

=MISS.= Now to be conscious of the loss of, and nearly answering to the Latin ‘desiderare,’ but once to do without, to dispense with.

But as ’tis, We cannot _miss_ him; he does make our fire, Fetch in our wood, and serves in offices That profit us.

SHAKESPEARE, _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.= This is due to a French form from a late Latin diminutive of ‘modulus,’ a diminutive of ‘modus;’ but this diminutive sense which once went constantly with the word, and which will alone explain the quotations which follow, when it lies in the word now, exists only by accident of context.

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 II._, act iii. sc. 2.

If Solomon’s Temple were compared to some structures and fanes of heathen gods, it would appear as St. Gregory’s to St. Paul’s (the babe by the mother’s side), or rather this David’s _model_ would be like David himself standing by Goliath, so gigantic were some pagan fabrics in comparison thereof.--FULLER, _A Pisgah Sight of Palestine_, b. iii. c. 3.

=MOOD.= It is hardly necessary to observe that there are two ‘moods’ in the English language, the one the Latin ‘modus,’ and existing in the two forms of ‘mood’ (grammatical) and ‘mode;’ the other the Anglo-Saxon ‘mód,’ the German ‘muth.’ It is this last with which we are dealing here. It would seem as if its homonym had influenced it so far as to take out in great part the force from it, though not from ‘moody;’ but it had not always so done.

And on here bare knees adoun they falle, And wolde han kist his feet ther as he stood, Till atte laste aslaked was his _mood_.

CHAUCER, _The Knightes Tale_, 900.

And as a lion skulking all in night Far off in pastures, and, come home, all dight In jaws and breastlocks with an oxe’s blood New feasted on him, his looks full of _mood_, So looked Ulysses.

CHAPMAN, _Homer’s Odysseis_, xxii. 518.

Then Phœbus gathered up his steeds that yet for fear had run Like flaighted fiends, and in his _mood_ without respect begun To beat his whipstock on their pates, and lash them on their sides.

GOLDING, _Ovid’s Metamorphosis_, b. ii.

=MOROSE.= It is very curious that while the classical ‘mōrosus’ expressed one given overmuch to his own manners, habits, ways (mores), very nearly the Greek αὐθέκαστος, the medieval ‘mŏrosus’ was commonly connected with ‘mora,’ a delay;[20] and in treatises of Christian ethics was the technical word to express the sin of _delaying_ upon impure, wanton, or, as in the quotation from South, malignant thoughts, instead of rejecting them on the instant. See, for instance, Gerson, _Opp._, vol. i. p. 377, for evidence constantly recurring of its connexion for him with ‘mora.’ So long as the scholastic theology exerted more or less influence on our own, ‘morose’ was often employed in this sense; which, however, it has since entirely foregone. I owe the third quotation given below to Todd, who is so entirely unaware of this history of ‘morose,’ that he explains it there as ungovernable!

Here are forbidden all wanton words, and all _morose_ delighting in venereous thoughts, all rolling and tossing such things in our minds.--Bishop TAYLOR, _Doctrine and Practice of Repentance_, c. 4, § 1.

All _morose_ thoughts, that is, _delaying_, dwelling, or insisting on such thoughts, fancying of such unclean matters with delectation.--HAMMOND, _Practical Catechism_, b. ii. § 6.

In this [the seventh] commandment are forbidden all that feed this sin [adultery], or are incentives to it, as luxurious diet, inflaming wines, an idle life, _morose_ thoughts, that dwell in the fancy with delight.--NICHOLSON, _Exposition of the Catechism_, 1662, p. 123.

For we must know that it is the _morose_ dwelling of the thoughts upon an injury, a long and sullen meditation upon a wrong, that incorporates and rivets it into the mind.--SOUTH, _Sermons_, vol. x. p. 278.

=MORTAL.= We speak still of a ‘mortal’ sin or a ‘mortal’ wound, but the active sense has nearly departed from the word, as the passive has altogether departed from ‘deadly,’ which see.

Were there a serpent seen with forkéd tongue That slily glided towards your majesty, It were but necessary you were waked, Lest, being suffered in that harmful slumber, The _mortal_ worm might make the sleep eternal.

SHAKESPEARE, _2 Henry VI._, act iii. sc. 2.

Come, thou _mortal_ wretch, With thy sharp teeth this knot intrinsicate Of life at once untie.

Id., _Antony and Cleopatra_, act v. sc. 2.

=MOUNTEBANK.= Now _any_ antic fool; but once restrained to the quack-doctor who at fairs and such places of resort, having _mounted_ on a _bank_ or _bench_, from thence proclaimed the virtue of his drugs; being described by Whitlock (_Zootomia_, p. 436) as ‘a fellow above the vulgar more by three planks and two empty hogsheads than by any true skill.’ See the quotation from Jackson, _s. v._ ‘Authentic.’

Such is the weakness and easy credulity of men, that a _mountebank_ or cunning woman is preferred before an able physician.--WHITLOCK, _Zootomia_, p. 437.

Giving no cause of complaint to any but such as are unwilling to be healed of their shameful and dangerous diseases, who love ignorant and flattering _mountebanks_ more than the most learned and faithful physicians of souls.--GAUDEN, _Hieraspistes_, p. 427.

Above the reach of antidotes, the power Of the famed Pontic _mountebank_ to cure.

OLDHAM, _Third Satire upon the Jesuits_.

=MUSE.= There is a very curious use of ‘Muse’ in our earlier literature, according to which the female sex of this inspirer of song falls quite out of sight. This recurs too often and too deliberately to be explained away as the accidental inaccuracy of some single writer.

Nor in the pomp of proud audacious deeds Intends our _Muse_ to vaunt _his_ heavenly verse.

MARLOWE, _Dr. Faustus_, 5, 6.

So is it not with me as with that _Muse_, Stirred by a painted beauty to _his_ verse.

SHAKESPEARE, _Sonnet 21_.

So may some gentle _Muse_, With lucky words favour my destined urn, And, as _he_ passes, turn.

MILTON, _Lycidas_, 19.

Sharp-judging Adriel, the Muses’ friend, Himself a _Muse_.

DRYDEN, _Absalom and Achitophel_, pt. 1.

=MUTTON.= It is a refinement in the English language, one wanting in some other languages which count themselves as refined or more, that it has in so many cases one word to express the living animal, and another its flesh prepared for food; ox and beef, calf and veal, deer and venison, sheep and mutton. In this last instance the refinement is of somewhat late introduction. At one time they were synonyms.

Peucestas, having feasted them in the kingdom of Persia, and given every soldier a _mutton_ to sacrifice, thought he had won great favour and credit among them.--NORTH, _Plutarch’s Lives_, p. 505.

A starved _mutton’s_ carcass would better fit their palates.--BEN JONSON, _The Sad Shepherd_, act i. sc. 2.

=NAMELY.= Now only designates; but, like the German ‘namentlich,’ once designated as first and chief, as deserving above all others to be named.

For there are many disobedient, and talkers of vanity, and deceivers of minds, _namely_ [μάλιστα] they of the circumcision.--_Tit._ i. 10. TYNDALE.

For in the darkness occasioned by the opposition of the earth just in the mids between the sun and the moon, there was nothing for him [Nicias] to fear, and _namely_ at such a time, when there was cause for him to have stood upon his feet, and served valiantly in the field.--HOLLAND, _Plutarch’s Morals_, p. 265.

=NATURALIST.= At present the student of natural history; but in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the name was often given to the deist, as one who denied any but a religion _of nature_, ‘Natural religion men’ such were sometimes called. See the quotation from Rogers, _s. v._ ‘Civil.’

But that he [the atheist] might not be shy of me, I have conformed myself as near his own garb as I might, without partaking of his folly or wickedness; and have appeared in the plain shape of a mere _naturalist_ myself, that I might, if it were possible, win him off from downright atheism.--H. MORE, _Antidote against Atheism_, Preface, p. 7.

This is the invention of Satan, that whereas all will not be profane, nor _naturalists_, nor epicures, but will be religious, lo, he hath a bait for every fish, and can insinuate himself as well into religion itself as into lusts and pleasures.--ROGERS, _Naaman the Syrian_, p. 115.

Heathen _naturalists_ hold better consort with the primitive Church concerning the nature of sin original than the Socinians.--JACKSON, _Of Christ’s Everlasting Priesthood_, b. x. c. 8, § 4.

=NEEDFUL.= This was once often equivalent to ‘needy.’ The words, however, have in more recent times been discriminated in use, and ‘needy’ is active, and ‘needful’ passive.

These ferthinges shal be gaderid at everi moneth ende, and delid forth to the _needful_ man in honor of Christ and his moder.--_English Gilds_, p. 38.

Grieve not the heart of him that is helpless, and withdraw not the gift from the _needful_.--_Ecclus._ iv. 2. COVERDALE.

For thou art the poor man’s help, and strength for the _needful_ in his necessity.--_Isai._ xxv. 3. Id.

Great variety of clothes have been permitted to princes and nobility, and they usually give those clothes as rewards to servants and other persons _needful_ enough.--Bishop TAYLOR, _Holy Living_, iv. 8, 13.

=NEPHEW.= Restrained at this present to the son of a brother or a sister; but formerly of much laxer use, a grandson, or even a remoter lineal descendant. In East Anglia it is still so used in the popular language (see Nall, _Dialects of the East Coast_, s. v.). ‘Nephew’ in fact has undergone exactly the same change of meaning that ‘nepos’ in Latin underwent; which in the Augustan age meaning grandson, in the post-Augustan acquired the signification of ‘nephew’ in our present acceptation of that word. See ‘Niece.’

The warts, black moles, spots and freckles of fathers, not appearing at all upon their own children’s skin, begin afterwards to put forth and show themselves in their _nephews_, to wit, the children of their sons and daughters.--HOLLAND, _Plutarch’s Morals_, p. 555.

With what intent they [the apocryphal books] were first published, those words of the _nephew_ of Jesus do plainly enough signify: After that my _grandfather_ Jesus had given himself to the reading of the law and the prophets, he purposed also to write something pertaining to learning and wisdom.--HOOKER, _Ecclesiastical Polity_, b. v. c. 20.

If any widow have children or _nephews_ [ἔκγονα], let them learn first to show piety at home, and to requite their parents.--_1 Tim._ v. 4. (A.V.)

=NICE.= The use of ‘nice’ in the sense of fastidious, difficult to please, still survives, indeed this is now, as in times past, the ruling notion of the word; only this ‘niceness’ is taken now much oftener in good part than in ill; nor, even when taken in an ill sense, would the word be used exactly as in the passage which follows.

A. W. [Anthony Wood] was with him several times, ate and drank with him, and had several discourses with him concerning arms and armory, which he understood well; but he found him _nice_ and supercilious.--A. WOOD, _Athenæ Oxonienses_, 1848, vol. i. p. 161.

=NIECE.= This word has undergone the same change and limitation of meaning as ‘nephew,’ with indeed the further limitation that it is now applied to the female sex alone, to the _daughter_ of a brother or a sister, being once used, as ‘neptis’ was at the first, for children’s children, male and female alike. See ‘Nephew.’

Laban answeride to hym: My dowytres and sones, and the flockis, and alle that thou beholdist, ben myne, and what may I do to my sones and to my _neces_?--_Gen._ xxi. 43 (cf. _Exod._ xxxiv. 7). WICLIF.

The Emperor Augustus, among other singularities that he had by himself during his life, saw, ere he died, the nephew of his _niece_, that is to say, his progeny to the fourth degree of lineal descent.--HOLLAND, _Pliny_, vol. i. p. 162.

Within the compass of which very same time he [Julius Cæsar] lost by death first his mother, then his daughter Julia, and not long after his _niece_ by the said daughter.--Id., _Suetonius_, p. 11.

=NOISOME=, } NOISOMENESS. }

At present offensive and moving disgust; but once noxious and actually hurtful; thus a skunk would be ‘noisome’ now; a tiger was ‘noisome’ then. In all passages of the Authorized Translation of the Bible where the word occurs, as at _Ezek._ xiv. 15, 21, it is used not in the present meaning, but the past. See ‘Annoy.’

They that will be rich fall into temptations and snares, and into many foolish and _noisome_ [βλαβεράς] lusts, which drown men in perdition and destruction.--_1 Tim._ vi. 9. Geneva.

He [the superstitious person] is persuaded that they be gods indeed, but such as be _noisome_, hurtful, and doing mischief unto men.--HOLLAND, _Plutarch’s Morals_, p. 260.

This _noisome_ creature [the crocodile] is one of the greatest wonders we meet with, in that from so small a beginning as an egg, not much bigger than that of a turkey, they increase to eight or ten yards in length.--HERBERT, _Travels_, 1636, p. 323.

They [the prelates] are so far from hindering dissension, that they have made unprofitable, and even _noisome_, the chiefest remedy we have to keep Christendom at one, which is, by Councils.--MILTON, _Reason of Church Government_, b. i. c. 6.

Sad in his time was the condition of the Israelites, oppressed by the Midianites, who swarmed like grasshoppers for number and _noisomeness_, devouring all which the other had sown.--FULLER, _A Pisgah Sight of Palestine_, part i. b. ii. c. 8.

=NOVEL=, } NOVELIST. }

‘Novels’ once were simply news, ‘nouvelles;’ and the ‘novelist’ not a writer of new tales, but an innovator, a bringer in of new fashions into the Church or State.

She brynges in her bille som _novels_ new; Behold! it is of an olif tree A branch, thynkes me.

_Townley Mysteries._

But, see and say what you will, _novelists_ had rather be talked of, that they began a fashion and set a copy for others, than to keep within the imitation of the most excellent precedents.--HACKET, _Life of Archbishop Williams_, part ii. p. 36.

Every _novelist_ with a whirligig in his brain must broach new opinions, and those made canons, nay sanctions, as sure as if a General Council had confirmed them.--ADAMS, _The Devil’s Banquet_, 1614, p. 52.

I can hardly believe my eyes while I read such a petit _novelist_ charging the whole Church as fools and heretics for not subscribing to a silly heretical notion, solely of his own invention.--SOUTH, _Animadversions on Dr. Sherlock’s Book_, p. 3.

=NURSERY.= We have but one use of ‘nursery’ at this present, namely as the place of nursing; but it was once applied as well to the person nursed, or the act of nursing.

A jolly dame, no doubt; as appears by the well battling of the plump boy, her _nursery_.--FULLER, _A Pisgah Sight of Palestine_, part i. b. ii. c. 8.

If _nursery_ exceeds her [a mother’s] strength, and yet her conscience will scarce permit her to lay aside and free herself from so natural, so religious a work, yet tell her, God loves mercy better than sacrifice.--ROGERS, _Matrimonial Honour_, p. 247.

I loved her most, and thought to set my rest On her kind _nursery_.

SHAKESPEARE, _King Lear_, act i. sc. 1.

=OBELISK.= The ‘obelus’ is properly a sharp-pointed spear or spit. With a sign resembling this, spurious or doubtful passages were marked in the books of antiquity, which sign bore therefore this name of ‘obelus,’ or sometimes of its diminutive ‘obeliscus.’ It is in this sense that we find ‘obelisk’ employed by the writers in the seventeenth century; while for us at the present a small pillar tapering towards the summit is the only ‘obelisk’ that we know.

The Lord Keeper, the most circumspect of any man alive to provide for uniformity, and to countenance it, was scratched with their _obelisk_, that he favoured Puritans, and that sundry of them had protection through his connivency or clemency.--HACKET, _Life of Archbishop Williams_, part i. p. 95.

I have set my mark upon them [_i.e._ affected pedantic words]; and if any of them may have chanced to escape the _obelisk_, there can arise no other inconvenience from it but an occasion to exercise the choice and judgment of the reader.--PHILLIPS, _New World of Words_, Preface.

=OBNOXIOUS.= This, in its present lax and slovenly use a vague unserviceable synonym for offensive, is properly applied to one who on the ground of a mischief or wrong committed by him is justly liable to punishment (_ob noxam_ pœnæ obligatus); and is used in this sense by South (see below). But there often falls out of the word the sense of a wrong committed; and that of liability to punishment, whether just or unjust, only remains; it does so very markedly in the quotation from Donne. But we punish, or wish to punish, those whom we dislike, and thus ‘obnoxious’ has obtained its present sense of offensive.

They envy Christ, but they turn upon the man, who was more _obnoxious_ to them, and they tell him that it was not lawful for him to carry his bed that day [_John_ v. 10].--DONNE, _Sermon 20_.

Examine thyself in the particulars of thy relations; especially where thou governest and takest accounts of others, and art not so _obnoxious_ to them as they to thee.--Bishop TAYLOR, _The Worthy Communicant_, c. vi. sect. 2.

What shall we then say of the power of God Himself to dispose of men? little, finite, _obnoxious_ things of his own making?--SOUTH, _Sermons_, 1744, vol. viii. p. 315.

He [Satan] is in a chain, and that chain is in God’s hand; and consequently, notwithstanding his utmost spite, he cannot be more malicious than he is _obnoxious_.--Id., _ib._ vol. vi. p. 287.

=OBSEQUIOUS=, } OBSEQUIOUSNESS. }

There lies ever in ‘obsequious’ at the present the sense of an observance which is overdone, of an unmanly readiness to fall in with the will of another; there lay nothing of this in the Latin ‘obsequium,’ nor yet in our English word as employed two centuries ago. See the quotation from Feltham, _s. v._ ‘Garb.’

Besides many other fishes in divers places, which are very obeisant and _obsequious_, when they be called by their names.--HOLLAND, _Plutarch’s Morals_, p. 970.

I ever set this down, that the only course to be held with the Queen was by _obsequiousness_ and observance.--Lord BACON, _Defence of Himself_.

His corrections are so far from compelling men to come to heaven, as that they put many men farther out of their way, and work an obduration rather than an _obsequiousness_.--DONNE, _Sermon 45_.

In her relation to the king she was the best pattern of conjugal love and _obsequiousness_.--BATES, _Sermon upon the Death of the Queen_.

=OCCUPY=, } OCCUPIER. }

He now ‘occupies’ who has in present possession; but the word involved once the further signification of using, employing, laying out that which was thus possessed; and by an ‘occupier’ was meant a trader or retail dealer.

He [Eumenes] made as though he had occasion to _occupy_ money, and so borrowed a great sum of them.--NORTH, _Plutarch’s Lives_, p. 505.

If they bind me fast with new ropes that never were _occupied_, then shall I be weak, and be as another man.--_Judges_ xvi. 11. (A.V.)

Mercury, the master of merchants and _occupiers_ [ἀγοραίων].--HOLLAND, _Plutarch’s Morals_, p. 692.

=OFFAL.= This, bearing its derivation on its front, namely that it is that which, as refuse and of little or no worth, is suffered or caused to _fall off_, we restrict at the present to the refuse of the butcher’s stall; but it was once employed in a much wider acceptation, an acceptation which here and there still survives. Thus, as one who writes to me, ‘in all her Majesty’s dockyards there is a monthly sale by auction of “offal wood,” being literally that which _falls off_ from the log under the saw, axe, or adze.’

Glean not in barren soil these _offal_ ears, Sith reap thou may’st whole harvests of delight.

SOUTHWELL, _Lewd Love is Loss_.

Of gold the very smallest filings are precious, and our Blessed Saviour, when there was no want of provision, yet gave it in charge to his disciples, the _off-fall_ should not be lost.--SANDERSON, _Preface to the Clavi Trabales_.

Poor Lazarus lies howling at his gates for a few crumbs; he only seeks chippings, _offals_; let him roar and howl, famish and eat his own flesh; he respects him not.--BURTON, _Anatomy of Melancholy_, part iii. sect. 1.

=OFFICIOUS=, } OFFICIOUSNESS.}

Again and again we light on words used once in a good, but now in an unfavourable, sense. An ‘officious’ person is now a busy uninvited meddler in matters which do not belong to him; so late as Burke’s time he might be one prompt and forward in due _offices_ of kindness. The more honourable use of ‘officious’ now only survives in the distinction familiar to diplomacy between an ‘official’ and ‘officious’ communication.

With granted leave _officious_ I return.

MILTON, _Paradise Regained_, ii. 302.

_Officious_, ready to do good offices, serviceable, friendly, very courteous and obliging.--PHILLIPS, _New World of Words_.

They [the nobility of France] were tolerably well bred, very _officious_, humane, and hospitable.--BURKE, _Reflections on the Revolution in France_, p. 251.

Well try’d through many a varying year, See Levett to the grave descend, _Officious_, innocent, sincere, Of every friendless name the friend.

S. JOHNSON (A.D. 1782).

Which familiar and affectionate _officiousness_ and sumptuous cost, together with that sinister fame that woman was noted with [_Luke_ vii. 37], could not but give much scandal to the Pharisees there present.--H. MORE, _Grand Mystery of Godliness_, b. viii. c. 13.

=ORIENT.= This had once a beautiful use, as clear, bright, shining, which has now wholly departed from it. Thus, the ‘orient’ pearl of our earlier poets is not ‘oriental,’ but pellucid, white, shining. Doubtless it acquired this meaning originally from the greater clearness and lightness of the east, as the quarter whence the day breaks.

Those shells that keep in the main sea, and lie deeper than that the sunbeams can pierce unto them, keep the finest and most delicate pearls. And yet they as _orient_ as they be, wax yellow with age.--HOLLAND, _Pliny_, vol. i. p. 255.

He, who out of that dark chaos made the glorious heavens, and garnished them with so many _orient_ stars, can move upon thy dark soul and enlighten it, though now it be as void of knowledge as the evening of the first day was of light.--GURNALL, _Christian in Complete Armour_, ii. 22, 1.

Her wings and train of feathers, mixed fine Of _orient_ azure and incarnadine.

SYLVESTER, _Du Bartas, Fifth Day_.

Κόκκος βαφική, a shrub, whose red berries or grains gave an _orient_ tincture to cloth.--FULLER, _A Pisgah Sight of Palestine_, b. iv. c. 6.

=ORTOLAN.= This, the name now of a delicate bird haunting _gardens_, was once the name of the gardener (‘hortolanus,’ ‘ortolano’) himself.

Though to an old tree it must needs be somewhat dangerous to be oft removed, yet for my part I yield myself entirely to the will and pleasure of the most notable _ortolan_.--_State Papers_, 1536, vol. vi. p. 534.

=OSTLER.= Not formerly the servant of the inn having care of the horses, but the innkeeper or host, the ‘hosteller’ himself.

And another dai he brougte forth twey pans, and gaf to the _ostiler_ [stabulario, Vulg].--_Luke_ x. 35. WICLIF.

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._

=OUGHT.= Of the two perfects of the verb ‘to owe’ (see Morris, _English Accidence_, p. 189; and Earle, _Philology of the English Tongue_, § 289), namely ‘ought’ and ‘owed,’ the former has come now to be used of a moral owing or obligation only, never of a material; but it was not always so. In the passage from Spenser ‘ought’ is used in the sense of ‘possessed.’ Among the many tacit alterations which our Authorized Version has at various times undergone, the substitution in many places of ‘owed’ for ‘ought’ is one.

But th’ Elfin knight which _ought_ that warlike wage, Disdaind to loose the meed he wonne in fray.

SPENSER, _Fairy Queen_, i. 4, 39.

There was a certain creditor, who had two debtors. The one _ought_ five hundred pence, and the other fifty.--_Luke_ vii. 41. (A. V.)

Also we forgive the oversights and faults committed against us, and the crown-tax that ye _ought_ us.--_1 Macc._ xiii. 39. Geneva Version.

=OVERTURE.= Not now an aperture or opening, in the literal and primary sense of the word, as formerly it was; but always in some secondary and derived.

The squirrels also foresee a tempest coming; and look in what corner the wind is like to stand, on that side they stop up the mouth of their holes, and make an _overture_ on the other side against it.--HOLLAND, _Pliny_, b. viii. c. 38.

=PAINFUL=, } PAINFULNESS, } PAINFULLY. }

‘Painful’ is now feeling pain, or inflicting it; it was once taking pains. Many things would not be so ‘painful’ in the present sense of the word, if they had been more ‘painful’ in the earlier,--as perhaps some sermons.

Within fourteen generations, the royal blood of the kings of Judah ran in the veins of plain Joseph, a _painful_ carpenter.--FULLER, _Holy War_, b. v. c. 29.

I think we have some as _painful_ magistrates as ever was in England.--LATIMER, _Sermons_, p. 142.

_Painfulness_ by feeble means shall be able to gain that which in the plenty of more forcible instruments is through sloth and negligence lost.--HOOKER, _Ecclesiastical Polity_, b. v. § 22.

O the holiness of their living, and _painfulness_ of their preaching!--FULLER, _Holy State_, b. ii. c. 6.

Whoever would be truly thankful, let him live in some honest vocation, and therein bestow himself faithfully and _painfully_.--SANDERSON, _Sermons_, vol. i. p. 251.

=PALESTINE.= This is now a name for the entire Holy Land; but in the Authorized Version ‘Palestine,’ or ‘Palestina,’ as it is written three times out of the four on which it occurs, is used in a far more restricted sense, namely, as equivalent to Philistia, that narrow strip of coast occupied by the Philistines. This a close examination of the several passages (see Wright’s _Dictionary of the Bible_) will make abundantly clear. And it is also invariably so employed by Milton; thus see, besides the passage quoted below, _Samson Agonistes_, 144, and _On the Nativity_, 199.

Rejoice not thou, whole _Palestina_, because the rod of him that smote thee is broken.--_Isai._ xiv. 29. (A.V.)

Such their [the Philistines’] puissance, that from them the Greeks and Latins called all this land _Palestina_, because the Philistines lived on the sea coast, most obvious to the notice of foreigners.--FULLER, _A Pisgah Sight of Palestine_, ii. 10, 23.

Dagon his name, sea-monster, upward man And downward fish: yet had his temple high Reared in Azotus, dreaded through the coast Of _Palestine_, in Gath and Ascalon, And Accaron, and Gaza’s frontier bounds.

MILTON, _Paradise Lost_, i. 462.

=PALLIATE=, } PALLIATION. }

‘To palliate’ is at this day to extenuate a fault through the setting out of whatever will best serve to diminish the estimate of its gravity; and does not imply any endeavour wholly to deny it; nay, implies rather a certain recognition and admission of the fault itself. Truer to its etymology once, it expressed the _cloking_ of it, the attempt, successful or otherwise, entirely to conceal and cover it. Eve ‘palliates’ her fault in the modern sense of the word (_Gen._ iii. 13), Gehazi in the earlier (_2 Kin._ v. 25).

You cannot _palliate_ mischief, but it will Through all 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, _Grand Mystery of Godliness_, p. ix.

=PANTOMIME.=--Now the mimic show itself, but at the first introduction of the word (Bacon’s constant use of ‘pantomimus’ and ‘pantomimi,’ and Ben Jonson’s as well, testify that it was new in their time), the player who presented the show.

I would our _pantomimes_ also and stage-players would examine themselves and their callings by this rule.--SANDERSON, _Sermon on 1 Cor._ vii. 24.

The hypocrite cometh forth in a disguise, and acteth his part, and because men applaud him, thinketh God is of their mind, as the _pantomime_ in Seneca, who observing the people well pleased with his dancing, did every day go up into the Capitol and dance before Jupiter, and was persuaded that he was also delighted in him.--FARINGDON, _Sermon 10_.

Not that I think those _pantomimes_, Who vary actions with the times, Are less ingenious in their art Than those who dully act one part.

BUTLER, _Hudibras_, p. 3, can. 2.

=PATHETIC=, } PATHETICAL, } PATHETICALLY. }

The ‘pathetic’ is now only _one_ kind of the passionate, that which, feeling _pity_, is itself capable of stirring it; but ‘pathetic’ or ‘pathetical’ and ‘passionate’ were once of an equal reach. When in a language like ours two words, derived from two different languages, as in this case from the Greek and from the Latin, exist side by side, being at the same time identical in signification, the desynonymizing process which we may note here, continually comes into play.

He [Hiel, cf. _Josh._ vi. 26 and _1 Kings_ xvi. 34] mistood Joshua’s curse rather for a _pathetical_ expression than prophetical prediction.--FULLER, _A Pisgah Sight of Palestine_, b. ii. c. 12.

Whatever word enhanceth Joseph’s praise, Her echo doubles it, and doth supply Some more _pathetic_ and transcendant 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 attire as those _pathetical_ handmaids of the soul please to lead her in to their queen.--MILTON, _Reason of Church Government_, b. ii. c. 3.

But the principal point whereon our apostle pitcheth for evincing the priesthood of Christ to be far more excellent than the Levitical priesthood was, was reserved to the last, and _pathetically_ though briefly avouched, ver. 20 [_Heb._ vii. 20].--JACKSON, _Of the Divine Essence and Attributes_, b. ix. § 2.

=PATTERN.= One is at first tempted to accuse our Translators of an inaccuracy at _Heb._ ix. 23, since, whatever ὑπόδειγμα may mean elsewhere, it is impossible that it can there mean ‘pattern,’ in our sense of exemplar or original from which a copy or sketch is derived, ‘patron’ upon whom the client forms and fashions himself. This is inconsistent with, and would indeed entirely defeat, the whole argument of the Apostle. The ὑποδείγματα there can be only the earthly copies and imitations of the heavenly and archetypal originals, ἀντίτυπα τῶν ἀληθινῶν. A passage, however, in the _Homilies_ entirely relieves them from any charge of error. All that can be said is that they have employed ‘pattern’ in a somewhat unusual sense, but one which an analogous use of ‘copy’ in our own day sufficiently explains.

Which priests serve unto the _patron_ [ὑποδείγματι] and shadow of heavenly things.--_Heb._ viii. 5. Geneva.

It was therefore necessary that the _patterns_ of things in the heavens should be purified with these; but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these.--_Heb._ ix. 23. (A.V.)

Where most rebellions and rebels be, there is the express similitude of hell, and the rebels themselves are the very figures of fiends and devils; and their captain, the ungracious _pattern_ of Lucifer and Satan, the prince of darkness.--_Homilies, Against Wilful Rebellion._

=PEEVISH=, } PEEVISHNESS. }

By ‘peevishness’ we now understand a small but constantly fretting ill-temper; yet no one can read our old authors, with whom ‘peevish’ and ‘peevishness’ are of constant recurrence, without feeling that their use of them is different from ours; although precisely to determine what their use was is anything but easy. Gifford (_Massinger_, vol. i. p. 71) says confidently, ‘peevish is foolish;’ but upon induction from an insufficient number of passages. ‘Peevish’ is rather self-willed, obstinate. That in a world like ours those who refuse to give up their own wills should be continually crossed, and thus should become fretful, and ‘peevish’ in our modern sense of the word, is inevitable; and here is the history of the change of meaning which it has undergone.

_Valentine._ Cannot your grace win her to fancy him?

_Duke._ No, trust me; she is _peevish_, sullen, froward, Proud, disobedient, stubborn, lacking duty.

SHAKESPEARE, _Two Gentlemen of Verona_, act iii. sc. 1.

We provoke, rail, scoff, calumniate, challenge, hate, abuse (hard-hearted, implacable, malicious, _peevish_, inexorable as we are), to satisfy our lust or private spleen.--BURTON, _Anatomy of Melancholy_, part iii. § 1.

_Pertinax_ hominum genus, a _peevish_ generation of men.--Id., _ib._, part iii. § 4.

That grand document of keeping to the light within us they [the Quakers] borrow out of St. John’s Gospel; and yet they are so frantic and _peevish_, that they would fling away the staff without which they are not able to make one step in religion.--H. MORE, _Grand Mystery of Godliness_, b. viii. c. 12.

In case the Romans, upon an inbred _peevishness_ and engraffed pertinacity of theirs, should not hear reason, but refuse an indifferent end, then both God and man shall be witness as well of the moderation of Perseus, as of their pride and insolent frowardness.--HOLLAND, _Livy_, p. 1152.

We must carefully distinguish continuance in opinion from obstinacy, confidence of understanding from _peevishness_ of affection, a not being convinced from a resolution never to be convinced.--Bishop TAYLOR, _Liberty of Prophesying_, § ii. 10.

=PENCIL.= The distinction between ‘pencil’ and paint-brush is quite modern. The older use of ‘pencil’ (‘penecillus,’ or little tail) was etymologically more correct than the modern; the brush being so called because it hung and drooped as does that.

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, _Profane State_, b. v. c. 10.

The first thing she did after rising was to have recourse to the _red-pot_, out of which she laid it on very thick with a _pencil_, not only on her cheeks, chin, under the nose, above the eyebrows and edges of the ears, but also on the inside of her hands, her fingers, and shoulders.--_The Lady’s Travels into Spain_, Letter 8.

=PENITENTIARY.= It is curious that this word has possessed three entirely independent meanings, namely penitent, ordainer of penances in the Church, and place for penitents; only the last is current now.

So Manasseh in the beginning and middle of his reign filled the city with innocent blood, and died a _penitentiary_.--JACKSON, _Christ’s Session at God’s Right Hand_, b. ii. c. 42.

’Twas a French friar’s conceit that courtiers were of all men the likeliest to forsake the world and turn _penitentiaries_.--HAMMOND, _The Seventh Sermon_, _Works_, vol. iv. p. 517.

_Penitentiary_, a priest that imposes upon an offender what penance he thinks fit.--PHILLIPS, _New World of Words_.

=PENSIVE=, } PENSIVENESS. }

He is ‘pensive,’ according to our present estimate of the word, in whom a certain mild and meditative sadness finds place; and in thus attaching to the word this meaning of a thoughtful sadness we are truer to its etymology than were our ancestors, when they used it, as they often did, to express the sharpest anguish of grief. Thus, in my first quotation, by ‘the pensive court’ is meant the Court of David, which has just received tidings of the slaughter by Absalom of all the king’s sons.

The _pensive_ court in doleful dumps did rue This dismal case.

FULLER, _Poem on David’s hainous Sin._

Great is the wit of _pensiveness_, and when the head is racked With hard misfortune sharp forecast of practice entereth in.

GOLDING, _Ovid’s Metamorphosis_, b. vi.

What is care and thought? a plain token of diffidence and distrust of God. It is an unfaithful care and _pensiveness_ of the mind for meat, drink, clothing.--BECON, _Works_, vol. iii. p. 611.

=PENURY.= This expresses now no more than the _objective_ fact of extreme poverty; an ethical _subjective_ meaning not lying in it, as would sometimes of old. This is now retained only in ‘penurious,’ ‘penuriousness.’

God sometimes punishes one sin with another; pride with adultery, drunkenness with murder, carelessness with irreligion, idleness with vanity, _penury_ with oppression.--Bishop TAYLOR, _The Faith and Patience of the Saints_.

[=PERSEVERANCE.= This word frequently occurs in literature of the sixteenth and seventeenth century in the sense of perception, discernment. ‘Perseverance’ = discernment should be carefully distinguished from ‘perseverance’ (French _perseverance_, Latin _perseverantia_) = persistency, constancy. The former in many texts is spelt with a _c_ instead of an _s_, as ‘perceverance,’ ‘perceyverance,’ ‘perceiverance.’ This spelling gives the key to the etymology; the word is a derivative from Old French _percevoir_, _percever_ = Latin _percipere_, to perceive. For a good collection of illustrative passages see _Notes and Queries_ (1st S. vii. 400.)]

If the dead have anie _perceverance_.

GOLDING (see _N. and Q._)

She had more _perceverance_ of the Hebrues law.--LANGLEY’S _Polidore Vergile_ (see _N. and Q._)

For his dyet he [Ariosto] was verie temperate, and a great enemie of excesse and surfetting, and so carelesse of delicates as though he had no _perseverance_ in the tast of meates.--Sir J. HARINGTON, _Life of Ariosto_, p. 418.

He [Æmilius Paulus] suddenly fell into a raving (without any _perseverance_ of sickness spied in him before, or any change or alteration in him [πρὶν αἰσθέσθαι καὶ νοῆσαι τὴν μεταβολήν]), and his wits went from him in such sort that he died three days after.--NORTH, _Plutarch’s Lives_, p. 221.

=PERSON.= We have forfeited the full force of the statement, ‘God is no respecter of _persons_;’ from the fact that ‘person’ does not mean for us now all that it once meant. ‘Person,’ from ‘persona,’ the mask constantly worn by the actor of antiquity, is by natural transfer the part or _rôle_ in the play which each sustains, as πρόσωπον is in Greek. In the great tragi-comedy of life each sustains a ‘person;’ one that of a king, another that of a peasant; one must play Dives, another Lazarus. This ‘person’ God, for whom the question is not _what_ ‘person’ each sustains, but _how_ he sustains it, does not respect.

_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 IV._, act v. sc. 2.

Cæsar also is brought in by Julian attributing to himself the honour (if it were at all an honour to that _person_ which he sustained), of being the first that left his ship and took land.--MILTON, _History of England_, b. ii.

Her gifts Were such as under government well seemed; Unseemly to bear rule, which was thy part And _person_, hadst thou known thyself aright.

Id., _Paradise Lost_, x. 153.

Certain it is, that no man can long put on a _person_ and act a part but his evil manners will peep through the corners of his white robe, and God will bring a hypocrite to shame even in the eyes of men.--Bishop TAYLOR, _Apples of Sodom_.

=PERSPECTIVE.= ‘Telescope’ and ‘microscope’ are both as old as Milton; but for a long while ‘perspective’ (glass being sometimes understood, and sometimes expressed) did the work of these. It is sometimes written ‘prospective.’ Our present use of ‘perspective’ hardly dates farther back than Dryden.

A guilty conscience Is a black register, wherein is writ All our good deeds and bad, a _perspective_ That shows us hell.

WEBSTER, _Duchess of Malfi_, act iv. sc. 2.

While we look for incorruption in the heavens, we find they are but like the earth, durable in their main bodies, alterable in their parts; whereof, beside comets and new stars, _perspectives_ begin to tell tales; and the spots that wander about the sun, with Phaeton’s favour, would make clear conviction.--Sir T. BROWNE, _Hydriotaphia_.

Look through faith’s _perspective_ with the magnifying end on invisibles (for such is its frame, it lesseneth visibles), and thou wilt see sights not more strange than satisfying.--WHITLOCK, _Zootomia_, p. 535.

A tiny mite, which we can scarcely see Without a _perspective_.

OLDHAM, _Eighth Satire of M. Boileau_.

=PERT.= This word had once the meaning of brisk, lively, nimble; now it is this with a very distinct subaudition of sauciness and impertinence as well.

Stir up the Athenian youth to merriments; Awake the _pert_ and nimble spirit of youth.

SHAKESPEARE, _Midsummer Night’s Dream_, act i. sc. 1.

And on the tawny sands and shelves Trip the _pert_ faeries and the dapper elves.

MILTON, _Comus_, 117.

=PESTER.= There is no greater discomfort or annoyance than extreme straitness or narrowness of room; out of which in Greek the word στενοχωρία, signifying this, has come to have a secondary signification of trouble or anguish. [In English, ‘to pester’ bears witness to the same fact, having first the meaning of to encumber or clog, then the second meaning of painfully cooping-up in a narrow and confined space, and lastly the meaning of to vex or annoy, which sense it still retains.]

Now because the most part of the people might not possibly have a sight of him, they gat up all at once into the theatre, and _pestered_ it quite full.--HOLLAND, _Livy_, p. 1055.

They within, though _pestered_ with their own numbers, stood to it like men resolved, and in a narrow compass did remarkable deeds.--MILTON, _History of England_, b. ii.

The calendar is filled, not to say _pestered_ with them [that is, with Saints’ Days], jostling one another for room, many holding the same day in copartnership of festivity.--FULLER, _Worthies of England_, c. 3.

=PHYSICAL=, } PHYSICALLY. }

Though ‘physical’ has not dissociated itself from ‘physics,’ it has from ‘physic’ and ‘physician,’ being used now as simply the equivalent for ‘natural’ which the Greek language has supplied us; but it was not always so.

Is Brutus sick? and is it _physical_ To walk unbracéd and suck up the humours Of the dank morning?

SHAKESPEARE, _Julius Cæsar_, act ii. sc. 1.

Attalus, surnamed Philometer (to say, lover of his mother), would plant and set _physical_ herbs, as helleborum.--NORTH, _Plutarch’s Lives_, p. 739.

And for physic, he [Lord Bacon] did indeed live _physically_,[21] but not miserably.--RAWLEY, _Life of Lord Bacon_.

=PLACARD.= Formerly used often in the sense of a license or permission, the ‘placard’ being properly the broad tablet or board on which this, as well as other edicts and ordinances, was exposed.

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, _Author’s Life_.

Others are of the contrary opinion, and that Christianity gives us a _placard_ to use these sports; and that man’s charter of dominion over the creatures enables him to employ them as well for pleasure as necessity.--FULLER, _Holy State_, b. iii. c. 13.

=PLANTATION.= We still ‘plant’ a colony, but a ‘plantation’ is now of trees only; and not of men. There was a time when ‘The Plantations’ was the standing name by which our transatlantic colonies were known. One of Bacon’s state-papers has this title, ‘Certain Considerations touching the _Plantation_ in Ireland.’

It is a shameful and unblessed thing to take the scum of people and wicked condemned men to be the people with whom you plant: and not only so, but it spoileth the _plantation_.--Lord BACON, _Essays_, 33.

_Plantations_ make mankind broader, as generation makes it thicker.--FULLER, _Holy State_, b. iii. c. 16.

=PLATFORM.= This word has lost much of its meaning, that is in England; for it is very far from having so done in America. The only ‘platforms’ which we know of here are structures of boards erected to serve a temporary need. But a ‘platform’ was once a scheme or pattern on which, as on a ground-plan, other things, moral or material, might be disposed. Statesmen had their ‘platform’ of policy; Churches their ‘platform’ of doctrine and discipline; and so is it still in America, where the word is in constant use.

They, [the courtiers of Dionysius] were every one occupied about drawing the _platform_ of Sicilia, telling the nature of the Sicilian Sea, and reckoning up the havens and places looking towards Africk.--NORTH, _Plutarch’s Lives_, p. 456.

The _platform_ of this Tabernacle was by God delivered to Moses on the Mount, with a strict charge to make all things conformable thereunto.--FULLER, _A Pisgah Sight of Palestine_, b. iv. c. 4.

=PLAUSIBLE=, } PLAUSIBLY, } PLAUSIBILITY. }

That is ‘plausible’ now which presents itself as worthy of applause; yet always with a subaudition, or at least a suggestion, that it is not so really; it was once that which obtained applause, with at least the _primâ facie_ likelihood that the applause which it obtained was deserved.

This John Bishop of Constantinople, that assumed to himself the title of Universal Bishop or Patriarch, was a good man, given greatly to alms and fasting, but too much addicted to advance the title of his see; which made a _plausible_ bishop seem to be Antichrist to Gregory the Great.--HACKET, _Life of Archbishop Williams_, part ii. p. 66.

The Romans _plausibly_ did give consent For Tarquin’s everlasting banishment.

SHAKESPEARE, _Lucrece_, 1854.

He was no sooner in sight than every one received him _plausibly_, and with great submission and reverence.--STUBBES, _Anatomy of Abuses_, p. 17.

Being placed in the upper part of the world, [he] carried on his dignity with that justice, modesty, integrity, fidelity, and other gracious _plausibilities_, that in a place of trust he contented those whom he could not satisfy, and in a place of envy procured the love of those who emulated his greatness.--VAUGHAN, _Life and Death of Dr. Jackson_.

=POACH=, } POACHER. }

A ‘poacher’ is strictly speaking an intruder; one who intrudes or ‘poaches’ into land where he has no business; the fact that he does so with intention of spoiling the game is superadded, not lying in the word.

Pocher le labeur d’autruy. To _poch_ into, or incroach upon another man’s imployment, practise or trade.--COTGRAVE.

So that, to speak truly, they [the Spaniards] have rather _poached_ and offered at a number of enterprises, than maintained any constantly.--Lord BACON, _Notes of a Speech concerning a War with Spain_.

It is ill conversing with an ensnarer, delving into the bottom of your mind, to know what is hid in it. I would ask a casuist if it were not lawful for me not only to hide my mind, but to cast something that is not true before such a _poacher_.--HACKET, _Life of Archbishop Williams_, part ii. p. 113.

=POLITE=, } POLITELY. }

Between ‘polite’ and ‘polished’ this much of difference has now grown up and established itself, that ‘polite’ is always employed in a secondary and tropical sense, having reference to the polish of the mind, while it is free to use ‘polished’ in the literal and figurative sense alike.

_Polite_ bodies, as looking-glasses.--CUDWORTH, _Intellectual System_, p. 731.

_Polite_; well-polished, neat.--PHILLIPS, _New World of Words_.

In things artificial seldom any elegance is wrought without a superfluous waste and refuse in the transaction. No marble statue can be _politely_ carved, no fair edifice built, without almost as much rubbish and sweeping.--MILTON, _Reason of Church Government_, b. i. c. 7.

=POLITICS=, } POLITICIAN. }

At the present ‘politics’ are always _things_, but were sometimes _persons_ as well in times past. ‘Politician’ too had an evil subaudition. One so named was a trickster or underhand self-seeker and schemer in politics, or it might be, as it is throughout in the sermon of South, quoted below, in the ordinary affairs of life. Fuller calls his Life of the wicked usurper Andronicus, ‘The Unfortunate Politician.’

It did in particular exasperate Tacitus, and other _politicks_ of his temper, to see so many natural Romans renounce their name and country for maintenance of Jewish religion.--JACKSON, _The Eternal Truth of Scriptures_, b. i. c. 20.

Let them [spiritual persons] have the diligence and craft of fishers, the watchfulness and the care of shepherds, the prudence of _politics_, the tenderness of parents.--Bishop TAYLOR, _Life of Christ_, part ii. § 12.

If this arch-_politician_ [the Devil] find in his pupils any remorse, any feeling or fear of God’s future judgment, he persuades them that God hath so great need of men’s souls that He will accept them at any time and upon any conditions.--Sir W. RALEIGH, _History of the World_, b. i. c. 7, § 9.

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. 3.

A _politician_ is the devil’s quilted anvil; He fashions all sins on him and the blows Are never heard.

WEBSTER, _Duchess of Malfi_, act iii. sc. 2.

The _politician_, whose very essence lies in this, that he is a person ready to do anything that he apprehends for his advantage, must first of all be sure to put himself in a state of liberty, as free and large as his principles, and so to provide elbow-room enough for his conscience to lay about it, and have its full play in.--SOUTH, _Sermons_, 1744, vol. i. p. 324.

=POMP=, } POMPOUS, } POMPOUSLY. }

‘Pomp’ is one of the many words which Milton employs with a strict classical accuracy, so that he is only to be perfectly understood when we keep in mind that a ‘pomp’ with him is always πομπή, a procession. He is not, however, singular here, as he often is, in the stricter use of a word. It is easy to perceive how ‘pomp’ obtained its wider application. There is no such favourable opportunity for the display of state and magnificence as a procession; this is almost the inevitable form which they take; and thus the word first applied to the most frequent display of these, came afterwards to be transferred to every display. In respect to ‘pompous’ and ‘pompously’ there is something else to note. There is in them always now the suggestion of that which is more in show than in substance, or, at any rate, of a magnificence which, if real, is yet vaingloriously and ostentatiously displayed. But they did not convey, and were not intended to convey, any such impression once.

[Antiochus] also provided a great number of bulls with gilt horns, the which he conducted himself with a goodly _pomp_ and procession to the very gate of the city [ἄχρι τῶν πυλῶν ἐπόμπευσε].--HOLLAND, _Plutarch’s Morals_, p. 417.

With goddess-like demeanour forth she went, Not unattended; for on her, as queen, A _pomp_ of winning Graces waited still.

MILTON, _Paradise Lost_, viii. 59.

The planets in their stations listening stood, While the bright _pomp_ ascended jubilant.

Id., _ib._ vii. 563.

What _pompous_ powers of ravishment were here,[22] 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.--HACKET, _Life of Archbishop Williams_, part i. p. 119.

He [Hardecnute] gave his sister Gunildis, a virgin of rare beauty, in marriage to Henry the Alman Emperor; and to send her forth _pompously_, all the nobility contributed their jewels and richest ornaments.--MILTON, _History of England_, b. vi.

=POPULAR=, } POPULARITY. }

He was ‘popular’ once, not who had acquired, but who was laying himself out to acquire, the favour of the people. ‘Popularity’ was the wooing, not, as now, the having won, that favour; exactly the Latin ‘ambitio.’ The word, which is passive now, was active then.

Of a senator he [Manlius] became _popular_, and began to break his mind and impart his designs unto the magistrates of the commons, finding fault with the nobility.--HOLLAND, _Livy_, 224.

And oft in vain his name they closely bite, As _popular_ and flatterer accusing.

P. FLETCHER, _Purple Island_, c. 10.

Divers were of opinion that he [Caius Gracchus] was more _popular_ and desirous of the common people’s good will and favour than his brother had been before him. But indeed he was clean contrary.--NORTH, _Plutarch’s Lives_, p 690.

Cato the Younger charged Muræna, and indited him in open court for _popularity_ and ambition.--HOLLAND, _Plutarch’s Morals_, p. 243.

Harold, lifted up in mind, and forgetting now his former shows of _popularity_, defrauded his soldiers their due and well-deserved share of the spoils.--MILTON, _History of England_, b. vi.

=PORTLY=, } PORTLINESS. }

There lies in ‘portly’ a certain sense of dignity of demeanour still, but always connoted with this a cumbrousness and weight, such as Spenser in his noble _Epithalamion_ (see below) would never have ascribed to his bride, nor Shakespeare to the swift-footed Achilles (_Troilus and Cressida_, act iv. sc. 5), or to the youthful Romeo.

The chief and most _portly_ person of them all was one Hasdrubal [_Insignis_ tamen inter ceteros Hasdrubal erat].--HOLLAND, _Livy_, p. 7.

He [Romeo] bears him like a _portly_ gentleman.

SHAKESPEARE, _Romeo and Juliet_, act i. sc. 5.

Rudely thou wrongest my deare hart’s desire, In finding fault with her too _portly_ pride; For in those lofty lookes is close implide Scorn of base things and ’sdeigne of foule dishonor, Such pride is praise; such _portlinesse_ is honor.

SPENSER, _Sonnet 5_.

=PRAGMATICAL.= This is always employed at the present in an ill sense; the ‘pragmatical’ man is not merely busy, but over-busy, officious, meddling; nay, more than this, with an assumption of bustling self-importance. The word’s etymology does not require this ill sense, which is merely superinduced upon it, and from which it was not indeed always, but often free in its earlier use.

It may appear at the first a new and unwonted argument, to teach men how to raise and make their fortune; but the handling thereof concerneth learning greatly both in honour and in substance. In honour, because _pragmatical_ men may not go away with an opinion that learning is like a lark, that can mount and sing and please herself, and nothing else; but may know that she holdeth as well of the hawk, that can soar aloft, and also descend and strike upon the prey.--Lord BACON, _Advancement of Learning_, b. ii.

We cannot always be contemplative or _pragmatical_ abroad; but have need of some delightful intermissions wherein the enlarged soul may leave off her severe schooling.--MILTON, _Tetrachordon_.

=PREPOSTEROUS=, } PREPOSTEROUSLY. }

A word nearly or quite unserviceable now, being merely an ungraceful and slipshod synonym for absurd. But restore and confine it to its old use and to one peculiar branch of absurdity, the reversing of the true order and method of things, the putting of the last first, and the first last, and of what excellent service it would be capable!

It is a _preposterous_ order to teach first, and to learn after.--_The Translators_ [_of the Bible_, 1611] _to the Reader._

King Asa justly received little benefit by them [physicians], because of his preposterous addressing himself to them before he went to God (_2 Chron._ xvi. 12).--FULLER, _Worthies of England_, c. ix.

To reason thus, I am of the elect, I therefore have saving faith, and the rest of the sanctifying qualities, therefore that which I do is good: thus I say to reason is very _preposterous_. We must go a quite contrary course, and thus reason: my life is good ... I therefore have the gifts of sanctification, and therefore am of God’s elect.--HALES, _Sermon on St. Peter’s Fall_.

Some indeed _preposterously_ misplace these, and make us partake of the benefit of Christ’s priestly office in the forgiveness of our sins and our reconcilement to God, before we are brought under the sceptre of his kingly office by our obedience.--SOUTH, _Sermons_, 1744, vol. xi. p. 3.

=PRETEND=, } PRETENCE, } PRETENSION. }

To charge one with ‘pretending’ anything is now a much more serious charge than it was once. Indeed it was not necessarily, and only by accident, a charge at all. That was ‘pretended’ which one stretched out before himself and in face of others: but whether it was the thing it affirmed itself to be, or, as at present, only a deceitful resemblance of this, the word did not decide. While it was thus with ‘to pretend,’ there was as yet no distinction recognized between ‘pretence’ and ‘pretension;’ they both signified the act of ‘pretending,’ or the thing ‘pretended;’ but whether truly or falsely it was left to the context, or to the judgment of the reader, to decide. ‘Pretence’ has since followed the fortunes of ‘pretend,’ and has fallen with it; while ‘pretension’ has disengaged itself from being a merely useless synonym of ‘pretence,’ and, retaining its relation to the earlier uses of the verb, now signifies a claim put forward which may or may not be valid, the word leaving this for other considerations to determine. Louis Napoleon assumed the dictatorship under the ‘pretence’ of resisting anarchy; the House of Orleans had ‘pretensions’ to the throne of France. But these distinctions are quite modern.

Being preferred by King James to the bishopric of Chichester, and _pretending_ his own imperfectness and insufficiency to undergo such a charge, he caused to be engraven about the seal of his bishopric, those words of St. Paul, Et ad hæc quis idoneus?--ISAACSON, _Life and Death of Lancelot Andrewes_.

[The Sabbath] is rather hominis gratiâ quam Dei; and though God’s honour is mainly _pretended_ in it, yet it is man’s happiness that is really intended by it, even of God Himself.--H. MORE, _Grand Mystery of Godliness_, b. viii. c. 13.

I come no enemy, but to set free From out this dark and dismal house of pain Both him and thee, and all the heavenly host Of Spirits, that, in our just _pretences_ armed, Fell with us from on high.

MILTON, _Paradise Lost_, ii. 822; cf. vi. 421.

This is the tree whose leaves were intended for the healing of the nations, not for a _pretence_ and palliation for sin.--H. MORE, _Grand Mystery of Godliness_, b. viii. c. 1.

He [the Earl of Pembroke] was exceedingly beloved in the Court, because he never desired to get that for himself which others laboured for; but was still ready to promote the _pretences_ of worthy men.--CLARENDON, _History of the Rebellion_, b. i. c. 121.

It is either secret pride, or base faintness of heart, or dull sloth, or some other thing, and not true modesty in us if being excellently gifted for some weighty employment in every other man’s judgment, we yet withdraw ourselves from it with _pretensions_ of unsufficiency.--SANDERSON, _Sermons_, 1671, p. 208.

=PREVARICATE=, } PREVARICATION. }

This verb, often now very loosely used, had once a very definite meaning of its own. ‘To prevaricate’ is to betray the cause which one affects to sustain, the prevaricator is the feint pleader, as he used to be called, and, so far as I know, the words are always so used by our early writers. We have inherited the word from the Latin law-courts, which borrowed it from the life. The ‘prævaricator’ being one who halted on two unequal legs, the name was transferred to him who, affecting to prosecute a charge, was in secret collusion with the opposite party, and so managed the cause as to ensure his escape. Observe in the two following passages the accuracy of use which so habitually distinguishes our writers of the seventeenth century as compared with too many of the nineteenth.

I proceed now to do the same service for the divines of England; whom you question first in point of learning and sufficiency, and then in point of conscience and honesty, as _prevaricating_ in the religion which they profess, and inclining to Popery.--CHILLINGWORTH, _Religion of Protestants_, Preface, p. 11.

If we be not all enemies to God in this kind [in a direct opposition], yet in adhering to the enemy we are enemies; in our _prevarications_, and easy betrayings and surrendering of ourselves to the enemy of his kingdom, Satan, we are his enemies.--DONNE, _On the Nativity_. Sermon 7.

=PREVENT=, } PREVENTION. }

One may reach a point before another to help or to hinder him there; may anticipate his arrival either with the purpose of keeping it _for_ him, or keeping it _against_ him. ‘To prevent’ has slipped by very gradual degrees, which it would not be difficult to trace, from the sense of keeping _for_ to that of keeping _against_, from the sense of arriving first with the intention of helping, to that of arriving first with the intention of hindering, and then generally from helping to hindering.

So it is, that if Titus had not _prevented_ the whole multitude of people which came to see him, and if he had not got him away betimes, before the games were ended, he had hardly escaped from being stifled amongst them.--NORTH, _Plutarch’s Lives_, p. 321.

Gentlemen that were brought low, not by their vices, but by misfortune, poveri vergognosi as the Tuscan calls them, bashful, and could not crave though they perished, he _prevented_ their modesty, and would heartily thank those that discovered their commiserable condition to him.--HACKET, _Life of Archbishop Williams_, part i. p. 201.

That poor man had waited thirty and eight years [at the pool of Bethesda], and still was _prevented_ by some other.--Bishop TAYLOR, _Life of Christ_, part iii. § 13.

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.

Half way he met His daring foe, at this _prevention_ more Incensed.

MILTON, _Paradise Lost_, vi. 129.

=PROBABLE.= Already in the best classical Latin ‘probabilis’ had passed over into the secondary meaning of ‘probatus;’ thus ‘probabilis orator’ (Cicero) is an approved orator. ‘Probable’ is often so used by our scholarly writers of the seventeenth century; though we now use it only in its original sense of ‘likely.’ On the distinction between ‘probable’ and ‘likely,’ ‘probability’ and ‘likelihood,’ see Garden, _Dictionary of Philosophical Terms_.

The Lord Bacon would have rewards given to those men who in the quest of natural experiments make _probable_ mistakes. An ingenious miss is of more credit than a bungling casual hit.--FULLER, _Mixt Contemplations_, i. 26.

S. Ambrose, who was a good _probable_ doctor, and one as fit to be relied on as any man else, hath these words.--Bishop TAYLOR, _Doctrine and Practice of Repentance_, Preface.

=PROBATION.= This is strictly speaking = δοκιμή, the process of proving; as ‘proof’ is = δοκίμιον or δοκιμεῖον, that by which this proving is carried out; thus toil is the δοκίμιον of soldiers (Herodian); and we now very properly keep the words apart according to this rule; but formerly this was not so.

He, sir, was lapped In a most curious mantle, wrought by the hand Of his queen-mother, which for more _probation_ I can with ease produce.

SHAKESPEARE, _Cymbeline_, act v. sc. 5.

Also Philip the Evangelist had three daughters. Neither can it help to say that these children were born before his election; for this is but a simple saying, and no _probation_.--FRITH, _Works_, 1572, p. 325.

=PRODIGIOUS.= This notes little now but magnitude. Truer to its etymology once (from ‘prodigium’ = prōd + agium from ajo, see Brugmann, § 509), it signified the ominous or ominously prophetic.

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, _Philaster_, act v. sc. 1.

Without this comely ornament of hair, their [women’s] most glorious beauty appears as deformed, as the sun would be _prodigious_ without beams.--FULLER, _The Profane State_, b. v. c. 5.

I began to reflect on the whole life of this _prodigious_ man.--COWLEY, _On the Government of Oliver Cromwell_.

=PROMOTE=, } PROMOTER, } PROMOTION. }

‘To promote,’ that is, to further or set forward, a ‘promoter,’ a furtherer, are now words of harmless, often of quite an honourable, signification. They were once terms of extremest scorn; a ‘promoter’ being a common informer, and so called because he ‘promoted’ charges and accusations against men (promotor litium: Skinner).

There lack men to _promote_ the king’s officers when they do amiss, and to _promote_ all offenders.--LATIMER, _Last Sermon before Edward VI._

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 _promoter_, was condemned to death for troubling men with wrongful imputations.--HOLLAND, _Plutarch’s Morals_, p. 421.

His eyes be _promoters_, some trespass to spy.

TUSSER, _Of an envious and haughty Neighbour_.

_Promoters_ be those which in popular and penal actions do defer the names or complain of offenders, having part of the profit for their reward.--COWELL, _The Interpreter_, s. v.

Covetousness and _promotion_ and such like are that right hand and right eye which must be cut off and plucked out, that the whole man perish not.--TYNDALE, _Exposition of the Sixth Chap. of Matthew_.

=PROPRIETY.= All ‘propriety’ is now mental or moral; where material things are concerned, we employ ‘property,’ at the first no more than a different spelling or slightly different form of the same word.

But some man haply will say, That where private _propriety_ is in place, public community is turned out of doors. HOLLAND, _Plutarch’s Morals_, p. 680.

He [the good servant] provides good bounds and sufficient fences betwixt his own and his master’s estate (Jacob, _Gen._ xxx. 36, set his flock three days’ journey from Laban’s), that no quarrel may arise about their _propriety_, nor suspicion that his remnant hath eaten up his master’s whole cloth.--FULLER, _The Holy State_, b. i. c. 8.

Hail, wedded love, mysterious law, true source Of human offspring, sole _propriety_ In Paradise of all things common else.

MILTON, _Paradise Lost_, iv. 751.

A _propriety_ is nothing else but _jus ad rem_, when a man doth claim such a thing as his own, and has a power to use it and dispose of it in a lawful way for his own benefit and advantage.--STRONG, _Of the Two Covenants_, b. iii. c. 1.

=PROSE=, } PROSER. }

‘To prose’ is now to talk or to write heavily, tediously, without spirit and without animation; but ‘to prose’ was once the antithesis of to versify, and a ‘proser’ of a writer in metre. In the tacit assumption that vigour, animation, rapid movement, with all the precipitation of the spirit, belong to verse rather than to prose, lies the explanation of the changed uses of the words.

It was found that whether ought was imposed me by them that had the overlooking, or betaken to of mine own choice in English or other tongue, _prosing_ or versing, but chiefly this latter, the style, by certain vital signs it had, was likely to live.--MILTON, _Reason of Church Government_, b. ii.

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 ‘prune’ trees; but our earlier authors use the word where we should use ‘preen,’ which indeed is but another form of the word. With us only birds ‘preen’ their feathers, while women, as in the example which follows, might ‘prune’ themselves of old.

A husband that loveth to trim and pamper his body, causeth his wife by that means to study nothing else but the tricking and _pruning_ of herself.--HOLLAND, _Plutarch’s Morals_, p. 318.

=PUBLICAN.= Formerly one who gathered the taxes, and paid them into the _publicum_ or treasury; but now--though, as Johnson assures us, ‘in low language’--a man that keeps a house of public entertainment.

The late king’s extorting _publicans_ (whereof Ranolf Flambard, Bishop of Durham, the principal) were closely imprisoned.--FULLER, _Church History_, ii. 3, 13.

They would not suffer him to take that money out of the treasury which was pressed and ready for him, but assigned and ordained certain moneys from the _publicans_ and farmers of the city’s customs and revenues to furnish him.--HOLLAND, _Plutarch_, p. 435.

=PULPIT.= We distinguish now between the ‘pulpit’ and the rostrum; our ancestors did not so.

I will myself into the _pulpit_ first, And show the reason of our Cæsar’s death.

SHAKESPEARE, _Julius Cæsar_, act iii. sc. 1.

He [Cicero] said that those orators who used to strain their voices and cry aloud in the _pulpit_ were privy to their own weakness and insufficience otherwise.--HOLLAND, _Plutarch’s Morals_, p. 439.

=PUNCTUAL=, } PUNCTUALLY. }

‘This word is now confined to the meagre denoting of accuracy in respect to time--fidelity to the precise moment of an appointment. But originally it was just as often and just as reasonably applied to space as to time. Nor only was it applied to time and space, but it had a large and very elegant figurative use’ (De Quincey, _Note Book_). Thus a ‘punctual’ narration was a narration which entered into minuter _points_ of detail.

The stars that seem to roll ... merely to officiate light Round this opacous earth, this _punctual_ spot.

MILTON, _Paradise Lost_, viii. 19-23.

Truly I thought I could not be too _punctual_ in describing the animal life, it being so serviceable for our better understanding the divine.--H. MORE, _Grand Mystery of Godliness_, Preface, p. x.

All curious solicitude about riches smells of avarice; even the very disposing of it with a too _punctual_ and artificial liberality is not worth a painful solicitude.--COTTON, _Montaigne’s Essays_, b. iii. c. 9.

Every one is to give a reason of his faith; but priests or ministers more _punctually_ than any.--H. MORE, _Grand Mystery of Godliness_, b. x. c. 12.

=PUNY.= The present use of ‘puny,’ as that which is at once weak and small, is only secondary and inferential. ‘Puny’ or ‘puisne’ (puis né) is born after another, therefore younger; and only by inference smaller and weaker.

It were a sign of ignorant arrogancy, if _punies_ or freshmen should reject the axioms and principles of Aristotle, usual in the schools, because they have some reasons against them which themselves cannot answer.--JACKSON, _The Eternal Truth of Scriptures_, c. i.

[The worthy soldier] had rather others should make a ladder of his dead corpse to scale a city by it, than a bridge of him whilst alive for his _punies_ to give him the go-by, and pass over him to preferment.--FULLER, _Holy State_, b. iv. c. 17.

He is dead and buried, and by this time no _puny_ among the mighty nations of the dead; for though he left this world not very many days past, yet every hour, you know, addeth largely unto that dark society.--Sir T. BROWNE, _Letter to a Friend_, p. 1.

=PURCHASE.= Now always to acquire in exchange for money, to buy; but much oftener in our old writers simply to acquire, being properly to hunt, ‘pourchasser;’ and then to take in hunting; then to acquire; and then, as the commonest way of acquiring is by giving money in exchange, to buy. The word occurs six times in our Version of the New Testament, _Acts_ i. 18; viii. 10; xx. 28; _Ephes._ i. 14; _1 Tim._ iii. 13; _1 Pet._ ii. 9, margin; in none of these is the notion of buying involved. At _Acts_ i. 18, this is especially noteworthy. It is there said: ‘This man _purchased_ a field with the reward of iniquity.’ There will always remain certain difficulties in reconciling the different records of the death of Judas; but if St. Peter had here affirmed that Judas had _bought_ this field of blood, these difficulties would be seriously increased, for the chief priests were the actual buyers (_Matt._ xxvii. 7). He affirms no such thing, neither did our Translators understand him to do so, but simply that Judas made that ominous potter’s field his own (ἐκτήσατο). The Revised Version has ‘obtained.’

And therefore true consideration of estate can hardly find what to reject, in matter of territory, in any empire, except it be some glorious acquists obtained sometime in the bravery of wars, which cannot be kept without excessive charge and trouble, of which kind were the _purchases_ of King Henry VIII., that of Tournay, and that of Bologne.--BACON, _History of King Henry VII._

The _purchases_ of our own industry are joined commonly with labour and strife.--Id., _Colours of Good and Evil_, 9.

Meditation considers anything that may best make us to avoid the place and to quit a vicious habit, or master and rectify an untoward inclination, or _purchase_ a virtue or exercise one.--Bishop TAYLOR, _Life of Christ_, part i. § 5.

[Men] will repent, but not restore; they will say _Nollem factum_, they wish they had never done it; but since it is done, you must give them leave to rejoice in their _purchase_.--Id., _Sermon preached to the University of Dublin_.

As it is a happiness for us to _purchase_ friends, so is it misery to lose them.--REYNOLDS, _God’s Revenge against Murther_, b. v. hist. 21.

=PURSUER.= ‘Pursue’ and ‘pursuer’ are older words in the language than ‘persecute’ and ‘persecutor’--earlier adoptions of ‘persequor’ and ‘persecutor,’ through Old French and not immediately from the Latin. Besides the meaning which they still retain, they once also covered the meanings which these later words have, since their introduction, appropriated as exclusively their own. In Scotch law the prosecutor is the ‘pursuer,’ ὁ διώκων.

That first was a blaspheme and _pursuere_.--_1 Tim._ i. 13. WICLIF.

If God leave them in this hardness of heart, they may prove as desperate opposites and _pursuers_ of all grace, of Christ and Christians, as the most horrible open swine, as we see in Saul and Julian.--ROGERS, _Naaman the Syrian_, p. 106.

=QUAINT=, } QUAINTLY. }

In ‘quaint,’ which is the Middle English ‘quaynt,’ ‘queynt,’ ‘coint,’ Old French ‘cointe,’ the same word as the Latin ‘cognitum,’ there lies always now the notion of a certain curiosity and oddness, however these may be subordinated to ends of beauty and grace, and indeed may themselves be made to contribute to these ends: pretty after some bygone standard of prettiness; but all this is of late introduction into the word, which had once simply the meaning of neat, graceful, skilful, subtle, knowing.

O britel joye, O sweete venym _queynte_, O monstre that so subtily canst peynte Thyn giftes, under hiew of stedfastnesse, That thou desceyuest bothe more and lesse.

CHAUCER, _The Marchaundes Tale_ (Morris, ii. p. 343).

I grant, my Lord, the damsel is as fair As simple Suffolk’s homely towns can yield, But in the court be _quainter_ dames than she.

GREENE, _Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay_, sc. 1.

But you, my lord, were glad to be employed, To show how _quaint_ an orator you are.

SHAKESPEARE, _2 Henry VI._, act iii. sc. 2.

Whom evere I schal kisse, he it is; holde ye him, and lede ye warli, or _queyntly_.--_Mark_ xiv. 44. WICLIF (earlier version).

A ladder quaintly made of cords.

SHAKESPEARE, _Two Gentlemen of Verona_, act iii. sc. 1.

=QUERULOUS.= Not formerly, as now, addicted to the making of complaints, but quarrelsome.

There inhabit these regions a kind of people, rude, warlike, ready to fight, _querulous_, and mischievous.--HOLLAND, _Camden’s Scotland_, p. 39.

Not _querulous_, or clamorous in his discourse; ‘He shall not _strive_ nor cry, neither shall any hear his voice in the streets;’ but meek and quiet.--FULLER, _A Pisgah Sight of Palestine_, b. iii. c. 6.

=RACE.= Formerly ‘race,’ the Old French ‘raïs,’ the same word as the Latin ‘radicem,’ was used in the sense of a root.

A _race_ of ginger.--SHAKESPEARE, _Winter’s Tale_, act iv. sc. 3.

=RAISIN.= It is conveniently agreed now that ‘raisin’ shall be employed only of the _dried_ grape, but this does not lie in ‘racemus,’ of which ‘raisin’ is the French equivalent, nor yet in its earlier uses; indeed, ‘raisins _of the sun_’ (Sir J. Harington) was a phrase commonly employed when the dried fruit was intended.

Nether in the vyneyerd thou schalt gadere _reysyns_ and greynes fallynge doun, but thou schalt leeve to be gaderid of pore men and pilgryms.--_Lev._ xix. 10. WICLIF.

=RASCAL=, } RASCALITY. }

The lean unseasonable members of the herd of deer were formerly so called; then the common people, the _plebs_ as distinguished from the _populus_; it is only in comparatively modern English that the word is one of moral contempt. [In Anglo-French the word ‘rascaille’ was used in the sense of a rabble; for references and etymology see Mayhew-Skeat, _Dict. of Middle English_.]

And he smoot of the puple seventi men, and fifti thousandis of the _raskeyl_ [Et percussit de populo septuaginta viros et quinquaginta millia _plebis_ (Vulg.)].--_1 Kin._ vi. 19. WICLIF.

The common priests be not so obedient unto their ordinaryes that they will pay money except they know why. Now it is not expedient that every _rascal_ should know the secretes of the very true cause, for many considerations.--TYNDALE, _The Practice of Popishe Prelates_.

Now shall I tel you which ben bestes of chace; And ye shall, my dere sones, other bestes all, Whereso ye hem finde, _rascall_ hem call.

JULIANA BERNERS, _The Book of St. Albans_.

As one should in reproach say to a poor man, Thou _raskall_ knave, where _raskall_ is properly the hunter’s term given to young deer, lean and out of season, and not to people.--PUTTENHAM, _Art of English Poesy_, 1811, p. 150.

Both sorts of seasoned deer, Here walk the stately red, the freckled fallow there; The bucks and lusty stags among the _rascals_ strewed, As sometimes gallant spirits amongst the multitude.

DRAYTON, _Polyolbion_, song 13.

The report which these roving hunters had made to their countrymen of that pleasant land, did invite the chief heads of their clans, with their several _rascalities_, to flock into Europe, like beggars dismissed out of prison, invited to a solemn banquet.--JACKSON, _A Treatise on the Divine Essence_, b. vi. c. 25, § 6.

=RATHER.= This survives for us now only as an adverb, but meets us often in Middle English as an adjective, as the comparative of ‘rathe,’ quick, swift, early.

This is he that Y seide of, aftir me is comun a man, which was maad bifor me; for he was _rather_ than Y [quia _prior_ me erat, Vulg.].--_John_ i. 30. WICLIF.

If the world hatith you, wite ye that it hadde me in hate _rather_ than you [me _priorem_ vobis odio habuit, Vulg.].--_John_ xv. 18. WICLIF.

The Sarazines maden another cytie more far from the see, and clepeden it the newe Damyete, so that now no man dwellethe at the _rathere_ town of Damyete.--Sir JOHN MANDEVILLE, _Voyage and Travaile_, p. 46, Halliwell’s edition.

Whatsoever thou or such other say, I say that the pilgrimage that now is used is to them that do it, a praisable and a good mean to come the _rather_ to grace.--FOXE, _Book of Martyrs; Examination of William Thorpe_.

The _rather_ lambs been starved with cold.

SPENSER, _The Shepherd’s Calendar, February_.

=RECEIPT.= At this present the act of receiving, or acknowledgment of having received; but not seldom once the place for receiving, or receptacle.

To conclude, his house was a common _receipt_ for all those that came from Greece to Rome.--NORTH, _Plutarch’s Lives_, p. 446.

Fountains I intend to be of two natures, the one that sprinkleth or spouteth water, the other a fair _receipt_ of water, of some thirty or forty foot square, but without fish, or slime, or mud.--BACON, _Essays_, 46.

=RECLAIM.= A ‘reclamation’ is still sometimes a calling _out against_; but ‘to reclaim’ is never, I think, anything now but to call _back again_; never to disclaim.

Herod, instead of _reclaiming_ what they exclaimed [_Acts_ xii. 22], embraced and hugged their praises as proper to himself, and thereupon an angel and worms, the best and basest of creatures, met in his punishment, the one smiting, the other eating him up.--FULLER, _A Pisgah Sight of Palestine_, b. ii. c. 8.

=RECOGNIZE.= This verb means now to revive our knowledge of a person or thing; to reacquaint oneself with it; but in earlier usage to review, as in my first quotation, to reconnoitre, as in my second.

In _recognizing_ this history I have employed a little more labour, partly to enlarge the argument which I took in hand, partly also to assay, whether by any painstaking I might pacify the stomachs, or to satisfy the judgments of these importune quarrellers.--FOXE, _Book of Martyrs; Epistle Dedicatory [of the Second Edition] to the Queen’s Majesty_.

In quartering either in village, field, or city, he [a commander] ought himself to _recognize_ all avenues, whereby his enemies may come to him.--MONRO, _His Expedition_, p. 9.

=REDUCE.= That which is ‘reduced’ now is brought back to narrower limits, or lower terms, or more subject conditions, than those under which it subsisted before. But nothing of this lies of necessity in the word, nor yet in the earlier uses of it. According to these, that was ‘reduced’ which was brought back to its former estate, an estate that might be, and in all the following examples is, an ampler, larger, or more prosperous one than that which it superseded.

The drift of the Roman armies and forces was not to bring free states into servitude, but contrariwise, to _reduce_ those that were in bondage to liberty.--HOLLAND, _Livy_, p. 1211.

There remained only Britain [_i.e._ Britany] to be reunited, and so the monarchy of France to be _reduced_ to the ancient terms and bounds.--BACON, _History of King Henry VII._

That he might have these keys to open the heavenly Hades to _reduced_ apostates, to penitent, believing, self-devoting sinners, for this it was necessary He should put on man, become obedient to death, even that servile punishment, the death of the cross.--HOWE, _The Redeemer’s Dominion over the Invisible World_.

Abate the edge of traitors, gracious Lord, That would _reduce_ these bloody days again.

SHAKESPEARE, _Richard III._, act v. sc. 5.

=REIGN.= This is now in the abstract what ‘kingdom’ is in the concrete, but there was no such distinction once between them.

And for a litel glorie veigne, They lesen God, and eke his _reigne_.

_Romaunt of the Rose_, 448.

=REJOICE.= Formerly used in the sense of to enjoy.

Then was mad pes on this manere, that he and his puple schuld frely _rejoyce_ all the lond of the other side of Seyne.--CAPGRAVE, _Chronicle of England_, p. 112.

In special he [Constantine] assigned and bequathe the lordschip of the west parte, which was Rome, to his eeldist sone Constantyn, which sone _rejoiced_ the same parte so to him devysid, and that thorugh al his liif.--PECOCK, _Repressor_, c. xiii.

=RELIGION=, } RELIGIOUS. }

Not, as too often now, used as equivalent for godliness; but like θρησκεία, for which it stands _Jam._ i. 27, it expressed the outer form and embodiment which the inward spirit of a true or a false devotion assumed. In the Middle Ages a ‘religion’ was a monastic Order, and they were ‘religious’ who had entered into one of these.

We would admit and grant them, that images used for no _religion_, or superstition rather, we mean of none worshipped, nor in danger to be worshipped of any, may be suffered.--_Homilies; Against Peril of Idolatry._

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_, i. 367.

_Religiouse_ folk ben fulle covert, Seculer folk ben more appert, But natheles I wole not blame _Religious_ folk, ne hem diffame, In what habit that ever thei go; _Religioun_ umble and trewe also Wole I not blame, ne dispise; But I nyl love it in no wise. I mene of fals _religious_, That stoute ben and malicious, That wolen in an abit goo, And setten not her herte therto.

_Romaunt of the Rose_, 6152.

And thus when that thei were counseilled, In black clothes thei them clothe, The daughter and the lady both, And yolde hem to _religion_.

GOWER, _Confessio Amantis_, b. viii.

=REMARK.= There are no ‘remarks’ now but verbal ones. ‘To remark’ was once to point out, to designate.

They [the publicans and harlots] are moved by shame, and punished by disgrace, and _remarked_ by punishments, and frighted by the circumstances and notices of all the world, and separated from sober persons by laws and an intolerable character.--Bishop TAYLOR, _Of Lukewarmness and Zeal_, Serm. 13, part ii.

_Officer._ Hebrews, the prisoner Samson here I seek.

_Chorus._ His manacles _remark_ him; there he sits.

MILTON, _Samson Agonistes_, 1308.

=REMONSTRATE=, } REMONSTRANCE. }

Its present sense, namely to expostulate, was only at a late date superinduced on the word. ‘To remonstrate’ is properly to make _any_ show or representation in regard to some step that has been taken. It is now only such show or representation as _protests against_ this step; and always assumes this step to have been distasteful; but this limitation lies not of necessity in the word.

Properties of a faithful servant: a sedulous eye, to observe all occasions within or without, tending to _remonstrate_ the habit within.--ROGERS, _Naaman the Syrian_, p. 309.

It [the death of Lady Carbery] was not (in all appearance) of so much trouble as two fits of a common ague; so careful was God to _remonstrate_ to all that stood in that sad attendance that this soul was dear to Him.--Bishop TAYLOR, _Funeral Sermon on Lady Carbery_.

I consider that in two very great instances it was _remonstrated_ that Christianity was the greatest persecution of natural justice and equality in the whole world.--Id., _Life of Christ_, Preface, § 32.

When Sir Francis Cottington returned with our king’s oath, plighted to the annexed conditions for the ease of the Roman Catholics, the Spaniards made no _remonstrance_ of joy, or of an ordinary liking of it.--HACKET, _Life of Archbishop Williams_, part i. p. 145.

No; the atheist is too wise in his generation to make _remonstrances_ and declarations of what he thinks. It is his heart and the little council that is held there, that is only privy to his monstrous opinions.--SOUTH, _Sermons_, 1744, vol. ix. p. 78.

=REMORSE=, } REMORSEFUL. }

In ‘remorseless’ and in the phrase ‘without remorse,’ we retain a sense of ‘remorse’ as equivalent with pity, which otherwise has quite passed away from it. It may thus have acquired this meaning. There is nothing which is followed in natures not absolutely devilish with so swift revulsion of mind as acts of cruelty. Nowhere does the conscience so quickly sting the guilty actor as in and after these; and thus ‘remorse,’ which is the penitence of the natural man, the penitence not wrought by the spirit of grace, while it means the revulsion of the mind and conscience against any evil which has been done, came to mean predominantly revulsion against acts of cruelty, the pity which followed close on these; and thus pity in general, and not only as in this way called out.

King Richard by his own experience grew sensible of the miseries which merchants and mariners at sea underwent. Wherefore, now touched with _remorse_ of their pitiful case, he resolved to revoke the law of wrecks.--FULLER, _Holy War_, b. iii. c. 7.

His helmet, justice, judgment, and _remorse_.

MIDDLETON, _Wisdom of Solomon_, c. v. 17.

O Eglamour, thou art a gentleman, Valiant, wise, _remorseful_, well accomplished.

SHAKESPEARE, _Two Gentlemen of Verona_, act iv. sc. 2.

=REPEAL.= ‘To repeal’ (compare Old French ‘rapeler’) is to recall, and seldom or never applied now except to some statute or law, but formerly of far wider use.

I will _repeal_ thee, or, be well assured, Adventure to be banishèd myself.

SHAKESPEARE, _2 Henry VI._, act iii. sc. 2.

Whence Adam soon _repealed_ The doubts that in his heart arose.

MILTON, _Paradise Lost_, vii. 59.

Or else Nepenthe, enemy to sadness, Repelling sorrows, and _repealing_ gladness.

SYLVESTER, _Du Bartas, Eden, The Second Week_.

=REPROVE.= Now ‘to rebuke,’ but once equivalent to ‘disprove,’ and convertible with it.

As it [the Apology] has been well allowed of and liked of the learned and godly, so hath it not hitherto, for ought that may appear, been anywhere openly _reproved_ either in Latin or otherwise, either by any one man’s private writing, or by the public authority of any nation.--JEWEL, _Defence of the Apology_.

_Reprove_ my allegation if you can; Or else conclude my words effectual.

SHAKESPEARE, _2 Henry VI._, act iii. sc. 1.

=REQUIRE.= This has now something almost imperative in it; being less to request or to entreat than to command; but it was not so always.

We do instantly _require_ and desire the Blessed Virgin Mary with all the holy company of heaven, continually to pray for us.--_Will of Henry VIII._

Lord of his fortune he salutes thee, and _Requires_ to live in Egypt.

SHAKESPEARE, _Antony and Cleopatra_, act iii. sc. 12.

=RESENT=, } RESENTMENT. }

When first introduced into the language (this was in the seventeenth century; ‘vox nova in nostrâ linguâ:’ Junius), ‘to resent’ meant to have a sense or feeling of that which had been done to us; but whether a sense of gratitude for the good, or of enmity for the evil, the word itself did not decide, and was employed in both meanings. It has fared not otherwise with ‘ressentiment’ in French. Of this Génin, _La Langue de Molière_, writes, ‘Ce mot, dont l’usage a déterminé l’acception en mauvaise part, ne signifiait jadis que _sentiment_ avec plus de force.’ Must we conclude from the fact that the latter is now the exclusive employment of it, that our sense of injuries is much stronger and more lasting than our sense of benefits?

’Tis by my touch alone that you _resent_ What objects yield delight, what discontent.

BEAUMONT, _Psyche_, can. iv. st. 156.

Perchance as vultures are said to smell the earthliness of a dying corpse; so this bird of prey [the evil Spirit which personated Samuel] _resented_ a worse than earthly savour in the soul of Saul, an evidence of his death at hand.--FULLER, _The Profane State_, b. v. c. 4.

The judicious prelate will prefer a drop of the sincere milk of the word before vessels full of traditionary pottage, _resenting_ of the wild gourd of human invention.--Id., _A Pisgah Sight of Palestine_, b. iii. c. 1.

I _resented_ as I ought the news of my mother-in-law’s death.--SANCROFT, _Variorum Shakespeare_, vol. i. p. 518.

Sadness does in some cases become a Christian, as being an index of a pious mind, of compassion, and a wise, proper _resentment_ of things.--Bishop TAYLOR, _Sermon 23_, part ii.

The Council taking notice of the many good services performed by Mr. John Milton, their Secretary for foreign languages, particularly for his book in vindication of the Parliament and people of England against the calumnies and invectives of Salmasius, have thought fit to declare their _resentment_ and good acceptance of the same, and that the thanks of the Council be returned to Mr. Milton.--_Extract from ‘The Council Book,’_ 1651, June 18.

=RESIDENCE=, } RESIDENT. }

It will be seen from the quotations which follow that ‘residence’ in the seventeenth century meant something quite different from ordinary place of habitation, which is all the meaning which now it has.

Separation in it is wrought by weight, as in the ordinary _residence_ or settlement of liquors.--BACON, _Natural History_, § 302.

Of waters of a muddy _residence_ we may make good use and quench our thirst, if we do not trouble them; yet upon any ungentle disturbance we drink down mud, instead of a clear stream.--Bishop TAYLOR, _Sermon on the Gunpowder Treason_.

The inexperienced Christian shrieks out whenever his vessel shakes, thinking it always a danger that the watery pavement is not stable and _resident_ like a rock.--Id., _Sermon 11_, part 3.

=RESTIVE=, } RESTIVENESS. }

Any one now invited to define a ‘restive’ horse would certainly put into his definition that it was one with _too much_ motion; but in obedience to its etymology ‘restive’ would have once meant one with _too little_; determined to stand still when it ought to go forward. [It is the Old French _restif_, stubborn, drawing backward (see Cotgrave), from _rester_, Latin _restare_, to stand still.] Immobile, lazy, stubborn, are the three stages of meaning which the word went through, before it reached the fourth and present.

Bishops or presbyters we know, and deacons we know, but what are chaplains? In state perhaps they may be listed among the upper serving-men of some great man’s household, the yeoman ushers of devotion, where the master is too _resty_ or too rich to say his own prayers, or to bless his own table.--MILTON, _Iconoclastes_, c. xxiv.

_Restive_, or _Resty_, drawing back instead of going forward, as some horses do.--PHILLIPS, _New World of Words_.

Nothing hindereth men’s fortunes so much as this: Idem manebat, neque idem decebat; men are where they were, when occasions turn. From whatsoever root or cause this _restiveness_ of mind proceedeth, it is a thing most prejudicial.--BACON, _Advancement of Learning_, b. ii.

The snake, by _restiness_ and lying still all winter, hath a certain membrane or film growing over the whole body.--HOLLAND, _Pliny_, part i. p. 210.

=RETALIATE=, } RETALIATION. }

It has fared with ‘retaliate’ and ‘retaliation’ as it has with ‘resent’ and ‘resentment,’ that whereas men could once speak of the ‘retaliation’ of benefits as well as of wrongs, they only ‘retaliate’ injuries now.

Our captain would not salute the city, except they would _retaliate_.--_Diary of Henry Teonge_, Aug. 1, 1675.

[The king] expects a return in specie from them [the Dissenters], that the kindness which he has graciously shown them may be _retaliated_ on those of his own persuasion.--DRYDEN, _The Hind and the Panther_, Preface.

His majesty caused directions to be sent for the enlargement of the Roman priests, in _retaliation_ for the prisoners that were set at liberty in Spain to congratulate the prince’s welcome.--HACKET, _Life of Archbishop Williams_, part i. p. 166.

=REVOKE.= This has now a much narrower range of meaning than the Latin ‘revocare;’ but some took for granted once that wherever the one word could have been used in Latin, the other might be used in English.

The wolf, who would not be _Revokëd_ from the slaughter for the sweetness of the blood, Persisted sharp and eager still, until that as he stood, Fast biting on a bullock’s neck, she turned him into stone.

GOLDING, _Ovid’s Metamorphosis_, b. xi.

Her knees _revoked_ their first strength, and her feet Were borne above the ground with wings to greet The long-grieved queen with news her king was come.

CHAPMAN, _The Odyssey of Homer_, b. xxiii. l. 5.

=RIG.= A somewhat vulgar word, with the present use of which, however, we are probably all familiar from its occurrence in _John Gilpin_:

‘He little guessed when he set out Of running such a _rig_.’

But a ‘rig’ in its earlier use was not so often a strange uncomely _feat_, as a wanton uncomely _person_.

Let none condemn them [the girls] for _rigs_ because thus hoyting with the boys, seeing the simplicity of their age was a patent to privilege any innocent pastime.--FULLER, _A Pisgah Sight of Palestine_, b. iv. 6.

[=RIPPLE.= It is now in literary English a poetical word, and nothing is ‘rippled’ but the surface of the water. This is probably a distinct word from the ‘ripple’ of the Whitby dialect, which means to scratch slightly as with a pin upon the skin (see Robinson’s ‘Glossary,’ English Dialect Society, 1876). This is precisely the meaning of ‘ripple’ in the citation from Holland below. For cognates of this ‘ripple’ to scratch see Skeat’s ‘Dictionary’ (_s. v._ ‘rip’).]

On a sudden an horseman’s javelin, having slightly _rippled_ the skin of his [Julian’s] left arm, pierced within his short ribs, and stuck fast in the nether lappet or fillet of his liver.--HOLLAND, _Ammianus_, p. 264.

=ROGUE.= There was a time when ‘rogue’ meant no more than wandering mendicant. What of dishonesty is implied now in the word was afterwards superinduced upon it; as has also been the case with ‘tramp’ and ‘vagabond.’

Mine enemy’s dog, Though he had bit me, should have stood that night Against my fire; and wast thou fain, poor father, To hovel thee with swine and _rogues_ forlorn In short and musty straw?

SHAKESPEARE, _King Lear_, act iv. sc. 7.

_Rogue_ signifieth with us an idle sturdy beggar, that, wandering from place to place without passport, after he hath been by justices bestowed upon some certain place of abode, or offered to be bestowed, is condemned to be so called; who for the first offence is called a _rogue_ of the first degree, and punished by whipping, and boring through the gristle of the right ear with a hot iron an inch in compass, and for the second offence is called a _rogue_ of the second degree, and put to death as a felon, if he be above eighteen years old.--COWELL, _The Interpreter_, s. v.

The third sort of those that live unprofitably and without a calling are our idle sturdy _rogues_ and vagrant towns-end beggars. I mean such as are able to work, yet rather choose to wander abroad the country, and to spend their days in a most base and ungodly course of life.--SANDERSON, _Sermons_, 1671, vol. i. p. 197.

=ROMANTIC.= It is much rarer to find words which in lapse of time have mended their position than those which have seen theirs grow worse. But such there are, and this is one of them. Who would have expected two centuries ago that ‘romantic’ would have held the place of honour which now it does; would have divided with ‘classical’ the whole world of modern literature?

Can anything in nature be imagined more profane and impious, more absurd, and indeed _romantic_, than such a persuasion [namely that whenever in Scripture the Covenant is mentioned, the Scotch Covenant was intended]? and yet, as impious and absurd as it was, it bore down all before it, and overturned the equallest and best framed government in the world.--SOUTH, _Sermons_, 1737, vol. vi. p. 42.

=ROOM.= In certain connexions we still employ ‘room’ for place, but in many more it obtains this meaning no longer. Thus one who accepts the words, ‘When thou art bidden of any man to a wedding, sit not down in the highest _room_’ (_Luke_ xiv. 8), according to the present use of ‘room,’ will probably imagine to himself guests assembling in various apartments, some more honourable than other; and not, as indeed the meaning is, taking higher or lower _places_ at one and the same table.

In 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=, } RUFFIANLY. }

The Old French ‘ruffien,’ the Italian ‘ruffiano,’ the Spanish ‘rufian,’ all signify the setter-forward of an infamous traffic between the sexes; nor will the passages quoted below leave any doubt that this is the proper meaning of ‘ruffian’ in English, others being secondary and derived from it. At the same time the ‘ruffian’ is not merely the ‘leno,’ he is the ‘amasius’ as well. For some instructive English uses of the word, see Ascham’s _Scholemaster_, Wright’s edit. pp. 44, 215.

Let young men consider the precious value of their time, and waste it not in idleness, in jollity, in gaming, in banqueting, in _ruffians’_ company.--_Homilies; Against Idleness._

Xenocrates, casting but his eye upon Polemon, who was come into his school like a _ruffian_, by his very look only redeemed him from his loose life.--HOLLAND, _Plutarch’s Morals_, p. 112.

He [her husband] is no sooner abroad than she is instantly at home, revelling with her _ruffians_.--REYNOLDS, _God’s Revenge against Murther_, b. iii. hist. 11.

Who in London hath not heard of his [Greene’s] dissolute and licentious living; his fond disguising of a Master of Art with _ruffianly_ hair, unseemly apparel, and more unseemly company?--G. HARVEY, _Four Letters touching Robert Greene_, p. 7.

Some frenchified or outlandish monsieur, who hath nothing else to make him famous, I should say infamous, but an effeminate, _ruffianly_, ugly, and deformed lock.--PRYNNE, _The Unloveliness of Love-locks_, p. 27.

=RUMMAGE.= At present so to look for one thing as in the looking to overturn and unsettle a great many others. It is a sea-term, and signified at first to dispose with such orderly method goods in the hold of a ship that there should be the greatest possible room, or ‘roomage.’ The quotation from Phillips shows the word in the act of transition from its former use to its present.

And that the masters of the ships do look well to the _romaging_, for they might bring away a great deal more than they do, if they would take pain in the _romaging_.--HAKLUYT, _Voyages_, vol. i. p. 308.

To _rummage_ (sea-term): To remove any goods or luggage from one place to another, especially to clear the ship’s hold of any goods or lading, in order to their being handsomely stowed and placed; whence the word is used upon other occasions, for to rake into, or to search narrowly.--PHILLIPS, _New World of Words_.

=SAD=, } SADLY, } SADNESS. }

This had once the meaning of earnest, serious, sedate. The passage from Shakespeare quoted below marks ‘sadly’ and ‘sadness’ in their transitional state from the old meaning to the new; Benvolio using ‘sadness’ in the old sense, Romeo pretending to understand him in the new. For the etymology of ‘sad’ see Mayhew-Skeat, _Dict. of Middle English_.

O dere wif, o gemme of lustyhede, That were to me so _sade_, and eke so trewe.

CHAUCER, _The Manciples Tale_.

He may have one year, or two at the most, an ancient and _sad_ matron attending on him.--Sir T. ELYOT, _The Governor_, b. i. c. 6.

For when I thinke how farre this earth doth us divyde, Alas, mesemes, love throws me down, I fele how that I slide. But when I think again, Why should I thus mistrust So sweet a wight, so _sad_ and wise, that is so true and just?

EARL OF SURREY, _The Faithful Lover_, p. 33 (ed. 1717).

In go the sperës _sadly_ in the rest.

CHAUCER, _The Knightes Tale_.

Therfor ye, britheren, bifor witynge kepe you silf, lest ye be disseyved bi errour of unwise men, and falle awei fro youre owne _sadness_ [a propriâ _firmitate_, Vulg.].--_2 Pet._ iii. 17. WICLIF.

_Benvolio._ Tell me in _sadness_ who she is you love?

_Romeo._ What, shall I groan, and tell you?

_Ben._ Groan? why, no; But _sadly_ tell me who?

SHAKESPEARE, _Romeo and Juliet_, act i. sc. 1.

=SAMPLER.= This has now quite dissociated itself in meaning from ‘exemplar,’ of which it is the popular form, as ‘sample’ has done from ‘example;’ not so, however, once.

Job, the _sawmpler_ of pacience.--_Preparatory Epistles of St. Jerome to Wiclif’s Bible._

=SASH.= At present always a belt or girdle _of the loins_; not so, however, when first introduced from the East. By the ‘sash,’ or ‘shash’ as it was then always spelt, was understood the roll of silk, fine linen, or gauze, worn about the head; in fact a turban. The word is of Persian origin.

_Shash_: Cidaris seu tiara, pileus Turcicus, ut doct. Th. H. placet, ab It. Sessa, gausapina cujus involucris Turcæ pileos suos adornant.--SKINNER, _Etymologicon_.

So much for the silk in Judea, called Shesh in Hebrew, whence haply that fine linen or silk is called _shashes_, worn at this day about the heads of eastern people.--FULLER, _A Pisgah Sight of Palestine_, b. ii. c. 14.

He [a Persian merchant] was apparelled in a long robe of cloth of gold, his head was wreathed with a huge _shash_ or tulipant of silk and gold.--HERBERT, _Travels_, 1638, p. 191.

=SCARCE=, } SCARCELY, } SCARCITY. }

Now expressing the fact that the thing to which this epithet is applied is rare, not easily to be come by; but in the time of Chaucer, Wiclif, and Gower, and till a later day, parsimonious or stingy. For the derivation see Skeat’s _Dictionary_.

Ye schul use the richesses the whiche ye han geten by youre witte and by youre travaile, in such a maner, that men holde yow not _skarse_ ne to sparynge ne fool-large; for right as men blamen an avërous man bycause of his _skarsite_ and chyncherie, in the same manere is he to blame that spendeth over largely.--CHAUCER, _The Tale of Melibœus_.

A man is that is maad riche in doynge _scarsli_ [parce agendo, Vulg.]--_Ecclus._ xi. 18. WICLIF.

For I seie this thing, he that sowith _scarseli_ schal also repe _scarseli_.--_2 Cor._ ix. 6. Id.

Both free and _scarce_, thou giv’st and tak’st again; Thy womb, that all doth breed, is tomb to all.

DAVISON, _Poetical Rhapsody_, p. 256.

=SECURE=, } SECURELY, } SECURITY. }

In our present English the difference between ‘safe’ and ‘secure’ is hardly recognized, but once it was otherwise. ‘Secure’ (‘securus,’ from sē- + cura) was _subjective_; it was a man’s own sense, well grounded or not, of the absence of danger; ‘safe’ was _objective_, the actual fact of such absence of danger. A man, therefore, might _not_ be ‘safe,’ just because he was ‘secure’ (thus see _Judges_ xviii. 7, 10, 27, and _Paradise Lost_, iv. 791). I may observe that our use of ‘secure’ at _Matt._ xxviii. 14, is in fact this early, though we may easily read the passage as though it were employed in the modern sense. ‘We will _secure_ you’ of our Version represents _ἀμερίμνους_ ὑμᾶς ποιήσομεν of the original.

My wanton weakness did herself betray With too much play. I was too bold; he never yet stood safe That stands _secure_.

QUARLES, _Emblems_, ii. 14.

We cannot endure to be disturbed or awakened from our pleasing lethargy. For we care not to be safe, but to be _secure_.--Bishop TAYLOR, _Of Slander and Flattery_.

Man may _securely_ sin, but safely never.

BEN JONSON, _The Forest_, xi.

We see the wind sit sore upon our sails, But yet we strike not, but _securely_ perish.

SHAKESPEARE, _Richard II._, act ii. sc. 1.

He means, my lord, that we are too remiss, While Bolingbroke, through our _security_, Grows strong and great in substance and in friends.

Id., _ibid._, act iii. sc. 2.

The last daughter of pride is delicacy, under which is contained gluttony, luxury, sloth, and _security_.--NASH, _Christ’s Tears over Jerusalem_, p. 137.

How this man Bears up in blood; seems fearless! Why ’tis well: _Security_ some men call the suburbs of hell, Only a dead wall between.

WEBSTER, _Duchess of Malfi_, act v. sc. 2.

=SEDITION=, } SEDITIOUS. }

There was an attempt on the part of some scholarly writers at the beginning of the seventeenth century to keep ‘sedition’ true to its etymology, and to the meaning which ‘seditio’ bears in the Latin. This is the explanation of its employment as a rendering of διχοστασίαι, _Gal._ v. 21, as quoted below; which in our present English would be more accurately rendered, secessions, dissensions, or divisions; in exactly which sense ‘seditious’ is there used by our Translators. So too, when Satan, in the quotation given below, addresses Abdiel ‘seditious Angel,’ this is to find the same explanation, as is clear from the words which immediately follow. He the one faithful, taking the Lord’s side, had in so doing divided the ranks of those who adhered to the fallen Archangel, and separated from them, being therein ‘seditious.’ The quotation from Bishop Andrewes not less evidently shows how distinct in his mind ‘seditions’ were from those overt acts of petty treason which we now call by this name; however, they might often lead to such.

Whom you find thus magnifying of changes and projecting new plots for the people, be sure they are in the way to _sedition_. For (mark it) they do _sedire_, that is _seorsim ire_, go aside; they have their meetings apart about their new alterations. Now of _sedire_ comes _sedition_, side-going. For if that be not looked to in time, the next news is, the blowing of a trumpet, and Sheba’s proclamation, We have no part in David. It begins in Shimei, it ends in Sheba.--ANDREWES, _Of the Gunpowder Treason_, Serm. 6.

Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these, ... _seditions_ (in R.V. ‘divisions’).--_Gal._ v. 20, 21. (A.V.)

Ill for thee, but in wished hour Of my revenge, first sought for, thou returnest From flight, _seditious_ Angel, to receive Thy merited reward.

MILTON, _Paradise Lost_, vi. 150.

=SEE.= Not always confined as now to the _seat_ or residence of a bishop; nor indeed did it necessarily involve the notion of a seat _of authority_ at all.

At Babiloyne was his sovereyn _see_.

CHAUCER, _The Monkes Tale_.

And smale harpers with her gleës Saten under hem in _seës_.

Id., _The Hous of Fame_, b. iii. (Skeat, p. 156).

The Lord smoot all the fyrst gotun in the loond of Egipte, fro the fyrst gotun of Pharao, that sat in his _see_, unto the fyrst gotun of the caitiff woman that was in prisoun.--_Exod._ xii. 29. WICLIF.

Not that same famous temple of Diane Might match with this by many a degree; Nor that which that wise King of Jewry framed With endless cost to be the Almighty’s _see_.

SPENSER, _Fairy Queen_, iv. 10, 30.

=SEEDSMAN.= Between the ‘seedsman’ and the ‘sower’ there is now a useful distinction. The one sells the seed; the other scatters it in the furrow; but the distinction is comparatively modern.

The higher Nilus swells The more it promises; as it ebbs, the _seedsman_ Upon the slime and ooze scatters his grain, And shortly comes to harvest.

SHAKESPEARE, _Antony and Cleopatra_, act ii. sc. 7.

=SENSUAL=, } SENSUALITY. }

‘Sensual’ is employed now only in an ill meaning, and implies ever a predominance of sense in quarters where it ought not so to predominate. Milton, feeling that we wanted another word affirming this predominance where no such fault was implied by it, and that ‘sensual’ only imperfectly expressed this, employed, I know not whether he coined, ‘sensuous,’ a word which, if it had rooted itself in the language at once, might have proved of excellent service. ‘Sensuality’ has had always an ill meaning, but not always the same ill meaning which it has now. Any walking by sense and sight rather than by faith was ‘sensuality’ of old.

Hath not the Lord Jesus convinced thy _sensual_ heart by _sensual_ arguments? If thy sense were not left-handed, thou mightest with thy right hand bear down thine infidelity; for God hath given assurance sufficient by his Son to thy very _sense_, if though wert not brutish (_1 John_ i. 1).--ROGERS, _Naaman the Syrian_, p. 493.

There cannot always be that degree of _sensual_, pungent, or delectable affections towards religion as towards the desires of nature and sense.--Bishop TAYLOR, _Life of Christ_, part ii. § 12.

Far as creation’s ample range extends, The scale of _sensual_, mental powers ascends.

POPE, _Essay on Man_, b. i.

I do take him to be a hardy captain; but yet a man more meet to be governed than to govern; for all his enterprizes be made upon his own _sensuality_, without the advice and counsel of those that been put in trust by the King’s Majesty.--_State Papers_, 1538, vol. iii. p. 95.

He who might claim this absolute power over the soul to be believed upon his bare word, yet seeing the _sensuality_ of man and our woful distrust, is willing to allow us all the means of strengthening our souls in his promise, by such seals and witnesses as confirm it.--ROGERS, _Naaman the Syrian_, p. 483.

A great number of people in divers parts of this realm, following their own _sensuality_, and living without knowledge and due fear of God, do wilfully and schismatically abstain and refuse to come to their own parish churches.--_Act of Uniformity_, 1662.

=SERVANT.= A wooer, follower, admirer, lover, not of necessity an accepted one, was a ‘servant’ in the chivalrous language of two or three centuries ago.

_Valentine._ Madam and mistress, a thousand good morrows.

_Silvia._ Sir Valentine and _servant_, to you two thousand.

SHAKESPEARE, _Two Gentlemen of Verona_, act ii. sc. 1.

’Tis more than I know if Mr. Freeman be my _servant_.... I cannot brag much that he makes any court to me.--_Letters from Dorothy Osborne_, Lett. 22 (ed. 1889).

=SERVILITY.= The _subjective_ abjectness and baseness of spirit of one who is a slave, or who acts as one, is always implied by this word at the present; while once it did but express the _objective_ fact of an outwardly servile condition in him of whom it was predicated, leaving it possible that in spirit he might be free notwithstanding.

Such _servility_ as the Jews endured under the Greeks and Asiatics, have they endured under the Saracen and the Turk.--JACKSON, _The Eternal Truth of Scriptures_, b. i. c. 26.

We are no longer under the _servility_ of the law of Moses, but are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus.--H. MORE, _The Grand Mystery of Godliness_, b. viii. c. 6.

The same [faith] inclined Moses to exchange the dignities and delights of a court for a state of vagrancy and _servility_.--BARROW, _Sermon 3, On the Apostles’ Creed_.

[=SHED.= This verb was once in common use in the sense of to separate, divide, or part. This ‘shed’ is the representative of the O.E. ‘sceādan’ (scādan), the equivalent of the modern German ‘scheiden.’ With these words is connected the modern geographical term ‘watershed,’ i.e. water-divider. ‘To shed’ is still used in the North in the sense of to divide or separate (Halliwell). From this verb comes the word ‘sheeding,’ the name of a territorial division in the Isle of Man. Probably our modern ‘shed,’ to scatter, pour, may be the same word as ‘shed,’ to separate, with a development of meaning, but the relation of the two words has not been satisfactorily made out yet.]

They say also that the manner of making the _shed_ [διακρίνεσθαι] of new-wedded wives’ hair with the iron head of a javelin came up then likewise.--NORTH, _Plutarch’s Lives_, p. 22.

They were never so careful to comb their heads as when they should to the battle; for then they did noint their selves with sweet oils, and did _shed_ their hair.--Id., _ibid._ p. 45.

=SHEER.= It is curious that Christopher Sly’s declaration that he was ‘fourteen pence on the score for _sheer_ ale’ (_Taming of the Shrew, Induction_, sc. 2) should have given so much trouble to some of the early commentators upon Shakespeare. ‘Sheer,’ which is pure, unmixed, was used of things concrete once, although mostly of things abstract now.

They had scarcely sunk through the uppermost course of sand above, when they might see small sources to boil up, at the first troubled, but afterward they began to yield _sheer_ and clear water in great abundance.--HOLLAND, _Livy_, p. 1911.

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 gammon of bacon, Or any esculent, but _sheer_ drink only, For which gross fault I here do damn thy license.

MASSINGER, _A New Way to pay Old Debts_, act iv. sc. 2.

=SHELF.= ‘To shelve’ as to shoal, still remains; but not so, except in mariners’ charts, ‘shelf’ as = shallow or sandbank. This ‘shelf’ is quite a distinct word from the ‘shelf’ (of a cupboard).

I thought fit to follow the rule of coasting maps, where the _shelves_ and rocks are described as well as the safe channel.--DAVENANT, _Preface to Gondibert_.

God wisheth none should wreck on a strange _shelf_; To Him man’s dearer than t’ himself.

BEN JONSON, _The Forest_, iii.

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_.

DRYDEN, _Virgil’s Æneid_, b. v.

=SHREW.= There are at the present no ‘shrews’ save female ones; but the word, like so many others which we have met with, now restrained to one sex, was formerly applied to both. It conveyed also of old a much deeper moral reprobation than now or in the Middle English it did. Thus Lucifer is a ‘shrew’ in _Piers Plowman_, and two murderers are ‘shrews’ in the quotation from Chaucer which follows.

And thus accorded ben these _schrewes_ twayn To sle the thridde, as ye han herd me sayn.

CHAUCER, _The Pardoneres Tale_.

If Y schal schewe me innocent, He schal preve me a _schrewe_ [_pravum_ me comprobabit, Vulg.].--_Job_ ix. 20. WICLIF.

I know none more covetous _shrews_ than ye are, when ye have a benefice.--FOXE, _Book of Martyrs; Examination of William Thorpe_.

=SHREWD=, } SHREWDNESS. }

The weakness of the world’s moral indignation against evil causes a multitude of words which once conveyed intensest moral reprobation gradually to convey none at all, or it may be even praise. ‘Shrewd’ and ‘shrewdness’ must be numbered among these.

An ant is a wise creature for itself; but it is a _shrewd_ thing in an orchard or garden.--BACON, _Essay 23_.

Is he _shrewd_ and unjust in his dealings with others?--SOUTH, _Sermons_, 1737, vol. vi. p. 106.

Forsothe the erthe is corupt before God, and is fulfilled with _shrewdness_ [iniquitate, Vulg.].--_Gen._ vi. 12. WICLIF.

The prophete saith: Flee _schrewednesse_ [declinet _a malo_, Vulg.], and doo goodnesse; seeke pees, and folwe it.--CHAUCER, _The Tale of Melibeus_ (Morris, iii. p. 187).

=SIEGE.= A ‘siege’ is now _the sitting down_ of an army before a fortified place with the purpose of taking it; and has no other meaning but this. It had once the double meaning, abstract and concrete, of the French ‘siège,’ a seat.

Whanne mannus sone schal come in his _majeste_ and alle hise aungels with hym, thanne he schal sitte on the _sege_ of his majeste, and alle folkis schulen be gaderid bifor hym.--_Matt._ xxv. 31. WICLIF.

A stately _siege_ of soveraine majestye; And thereon sat a woman gorgeous gay.

SPENSER, _Fairy Queen_, ii. 7, 44.

Besides, upon the very _siege_ of justice Lord Angelo hath to the common ear Professed the contrary.

SHAKESPEARE, _Measure for Measure_, act iv. sc. 2.

=SIGHT.= The use of ‘sight’ to signify a multitude, a great quantity (that is, to see), has now a touch of vulgarity about it, which once it was very far from possessing.

A noble _sighte_ of bookes (nobilissimam librorum bibliothecam).--Harleian translation of Higden, vi. 239. (Rolls Series, No. 41.)

Ye are come unto the mounte Sion, and to the citie of the livinge God, the celestiall Jerusalem, and to an innumerable _sight_ of angels.--_Heb._ xii. 22. TYNDALE.

Clodius was ever about him in every place and street he went, having a _sight_ of rascals and knaves with him.--NORTH, _Plutarch’s Lives_, p. 722.

=SILLY=, } SILLINESS. }

A deep conviction of men that he who departs from evil will make himself a prey, that none will be a match for the world’s evil who is not himself evil, has brought to pass the fact that a number of words, signifying at first goodness, signify next well-meaning simplicity; the notions of goodness and foolishness, with a strong predominance of the last, for a while interpenetrating one another in them; till at length the latter quite expels the former, and remains as the sole possessor of the word. I need hardly mention the Greek ἄκακος, εὐήθης, εὐήθεια: while the same has happened in regard of the O.E. ‘sǽlig,’ which (the same word as the German ‘selig’) has successively meant, (1) blissful, (2) innocent, harmless, (3) weakly foolish.

Oh God, quod she, so worldly _selynesse_, Which clerkes callen fals felicite, Imedled is with many a bitternesse.

CHAUCER, _Troylus and Cryseyde_ (Morris, p. 258).

O _sely_ woman, ful of innocence.

CHAUCER, _Legend of Fair Women_, 1252.

This Miles Forest and John Dighton about midnight (the _silly_ children lying in their beds) came into the chamber, and suddenly lapped them up among the clothes.--Sir T. MORE, _History of King Richard III._

=SINCERE=, } SINCERITY. }

The etymology of ‘sincerus’ being uncertain, it is impossible to say what is the primary notion of our English ‘sincere.’ These words belong now to an ethical sphere exclusively, and even there their meaning is not altogether what once it was; but the absence of foreign admixture which they predicate might be literal once.

The mind of a man, as it is not of that content or receipt to comprehend knowledge without helps and supplies, so again, it is not _sincere_, but of an ill and corrupt tincture.--BACON, _Of the Interpretation of Nature_, c. xvi.

The Germans are a people that more than all the world, I think, may boast _sincerity_, as being for some thousands of years a pure and unmixed people.--FELTHAM, _A brief Character of the Low Countries_, p. 59.

=SKELETON.= Now the framework of bones as entirely denuded of the flesh; but in early English, and there in stricter agreement with the meaning of the word in Greek, the _dried_ mummy.

_Scelet_; the dead body of a man artificially dried or tanned for to be kept or seen a long time.--HOLLAND, _Plutarch’s Morals; An Explanation of certain obscure Words_.

=SMUG.= One of many words which have been spoilt for poetic use through being drawn into our serio-comic vocabulary. It still means neat, trim, being connected with the German ‘schmuck,’ trim, spruce; but seeks to present the very neatness which it implies in a ridiculous ignoble point of view. Any such intention was very far from it once.

And here the _smug_ and silver Trent shall run In a new channel, fair and evenly.

SHAKESPEARE, _1 Henry IV._, act iii. sc. 1.

Twelve sable steeds, _smug_ as the old raven’s wing, Of even stature and of equal pride, Sons of the wind, or some more speedy thing, To his fair chariot all abreast were tied.

BEAUMONT, _Psyche_, ix. 176.

I like the _smugness_ of the Cathedral (Winchester), and the profusion of the most beautiful Gothic tombs.--WALPOLE, _Letters_, i. 442 (1755).

=SNAIL.= It is curious what different objects men will be content for long to confuse under a common name. Thus in some provincial dialects of Germany they have only one name, ‘padde’ (compare our ‘paddock’), for frog and toad. So too ‘snail’ (cochlea) and ‘slug’ (limax) with us were both to a comparatively recent period included under the former name. ‘Slug’ indeed, in the sense of slothful, is an old word in the language; but only at the end of the seventeenth or beginning of the eighteenth century was it transferred to that familiar pest of our gardens which we now call by this name. Indeed up to the present day in many of our provincial dialects slugs and snails are invariably both included under the latter name; the snail proper being sometimes distinguished from the other as the ‘_shell_-snail’ (see Holland’s _Plutarch_, p. 212). See an interesting discussion in the Philological Society’s _Transactions_, 1860-1, pp. 102-106.

There is much variety even in creatures of the same kind. See these two _snails_. One hath a house, the other wants it; _yet both are snails_, and it is a question whether case is the better. That which hath a house hath more shelter, that which wants it hath more freedom.--Bishop HALL, _Occasional Meditations_.

_Snails_, a soft and exosseous animal, whereof in the _naked_ and greater sort, as though she would requite the loss of a shell on their back, nature near the head hath placed a flat white stone. Of the great grey _snails_ I have not met with any that wanted it.--Sir T. BROWNE, _Vulgar Errors_, b. iii. c. 13.

=SNUB.= To check or cut short; now never used save in a figurative sense and in familiar language; but this was not always so.

If we neglect them [the first stirrings of corruption] but a little, out of a thought that they can do no great harm yet, or that we shall have time enough to _snub_ them hereafter, we do it to our own certain disadvantage, if not utter undoing.--SANDERSON, _Sermons_, 1671, vol. ii. p. 241.

=SOFT=, } SOFTNESS. }

It is not an honourable fact that ‘soft’ and ‘softness’ should now be terms of slight, almost of contempt, when ethically employed; although indeed it is only a repetition of what we find in χρηστός, εὐήθης, ‘gutig,’ ‘bonhomie,’ and other words not a few.

That they speak evil of no man, that they be no fighters, but _soft_ [ἐπιεικεῖς], showing all meekness unto all men.--_Titus_ iii. 2. TYNDALE.

The meek or _soft_ shall inherit the earth; even as we say, Be still and have thy will.--TYNDALE, _Exposition on the Fifth Chapter of Matthew_.

Let your _softness_ [τὸ ἐπιεικὲς ὑμῶν] be known unto all men.--_Phil._ iv. 5. CRANMER.

=SONNET.= A ‘sonnet’ now must consist of exactly fourteen lines, neither more nor less; and these with a fixed arrangement, though admitting a certain relaxation, of the rhymes; but ‘sonnet’ used often to be applied to _any_ shorter poem, especially of an amatory kind.

He [Arion] had a wonderful desire to chaunt a _sonnet_ or hymn unto Apollo Pythius.--HOLLAND, _Plutarch’s Morals_, p. 343.

If ye will tell us a tale, or play a jig, or show us a play and fine sights, or sing _sonnets_ in our ears, there we will be for you.--ROGERS, _Naaman the Syrian_, p. 492.

=SOT=, } SOTTISH, } SOTTISHNESS. }

He only is a ‘sot’ now whose stupor and folly is connected with, and the result of, excessive drink; but _any_ fool would once bear this name.

In Egypt oft has seen the _sot_ bow down, And reverence some deified baboon.

OLDHAM, _Eighth Satire of Boileau_.

I do not here speak of a legal innocence (none but _sots_ and Quakers dream of such things), for as St. Paul says, ‘By the works of the law shall no flesh living be justified;’ but I speak of an evangelical innocence.--SOUTH, _Sermons_, vol. ii. p. 427.

He [Perseus] commanded those poor divers to be secretly murdered, that no person should remain alive that was privy to that _sottish_ commandment of his.--HOLLAND, _Livy_, p. 1177.

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_, i. 471.

_Sottishness_ and dotage is the extinguishing of reason in phlegm or cold.--H. MORE, _Grand Mystery of Godliness_, b. viii. c. 14.

[=SPARKLE.= It is probable that ‘to sparkle’ in the sense of to scatter is not the same word as our modern ‘sparkle,’ the diminutive of ‘spark,’ a small particle of fire. I think that it is almost certain that the ‘sparkle’ in the passages given below is a later form of ‘sparple,’ to scatter, see Trevisa, v. 287 (Rolls Series), and _Promptorium_. The Middle English ‘sparplen’ is the same word as the French ‘esparpiller,’ to scatter, disparkle asunder (see Cotgrave); compare also Italian ‘sparpagliare’ (Florio). For the etymology of ‘sparple’ see Mayhew-Skeat, _Dict. of Middle English_ (s. v. ‘disparplen’). For a late use of ‘disparple,’ to scatter, see Davies, _Suppl. Gloss._]

The Lansgrave hath _sparkled_ his army without any further enterprise.--_State Papers_, vol. x. p. 718.

Cassandra yet there sawe I how they haled From Pallas’ house, with _spercled_ tresse undone.

SACKVILLE, _Induction to a Mirrour for Magistrates_.

And awhile chawing all those things in his mouth, he spitteth it upon him whom he desireth to kill; who being _sparkled_ therewith, dieth by force of the poison within the space of half an hour.--_Purchas’s Pilgrims_, part ii. p. 1495.

=SPECIOUS.= Like the Latin ‘speciosus,’ it simply signified beautiful once; it now means always presenting a deceitful appearance of that beauty which is not really possessed, and is never used in any but an ethical sense.

This prince hadde a dowter dere, Asneth was her name, A virgine ful _specious_, and semely of stature.

_Metrical Romance of the Fourteenth Century._

And they knew him, that it was he which sate for alms at the _Specious_ Gate of the temple.--_Acts_ iii. 10. Rheims.

His mind as pure and neatly kept As were his nurseries, and swept So of uncleanness or offence That never came ill odour thence; And add his actions unto these, They were as _specious_ as his trees.

BEN JONSON, _Epitaph on Master Vincent Corbet_.

Which [almug-trees], if odoriferous, made that passage as sweet to the smell as _specious_ to the sight.--FULLER, _Α Pisgah Sight of Palestine_, b. iii. c. 2, § 5.

=SPICE.= We have in English a double adoption of the Latin ‘species,’ namely ‘spice’ and ‘species’. ‘Spice,’ the earlier form (Old French ‘espice’), is now limited to certain aromatic drugs, which, as consisting of various _kinds_, have this name of ‘spices.’ But ‘spice’ was once employed as ‘species’ is now.

Absteyne you fro al yvel _spice_ [ab omni _specie_ malâ, Vulg.]--_1 Thess._ v. 22. WICLIF.

The _spices_ of envye ben these.--CHAUCER, _The Persones Tale_ (Morris, p. 304).

Justice, although it be but one entire virtue, yet is described in two kinds of _spices_. The one is named justice distributive, the other is called commutative.--Sir T. ELYOT, _The Governor_, b. iii. c. 1.

=SPILL.= Nothing appears so utterly and irrecoverably lost as liquid poured upon the ground; and thus it has come to pass that ‘to spill,’ the Ο. E. ‘spillan,’ which had once the meaning of to waste, to squander, to consume, to destroy, and that in any way, is now restricted to this single meaning.

O litel child, alas! what is thi gilt, That never wroughtest synne as yet, parde? Why wil thyn harde fader han the _spilt_?

CHAUCER, _The Man of Lawes Tale_.

If the colors ... be not well tempered or not well laid, or be used in excess, or never so little disordered and misplaced, they disfigure the stuff, and _spill_ the whole workmanship, taking away all beauty and good liking from it.--PUTTENHAM, _Art of English Poesy_, b. iii. c. 1.

_Spill_ not the morning, the quintessence of the day, in recreations.--FULLER, _Holy State_, b. iii. c. 13.

=SPINSTER.= A name that was often applied to women of evil life, in that they were set to enforced labour of spinning in the Spittle or House of Correction (it is still called ‘The _Spinning_ House’ at Cambridge), and thus were ‘spinsters.’ None of our Dictionaries, so far as I have observed, take note of this use of the word.

Many would never be indicted _spinsters_, were they spinsters indeed, nor come to so public and shameful punishments, if painfully employed in that vocation.--FULLER, _Worthies of England: Kent_.

_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.

=SPRUCE.= The exploits of the Teutonic Knights against the Pruzzi, the stubborn heathen of Lithuania, made Prussia to be very familiar on the lips of men in the later Middle Ages (see Weigand, _s. v._ Preuszen). This Prussia, Sprutia very often in medieval Latin, appears now as ‘Pruce’ (so in Chaucer), and now as ‘Spruce’ (see Skeat’s _Dictionary_); and in this latter form it survives in our _spruce_ fir, which was brought from Northern Europe, in _spruce_ beer, and in _spruce_, more vaguely applied to a certain neatness and smartness of outward appearance; one which it is implied had reached us from those quarters.

They were apparelled after the fashion of Prussia or _Spruce_.--HALL, _Chronicle, Henry VIII._

Norway in that age, the _sprucest_ of the three kingdoms of Scandia, and best tricked up with shipping, sent her fleet of tall soldiers to Syria.--FULLER, _Holy War_, b. v. c. 22.

=SQUANDER.= The examples which follow will show that ‘to squander’ had once, if not a different, yet a much wider use than it now, at least in our classical English, retains. In the northern dialects it is still used as equivalent to ‘disperse.’

He hath an argosy bound to Tripolis, another to the Indies; ... he hath a third at Mexico, a fourth for England, and other ventures he hath, _squandered_ abroad.--SHAKESPEARE, _Merchant of Venice_, act i. sc. 3.

The minister is not to come into the pulpit, as a fencer upon the stage, to make a fair flourish against sin, but rather as a captain into the field, to bend his forces specially against the strongest troops of the enemy, and to _squander_ and break through the thickest ranks.--SANDERSON, _Sermon 2, ad Clerum_.

They charge, recharge, and all along the sea They chase and _squander_ the huge Belgian fleet.

DRYDEN, _Annus Mirabilis_, st. 67.

=STAPLE.= A curious change has come over this word. We should now say, Cotton is the great ‘staple,’ that is, the established merchandize, of Manchester; our ancestors would have reversed this and said, Manchester is the great ‘staple,’ or established mart, of cotton. We make the goods prepared or sold the ‘staple’ of the place; they made the place the ‘staple’ of the goods. See Cowell, _The Interpreter_, s. v.

Men in all ages have made themselves merry with singling out some place, and fixing the _staple_ of stupidity and stolidity therein.--FULLER, _Worthies of England: Nottinghamshire_.

_Staple_; a city or town, where merchants jointly lay up their commodities for the better uttering of them by the great; a public storehouse.--PHILLIPS, _New World of Words_.

=STARVE.= This word, the O.E. ‘steorfan,’ the German ‘sterben,’ to die, is only by comparatively modern use restricted to dying _by cold or by hunger_; in this restriction of use, resembling the French ‘noyer,’ to kill _by drowning_, while ‘necare,’ from which it descends, is to kill by any manner of death. But innumerable words are thus like rivers, which once pouring their waters through many channels, have now left dry and abandoned them all, save one, or, as in the present instance it happens, save two.

For wele or woo sche wol him not forsake: Sche is not wery him to love and serve, Theigh that he lay bedred til that he _sterve_.

CHAUCER, _The Marchaundes Tale_.

But, if for me ye fight, or me will serve, Not this rude kind of battell, nor these armes Are meet, the which doe men in bale to _sterve_.

SPENSER, _Fairy Queen_, ii. 6, 34.

=STATE.= Used often by our old writers for a raised dais or platform, on which was placed a chair or throne with a canopy (the German ‘Thronhimmel’) above it; being the chiefest seat of honour; thus in Massinger’s _Bondman_, act i. sc. 3, according to the old stage-direction Archidamus ‘offers Timoleon the _state_.’ But there is another use of ‘state’ not unfrequent in the seventeenth century, though altogether unknown in our own. A ‘state’ was a republic, as contradistinguished from a monarchy. This usage, which the States of Holland may have contributed to bring about, does not seem to have lasted very long.

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.

Their majesties were seated as is aforesaid under their canopies or _states_, whereof that of the Queen was somewhat lesser and lower than that of the King, but both of them exceeding rich.--_History of the Coronation of King James II._, 1687, p. 61.

When he went to court, he used to kick away the _state_, and sit down by his prince cheek by jowl. Confound these _states_, says he, they are a modern invention.--SWIFT, _History of John Bull_, part ii. c. 1.

What say some others? A government of _states_ would do much better for you than a monarchy.--ANDREWES, _Sermon 6, Of the Gunpowder Treason_.

Dull subjects see too late Their safety in monarchal reign; Finding their freedom in a _state_ Is but proud strutting in a chain.

DAVENANT, _The Dream_.

Those very Jews, who, at their very best Their humour more than loyalty expressed, Thought they might ruin him, they could create; Or melt him to a golden calf, a _state_.

DRYDEN, _Absalom and Achitophel_, 66.

=STATIONER.= There was a time when ‘stationer,’ meaning properly no more than one who had his _station_, that is, in the market-place or elsewhere, included the bookseller and the publisher, as well as the dealer in the raw material of books. But when, in the division of labour, these became separate businesses, the name was restrained to him who dealt in the latter articles alone.

_Stacyonere_, or he that sellythe bokys, stacionarius, bibliopola.--_Promptorium._

I doubt not but that the Animadverter’s _stationer_ doth hope and desire that he hath thus pleased people in his book, for the advancing of the price and quickening the sale thereof.--FULLER, _Appeal of Injured Innocence_, p. 38.

The right of the printed copies (which the _stationer_ takes as his own freehold), was dispersed in five or six several hands.--OLEY, _Preface to Dr. Jackson’s Works_.

Quarles, Chapman, Heywood, Wither had applause, And Wild, and Ogilby in former days; But now are damned to wrapping drugs and wares, And cursed by all their broken _stationers_.

OLDHAM, _A Satire_.

=STICKLE=, } STICKLER. }

Now to stand with a certain pertinacity to one’s point, refusing to renounce or go back from it; but formerly to interpose between combatants and separate them, when they had sufficiently satisfied the laws of honour. Our present meaning of the word connects itself with the past in the fact that the ‘sticklers,’ or seconds, as we should call them now, often fulfilled another function, being ready to maintain in their own persons and by their own arms the quarrel of their principals, and thus to ‘stickle’ for it. [The word ‘stickle’ represents the Middle English ‘stightlen,’ to order, arrange; for an interesting account of its cognates see Skeat’s _Dictionary_.]

I _styckyll_ betwene wrastellers, or any folkes that prove mastries to se that none do other wronge, or I parte folkes that be redy to fyght.--PALSGRAVE.

Betwixt which three a question grew, Which should the worthiest be; Which violently they pursue, And would not _stickled_ be.

DRAYTON, _Muses’ Elysium, Nymph. 6_.

The same angel [in Tasso], when half of the Christians are already killed, and all the rest are in a fair way of being routed, _stickles_ betwixt the remainders of God’s hosts and the race of fiends; pulls the devils backwards by the tails, and drives them from their quarry.--DRYDEN, _Dedication of Translations from Juvenal_, p. 122.

In ancient times they were wont to employ third persons as _sticklers_, to see no treachery nor disorder were used, and to bear witness of the combat’s success.--FLORIO, _Montaigne_, ii. 27.

The dragon wing of night o’erspreads the earth, And, _stickler_-like, 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.

DRYDEN, _On the Death of Oliver Cromwell_.

=STOMACH.= Already in classical Latin ‘stomachus’ had all the uses, courage, pride, indignation, ill-will, which ‘stomach’ may be seen in the following quotations to have once possessed, but which at this day have nearly or quite departed from it.

And sence we herde therof oure hert hath failed us, neither is there a good _stomache_ more in eny man, by the reasone of youre commynge.--_Josh._ ii. 11. COVERDALE.

He was a man Of an unbounded _stomach_, ever ranking Himself with princes.

SHAKESPEARE, _Henry VIII._, act iv. sc. 2.

Arius, discontented that one should be placed before him in honour, whose superior he thought himself in desert, became through envy and _stomach_ prone unto contradiction, and bold to broach that heresy wherein the Deity of our Lord Jesus Christ was denied.--HOOKER, _Ecclesiastical Polity_, b. v. § 42.

[=STOUT.= This word is now generally used in the sense of corpulent, less frequently in the sense of strong, robust. In provincial use ‘stout’ has sometimes the meaning of proud, and this is probably the original meaning of the word. ‘Stout’ is the same word as the Old French _estout_, bold, proud, which represents a Germanic base _stolto_-; compare modern German _stolz_, proud (see Kluge, _s. v._). In the passages below the word retains its old meaning.]

Commonly it is seen that they that be rich are lofty and _stout_.--LATIMER, _Sermons_, p. 545.

I _stout_ and you _stout_, Who will carry the dirt out?

_Old Proverb._

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, which was probably introduced from Holland, has much narrowed its meaning. Bath, hothouse, any room where air or water was artificially heated, was a ‘stove’ once.

When a certain Frenchman came to visit Melanchthon, he found him in his _stove_, with one hand dandling his child in the swaddling-clouts, and the other holding a book and reading it.--FULLER, _Holy State_, b. ii. c. 9.

How tedious is it to them that live in _stoves_ and caves half a year together, as in Iceland, Muscovy, or under the pole!--BURTON, _Anatomy of Melancholy_, part i. sect. 2.

When most of the waiters were commanded away to their supper, the parlour or _stove_ being nearly emptied, in came a company of musketeers, shot every one his man, and so proceeded to an apothecary’s house, where Wallenstein lay.--_Letters and Despatches of Thomas Earl of Strafford_, vol. i. p. 226.

=STREET.= This, one of the words which the Romans left behind them when they quitted Britain, and which the Saxons learned from the Britons, is more properly a road or causeway (‘via _strata_’) than a street, in our present sense of the word; and as late as Coverdale was so used.

For they soughte them thorow every _strete_, and yet they founde them not.--_Josh._ ii. 22. COVERDALE.

But when one sawe that all the people stode there still, he removed Amasa from the _strete_ unto the felde.--_1 Sam._ xx. 12. COVERDALE.

=SUBLIME.= There is an occasional use of ‘sublime’ by our earlier poets, a use in which it bears much the meaning of the Greek ὑπερήφανος, or perhaps approaches still more closely to that of μετέωρος, high and lifted up, as with pride; which has now quite departed from it.

For the proud Soldan, with presumptuous cheer And countenance _sublime_ and insolent, Sought only slaughter and avengément.

SPENSER, _Fairy Queen_, v. 8, 30.

Their hearts were jocund and _sublime_, Drunk with idolatry, drunk with wine.

MILTON, _Samson Agonistes_, 1669.

=SUE.= One now ‘sues’ or _follows_ another into the courts of law, being, as in the legal language of Greece, ὁ διώκων, the ‘pursuer;’ but ‘to sue’ was once to follow, without any such limitation of meaning.

If thou wolt be perfite, go, and sille alle thingis that thou hast, and come, and _sue_ me.--_Matt._ xix. 21. WICLIF.

And anoon thei leften the nettis and _sueden_ hym.--_Mark_ i. 19. Id.

=SURE.= Used once in the sense of affianced, or, as it would be sometimes called, ‘hand-fasted.’ See ‘Assure,’ ‘Ensure.’

The king was _sure_ to dame Elizabeth Lucy, and her husband before God.--Sir T. MORE, _History of King Richard III._

=SUSPECT=, } SUSPICION. }

To ‘suspect’ is properly to look under, and out of this fact is derived our present use of the word; but in looking _under_ you may also look _up_, and herein lies the explanation of an occasional use of ‘suspect’ and ‘suspicion’ which we find in our early writers.

Pelopidas being sent the second time into Thessaly, to make accord betwixt the people and Alexander, the tyrant of Pheres, was by this tyrant (not _suspecting_ the dignity of an ambassador, nor of his country) made prisoner.--NORTH, _Plutarch’s Lives_, p. 927.

If God do intimate to the spirit of any wise inferiors that they ought to reprove, then let them _suspect_ their own persons, and beware that they make no open contestation, but be content with privacy.--ROGERS, _Naaman the Syrian_, p. 330.

Cordeilla, out of mere love, without the _suspicion_ of expected reward, at the message only of her father in distress, pours forth true filial tears.--MILTON, _History of England_, b. i.

=SYCOPHANT.= The early meaning of ‘sycophant,’ when it was employed as equivalent to informer, delator, calumniator, ‘promoter’ (which see), agreed better with its use in the Greek than does our present. Employing it now in the sense of false and fawning flatterer, we might seem at first sight to employ it in a sense not merely altogether unconnected with, but quite opposite to, its former. Yet indeed there is a very deep inner connexion between the two uses. It is not for nothing that Jeremy Taylor treats of these two, namely ‘Of Slander and Flattery,’ in one and the same course of sermons; seeing that, as the Italian proverb has taught us, ‘He who flatters me before, spatters me behind.’

The poor man, that hath nought to lose, is not afraid of the _sycophant_ or promoter.--HOLLAND, _Plutarch’s Morals_, p. 261.

He [St. Paul] in peril of the wilderness, that is of wild beasts; they [rich men] not only of the wild beast called the _sycophant_, but of the tame beast too, called the flatterer.--ANDREWES, _Sermon preached at the Spittle_.

Sanders, that malicious _sycophant_, will have no less than twenty-six wain-load of silver, gold, and precious stones to be seized into the king’s hands by the spoil of that monument.--HEYLIN, _History of the Reformation_, 1849, vol. i. p. 20.

=SYMBOL.= The employment of ‘symbol’ in its proper Greek sense of contribution thrown into a common stock, as in a pic-nic or the like, is frequent in Jeremy Taylor, and examples of it may be found in other scholarly writers of the seventeenth century.

The consideration of these things hath oft suggested, and at length persuaded me to make this attempt, to cast in my mite to this treasury, my _symbolum_ toward so charitable a work.--HAMMOND, _A Paraphrase on the Psalms_, Preface.

Christ hath finished his own sufferings for expiation of the world; yet there are ‘portions that are behind of the sufferings’ of Christ, which must be filled up by his body the Church; and happy are they that put in the greatest _symbol_; for ‘in the same measure you are partakers of the sufferings of Christ, in the same shall ye be also of the consolation.’--Bishop TAYLOR, _The Faith and Patience of the Saints_.

There [in Westminster Abbey] the warlike and the peaceful, the fortunate and the miserable, the beloved and the despised princes, mingle their dust and pay down their _symbol_ of mortality.--Id., _Holy Dying_, c. i. § 2.

=TABLE.= The Latin ‘tabula’ had for one of its meanings picture or painting; and this caused that ‘table’ was by our early writers used often in the same meaning.

The _table_ wherein Detraction was expressed, he [Apelles] painted in this form.--Sir T. ELYOT, _The Governor_, b. iii. c. 27.

You shall see, as it were in a _table_ painted before your eyes, the evil-favouredness and deformity of this most detestable vice.--_Homilies: Against Contention._

Learning flourished yet in the city of Sicyon, and they esteemed the painting of _tables_ in that city to be the perfectest for true colours and fine drawing, of all other places.--NORTH, _Plutarch’s Lives_, p. 843.

=TAINT.= This and ‘tint’ or ‘teint,’ the one connected more closely with the French, the other with the Italian form of the word, have divided off from one another, but own a common origin--‘tingo,’ ‘tinctus.’ The fact that discoloration commonly accompanies decay explains our present use of ‘taint.’

A most delicate and beautiful young lady, slender of body, tall of stature, fair of _taynt_ and complexion.--REYNOLDS, _God’s Revenge against Murther_, b. i. hist. 1.

But in the court be quainter dames than she, Whose faces are enrich’d with honour’s _taint_.

GREENE, _Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay_, sc. 1.

And Nero will be _tainted_ with remorse.

SHAKESPEARE, _3 Henry VI._, act iii. sc. 1.

=TALENT.= The original meaning, as of ‘talent’ in Old French, ‘talento’ in Italian, ‘talante’ in Spanish, was will, inclination, from ‘talentum’ (τάλαντον), balance, scales, and then inclination of balance; thus in Spenser (_Fairy Queen_, iii. 4, 61), ‘maltalent’ is grudge or ill-will (compare Old French ‘maltalant’ in the _Chanson de Roland_, 271). It is probably under the influence of the Parable of the Talents (_Matt._ xxv.) that it has travelled to its present meaning. Clarendon still employs it very distinctly in its older sense.

Whoso then wold wel understonde these peines, and bethinke him wel that he hath deserved these peines for his sinnes, certes he shold have more _talent_ for to sighe and to wepe than for to singe and playe.--CHAUCER, _The Persones Tale_.

The meaner sort rested not there, but creating for their leader Sir John Egremond, a factious person and one who had of a long time borne an ill _talent_ towards the king, entered into open rebellion.--BACON, _History of King Henry VII._

Though the nation generally was without any ill _talent_ to the Church, either in the point of the doctrine or the discipline, yet they were not without a jealousy that Popery was not enough discountenanced.--CLARENDON, _History of the Rebellion_, b. i. c. 194.

=TALL.= [This word occurs in earlier English with a great variety of meanings. A very common meaning is seemly, fine, elegant; for examples see Oliphant’s _New English_ (index). In old plays it often meant valiant, brave, great (Halliwell). In the _Complaint of Mars_ ‘talle’ occurs, apparently in the sense of obedient, docile (see Skeat, _Minor Poems of Chaucer_, iv. 38). The word in the sense of lofty in stature may perhaps be distinct from the above ‘tall’; at any rate the modern sense of tall seems to be the primary one in the Welsh and Cornish _tal_, high. See Skeat’s _Dictionary_.]

_Tal_, or semely, Decens, elegans.--_Promptorium._

He [the Earl of Richmond’s] companions being almost in despair of victory were suddenly recomforted by Sir William Stanley, which came to succours with three thousand _tall_ men.--GRAFTON, _Chronicle_.

_Tamburlaine._ 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 for a _tall_ man.--FULLER, _Holy War_, b. iv. c. 29.

=TARPAULIN.= Not any longer used in the sense of sailor, except in the shorter form of ‘tar.’ See the quotation from Smollett, _s. v._ ‘Companion.’

The Archbishop of Bordeaux is at present General of the French naval forces, who though a priest, is yet permitted to turn _tarpaulin_ and soldier.-_-Turkish Spy_, Letter 2.

=TAWDRY.= ‘Tawdry’ laces and such like were cheap and showy articles of finery bought at St. Etheldrida’s or St. Awdry’s fair; but it is only in later times that this cheapness, showiness, with a further suggestion of vulgarity, made themselves distinctly felt in the word. [The Old English form of ‘Etheldrida’ was ‘Æthelthry̅th,’ which means noble strength. See Sweet, _Oldest English Texts_, p. 638.]

Bind your fillets fast, And gird in your waist For more fineness with a _tawdry_ lace.

SPENSER, _Shepherd’s Calendar, Fourth Eclogue_.

Come, you promised me a _tawdry_ lace and a pair of sweet gloves.--SHAKESPEARE, _Winter’s Tale_, act iv. sc. 3.

=TEMPER.= What has been said under ‘Humour,’ which see, will also explain ‘Temper,’ and the earlier uses of it which we meet. The happy ‘temper’ would be the happy mixture, the blending in due proportions, of the four principal ‘humours’ of the body.

The exquisiteness of his [the Saviour’s] bodily _temper_ increased the exquisiteness of his torment, and the ingenuity of his soul added to his sensibleness of the indignities and affronts offered to him.--FULLER, _A Pisgah Sight of Palestine_, vol. i. p. 345.

Concupiscence itself follows the crasis and temperature of the body. If you would know why one man is proud, another cruel, another intemperate or luxurious, you are not to repair so much to Aristotle’s ethics, or to the writings of other moralists, as to those of Galen, or of some anatomists, to find the reason of these different _tempers_.--SOUTH, _Sermons_, 1744, vol. ii. p. 5.

=TEMPERAMENT.= The Latin ‘temperamentum’ had sometimes very nearly the sense of our English ‘compromise’ or the French ‘transaction,’ and signified, as these do, a middle term reached by mutual concession, by a _tempering_ of the extreme claims upon either side. This same use of ‘temperament’ appears from time to time in such of our writers as have allowed their style to be modified by their Latin studies.

Safest, therefore, to me it seems that none of the Council be moved unless by death, or just conviction of some crime. However, I forejudge not any probable expedient, any _temperament_ that can be found in things of this nature, so disputable on either side.--MILTON, _The Ready and Easy Way to establish a Free Commonwealth_.

Many _temperaments_ and explanations there would have been, if ever I had a notion that it [_Observations on the Minority_] should meet the public eye.--BURKE, _Letter to Lawrence_.

=TERMAGANT.= A name at this present applied only to _women_ of fierce temper and ungoverned tongue, but formerly to men and women alike; and indeed predominantly to men; ‘Termagant’ in the popular notion being the name of one of the three gods of the Saracens. [See Mayhew-Skeat, _Dict. of Middle English_ (_s. v._ ‘Tervagant’).]

Art thou so fierce, currish, and churlish a Nabal, that even when thou mightest live in the midst of thy people (as she told Elisha [_2 Kings_ iv. 13]), thou delightest to play the tyrant and _termagant_ among them?--ROGERS, _Naaman the Syrian_, p. 270.

This would make a saint swear like a soldier, and a soldier like _Termagant_.--BEAUMONT and FLETCHER, _King or No King_.

=THEWS.= It is a remarkable evidence of the influence of Shakespeare upon the English language, that while, so far as yet has been observed, every other writer, one single instance excepted, employs ‘thews’ in the sense of manners, qualities of mind and disposition, his employment of it in the sense of nerves, muscular vigour, has quite overborne the other; which, once so familiar in our literature, has now quite passed away. See a valuable note in Craik’s _English of Shakespeare_, p. 117.

To alle gode _thewes_ born was she; As lyked to the goddes, or she was born, That of the shefe she sholde be the corn.

CHAUCER, _Legend of Good Women_ (Skeat, p. 118).

For well ye worthy bene forworth and gentle _thewes_.

SPENSER, _Fairy Queen_, ii. 1, 33.

Faire Helena, the fairest living wight, Who in all godly _thewes_ and goodly prayse Did far excell.

Id., _ib._, 10, 59.

=THINK=, } THOUGHT, } THOUGHTFUL. }

Many, as they read or hear in our English Bible these words of our Lord, ‘Take no _thought_ for your life’ (_Matt._ vi. 25; cf. _1 Sam._