Shakespeare, The Tempest, act iv. sc. 1.
Massinger, The City Madam, act i. sc. 1.
Hast thou foresworn all thy friends in the Old Jewry? or dost thou think us all Jews that inherit there? Yet, if thou dost, come over, and but see our frippery. Change an old shirt for a whole smock with us.—Ben Jonson, Every Man in his Humour, act i. sc. 1.
| Fulsome, | } |
| Fulsomeness. |
I have seen it questioned whether in the first syllable of ‘fulsome’ we are to find ‘foul’ or ‘full.’ There should be no question on the matter; seeing that ‘fulsome’ is properly no more than ‘full,’ and then secondly that which by its fulness and overfulness produces first satiety, and then loathing and disgust. This meaning of ‘fulsome’ is still retained in our only present application of the word, namely to compliments and flattery, which by their grossness produce this effect on him who is their object; but the word had once many more applications than this. See the quotation from Pope, s. v. ‘Bacchanal.’
Golding, Ovid’s Metamorphosis, b. vii.
Beaumont, Psyche, b. xix. st. 210.
Chaste and modest as he [Persius] is esteemed, it cannot be denied but that in some cases he is broad and fulsome. No decency is considered; no fulsomeness omitted.—Dryden, Dedication of Translations from Juvenal.
Making her soul to loathe dainty meat, or putting a surfeit and fulsomeness into all which she enjoys.—Rogers, Naaman the Syrian, p. 32.
Garb. One of many words, all whose meaning has run to the surface. A man’s dress was once only a portion, and a very insignificant portion, of his ‘garb,’ which included his whole outward presentment to other men; now it is all.
Ben Jonson, Volpone, act iv. sc. 1.
The greatest spirits, and those of the best and noblest breeding, are ever the most respective and obsequious in their garb, and the most observant and grateful in their language to all.—Feltham, Resolves, lxxxv.
Quarles, History of Samson, sect. 19.
A σεμνοπρέπεια in his person, a grave and a smiling garb compounded together to bring strangers into a liking of their welcome.—Hacket, Life of Archbishop Williams, part ii. p. 32.
Denham, On the Death of Cowley.
Garble. Writings only are ‘garbled’ now; and ‘garbled’ extracts are extracts dishonestly made, so shifted, mutilated, or in other ways tampered with, that, while presented as fair specimens, they convey a false impression. It is not difficult to trace the downward progress of the word. It is derived from the Low Latin ‘garbellare,’ to sift or cleanse corn from any dust or rubbish which may have become mingled with it. It was then applied to any separation of the good from the bad, retaining that, rejecting this, and used most commonly of spices; then generally to picking and choosing, but without any intention to select the better and to dismiss the worse: and lastly, as at present, to picking and choosing with the distinct purpose of selecting that which should convey the worse impression, and dismissing that which should have conveyed a truer and a better. It is a very favourite word in its earlier uses with Fuller.
Garbling of bow-staves (anno 1 R. 3, cap. 11) is the sorting or culling out of the good from the bad.—Cowell, The Interpreter, s.v.
There was a fair hospital, built to the honour of St. Anthony in Bennet’s Fink, in this city; the protectors and proctors whereof claimed a privilege to themselves, to garble the live pigs in the markets of the city; and such as they found starved or otherwise unwholesome for man’s sustenance they would slit in the ear, tie a bell about their necks, and turn them loose about the city.—Fuller, Worthies of England: London.
Id., Worthies of England. A Panegyric on Charles II.
To garble, to cleanse from dross and dirt, as grocers do their spices, to pick or cull out.—Phillips, New World of Words.
Garland. At present we know no other ‘garlands’ but of flowers; but ‘garland’ was at one time a technical name for the royal crown or diadem, and not a poetical one, as might at first sight appear; as witness these words of Matthew of Paris in his Life of Henry III.: Rex veste deauratâ, et coronulâ aureâ, quæ vulgariter garlanda dicitur, redimitus.
In the adoption and obtaining of the garland, I being seduced and provoked by sinister counsel did commit a naughty and abominable act.—Grafton, Chronicle of King Richard III.
In whose [Edward the Fourth’s] time, and by whose occasion, what about the getting of the garland, keeping it, losing and winning again, it hath cost more English blood than hath twice the winning of France.—Sir T. More, History of King Richard III. p. 107.
Shakespeare, 2 Henry IV. act iv. sc. 4.
Garret. The Old French ‘garite,’ which is our ‘garret,’ is properly a place of refuge or safety, being derived from the verb ‘garir;’ thus ‘gagner la guérite,’ to save oneself by flight. But this place of safety would be often on a high wall, in a watch-tower, upon the tops of houses; and thus the notion of the ‘garret’ was connected with that of the highest stage or storey. The subaudition of its being the poorest and meanest place in the house is an afterthought, and certainly has no place in any of the following uses of the word.
Peres the Plowman’s Crede, l. 214 (Skeat).
Richard Rolle de Hampole, Pricke of Conscience, 9101-9104.
It is nat possible algate to have highe garettes, or toures, or highe places for watche men; therefor it nedethe to have out watche.—Vegetius, quoted in Way’s Promptorium, p. 187.
Gazette. The French form of an Italian word ‘gazzetta,’ designating a small piece of tin money current at Venice, of the value of less than a farthing (see Florio). This word ‘gazzetta’ may possibly be quite distinct in origin from ‘gazzetta,’ the name of a monthly bill of news printed commonly at Venice (see Skeat’s Dictionary). We see the word in this latter sense, but not as yet thoroughly at home in English, for it still retains [as it retained much later] an Italian termination, in Ben Jonson’s Volpone (act v. sc. 2), of which the scene is laid at Venice. Curiously enough the same play gives also an example, quoted below, of ‘gazette’ in the sense of a coin.
If you will have a stool, it will cost you a gazet, which is almost a penny.—Coryat, Crudities, vol. ii. p. 15.
Ben Jonson, Volpone, act ii. sc. 2.
Gelding. Restrained at present to horses which have ceased to be entire; but until ‘eunuch,’ which is of somewhat late adoption, had been introduced into the language, serving also the needs which that serves now.
Thanne Joseph was lad in Egepte, and bought him Potiphar, the gelding of Pharao.—Gen. xxxix. 1. Wiclif.
And whanne thei weren come up of the watir, the spirit of the Lord ravyschide Filip, and the gelding say hym no more.—Acts viii. 39. Wiclif.
Lysimachus was very angry, and thought great scorn that Demetrius should reckon him a gelding.—North, Plutarch’s Lives, p. 741.
Generosity. We still use ‘generous’ occasionally in the sense of highly or nobly born; but ‘generosity’ has quite lost this its earlier sense, and acquired a purely ethical meaning. Its history illustrates, as does the history of so many other words, what one may call the aristocratic tendencies of language.
Nobility began in thine ancestors and ended in thee: and the generosity that they gained by virtue, thou hast blotted by vice.—Lyly, Euphues and his England.
Their eyes are commonly black and small, noses little, nails almost as long as their fingers, but serving to distinguish their generosity.—Harris, Voyages, vol. i. p. 465.
Genial. It is curious to find ‘genial’ used in a sense not merely so different, but so directly opposed to that in which we employ it now, as in the quotation which follows we do. Whether there are other examples of the same use, I am unable to say.
There are not a few very much to be pitied, whose industry being not attended with natural parts, they have sweat to little purpose, and rolled the stone in vain, which chiefly proceedeth from natural incapacity and genial indisposition, at least to those particulars whereunto they apply their endeavours.—Sir T. Browne, Vulgar Errors, b. i. c. 5.
Gestation. Now a technical word applied only to the period during which the females of animals carry their young; but acknowledging no such limitation once.
Gestation in a chariot or wagon hath in it a shaking of the body, but some vehement, and some more soft.—Sir T. Elyot, Castle of Health, b. ii. c. 34.
Gestation, an exercise of the body, by being carried in coach, litter, upon horseback, or in a vessel on the water.—Holland, Pliny, Explanation of the Words of Art.
Ghost. It is only in the very highest acceptation of all that ‘Ghost’ and ‘Spirit’ are now synonymous and exchangeable. They once were so through the entire range of their several uses.
Piers Plowman, B-text, Passus ix. 45 (Skeat).
Chaucer, The Doctoures Tale (Morris, iii. p. 77).
He sawe that the heavens opened, and the goost as a dove commynge downe upon Him.—Mark i. 10. Coverdale.
Girl. A child, and this of either sex. In Middle English the phrase ‘knave gerlys’ occurs in the sense of boys. It fared in early English not otherwise with ‘wench’ (which see).
Piers Plowman, B-text, Passus i. 32 (Skeat).
Chaucer, Canterbury Tales, The Prologue, 663
(Morris, ii. p. 21).
Gist. This, the Old French ‘giste,’ from the old ‘gésir’ (Latin ‘jacēre’) meant formerly, as the French word ‘gîte’ means still, the place where one lodges for the night. A scroll containing the route and resting places of a royal party during a progress was sometimes so called. For the connexion between ‘gist’ in this sense and ‘gist’ as we use it now see Skeat’s Dictionary.
After he had sent Popilius before in spial, and perceived that the avenues were open in all parts, he marched forward himself, and by the second gist came to Dium [secundis castris pervenit ad Dium].—Holland, Livy, p. 1174.
The guides who were to conduct them on their way had commandment so to cast their gists and journeys that by three of the clock in the morning of the third day they might assail Pythoum.—Id., ib. p. 1193.
| Glory, | } |
| Glorious, | |
| Gloriously. |
‘Glory’ is never employed now in the sense of ‘vain-glory,’ nor ‘glorious’ in that of ‘vain-glorious,’ as once they often were.
In military commanders and soldiers, vain-glory is an essential point; for as iron sharpens iron, so by glory one courage sharpeneth another.—Bacon, Essays, 54.
So commonly actions begun in glory shut up in shame.—Bishop Hall, Contemplations, On Babel.
Lyndesay, The Monarchie.
Some took this for a glorious brag; others thought he [Alcibiades] was like enough to have done it.—North, Plutarch’s Lives, p. 183.
Likewise glorious followers, who make themselves as trumpets of the commendation of those they follow, are full of inconveniences. For they taint business through want of secrecy; and they export honour from a man, and make him a return in envy.—Bacon, Essays, 48 (Abbott, ii. p. 66).
He [Anselm] little dreamt then that the weeding-hook of Reformation would after two ages pluck up his glorious poppy [prelacy] from insulting over the good corn [presbytery].—Milton, Reason of Church Government, b. i. c. 5.
I speak it not gloriously, or out of affectation.—Ben Jonson, Every Man out of his Humour, act ii. sc. 1.
| Good-nature, | } |
| Good-natured. |
As metaphysics have yielded us ‘common sense,’ and logic ‘formal’ and ‘formality,’ so we owe to theology ‘good-nature.’ By it our elder divines understood far more than we understand by it now; even all which it is possible for a man to have, without having the grace of God. The contrast between grace and nature was of course unknown to the Greeks; but, this being kept in mind, we may say that the ‘good-nature’ of our theology two centuries ago was as nearly as possible expressed by the εὐφυΐα of Aristotle (Eth. Nic. iii. 7; compare the ‘heureusement né’ of the French); the genial preparedness for the reception of every high teaching. In the paper of The Spectator, quoted below, which treats exclusively of ‘good-nature,’ the word is passing, but has by no means passed, into its modern meaning. See ‘Ill-nature.’
Good-nature, being the relics and remains of that shipwreck which Adam made, is the proper and immediate disposition to holiness. When good-nature is heightened by the grace of God, that which was natural becomes now spiritual.—Bishop Taylor, Sermon preached at the Funeral of Sir George Dalstone.
Good-nature! alas, where is it? Since Adam fell, there was never any such thing in rerum naturâ; if there be any good thing in any man, it is all from grace. We may talk of this and that, of good-natured men, and I know not what; but the very truth is, set grace aside (I mean all grace, both renewing grace and restraining grace), there is no more good-nature in any man than there was in Cain and in Judas. That thing which we use to call good-nature is indeed but a subordinate means or instrument, whereby God restraineth some men more than others, from their birth and special constitution, from sundry outrageous exorbitances, and so is a branch of this restraining grace whereof we now speak.—Sanderson, Sermons, 1671, vol. i. p. 279.
If any good did appear in the conversation of some men who followed that religion [the Pagan], it is not to be imputed to the influence of that, but to some better cause; to the relics of good-nature, to the glimmerings of natural light, or (perhaps also) to secret whispers and impressions of divine grace on some men’s minds vouchsafed in pity to them.—Barrow, Sermon 14 on the Apostles’ Creed.
They [infidels] explode all natural difference of good and evil; deriding benignity, mercy, pity, gratitude, ingenuity; that is, all instances of good-nature, as childish and silly dispositions.—Id., Sermon 6 on the Apostles’ Creed.
Xenophon, in the Life of his imaginary Prince, is always celebrating the philanthropy or good-nature of his hero, which he tells us he brought into the world with him.—Spectator, no. 169.
Gospeller. Now seldom used save in ritual language, and there designating the priest or deacon who in the divine service reads the Gospel of the day; but employed once as equivalent to ‘Evangelist,’ and subsequently applied to adherents of the Reformed faith; both which meanings have since departed from it.
Marke, the gospeller, was the goostli sone of Petre in baptysm.—Wiclif, The Prologe of Marke.
The persecution was carried on against the gospellers with much fierceness by those of the Roman persuasion.—Strype, Memorial of Archbishop Cranmer, b. iii. c. 16.
Gossip. It would be interesting to collect instances in which the humbler classes of society have retained the correct use of a word, which has been let go by those of higher education. ‘Gossip’ is one, being still used by our peasantry in its first and etymological sense, namely as a sponsor in baptism—one sib or akin in God, according to the doctrine of the medieval Church, that sponsors contracted a spiritual affinity with the child for whom they stood. ‘Gossips,’ in this primary sense, would often be familiar with one another—and thus the word was applied to all familiars and intimates. At a later day it came to signify such idle talk, the ‘commérage’ (which word has exactly the same history), which too often would find place in the intercourse of such.
They had mothers as we had; and those mothers had gossips (if their children were christened), as we are.—Ben Jonson, The Staple of News, The Induction.
Thus fareth the golden mean, through the misconstruction of the extremes. Well-tempered zeal is lukewarmness; devotion is hypocrisy; charity, ostentation; constancy, obstinacy; gravity, pride; humility, abjection of spirit; and so go through the whole parish of virtues, where misprision and envy are gossips, be sure the child shall be nicknamed.—Whitlock, Zootomia, p. 3.
Should a great lady that was invited to be a gossip, in her place send her kitchen-maid, ’twould be ill-taken.—Selden, Table-Talk, Prayer.
Grave. The O.E. ‘grafan’ (compare German ‘graben,’ ‘to grave’) was once used in the senses which ‘graben’ still retains. See ‘Engrave.’
Chaucer, Legend of Good Women, 784 (Skeat, p. 50).
I wil laye sege to the rounde aboute, and grave up dykes against ye.—Isai. xxix. 3. Coverdale.
He hath graven and digged up a pit, and is fallen himself into the destruction that he made for other.—Ps. vii. 16. (P. B. V.)
Grope. Now to feel for, and uncertainly, as does a blind man or one in the dark; but once simply to feel, to grasp.
Tho han hondis, and schulen not grope [et non palpabunt, Vulg.]—Ps. cxiii. 7. Wiclif.
I have touched and tasted the Lord, and groped Him with hands, and yet unbelief hath made all unsavoury.—Rogers, Naaman the Syrian, p. 231.
Grudge. Now to repine at the good which others already have, or which we may be required to impart to them; but it formerly implied open utterances of discontent and displeasure against others, and did the work which ‘to murmur’ does now. Traces of this still survive in our English Bible.
And the Farisees and scribis grutchiden; seiynge, For this resseyveth synful men, and etith with hem.—Luke xv. 2. Wiclif.
After bakbytyng cometh grucching or murmuracioun, and somtyme it springith of impacience agayns God, and somtyme agains man.—Chaucer, The Persones Tale (Morris, iii. p. 305).
Yea without grudging Christ suffered the cruel Jews to crown Him with most sharp thorns, and to strike Him with a reed.—Foxe, Book of Martyrs: Examination of William Thorpe.
Use hospitality one to another without grudging [ἄνευ γογγυσμῶν].—1 Pet. iv. 9. (A.V.)
Guard. Is ‘guard,’ in the sense of welt or border to a garment, nothing more than a special application of ‘guard,’ as it is familiar to us all? or is it altogether a different word with its own etymology, and only by accident offering the same letters in the same sequence? I have assumed, though not with perfect confidence, the former; for indeed otherwise the word would have no right to a place here.
Antipater wears in outward show his apparel with a plain white welt or guard, but he is within all purple, I warrant you, and as red as scarlet.—Holland, Plutarch’s Morals, p. 412.
Then were the fathers of those children glad men to see their sons apparelled like Romans, in fair long gowns, garded with purple.—North, Plutarch’s Lives, p. 492.
Shakespeare, Merchant of Venice, act ii. sc. 2.
Hag. One of the many words applied formerly to both sexes, but now restrained only to one. See ‘Coquet,’ ‘Girl,’ ‘Harlot,’ ‘Hoyden,’ ‘Termagant,’ ‘Witch.’
Golding, Ovid’s Metamorphosis, b. iv.
Chapman, Byron’s Conspiracies, act iii.
| Handsome, | } |
| Handsomeness. |
Now referred exclusively to comeliness, either literal or figurative. It is of course closely connected with ‘handy,’ indeed differs from it only in termination, and in all early uses means having prompt and dexterous use of the hands, and then generally able, adroit. In Cotgrave’s Dictionary, ‘habile,’ ‘adroit,’ ‘maniable,’ take precedence of ‘beau,’ ‘belle,’ as its French equivalents. See ‘Unhandsome.’
Few of them [the Germans] use swords or great lances; but carry javelins with a narrow and short iron, but so sharp and handsome, that, as occasion serveth, with the same weapon they can fight both at hand and afar off.—Greenwey, Tacitus, vol. i. p. 259.
A light footman’s shield he takes unto him, and a Spanish blade by his side, more handsome to fight short and close [ad propiorem habili pugnam].—Holland, Livy, p. 255.
Philopœmen sought to put down all exercise, which made men’s bodies unmeet to take pains, and to become soldiers to fight in defence of their country, that otherwise would have been very able and handsome for the same.—North, Plutarch’s Lives, p. 306.
Golding, Ovid’s Metamorphosis, b. vi.
Harbinger. This word belongs at present to our poetical diction, and to that only; its original significance being nearly or quite forgotten: as is evident from the inaccurate ways in which it has come to be used; as though a ‘harbinger’ were merely one who announced the coming, and not always one who prepared a place and lodging, a ‘harbour,’ for another. He did indeed announce the near approach, but only as an accidental consequence of his office. Our Lord, if we may reverently say it, assumed to Himself precisely the office of a ‘harbinger,’ when He said, ‘I go to prepare a place for you’ (John xiv. 2).
There was a harbinger who had lodged a gentleman in a very ill room; who expostulated with him somewhat rudely; but the harbinger carelessly said, ‘You will take pleasure in it when you are out of it.’—Bacon, Apophthegms.
Shakespeare, Macbeth, act i. sc. 4.
The fame of Frederick’s valour and maiden fortune, never as yet spotted with ill success, like a harbinger hastening before, had provided victory to entertain him at his arrival.—Fuller, Holy War, b. iii. c. 31.
Bishop Taylor, On the Annunciation.
| Hardy, | } |
| Hardily. |
When used of persons, ‘hardy’ means now enduring, indifferent to fatigue, hunger, thirst, heat, cold, and the like. But it had once a far more prevailing sense of bold, which now only remains to it in connexion with things, as we should still speak of a ‘hardy,’ meaning thereby a bold, assertion; though never now of a ‘hardy,’ if we intended a bold or daring person. Lord Bacon’s Charles the Hardy is Charles le Téméraire, or Charles the Bold, as we always style him now.
Chaucer, Legend of Good Women (Skeat, p. 86).
It is not to be forgotten that Commineus observeth of his first master, duke Charles the Hardy, namely, that he would communicate his secrets with none.—Bacon, Essays, 27.
Hardily [audacter, Vulg.] he entride in to Pilat, and axide the body of Jhesu.—Mark xv. 43. Wiclif (earlier version).
Harlot. I have no desire to entangle myself in the question of this word’s etymology; it is sufficient to observe that it was used of both sexes alike; and though for the most part a word of slight and contempt, signifying generally a low fellow, vagabond, buffoon, acrobat (in the Promptorium ‘scurrus’ is the Latin equivalent of it), implied nothing of that special form of sin to which it now exclusively refers.
Morte Arthure, 2446.
Piers Plowman, B-text, Passus 18, 77 (Skeat).
Chaucer, Prologue, 647.
Thou lord (God) has done mare wondire than the herlot: he lerid to ga in a corde, thou makis men to ga abouen the watire.—Hampole, Psalm xxxix. 7 (ed. Bramley, 1884).
No man but he and thou and such other false harlots praiseth any such preaching.—Foxe, Book of Martyrs; Examination of William Thorpe.
About this time [A.D. 1264] a redress of certain sects was intended, among which one by name specially occurreth, and called the assembly of harlots,16 a kind of people of a lewd disposition and uncivil.—Id., ib. vol. i. p. 435.
Harness. In French the difference between the ‘harness’ of a man and of a horse is expressed by a slight difference in the spelling, ‘harnois’ in one case, ‘harnais’ in the other. In English we only retain the word now in the second of these uses.
But when a stronger then he cometh apon hym and overcommeth him, he taketh from him his harnes wherin he trusted, and devideth his gooddes.—Luke xi. 22. Tyndale.
When Abram herde that his brother was taken, he harnessed his bonde-servauntes, and followed after them untill Dan.—Gen. xiv. Coverdale.
Those that sleep in Jesus shall God bring with Him, and harness them with the bright armour of life and immortality.—H. More, Grand Mystery of Godliness, b. iv. c. 18.
Milton, On the Nativity.
Harvest. It is remarkable that while spring, summer, winter, have all their home-bred names, we designate the other quarter of the year by its Latin title ‘autumn,’ ‘hærfest’ (= the German ‘Herbst’) having been appropriated to the ingathering of the fruits of this season, not to the season itself. In this indeed we are truer to the proper meaning of ‘harvest’ than the Germans, who have transferred the word from the former to the latter; for it is closely related with the Greek καρπός. Occasionally, however, as in the passages which follow, ‘harvest’ assumes with us also the signification of autumn.
These ben hervest trees [arbores autumnales, Vulg.] with out fruyt, twies deed, drawun up bi the roote.—Jude 12. Wiclif.
Golding, Ovid’s Metamorphosis, b. ii.
Hassock. Already in Phillips’s New World of Words, 1706, the ‘hassock’ was what it is now, ‘a kind of straw cushion used to kneel upon in churches;’ and some of us may remember to have seen in country churches ‘hassocks’ of solid tufts of coarse black grass which had so grown and matted together that they served this purpose sufficiently well. But this is only the secondary and transferred use of the word. It was once the name by which this coarse grass growing in these rank tufts was itself called; and this name, as Forby tells us, in Norfolk it still bears. See Way’s Promptorium, s. v. ‘Hassok.’
Land so full of hassocks as to be impossible to find the deer among them.—Hutchinson, Drainage of Land.
These hassocks, in bogs, were formerly taken up with a part of the soil, matted together with roots, shaped, trimmed, and dressed, a sufficient part of their shaggy and tufted surface being left to make kneeling much easier than on the pavement of the church or the bare-boarded floor of a pew.—Forby, East Anglia.
Hateful. This has undergone exactly the same limitation of meaning as ‘Dreadful’ and ‘Frightful,’ which see.
Shakespeare, Richard II., act ii. sc. 2.
Pope, Messiah, 57.
Hear. Our scholars of the seventeenth century occasionally use the Latin idiom, ‘to hear well,’ or ‘to hear ill,’ i.e. concerning oneself (bene audire, male audire), instead of, to be praised, or to be blamed.
[Fabius] was well aware, that not only within his own camp, but also now at Rome, he heard ill for his temporizing and slow proceedings.—Holland, Livy, p. 441.
What more national corruption, for which England hears ill abroad, than household gluttony?—Milton, Areopagitica, p. 431.
The abbot made his mind known to the Lord Keeper, that he would gladly be present in the Abbey of Westminster on our Christmas-day in the morning, to behold and hear how that great feast was solemnized in our congregations, which heard very ill beyond the seas for profaneness.—Hacket, Life of Archbishop Williams, part i. p. 210.
Hearse. Now the carriage in which the dead are conveyed to the grave, but this was not the meaning from the first. The origin is the French ‘herse,’ a harrow; this implement in France being made in a triangular form, not square as with us. Hence the name of ‘herce’ or ‘herche’ was given to a triangular framework, generally of iron, used for holding a number of candles at funerals; and which, being elaborately fashioned and framed, was allowed afterwards to remain in the church for a longer or shorter period.