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A select glossary of English words used formerly in senses different from their present cover

A select glossary of English words used formerly in senses different from their present

Chapter 7: Transcriber’s Notes
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About This Book

A scholarly glossary surveys English words whose meanings have shifted, offering concise etymologies, historical citations, and illustrative quotations that demonstrate former senses. Entries are selectively chosen to reveal patterns of semantic change, to aid readers in interpreting older texts, and to illuminate incidental cultural or historical details; special attention is paid to Middle English usage and to revising doubtful etymologies. Quotations are presented to stand independently as clear evidence rather than to exhaust a topic, and the work deliberately limits scope to provoke further curiosity and independent study. Overall it functions as a practical reference and pedagogical aid for tracing the development of English vocabulary.

FOOTNOTES:

1 [For early instances and uses of the verb actuate see N.E.D.]
2 Deabus artificibus similes, as S. Walker (Criticisms on Shakespeare, vol. i. p. 96) gives it well.
3 [The word is a derivative of O. Fr. artillier = Late Lat. articularius, a form of doubtful origin. Dr. Murray hesitates between articulum, dimin. of ars, artem, and articulus, joint, see N.E.D.]
4 [Assassins is the rendering adopted in R.V.]
5 [Astonish represents an O. Fr. *estonnir, estonniss-, used for estoner, Late Lat. *ex-tonare, to stupefy as with a thunderbolt.]
6 [Of course the words authentic and author (authority) are entirely unrelated: αὐθεντικός is from αὐθέντης (= αὐτο- self + ἑντης), whereas author is O. Fr. autor, Lat. auctorem, cp. augēre, to make, to grow.]
7 [See however on this point N.E.D.]
8 ‘Non grati victima sacri.’
9Rough Clifford’ he is called a few lines before.
10 ‘Concealers be such as find out concealed lands, that is such lands as privily are kept from the king by common persons, having nothing to shew for them.’—Cowell, The Interpreter, s. v.
11 [This story rests on the sole authority of Gifford, the editor of Ben Jonson. For further information see N.E.D.]
12 [This is a gloss on Spenser’s line, ‘Nor in all Kent nor in Christendome,’ which repeats a very common proverbial saying.]
13 [It has been revived; for examples see N. E. D.]
14 [The words deal and dole probably owe their difference of form to an original slight variation of suffix (-li, -lo), see Kluge (s.v. teil).]
15 Vinegar.
16 ‘Qui se harlotos appellant’ are the important words in Henry the Third’s letter to the Sheriff of Oxfordshire, requiring their dispersion.
17 For the cognates of ‘loiter’ see Franck’s Dutch Etym. Dict. (s. v. leuteren).
18 One would willingly know a little more of this phrase ‘lucid interval,’ which had evidently about the time of the first of my quotations recently come into the language, but from what quarter, whether from the writings of physicians or naturalists, or from what other source, I am unable to say. Of its recent introduction I find evidence in the following passage:—‘The saints have their turbida intervalla, their ebbing and flowing, their full and their wane; but yet all their cloudings do but obscure their graces, not extinguish them. All the goodness of other men that seem to live, are but lucida intervalla, they are good but by fits.’ (Preston, Description of Spiritual Death and Life, 1636, p. 73.) No one would have used this Latin phrase in a sermon had ‘lucid interval’ been already familiar in English, or had ‘lucidum intervallum’ not already somewhere existed. The word ‘interval,’ it may be here remarked, was only coming into use at the beginning of the seventeenth century. Holland in his Pliny uses, but using explains it; while Chillingworth still regards it as Latin, and writes ‘intervalla.’
19 Edward, George, Richard, and Edmund.
20 ‘Taryinge, morosus.’—Catholicon.
21 There is allusion here to the Latin proverb Medice vivere est misere vivere.
22 In heaven.

Transcriber’s Notes

Obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected. Variations in spelling and punctuation from the various sources cited have been left unchanged.