A SELECT GLOSSARY ETC. (continued 6)

We yield not ourselves to be your villains and slaves [non in servitutem nos tradimus], but as allies to be protected by you.—Holland, Livy, p. 935.

[He] was condemned to be degraded of all nobility, and not only himself, but all his succeeding posterity declared villains, and clowns, taxable and incapable to bear arms.—Florio, Montaigne, b. i. c. 15.

In our modern language it [foul language] is termed villany, as being proper for rustic boors, or men of coarsest education and employment, who, having their minds debased by being conversant in meanest affairs, do vent their sorry passions in such strains.—Barrow, Of Evil-speaking in general, Sermon 16.

Virtuous. Virtue is still occasionally used as equivalent to might or potency; but ‘virtuous’ has quite abdicated the meaning of valorous or potent which it once had, and which its etymology justified.

Chapman, Homer’s Iliad, xiii. 147.

Milton, Il Penseroso.

Spenser, Fairy Queen, ii. 12, 26.

Vivacious, }

Vivacity.

‘Longevity’ is a comparatively modern word. ‘Vivacity,’ which has now acquired the mitigated sense of liveliness, served instead of it; keeping in English the original sense which ‘vivacitas’ had in the Latin.

James Sands, of Horborn in this county, is most remarkable for his vivacity, for he lived 140 years.—Fuller, Worthies of England: Staffordshire.

Fables are raised concerning the vivacity of the deer; for neither are their gestation nor increment such as may afford an argument of long life.—Sir T. Browne, Vulgar Errors.

Hitherto the English bishops had been vivacious almost to wonder. For, necessarily presumed of good years before entering on their office in the first year of Queen Elizabeth, it was much that but five died for the first twenty years of her reign.—Fuller, Church History of Britain, b. ix. § 27.

Voluble. This epithet always insinuates of him to whom it is now applied that his speech is freer and faster than is meet; but it once occupied that region of meaning which ‘fluent’ does at present, without any suggestion of the kind. Milton (P. L. ix. 436) recalls the word, as he does so many, to its primary meaning.

He [Archbishop Abbott] was painful, stout, severe against bad manners, of a grave and a voluble eloquence.—Hacket, Life of Archbishop Williams, part i. p. 65.

Voyage. All journeys, those alike by land and by water, were ‘voyages’ once. The word is restricted now to journeys made by water. ‘Voyage’ is the French form of the late Latin ‘viaticum.’

Holofernes went forth with his chariots and horses to go before King Nebuchodonosor in the voyage.—Judith ii. 19. (A.V.)

My life hath not been unexpensive in learning, and voyaging about.—Milton, An Apology for Smectymnuus.

Chaucer, Canterbury Tales, Prologue.

Wainscot. I transcribe a correction of the brief and inaccurate notice of this word in my first edition, which a correspondent, with the best opportunity of knowledge, has kindly sent me: ‘“Wainscot” is always in the building trade applied to oak only, but not to all kinds of oak. The wainscot oak grows abroad, chiefly, I think, in Holland, and is used for wainscoting, or wood lining, of walls of houses, because it works very freely under the tool, and is not liable to “cast” or rend, as English oak will do. It is consequently used for all purposes where expense is no object. Formerly all panelling to walls was done in wainscot, and was called “wainscoting.” It was never painted. In modern times it was imitated in deal, and was painted to represent real wainscot, or of any other colour, while the name of “wainscoting” adhered to it, though the material was no longer wainscot. At present, however, the word “wainscot” is always used to designate the real wainscot oak.’ It will be seen from this very interesting explanation that within the narrow limits of a particular trade, the old meaning of ‘wainscot,’ which has everywhere else disappeared, still survives. It would be curious to trace how much in this way of earlier English within limited technical circles lives on, having everywhere else died out. For a further account of ‘wainscot,’ see Skeat’s Dictionary, p. 833.

A wedge of wainscot is fittest and most proper for cleaving of an oaken tree.—Sir T. Urquhart, Tracts, p. 153.

Being thus arrayed, and enclosed in a chest of wainscot, he [Edward the Confessor] was removed into the before-prepared feretry.—Dart, History of St. Peter’s, Westminster, c. 3.

Want. Among other differences between ‘carere’ and ‘egere,’ this certainly is one, that the former may be said of things evil as well as good, as well of those whose absence is desirable as of those whose absence is felt as a loss, while ‘egere’ always implies not merely the absence but the painful sense of the absence. ‘To want,’ which had once the more colourless use of ‘carere,’ has passed now, nearly though not altogether, into this latter sense, and is = ‘egere.’

If he be lost, and want, thy life shall go for his life.—1 Kings xx. 39. Geneva.

The happy and fortunate want of these beasts [wolves] in England is universally ascribed to the politic government of King Edgar.—Harrison, Description of England, b. iii. c. 4.

In a word, he [the true gentleman] is such, that could we want him, it were pity but that he were in heaven; and yet I pity not much his continuance here, because he is already so much in heaven to himself.—Clement Ellis, Character of a True Gentleman.

Pope, Lines to Arbuthnot.

Wench. In Middle English this term (in the older form ‘wenchel’), like ‘girl,’ ‘coquette,’ ‘slut,’ ‘flirt,’ and so many more, might be ascribed to either sex; and when afterwards restrained to one, was rather a word of familiarity, or even of passion, than of slight and contempt, which now it has grown to be. See Mayhew-Skeat’s Dict. of Middle English.

Golding, Ovid’s Metamorphosis, b. vi.

Shakespeare, Othello, act v. sc. 2.

Id., Love’s Labours Lost, act v. sc. 2.

And going in, He saith to them: Why make ye this ado, and weepe? The wenche is not dead, but sleepeth.... And holding the wenches hand, He saith to her, Talitha Cumi.—Mark v. 39, 41. Rheims.

Whirlpool. Formerly used in the sense of some huge sea-monster of the whale kind. Thus in the margin of our Bible, there is on Job xli. 1 (‘Canst thou draw out leviathan?’) a gloss, ‘that is, a whale or whirlpool.’ In Harrison’s Description of England, b. iii. c. 5, the ‘thirlepole’ is mentioned with the porpoise and whale as among the great fishes of the sea. See Wright’s Bible Word Book.

The Indian Sea breedeth the most and the biggest fishes that are, among which the whales and whirlpools, called balænæ, take up in length as much as four acres or arpens of land.—Holland, Pliny, vol. i. p. 235.

Spenser, Fairy Queen, ii. 12, 23.

Sylvester, Du Bartas, First Day of the Week.

About sunset, coming near the Wild Island, Pantagruel spied afar off a huge monstrous physeter, a sort of whale, which some call a whirlpool.—Rabelais, Pantagruel, b. iv. c. 33. [This creature is suggested by ‘Leviathan descript par le noble prophete Moses en la vie du sainct home Job.’]

Whisperer, }

Whispering.

There lay in ‘whisperer’ once, as in the ψιθυριστής of the Greeks, the ‘susurro’ of the Latins, the suggestion of a slanderer or false accuser, which has now quite passed away from the word.

Now this Doeg, being there at that time, what doeth he? Like a whisperer or man-pleaser goeth to Saul the king, and told him how the priest had refreshed David in his journey, and had given unto him the sword of Goliath.—Latimer, Sermons, Parker edit., p. 486.

A whisperer separateth chief friends.—Prov. xvi. 28; cf. Ecclus. v. 14. (A.V.)

Kings in ancient times were wont to put great trust in eunuchs. But yet their trust towards them hath rather been as to good whisperers than good magistrates and officers.—Bacon, Essay, 44, Of Deformity.

Lest there be debates, envyings, wraths, strifes, backbitings, whisperings, swellings, tumults.—2 Cor. xii. 20. (A. V.)

Whiteboy. Formerly a cockered favourite (compare Barnes’s use of ‘white son,’ Works, 1572, p. 192), but in later years one of the many names which the perpetrators of agrarian outrages in Ireland either assumed to themselves, or had given to them by others.

His first address was An humble Remonstrance by a dutiful son of the Church, almost as if he had said her whiteboy.—Milton, Prose Works, vol. i. p. 172.

The Pope was loath to adventure his darlings into danger. Those whiteboys were to stay at home with his Holiness, their tender father.—Fuller, Holy War, i. 13.

Wife. It is a very profound testimony, yielded by language, to the fact that women are intended to be wives, and only find the true completion of their being when they are so, that in so many languages there is a word which, meaning first a woman, means afterwards a wife, as γυνή, ‘mulier,’ ‘femme,’ ‘weib,’ and our English ‘wife.’ With us indeed the secondary use of the word has now overborne and swallowed up the first, which only survives in a few such combinations as ‘midwife,’ ‘fishwife,’ ‘huswife,’ and the like; but it was not always so; nor in our provincial dialects is it so now. An intelligent correspondent who has sent me a ‘Glossary of Words used in Central Yorkshire’ writes as follows: ‘In rural districts a grown woman is a young wife, though she be unmarried.’

Chaucer, The Wife of Bath’s Tale.

Like as a wife with childe, when hir travaile commeth upon her, is ashamed, crieth, and suffreth the payne, even so are we, O Lorde, in thy sight.—Isai. xxvi. 17. Coverdale.

Wight. The best discussion on this interesting word is in Grimm’s Teutonic Mythology, pp. 439-442, who has a chapter [ch. xvii.], ‘On Wights and Elves.’ ‘Wight’ has for us lost altogether its original sense of a preternatural or supernatural being, and is used, but always slightingly, of men. It is easy to see how, with the gradual contempt for the old mythology, the dying-out of the superstitions connected with it, words such as ‘elf’ and ‘wight’ should have lost their weight and honour as well.

Chaucer, The Miller’s Tale.

The poet Homer speaketh of no garlands and chaplets but due to the celestial and heavenly wights.—Holland, Pliny, vol. i. p. 456.

A black horse cometh, and his rider hath a balance, and a voice telleth among the four wights that corn shall be dear [Rev. vi. 6].—Broughton, Of Consent upon Apocalypse.

When the four wights are said to have given glory, honour, and thanks to Him that sate upon the throne [Rev. v. 14], what was their ditty but this?—Mede, Sermons.

Wilful, }

Wilfully.

‘Wilful’ and ‘willing,’ ‘wilfully’ and ‘willingly,’ have been conveniently desynonymized by later usage in our language; so that in ‘wilful’ and ‘wilfully’ there now lies ever the sense of will capriciously exerted, deriving its motives merely from itself; while the examples which follow show there was once no such implication of self-will in the words.

Alle the sones of Israel halewiden wilful thingis to the Lord.—Exod. xxxv. 29. Wiclif.

A proud priest may be known when he denieth to follow Christ and his apostles in wilful poverty and other virtues.—Foxe, Book of Martyrs; Examination of William Thorpe.

Fede ye the flok of God, that is among you, and purvey ye, not as constreyned, but wilfulli.—1 Pet. v. 2. Wiclif.

And so, through his pitiful nailing, Christ shed out wilfully for man’s life the blood that was in his veins.—Foxe, Book of Martyrs; Examination of William Thorpe.

Wince. Now to shrink or start away as in pain from a stroke or touch; but, as far as I know, used always by our earlier authors in the sense of to kick.

Poul, whom the Lord hadde chosun, long tyme wynside agen the pricke.—Wiclif, Prolog on the Dedis of Apostlis.

For this flower of age, having no forecast of thrift, but set altogether upon spending, and given to delights and pleasures, winseth and flingeth out like a skittish and frampold horse in such sort that it had need of a sharp bit and short curb.—Holland, Plutarch’s Morals, p. 14.

Wit, }

Witty.

The present meaning of ‘wit’ as compared with the past, and the period when it was in the act of transition from one to the other, cannot be better marked than in the quotation from Bishop Reynolds which is given below. It is a protest, an impotent one, as such invariably are, against a change in the word’s meaning, going on before his eyes. Cowley’s Ode, Of Wit, is another very important document, illustrating the history of the word.

Who knew the wit of the Lord, or who was his counselour?—Rom. xi. 34. Wiclif.

I take not wit in that common acceptation, whereby men understand some sudden flashes of conceit whether in style or conference, which, like rotten wood in the dark, have more shine than substance, whose use and ornament are, like themselves, swift and vanishing, at once both admired and forgotten. But I understand a settled, constant, and habitual sufficiency of the understanding, whereby it is enabled in any kind of learning, theory, or practice, both to sharpness in search, subtilty in expression, and despatch in execution.—Reynolds, Passions and Faculties of the Soul, c. xxxix.

Richard Rolle de Hampole, Pricke of Conscience, 1092.

I confess notwithstanding, with the wittiest of the school divines, that if we speak of strict justice God could no way have been bound to requite man’s labours in so large and ample manner.—Hooker, Ecclesiastical Polity, b. i. c. 11.

Witch. This was not restrained formerly, as it now is, to the female exerciser of unlawful magical arts, but would have been as freely applied to Balaam or Simon Magus as to her whom we call ‘the Witch of Endor.’ ‘She-witch’ was not uncommon in our Elizabethan literature, when such was intended. In the dialect of Northumbria ‘witches’ are of both sexes still (Atkinson).

There was a man in that citee whos name was Symount, a witche.—Acts viii. 9. Wiclif.

Item, he is a witch, asking counsel at soothsayers.—Foxe, Book of Martyrs; Appeal against Boniface.

Then the king commanded to call together all the soothsayers, charmers, witches, and Caldees, for to shew the king his dream.—Dan. ii. 2. Coverdale.

Who can deny him a wisard or witch, who in the reign of Richard the Usurper foretold that upon the same stone where he dashed his spur riding toward Bosworth field he should dash his head in his return?—Cotta, The Trial of Witchcraft, p. 49.

Wizard. A title not necessarily used in times past with any dishonourable subaudition of perverted wisdom on his part to whom it was given, as is now the case.

Then Herod, calling the wisards privily, did narrowly search of them the time of the star’s appearing.—Matt. ii. 7. Sir J. Cheke.

Drayton, Elegies, To Mr. G. Sandys.

Milton, On the Nativity.

Womb. This is now only the ὑστέρα, but once could be ascribed to both sexes, having as wide a meaning as the κοιλία of the Greeks.

And he coveitide to fille his wombe of the coddis that the hoggis eeten, and no man gaf hym.—Luke xv. 16. Wiclif.

Chaucer, Pardoneres Tale (Clar. Press).

Falstaff. An I had but a belly of any indifferency, I were simply the most active fellow in Europe. My womb, my womb, my womb undoes me.—Shakespeare, 2 Henry IV., act iv. sc. 3.

Worm. This, which designates at present only smaller and innoxious kinds of creeping and crawling things, once, as the German ‘wurm,’ was employed of all the serpent kind; and indeed in some of our northern dialects all snakes and serpents are ‘worms’ to the present day. In ‘blindworm,’ ‘slowworm,’ ‘hagworm,’ we have tokens of the earlier use.

There came a viper out of the heat and leapt on his hand. When the men of the country saw the worm hang on his hand, they said, This man must needs be a murderer.—Acts xxviii. 3, 4. Tyndale.

Shakespeare, Cymbeline, act iii. sc. 4.

Milton, Paradise Lost, ix. 1067.

Worship. At present we ‘worship’ none but God; there was a time when the word was employed in so much more general a sense that it was not profane to say that God ‘worshipped,’ that is honoured, man. This, of course, is the sense of the word in the Marriage Service, ‘with my body I thee worship.’

If ony man serve me, my fadir schal worschipe hym.—John xii. 26. Wiclif.

Chaucer, The Clerkes Tale, 108.

Man, that was made after the image and likeness of God, is full worshipful in his kind; yea, this holy image that is man God worshippeth.—Foxe, Book of Martyrs; Examination of William Thorpe.

Wretched. What has been observed on ‘Unhappy’ explains and accounts also for the use of ‘wretched’ as = wicked. ‘Wretch’ still continues to cover the two meanings of one miserable and one wicked, though ‘wretched’ does so no more.

Nero regned after this Claudius, of alle men wrechidhest, redy to alle maner vices.—Capgrave, Chronicle of England, p. 62.

To do evil gratis, to do evil for good, is the wretchedest wickedness that can be.—Andrewes, Of the Conspiracy of the Gowries, serm. 4.

Younker. Now, as far as it is used at all, equivalent to ‘youngster;’ but the ‘younker’ of our Elizabethan and earlier literature was much more nearly the German ‘junker,’ or Jung Herr, the young lord,—or perhaps ‘squire’ would be nearer the mark,—or youthful gallant. [We borrowed the word from the Dutch ‘jonker’ or ‘jonkheer’ (= ‘jong’ young + ‘heer’ gentleman). See Skeat’s Dictionary.]

Yf some of them can get a fox tale or two, or that he may have a capons feder or a goose feder, or any long feder on his cap, than he is called a yonker.—Boorde, The Boke of the Introduction of Knowledge, 1547.

Shakespeare, Merchant of Venice, act ii. sc. 6.

Id., 3 Henry VI., act ii. sc. 1.

Venus loved the younker Adonis better than the warrior Mars.—Dodoen, History of Plants, p. 656.

As Rehoboam’s yonkers carried that weighty business of his kingdom and overthrew it, so do the unruly and rebellious humours of most youth miscarry this.—Rogers, Matrimonial Honour, p. 31.

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