A SELECT GLOSSARY ETC. (continued 4)

The king’s captains and soldiers fight his battles, and yet he is summus imperator, and the power of the militia is his.—Bishop Taylor, Ductor Dubitantium, iii. 3, 7.

Ye are of his flock and his militia; ye are now to fight his battles, and therefore to put on his armour.—Id., On Preparation for Confirmation, § 7.

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

Sylvester, Du Bartas’ Weeks, The Imposture.

Old Song.

Minute. ‘Minutes’ are now ‘minúte’ portions of time; they might once be ‘minúte’ portions of anything.

But whanne a pore widewe was comun, sche keste two mynutis, that is a ferthing.—Mark xii. 42. Wiclif.

Let us, with the poor widow of the Gospel, at least give two minutes.—Becon, The Nosegay, Preface.

An enquiry into the minutes of conscience is commonly the work of persons that live holily.—Bishop Taylor, Doctrine and Practice of Repentance, Preface.

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

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

We are not therefore ashamed of the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, because miscreants in scorn have upbraided us that the highest of our wisdom is, Believe.—Hooker, Ecclesiastical Polity, b. v.

One sort you say be those that believe not in Christ, but deny Christ and his Scripture; as be the Turks, paynims, and such other miscreants.—Frith, Works, 1572, p. 62.

Shakespeare, 1 Henry VI., act v. sc. 2.

The consort and the principal servants of Soliman had been honourably restored without ransom; and the emperor’s generosity to the miscreant was interpreted as treason to the Christian cause.—Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, c. 58.

Miser, }

Misery,

Miserable.

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

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

Spenser, Fairy Queen, ii. 1, 8.

He [Perseus] returned again to his old humour which was born and bred with him, and that was avarice and misery.—North, Plutarch’s Lives, p. 215.

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

If avarice be thy vice, yet make it not thy punishment; miserable men commiserate not themselves; bowelless unto themselves, and merciless unto their own bowels.—Sir T. Browne, Letter to a Friend.

The liberal-hearted man is by the opinion of the prodigal, miserable; and by the judgment of the miserable, lavish.—Hooker, Ecclesiastical Polity, b. v. c. 65.

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

Shakespeare, Tempest, act i. sc. 2.

Beaumont and Fletcher, The Mad Lover, act. ii.

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

Shakespeare, Henry V., act ii. Chorus.

Id., Richard II., act iii. sc. 2.

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

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

Chaucer, The Knightes Tale, 900.

Chapman, Homer’s Odysseis, xxii. 518.

Golding, Ovid’s Metamorphosis, b. ii.

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

Here are forbidden all wanton words, and all morose delighting in venereous thoughts, all rolling and tossing such things in our minds.—Bishop Taylor, Doctrine and Practice of Repentance, c. 4, § 1.

All morose thoughts, that is, delaying, dwelling, or insisting on such thoughts, fancying of such unclean matters with delectation.—Hammond, Practical Catechism, b. ii. § 6.

In this [the seventh] commandment are forbidden all that feed this sin [adultery], or are incentives to it, as luxurious diet, inflaming wines, an idle life, morose thoughts, that dwell in the fancy with delight.—Nicholson, Exposition of the Catechism, 1662, p. 123.

For we must know that it is the morose dwelling of the thoughts upon an injury, a long and sullen meditation upon a wrong, that incorporates and rivets it into the mind.—South, Sermons, vol. x. p. 278.

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

Shakespeare, 2 Henry VI., act iii. sc. 2.

Id., Antony and Cleopatra, act v. sc. 2.

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

Such is the weakness and easy credulity of men, that a mountebank or cunning woman is preferred before an able physician.—Whitlock, Zootomia, p. 437.

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

Oldham, Third Satire upon the Jesuits.

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

Marlowe, Dr. Faustus, 5, 6.

Shakespeare, Sonnet 21.

Milton, Lycidas, 19.

Dryden, Absalom and Achitophel, pt. 1.

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

Peucestas, having feasted them in the kingdom of Persia, and given every soldier a mutton to sacrifice, thought he had won great favour and credit among them.—North, Plutarch’s Lives, p. 505.

A starved mutton’s carcass would better fit their palates.—Ben Jonson, The Sad Shepherd, act i. sc. 2.

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

For there are many disobedient, and talkers of vanity, and deceivers of minds, namely [μάλιστα] they of the circumcision.—Tit. i. 10. Tyndale.

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

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

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

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

Heathen naturalists hold better consort with the primitive Church concerning the nature of sin original than the Socinians.—Jackson, Of Christ’s Everlasting Priesthood, b. x. c. 8, § 4.

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

These ferthinges shal be gaderid at everi moneth ende, and delid forth to the needful man in honor of Christ and his moder.—English Gilds, p. 38.

Grieve not the heart of him that is helpless, and withdraw not the gift from the needful.—Ecclus. iv. 2. Coverdale.

For thou art the poor man’s help, and strength for the needful in his necessity.—Isai. xxv. 3. Id.

Great variety of clothes have been permitted to princes and nobility, and they usually give those clothes as rewards to servants and other persons needful enough.—Bishop Taylor, Holy Living, iv. 8, 13.

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

The warts, black moles, spots and freckles of fathers, not appearing at all upon their own children’s skin, begin afterwards to put forth and show themselves in their nephews, to wit, the children of their sons and daughters.—Holland, Plutarch’s Morals, p. 555.

With what intent they [the apocryphal books] were first published, those words of the nephew of Jesus do plainly enough signify: After that my grandfather Jesus had given himself to the reading of the law and the prophets, he purposed also to write something pertaining to learning and wisdom.—Hooker, Ecclesiastical Polity, b. v. c. 20.

If any widow have children or nephews [ἔκγονα], let them learn first to show piety at home, and to requite their parents.—1 Tim. v. 4. (A.V.)

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

A. W. [Anthony Wood] was with him several times, ate and drank with him, and had several discourses with him concerning arms and armory, which he understood well; but he found him nice and supercilious.—A. Wood, Athenæ Oxonienses, 1848, vol. i. p. 161.

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

Laban answeride to hym: My dowytres and sones, and the flockis, and alle that thou beholdist, ben myne, and what may I do to my sones and to my neces?—Gen. xxi. 43 (cf. Exod. xxxiv. 7). Wiclif.

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

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

Noisome, }

Noisomeness.

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

They that will be rich fall into temptations and snares, and into many foolish and noisome [βλαβεράς] lusts, which drown men in perdition and destruction.—1 Tim. vi. 9. Geneva.

He [the superstitious person] is persuaded that they be gods indeed, but such as be noisome, hurtful, and doing mischief unto men.—Holland, Plutarch’s Morals, p. 260.

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

They [the prelates] are so far from hindering dissension, that they have made unprofitable, and even noisome, the chiefest remedy we have to keep Christendom at one, which is, by Councils.—Milton, Reason of Church Government, b. i. c. 6.

Sad in his time was the condition of the Israelites, oppressed by the Midianites, who swarmed like grasshoppers for number and noisomeness, devouring all which the other had sown.—Fuller, A Pisgah Sight of Palestine, part i. b. ii. c. 8.

Novel, }

Novelist.

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

Townley Mysteries.

But, see and say what you will, novelists had rather be talked of, that they began a fashion and set a copy for others, than to keep within the imitation of the most excellent precedents.—Hacket, Life of Archbishop Williams, part ii. p. 36.

Every novelist with a whirligig in his brain must broach new opinions, and those made canons, nay sanctions, as sure as if a General Council had confirmed them.—Adams, The Devil’s Banquet, 1614, p. 52.

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

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

A jolly dame, no doubt; as appears by the well battling of the plump boy, her nursery.—Fuller, A Pisgah Sight of Palestine, part i. b. ii. c. 8.

If nursery exceeds her [a mother’s] strength, and yet her conscience will scarce permit her to lay aside and free herself from so natural, so religious a work, yet tell her, God loves mercy better than sacrifice.—Rogers, Matrimonial Honour, p. 247.

Shakespeare, King Lear, act i. sc. 1.

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

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

I have set my mark upon them [i.e. affected pedantic words]; and if any of them may have chanced to escape the obelisk, there can arise no other inconvenience from it but an occasion to exercise the choice and judgment of the reader.—Phillips, New World of Words, Preface.

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

They envy Christ, but they turn upon the man, who was more obnoxious to them, and they tell him that it was not lawful for him to carry his bed that day [John v. 10].—Donne, Sermon 20.

Examine thyself in the particulars of thy relations; especially where thou governest and takest accounts of others, and art not so obnoxious to them as they to thee.—Bishop Taylor, The Worthy Communicant, c. vi. sect. 2.

What shall we then say of the power of God Himself to dispose of men? little, finite, obnoxious things of his own making?—South, Sermons, 1744, vol. viii. p. 315.

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

Obsequious, }

Obsequiousness.

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

Besides many other fishes in divers places, which are very obeisant and obsequious, when they be called by their names.—Holland, Plutarch’s Morals, p. 970.

I ever set this down, that the only course to be held with the Queen was by obsequiousness and observance.—Lord Bacon, Defence of Himself.

His corrections are so far from compelling men to come to heaven, as that they put many men farther out of their way, and work an obduration rather than an obsequiousness.—Donne, Sermon 45.

In her relation to the king she was the best pattern of conjugal love and obsequiousness.—Bates, Sermon upon the Death of the Queen.

Occupy, }

Occupier.

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

He [Eumenes] made as though he had occasion to occupy money, and so borrowed a great sum of them.—North, Plutarch’s Lives, p. 505.

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

Mercury, the master of merchants and occupiers [ἀγοραίων].—Holland, Plutarch’s Morals, p. 692.

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

Southwell, Lewd Love is Loss.

Of gold the very smallest filings are precious, and our Blessed Saviour, when there was no want of provision, yet gave it in charge to his disciples, the off-fall should not be lost.—Sanderson, Preface to the Clavi Trabales.

Poor Lazarus lies howling at his gates for a few crumbs; he only seeks chippings, offals; let him roar and howl, famish and eat his own flesh; he respects him not.—Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy, part iii. sect. 1.

Officious, }

Officiousness.

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

Milton, Paradise Regained, ii. 302.

Officious, ready to do good offices, serviceable, friendly, very courteous and obliging.—Phillips, New World of Words.

They [the nobility of France] were tolerably well bred, very officious, humane, and hospitable.—Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France, p. 251.

S. Johnson (A.D. 1782).

Which familiar and affectionate officiousness and sumptuous cost, together with that sinister fame that woman was noted with [Luke vii. 37], could not but give much scandal to the Pharisees there present.—H. More, Grand Mystery of Godliness, b. viii. c. 13.

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

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

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

Sylvester, Du Bartas, Fifth Day.

Κόκκος βαφική, a shrub, whose red berries or grains gave an orient tincture to cloth.—Fuller, A Pisgah Sight of Palestine, b. iv. c. 6.

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

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

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

And another dai he brougte forth twey pans, and gaf to the ostiler [stabulario, Vulg].—Luke x. 35. Wiclif.

Corbet. Iter. Boreale.

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

Spenser, Fairy Queen, i. 4, 39.

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

Also we forgive the oversights and faults committed against us, and the crown-tax that ye ought us.—1 Macc. xiii. 39. Geneva Version.

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

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

Painful, }

Painfulness,

Painfully.

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

Within fourteen generations, the royal blood of the kings of Judah ran in the veins of plain Joseph, a painful carpenter.—Fuller, Holy War, b. v. c. 29.

I think we have some as painful magistrates as ever was in England.—Latimer, Sermons, p. 142.

Painfulness by feeble means shall be able to gain that which in the plenty of more forcible instruments is through sloth and negligence lost.—Hooker, Ecclesiastical Polity, b. v. § 22.

O the holiness of their living, and painfulness of their preaching!—Fuller, Holy State, b. ii. c. 6.

Whoever would be truly thankful, let him live in some honest vocation, and therein bestow himself faithfully and painfully.—Sanderson, Sermons, vol. i. p. 251.

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

Rejoice not thou, whole Palestina, because the rod of him that smote thee is broken.—Isai. xiv. 29. (A.V.)

Such their [the Philistines’] puissance, that from them the Greeks and Latins called all this land Palestina, because the Philistines lived on the sea coast, most obvious to the notice of foreigners.—Fuller, A Pisgah Sight of Palestine, ii. 10, 23.

Milton, Paradise Lost, i. 462.

Palliate, }

Palliation.

‘To palliate’ is at this day to extenuate a fault through the setting out of whatever will best serve to diminish the estimate of its gravity; and does not imply any endeavour wholly to deny it; nay, implies rather a certain recognition and admission of the fault itself. Truer to its etymology once, it expressed the cloking of it, the attempt, successful or otherwise, entirely to conceal and cover it. Eve ‘palliates’ her fault in the modern sense of the word (Gen. iii. 13), Gehazi in the earlier (2 Kin. v. 25).

Daniel, The Tragedy of Philotas, act iv. sc. 2.

You see the Devil could fetch up nothing of Samuel at the request of Saul, but a shadow and a resemblance, his countenance and his mantle, which yet was not enough to cover the cheat, or to palliate the illusion.—South, Sermon on Easter Day.

The generality of Christians make the external frame of religion but a palliation for sin.—H. More, Grand Mystery of Godliness, p. ix.

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

I would our pantomimes also and stage-players would examine themselves and their callings by this rule.—Sanderson, Sermon on 1 Cor. vii. 24.

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

Butler, Hudibras, p. 3, can. 2.

Pathetic, }

Pathetical,

Pathetically.

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

He [Hiel, cf. Josh. vi. 26 and 1 Kings xvi. 34] mistood Joshua’s curse rather for a pathetical expression than prophetical prediction.—Fuller, A Pisgah Sight of Palestine, b. ii. c. 12.

Beaumont, Psyche, c. i. st. 148.

For Truth, I know not how, hath this unhappiness fatal to her, ere she can come to the trial and inspection of the understanding; being to pass through many little wards and limits of the several affections and desires, she cannot shift it, but must put on such colours and attire as those pathetical handmaids of the soul please to lead her in to their queen.—Milton, Reason of Church Government, b. ii. c. 3.

But the principal point whereon our apostle pitcheth for evincing the priesthood of Christ to be far more excellent than the Levitical priesthood was, was reserved to the last, and pathetically though briefly avouched, ver. 20 [Heb. vii. 20].—Jackson, Of the Divine Essence and Attributes, b. ix. § 2.

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

Which priests serve unto the patron [ὑποδείγματι] and shadow of heavenly things.—Heb. viii. 5. Geneva.

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

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

Peevish, }

Peevishness.

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

Shakespeare, Two Gentlemen of Verona, act iii. sc. 1.

We provoke, rail, scoff, calumniate, challenge, hate, abuse (hard-hearted, implacable, malicious, peevish, inexorable as we are), to satisfy our lust or private spleen.—Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy, part iii. § 1.

Pertinax hominum genus, a peevish generation of men.—Id., ib., part iii. § 4.

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

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

We must carefully distinguish continuance in opinion from obstinacy, confidence of understanding from peevishness of affection, a not being convinced from a resolution never to be convinced.—Bishop Taylor, Liberty of Prophesying, § ii. 10.

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

Shakespeare, King John, act iii. sc. 1.

Learning is necessary to him [the heretic], if he trades in a critical error; but if he only broaches dregs, and deals in some dull sottish opinion, a trowel will serve as well as a pencil to daub on such thick coarse colours.—Fuller, Profane State, b. v. c. 10.

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

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

So Manasseh in the beginning and middle of his reign filled the city with innocent blood, and died a penitentiary.—Jackson, Christ’s Session at God’s Right Hand, b. ii. c. 42.

’Twas a French friar’s conceit that courtiers were of all men the likeliest to forsake the world and turn penitentiaries.—Hammond, The Seventh Sermon, Works, vol. iv. p. 517.

Penitentiary, a priest that imposes upon an offender what penance he thinks fit.—Phillips, New World of Words.

Pensive, }

Pensiveness.

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

Fuller, Poem on David’s hainous Sin.

Golding, Ovid’s Metamorphosis, b. vi.

What is care and thought? a plain token of diffidence and distrust of God. It is an unfaithful care and pensiveness of the mind for meat, drink, clothing.—Becon, Works, vol. iii. p. 611.

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

God sometimes punishes one sin with another; pride with adultery, drunkenness with murder, carelessness with irreligion, idleness with vanity, penury with oppression.—Bishop Taylor, The Faith and Patience of the Saints.

[Perseverance. This word frequently occurs in literature of the sixteenth and seventeenth century in the sense of perception, discernment. ‘Perseverance’=discernment should be carefully distinguished from ‘perseverance’ (French perseverance, Latin perseverantia)=persistency, constancy. The former in many texts is spelt with a c instead of an s, as ‘perceverance,’ ‘perceyverance,’ ‘perceiverance.’ This spelling gives the key to the etymology; the word is a derivative from Old French percevoir, percever=Latin percipere, to perceive. For a good collection of illustrative passages see Notes and Queries (1st S. vii. 400.)]

Golding (see N. and Q.)

She had more perceverance of the Hebrues law.—Langley’s Polidore Vergile (see N. and Q.)

For his dyet he [Ariosto] was verie temperate, and a great enemie of excesse and surfetting, and so carelesse of delicates as though he had no perseverance in the tast of meates.—Sir J. Harington, Life of Ariosto, p. 418.

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

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

Shakespeare, 2 Henry IV., act v. sc. 2.

Cæsar also is brought in by Julian attributing to himself the honour (if it were at all an honour to that person which he sustained), of being the first that left his ship and took land.—Milton, History of England, b. ii.

Id., Paradise Lost, x. 153.

Certain it is, that no man can long put on a person and act a part but his evil manners will peep through the corners of his white robe, and God will bring a hypocrite to shame even in the eyes of men.—Bishop Taylor, Apples of Sodom.

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

Webster, Duchess of Malfi, act iv. sc. 2.

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

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

Oldham, Eighth Satire of M. Boileau.

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

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

Milton, Comus, 117.

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

Now because the most part of the people might not possibly have a sight of him, they gat up all at once into the theatre, and pestered it quite full.—Holland, Livy, p. 1055.

They within, though pestered with their own numbers, stood to it like men resolved, and in a narrow compass did remarkable deeds.—Milton, History of England, b. ii.

The calendar is filled, not to say pestered with them [that is, with Saints’ Days], jostling one another for room, many holding the same day in copartnership of festivity.—Fuller, Worthies of England, c. 3.

Physical, }

Physically.

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

Shakespeare, Julius Cæsar, act ii. sc. 1.

Attalus, surnamed Philometer (to say, lover of his mother), would plant and set physical herbs, as helleborum.—North, Plutarch’s Lives, p. 739.

And for physic, he [Lord Bacon] did indeed live physically,21 but not miserably.—Rawley, Life of Lord Bacon.

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

Tusser, Author’s Life.

Others are of the contrary opinion, and that Christianity gives us a placard to use these sports; and that man’s charter of dominion over the creatures enables him to employ them as well for pleasure as necessity.—Fuller, Holy State, b. iii. c. 13.

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

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

Plantations make mankind broader, as generation makes it thicker.—Fuller, Holy State, b. iii. c. 16.

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

They, [the courtiers of Dionysius] were every one occupied about drawing the platform of Sicilia, telling the nature of the Sicilian Sea, and reckoning up the havens and places looking towards Africk.—North, Plutarch’s Lives, p. 456.

The platform of this Tabernacle was by God delivered to Moses on the Mount, with a strict charge to make all things conformable thereunto.—Fuller, A Pisgah Sight of Palestine, b. iv. c. 4.

Plausible, }

Plausibly,

Plausibility.

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

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

Shakespeare, Lucrece, 1854.

He was no sooner in sight than every one received him plausibly, and with great submission and reverence.—Stubbes, Anatomy of Abuses, p. 17.

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

Poach, }

Poacher.

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

Pocher le labeur d’autruy. To poch into, or incroach upon another man’s imployment, practise or trade.—Cotgrave.

So that, to speak truly, they [the Spaniards] have rather poached and offered at a number of enterprises, than maintained any constantly.—Lord Bacon, Notes of a Speech concerning a War with Spain.

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

Polite, }

Politely.

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

Polite bodies, as looking-glasses.—Cudworth, Intellectual System, p. 731.

Polite; well-polished, neat.—Phillips, New World of Words.

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

Politics, }

Politician.

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

It did in particular exasperate Tacitus, and other politicks of his temper, to see so many natural Romans renounce their name and country for maintenance of Jewish religion.—Jackson, The Eternal Truth of Scriptures, b. i. c. 20.

Let them [spiritual persons] have the diligence and craft of fishers, the watchfulness and the care of shepherds, the prudence of politics, the tenderness of parents.—Bishop Taylor, Life of Christ, part ii. § 12.

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

Shakespeare, 1 Henry IV., act i. sc. 3.

Webster, Duchess of Malfi, act iii. sc. 2.

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

Pomp, }

Pompous,

Pompously.

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

[Antiochus] also provided a great number of bulls with gilt horns, the which he conducted himself with a goodly pomp and procession to the very gate of the city [ἄχρι τῶν πυλῶν ἐπόμπευσε].—Holland, Plutarch’s Morals, p. 417.

Milton, Paradise Lost, viii. 59.

Id., ib. vii. 563.

Beaumont, Psyche, can. xv. st. 299.

All expresses related that the entertainment [of Prince Charles at Madrid] was very pompous and kingly.—Hacket, Life of Archbishop Williams, part i. p. 119.

He [Hardecnute] gave his sister Gunildis, a virgin of rare beauty, in marriage to Henry the Alman Emperor; and to send her forth pompously, all the nobility contributed their jewels and richest ornaments.—Milton, History of England, b. vi.

Popular, }

Popularity.

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

Of a senator he [Manlius] became popular, and began to break his mind and impart his designs unto the magistrates of the commons, finding fault with the nobility.—Holland, Livy, 224.

P. Fletcher, Purple Island, c. 10.

Divers were of opinion that he [Caius Gracchus] was more popular and desirous of the common people’s good will and favour than his brother had been before him. But indeed he was clean contrary.—North, Plutarch’s Lives, p 690.

Cato the Younger charged Muræna, and indited him in open court for popularity and ambition.—Holland, Plutarch’s Morals, p. 243.

Harold, lifted up in mind, and forgetting now his former shows of popularity, defrauded his soldiers their due and well-deserved share of the spoils.—Milton, History of England, b. vi.

Portly, }

Portliness.

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

The chief and most portly person of them all was one Hasdrubal [Insignis tamen inter ceteros Hasdrubal erat].—Holland, Livy, p. 7.

Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, act i. sc. 5.

Spenser, Sonnet 5.

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

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

We cannot always be contemplative or pragmatical abroad; but have need of some delightful intermissions wherein the enlarged soul may leave off her severe schooling.—Milton, Tetrachordon.

Preposterous, }

Preposterously.

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

It is a preposterous order to teach first, and to learn after.—The Translators [of the Bible, 1611] to the Reader.

King Asa justly received little benefit by them [physicians], because of his preposterous addressing himself to them before he went to God (2 Chron. xvi. 12).—Fuller, Worthies of England, c. ix.

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

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

Pretend, }

Pretence,

Pretension.

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

Being preferred by King James to the bishopric of Chichester, and pretending his own imperfectness and insufficiency to undergo such a charge, he caused to be engraven about the seal of his bishopric, those words of St. Paul, Et ad hæc quis idoneus?—Isaacson, Life and Death of Lancelot Andrewes.

[The Sabbath] is rather hominis gratiâ quam Dei; and though God’s honour is mainly pretended in it, yet it is man’s happiness that is really intended by it, even of God Himself.—H. More, Grand Mystery of Godliness, b. viii. c. 13.

Milton, Paradise Lost, ii. 822; cf. vi. 421.

This is the tree whose leaves were intended for the healing of the nations, not for a pretence and palliation for sin.—H. More, Grand Mystery of Godliness, b. viii. c. 1.

He [the Earl of Pembroke] was exceedingly beloved in the Court, because he never desired to get that for himself which others laboured for; but was still ready to promote the pretences of worthy men.—Clarendon, History of the Rebellion, b. i. c. 121.

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

Prevaricate, }

Prevarication.

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

I proceed now to do the same service for the divines of England; whom you question first in point of learning and sufficiency, and then in point of conscience and honesty, as prevaricating in the religion which they profess, and inclining to Popery.—Chillingworth, Religion of Protestants, Preface, p. 11.

If we be not all enemies to God in this kind [in a direct opposition], yet in adhering to the enemy we are enemies; in our prevarications, and easy betrayings and surrendering of ourselves to the enemy of his kingdom, Satan, we are his enemies.—Donne, On the Nativity. Sermon 7.

Prevent, }

Prevention.

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

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

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

That poor man had waited thirty and eight years [at the pool of Bethesda], and still was prevented by some other.—Bishop Taylor, Life of Christ, part iii. § 13.

Daniel, Civil Wars, b. ii. st. 56.

Milton, Paradise Lost, vi. 129.

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

The Lord Bacon would have rewards given to those men who in the quest of natural experiments make probable mistakes. An ingenious miss is of more credit than a bungling casual hit.—Fuller, Mixt Contemplations, i. 26.

S. Ambrose, who was a good probable doctor, and one as fit to be relied on as any man else, hath these words.—Bishop Taylor, Doctrine and Practice of Repentance, Preface.

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

Shakespeare, Cymbeline, act v. sc. 5.

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

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

Beaumont and Fletcher, Philaster, act v. sc. 1.

Without this comely ornament of hair, their [women’s] most glorious beauty appears as deformed, as the sun would be prodigious without beams.—Fuller, The Profane State, b. v. c. 5.

I began to reflect on the whole life of this prodigious man.—Cowley, On the Government of Oliver Cromwell.

Promote, }

Promoter,

Promotion.

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

There lack men to promote the king’s officers when they do amiss, and to promote all offenders.—Latimer, Last Sermon before Edward VI.

Sir J. Harington, Epigrams, ii. 98.

Aristogiton the sycophant, or false promoter, was condemned to death for troubling men with wrongful imputations.—Holland, Plutarch’s Morals, p. 421.

Tusser, Of an envious and haughty Neighbour.

Promoters be those which in popular and penal actions do defer the names or complain of offenders, having part of the profit for their reward.—Cowell, The Interpreter, s. v.

Covetousness and promotion and such like are that right hand and right eye which must be cut off and plucked out, that the whole man perish not.—Tyndale, Exposition of the Sixth Chap. of Matthew.

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

But some man haply will say, That where private propriety is in place, public community is turned out of doors. Holland, Plutarch’s Morals, p. 680.

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

Milton, Paradise Lost, iv. 751.

A propriety is nothing else but jus ad rem, when a man doth claim such a thing as his own, and has a power to use it and dispose of it in a lawful way for his own benefit and advantage.—Strong, Of the Two Covenants, b. iii. c. 1.

Prose, }

Proser.

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

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

Drayton, On Poets and Poesy.

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

A husband that loveth to trim and pamper his body, causeth his wife by that means to study nothing else but the tricking and pruning of herself.—Holland, Plutarch’s Morals, p. 318.

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

The late king’s extorting publicans (whereof Ranolf Flambard, Bishop of Durham, the principal) were closely imprisoned.—Fuller, Church History, ii. 3, 13.

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

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

Shakespeare, Julius Cæsar, act iii. sc. 1.

He [Cicero] said that those orators who used to strain their voices and cry aloud in the pulpit were privy to their own weakness and insufficience otherwise.—Holland, Plutarch’s Morals, p. 439.

Punctual, }

Punctually.

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

Milton, Paradise Lost, viii. 19-23.

Truly I thought I could not be too punctual in describing the animal life, it being so serviceable for our better understanding the divine.—H. More, Grand Mystery of Godliness, Preface, p. x.

All curious solicitude about riches smells of avarice; even the very disposing of it with a too punctual and artificial liberality is not worth a painful solicitude.—Cotton, Montaigne’s Essays, b. iii. c. 9.

Every one is to give a reason of his faith; but priests or ministers more punctually than any.—H. More, Grand Mystery of Godliness, b. x. c. 12.

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

It were a sign of ignorant arrogancy, if punies or freshmen should reject the axioms and principles of Aristotle, usual in the schools, because they have some reasons against them which themselves cannot answer.—Jackson, The Eternal Truth of Scriptures, c. i.

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

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

Purchase. Now always to acquire in exchange for money, to buy; but much oftener in our old writers simply to acquire, being properly to hunt, ‘pourchasser;’ and then to take in hunting; then to acquire; and then, as the commonest way of acquiring is by giving money in exchange, to buy. The word occurs six times in our Version of the New Testament, Acts i. 18; viii. 10; xx. 28; Ephes. i. 14; 1 Tim. iii. 13; 1 Pet. ii. 9, margin; in none of these is the notion of buying involved. At Acts i. 18, this is especially noteworthy. It is there said: ‘This man purchased a field with the reward of iniquity.’ There will always remain certain difficulties in reconciling the different records of the death of Judas; but if St. Peter had here affirmed that Judas had bought this field of blood, these difficulties would be seriously increased, for the chief priests were the actual buyers (Matt. xxvii. 7). He affirms no such thing, neither did our Translators understand him to do so, but simply that Judas made that ominous potter’s field his own (ἐκτήσατο). The Revised Version has ‘obtained.’

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

The purchases of our own industry are joined commonly with labour and strife.—Id., Colours of Good and Evil, 9.

Meditation considers anything that may best make us to avoid the place and to quit a vicious habit, or master and rectify an untoward inclination, or purchase a virtue or exercise one.—Bishop Taylor, Life of Christ, part i. § 5.

[Men] will repent, but not restore; they will say Nollem factum, they wish they had never done it; but since it is done, you must give them leave to rejoice in their purchase.—Id., Sermon preached to the University of Dublin.

As it is a happiness for us to purchase friends, so is it misery to lose them.—Reynolds, God’s Revenge against Murther, b. v. hist. 21.

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

That first was a blaspheme and pursuere.—1 Tim. i. 13. Wiclif.

If God leave them in this hardness of heart, they may prove as desperate opposites and pursuers of all grace, of Christ and Christians, as the most horrible open swine, as we see in Saul and Julian.—Rogers, Naaman the Syrian, p. 106.

Quaint, }

Quaintly.

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

Chaucer, The Marchaundes Tale (Morris, ii. p. 343).

Greene, Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay, sc. 1.

Shakespeare, 2 Henry VI., act iii. sc. 2.

Whom evere I schal kisse, he it is; holde ye him, and lede ye warli, or queyntly.—Mark xiv. 44. Wiclif (earlier version).

Shakespeare, Two Gentlemen of Verona, act iii. sc. 1.

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

There inhabit these regions a kind of people, rude, warlike, ready to fight, querulous, and mischievous.—Holland, Camden’s Scotland, p. 39.

Not querulous, or clamorous in his discourse; ‘He shall not strive nor cry, neither shall any hear his voice in the streets;’ but meek and quiet.—Fuller, A Pisgah Sight of Palestine, b. iii. c. 6.

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

A race of ginger.—Shakespeare, Winter’s Tale, act iv. sc. 3.

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

Nether in the vyneyerd thou schalt gadere reysyns and greynes fallynge doun, but thou schalt leeve to be gaderid of pore men and pilgryms.—Lev. xix. 10. Wiclif.

Rascal, }

Rascality.

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

And he smoot of the puple seventi men, and fifti thousandis of the raskeyl [Et percussit de populo septuaginta viros et quinquaginta millia plebis (Vulg.)].—1 Kin. vi. 19. Wiclif.

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

Juliana Berners, The Book of St. Albans.

As one should in reproach say to a poor man, Thou raskall knave, where raskall is properly the hunter’s term given to young deer, lean and out of season, and not to people.—Puttenham, Art of English Poesy, 1811, p. 150.

Drayton, Polyolbion, song 13.

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

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

This is he that Y seide of, aftir me is comun a man, which was maad bifor me; for he was rather than Y [quia prior me erat, Vulg.].—John i. 30. Wiclif.

If the world hatith you, wite ye that it hadde me in hate rather than you [me priorem vobis odio habuit, Vulg.].—John xv. 18. Wiclif.

The Sarazines maden another cytie more far from the see, and clepeden it the newe Damyete, so that now no man dwellethe at the rathere town of Damyete.—Sir John Mandeville, Voyage and Travaile, p. 46, Halliwell’s edition.

Whatsoever thou or such other say, I say that the pilgrimage that now is used is to them that do it, a praisable and a good mean to come the rather to grace.—Foxe, Book of Martyrs; Examination of William Thorpe.

Spenser, The Shepherd’s Calendar, February.

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

To conclude, his house was a common receipt for all those that came from Greece to Rome.—North, Plutarch’s Lives, p. 446.

Fountains I intend to be of two natures, the one that sprinkleth or spouteth water, the other a fair receipt of water, of some thirty or forty foot square, but without fish, or slime, or mud.—Bacon, Essays, 46.

Reclaim. A ‘reclamation’ is still sometimes a calling out against; but ‘to reclaim’ is never, I think, anything now but to call back again; never to disclaim.

Herod, instead of reclaiming what they exclaimed [Acts xii. 22], embraced and hugged their praises as proper to himself, and thereupon an angel and worms, the best and basest of creatures, met in his punishment, the one smiting, the other eating him up.—Fuller, A Pisgah Sight of Palestine, b. ii. c. 8.

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

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

In quartering either in village, field, or city, he [a commander] ought himself to recognize all avenues, whereby his enemies may come to him.—Monro, His Expedition, p. 9.

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

The drift of the Roman armies and forces was not to bring free states into servitude, but contrariwise, to reduce those that were in bondage to liberty.—Holland, Livy, p. 1211.

There remained only Britain [i.e. Britany] to be reunited, and so the monarchy of France to be reduced to the ancient terms and bounds.—Bacon, History of King Henry VII.

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

Shakespeare, Richard III., act v. sc. 5.

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

Romaunt of the Rose, 448.

Rejoice. Formerly used in the sense of to enjoy.

Then was mad pes on this manere, that he and his puple schuld frely rejoyce all the lond of the other side of Seyne.—Capgrave, Chronicle of England, p. 112.

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

Religion, }

Religious.

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

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

Milton, Paradise Lost, i. 367.

Romaunt of the Rose, 6152.

Gower, Confessio Amantis, b. viii.

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

They [the publicans and harlots] are moved by shame, and punished by disgrace, and remarked by punishments, and frighted by the circumstances and notices of all the world, and separated from sober persons by laws and an intolerable character.—Bishop Taylor, Of Lukewarmness and Zeal, Serm. 13, part ii.

Milton, Samson Agonistes, 1308.

Remonstrate, }

Remonstrance.

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

Properties of a faithful servant: a sedulous eye, to observe all occasions within or without, tending to remonstrate the habit within.—Rogers, Naaman the Syrian, p. 309.

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

I consider that in two very great instances it was remonstrated that Christianity was the greatest persecution of natural justice and equality in the whole world.—Id., Life of Christ, Preface, § 32.

When Sir Francis Cottington returned with our king’s oath, plighted to the annexed conditions for the ease of the Roman Catholics, the Spaniards made no remonstrance of joy, or of an ordinary liking of it.—Hacket, Life of Archbishop Williams, part i. p. 145.

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

Remorse, }

Remorseful.

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

King Richard by his own experience grew sensible of the miseries which merchants and mariners at sea underwent. Wherefore, now touched with remorse of their pitiful case, he resolved to revoke the law of wrecks.—Fuller, Holy War, b. iii. c. 7.

Middleton, Wisdom of Solomon, c. v. 17.

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

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

Shakespeare, 2 Henry VI., act iii. sc. 2.

Milton, Paradise Lost, vii. 59.

Sylvester, Du Bartas, Eden, The Second Week.

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

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

Shakespeare, 2 Henry VI., act iii. sc. 1.

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

We do instantly require and desire the Blessed Virgin Mary with all the holy company of heaven, continually to pray for us.—Will of Henry VIII.

Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra, act iii. sc. 12.

Resent, }

Resentment.

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