A SELECT GLOSSARY ETC. (continued 2)

Shakespeare, Henry V. act iii. sc. 1.

Drayton’s Heroical Epistles are well worth the reading also, for the purpose of our subject, which is to furnish an English historian with choice and copy of tongue.—Bolton, Hypercritica, p. 235.

The sun, the prince of all the bodies of light, is the principal, the rule and the copy, which they in their proportions imitate and transcribe.—Bishop Taylor, Exhortation to the Imitation of Christ.

Coquet. At present all our ‘coquets’ are female. But, as in the case with so many other words instanced in this volume, what once belonged to both sexes is now restricted to one.

Cocquet; a beau, a gallant, a general lover; also a wanton girl that speaks fair to several lovers at once.—Phillips, New World of Words.

Corpse. Now only used for the body abandoned by the spirit of life, but once for the body of the living equally as of the dead; now only = ‘cadaver,’ but once ‘corpus’ as well. It will follow that ‘dead corpses’ (2 Kings xix. 35 and often) is not a tautology.

Surrey, On the Death of Sir T. Wyatt.

Butler, Hudibras, iii. 1. 1349.

Women and maids shall particularly examine themselves about the variety of their apparell, their too much care of their corps.—Richeome’s Pilgrim of Loretto, by G. W.

Ben Jonson, The Alchemist, act i. sc. 1.

Counterfeit. Now, to imitate with the purpose of passing off the imitation as the original; but no such dishonest intention was formerly implied in the word.

Chaucer, The Pardoner’s Prologue (Morris, p. 90).

Christ prayseth not the unrighteous stuard, neither setteth him forth to us to counterfeit, because of his unrighteousness, but because of his wisdom only, in that he with unright so wisely provided for himself.—Tyndale, The Parable of the Wicked Mammon.

But for the Greek tongue they do note in some of his epistles that he [Brutus] counterfeited that brief compendious manner of speech of the Lacedæmonians.—North, Plutarch’s Lives, p. 818.

Courtesan. The Low Latin ‘cortesanus’ was once one haunting the court, a courtier, ‘aulicus,’ though already in Shakespeare we often meet the word in its present use.

By the wolf, no doubt, was meant the Pope, but the fox was resembled to the prelates, courtesans, priests, and the rest of the spirituality.—Foxe, Book of Martyrs, ed. 1641, vol. i. p. 511.

Courtship. We now assign to this and to ‘courtesy’ their own several domains of meanings; but they were once promiscuously used. See for another example of the same the quotation from Fuller, s. v. ‘Defalcation.’

As he [Charles I.], to acquit himself, hath not spared his adversaries, to load them with all sorts of blame and accusation, so to him, as in his book alive, there will be used no more courtship than he uses.—Milton, Iconoclastes, The Preface.

Cumber, }

Cumbrous.

This word, the Old French combrer, has lost much of the force which it once possessed; it means now little more than passively to burden. It was once actively to annoy, disquiet, or mischief. It was as possessing this force that our Translators rendered ἵνα τί καὶ τὴν γῆν καταργεῖ; ‘why cumbereth it the ground?’ (Luke xiii. 7.)

The archers in the forefront so wounded the footmen, so galled the horses, and so combred the men of arms that the footmen durst not go forward.—Hall, Henry V. fol. 17, 6.

We have herde that certayne of oures are departed, and have troubled you and have combred [ἀνασκευάζοντες] your myndes, sayenge, Ye must be circumcised and must keep the law.—Acts xv. 24. Coverdale.

But Martha was cumbered [περιεσπᾶτο, cf. ver. 41: μεριμνᾷs καὶ τυρβάζῃ] about much serving.—Luke x. 40. (A.V.)

Spenser, Fairy Queen, i. 1. 23.

Cunning. The fact that so many words implying knowledge, art, skill, obtain in course of time a secondary meaning of crooked knowledge, art that has degenerated into artifice, skill used only to circumvent, which meanings partially or altogether put out of use their primary, is a mournful witness to the way in which intellectual gifts are too commonly misapplied. Thus there was a time when the Latin ‘dolus’ required the epithet ‘malus,’ as often as it signified a treacherous or fraudful device; but it was soon able to drop this as superfluous, and to stand by itself. Other words which have gone the same downward course are the following: τέχνη, ‘astutia,’ ‘calliditas,’ ‘List,’ ‘Kunst,’ and our English ‘craft’ and ‘cunning,’—the last, indeed, as early as Lord Bacon, who says, ‘We take cunning for a sinister or crooked wisdom,’ had acquired what is now its only acceptation; but not then, nor till long after, to the exclusion of its more honourable use. How honourable that use sometimes was, my first quotation will testify.

I believe that all these three Persons [in the Godhead] are even in power and in cunning and in might, full of grace and of all goodness.—Foxe, Book of Martyrs; Examination of William Thorpe.

So the number of them, with their brethren, that were instructed in the songs of the Lord, even all that were cunning, was two hundred fourscore and eight.—1 Chron. xxv. 7. (A.V.)

Curate. Rector, vicar, every one having cure of souls in a parish, was a ‘curate’ once. Thus ‘bishops and curates’ in the Liturgy.

They [the begging friars] letten curats to know Gods law by holding bookes fro them, and withdrawing of their vantages, by which they shulden have books and lerne.—Wiclif, Treatise against the Friars, p. 56.

If there be any man wicked because his curate teacheth him not, his blood shall be required at the curate’s hands.—Latimer, Sermons, p. 525.

Henry the Second of England commanded all prelates and curates to reside upon their dioceses and charges.—Bishop Taylor, Ductor Dubitantium, b. iii. c. 1.

Curate, a parson or vicar, one that serves a cure, or has the charge of souls in a parish.—Phillips, New World of Words.

Customer. One sitting officially at the receipt of customs, that is, of dues customably paid, and receiving these, and not one repairing customably to a shop to purchase there, was a ‘customer’ two and three centuries ago.

He healeth the man of the palsye, calleth Levi the customer, eateth with open synners, and excuseth his disciples.—What S. Marke conteyneth. Coverdale.

The extreme and horrible covetousness of the farmers, customers, and Roman usurers devoured it [Asia].—North, Plutarch’s Lives, p. 432.

We hardly can abide publicans, customers, and toll-gatherers, when they keep a ferreting and searching for such things as be hidden.—Holland, Plutarch’s Morals, p. 138.

Danger, }

Dangerous.

A feudal term, beset with many difficulties when we seek to follow it as it passes to its present use; but very well worth some study bestowed upon it. Ducange has written on the subject, and Diez, and Littré (Hist. de la Langue Franç. vol. i. p. 49). [The Old French dangier, dongier, power, lordship, refusal, danger, is of Late Latin origin, representing a form dominiarium (from Latin dominium) which signified properly the strict right of the suzerain in regard to the fief of the vassal]; thus, ‘fief de danger,’ a fief held under a lord on strict conditions, and therefore in peril of being forfeited (juri stricto atque adeo confiscationi obnoxium; Ducange). There is no difficulty here; but there is another early use of ‘danger’ and ‘dangerous’ which is not thus explained, nor yet the connexion between it and the modern meaning of the words. I refer to that of ‘danger’ in the sense of ‘coyness,’ ‘sparingness,’ ‘niggardliness,’ and of ‘dangerous’ in the sense of haughty, difficult to please.

Romaunt of the Rose, 2317.

We ourselves also were in times past unwise, disobedient, deceived, in danger to lusts [δουλεύοντες ἐπιθυμίαις].—Tit. iii. Tyndale.

Shakespeare, Venus and Adonis.

Chaucer, The Freres Tale (Morris, p. 250).

Romaunt of the Rose, 1480.

Deadly. This and ‘mortal’ (which see) are sometimes synonyms now; thus, ‘a deadly wound’ or ‘a mortal wound;’ but they are not invariably so; ‘deadly’ being always active, while ‘mortal’ is far oftenest passive, signifying not that which inflicts death, but that which suffers death; thus, ‘a mortal body,’ or body subject to death, but not now ‘a deadly body.’ It was otherwise once. ‘Deadly’ is the constant word in Wiclif’s Bible, wherever in the later Versions ‘mortal’ occurs.

Elye was a deedli man lijk us, and in preier he preiede that it schulde not reyne on the erthe, and it reynede not three yeeris and sixe monethis.—Jam. v. 17. Wiclif.

Many holy prophets that were deadly men were martyred violently in the Old Law.—Foxe, Book of Martyrs; Examination of William Thorpe.

Debate, }

Debater.

This word was only true to its etymology (débattre) so long as an element of strife, of war waged by the tongue or by the sword, was included in it. Thus, in some memorable lines attributed to Queen Elizabeth, Mary Queen of Scots is described as ‘the daughter of debate.’ It has now a far more harmless meaning, the element of strife having quite gone out of the word.

It is not the possession of a man’s own, but the usurping of another man’s right that hath brought injustice, debate, and trouble into the world.—Holland, Plutarch’s Morals, p. 680.

Prevy bacbiteris, detractouris, hateful to God, debateris [contumeliosi, Vulg.], proude.—Rom. i. 30. Wiclif.

Deceivable, }

Deceivableness.

So far as we use ‘deceivable’ at all now, we use it in the passive sense, as liable to be, or capable of being, deceived. It was active when counted exchangeable with ‘deceitful’ as at 2 Pet. i. 16, where the ‘deceivable’ of Tyndale appears as the ‘deceitful’ of Cranmer’s Bible. It has fared in like manner with ‘discernible,’ ‘contemptible,’ which see, and with other words which, active once, are passive now.

Richard Rolle de Hampole, Pricke of Conscience, 1088.

The most uncertain and deceivable proof of the people’s good will and cities’ toward kings and princes are the immeasurable and extreme honours they do unto them.—North, Plutarch’s Lives, p. 743.

For we folowed not decevable fables, when we openned unto you the power and commynge of our Lorde Jesus Christ.—2 Pet. i. 16. Geneva Version.

Whose coming is after the working of Satan with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish.—2 Thess. 9, 10. (A.V.)

Defalcation. A word at present of very slovenly and inaccurate use. We read in the newspapers of a ‘defalcation’ of the revenue, not meaning thereby an active lopping off (‘defalcatio’) of certain taxes with their proceeds, which would be the only correct use, but a passive falling short in its returns from what they previously were. Can it be that some confusion of ‘defalcation’ with ‘default,’ or at least a seeing of ‘fault’ and not ‘falx’ in its second syllable (there was once a verb ‘to defalk’), has led to this?

My first crude meditations, being always hastily put together, could never please me so well at a second and more leisurable review, as to pass without some additions, defalcations, and other alterations, more or less.—Sanderson, Sermons, 1671, Preface.

As for their conjecture that Zorobabel, at the building of this temple purposely abated of those dimensions assigned by Cyrus, as too great for him to compass, in such defalcation of measures by Cyrus allowed, he showed little courtship to his master the emperor, and less religion to the Lord his God.—Fuller, A Pisgah Sight of Palestine, b. iii. c. 2.

Defend, }

Defence.

Now, to protect, but once to protect by prohibiting or fencing round, to forbid, as ‘défendre’ is still in French.

Now wol I you defenden hasardrye.—Chaucer, The Pardoneres Tale. (Clar. Press.)

Id., The Wife of Bath’s Tale.

And oure Lord defended hem that thei scholde not tell that avisioun till that He were rysen.—Sir John Mandeville, Voiage and Travaile, p. 114.

Milton, Paradise Lost, xi. 84.

Piers Plowman, B-text, Passus xviii. 193.

Defy, }

Defiance.

This means now to dare to the uttermost hostility, and so, as a consequence which will often follow upon this, to challenge. But in earlier use ‘to defy’ is, according to its etymology, to pronounce all bonds of faith and fellowship which existed previously between the defier and the defied to be wholly dissolved, so that nothing of treaty or even of the natural faith of man to man shall henceforth hinder extremest hostility between them. But still, when we read of one potentate sending ‘defiance’ to another, the challenge to conflict did not lie necessarily in the word, however such a message might provoke and would often be the prelude to this: it meant but the releasing of himself from all which hitherto had mutually obliged; and thus it came often to mean simply to disclaim, or renounce.

No man speaking in the Spirit of God defieth Jesus [λέγει ἀνάθεμα Ἰησοῦν].—1 Cor. xii. 3. Tyndale.

Despise not an hungry soul, and defy not the poor in his necessity.—Ecclus. iv. 2. Coverdale.

Shakespeare, 1 Henry IV. act i. sc. 8.

There is a double people-pleasing. One sordid and servile, made of falsehood and flattery, which I defy and detest.—Fuller, Appeal of Injured Innocence, p. 38.

Now although I instanced in a question which by good fortune never came to open defiance, yet there have been sects formed upon lighter grounds.—Bishop Taylor, Liberty of Prophesying, § 3, 5.

Delay. Like the French ‘délayer,’ used often in old time where we should now employ ‘allay.’ Out of an ignorance of this, and assuming it a misprint, some modern editors of our earlier authors have not scrupled to change ‘delay’ into ‘allay.’ This is quite a different word from delay, to put off.

Wine delayed with water.—Holland’s Camden, p. 20.

Earl of Surrey, The Faithful Lover, p. 34 (ed. 1717).

Even so fathers ought to delay their eager reprehensions and cutting rebukes with kindness and clemency.—Holland, Plutarch’s Morals, p. 16.

Cup-bearers know well enough, and in that regard can discern and distinguish, when they are to use more or less water to the delaying of wines.—Id., Ib. p. 652.

Delicacy, }

Delicate,

Delicately,

Delicious,

Deliciously.

In the same way as self-indulgence creeps over us by unmarked degrees, so there creeps over the words that designate it a subtle change; they come to contain less and less of rebuke and blame; the thing itself being tolerated, nay allowed, it must needs be that the words which express it should be received into favour too. It has been thus, as I shall have occasion to note, with ‘luxury;’ it has been thus also with this whole group of words. See the quotation from Sir W. Raleigh, s. v. ‘Feminine.’

Thus much of delicacy in general; now more particularly of his first branch, gluttony.—Nash, Christ’s Tear’s over Jerusalem, p. 140.

Cephisodorus, the disciple of Isocrates, charged him with delicacy, intemperance, and gluttony.—Blount, Philostratus, p. 229.

The most delicate and voluptuous princes have ever been the heaviest oppressors of the people, riot being a far more lavish spender of the common treasure than war or magnificence.—Habington, History of King Edward IV., p. 196.

Piers Plowman, C-text, Passus vii. 166 (Skeat).

She that liveth delicately [σπαταλῶσα] is dead while she liveth.—1 Tim. v. 6. A.V. (margin).

Yea, soberest men it [idleness] makes delicious.—Sylvester, Du Bartas, Second Week, Eden.

How much she hath glorified herself and lived deliciously [ἐστρηνίασε], so much torment and sorrow give her.—Rev. xviii. 7. (A.V.)

Demerit. It was plainly a squandering of the wealth of the language, that ‘merit’ and ‘demerit’ should mean one and the same thing; however this might be justified by the fact that ‘mereor’ and ‘demereor,’ from which they were severally derived, were scarcely discriminated in meaning. It has thus come to pass, according to the desynonymizing processes ever at work in a language, that ‘demerit’ has ended in being employed only of ill desert, while ‘merit’ is left free to good or ill, having predominantly the sense of the former.

Shakespeare, Othello, act i. sc. 2.

By our profane and unkind civil wars the world is grown to this pass, that it is reputed a singular demerit and gracious act, not to kill a citizen of Rome, but to let him live.—Holland, Pliny, vol. i. p. 456.

But the Rhodians, contrariwise, in a proud humour of theirs, reckoned up a beadroll of their demerits toward the people of Rome.—Id., Livy, p. 1179.

Demure, }

Demureness.

Used by our earlier writers without the insinuation, which is now always latent in it, that the external shows of modesty and sobriety rest upon no corresponding realities. On the contrary the ‘demure’ was the truly modest and virtuous and good. It is one of the many words to which the suspicious nature of man, with the warrants to a certain extent which these suspicions find, has given a turn for the worse.

These and other suchlike irreligious pranks did this Dionysius play, who notwithstanding fared no worse than the most demure and innocent, dying no other death than what usually other mortals do.—H. More, Antidote against Atheism, b. iii. c. 1.

Which advantages God propounds to all the hearers of the Gospel, without any respect of works or former demureness of life, if so be they will but now come in and close with this high and rich dispensation.—Id., Grand Mystery of Godliness, b. viii. c. 5.

True History of King Leir, 1605.

In like manner women also in comely attire; with demureness [cum verecundiâ, Vulg.] and sobriety adorning themselves.—1 Tim. ii. 9. Rheims.

Spenser, Fairy Queen, ii. 1, 6.

Depart. Once used as equivalent with ‘to separate’ (divido, partior, Promptorium Parvulorum)—a fact already forgotten, when, at the last revision of the Prayer-Book in 1662, the Puritan divines objected to the form as it then stood in the Marriage Service, ‘till death us depart;’ in condescension to whose objection the words, as we now have them, ‘till death us do part,’ were introduced.

And he schal departe hem atwynne, as a scheepherde departith scheep fro kidis.—Matt. xxv. 32. Wiclif.

And whanne he hadde seid this thing, dissencioun was maad bitwixe the Fariseis and the Saduceis, and the multitude was departid.—Acts xxiii. 7. Id.

If my neighbour neede and I geve him not, neyther depart liberally with him of that which I have, than withholde I from him unrighteously that which is hys owne.—Tyndale, Parable of the Wicked Mammon.

Neither did the apostles put away their wives, after they were called unto the ministry; but they continued with their wives lovingly and faithfully, till death departed them.—Becon, An Humble Supplication unto God (1554).

Deplored. It is well known that ‘deploratus’ obtained in later Latin, through a putting of effect for cause, the sense of desperate or past all hope, and was technically applied to the sick man given over by his physicians, ‘deploratus a medicis.’

The physicians do make a kind of scruple and religion to stay with the patient after the disease is deplored; whereas, in my judgement, they ought both to inquire the skill, and to give the attendances, for the facilitating and assuaging of the pains and agonies of death.—Bacon, Advancement of Learning, ii. 10. 5.

If a man hath the mind to get the start of other sinners, and desires to be in hell before them, he need do no more but open his sails to the wind of heretical doctrine, and he is like to make a short voyage to hell; for these bring upon their maintainers a swift destruction. Nay, the Spirit of God the more to aggravate their deplored state, brings on three most dreadful instances of divine justice that ever were executed upon any sinners.—Gurnall, The Christian in Complete Armour, pt. ii. p. 317.

Deprave. As ‘pravus’ is literally crooked, we may say that ‘to deprave’ was formerly ‘untruly to present as crooked,’ to defame; while it is now ‘wickedly to make crooked.’ See the quotation from Bacon, s.v. ‘Disable.’

Their intent was none other than to get him [Cardinal Wolsey] from the king out of the realm; then might they sufficiently adventure, by the help of their chief mistress, to deprave him with the king’s highness, and so in his absence to bring him in displeasure with the king.—Cavendish, Life of Cardinal Wolsey.

Shakespeare, Much Ado about Nothing, act v. sc. 1.

I am depraved unjustly; who never deprived the Church of her authority.—Fuller, Appeal of Injured Innocence, pt. i. p. 45.

Milton, Paradise Lost, vi. 174.

Derive. Tropical uses of the verb ‘to derive’ have quite superseded the literal, so that we now ‘derive’ anything rather than waters from a river.

An infinite deal of labour there is to lade out the water that riseth upon the workmen, for fear it choke up the pits; for to prevent which inconvenience they derive it by other drains.—Holland, Plutarch’s Morals.

Nor may the industry of the citizens of Salisbury be forgotten, who have derived the river into every street therein, so that Salisbury is a heap of islets thrown together.—Fuller, Worthies of England: Wiltshire.

Descry. This verb had a technical meaning in the seventeenth century, which it afterwards lost; its loss leading to the introduction of the French verb ‘to reconnoitre,’ ridiculed as an outlandish term by Addison (1711), and more than half a century later not admitted by Johnson into his Dictionary. It was exactly this which ‘to descry,’ as used by Shakespeare and by Milton, meant. [The verb is the equivalent of the Old French descrire, descrivre, Latin describere, to describe.]

Shakespeare, Richard III. act v. sc. 3.

The house of Israel sent to descry (to spy out, R.V.) Bethel.—Judg. i. 23. (A.V.)

Milton, Paradise Lost, vi. 530.

Desire. ‘To desire’ is only to look forward with longing now; the word has lost the sense of regret or looking back upon the lost but still loved. This it once possessed in common with ‘desiderium’ and ‘desiderare,’ from which more remotely, and ‘désirer,’ from which more immediately, we derive it.

He [Jehoram] reigned in Jerusalem eight years, and departed without being desired.—2 Chron. xxi. 20. (A.V.)

She that hath a wise husband must entice him to an eternal dearness by the veil of modesty and the grave robes of chastity, and she shall be pleasant while she lives, and desired when she dies.—Bishop Taylor, The Marriage Ring, Sermon 18.

Chapman, Homer’s Iliad, xvii. 379.

Detest. For the writers of the seventeenth century ‘to detest’ still retained often the sense of its original ‘detestari,’ openly to witness against, and not merely to entertain an inward abhorrence of, a thing; as in ‘attest’ and ‘protest’ the etymological meaning still survives. It is not easy to adduce passages which absolutely prove this against one who should be disposed to deny it. There can, however, be no doubt whatever of the fact. In Du Bartas’ Weeks, 1621, p. 106, an invective against avarice is called in the margin ‘Detestation of Avarice, for her execrable and cruel effects.’

Wherefore God hath detested them with his own mouth, and clean given them over unto their own filthy lusts.—Bale, The Image of both Churches, c. 11.

She cast herself upon him [her dead husband], and with fearful cries detested the governor’s inhuman and cruel deceit.—Grimeston, History of Lewis XI., 1614, p. 228.

Satyrs were certain poems, detesting and reproving the misdemeanours of people and their vices.—Holland, Explanation of certain obscure words.

Shakespeare, Cymbeline, act ii. sc. 5.

Diamond. This, or ‘diamant’ as it used to be spelt, is a popular form of ‘adamant.’ The Greek ἀδάμας, originally used of the hardest steel, was, about the time of Theophrastus, and, so far as we know, first in his writings, transferred to the diamond, as itself also of a hardness not to be subdued; the cutting or polishing of this stone being quite a modern invention; and the Latin ‘adamas’ continued through the Middle Ages to bear this double meaning. But if ‘adamant’ meant diamond, then ‘diamond,’ by a reactive process frequent in language, would be employed for adamant as well. So far as I know, Milton is the last writer who so uses it.

Romaunt of the Rose.

This little care and regard did at length melt and break asunder those strong diamond chains with which Dionysius the elder made his boast that he left his tyranny chained to his son.—North, Plutarch’s Lives, 1656, p. 800.

Spenser, Fairy Queen, i. 6. 4.

Spenser, ib. i. 9. 19.

Zeal, whose substance is ethereal, arming in complete diamond, ascends his fiery chariot drawn with two blazing meteors, figured like beasts, but of a higher breed than any the zodiack yields, resembling two of those four, which Ezekiel and St. John saw, the one visaged like a lion to express power, high authority, and indignation; the other of countenance like a man to cast derision and scorn upon perverse and fraudulent seducers; with these the invincible warrior Zeal shaking loosely the slack reins drives over the heads of scarlet prelates, and such as are insolent to maintain traditions, bruising their stiff necks under his flaming wheels.—Milton, Defence of Smectymnuus.

Id., Paradise Lost, vi. 363.

Diffidence, }

Diffidently.

‘Diffidence’ expresses now a not unbecoming distrust of one’s own self, with only a slight intimation, such as ‘verecundia’ obtained in the silver age of Latin literature, that perhaps this distrust is carried too far; but it was once used for distrust of others, and sometimes for distrust pushed so far as to amount to an entire withholding of all faith from them, being nearly allied to despair; as indeed in The Pilgrim’s Progress Mistress Diffidence is Giant Despair’s wife.

Of the impediments which have been in the affections, the principal whereof hath been despair or diffidence, and the strong apprehension of the difficulty, obscurity, and infiniteness, which belongeth to the invention of knowledge.—Bacon, Of the Interpretation of Nature, c. 19.

Every sin smiles in the first address, and carries light in the face, and honey in the lip; but when we have well drunk, then comes that which is worse, a whip with ten strings, fears and terrors of conscience, and shame and displeasure, and a caitiff disposition, and diffidence in the day of death.—Bishop Taylor, Life of Christ.

That affliction grew heavy upon me, and weighed me down even to a diffidence of God’s mercy.—Donne, Sermons, 1640, vol. i. p. 311.

Mediators were not wanting that endeavoured a renewing of friendship between these two prelates, which the haughtiness, or perhaps the diffidence of Bishop Laud would not accept; a symptom of policy more than of grace, not to trust a reconciled enemy.—Hacket, Life of Archbishop Williams, pt. ii. p. 86.

It was far the best course to stand diffidently against each other, with their thoughts in battle array.—Hobbes, Thucydides, b. iii. c. 83.

Digest. Scholars of the seventeenth century often employ a word of their own language in the same latitude which its equivalent possessed in the Greek or the Latin; as though it entered into all the rights of its equivalent, and corresponded with it on all points, because it corresponded in one. Thus ‘coctus’ meaning ‘digested,’ why should not ‘digested’ mean all which ‘coctus’ meant? but one of the meanings of ‘coctus’ is ‘ripened;’ ‘digested’ therefore might be employed in the same sense.

Repentance is like the sun; it produces rich spices in Arabia, it digests the American gold, and melts the snows from the Riphæan mountains.—Bishop Taylor, Doctrine and Practice of Repentance, ch. 10, § 8.

Splendid fires, aromatic spices, rich wines, and well-digested fruits.—Id., Discourse of Friendship.

Disable. Our ancestors felt that to injure the character of another was the most effectual way of disabling him; and out of a sense of this they often used ‘to disable’ in the sense of to disparage, to speak slightingly of.

Farewell, mounsieur traveller. Look, you lisp, and wear strange suits: disable all the benefits of your own country.—Shakespeare, As You Like It, act. iv. sc. 1.

If affection lead a man to favour the less worthy in desert, let him do it without depraving or disabling the better deserver.—Bacon, Essays, 49.

Discourse. It is very characteristic of the slight acquaintance with our elder literature—the most obvious source for elucidating Shakespeare’s text—which was possessed by many of his commentators down to a late day, that the phrase ‘discourse of reason,’ which he puts into Hamlet’s mouth, should have perplexed them so greatly. Gifford, a pitiless animadverter on the real or imaginary mistakes of others, and who tramples upon Warburton for attempting to explain this phrase as though Shakespeare could have ever written it, declares ‘“discourse of reason” is so poor and perplexed a phrase that I should dismiss it at once for what I believe to be his genuine language;’ and then proceeds to suggest the obvious but erroneous correction ‘discourse and reason’ (see his Massinger, vol. i. p. 148); while yet, if there be a phrase of continual recurrence among the writers of our Elizabethan age and down to Milton, it is this. I have little doubt that it occurs fifty times in Holland’s translation of Plutarch’s Moralia. What our fathers intended by ‘discourse’ and ‘discourse of reason,’ the following passages will abundantly declare.

There is not so great difference and distance between beast and beast, as there is odds in the matter of wisdom, discourse of reason, and use of memory between man and man.—Holland, Plutarch’s Morals, p. 570; cf. pp. 313, 566, 570, 752, 955, 966, 977, 980.

If you mean, by discourse, right reason, grounded on Divine Revelation and common notions, written by God in the hearts of all men, and deducing, according to the never-failing rules of logic, consequent deductions from them; if this be it which you mean by discourse, it is very meet and reasonable and necessary that men, as in all their actions, so especially in that of greatest importance, the choice of their way to happiness, should be left unto it.—Chillingworth, The Religion of Protestants, Preface.

As the intuitive knowledge is more perfect than that which insinuates itself into the soul gradually by discourse, so more beautiful the prospect of that building which is all visible at one view than what discovers itself to the sight by parcels and degrees.—Fuller, Worthies of England: Canterbury.

Milton, Paradise Lost, v. 486.

You, being by nature given to melancholic discoursing, do easilier yield to such imaginations.—North, Plutarch’s Lives, p. 830.

Chapman, Homer’s Iliad, b. ii.

Discover. This word has lost the sense of uncover, which once it had, and in which it occurs several times in our Bible.

Whether any man hath pulled down or discovered any church, chancel or chapel, or any part of them.—Archbishop Grindal, Articles of Enquiry, 1576.

The voice of the Lord discovereth the forests.—Ps. xxix. 9. A.V. and P.B.V.

Disease. Our present limitation of ‘disease’ is a very natural one, seeing that nothing so effectually wars against ease as a sick and suffering condition of body. Still the limitation is modern, and by ‘disease’ was once meant any distress or discomfort whatever, and the verb had a corresponding meaning.

Wo to hem that ben with child, and norishen in tho daies, for a greet diseese [pressura magna, Vulg.] schal be on the erthe and wraththe to this puple.—Luke xxi. 23. Wiclif.

Thy doughter is deed; why diseasest thou the master eny further?—Mark v. 35. Tyndale.

This is now the fourteenth day they [the Cardinals] have been in the Conclave, with such pain and disease that your grace would marvel that such men as they would suffer it.—State Papers (Letter to Wolsey from his Agent at Rome), vol. vi. p. 182.

Spenser, Fairy Queen, ii. 2, 12.

Dismal. Minsheu’s derivation of ‘dismal,’ that it is ‘dies malus,’ the unlucky, ill-omened day, is exactly one of those plausible etymologies which one learns after a while to reject with contempt. Yet there can be no doubt that our fathers so understood the word, and that this assumed etymology often overrules their usage of it.

Why should we then be bold to call them evil, infortunate, and dismal days? If God rule our doings continually, why shall they not prosper on those days as well as on other?—Pilkington, Exposition on Aggeus, c. 1.

Then began they to reason and debate about the dismal days [tum de diebus religiosis agitari cœptum]. And the fifteenth day before the Kalends of August, so notorious for a twofold loss and overthrow, they set this unlucky mark upon it, that it should be reputed unmeet and unconvenient for any business, as well public as private.—Holland, Livy, p. 217.

The particular calendars, wherein their [the Jews’] good or dismal days are distinguished, according to the diversity of their ways, we find, Leviticus 26.—Jackson, The Eternal Truth of Scriptures, b. i. c. 22.

Disoblige. Release from obligation lies at the root of all uses, present and past, of this word; but it was formerly more the release from an oath or a duty, and now rather from the slighter debts of social life, to which kindness and courtesy on the part of another would have held us bound or ‘obliged;’ while the contraries to these are ‘disobliging.’

He did not think that Act of Uniformity could disoblige them [the Non-Conformists] from the exercise of their office.—Bates, Mr. Richard Baxter’s Funeral Sermon.

Many that are imprisoned for debt, think themselves disobliged from payment.—Bishop Taylor, Holy Dying, c. 5, § 3.

He hath a very great obligation to do that and more; and he can noways be disobliged, but by the care of his natural relations.—Id., Measures and Offices of Friendship.

Ditty. By the ‘ditty’ were once understood the words of a song as distinguished from the musical accompaniment.

They fell to challenge and defy one another, whereupon he commanded the musician Eraton to sing unto the harp, who began his song on this wise out of the works of Hesiodus:—

for which I commended him in that he knew how to apply the ditty of his song so well unto the present time.—Holland, Plutarch’s Morals, p. 786.

So that, although we lay altogether aside the consideration of ditty or matter, the very harmony of sounds being framed in due sort, and carried by the ear to the spiritual faculties of the soul, is by a native puissance and efficacy greatly available to bring to a perfect temper whatsoever is there troubled.—Hooker, Ecclesiastical Polity, b. v. c. 38.

Document. Now used only of the material, and not, as once, of the moral proof, evidence, or means of instruction.

They were forthwith stoned to death, as a document unto others.—Sir W. Raleigh, History of the World, b. v. c. 2, § 3.

This strange dejection of these three great apostles at so mild and gentle a voice [Matt. xvii. 6], gives us a remarkable document or grounded observation of the truth of that saying of St. Paul, Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God.—Jackson, Of the Primeval State of Man, b. ii. c. 12.

It was a rare document of divine justice to ordain, and of divine wisdom so to contrive, that the dogs should lap King Ahab’s blood in the same place where they had lapped the blood of Naboth.—Id., Of the Divine Essence and Attributes, b. vi. ch. iii. 3.

Dole. This and ‘deal’ are one and the same word, and answer to the German ‘Theil,’ a part or portion.14 It has now always the subaudition of a scanty portion, as ‘to dole’ is to deal scantily and reluctantly forth (‘pittance’ has acquired the same); but Sanderson’s use of ‘dole’ is instructive, as showing that ‘distribution or division’ is all which once lay in the word.

There are certain common graces of illumination, and those indeed are given by dole, knowledge to one, to another tongues, to another healings; but it is nothing so with the special graces of sanctification. There is no distribution or division here; either all or none.—Sanderson, Sermons, 1671, vol. ii. p. 247.

Draught. Many ‘draughts’ we still acknowledge, but not the ‘draught’ or drawing of a bow.

Chaucer, Dreame, 788.

Chapman, The Odysseis of Homer, xxi. 533.

Dreadful. Now that which causes dread, but once that which felt it. See ‘Frightful,’ ‘Hateful.’

Forsothe the Lord shall gyve to thee there a dreedful herte and faylinge eyen.—Deut. xxviii. 65. Wiclif.

Chaucer, The Knightes Tale.

Heywood, Translation of Seneca’s Hercules Furens.

Daniel, Panegyric to the King.

Dreary, }

Dreariness.

This word has slightly shifted its meaning. In our earlier English it was used exactly as its German cognate ‘traurig’ is now, to designate the heaviness at once of countenance and of heart; very much the σκυθρωπός of the Greeks, though not admitting the subaudition of anger, which in that word is often contained. [Its Old English form was dréorig.]

And the king seide to me, Whi is thi chere dreri, sithen I see thee not sick?—2 Esdras ii. 2. Wiclif.

Chaucer, The Clerkes Tale, pt. 3.

Bowe down to the pore thin ere withoute dreryness [sine tristitiâ, Vulg.]—Ecclus. iv. 8. Wiclif.

Richard Rolle de Hampole, Pricke of Conscience, 1454.

Drench. As ‘to fell’ is to make to fall, and ‘to lay’ to make to lie, so ‘to drench’ is to make to drink, though with a sense now very short of ‘to drown;’ but ‘drench’ and ‘drown,’ though desynonymized in our later English, were once perfectly adequate to one another.

Havelok the Dane, 669.

Thei that wolen be maad riche, fallen in to temptacioun, and in to snare of the devil, and in to many unprofitable desiris and noyous, whiche drenchen men in to deth and perdicioun.—1 Tim. vi. 9. Wiclif.

Chaucer, The Man of Lawes Tale, 488 (Skeat).

Drift. A drove of sheep or cattle was once a ‘drift;’ so too the act of driving.

Hoc armentum, Anglice, a dryfte.—Wright-Wülcker, Vocab. 814. 11.

By reason of the foulness and deepness of the way divers of the said sheep died in driving; partly for lack of meat and feeding, but especially by mean of the said unreasonable drift the said sheep are utterly perished.—Trevelyan Papers, p. 130.

Scotch Ballad.

Duke. One of Shakespeare’s commentators charges him with an anachronism, the incongruous transfer of a modern title to an ancient condition of society, when he styles Theseus ‘Duke of Athens.’ It would be of very little consequence if the charge was a true one; but it is not, as his English Bible might have sufficiently taught him; Gen. xxxvi. 15-19. ‘Duke’ has indeed since Shakespeare’s time become that which this objector supposed it to have been always; but all were ‘dukes’ once who were ‘duces,’ captains and leaders of their people.

He [St. Peter] techith christen men to be suget to kyngis and dukis, and to ech man for God.—Wiclif, Prologe on the first Pistel of Peter.

Hannibal, duke of Carthage.—Sir T. Elyot, The Governor, b. i. c. 10.

Chapman, Homer’s Iliad, b. ii.

Dunce. I have sought elsewhere (Study of Words, 20th edit. p. 143) to trace at some length the curious history of this word. Sufficient here to say that Duns Scotus, whom Hooker styles ‘the wittiest of the school divines,’ has given us this name, which now ascribes hopeless ignorance, invincible stupidity, to him on whom it is affixed. The course by which this came to pass was as follows. When at the Reformation and Revival of Learning the works of the Schoolmen fell into extreme disfavour, alike with the Reformers and with the votaries of the new learning, Duns, a standard-bearer among those, was so often referred to with scorn and contempt by these, that his name gradually became that byeword which ever since it has been. See the quotation from Stanyhurst, s. v. ‘Trivial.’

Remember ye not how within this thirty years, and far less, and yet dureth unto this day, the old barking curs, Dunce’s disciples, and like draff called Scotists, the children of darkness, raged in every pulpit against Greek, Latin, and Hebrew?—Tyndale, Works, 1575, p. 278.

We have set Dunce in Bocardo and have utterly banished him Oxford for ever with all his blind glosses.... The second time we came to New College after we had declared your injunctions, we found all the great Quadrant Court full of the leaves of Dunce, the wind blowing them in every corner.—Wood’s Annals, A.D. 1535, 62.

What Dunce or Sorbonist cannot maintain a paradox?—G. Harvey, Pierce’s Supererogation, p. 159.

As for terms of honesty or civility, they are gibberish unto him, and he a Jewish Rabbin or a Latin dunce with him that useth any such form of monstrous terms.—Id., ib. p. 175.

Middleton, A Chaste Maid in Cheapside, act iii. sc. 1.

Dutch, }

Dutchman.

Till late in the seventeenth century ‘Dutch’ (‘deutsch,’ lit. belonging to the people) meant generally ‘German,’ and a ‘Dutchman’ a native of Germany, while what we now term a Dutchman was then a Hollander. In America this with so many other usages is retained, and Germans are now often called ‘Dutchmen’ there.

Though the root of the English language be Dutch, yet she may be said to have been inoculated afterwards upon a French stock.—Howell, Lexicon Tetraglotton, Preface.

Germany is slandered to have sent none to this war [the Crusades] at this first voyage; and that other pilgrims, passing through that country, were mocked by the Dutch, and called fools for their pains.—Fuller, Holy War, b. i. c. 13.

At the same time began the Teutonic Order, consisting only of Dutchmen, well descended.—Id. ib. b. ii. c. 16.

Eager, }

Eagerness.

The physical and literal sense of ‘eager,’ that is, sharp or acrid (Fr. aigre, Lat. acrem), has quite departed from the word. It occasionally retained this, long after it was employed in the secondary meaning which is its only one at present.

Romaunt of the Rose, 215.

Bees have this property by nature to find and suck the mildest and best honey out of the sharpest and most eager flowers.—Holland, Plutarch’s Morals, p. 43.

Chapman, Homer’s Iliad, b. x.

Asproso, full of sowrenesse or eagernesse.—Florio, New World of Words (A.D. 1611).

Ebb. Nothing ‘ebbs,’ unless it is figuratively, except water now. But ‘ebb,’ oftenest an adjective, was continually used in our earlier English with a general meaning of shallow. There is still a Lancashire proverb, ‘Cross the stream where it is ebbest.’

Orpiment, a mineral digged out of the ground in Syria, where it lieth very ebb.—Holland, Pliny, vol. ii. p. 469.

This you may observe ordinarily in stones, that those parts and sides which lie covered deeper within the ground be more frim and tender, as being preserved by heat, than those outward faces which lie ebb, or above the earth.—Id., Plutarch’s Morals, p. 747.

It is all one whether I be drowned in the ebber shore, or in the midst of the deep sea.—Bishop Hall, Meditations and Vows, cent. ii.

Ecstasy. We still say of madmen that they are beside themselves; but ‘ecstasy,’ or a standing out of oneself, is no longer used as an equivalent to madness.

Shakespeare, Hamlet, act iii. sc. 4.

Edify. ‘From the Christian Church being called the temple or house of God, this word acquired a metaphorical and spiritual meaning, and is applied in the N. T. and in modern language to mental or spiritual advancement. Old English writers used it in its original sense of build’ (Bible Word Book). For some quotations which mark the coming up of the secondary or metaphorical meaning see my English Past and Present, 14th edit. p. 186.

Piers Plowman, B-text, Passus xvi. 131 (Skeat).

And the Lord God edifiede the rib, the which he toke of Adam, into a woman.—Gen. ii. 22. Wiclif.

What pleasure and also utility is to a man which intendeth to edify, himself to express the figure of the work that he purposeth, according as he hath conceived it in his own fantasy.—Sir T. Elyot, The Governor, b. i. c. 8.

Spenser, Fairy Queen, i. 1, 34.

Egregious. This has generally now an uncomplimentary subaudition, which it was very far from having of old.

Marlowe, Tamburlaine the Great, part i. act i. sc. 1.

It may be denied that bishops were our first reformers, for Wickliffe was before them, and his egregious labours are not to be neglected.—Milton, Animadversions upon the Remonstrants’ Defence.

Elder. The German ‘eltern’ still signifies parents; as ‘elders’ did once with us, though now the word has quite let this meaning go.

And hise disciplis axiden hym, Maistir, what synnede, this man or hise eldris, that he schulde be borun blynd?—John ix. 2. Wiclif.

And his elders went to Jerusalem every year at the feast of Easter.—Luke ii. 41. Coverdale.

Disobedient to their elders [γονεῦσιν ἀπειθεῖς].—Rom. i. 30. Coverdale.

Sylvester, Du Bartas, The Handycrafts.

Element. The air, as that among the four elements which is most present everywhere, was frequently ‘the element’ in our earlier literature.

When Pompey saw the dust in the element, and conjectured the flying of his horsemen, what mind he was of then it was hard to say.—North, Plutarch’s Lives, p. 553.

The face therefore of the element you have skill to discern, and the signs of times can you not?—Matt. xvi. 3. Rheims.

Shakespeare, Julius Cæsar, act i. sc. 3.

Milton, Comus, 298.

Elephant. I have little doubt that ‘elephant’ as an equivalent for ivory is a Grecism not peculiar to Chapman, in whose translations from Homer it several times occurs; but I cannot adduce an example from any other. The use of ‘olifant’ in this sense is quite common in the older French (see Didot’s Glossary in Ducange, ed. 1887).

Chapman, The Odysseis of Homer, b. xxiii. l. 306.

Elevate. There are two intentions with which anything may be lifted from the place which it occupies; either with that of setting it in a more conspicuous position; or else of removing it out of the way, or, figuratively, of withdrawing all importance and significance from it. We employ ‘to elevate’ now in the former intention; our ancestors for the most part, especially those whose style was influenced by their Latin studies, in the latter.

Withal, he forgat not to elevate as much as he could the fame of the foresaid unhappy field fought, saying, That if all had been true, there would have been messengers coming thick one after another upon their flight to bring fresh tidings still thereof.—Holland, Livy, p. 1199.

Audience he had with great assent and applause; not more for elevating the fault and trespass of the common people, than for laying the weight upon those that were the authors culpable.—Id., ib. p. 1207.

Tully in his oration Pro Flacco, to elevate or lessen that conceit which many Romans had of the nation of the Jews, objects little less unto them than our Saviour in this place doth, to wit that they were in bondage to the Romans.—Jackson, Of the Primeval Estate of Man, b. x. c. 14.

Embezzle. A man can now only ‘embezzle’ another man’s property; he might once ‘embezzle’ his own. Thus, while we might now say that the Unjust Steward ‘embezzled’ his lord’s goods (Luke xvi. 1), we could not say that the Prodigal Son ‘embezzled’ the portion which he had received from his father, and which had thus become his own (Luke xv. 13); but the one would have been as free to our early writers as the other. There is a form, ‘to imbecile,’ used by Jeremy Taylor and others, which has the same meaning as this word.

Mr. Hackluit died, leaving a fair estate to an unthrift son, who embezzled it.—Fuller, Worthies of England: Herefordshire.

The collection of these various readings [is] a testimony even of the faithfulness of these later ages of the Church, and of the high reverence they had of these records, in that they would not so much as embesell the various readings of them, but keep them still on foot for the prudent to judge of.—H. More, Grand Mystery of Godliness, b. vii. c. 11.

If we are ambitious of having a property in somewhat, or affect to call anything our own, ’tis only by nobly giving that we can accomplish our desire; that will certainly appropriate our goods to our use and benefit; but from basely keeping or vainly embezzling them, they become not our possession and enjoyment, but our theft and our bane.—Barrow, The Duty and Reward of Bounty to the Poor.

Be not prodigal of your time on earth, which is so little in your power. ’Tis so precious a thing that it is to be redeemed; ’tis therefore too precious to be embezzled and trifled away.—Howe, The Redeemer’s Dominion over the Invisible World.

Emulation. South in one of his sermons has said excellently well, ‘We ought by all means to note the difference between envy and emulation; which latter is a brave and noble thing, and quite of another nature, as consisting only in a generous imitation of something excellent; and that such an imitation as scorns to fall short of its copy, but strives if possible to outdo it. The emulator is impatient of a superior, not by depressing or maligning another but by perfecting himself. So that while that sottish thing envy sometimes fills the whole soul, as a great fog does the air: this on the contrary inspires it with a new life and vigour, whets and stirs up all the powers of it to action.’ But ‘emulation,’ though sometimes used by our early writers in this nobler sense, to express an honourable and generous rivalry, was by no means always so; it was often an exact equivalent to envy.

Zeal to promote the common good is welcomed with suspicion instead of love, and with emulation instead of thanks.—The Translators’ Preface to the Authorized Version.

Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida, act i. sc. 3.

And the patriarchs through emulation [moved with envy, A.V.] sold Joseph into Egypt.—Acts vii. 9. Rheims.

Endeavour. This, connected with ‘devoir,’ is used as a reflexive verb in our version of the New Testament and in the Prayer Book. Signifying now no more than to try, it signified once to bend all our energies, not to the attempt at fulfilling, but to the actual fulfilment of a duty. The force of such passages as Ephes. iv. 3, ‘endeavouring to keep the unity of the Spirit,’ is greatly weakened by giving to ‘endeavour’ its modern sense. Attaching to it this, we may too easily persuade ourselves that the Apostle does no more than bid us to attempt to preserve this unity, and that he quite recognizes the possibility of our being defeated in this attempt.

This is called in Scripture ‘a just man,’ that endeavoureth himself to leave all wickedness.—Latimer, Sermons, p. 340.

One thing I do, I forget that which is behind, and endevour myself into that which is before.—Phil. iii. 13. Geneva.

Engrave. This word has now quite lost the sense of ‘to bury,’ which it once possessed. See ‘Grave.’

Spenser, Fairy Queen, ii. 1, 60.

Britain’s Ida, iv. 2.

Phineas Fletcher, Poetical Miscellanies.

Enjoy. Not, when Wiclif wrote, nor till some time later, distinguished from ‘rejoice,’ which see.

And the pees of Crist enioye [pax Christi exsultet, Vulgate] in youre hertis.—Col. iii. 15. Wiclif.

Enormous, }

Enormity.

Now only applied to that which is irregular in excess, in this way transcending the established norm or rule. But departure from rule or irregularity in any direction might be characterised as ‘enormous’ once.

Beaumont and Fletcher, The Two Noble Kinsmen, act v. sc. 1.

Milton, Paradise Lost, v. 297.

Pyramids, arches, obelisks, were but the irregularities of vain-glory, and wild enormities of ancient magnanimity.—Sir T. Browne, Hydriotaphia.

Ensure. None of our Dictionaries, as far as I can observe, have taken notice of an old use of this word, namely, to betroth, and thus to make sure the future husband and wife to each other. See ‘Assure,’ ‘Sure.’

After his mother Mary was ensured to Joseph, before they were coupled together, it was perceived she was with child.—Matt. i. 18. Sir John Cheke.

Albeit that she was by the king’s mother and many other put in good comfort to affirm that she was ensured unto the king; yet when she was solemnly sworn to say the truth, she confessed that they were never ensured.—Sir T. More, History of King Richard III.

Epicure. Now applied only to those who devote themselves, yet with a certain elegance and refinement, to the pleasures of the table; ‘gourmets’ rather than ‘gourmands.’ We may trace two earlier stages in its meaning. By Lord Bacon and others the followers of Epicurus, whom we should call Epicureans, are often called ‘Epicures,’ after the name of the founder of their sect. From them it was transferred to all who were, like them, deniers of a divine Providence; and this is the common use of it by our elder divines. But inasmuch as those who have persuaded themselves that there is nothing above them, will seek their good, since men must seek it somewhere, in the things beneath them, in sensual delights, the name has been transferred, by that true moral instinct which is continually at work in speech, from the philosophical speculative atheist to the human swine for whom the world is but a feeding-trough.

So the Epicures say of the Stoics’ felicity placed in virtue, that it is like the felicity of a player, who if he were left of his auditors and their applause, he would straight be out of heart and countenance.—Bacon, Colours of Good and Evil, 3.

Aristotle is altogether an Epicure; he holdeth that God careth nothing for human creatures; he allegeth God ruleth the world like as a sleepy maid rocketh a child.—Luther, Table-Talk, c. 73.

The Epicure grants there is a God, but denies his providence.—Sydenham, The Athenian Babbler, 1627, p. 7.

Equal. The ethical sense of ‘equal,’ as fair, candid, just, has almost, if not altogether, departed from it. Compare ‘Unequal.’

Ben Jonson, The Fox, act iv. sc. 2.

Hear now, O house of Israel; is not my way equal? are not your ways unequal?—Ezek. xviii. 25. (A. V.)

Equivocal, }

Equivocally,

Equivocation.

The calling two or more different things by one and the same name (æque vocare) is the source of almost all error in human discourse. He who wishes to throw dust in the eyes of an opponent, to hinder his arriving at the real facts of a case, will often have recourse to this artifice, and thus ‘to equivocate’ and ‘equivocation’ have attained their present secondary meaning, very different from their original, which was simply the calling of two or more different things by one and the same word.

This visible world is but a picture of the invisible, wherein as in a portrait, things are not truly, but in equivocal shapes, and as they counterfeit some real substance in that invisible fabric.—Sir T. Browne, Religio Medici.

Which [courage and constancy] he that wanteth is no other than equivocally a gentleman, as an image or a carcass is a man.—Barrow, Sermon on Industry in our several Callings.

He [the good herald] knows when indeed the names are the same, though altered through variety of writing in various ages; and where the equivocation is untruly affected.—Fuller, The Holy State, b. ii. c. 22.

All words, being arbitrary signs, are ambiguous; and few disputers have the jealousy and skill which is necessary to discuss equivocations; and so take verbal differences for material.—Baxter, Catholic Theology, Preface.

Err, }

Error.

‘To err’ is still to wander; but it is now used always in a figurative and ethical sense, to deviate morally from the right way. In my first quotation from Chapman, it is Telemachus who speaks, and of course Ulysses of whom he speaks.

Chapman, Homer’s Odysseis, b. iv. 435.

Id., ib. xx. 323.

Shakespeare, Hamlet, act i. sc. 1.

Marlowe, Faustus, sc. 3.

Essay. There is no particular modesty now in calling a treatise or dissertation an ‘essay;’ but from many passages it is plain that there was so once; which indeed is only agreeable to the proper meaning of the word, an ‘essay’ being a trial, proof, specimen, taste of a thing, rather than the very and completed thing itself.

To write just treatises requireth leisure in the writer, and leisure in the reader; and therefore are not so fit neither in regard of your highness’ princely affairs, nor in regard of my continual service; which is the cause which hath made me choose to write certain brief notes, set down rather significantly than curiously, which I have called Essays. The word is late, but the thing is ancient.—Bacon, Intended Dedication of his Essays to Prince Henry.

Dryden, Epistle 5, To the Earl of Roscommon.

Exemplary. A certain vagueness in our use of ‘exemplary’ makes it for us little more than a loose synonym for excellent. We plainly often forget that ‘exemplary’ is strictly that which serves, or might serve, for an exemplar to others, while only through keeping this distinctly before us will passages like the following yield their exact meaning to us.

We are not of opinion, therefore, as some are, that nature in working hath before her certain exemplary draughts or patterns.—Hooker, Ecclesiastical Polity, b. i. c. 3.

When the English, at the Spanish fleet’s approach in eighty-eight [1588], drew their ships out of Plymouth haven, the Lord Admiral Howard himself towed a cable, the least joint of whose exemplary hand drew more than twenty men besides.—Fuller, The Holy State, b. iv. c. 17.

Exemplify. The use of ‘exemplify’ in the sense of the Greek παραδειγματίζειν (Matt. i. 19) has now passed away. Observe also in the passage quoted the curious use of ‘traduce.’

He is a just and jealous God, not sparing to exemplify and traduce his best servants [i.e. when they sin], that their blur and penalty might scare all from venturing.—Rogers, Matrimonial Honour, p. 337.

Explode. All our present uses of ‘explode,’ whether literal or figurative, have reference to bursting, and to bursting with noise; and it is for the most part forgotten that these are all secondary and derived; that ‘to explode,’ originally an active verb, means to drive off the stage with loud clappings of the hands: and that when one of our early writers speaks of an ‘exploded’ heresy, or an ‘exploded’ opinion, his image is not drawn from something which, having burst, has so perished; but he would imply that it has been contemptuously driven off from the world’s stage—the fact that ‘explosion’ in this earlier sense was with a great noise being the connecting link between that sense and our present.

A third sort explode this opinion as trespassing on Divine Providence.—Fuller, Holy War, b. iii. c. 18.

A man may with more facility avoid him that circumvents by money than him that deceives with glosing terms, which made Socrates so much abhor and explode them.—Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy; Democritus to the Reader.

Milton, Paradise Lost, x. 545; cf. xi. 699.

Shall that man pass for a proficient in Christ’s school, who would have been exploded in the school of Zeno or Epictetus?—South, Sermons, vol. i. p. 431.

Exterminate, }

Extermination.

This now signifies to destroy, to abolish; but our fathers, more true to the etymology, understood by it to drive men out of and beyond their own borders.

Most things do either associate and draw near to themselves the like, and do also drive away, chase, and exterminate their contraries.—Bacon, Colours of Good and Evil, 7.

We believe it to be the general interest of us all, as much as in us lies, with our common aid and succour to relieve our exterminated and indigent brethren.—Milton, Letter written in Cromwell’s name on occasion of the persecutions of the Vaudois.

The state of the Jews was in that depression, in that conculcation, in that consternation, in that extermination in the captivity of Babylon.—Donne, Sermons, 19.

Facetious, }

Facetiousness.

It is certainly not a little remarkable that alike in Greek, Latin, and English, words expressive of witty festive conversation should have degenerated, though not all exactly in the same direction, and gradually acquired a worse signification than that with which they began; I mean εὐτραπελία, ‘urbanitas,’ and our own ‘facetiousness;’ this degeneracy of the words warning us how easily the thing itself degenerates: how sure it is to do so, to corrupt and spoil, if it be not seasoned with the only salt which will hinder this. ‘Facetiousness’ has already acquired the sense of buffoonery, of the making of ignoble mirth for others; there are plain indications that it will ere long acquire the sense of indecent buffoonery: while there was a time, as the examples given below will prove, when it could be ascribed in praise to high-bred ladies of the court and to grave prelates and divines.

He [Archbishop Williams] demonstrated that his mind was the lighter, because his friends were about him, and his facetious wit was true to him at those seasons, because his heart was true to his company.—Hacket, Life of Archbishop Williams, part ii. p. 32.

A grave man, yet without moroseness, as who would willingly contribute his shot of facetiousness on any just occasion.—Fuller, Worthies of England: Oxfordshire.

The king easily took notice of her [Anne Boleyn]; whether more captivated by the allurements of her beauty, or the facetiousness of her behaviour, it is hard to say.—Heylin, History of Queen Mary, Introduction.

Fact. This and ‘act’ or ‘deed’ have been usefully desynonymized. An ‘act’ or ‘deed’ implies now always a person as the actor or doer; but it is sufficient for a ‘fact’ that it exists, that it has been done, the author or doer of it falling altogether out of sight.

All the world is witnesse agaynst you, yea, and also your owne factes and deedes.—Barnes, Works, 1572, p. 251.

Spenser, Fairy Queen, 1, iv. 34.

Icetes took but a few of them to serve his turn, as if he had been ashamed of his fact, and had used their friendship by stealth.—North, Plutarch’s Lives, 1656, p. 228.

Fairy. In whatever latitude we may employ ‘fairy’ now, this Romance word is generally restricted to the middle beings of Teutonic and Romanic popular mythology; being in no case applied, as it used to be, to the δαίμονες of classical antiquity.

Of the fairy Manto [daughter of Tiresias] I cannot affirm any thing of truth, whether she were a fairy or a prophetess.—Sir J. Harington, Orlando Furioso, b. lxiii.

So long as these wise fairies Μοῖρα and Λάχεσις, that is to say Portion and Partition, had the ordering of suppers, dinners, and great feasts, a man should never see any illiberal or mechanical disorder.—Holland, Plutarch’s Morals, p. 679.

Fame. This is now generally applied to the reputation derived from the report of great actions, but was constantly used in our Authorized Version (Gen. xlv. 16; 1 Kin. x. 7; Jer. vi. 24; Matt. ix. 26), and in contemporary writings, as equivalent to report alone. Compare the distinction in Quintilian (v. 3) between ‘fama’ and ‘rumor.’

The occasion which Pharaoh took to murder all the Hebrew males was from a constant fame or prenotion that about this time there should a Hebrew male be born that should work wonders for the good of his people.—Jackson, Christ’s Everlasting Priesthood, b. x. c. xl.

And his fame [ἡ ἀκοὴ αὐτοῦ] went throughout all Syria.—Matt. iv. 24. (A. V.)

Family. It is not a good sign that the ‘family’ has now ceased to include the servants; but for a long while the word retained the largeness of its classical use, indeed it has only very recently lost it altogether.

The same care is to extend to all of our family, in their proportions, as to our children: for as by S. Paul’s reasoning the heir differs nothing from a servant while he is in minority, so a servant should differ nothing from a child in the substantial part of the care.—Bishop Taylor, Holy Living, 3, 2.

He [Sir Matthew Hale] kept no greater a family than myself.—Baxter, Life, part 3, § 107.

A just master may have an unconscionable servant; and if he have a numerous family and keep many, it is a rare thing if he have not some bad.—Sanderson, Sermons, 1671, vol. i. p. 115.

Tusser, Hundred Points of Good Husbandry, 9.

Fancy. The distinction between ‘fancy’ and ‘imagination,’ for which Wordsworth so earnestly contended, has obtained full recognition. It was the more easy for it to find acceptance from the fact that it fell in with a certain clinamen, a disposition already obscurely working in the minds of men, to ascribe different domains of meaning to these several words. But while what has been thus done has been well done, it would be a mistake to regard this as an old distinction that was now recovered from the oblivion into which it had fallen. The Greeks ascribed no such subordination of φαντασία (‘phantasy,’ ‘phansy,’ ‘fancy’) to some other word, as we now ascribe to ‘fancy’ in its relation to ‘imagination.’ Φαντασία was for Plato and Aristotle (see too Longinus, c. 15), all that ‘imagination’ is for us, the power which summons up before the mind’s eye of the poet, and of as many as he can carry along with him, the forms of things not present, shaping and moulding, dissolving and reuniting and fusing these at his will; while ‘fancy,’ as we now understand the word, with the humbler offices assigned to it, as the aggregative and associated power, more playful but less earnest, dealing often in prettinesses rather than in beauties, had not obtained any special word to express it. At the Revival of Learning both words found themselves in our English vocabulary; but far down into the seventeenth century there was no sense of any distinction between them; they were simply duplicates, one from the Greek and one from the Latin. They are constantly employed by Henry More as absolutely convertible; and where Milton makes any difference between them, it is to the advantage of ‘fancy,’ which includes ‘imagination’ as a greater includes a less. At a later day it was felt to be a waste of wealth to have two words absolutely identical in meaning for one and the same mental operation; above all, while another went without any to designate it at all; and thus the instinct which is ever at work in a language for the making the most of its resources began to work for the desynonymizing of ‘imagination’ and ‘fancy.’ This could only be effected by the coming down of one or the other from its height of place. The lot naturally fell on ‘fancy,’ the grand φαντάζεσθαι, on which it rested, being far more obscured to such as were not scholars, than the Latin ‘imago,’ on which ‘imagination’ reposed.

Shakespeare, Midsummer Night’s Dream, act v. sc. 1.

Milton, Paradise Lost, v. 300.

The devil can act upon the soul by suggesting the ideas and spiritual pictures of things to the imagination. For this is the grand repository of all the ideas and representations which the mind of man can work either upon or by. So that Satan, our skilful artist, can as easily slide his injections into the fancy as present a deluding image to the eye.—South, Sermons, 1737, vol. i. p. 110.

Fastidious. Persons are ‘fastidious’ now, as feeling disgust; things, and indeed persons too, were ‘fastidious’ once, as occasioning disgust. The word has shifted from an objective to a subjective use. ‘Fastidiosus’ had both uses, but our modern quite predominated; indeed the other is very rare.

That thing for the which children be oftentimes beaten, is to them ever after fastidious.—Sir T. Elyot, The Governor, b. i. c. 9.

Feature. This, the Old French ‘faiture,’ Latin ‘factura,’ is always the part now of a larger whole, a ‘feature’ of the landscape, the ‘features’ of the face; but there was no such limitation once; anything made, any ‘fattura,’ was a ‘feature’ once. ‘Facies’ in Latin, according to Aulus Gellius (xiii. 29), underwent a not very dissimilar change of meaning. In addition to the examples which follow, see Spenser, Fairy Queen, iv. 2, 44; iii. 9, 21.

Ben Jonson, The Forest, xi.

We have not yet found them all [the scattered limbs of Truth], nor ever shall do, till her Master’s second coming; He shall bring together every joint and member, and shall mould them into an immortal feature of loveliness and perfection.—Milton, Areopagitica.

Id. Paradise Lost, x. 278.

But this young feature [a commentary on Scripture which Archbishop Williams had planned], like an imperfect embryo, was mortified in the womb by Star-chamber vexations.—Hacket, Life of Archbishop Williams, part ii. p. 40.

Feminine. The distinction between ‘feminine’ and ‘effeminate,’ that the first is ‘womanly,’ the second ‘womanish,’ the first what becomes a woman, and under certain limitations may without reproach be affirmed of a man, while the second under all circumstances dishonours a man, as ‘mannish’ would dishonour a woman, is of comparatively modern growth. Neither could ‘feminine’ now be used as an antithesis of ‘male,’ as by Milton (Paradise Lost, i. 423) it is.

Lydgate, Poem against Idleness.

But Ninias being esteemed no man of war at all, but altogether feminine, and subject to ease and delicacy, there is no probability in that opinion.—Sir W. Raleigh, History of the World, b. ii. c 1, § 1.

Commodus, the wanton and feminine son of wise Antoninus, gave a check to the great name of his father.—Bishop Taylor, Apples of Sodom.

Firmament. We now use ‘firmament’ only for that portion of the sky on all sides visible above the horizon, having gotten this application of the word from the Vulgate (Gen. i. 6), or at any rate from the Church Latin (‘firmamentum cæleste,’ Tertullian, De Bapt. 3), as that had derived it from the Septuagint. This by στερέωμα had sought to express the firmness and stability of the sky-tent, which phenomenally (and Scripture for the most part speaks phenomenally) is drawn over the earth; and to reproduce the force of the original Hebrew word,—in which, however, there is rather the notion of expansion than of firmness (see H. More, Defence of Cabbala, p. 60). But besides this use of ‘firmament,’ totally strange to the classical ‘firmamentum,’ being derived to us from the ecclesiastical employment of the word, there is also an occasional use of it by the scholarly writers of the seventeenth century in the original classical sense, as that which makes strong or confirms.

I thought it good to make a strong head or bank to rule and guide the course of the waters; by setting down this position or firmament, namely, that all knowledge is to be limited by religion, and to be referred to use and action.—Bacon, Of the Interpretation of Nature.

Religion is the ligature of all communities, and the firmament of laws.—Bishop Taylor, Ductor Dubitantium, iii. 3, 8.

Flicker. This, with its variant ‘flacker,’ can only be used now of the wavering motion of flames; but it was not so once.

Golding, Ovid’s Metamorphosis, b. vii.

And the Cherubins flackered with their wings, and lift themselves up from the earth.—Ezek. x. 19. Coverdale.

Flirt. This, or ‘flurt,’ as it used to be spelt, is a slightly contracted form of the French ‘fleureter,’ from ‘fleur,’ a flower, to flirt meaning to go as a bee from flower to flower, daintily sipping the sweets of one flower, and then passing on to another (see Cotgrave). At the same time much graver charges came to be often implied in the word than are implied at the present. See on it A. S. Palmer’s Leaves from a Word-hunter’s Note Book, pp. 33-40.

For why may not the mother be naught, a peevish, drunken flurt, a waspish choleric slut, a crazed piece, a fool, as soon as the nurse?—Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy, part i. sect. 2.

Gadrouillette, f. A minx, gigle, flirt, callet, Gixie; (a feigned word, appliable to any such cattell).—Cotgrave, A French and English Dictionary, ed. 1673.

Flounce. This word, meaning ‘to plunge about,’ must not be confused with ‘flounce’ (a part of a dress); see Skeat’s Dictionary.

After an exhortation to his army, he [the Emperor Conrad] commanded them all at once to flounce into the river.—Fuller, Holy War, b. ii. c. 28.

Launch now into the whirlpool, or rather flounce into the mud and quagmire.—Hacket, Life of Archbishop Williams, vol. ii. p. 200.

Fondling. ‘Fond’ retains to this day, at least in poetry, not seldom the sense of foolish; but a ‘fondling’ is no longer a fool.

An epicure hath some reason to allege, an extortioner is a man of wisdom, and acteth prudently in comparison to him; but this fondling [the profane swearer] offendeth heaven and abandoneth happiness he knoweth not why or for what.—Barrow, Sermon 15.

We have many such fondlings, that are their wives’ pack-horses and slaves.—Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy, part iii. sect. 3.

Forgetful. Exactly the converse of what has happened to ‘dreadful’ and ‘frightful’ (which see) has befallen ‘forgetful.’

Webster, A Cure for a Cuckold, act iii. sc. 1.

Milton, Paradise Lost, ii. 73.

Forlorn, }

Forlorn Hope.

There are two points of difference between the past use of ‘forlorn hope’ and the present. The first, that it was seldom used,—I can recall no single example,—in that which is now its only application, namely, of those who, being the first to mount the breach, thus set their lives upon a desperate hazard; but always of the skirmishers and others thrown out in front of an army about to engage. Here, indeed, the central notion of the word may be affirmed to agree with that it has now. These first come to hand-strokes with the enemy; they bear the brunt of their onset; with less likelihood therefore that they will escape than those who come after. This is quite true, and it comes remarkably out in my first quotation from Holland; just as in a retreat they are the ‘forlorn hope’ (Swedish Intelligencer, vol. i. p. 163), who bring up the rear. But in passages innumerable this of the greater hazard to which the ‘forlorn hope’ are exposed, has quite disappeared, and the ‘forlorn’ (for ‘hope’ is often omitted) are simply that part of the army which, being posted in the front, is first engaged. The phrase is an importation from Holland, and ‘hope’ is the Dutch ‘hoop,’ a heap, band, troop. I find it first in Gascoigne’s Fruits of War, st. 74.

The fearful are in the forlorn [see Rev. xxi. 8] of those that march for hell.—Gurnall, The Christian in Complete Armour, c. 1.

They [the Enniskillen horse] offered with spirit to make always the forlorn of the army.—Dryden (Scott’s edition), vol. vii. p. 303.

These [the Roman Velites] were loose troops, answerable in a manner to those which we call now by a French name Enfans Perdues, but when we use our own terms, The Forlorn Hope.—Sir W. Raleigh, History of the World, v. 3, 8.

Before the main battle of the Carthaginians he sets the auxiliaries and aid-soldiers, a confused rabble and medley of all sorts of nations, who, as the forlorn hope, bearing the furious heat of the first brunt, might, if they did no other good, yet, with receiving many a wound in their bodies dull and turn the edge of the enemy’s sword.—Holland, Livy, p. 765.

Upon them the light-armed forlorn hope [qui primi agminis erant] of archers and darters of the Roman host, which went before the battle to skirmish, charged forcibly with their shot.—Id., ib. p. 641; cf. pp. 1149, 1150, 1195.

Christ’s descent into hell was not ad prædicandum, to preach; useless, where his auditory was all the forlorn hope.—Fuller, Worthies of England: Hampshire.

Formal, }

Formally,

Formality.

It has been observed already, s. v. ‘Common Sense,’ that a vast number of our words have descended to us from abstruse sciences and speculations, we accepting them often in a total unconsciousness of the quarter from which they came. Another proof of this assertion is here; only, as it was metaphysics there, it is logic here which has given us the word. It is curious to trace the steps by which ‘formality,’ which meant in the language of the Schools the essentiality, the innermost heart of a thing, that which gave it its form and shape, the ‘forma formans,’ should now mean something not merely so different, but so opposite.

Shakespeare, Comedy of Errors, act v. sc. 1.

Next day we behold our bride a formal wife.—Fuller, Of the Clothes and Ornaments of the Jews, § 6.

There are many graces required of us, whose material and formal part is repentance.—Bishop Taylor, Doctrine and Practice of Repentance, i. 3, 47.

It is not only as impious and irreligious a thing, but as senseless and as absurd a thing to deny that the Son of God hath redeemed the world, as to deny that God hath created the world; and he is as formally and as gloriously a martyr that dies for this article, The Son of God is come, as he that dies for this, There is a God.—Donne, Sermons, 1640, p. 69.

According to the rule of the casuists, the formality of prodigality is inordinateness of our laying out, or misbestowing on what we should not.—Whitlock, Zootomia, p. 497.

When the school makes pertinacy or obstinacy to be the formality of heresy, they say not true at all, unless it be meant the obstinacy of the will and choice; and if they do, they speak impertinently and inartificially, this being but one of the causes that make error become heresy; the adequate and perfect formality of heresy is whatsoever makes the error voluntary and vicious.—Bishop Taylor, Liberty of Prophesying, § 2, 10.

Strong and importunate persuasions have not the nature and formality of force: but they have oftentimes the effect of it; and he that solicits earnestly, sometimes determines as certainly as if he did force.—South, Sermons, 1744, vol. viii. p. 288.

France, }

Frenchman.

We consider now, and consider rightly, that there was properly no ‘France’ before there were Franks; and, speaking of the land and people before the Frankish conquest, we use Gaul, Gauls, and Gaulish; just as we should not now speak of Cæsar’s ‘journey into England.’ Our fathers had not these scruples (North, Plutarch’s Lives). See the quotation from Milton, s. v. ‘Civil.’

Marlowe, First Book of Lucan.

A Frenchman together with a Frenchwoman, likewise a Grecian man and woman, were let down alive into the beast-market into a vault under the ground, stoned all about.—Holland, Livy, p. 467.

Fret. This, the A.S. ‘fretan,’ the German ‘fressen,’ to eat, is with us restricted now, though once it was otherwise, to the eating of the heart through care, according to an image which we all can only too well understand; and which has given the Pythagorean ‘Cor ne edito,’ the French ‘dévoré de chagrins.’

Piers Plowman, B-text, xviii. 193 (Skeat).

Chaucer, The Monkes Tale (Morris, iii. p. 205).

Id., Knightes Tale (Morris, ii. p. 64).

Thou makest his beauty to consume away, like as it were a moth fretting a garment.—Ps. xxxix. 12. P. B. V.

Frightful. Now always active, that which inspires fright; but formerly as often passive, that which is, or is liable to be, frightened. See ‘Dreadful,’ ‘Hateful.’

Drayton, Polyolbion, Song 13.

Frippery. Now such trumpery, such odds and ends of cheap finery, as one might expect to meet at an old-clothes shop; but in our early dramatists and others of their time, the shop itself where old clothes were by the ‘fripper’ or broker scoured, ‘interpolated,’ and presented anew for sale (officina vestium tritarum, Skinner); nor had ‘frippery’ then the contemptuous subaudition of worthlessness in the objects offered for sale which its present use would imply. See Littré, Dictionnaire, s. v. Friperie.

Shakespeare, The Tempest, act iv. sc. 1.

Massinger, The City Madam, act i. sc. 1.

Hast thou foresworn all thy friends in the Old Jewry? or dost thou think us all Jews that inherit there? Yet, if thou dost, come over, and but see our frippery. Change an old shirt for a whole smock with us.—Ben Jonson, Every Man in his Humour, act i. sc. 1.

Fulsome, }

Fulsomeness.

I have seen it questioned whether in the first syllable of ‘fulsome’ we are to find ‘foul’ or ‘full.’ There should be no question on the matter; seeing that ‘fulsome’ is properly no more than ‘full,’ and then secondly that which by its fulness and overfulness produces first satiety, and then loathing and disgust. This meaning of ‘fulsome’ is still retained in our only present application of the word, namely to compliments and flattery, which by their grossness produce this effect on him who is their object; but the word had once many more applications than this. See the quotation from Pope, s. v. ‘Bacchanal.’

Golding, Ovid’s Metamorphosis, b. vii.

Beaumont, Psyche, b. xix. st. 210.

Chaste and modest as he [Persius] is esteemed, it cannot be denied but that in some cases he is broad and fulsome. No decency is considered; no fulsomeness omitted.—Dryden, Dedication of Translations from Juvenal.

Making her soul to loathe dainty meat, or putting a surfeit and fulsomeness into all which she enjoys.—Rogers, Naaman the Syrian, p. 32.

Garb. One of many words, all whose meaning has run to the surface. A man’s dress was once only a portion, and a very insignificant portion, of his ‘garb,’ which included his whole outward presentment to other men; now it is all.

Ben Jonson, Volpone, act iv. sc. 1.

The greatest spirits, and those of the best and noblest breeding, are ever the most respective and obsequious in their garb, and the most observant and grateful in their language to all.—Feltham, Resolves, lxxxv.

Quarles, History of Samson, sect. 19.

A σεμνοπρέπεια in his person, a grave and a smiling garb compounded together to bring strangers into a liking of their welcome.—Hacket, Life of Archbishop Williams, part ii. p. 32.

Denham, On the Death of Cowley.

Garble. Writings only are ‘garbled’ now; and ‘garbled’ extracts are extracts dishonestly made, so shifted, mutilated, or in other ways tampered with, that, while presented as fair specimens, they convey a false impression. It is not difficult to trace the downward progress of the word. It is derived from the Low Latin ‘garbellare,’ to sift or cleanse corn from any dust or rubbish which may have become mingled with it. It was then applied to any separation of the good from the bad, retaining that, rejecting this, and used most commonly of spices; then generally to picking and choosing, but without any intention to select the better and to dismiss the worse: and lastly, as at present, to picking and choosing with the distinct purpose of selecting that which should convey the worse impression, and dismissing that which should have conveyed a truer and a better. It is a very favourite word in its earlier uses with Fuller.

Garbling of bow-staves (anno 1 R. 3, cap. 11) is the sorting or culling out of the good from the bad.—Cowell, The Interpreter, s.v.

There was a fair hospital, built to the honour of St. Anthony in Bennet’s Fink, in this city; the protectors and proctors whereof claimed a privilege to themselves, to garble the live pigs in the markets of the city; and such as they found starved or otherwise unwholesome for man’s sustenance they would slit in the ear, tie a bell about their necks, and turn them loose about the city.—Fuller, Worthies of England: London.

Id., Worthies of England. A Panegyric on Charles II.

To garble, to cleanse from dross and dirt, as grocers do their spices, to pick or cull out.—Phillips, New World of Words.

Garland. At present we know no other ‘garlands’ but of flowers; but ‘garland’ was at one time a technical name for the royal crown or diadem, and not a poetical one, as might at first sight appear; as witness these words of Matthew of Paris in his Life of Henry III.: Rex veste deauratâ, et coronulâ aureâ, quæ vulgariter garlanda dicitur, redimitus.

In the adoption and obtaining of the garland, I being seduced and provoked by sinister counsel did commit a naughty and abominable act.—Grafton, Chronicle of King Richard III.

In whose [Edward the Fourth’s] time, and by whose occasion, what about the getting of the garland, keeping it, losing and winning again, it hath cost more English blood than hath twice the winning of France.—Sir T. More, History of King Richard III. p. 107.

Shakespeare, 2 Henry IV. act iv. sc. 4.

Garret. The Old French ‘garite,’ which is our ‘garret,’ is properly a place of refuge or safety, being derived from the verb ‘garir;’ thus ‘gagner la guérite,’ to save oneself by flight. But this place of safety would be often on a high wall, in a watch-tower, upon the tops of houses; and thus the notion of the ‘garret’ was connected with that of the highest stage or storey. The subaudition of its being the poorest and meanest place in the house is an afterthought, and certainly has no place in any of the following uses of the word.

Peres the Plowman’s Crede, l. 214 (Skeat).