A SELECT GLOSSARY ETC. (continued 3)

Richard Rolle de Hampole, Pricke of Conscience, 9101-9104.

It is nat possible algate to have highe garettes, or toures, or highe places for watche men; therefor it nedethe to have out watche.—Vegetius, quoted in Way’s Promptorium, p. 187.

Gazette. The French form of an Italian word ‘gazzetta,’ designating a small piece of tin money current at Venice, of the value of less than a farthing (see Florio). This word ‘gazzetta’ may possibly be quite distinct in origin from ‘gazzetta,’ the name of a monthly bill of news printed commonly at Venice (see Skeat’s Dictionary). We see the word in this latter sense, but not as yet thoroughly at home in English, for it still retains [as it retained much later] an Italian termination, in Ben Jonson’s Volpone (act v. sc. 2), of which the scene is laid at Venice. Curiously enough the same play gives also an example, quoted below, of ‘gazette’ in the sense of a coin.

If you will have a stool, it will cost you a gazet, which is almost a penny.—Coryat, Crudities, vol. ii. p. 15.

Ben Jonson, Volpone, act ii. sc. 2.

Gelding. Restrained at present to horses which have ceased to be entire; but until ‘eunuch,’ which is of somewhat late adoption, had been introduced into the language, serving also the needs which that serves now.

Thanne Joseph was lad in Egepte, and bought him Potiphar, the gelding of Pharao.—Gen. xxxix. 1. Wiclif.

And whanne thei weren come up of the watir, the spirit of the Lord ravyschide Filip, and the gelding say hym no more.—Acts viii. 39. Wiclif.

Lysimachus was very angry, and thought great scorn that Demetrius should reckon him a gelding.—North, Plutarch’s Lives, p. 741.

Generosity. We still use ‘generous’ occasionally in the sense of highly or nobly born; but ‘generosity’ has quite lost this its earlier sense, and acquired a purely ethical meaning. Its history illustrates, as does the history of so many other words, what one may call the aristocratic tendencies of language.

Nobility began in thine ancestors and ended in thee: and the generosity that they gained by virtue, thou hast blotted by vice.—Lyly, Euphues and his England.

Their eyes are commonly black and small, noses little, nails almost as long as their fingers, but serving to distinguish their generosity.—Harris, Voyages, vol. i. p. 465.

Genial. It is curious to find ‘genial’ used in a sense not merely so different, but so directly opposed to that in which we employ it now, as in the quotation which follows we do. Whether there are other examples of the same use, I am unable to say.

There are not a few very much to be pitied, whose industry being not attended with natural parts, they have sweat to little purpose, and rolled the stone in vain, which chiefly proceedeth from natural incapacity and genial indisposition, at least to those particulars whereunto they apply their endeavours.—Sir T. Browne, Vulgar Errors, b. i. c. 5.

Gestation. Now a technical word applied only to the period during which the females of animals carry their young; but acknowledging no such limitation once.

Gestation in a chariot or wagon hath in it a shaking of the body, but some vehement, and some more soft.—Sir T. Elyot, Castle of Health, b. ii. c. 34.

Gestation, an exercise of the body, by being carried in coach, litter, upon horseback, or in a vessel on the water.—Holland, Pliny, Explanation of the Words of Art.

Ghost. It is only in the very highest acceptation of all that ‘Ghost’ and ‘Spirit’ are now synonymous and exchangeable. They once were so through the entire range of their several uses.

Piers Plowman, B-text, Passus ix. 45 (Skeat).

Chaucer, The Doctoures Tale (Morris, iii. p. 77).

He sawe that the heavens opened, and the goost as a dove commynge downe upon Him.—Mark i. 10. Coverdale.

Girl. A child, and this of either sex. In Middle English the phrase ‘knave gerlys’ occurs in the sense of boys. It fared in early English not otherwise with ‘wench’ (which see).

Piers Plowman, B-text, Passus i. 32 (Skeat).

Chaucer, Canterbury Tales, The Prologue, 663 (Morris, ii. p. 21).

Gist. This, the Old French ‘giste,’ from the old ‘gésir’ (Latin ‘jacēre’) meant formerly, as the French word ‘gîte’ means still, the place where one lodges for the night. A scroll containing the route and resting places of a royal party during a progress was sometimes so called. For the connexion between ‘gist’ in this sense and ‘gist’ as we use it now see Skeat’s Dictionary.

After he had sent Popilius before in spial, and perceived that the avenues were open in all parts, he marched forward himself, and by the second gist came to Dium [secundis castris pervenit ad Dium].—Holland, Livy, p. 1174.

The guides who were to conduct them on their way had commandment so to cast their gists and journeys that by three of the clock in the morning of the third day they might assail Pythoum.—Id., ib. p. 1193.

Glory, }

Glorious,

Gloriously.

‘Glory’ is never employed now in the sense of ‘vain-glory,’ nor ‘glorious’ in that of ‘vain-glorious,’ as once they often were.

In military commanders and soldiers, vain-glory is an essential point; for as iron sharpens iron, so by glory one courage sharpeneth another.—Bacon, Essays, 54.

So commonly actions begun in glory shut up in shame.—Bishop Hall, Contemplations, On Babel.

Lyndesay, The Monarchie.

Some took this for a glorious brag; others thought he [Alcibiades] was like enough to have done it.—North, Plutarch’s Lives, p. 183.

Likewise glorious followers, who make themselves as trumpets of the commendation of those they follow, are full of inconveniences. For they taint business through want of secrecy; and they export honour from a man, and make him a return in envy.—Bacon, Essays, 48 (Abbott, ii. p. 66).

He [Anselm] little dreamt then that the weeding-hook of Reformation would after two ages pluck up his glorious poppy [prelacy] from insulting over the good corn [presbytery].—Milton, Reason of Church Government, b. i. c. 5.

I speak it not gloriously, or out of affectation.—Ben Jonson, Every Man out of his Humour, act ii. sc. 1.

Good-nature, }

Good-natured.

As metaphysics have yielded us ‘common sense,’ and logic ‘formal’ and ‘formality,’ so we owe to theology ‘good-nature.’ By it our elder divines understood far more than we understand by it now; even all which it is possible for a man to have, without having the grace of God. The contrast between grace and nature was of course unknown to the Greeks; but, this being kept in mind, we may say that the ‘good-nature’ of our theology two centuries ago was as nearly as possible expressed by the εὐφυΐα of Aristotle (Eth. Nic. iii. 7; compare the ‘heureusement né’ of the French); the genial preparedness for the reception of every high teaching. In the paper of The Spectator, quoted below, which treats exclusively of ‘good-nature,’ the word is passing, but has by no means passed, into its modern meaning. See ‘Ill-nature.’

Good-nature, being the relics and remains of that shipwreck which Adam made, is the proper and immediate disposition to holiness. When good-nature is heightened by the grace of God, that which was natural becomes now spiritual.—Bishop Taylor, Sermon preached at the Funeral of Sir George Dalstone.

Good-nature! alas, where is it? Since Adam fell, there was never any such thing in rerum naturâ; if there be any good thing in any man, it is all from grace. We may talk of this and that, of good-natured men, and I know not what; but the very truth is, set grace aside (I mean all grace, both renewing grace and restraining grace), there is no more good-nature in any man than there was in Cain and in Judas. That thing which we use to call good-nature is indeed but a subordinate means or instrument, whereby God restraineth some men more than others, from their birth and special constitution, from sundry outrageous exorbitances, and so is a branch of this restraining grace whereof we now speak.—Sanderson, Sermons, 1671, vol. i. p. 279.

If any good did appear in the conversation of some men who followed that religion [the Pagan], it is not to be imputed to the influence of that, but to some better cause; to the relics of good-nature, to the glimmerings of natural light, or (perhaps also) to secret whispers and impressions of divine grace on some men’s minds vouchsafed in pity to them.—Barrow, Sermon 14 on the Apostles’ Creed.

They [infidels] explode all natural difference of good and evil; deriding benignity, mercy, pity, gratitude, ingenuity; that is, all instances of good-nature, as childish and silly dispositions.—Id., Sermon 6 on the Apostles’ Creed.

Xenophon, in the Life of his imaginary Prince, is always celebrating the philanthropy or good-nature of his hero, which he tells us he brought into the world with him.—Spectator, no. 169.

Gospeller. Now seldom used save in ritual language, and there designating the priest or deacon who in the divine service reads the Gospel of the day; but employed once as equivalent to ‘Evangelist,’ and subsequently applied to adherents of the Reformed faith; both which meanings have since departed from it.

Marke, the gospeller, was the goostli sone of Petre in baptysm.—Wiclif, The Prologe of Marke.

The persecution was carried on against the gospellers with much fierceness by those of the Roman persuasion.—Strype, Memorial of Archbishop Cranmer, b. iii. c. 16.

Gossip. It would be interesting to collect instances in which the humbler classes of society have retained the correct use of a word, which has been let go by those of higher education. ‘Gossip’ is one, being still used by our peasantry in its first and etymological sense, namely as a sponsor in baptism—one sib or akin in God, according to the doctrine of the medieval Church, that sponsors contracted a spiritual affinity with the child for whom they stood. ‘Gossips,’ in this primary sense, would often be familiar with one another—and thus the word was applied to all familiars and intimates. At a later day it came to signify such idle talk, the ‘commérage’ (which word has exactly the same history), which too often would find place in the intercourse of such.

They had mothers as we had; and those mothers had gossips (if their children were christened), as we are.—Ben Jonson, The Staple of News, The Induction.

Thus fareth the golden mean, through the misconstruction of the extremes. Well-tempered zeal is lukewarmness; devotion is hypocrisy; charity, ostentation; constancy, obstinacy; gravity, pride; humility, abjection of spirit; and so go through the whole parish of virtues, where misprision and envy are gossips, be sure the child shall be nicknamed.—Whitlock, Zootomia, p. 3.

Should a great lady that was invited to be a gossip, in her place send her kitchen-maid, ’twould be ill-taken.—Selden, Table-Talk, Prayer.

Grave. The O.E. ‘grafan’ (compare German ‘graben,’ ‘to grave’) was once used in the senses which ‘graben’ still retains. See ‘Engrave.’

Chaucer, Legend of Good Women, 784 (Skeat, p. 50).

I wil laye sege to the rounde aboute, and grave up dykes against ye.—Isai. xxix. 3. Coverdale.

He hath graven and digged up a pit, and is fallen himself into the destruction that he made for other.—Ps. vii. 16. (P. B. V.)

Grope. Now to feel for, and uncertainly, as does a blind man or one in the dark; but once simply to feel, to grasp.

Tho han hondis, and schulen not grope [et non palpabunt, Vulg.]—Ps. cxiii. 7. Wiclif.

I have touched and tasted the Lord, and groped Him with hands, and yet unbelief hath made all unsavoury.—Rogers, Naaman the Syrian, p. 231.

Grudge. Now to repine at the good which others already have, or which we may be required to impart to them; but it formerly implied open utterances of discontent and displeasure against others, and did the work which ‘to murmur’ does now. Traces of this still survive in our English Bible.

And the Farisees and scribis grutchiden; seiynge, For this resseyveth synful men, and etith with hem.—Luke xv. 2. Wiclif.

After bakbytyng cometh grucching or murmuracioun, and somtyme it springith of impacience agayns God, and somtyme agains man.—Chaucer, The Persones Tale (Morris, iii. p. 305).

Yea without grudging Christ suffered the cruel Jews to crown Him with most sharp thorns, and to strike Him with a reed.—Foxe, Book of Martyrs: Examination of William Thorpe.

Use hospitality one to another without grudging [ἄνευ γογγυσμῶν].—1 Pet. iv. 9. (A.V.)

Guard. Is ‘guard,’ in the sense of welt or border to a garment, nothing more than a special application of ‘guard,’ as it is familiar to us all? or is it altogether a different word with its own etymology, and only by accident offering the same letters in the same sequence? I have assumed, though not with perfect confidence, the former; for indeed otherwise the word would have no right to a place here.

Antipater wears in outward show his apparel with a plain white welt or guard, but he is within all purple, I warrant you, and as red as scarlet.—Holland, Plutarch’s Morals, p. 412.

Then were the fathers of those children glad men to see their sons apparelled like Romans, in fair long gowns, garded with purple.—North, Plutarch’s Lives, p. 492.

Shakespeare, Merchant of Venice, act ii. sc. 2.

Hag. One of the many words applied formerly to both sexes, but now restrained only to one. See ‘Coquet,’ ‘Girl,’ ‘Harlot,’ ‘Hoyden,’ ‘Termagant,’ ‘Witch.’

Golding, Ovid’s Metamorphosis, b. iv.

Chapman, Byron’s Conspiracies, act iii.

Handsome, }

Handsomeness.

Now referred exclusively to comeliness, either literal or figurative. It is of course closely connected with ‘handy,’ indeed differs from it only in termination, and in all early uses means having prompt and dexterous use of the hands, and then generally able, adroit. In Cotgrave’s Dictionary, ‘habile,’ ‘adroit,’ ‘maniable,’ take precedence of ‘beau,’ ‘belle,’ as its French equivalents. See ‘Unhandsome.’

Few of them [the Germans] use swords or great lances; but carry javelins with a narrow and short iron, but so sharp and handsome, that, as occasion serveth, with the same weapon they can fight both at hand and afar off.—Greenwey, Tacitus, vol. i. p. 259.

A light footman’s shield he takes unto him, and a Spanish blade by his side, more handsome to fight short and close [ad propiorem habili pugnam].—Holland, Livy, p. 255.

Philopœmen sought to put down all exercise, which made men’s bodies unmeet to take pains, and to become soldiers to fight in defence of their country, that otherwise would have been very able and handsome for the same.—North, Plutarch’s Lives, p. 306.

Golding, Ovid’s Metamorphosis, b. vi.

Harbinger. This word belongs at present to our poetical diction, and to that only; its original significance being nearly or quite forgotten: as is evident from the inaccurate ways in which it has come to be used; as though a ‘harbinger’ were merely one who announced the coming, and not always one who prepared a place and lodging, a ‘harbour,’ for another. He did indeed announce the near approach, but only as an accidental consequence of his office. Our Lord, if we may reverently say it, assumed to Himself precisely the office of a ‘harbinger,’ when He said, ‘I go to prepare a place for you’ (John xiv. 2).

There was a harbinger who had lodged a gentleman in a very ill room; who expostulated with him somewhat rudely; but the harbinger carelessly said, ‘You will take pleasure in it when you are out of it.’—Bacon, Apophthegms.

Shakespeare, Macbeth, act i. sc. 4.

The fame of Frederick’s valour and maiden fortune, never as yet spotted with ill success, like a harbinger hastening before, had provided victory to entertain him at his arrival.—Fuller, Holy War, b. iii. c. 31.

Bishop Taylor, On the Annunciation.

Hardy, }

Hardily.

When used of persons, ‘hardy’ means now enduring, indifferent to fatigue, hunger, thirst, heat, cold, and the like. But it had once a far more prevailing sense of bold, which now only remains to it in connexion with things, as we should still speak of a ‘hardy,’ meaning thereby a bold, assertion; though never now of a ‘hardy,’ if we intended a bold or daring person. Lord Bacon’s Charles the Hardy is Charles le Téméraire, or Charles the Bold, as we always style him now.

Chaucer, Legend of Good Women (Skeat, p. 86).

It is not to be forgotten that Commineus observeth of his first master, duke Charles the Hardy, namely, that he would communicate his secrets with none.—Bacon, Essays, 27.

Hardily [audacter, Vulg.] he entride in to Pilat, and axide the body of Jhesu.—Mark xv. 43. Wiclif (earlier version).

Harlot. I have no desire to entangle myself in the question of this word’s etymology; it is sufficient to observe that it was used of both sexes alike; and though for the most part a word of slight and contempt, signifying generally a low fellow, vagabond, buffoon, acrobat (in the Promptorium ‘scurrus’ is the Latin equivalent of it), implied nothing of that special form of sin to which it now exclusively refers.

Morte Arthure, 2446.

Piers Plowman, B-text, Passus 18, 77 (Skeat).

Chaucer, Prologue, 647.

Thou lord (God) has done mare wondire than the herlot: he lerid to ga in a corde, thou makis men to ga abouen the watire.—Hampole, Psalm xxxix. 7 (ed. Bramley, 1884).

No man but he and thou and such other false harlots praiseth any such preaching.—Foxe, Book of Martyrs; Examination of William Thorpe.

About this time [A.D. 1264] a redress of certain sects was intended, among which one by name specially occurreth, and called the assembly of harlots,16 a kind of people of a lewd disposition and uncivil.—Id., ib. vol. i. p. 435.

Harness. In French the difference between the ‘harness’ of a man and of a horse is expressed by a slight difference in the spelling, ‘harnois’ in one case, ‘harnais’ in the other. In English we only retain the word now in the second of these uses.

But when a stronger then he cometh apon hym and overcommeth him, he taketh from him his harnes wherin he trusted, and devideth his gooddes.—Luke xi. 22. Tyndale.

When Abram herde that his brother was taken, he harnessed his bonde-servauntes, and followed after them untill Dan.—Gen. xiv. Coverdale.

Those that sleep in Jesus shall God bring with Him, and harness them with the bright armour of life and immortality.—H. More, Grand Mystery of Godliness, b. iv. c. 18.

Milton, On the Nativity.

Harvest. It is remarkable that while spring, summer, winter, have all their home-bred names, we designate the other quarter of the year by its Latin title ‘autumn,’ ‘hærfest’ (= the German ‘Herbst’) having been appropriated to the ingathering of the fruits of this season, not to the season itself. In this indeed we are truer to the proper meaning of ‘harvest’ than the Germans, who have transferred the word from the former to the latter; for it is closely related with the Greek καρπός. Occasionally, however, as in the passages which follow, ‘harvest’ assumes with us also the signification of autumn.

These ben hervest trees [arbores autumnales, Vulg.] with out fruyt, twies deed, drawun up bi the roote.—Jude 12. Wiclif.

Golding, Ovid’s Metamorphosis, b. ii.

Hassock. Already in Phillips’s New World of Words, 1706, the ‘hassock’ was what it is now, ‘a kind of straw cushion used to kneel upon in churches;’ and some of us may remember to have seen in country churches ‘hassocks’ of solid tufts of coarse black grass which had so grown and matted together that they served this purpose sufficiently well. But this is only the secondary and transferred use of the word. It was once the name by which this coarse grass growing in these rank tufts was itself called; and this name, as Forby tells us, in Norfolk it still bears. See Way’s Promptorium, s. v. ‘Hassok.’

Land so full of hassocks as to be impossible to find the deer among them.—Hutchinson, Drainage of Land.

These hassocks, in bogs, were formerly taken up with a part of the soil, matted together with roots, shaped, trimmed, and dressed, a sufficient part of their shaggy and tufted surface being left to make kneeling much easier than on the pavement of the church or the bare-boarded floor of a pew.—Forby, East Anglia.

Hateful. This has undergone exactly the same limitation of meaning as ‘Dreadful’ and ‘Frightful,’ which see.

Shakespeare, Richard II., act ii. sc. 2.

Pope, Messiah, 57.

Hear. Our scholars of the seventeenth century occasionally use the Latin idiom, ‘to hear well,’ or ‘to hear ill,’ i.e. concerning oneself (bene audire, male audire), instead of, to be praised, or to be blamed.

[Fabius] was well aware, that not only within his own camp, but also now at Rome, he heard ill for his temporizing and slow proceedings.—Holland, Livy, p. 441.

What more national corruption, for which England hears ill abroad, than household gluttony?—Milton, Areopagitica, p. 431.

The abbot made his mind known to the Lord Keeper, that he would gladly be present in the Abbey of Westminster on our Christmas-day in the morning, to behold and hear how that great feast was solemnized in our congregations, which heard very ill beyond the seas for profaneness.—Hacket, Life of Archbishop Williams, part i. p. 210.

Hearse. Now the carriage in which the dead are conveyed to the grave, but this was not the meaning from the first. The origin is the French ‘herse,’ a harrow; this implement in France being made in a triangular form, not square as with us. Hence the name of ‘herce’ or ‘herche’ was given to a triangular framework, generally of iron, used for holding a number of candles at funerals; and which, being elaborately fashioned and framed, was allowed afterwards to remain in the church for a longer or shorter period.

In the quer was a hersse mad of tymbur and covered with blake, and armes upon the blake.—Diary of Henry Machyn, 1550-1563, p. 44.

A cenotaph is an empty funeral monument or tomb, erected for the honour of the dead; in imitation of which our hearses here in England are set up in churches during the continuance of a year or for the space of certain months.—Weever, Ancient Funeral Monuments, p. 32.

Hearse, an empty tomb erected for the honour of the dead.—Phillips, New World of Words.

Bishop King, Poems, p. 19.

Help. ‘To help’ used not unfrequently to designate an assisting in one particular manner, in that namely of healing. A recent editor of Shakespeare, not having this present in his mind, has said of those lines first quoted below: ‘We cannot but believe Shakespeare wrote, Do wounds salve wounds, &c., or Do wounds heal wounds, &c.’ There is indeed nothing here needing to be set right.

Shakespeare, Lucrece.

Id., Two Gentlemen of Verona, act iv. sc. 2.

Milton, Comus, 842.

Hereafter. This word, while it looks on to a future, always looks on to one more or less divided by an interval of time from the present. But it was often employed as equivalent to ‘from this time forth’ in our Elizabethan literature; it is so in the examples which follow.

Hereafter [ἀπ’ ἄρτι] ye shall see heaven open and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of man.—St. John i. 51. (A.V.)

Shakespeare, Macbeth, act i. sc. 4.

Hide. This word is at present only contemptuously applied to the skin of man, being reserved almost exclusively for that of beasts; but it had once the same extent of meaning as by the German ‘haut’ is still retained, which is ‘cutis’ and ‘pellis’ both.

Eger and Grine, 263.

Ballad of John de Reeve, 226.

Hobby. The ‘hobby’ being the ambling nag ridden for pleasure, and then the child’s toy in imitation of the same, had in these senses nearly passed out of use, when the word revived, by a very natural transfer, in the sense which it now has, of a favourite pursuit which carries a man easily and pleasantly forward.

They have likewise excellent good horses (we term them hobbies), which have not the same pace that other horses in their course, but a soft and round amble, setting one leg before another very finely.—Holland, Camden’s Ireland, p. 63.

King Agesilaus, having a great sort of little children, was one day disposed to solace himself among them in a gallery where they played, and took a little hobby-horse of wood, and bestrid it.—Puttenham, Art of English Poesy, b. iii. c. 24.

Randolph, Poems, p. 19.

Homely. The etymology of ‘homely’ which Milton puts into the mouth of Comus,

witnesses that in his time it had the same meaning which it has in ours. At an earlier day, however, it much more nearly corresponded to the German ‘heimlich,’ that is, secret, inward, familiar, as those may be presumed to be that share in a common home. ‘Homeliness’ is more than once the word by which Wiclif translates ‘mansuetudo:’ thus, 2 Cor. x. 1; Jam. i. 21.

And the enemyes of a man ben thei that ben homeli with him.—Matt. x. 36. Wiclif. [Cf. Judg. xix. 4, and often.]

Chaucer, The Marchaundes Tale (Morris, ii. p. 335).

Such peple be able and worthi to be admytted into the homeli reding of Holi Writt.—Pecock, Repressor, c. 3.

With all these men I was right homely, and communed with them long time and oft.—Foxe, Book of Martyrs; Examination of William Thorpe.

Hoyden. Now and for a long time since a clownish ill-bred girl; what is vulgarly called in America a ‘gal-boy,’ yet it is only another form of ‘heathen.’ Remote as the words appear at starting, it will not be hard to bring them close together. In the first place, it is only by a superinduced meaning that ‘heathen’ has its present sense of non-christian; it is properly, as Grimm has abundantly shown, as indeed Piers Plowman had told us long ago, a dweller on the heath; then any living a wild savage life; thus we have in Wiclif (Acts xxviii. 1), ‘And the hethene men [barbari, Vulg.] diden to us not litil curtesie;’ and only afterwards was the word applied to those who resisted to the last the humanizing influences of the Christian faith. This ‘heathen’ is in Dutch ‘heyden’ (see Sewel); while less than two hundred years ago ‘hoyden’ was by no means confined, as it now is, to the female sex, the clownish ill-bred girl, but was oftener applied to men.

Shall I argue of conversation with this hoyden, to go and practise at his opportunities in the larder?—Milton, Colasterion.

Falourdin, m. A lusk, lowt, lurden, a lubberly sloven, heavy sot, lumpish hoydon.—Cotgrave, A French and English Dictionary.

Badault, m. A fool, dolt, sot, fop, ass, coxcomb, gaping hoydon.—Id. ib.

A rude hoidon; Grue, badault, falourdin, becjaune; Balordo, babionetto, rustico; Bouaron.—Howell, Lexicon Tetraglotton.

Humour, }

Humourous,

Humourist.

The four ‘humours’ in man, according to the old physicians, were blood, choler, phlegm, and melancholy. So long as these were duly tempered, all would be well. But so soon as any of them unduly preponderated, the man became ‘humourous,’ one ‘humour’ or another bearing too great a sway in him. As such, his conduct would not be according to the received rule of other men, but have something peculiar, whimsical, self-willed in it. In this the self-asserting character of the ‘humourous’ man lay the point of contact, the middle term, between the modern use of ‘humour’ and the ancient. It was his ‘humour’ which would lead a man to take an original view and aspect of things, a ‘humourous’ aspect, first in the old sense, which in some of our provincial dialects still lives on, and then in that which we now employ. The classical passage in English literature on ‘humour’ and its history is the Prologue, or ‘Stage,’ as it is called, to Ben Jonson’s Every Man out of his Humour; it is, however, too long to cite; an earlier occurs in Gower’s Confessio Amantis, lib. 7, in init. See ‘Temper.’ ‘Humourous’ has been sometimes used in quite another sense, as simply equivalent to moist; so in the passage from Chapman’s Homer, quoted below.

In which [kingdom of heaven] neither such high-flown enthusiasts, nor any dry churlish reasoners and disputers, shall have either part or portion, till they lay down those gigantic humours, and become (as our Saviour Christ, who is that unerring Truth, has prescribed) like little children.—H. More, Grand Mystery of Godliness, b. viii. c. 15.

Good Humour is not only the best security against enthusiasm, but the best foundation of piety and true religion. For if right thoughts and worthy apprehensions of the Supreme Being are fundamental to all true worship and adoration, ’tis more than probable we shall never miscarry in this respect except through Ill Humour only.—Shaftesbury, Works, 1727, vol. i. p. 22.

Shakespeare, As You Like It, act i. sc. 2.

The people thereof [Ephraim] were active, valiant, ambitious of honour; but withal hasty, humourous, hard to be pleased; forward enough to fight with their foes, and too forward to fall out with their friends.—Fuller, A Pisgah Sight of Palestine, b. ii. c. 9.

Or it may be (what is little better than that), instead of the living righteousness of Christ, he will magnify himself in some humourous pieces of holiness of his own.—H. More, Grand Mystery of Godliness, b. viii. c. 14.

Upon his sight of the first signs and experiments of the plagues which did accompany them, he [Pharaoh] demeaned himself like a proud phantastic humorist.—Jackson, Christ’s Everlasting Priesthood, b. x. c. 40.

The seamen are a nation by themselves, a humourous and fantastic people.—Clarendon, History of the Rebellion, b. ii. in init.

Wretched men, that shake off the true comely habit of religion, to bespeak them a new-fashioned suit of profession at an humourist’s shop!—Adams, The Devil’s Banquet, p. 52.

Chapman, Homer’s Odysseis, b. iv. l. 120.

Hunger. It was long before this and ‘famine’ were desynonymized, and indeed the great famine year is still spoken of in Ireland as ‘the year of the hunger.’ Still in the main the words are distinguished, ‘famine’ expressing an outward fact, the dearth of food, and ‘hunger’ the inward sense and experience of this fact.

And aftir that he hadde endid alle thingis, a strong hungre was maad in that cuntre.—Luke xv. 14. Wiclif.

Richard Rolle de Hampole, Pricke of Conscience, 4035.

Oon of hem roos up, Agabus bi name, and signefiede bi the spirit a greet hungur to comynge in al the world, which hungur was maad undur Claudius.—Acts xi. 28. Wiclif.

Behold the tyme commeth that I shal sende an hunger in to the earth; not the hunger of bread, nor the thyrst of water.—Amos viii. 11. Coverdale.

Husband. This, the Old Norse ‘hús-bondi,’ is much more nearly the Latin ‘paterfamilias’ than ‘vir.’ As the house, above all that of him who owns and tills the soil, stands by a wise and watchful economy, it is easy to see how ‘husband’ came to signify one who knows how prudently to spare and save.

All good husbands agree in this, That every work should have the due and convenient season.—Holland, Pliny, vol. i. p. 556.

They are too good husbands, and too thrifty of God’s grace, too sparing of the Holy Ghost, that restrain God’s general propositions, Venite omnes, Let all come, so particularly as to say that when God says all, he means some.—Donne, Sermon 33.

Cowley, The Shortness of Life and Uncertainty of Riches.

After we come once to view the seam or vein where the hidden treasure lies, we account all we possess besides as dross; for whose further assurance we alienate all our interest in the world, with as great willingness as good husbands do base tenements or hard-rented leases, to compass some goodly royalty offered them more than half for nothing.—Jackson, The Eternal Truth of the Scriptures, b. iv. c. 8.

Idiot, }

Idiotical.

A word with a very interesting and instructive history, which, however, is only fully intelligible by a reference to the Greek. The ἰδιώτης or ‘idiot’ is first the private man as distinguished from the man sustaining a public office; then, inasmuch as public life was considered an absolutely necessary condition of man’s highest education, the untaught or mentally undeveloped, as distinguished from the educated; and only after it had run through these courses did ‘idiot’ come to signify what ἰδιώτης never did, the man whose mental powers are not merely unexercised but deficient, as distinguished from him in full possession of them. This is the only employment to which we now put the word; but examples of its earlier and more Greek uses are frequent in Jeremy Taylor and others. See my Synonyms of the N.T. § 79.

And here, again, their allegation out of Gregory the First and Damascene, That images be the laymen’s books, and that pictures are the Scripture of idiots and simple persons, is worthy to be considered.—Homilies; Against Perils of Idolatry.

It is clear, by Bellarmine’s confession, that S. Austin affirmed that the plain places of Scripture are sufficient to all laics, and all idiots or private persons.—Bishop Taylor, A Dissuasive from Popery, part ii. b. i. § 1.

Christ was received of idiots, of the vulgar people, and of the simpler sort, while He was rejected, despised, and persecuted even to death by the high priests, lawyers, scribes, doctors, and rabbies.—Blount, Philostratus, p. 237.

It [Scripture] speaks commonly according to vulgar apprehension, as when it tells of ‘the ends of the heaven;’ which now almost every idiot knows hath no ends at all.—John Smith, Select Discourses, vi., On Prophecy.

Truth is content, when it comes into the world, to wear our mantles, to learn our language: it speaks to the most idiotical sort of men in the most idiotical way. The reason of this plain and idiotical style of Scripture it may be worth our farther taking notice of.—Id., ibid.

Ill-nature, }

Ill-natured.

This is now rather one special evil quality, as κακία is often in Greek; it was once the complex of all, or more properly the natural substratum on which they all were superinduced. See ‘Good-nature,’ and, in addition to the passage from South, quoted below, a very instructive discussion on both words in his Sermons, 1737, vol. vi. pp. 104-111.

I may truly say of the mind of an ungrateful person, that it is kindness-proof. It is inpenetrable, unconquerable; unconquerable by that which conquers all things else, even by love itself. And the reason is manifest; for you may remember that I told you that ingratitude sprang from a principle of ill-nature; which being a thing founded in such a certain constitution of blood and spirit, as being born with a man into the world, and upon that account called nature, shall prevent all remedies that can be applied by education.—South, Sermons, 1737, vol. i. p. 429.

King Henry the Eighth was an ill-natured prince to execute so many whom he had so highly favoured.—Sir T. Overbury, Crumbs fallen from King James’ Table.

He is the worst of men, whom kindness cannot soften, nor endearments oblige; whom gratitude cannot tie faster than the bands of life and death.—He is an ill-natured sinner.—Bishop Taylor, The Miracles of the Divine Mercy, serm. 27.

Imp. Employed in nobler senses formerly than now. ‘To imp’ is properly to engraft, and an ‘imp’ a graft, scion, or young shoot; and, even as we now speak of the ‘scions’ of a noble house, so there was in earlier English the same natural transfer of ‘imps’ from plants to persons.

Piers Plowman, B-text, Passus v. 136 (Skeat).

Chaucer, The Monkes Prologue (Morris, iii. p. 200).

The sudden taking away of those most goodly and virtuous young imps, the Duke of Suffolk and his brother, by the sweating sickness, was it not also a manifest token of God’s heavy displeasure towards us?—Becon, A Comfortable Epistle.

The king returned into England with victory and triumph; the king preferred there eighty noble imps to the order of knighthood.—Stow, Annals, 1592, p. 385.

Impotent, }

Impotence.

The inner connexion between weakness and violence is finely declared in Latin in the fact that ‘impotens’ and ‘impotentia’ imply both; so once did ‘impotent’ and ‘impotence’ in English (see Spenser’s Fairy Queen, ii. 11, 23), though they now retain only the meaning of weak.

Massinger, The Unnatural Combat, act iii. sc. 2.

The Lady Davey, ever impotent in her passions, was even distracted with anger, that she was crossed in her will.—Hacket, Life of Archbishop Williams, part i. p. 194.

The truth is, that in this battle and whole business the Britons never more plainly manifested themselves to be right barbarous; such confusion, such impotence, as seemed likest not to a war, but to the wild hurry of a distracted woman, with as mad a crew at her heels.—Milton, History of England, b. ii.

If a great personage undertakes an action passionately and upon great interest, let him manage it indiscreetly, let the whole design be unjust, let it be acted with all the malice and impotency in the world, he shall have enough to flatter him, but not enough to reprove him.—Bishop Taylor, Holy Living, c. 2, § 6.

Improve. So long as the verb ‘to improve’ was directly connected in men’s thoughts with the Latin ‘improbare,’ it was inevitable that it should have a meaning very different from that which now attaches to it; and so we find it used as equivalent to the Greek ἐλέγχειν, the Latin ‘reprobare,’ to disapprove of, to disallow.

If tho thre [opinions] be sufficiently improved, that is to saie, if it be sufficiently schewen that the thre be nought and untrewe and badde, alle the othere untrewe opiniouns bilded upon hem muste needis therebi take her fal.—Pecock, Repressor, part 1, c. 1.

For love of the world the olde pharesies blasphemed the Holy Ghost, and persecuted the manifest truth which they could not improve.—Tyndale, Exposition on the First Epistle of S. John.

If ye cannot improve it [my doctrine] by God’s word, and yet of an hate and malicious mind that you bear to the truth, labour to resist it and condemn it that it should not spread, I ensure you your sin is irremissible and even against the Holy Ghost.—Frith, Works, 1572, p. 3.

Be instant in season and out of season; improve [ἔλεγξον], rebuke, exhort with all longsuffering and doctrine.—2 Tim. iv. 2. (Geneva Version.)

Incense. Now to kindle anger only; but once to kindle or inflame any passion, good or bad, in the breast. Anger, as the strongest passion, finally appropriated the word, just as in Greek it made θυμός and ὀργή its own.

He [Asdrubal] it was, that when his men were weary and drew back, incensed [accendit] them again, one while by fair words and entreaty, another while by sharp checks and rebukes.—Holland, Livy, p. 665.

Prince Edward struck his breast and swore, that though all his friends forsook him, yet he would enter Ptolemais, though only with Fowin, his horsekeeper. By which speech he incensed the English to go on with him.—Fuller, Holy War, b. iv. c. 28.

Incivility. See ‘Civil.’

By this means infinite numbers of souls may be brought from their idolatry, bloody sacrifices, ignorance, and incivility, to the worshipping of the true God.—Sir W. Raleigh, Of the Voyage for Guiana.

Incredulous, }

Incredulity.

In Low Latin, and in ages of a blind unintelligent faith, ‘credulitas’ came to be regarded as equivalent to ‘fides,’ and ‘credulity’ to ‘faith.’ The two latter, with their negatives, ‘incredulity’ and ‘unbelief,’ have been usefully desynonymized in our later English; but the quotations which follow will show that this was not always the case.

For we also were sometime unwise, incredulous, erring, serving divers lusts and voluptuousnesses.—Tit. iii. 3. Rhemish Version.

And we see that they could not enter in because of incredulity.—Heb. iii. 19. The same version.

But let us take heed; as God hates a lie, so He hates incredulity, an obstinate, a foolish, and pertinacious understanding.—Bishop Taylor, Sermon at the Funeral of the Lord Primate.

Indifferent, }

Indifference,

Indifferently.

It is a striking testimony of the low general average which we assume common to most things, that a thing which does not differ from others, is therefore qualified as poor; a sentence of depreciation is pronounced upon it when it is declared to be ‘indifferent.’ When in Greek διαφέρειν means ‘præstare,’ and τὰ διαφέροντα ‘præstantiora,’ we have exactly the same feeling embodying itself at the other end. But this use of these words is modern. ‘Indifferent’ was impartial once, not making differences where none really were.

God receiveth the learned and unlearned, and casteth away none, but is indifferent unto all.—Homilies: Exhortation to the Reading of Holy Scripture.

If overseer of the poor, he [the good parishioner] is careful the rates be made indifferent, whose inequality oftentimes is more burdensome than the sum.—Fuller, Holy State, b. ii. c. 11.

Sir P. Sidney, Astrophel and Stella, 39.

Requesting that they might speak before the senate, and be heard with indifference.—Holland, Livy, p. 1214.

That they may truly and indifferently minister justice.—Book of Common Prayer.

Individual. Properly not capable of division; indivisible, as is an atom; then, undivided, inseparable, and so used in the quotations which follow. We, using ‘individual’ as = person, have in fact recurred to the earlier meaning.

Milton, On Time.

Holyday, Marriages of the Arts, act ii. sc. 6.

Indolence. ‘Indolentia’ was a word first invented by Cicero, when he was obliged to find some equivalent for the ἀπάθεια of certain Greek schools. That it was not counted one of his happiest coinages we may conclude from the seldom use of it by any other authors but himself, as also from the fact that Seneca, a little later proposing ‘impatientia’ as the Latin equivalent for ἀπάθεια, implied that none such had hitherto been found. The word has taken firmer root in English than it ever did in Latin. At the same time, meaning as it does now a disposition or temper of languid non-exertion, it has lost the accuracy of use which it had in the philosophical schools, where it signified a state of freedom from passion and pain; which signification it retained among our own writers of the Caroline period, and even later. To this day, indeed, surgeons call certain painless swellings ‘indolent tumours.’

Now, to begin with fortitude, they say it is the mean between cowardice and rash audacity, of which twain the one is a defect, the other an excess of the ireful passion; liberality between niggardise and prodigality, clemency and mildness between senseless indolence and cruelty.—Holland, Plutarch’s Morals, p. 69.

Now though Christ were far from both, yet He came nearer to an excess of passion than to an indolency, to a senselessness, to a privation of natural affections. Inordinateness of affections may sometimes make some men like some beasts; but indolency, absence, emptiness, privation of affections, makes any man, at all times, like stones, like dirt.—Donne, Sermons, 1640, p. 156.

The submission here spoken of in the text is not a stupid indolence, or insensibility under such calamities as God shall be pleased to bring upon us.—South, Sermons, 1744, vol. x. p. 97.

Ingenious, }

Ingenuous,

Ingeniously,

Ingenuity,

Ingenuousness.

We are now pretty well agreed in our use of these words; but there was a time when the uttermost confusion reigned amongst them. Thus, in the first and second quotations which follow, ‘ingenious’ is used where we should now use, and where oftentimes the writers of that time would have used, ‘ingenuous,’ and the converse in the third; while in like manner ‘ingenuity’ in each of the succeeding three quotations stands for our present ‘ingenuousness,’ and ‘ingenuousness’ in the last for ‘ingenuity.’ In respect of ‘ingenious’ and ‘ingenuous,’ the arrangement at which we have now arrived regarding their several meanings, namely that the first indicates mental, the second moral qualities, is good; ‘ingenious’ being from ‘ingenium’ and ‘ingenuous’ from ‘ingenuus.’ But ‘ingenuity,’ being from ‘ingenuous,’ should have kept the meaning, which it has now quite let go, of innate nobleness of disposition; while ‘ingeniousness,’ against which there can be no objection to which ‘ingenuousness’ is not equally exposed, might have expressed what ‘ingenuity’ does now.

Now as an ingenious debtor desires his freedom at his creditor’s hands, that thereby he may be capable of paying his debt, as well as to escape the misery which himself should endure by his imprisonment; so an ingenious soul (and such is every saint) deprecates hell, as well with an eye to God’s glory as to his own ease and happiness.—Gurnall, The Christian in Complete Armour, part ii. c. 54, § 2.

Shakespeare, Taming of the Shrew, act i. sc. 1.

An ingenious person will rather wear a plain garment of his own than a rich livery, the mark of servitude.—Bates, Spiritual Perfection, Preface.

Shakespeare, Timon of Athens, act ii. sc. 2.

Since heaven is so glorious a state, and so certainly designed for us, if we please, let us spend all that we have, all our passions and affections, all our study and industry, all our desires and stratagems, all our witty and ingenuous faculties, towards the arriving thither.—Bishop Taylor, Holy Dying, c. 2, § 4.

Christian simplicity teaches openness and ingenuity in contracts and matters of buying and selling.—Id., Sermon 24. part ii.

When a man makes use of the name of any simple idea, which he perceives is not understood, or is in danger to be mistaken, he is obliged by the laws of ingenuity and the end of speech, to declare his meaning, and make known what idea he makes it stand for.—Locke, An Essay concerning Human Understanding, b. iii. c. 11, § 14.

It [gratitude] is such a debt as is left to every man’s ingenuity (in respect to any legal coaction) whether he will pay it or no.—South, Sermons, vol. i. p. 410.

By his ingenuousness he [the good handicrafts-man] leaves his art better than he found it.—Fuller, Holy State, b. ii. c. 19.

Inn. This has always meant a lodging, a place to which one turns in; but it is now, and for a long time has been, restricted to one which yields food and shelter, or it may be only the last, in return for payment. Such terms as Lincoln’s Inn, Gray’s Inn, attest the older use of the word.

Chaucer, Knightes Tale, 1578 (Morris, ii. p. 75).

Sylvester, Du Bartas, his Divine Works, The Capitaine, 369.

Insolent, }

Insolence.

The ‘insolent’ is properly no more than the unusual. This, as the violation of the fixed law and order of society, is commonly offensive, even as it indicates a mind willing to offend; and thus ‘insolent’ has acquired its present meaning. But for the poet, the fact that he is forsaking the beaten track, that he can say,

in this way to be ‘insolent’ or original, as we should now say, may be his highest praise. The epithet ‘furious’ joined to ‘insolence’ in the second quotation is to be explained of that ‘fine madness’ which Spenser as a Platonist esteemed a necessary condition of the poet.

For ditty and amorous ode I find Sir Walter Raleigh’s vein most lofty, insolent, and passionate.—Puttenham, Art of English Poesy, b. i. c. 3.

Spenser, Colin Clout’s come Home again, 619 (Morris, v. p. 105).

Institute, }

Instituter,

Institution.

These all had once in English meanings coextensive with those of the Latin words which they represent. We now inform, instruct (the images are nearly the same), but we do not ‘institute,’ children any more.

Sylvester, Du Bartas; Seventh Day of the First Week.

Neither did he this for want of better instructions, having had the learnedest and wisest man reputed of all Britain, the instituter of his youth.—Milton, History of England, b. iii.

A Short Catechism for the institution of young persons in the Christian Religion.—Title of a Treatise by Jeremy Taylor.

Intend, }

Intention.

The inveterate habit of procrastination has brought us to say now that we ‘intend’ a thing, when we mean hereafter to do it. Our fathers with a more accurate use of the word ‘intended’ that which they were at that moment actually and earnestly engaged in doing. The same habit of procrastination has made ‘by-and-bye’ mean not straightway, but at a comparatively remote period; and ‘presently’ not at this present, but in a little while. ‘Intention’ too, or ‘intension,’ for Jeremy Taylor in the same work spells the word both ways, was once something not future but present.

The Devil sleepeth not. He ever intendeth to withdraw us from prayer.—Latimer, Sermons, vol. i. p. 342.

So often as he [Augustus] was at them [the games], he did nothing else but intend the same.—Holland, Suetonius, p. 60.

He [Lord Bacon] saw plainly that natural philosophy hath been intended by few persons, and in them hath occupied the least part of their time.—Bacon, Filum Labyrinthi, 6.

It is so plain that every man profiteth in that he most intendeth, that it needeth not to be stood upon.—Id., Essays, 29.

Ben Jonson, Cynthia’s Revels.

Shirley, The Royal Master, act ii. sc. 1.

According as we neglect meditation, so are our prayers imperfect; meditation being the soul of prayer, and the intention of our spirit.—Bishop Taylor, Life of Christ, part i. § 5.

Jacobin. The great French Revolution has stamped itself too deeply and terribly upon the mind of Europe for ‘Jacobin’ ever again to have any other meaning than that which the famous Club, assembling in the hall of the Jacobin convent, has given it; but it needs hardly to say that a ‘Jacobin’ was once a Dominican friar, though this name did not extend beyond France.

Romaunt of the Rose, 6339 (Morris, vi. p. 193).

Marlowe, The Massacre at Paris, act iii. sc. 4.

A certain Jacobin offered himself to the fire to prove that Savonarola had true revelations, and was no heretic.—Bishop Taylor, The Liberty of Prophesying, The Epistle Dedicatory.

Jolly. For a long time after its adoption into the English language, ‘jolly’ kept the meaning of beautiful, which it brought with it from the French, and which ‘joli’ in French still retains.

William of Palerne, 5478.

Golding, Ovid’s Metamorphosis, b. 13.

Beaumont, Psyche, iv. 4.

Kindly. Nothing ethical was connoted in ‘kindly’ once; it was simply the adjective of ‘kind.’ But it is God’s ordinance that ‘kind’ should be ‘kindly,’ in our modern sense of the word as well; and thus the word has attained this meaning. See ‘Unkind.’

This Joon in the Gospel witnesseth that the kyndeli sone of God is maad man.—Wiclif, Prologe of John.

Forasmuch as his mind gave him, that, his nephews living, men would not reckon that he could have right to the realm, he thought therefore without delay to rid them, as though the killing of his kinsmen could amend his cause, and make him a kindly king.—Sir T. More, History of King Richard III.

The royal eagle is called in Greek Gnesios, as one would say, true and kindly, as descended from the gentle and right aëry of eagles.—Holland, Pliny, vol. i. p. 272.

Whatsoever as the Son of God He may do, it is kindly for Him as the Son of Man to save the sons of men.—Andrewes, Sermons, vol. iv. p. 253.

Where are they? Gone to their own place, to Judas their brother; and, as is most kindly, the sons, to the father, of wickedness, there to be plagued with him for ever.—Id., Of the Conspiracy of the Gowries, serm. 4.

What greater tyranny and usurpation over poor souls would he have than is now exercised, since the perjured prelates, the kindly brood of the Man of sin, have defiled and burdened our poor Church?—Jus Populi Vindicatum, 1665.

Knave. How many serving-lads must have been unfaithful and dishonest before ‘knave,’ which meant at first no more than boy, acquired the meaning which it has now! Note the same history in the German ‘Bube,’ ‘Dirne,’ ‘Schalk,’ and see ‘Varlet.’

If it is a knave child, sle ye him; if it is a womman, kepe ye.—Exodus i. 16. Wiclif.

Chaucer, The Man of Lawes Tale (Morris, ii. p. 192).

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

Knuckle. The German ‘Knöchel’ is any joint whatsoever; nor was our ‘knuckle’ limited formerly, as now it well nigh exclusively is, at least in regard of the human body, to certain smaller joints of the hand.

Golding, Ovid’s Metamorphosis, b. 1.

But when

the pace of the verse told me that her maukin knuckles were never shapen to that royal buskin.—Milton, Apology for Smectymnuus, p. 186.

Lace. That which now commonly bears this name has it on the score of its curiously woven threads; but ‘lace,’ Old French ‘las,’ ‘laqs,’ identical with the Latin ‘laqueus,’ is commonly used by our earlier writers in the more original sense of a noose.

Earl of Surrey, The Restless State of a Lover, p. 2 (ed. 1717).

Yet if the polype can get and entangle him [the lobster] once within his long laces, he dies for it.—Holland, Plutarch’s Morals, p. 973.

Landscape. The second syllable in ‘landscape’ or ‘landskip’ is only a Dutch example of an earlier form of the same termination which we meet in ‘friendship,’ ‘lordship,’ ‘fellowship,’ and the like. As these mean the manner or fashion of a friend, of a lord, and so on, so ‘landscape’ the manner or fashion of the land; and in our earlier English this rather as the pictured or otherwise counterfeited model, than in its very self. As this imitation would be necessarily in small, the word acquired the secondary meaning of a compendium or multum in parvo; cf. Skinner, Etymologicon, s. v. Landskip: Tabula chorographica, primario autem terra, provincia, seu topographica, σκιαγραφία; Phillips, New World of Words, s. v.; and Earle, Philology of the English Tongue, § 327, who suggests that the word has been borrowed by us from the Dutch painters, which would account for the termination ‘-scape,’ ‘-skip’ instead of the native suffix ‘-ship.’ See Skeat’s Dictionary.

The sins of other women show in landskip, far off and full of shadow; her [a harlot’s] in statue, near hand and bigger in the life.—Sir Thomas Overbury, Characters.

London, as you know, is our Ἑλλάδος Ἑλλάς, our England of England, and our landskip and representation of the whole island.—Hacket, Life of Archbishop Williams, part ii. p. 59.

The detestable traitor, that prodigy of nature, that opprobrium of mankind, that landscape of iniquity, that sink of sin, and that compendium of baseness, who now calls himself our Protector.—Address sent by the Anabaptists to the King, 1658, in Clarendon’s History of the Rebellion, b. xv.

Latch. Few things now are ‘latched’ or caught except a door or casement; but the word was formerly of much wider use. It is the O.E. lœccan.

Those that remained threw darts at our men, and latching our darts, sent them again at us.—Golding, Cæsar, p. 60.

Peahens are wont to lay by night, and that from an high place where they perch; and then, unless there be good heed taken that the eggs be latched in some soft bed underneath, they are soon broken.—Holland, Pliny, vol. i. p. 301.

Lecture. Where words like ‘lecture’ and ‘reading’ exist side by side, it is very usual for one after a while to be appropriated to the doing of the thing, the other to the thing which is done. So it has been here; but they were once synonymous.

After the lecture of the law and of the prophets, the rulers of the synagogue sent unto them, saying, Good brethren, if ye have any sermon to exhort the people, say on.—Acts xiii. 15. Coverdale.

That may be gathered out of Plutarch’s writings, out of those especially where he speaketh of the lecture of the poets.—North, Plutarch’s Lives, p. 982.

In my lecture I often perceive how my authors commend examples for magnanimity and force, that rather proceed from a thick skin and hardness of the bones.—Florio, Montaigne’s Essays, p. 72.

Legacy. This now owns no relation except with ‘lēgatum,’ which meant in juristic Latin a portion of the inheritance by testamentary disposition withdrawn from the heir, and bestowed upon some other. It was formerly used as a derivative of ‘legatus,’ ambassador, in the sense of embassage.

They were then preaching bishops, and more often seen in pulpits than in princes’ palaces: more often occupied in his legacy, who said, Go ye into the whole world and preach the gospel to all men, than in embassages and affairs of princes.—Homilies, Against Peril of Idolatry.

Otherwise, while he is yet far off, sending a legacy, he asketh those things that belong to peace.—Luke xiv. 32. Rheims.

And his citizens hated him, and they sent a legacie after him, saying, We will not have this man to reign over us.—Luke xix. 14. Ibid.

Levy. Troops are now raised, or ‘levied,’ indifferently: but a siege is only raised, and not ‘levied,’ as it too once might have been.

Euphranor having levied the siege from this one city, forthwith led his army to Demetrias.—Holland, Livy, p. 1178.

Lewd, }

Lewdly,

Lewdness.

There are three distinct stages in the meaning of the word ‘lewd;’ of these it has entirely overlived two, and survives only in the third, namely in that of wanton or lascivious. Without discussing here its etymology or its exact relation to ‘lay,’ it is sufficient to observe, that, as ‘lay,’ it was often used in the sense of ignorant, or rather unlearned. Next, according to the proud saying of the Pharisees, ‘This people who knoweth not the law are cursed’ (John vii. 49), and on the assumption, which would have its truth, that those untaught in the doctrines, would be unexercised in the practices, of Christianity, it came to signify vicious, though without designating one vice more than others. While in its present and third stage, it has, like so many other words, retired from this general designation of all vices, to express one of the more frequent, alone.

Piers Plowman, B-text, Passus xii. 115 (Skeat).

For as moche as the curatis ben often so lewed, that thei understonden not bookis of Latyn for to teche the peple, it is spedful not only to the lewed peple, but also to the lewed curatis, to have bookis in Englisch of needful loore to the lewed people.—Wycliffe Mss., p. 5.

Chaucer, The Squieres Tale (Morris, ii. p. 361).

Joon was a lewde fischere and untaught in scolys.—Purvey, Preface to Epistles of St. Jerome, p. 65.

Neither was it Christ’s intention that there should be any thing in it [the Lord’s Prayer] dark or far from our capacity, specially since it belongeth equally to all, and is as necessary for the lewd as the learned.—A Short Catechism, 1553.

Milton, Paradise Lost, vi. 178.

If it were a matter of wrong or wicked lewdness [ῥᾳδιούργημα], O ye Jews, reason would that I should bear with you.—Acts xviii. 14. (A.V.)

Liberal. Often used by Shakespeare and his contemporaries as free of tongue, licentious or wanton in speech.

Shakespeare, Hamlet, act iv. sc. 7.

Desdemona [of Iago]: Is he not a most profane and liberal counsellor?—Id., Othello, act ii. sc. 1.

Webster, The Famous History of Sir Thomas Wyatt.

Libel. This, properly a little book, is with us any defamatory speech or writing; but was not formerly so restricted; indeed, in the legal language of Scotland, where an indictment is in technical language a ‘libel,’ it still retains a wider meaning.

Forsoothe, it is said, Who evere shal leeve his wyf, geve he to hir a libel.—Matt. v. 31. Wiclif.

Let the Allmightie geve me answere, and let him that is my contrary party sue me with a lybell.—Job xxxi. 35. Coverdale.

Ben Jonson, Catiline, act v. sc. 4.

Libertine. A striking evidence of the extreme likelihood that he who has no restraints on his belief will ere long have none upon his life, is given by this word ‘libertine.’ Applied at first to certain heretical sects, and intended to mark the licentious liberty of their creed, ‘libertine’ soon let go altogether its relation to what a man believed, and acquired the sense which it now has, a ‘libertine’ being one who has released himself from all moral restraints, and especially in his relations with the other sex.

That the Scriptures do not contain in them all things necessary to salvation, is the fountain of many great and capital errors; I instance in the whole doctrine of the libertines, familists, quakers, and other enthusiasts, which issue from this corrupted fountain.—Bishop Taylor, A Dissuasive from Popery, part ii. b. 1, § 2.

It is not to be denied that the said libertine doctrines do more contradict the doctrine of the Gospel, even Christianity itself, than the doctrines of the Papists about the same subjects do.—Baxter, Catholic Theology, part iii. p. 289.

It is too probable that our modern libertines, deists, and atheists, took occasion from the scandalous contentions of Christians about many things, to disbelieve all.—A Discourse of Logomachies, 1711.

Litigious. This word has changed from an objective to a subjective sense. Things were ‘litigious’ once, which offered matter for going to law; persons are ‘litigious’ now, who are prone to going to law. Both meanings are to be found in the Latin ‘litigiosus,’ though predominantly that which we have now made the sole meaning.

Dolopia he hath subdued by force of arms, and could not abide to hear that the determination of certain provinces, which were debatable and litigious, should be referred to the award of the people of Rome.—Holland, Livy, p. 1111.

Of the articles gainsaid by a great outcry, three and no more did seem to be litigious.—Hacket, Life of Archbishop Williams, part i. p. 140.

Dryden, Virgil’s Georgics, b. i. 193, 4.

Lively. This had once nearly, if not altogether, the same meaning as ‘living.’ We have here the explanation of a circumstance which many probably have noted and regretted in the Authorized Version of the New Testament, namely that while λίθον ζῶντα at 1 Pet. ii. 4 is ‘a living stone,’ λίθοι ζῶντες, which follows immediately, ver. 5, is only ‘lively stones,’ ‘living’ being thus brought down to ‘lively’ with no correspondent reduction in the original to warrant it. But when our Version was made, there was scarcely any distinction between the forces of the words. Still it would certainly have been better to adhere to one word or the other.

Mine enemies are lively (Heb. living), and they are strong.—Ps. xxxviii. 19. (A.V.)

Was it well done to suffer him, imprisoned in chains, lying in a dark dungeon, to draw his lively breath at the pleasure of the hangman?—Holland, Livy, p. 228.

Shakespeare, Titus Andronicus, act iii. sc. 1.

Massinger, The Fatal Dowry, act ii. sc. 1.

Livery. It need hardly be observed that the explanation of ‘livery’ which Spenser offers (see below) is perfectly correct; but we do not any longer recognize the second of those uses of the word there mentioned by him. It is no longer applied to the ration, or stated portion of food, delivered at stated periods (the σιτομέτριον of Luke xii. 42), either to the members of a household, to soldiers, or to others.

Ballad of John de Reeve, 155.

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

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

Loiter, }

Loiterer.

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

God bad that no such strong lubbers should loyter and goe a begging, and be chargeable to the congregation.—Tyndale, Works, p. 217.

He that giveth any alms to an idle beggar robbeth the truly poor; as S. Ambrose sometimes complaineth that the maintenance of the poor is made the spoil of the loiterer.—Sanderson, Sermons, 1671. vol. i. p. 198.

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

They spend their youth in loitering, bezzling, and harlotting.—Milton, Animadversions on Remonstrants’ Defence.

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

If ye love them that love you, what thank have ye therefore? for sinners also love their lovers.—Luke vi. 32. Coverdale.

For Hiram was ever a lover of David.—1 Kin. v. 1. (A.V.)

Shakespeare, Cymbeline, act v. sc. 5.

Ben Jonson, The Poetaster.

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

East of Edom lay the land of Uz, where Job dwelt, so renowned for his patience, when the devil heaped afflictions upon him, allowing him no lucid intervals.—Fuller, A Pisgah Sight of Palestine, b. iv. c. 2.

Dryden, Mac-Flecknoe.

Such is the nature of man, that it requires lucid intervals; and the vigour of the mind would flag and decay, should it always jog on at the rate of a common enjoyment, without being sometimes quickened and exalted with the vicissitude of some more refined pleasures.—South, Sermons, 1744, vol. viii. p. 403.

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

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

Lumber, potius lumbar, as to put one’s clothes to lumbar, i.e. pignori dare, oppignorare.—Skinner, Etymologicon.

Butler, Upon Critics.

They put up all the little plate they had in the lumber, which is pawning it, till the ships came.—Lady Murray, Lives of George Baillie and of Lady Grisell Baillie.

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

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

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

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

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

Chaucer, Canterbury Tales, 192.

Through faith a man is purged of his sins, and obtaineth lust unto the law of God.—Tyndale, Prologue upon the Epistle to the Romans.

It was not because of the multitude of you above all nations that the Lord had lust unto you and chose you.—Deut. vii. 7. Coverdale.

My lust to devotion is little, my joy none at all.—Bishop Hall, Letters, Dec. 2, Ep. 1.

Thou mayest kill and eat flesh in all thy gates, whatsoever thy soul lusteth after.—Deut. xii. 15. (A.V.)

Luxury, }

Luxurious.

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

Chaucer, The Man of Lawes Tale (Morris, ii. p. 198).

Luxury and lust fasten a rust and foulness on the mind, that it cannot see sin in its odious deformity, nor virtue in its unattainable beauty.—Bates, Spiritual Perfection, c. 1.

Luxury, all superfluity and excess in carnal pleasures, sumptuous fare or building; sensuality, riotousness, profuseness.—Phillips, New World of Words.

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

Again, that many of their Popes be such as I have said, naughty, wicked, luxurious men, they openly confess.—Jackson, The Eternal Truth of Scriptures, b. ii. c. 14.

Magnificent, }

Magnificence.

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

Then cometh magnificence, that is to say when a man doth and performeth gret werkes of goodnesse.—Chaucer, The Persones Tale.

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

Massinger, The Emperor of the East, act ii. sc. 1.

Bounty and magnificence are virtues very regal; but a prodigal king is nearer a tyrant than a parsimonious.—Bacon, Essays, Of a King.

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

To him [John the Apostle] God hangyng in the cross bitook his modir, that a mayde schulde kepe a mayde.—Wiclif, Prolog of John.

Chaucer, Prologe of the Wyf of Bathe, 79.

Sir Galahad is a maid and sinner never; and that is the cause he shall achieve where he goeth that ye nor none such shall not attain.—Sir T. Malory, Morte D’Arthur, b. xiii. c. 16.

Make, }

Maker.

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

Chaucer, Compleynt of Venus, 79 (Skeat).

Spenser, The Shepherd’s Calendar, June.

The old famous poete Chaucer, for his excellencie and wonderful skil in making, his scholler Lidgate (a worthy scholler of so excellent a maister) calleth the Loadestarre of our language.—E. K., Epistle Dedicatory to Spenser’s Shepherd’s Calendar.

There cannot be in a maker a fouler fault than to falsify his accent to serve his cadence, or by untrue orthography to wrench his words to help his rhyme.—Puttenham, Art of English Poesy, b. ii. c. 8.

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

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

They [the Angels] be pure minds and were never neither blinded through sin, ne hindered through any earthly mansion and corruptible body.—Hutchinson, Works, p. 160 (ed. 1842).

Milton, Comus, i. 4.

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

The manuring hand of the tiller shall root up all that burdens the soil.—Milton, Reason of Church Government.

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

A rare and excellent wit untaught doth bring forth many good and evil things together; as a fat soil, that lieth unmanured, bringeth forth both herbs and weeds.—North, Plutarch’s Lives, p. 185.

Every man’s hand itching to throw a cudgel at him, who, like a nut-tree, must be manured by beating, or else would never bear fruit.—Fuller, Holy War, ii. 11.

Mean, }

Meanness.

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

And the mean man boweth down, and the great man humbleth himself.—Isai. ii. 9. (A.V.)

Spenser, Fairy Queen, iv. 7, 16.

Mechanic, }

Mechanical.

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

Base and mechanical niggardise they [flatterers] account temperate frugality.—Holland, Plutarch’s Morals, p. 93.

Shakespeare, 2 Henry VI., act i. sc. 3.

It was never a good world, since employment was counted mechanic, and idleness gentility.—Whitlock, Zootomia, p. 30.

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

In the drynke that she meddlid to you, mynge ye double to hir.—Apoc. xviii. 6. Wiclif.

How is it that thou, being a Jew, askest drink of me, which am a Samaritan? For the Jews meddle not [oὐ συγχρῶνται] with the Samaritans.—John iv. 9. Cranmer.

We beseech you, brethren, that ye study to be quiet, and to meddle with your own business.—1 Thess. iv. 10, 11. Tyndale.

Spenser, The Shepherd’s Calendar, May.

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

Their buildings are for the most part of tymber, for the mediterranean countreys have almost no stone.—The Kyngdome of Japonia, p. 6.

An old man, full of days, and living still in your mediterranean city, Coventry.—Henry Holland, Preface to Holland’s Cyropædia.

It [Arabia] hath store of cities, as well mediterranean as maritime.—Holland, Ammianus.

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

The consul for his part forslowed not to come to handfight. The medley continued above three hours, and the hope of victory hung in equal balance.—Holland, Livy, p. 1119.

Now began the conflict for the winning and defending of that old castle, which proved a medley of twelve hours long.—Swedish Intelligencer, vol. ii. p. 41.

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

That property of melancholy, whereby men become to be delirious in some one point, their judgment standing untouched in others.—H. More, A Brief Discourse of Enthusiasm, sect. xiv.

Luther’s conference with the devil might be, for ought I know, nothing but a melancholy dream.—Chillingworth, The Religion of Protestants, Preface.

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

Some melancholy men have believed that elephants and birds and other creatures, have a language whereby they discourse with one another.—Bishop Reynolds, Passions and Faculties of the Soul, c. 39.

Mere, }

Merely.

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

With them all the people of Mounster went out, and many other of them which were mere English, thenceforth joined themselves with the Irish against the king, and termed themselves very Irish.—Spenser, View of the State of Ireland.

Our wine is here mingled with water and with myrrh; there [in heaven] it is mere and unmixed.—Bishop Taylor, The Worthy Communicant.

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

Shakespeare, Hamlet, act i. sc. 2.

Mess. This used continually to be applied to a quarternion, or group of four persons or things. Probably in the distribution of food to large numbers, it was found most convenient to arrange them in fours, and hence this application of the word. A ‘mess’ at the Inns of Court still consists of four. A phrase-book published in London in 1617 bears this title, ‘Janua Linguarum Quadrilinguis, or A Messe of Tongues, Latine, English, French, and Spanish.’

There lacks a fourth thing to make up the mess.—Latimer, Sermon 5.

Shakespeare, 3 Henry VI. act i. sc. 4.

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

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

It was impossible to live without our king, but as slaves live, that is, such who are civilly dead, and persons condemned to metals.—Bishop Taylor, Ductor Dubitantium, Epistle Dedicatory.

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

The finest methodists, according to Aristotle’s golden rule of artificial bounds, condemn geometrical precepts in arithmetic, or arithmetical precepts in geometry, as irregular and abusive.—G. Harvey, Pierce’s Supererogation, p. 117.

For physick, search into the writings of Hippocrates, Galen and the methodists.—Sanderson, Sermons, vol. ii. p. 135.

All of us have some or other tender parts of our souls, which we cannot endure should be ungently touched; every man must be his own methodist to find them out.—Jackson, Justifying Faith, b. iv. c. 5.

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

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