Romaunt of the Rose, 6339 (Morris, vi. p. 193).
Marlowe, The Massacre at Paris, act iii. sc. 4.
A certain Jacobin offered himself to the fire to prove that Savonarola had true revelations, and was no heretic.—Bishop Taylor, The Liberty of Prophesying, The Epistle Dedicatory.
Jolly. For a long time after its adoption into the English language, ‘jolly’ kept the meaning of beautiful, which it brought with it from the French, and which ‘joli’ in French still retains.
William of Palerne, 5478.
Golding, Ovid’s Metamorphosis, b. 13.
Beaumont, Psyche, iv. 4.
Kindly. Nothing ethical was connoted in ‘kindly’ once; it was simply the adjective of ‘kind.’ But it is God’s ordinance that ‘kind’ should be ‘kindly,’ in our modern sense of the word as well; and thus the word has attained this meaning. See ‘Unkind.’
This Joon in the Gospel witnesseth that the kyndeli sone of God is maad man.—Wiclif, Prologe of John.
Forasmuch as his mind gave him, that, his nephews living, men would not reckon that he could have right to the realm, he thought therefore without delay to rid them, as though the killing of his kinsmen could amend his cause, and make him a kindly king.—Sir T. More, History of King Richard III.
The royal eagle is called in Greek Gnesios, as one would say, true and kindly, as descended from the gentle and right aëry of eagles.—Holland, Pliny, vol. i. p. 272.
Whatsoever as the Son of God He may do, it is kindly for Him as the Son of Man to save the sons of men.—Andrewes, Sermons, vol. iv. p. 253.
Where are they? Gone to their own place, to Judas their brother; and, as is most kindly, the sons, to the father, of wickedness, there to be plagued with him for ever.—Id., Of the Conspiracy of the Gowries, serm. 4.
What greater tyranny and usurpation over poor souls would he have than is now exercised, since the perjured prelates, the kindly brood of the Man of sin, have defiled and burdened our poor Church?—Jus Populi Vindicatum, 1665.
Knave. How many serving-lads must have been unfaithful and dishonest before ‘knave,’ which meant at first no more than boy, acquired the meaning which it has now! Note the same history in the German ‘Bube,’ ‘Dirne,’ ‘Schalk,’ and see ‘Varlet.’
If it is a knave child, sle ye him; if it is a womman, kepe ye.—Exodus i. 16. Wiclif.
Chaucer, The Man of Lawes Tale (Morris, ii. p. 192).
Shakespeare, Julius Cæsar, act iv. sc. 3.
Knuckle. The German ‘Knöchel’ is any joint whatsoever; nor was our ‘knuckle’ limited formerly, as now it well nigh exclusively is, at least in regard of the human body, to certain smaller joints of the hand.
Golding, Ovid’s Metamorphosis, b. 1.
But when
the pace of the verse told me that her maukin knuckles were never shapen to that royal buskin.—Milton, Apology for Smectymnuus, p. 186.
Lace. That which now commonly bears this name has it on the score of its curiously woven threads; but ‘lace,’ Old French ‘las,’ ‘laqs,’ identical with the Latin ‘laqueus,’ is commonly used by our earlier writers in the more original sense of a noose.
Earl of Surrey, The Restless State of a Lover, p. 2 (ed. 1717).
Yet if the polype can get and entangle him [the lobster] once within his long laces, he dies for it.—Holland, Plutarch’s Morals, p. 973.
Landscape. The second syllable in ‘landscape’ or ‘landskip’ is only a Dutch example of an earlier form of the same termination which we meet in ‘friendship,’ ‘lordship,’ ‘fellowship,’ and the like. As these mean the manner or fashion of a friend, of a lord, and so on, so ‘landscape’ the manner or fashion of the land; and in our earlier English this rather as the pictured or otherwise counterfeited model, than in its very self. As this imitation would be necessarily in small, the word acquired the secondary meaning of a compendium or multum in parvo; cf. Skinner, Etymologicon, s. v. Landskip: Tabula chorographica, primario autem terra, provincia, seu topographica, σκιαγραφία; Phillips, New World of Words, s. v.; and Earle, Philology of the English Tongue, § 327, who suggests that the word has been borrowed by us from the Dutch painters, which would account for the termination ‘-scape,’ ‘-skip’ instead of the native suffix ‘-ship.’ See Skeat’s Dictionary.
The sins of other women show in landskip, far off and full of shadow; her [a harlot’s] in statue, near hand and bigger in the life.—Sir Thomas Overbury, Characters.
London, as you know, is our Ἑλλάδος Ἑλλάς, our England of England, and our landskip and representation of the whole island.—Hacket, Life of Archbishop Williams, part ii. p. 59.
The detestable traitor, that prodigy of nature, that opprobrium of mankind, that landscape of iniquity, that sink of sin, and that compendium of baseness, who now calls himself our Protector.—Address sent by the Anabaptists to the King, 1658, in Clarendon’s History of the Rebellion, b. xv.
Latch. Few things now are ‘latched’ or caught except a door or casement; but the word was formerly of much wider use. It is the O.E. lœccan.
Those that remained threw darts at our men, and latching our darts, sent them again at us.—Golding, Cæsar, p. 60.
Peahens are wont to lay by night, and that from an high place where they perch; and then, unless there be good heed taken that the eggs be latched in some soft bed underneath, they are soon broken.—Holland, Pliny, vol. i. p. 301.
Lecture. Where words like ‘lecture’ and ‘reading’ exist side by side, it is very usual for one after a while to be appropriated to the doing of the thing, the other to the thing which is done. So it has been here; but they were once synonymous.
After the lecture of the law and of the prophets, the rulers of the synagogue sent unto them, saying, Good brethren, if ye have any sermon to exhort the people, say on.—Acts xiii. 15. Coverdale.
That may be gathered out of Plutarch’s writings, out of those especially where he speaketh of the lecture of the poets.—North, Plutarch’s Lives, p. 982.
In my lecture I often perceive how my authors commend examples for magnanimity and force, that rather proceed from a thick skin and hardness of the bones.—Florio, Montaigne’s Essays, p. 72.
Legacy. This now owns no relation except with ‘lēgatum,’ which meant in juristic Latin a portion of the inheritance by testamentary disposition withdrawn from the heir, and bestowed upon some other. It was formerly used as a derivative of ‘legatus,’ ambassador, in the sense of embassage.
They were then preaching bishops, and more often seen in pulpits than in princes’ palaces: more often occupied in his legacy, who said, Go ye into the whole world and preach the gospel to all men, than in embassages and affairs of princes.—Homilies, Against Peril of Idolatry.
Otherwise, while he is yet far off, sending a legacy, he asketh those things that belong to peace.—Luke xiv. 32. Rheims.
And his citizens hated him, and they sent a legacie after him, saying, We will not have this man to reign over us.—Luke xix. 14. Ibid.
Levy. Troops are now raised, or ‘levied,’ indifferently: but a siege is only raised, and not ‘levied,’ as it too once might have been.
Euphranor having levied the siege from this one city, forthwith led his army to Demetrias.—Holland, Livy, p. 1178.
| Lewd, | } |
| Lewdly, | |
| Lewdness. |
There are three distinct stages in the meaning of the word ‘lewd;’ of these it has entirely overlived two, and survives only in the third, namely in that of wanton or lascivious. Without discussing here its etymology or its exact relation to ‘lay,’ it is sufficient to observe, that, as ‘lay,’ it was often used in the sense of ignorant, or rather unlearned. Next, according to the proud saying of the Pharisees, ‘This people who knoweth not the law are cursed’ (John vii. 49), and on the assumption, which would have its truth, that those untaught in the doctrines, would be unexercised in the practices, of Christianity, it came to signify vicious, though without designating one vice more than others. While in its present and third stage, it has, like so many other words, retired from this general designation of all vices, to express one of the more frequent, alone.
Piers Plowman, B-text, Passus xii. 115 (Skeat).
For as moche as the curatis ben often so lewed, that thei understonden not bookis of Latyn for to teche the peple, it is spedful not only to the lewed peple, but also to the lewed curatis, to have bookis in Englisch of needful loore to the lewed people.—Wycliffe Mss., p. 5.
Chaucer, The Squieres Tale (Morris, ii. p. 361).
Joon was a lewde fischere and untaught in scolys.—Purvey, Preface to Epistles of St. Jerome, p. 65.
Neither was it Christ’s intention that there should be any thing in it [the Lord’s Prayer] dark or far from our capacity, specially since it belongeth equally to all, and is as necessary for the lewd as the learned.—A Short Catechism, 1553.
Milton, Paradise Lost, vi. 178.
If it were a matter of wrong or wicked lewdness [ῥᾳδιούργημα], O ye Jews, reason would that I should bear with you.—Acts xviii. 14. (A.V.)
Liberal. Often used by Shakespeare and his contemporaries as free of tongue, licentious or wanton in speech.
Shakespeare, Hamlet, act iv. sc. 7.
Desdemona [of Iago]: Is he not a most profane and liberal counsellor?—Id., Othello, act ii. sc. 1.
Webster, The Famous History of Sir Thomas Wyatt.
Libel. This, properly a little book, is with us any defamatory speech or writing; but was not formerly so restricted; indeed, in the legal language of Scotland, where an indictment is in technical language a ‘libel,’ it still retains a wider meaning.
Forsoothe, it is said, Who evere shal leeve his wyf, geve he to hir a libel.—Matt. v. 31. Wiclif.
Let the Allmightie geve me answere, and let him that is my contrary party sue me with a lybell.—Job xxxi. 35. Coverdale.
Ben Jonson, Catiline, act v. sc. 4.
Libertine. A striking evidence of the extreme likelihood that he who has no restraints on his belief will ere long have none upon his life, is given by this word ‘libertine.’ Applied at first to certain heretical sects, and intended to mark the licentious liberty of their creed, ‘libertine’ soon let go altogether its relation to what a man believed, and acquired the sense which it now has, a ‘libertine’ being one who has released himself from all moral restraints, and especially in his relations with the other sex.
That the Scriptures do not contain in them all things necessary to salvation, is the fountain of many great and capital errors; I instance in the whole doctrine of the libertines, familists, quakers, and other enthusiasts, which issue from this corrupted fountain.—Bishop Taylor, A Dissuasive from Popery, part ii. b. 1, § 2.
It is not to be denied that the said libertine doctrines do more contradict the doctrine of the Gospel, even Christianity itself, than the doctrines of the Papists about the same subjects do.—Baxter, Catholic Theology, part iii. p. 289.
It is too probable that our modern libertines, deists, and atheists, took occasion from the scandalous contentions of Christians about many things, to disbelieve all.—A Discourse of Logomachies, 1711.
Litigious. This word has changed from an objective to a subjective sense. Things were ‘litigious’ once, which offered matter for going to law; persons are ‘litigious’ now, who are prone to going to law. Both meanings are to be found in the Latin ‘litigiosus,’ though predominantly that which we have now made the sole meaning.
Dolopia he hath subdued by force of arms, and could not abide to hear that the determination of certain provinces, which were debatable and litigious, should be referred to the award of the people of Rome.—Holland, Livy, p. 1111.
Of the articles gainsaid by a great outcry, three and no more did seem to be litigious.—Hacket, Life of Archbishop Williams, part i. p. 140.
Dryden, Virgil’s Georgics, b. i. 193, 4.
Lively. This had once nearly, if not altogether, the same meaning as ‘living.’ We have here the explanation of a circumstance which many probably have noted and regretted in the Authorized Version of the New Testament, namely that while λίθον ζῶντα at 1 Pet. ii. 4 is ‘a living stone,’ λίθοι ζῶντες, which follows immediately, ver. 5, is only ‘lively stones,’ ‘living’ being thus brought down to ‘lively’ with no correspondent reduction in the original to warrant it. But when our Version was made, there was scarcely any distinction between the forces of the words. Still it would certainly have been better to adhere to one word or the other.
Mine enemies are lively (Heb. living), and they are strong.—Ps. xxxviii. 19. (A.V.)
Was it well done to suffer him, imprisoned in chains, lying in a dark dungeon, to draw his lively breath at the pleasure of the hangman?—Holland, Livy, p. 228.
Shakespeare, Titus Andronicus, act iii. sc. 1.
Massinger, The Fatal Dowry, act ii. sc. 1.
Livery. It need hardly be observed that the explanation of ‘livery’ which Spenser offers (see below) is perfectly correct; but we do not any longer recognize the second of those uses of the word there mentioned by him. It is no longer applied to the ration, or stated portion of food, delivered at stated periods (the σιτομέτριον of Luke xii. 42), either to the members of a household, to soldiers, or to others.
Ballad of John de Reeve, 155.
What Liverye is, we by common use in England knowe well enough, namelye, that it is, allowaunce of horse-meate, as they commonly use the woord in stabling, as to keepe horses at liverye, the which woord, I gess, is derived of livering or delivering foorth theyr nightlye foode. Soe in great howses the liverye is sayd to be served up for all night. And Liverye is also called the upper garment which serving-men weareth, soe called (as I suppose) for that it is delivered and taken from him at pleasure.—Spenser, View of the State of Ireland, p. 623 (Globe edition).
The emperor’s officers every night went through the town from house to house, whereat any English gentleman did repast or lodge, and served their liveries for all night; first the officers brought into the house a cast of fine manchet, and of silver two great pots, and white wine, and sugar, to the weight of a pound, &c.—Cavendish, Life of Cardinal Wolsey.
| Loiter, | } |
| Loiterer. |
Whatever may be the derivation of ‘to loiter,’17 it is certain that it formerly implied a great deal more and worse than it implies now. The ‘loiterer’ then was very much what the tramp is now.
God bad that no such strong lubbers should loyter and goe a begging, and be chargeable to the congregation.—Tyndale, Works, p. 217.
He that giveth any alms to an idle beggar robbeth the truly poor; as S. Ambrose sometimes complaineth that the maintenance of the poor is made the spoil of the loiterer.—Sanderson, Sermons, 1671. vol. i. p. 198.
Yf he be but once taken soe idlye roging, he [the Provost Marshal] may punnish him more lightlye, as with stockes or such like; but yf he be founde agayne soe loytring he may scourge him with whippes or roddes; after which yf he be agayne taken, lett him have the bitterness of the marshall lawe.—Spenser, View of the State of Ireland, p. 679 (Globe Edition).
They spend their youth in loitering, bezzling, and harlotting.—Milton, Animadversions on Remonstrants’ Defence.
Lover. This word has undergone two restrictions, of which formerly it knew nothing. A natural delicacy, and an unwillingness to confound under a common name things essentially different, has caused ‘lover’ no longer to be equivalent with friend, but always to imply a relation resting on the difference of sex; while further, and within these narrower limits, the ‘lover’ now is always the man, not as once the man or the woman indifferently. We may still indeed speak of ‘a pair of lovers,’ but then datur denominatio a potiori. ‘Leman’ had something of the same history, though that history ended in leaving this a designation of the woman alone.
If ye love them that love you, what thank have ye therefore? for sinners also love their lovers.—Luke vi. 32. Coverdale.
For Hiram was ever a lover of David.—1 Kin. v. 1. (A.V.)
Shakespeare, Cymbeline, act v. sc. 5.
Ben Jonson, The Poetaster.
Lucid interval. We limit this at present to the brief and transient season when a mind, ordinarily clouded and obscured by insanity, recovers for a while its clearness. It had no such limitation formerly, but was of very wide use, as the four passages quoted below, in each of which its application is different, will show.18
East of Edom lay the land of Uz, where Job dwelt, so renowned for his patience, when the devil heaped afflictions upon him, allowing him no lucid intervals.—Fuller, A Pisgah Sight of Palestine, b. iv. c. 2.
Dryden, Mac-Flecknoe.
Such is the nature of man, that it requires lucid intervals; and the vigour of the mind would flag and decay, should it always jog on at the rate of a common enjoyment, without being sometimes quickened and exalted with the vicissitude of some more refined pleasures.—South, Sermons, 1744, vol. viii. p. 403.
Thus he [Lord Lyttelton] continued, giving his dying benediction to all around him. On Monday morning a lucid interval gave some small hopes; but these vanished in the evening.—Narrative of the Physician, inserted in Johnson’s Life of Lord Lyttelton.
Lumber. As the Lombards were the bankers, so also they were the pawnbrokers of the Middle Ages; indeed, as they would often advance money upon pledges, the two businesses were very closely joined, would often run in, to one another. The ‘lumber’ room was originally the Lombard room, or room where the Lombard banker and broker stowed away his pledges; ‘lumber’ then, as in the passage from Butler, the pawns and pledges themselves. As these would naturally often accumulate here till they became out of date and unserviceable, the steps are easy to be traced by which the word came to possess its present meaning.
Lumber, potius lumbar, as to put one’s clothes to lumbar, i.e. pignori dare, oppignorare.—Skinner, Etymologicon.
Butler, Upon Critics.
They put up all the little plate they had in the lumber, which is pawning it, till the ships came.—Lady Murray, Lives of George Baillie and of Lady Grisell Baillie.
Lurch. ‘To lurch’ is seldom used now except of a ship, which ‘lurches’ when it makes something of a headlong dip in the sea; the fact that by so doing it, partially at least, hides itself, and so ‘lurks,’ explains this employment of the word. But ‘to lurch,’ generally as an active verb, was of much more frequent use in early English; and soon superinduced on the sense of lying concealed that of lying in wait with the view of intercepting and seizing a prey. After a while this superadded notion of intercepting and seizing some booty quite thrust out that of lying concealed; as in all three of the quotations which follow. See Skeat’s Dictionary.
It is not an auspicate beginning of a feast, nor agreeable to amity and good fellowship, to snatch or lurch one from another, to have many hands in a dish at once, striving a vie who should be more nimble with his fingers.—Holland, Plutarch’s Morals, p. 679.
I speak not of many more [discommodities of a residence]: too far off from great cities, which may hinder business; or too near them, which lurcheth all provisions, and maketh every thing dear.—Bacon, Essays, 45 (ed. Abbott, ii. p. 50).
At the beginning of this war [the Crusades] the Pope’s temporal power in Italy was very slender; but soon after he grew within short time without all measure, and did lurch a castle here, gain a city there from the emperor, while he was employed in Palestine.—Fuller, Holy War, b. i. c. 11.
Lust. Used at this present only in an ill sense, not as ἐπιθυμία, but as ἐπιθυμία κακή (Col. iii. 5), and this mainly in one particular direction. ‘Lust’ had formerly no such limitations, nor has it now in German. The same holds good of the verb.
Chaucer, Canterbury Tales, 192.
Through faith a man is purged of his sins, and obtaineth lust unto the law of God.—Tyndale, Prologue upon the Epistle to the Romans.
It was not because of the multitude of you above all nations that the Lord had lust unto you and chose you.—Deut. vii. 7. Coverdale.
My lust to devotion is little, my joy none at all.—Bishop Hall, Letters, Dec. 2, Ep. 1.
Thou mayest kill and eat flesh in all thy gates, whatsoever thy soul lusteth after.—Deut. xii. 15. (A.V.)
| Luxury, | } |
| Luxurious. |
‘Luxuria’ in classical Latin was very much what our ‘luxury’ is now. The meaning which in our earlier English was its only one, namely indulgence in sins of the flesh, it derived from the use of ‘luxuria’ in the medieval ethics, where it never means anything else but this. The weakening of the influence of the scholastic theology, joined to a more familiar acquaintance with classical Latinity, has probably caused its return to the classical meaning. In the definition given by Phillips (see below), we note the process of transition from its old meaning to its new, the old still remaining, but the new superinduced upon it.
Chaucer, The Man of Lawes Tale (Morris, ii. p. 198).
Luxury and lust fasten a rust and foulness on the mind, that it cannot see sin in its odious deformity, nor virtue in its unattainable beauty.—Bates, Spiritual Perfection, c. 1.
Luxury, all superfluity and excess in carnal pleasures, sumptuous fare or building; sensuality, riotousness, profuseness.—Phillips, New World of Words.
Shakespeare, Much Ado about Nothing, act iv. sc. 1.
Again, that many of their Popes be such as I have said, naughty, wicked, luxurious men, they openly confess.—Jackson, The Eternal Truth of Scriptures, b. ii. c. 14.
| Magnificent, | } |
| Magnificence. |
Frequently used by our elder writers where we should employ munificent or generous. Yet there lay in the word something more than in these; something of the μεγαλοπρέπεια of Aristotle; a certain grandeur presiding over and ordering this large distribution of wealth. Behind both uses an earlier and a nobler than either may be traced, as is evident from my first quotation.
Then cometh magnificence, that is to say when a man doth and performeth gret werkes of goodnesse.—Chaucer, The Persones Tale.
Every amorous person becometh liberal and magnificent, although he had been aforetime a pinching snudge; in such sort as men take more pleasure to give away and bestow upon those whom they love, than they do take and receive of others.—Holland, Plutarch’s Morals, p. 1147.
Massinger, The Emperor of the East, act ii. sc. 1.
Bounty and magnificence are virtues very regal; but a prodigal king is nearer a tyrant than a parsimonious.—Bacon, Essays, Of a King.
Maid. A word which, in its highest sense as = virgin, might once be applied to either sex, to Sir Galahad as freely as to the Pucelle, but which is now restricted to one. Compare παρθένος in Greek.
To him [John the Apostle] God hangyng in the cross bitook his modir, that a mayde schulde kepe a mayde.—Wiclif, Prolog of John.
Chaucer, Prologe of the Wyf of Bathe, 79.
Sir Galahad is a maid and sinner never; and that is the cause he shall achieve where he goeth that ye nor none such shall not attain.—Sir T. Malory, Morte D’Arthur, b. xiii. c. 16.
| Make, | } |
| Maker. |
The very early use of ‘maker,’ as equivalent to poet, and ‘to make’ as applied to the exercise of the poet’s art, is evidence that the words are of genuine home-growth, and not mere imitations of the Greek ποιητής and ποιεῖν, which Sir Philip Sidney, as will be seen below, suggests as possible. The words, like the French ‘trouvère’ and ‘troubadour,’ the O.H.G. ‘scof,’ and the O.E. ‘sceop,’ mark men’s sense that invention, and in a certain sense, creation, is the essential character of the poet. The quotation from Chaucer will sufficiently prove how entirely mistaken Sir John Harington was, when he affirmed (Apology for Poetry, p. 2) that Puttenham in his Art of English Poesy, 1589, was the first who gave ‘make’ and ‘maker’ this meaning. Sir Walter Scott somewhere claims them as Scotticisms; but exclusively such they certainly are not.
Chaucer, Compleynt of Venus, 79 (Skeat).
Spenser, The Shepherd’s Calendar, June.
The old famous poete Chaucer, for his excellencie and wonderful skil in making, his scholler Lidgate (a worthy scholler of so excellent a maister) calleth the Loadestarre of our language.—E. K., Epistle Dedicatory to Spenser’s Shepherd’s Calendar.
There cannot be in a maker a fouler fault than to falsify his accent to serve his cadence, or by untrue orthography to wrench his words to help his rhyme.—Puttenham, Art of English Poesy, b. ii. c. 8.
The Greeks named the poet ποιητής, which name, as the most excellent, hath gone through other languages. It cometh of this word ποιεῖν, to make; wherein I know not whether by luck or wisdom we Englishmen have met well with the Greeks in calling him a maker.—Sir P. Sidney, Defence of Poesy.
Mansion. This is a finely selected word, suggested no doubt by the ‘mansiones’ of the Vulgate, whereby our Translators, and Tyndale before them, rendered the μοναί of John xiv. 2. Knowing, however, as we do that μοναί never meant ‘mansions’ in our modern, or auctioneers’ sense of the word, we cannot doubt that by this word they intended places of tarrying, which might be for a longer or a shorter time; resting places which remained for the Christian traveller who should have reached at length his heavenly home. This use of ‘mansion’ as a place of tarrying is frequent enough in our early literature, although our modern use is by no means unknown.
They [the Angels] be pure minds and were never neither blinded through sin, ne hindered through any earthly mansion and corruptible body.—Hutchinson, Works, p. 160 (ed. 1842).
Milton, Comus, i. 4.
Manure. The same word as ‘manœuvre,’ to work with the hand; and thus, to till or cultivate the earth, this tillage being in earlier periods of society the great and predominant labour of the hands. We restrain the word now to one particular branch of this cultivation, but our ancestors made it to embrace the whole.
The manuring hand of the tiller shall root up all that burdens the soil.—Milton, Reason of Church Government.
It [Japan] is mountainous and craggy, full of rocks and stony places, so that the third part of this empire is not inhabited or manured.—Memorials of Japan (Hakluyt Society), p. 3.
A rare and excellent wit untaught doth bring forth many good and evil things together; as a fat soil, that lieth unmanured, bringeth forth both herbs and weeds.—North, Plutarch’s Lives, p. 185.
Every man’s hand itching to throw a cudgel at him, who, like a nut-tree, must be manured by beating, or else would never bear fruit.—Fuller, Holy War, ii. 11.
| Mean, | } |
| Meanness. |
O.E. ‘gemǽne,’ Goth. ‘gamains’ (compare Germ. ‘gemein’), cognate with Latin ‘communis’ (our ‘common’)—all with a history very closely corresponding to that of the Greek κοινός (see Acts x. 14). The connotation of moral baseness only accrued to the word by degrees.