Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra, act ii. sc. 5.
Ben Jonson, The Fox, act iii. sc. 1.
Jerome, a very unequal relator of the opinion of his adversaries.—Worthington, Life of Joseph Mede, p. xi.
Uneasy. This has lost the sense of ‘difficult,’ and means now restless or anxious. But the objective signification is to be found in our Bible and in Shakespeare.
The town was hard to besiege and uneasy to come unto.—2 Macc. xii. 21. (A.V.)
Shakespeare, The Tempest, act i. sc. 2.
Unhandsome. See ‘Handsome.’
A narrow straight path by the water’s side, very unhandsome [οὐ ῥᾳδίαν] for an army to pass that way, though they found not a man to keep the passage.—North, Plutarch’s Lives, p. 317; cf. p. 378.
The ships were unwieldy and unhandsome.—Holland, Livy, p. 1188.
| Unhappy, | } |
| Unhappiness. |
A very deep truth lies involved in the fact that so many words, and I suppose in all languages, unite the meanings of wicked and miserable, as the Greek σχέτλιος, our own ‘wretch’ and ‘wretched.’ So, too, it was once with ‘unhappy,’ although its use in the sense of ‘wicked’ has now passed away.
Fathers shall do well also to keep from them [their children] such schoolfellows as be unhappy, and given to shrewd turns; for such as they are enough to corrupt and mar the best natures in the world.—Holland, Plutarch’s Morals, p. 16.
Shakespeare, King Lear, act iv. sc. 6.
The servants of Dionyse, king of Sicily, which although they were inclined to all unhappiness and mischief, yet after the coming of Plato, perceiving that for his doctrine and wisdom the king had him in high estimation, they thus counterfeited the countenance and habit of the philosopher.—Sir T. Elyot, The Governor, b. ii. c. 14.
[Man] from the hour of his birth is most miserable, weak, and sickly; when he sucks, he is guided by others; when he is grown great, practiseth unhappiness and is sturdy; and when old, a child again and repenteth him of his past life.—Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy; Democritus to the Reader.
Union. The elder Pliny (H. N. ix. 59) tells us that the name ‘unio’ had not very long before his time begun to be given to a pearl in which all chiefest excellencies, size, roundness, smoothness, whiteness, weight, met and, so to speak, were united; and as late as Jeremy Taylor the word ‘union’ was often employed to designate a pearl of a rare and transcendent beauty. See Skeat’s Dictionary (s. v. ‘Onion’).
Shakespeare, Hamlet, act v. sc. 2.
Pope Paul II. in his pontifical vestments outwent all his predecessors, especially in his mitre, upon which he had laid out a great deal of money in purchasing at vast rates diamonds, sapphires, emeralds, crysoliths, jaspers, unions, and all manner of precious stones.—Sir Paul Rycaut, Platina’s History of the Popes, p. 114.
Perox, the Persian king, [hath] an union in his ear worth an hundred weight of gold.—Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy, mem. ii. sect. 3.
| Unkind, | } |
| Unkindness. |
‘Unkind’ has quite forfeited now its primary meaning, namely that which violates the law of kind, thus ‘unkind abominations’ (Chaucer), meaning incestuous unions and the like; and has taken up with the secondary, that which does not recognise the duties flowing out of this kinship. In its primary meaning it moves in a region where the physical and ethical meet; in its secondary in a purely ethical sphere. How soon it began to occupy this the passages which follow will show; for out of a sense that nothing was so unnatural or ‘unkind’ as ingratitude, the word early obtained use as a special designation of this vice.
Unkynde [ingrati, Vulg.], cursid, withouten affeccioun.—2 Tim. iii. 2, 3. Wiclif.
Gower, Confessio Amantis, b. v.
Richard Rolle de Hampole, Pricke of Conscience, 117.
The most damnable vice and most against justice, in mine opinion, is ingratitude, commonly called unkindness. He is unkind that denieth to have received any benefit, that indeed he hath received; he is unkind that dissimuleth; he is unkind that recompenseth not; but he is most unkind that forgetteth.—Sir T. Elyot, The Governor, b. ii. c. 13.
God might have made me even such a foule and unreasonable beast as this is; and yet was I never so kynde as to thancke Him that He had not made me so vile a creature; which thing I greatly bewayle, and my unkindenesse causeth me now thus to weepe.—Frith, Works, 1573, p. 90.
We have cause also in England to beware of unkindnesse, who have had in so fewe yeares the candel of Goddes woorde, so oft lightned, so oft put out; and yet will venture by our unthankfulnesse in doctrine, and sinfull life, to leese againe lighte, candle, candlesticke, and all.—Ascham, The Scholemaster, b. i.
| Unthrifty, | } |
| Unthriftiness. |
As the ‘thrifty’ will probably be the thriving, so the ‘unthrifty’ the unthriving; but the words are not synonymous any more, as once they were. See ‘Thrifty.’
What [is it] but this self and presuming of ourselves causes grace to be unthrifty, and to hang down the head? what but our ascribing to ourselves in our means-using, makes them so unfruitful?—Rogers, Naaman the Syrian, p. 146.
Staggering, non-proficiency, and unthriftiness of profession is the fruit of self.—Id., Index.
Unvalued. This and ‘invaluable’ have been usefully desynonymized; so that ‘invaluable’ means now having a value greater than can be estimated, ‘unvalued’ esteemed to have no value at all. Yet it was not so once; though in Shakespeare (see Hamlet, act i. sc. 3) our present use of ‘unvalued’ occasionally obtained.
Spenser, Sonnet 77.
Chapman, Dedication of Poems.
Milton, An Epitaph on Shakespeare.
| Usury, | } |
| Usurer. |
This, which is now the lending of money upon inordinate interest, was once the lending it upon any. The man who did not lend his money for nothing was then a ‘usurer,’ not he, as now, who makes unworthy profit by the necessities of the needy or the extravagance of the foolish. It is true that the word was as dishonourable then as it is now; and it could not be otherwise, so long as all receiving of interest was regarded as a violation at once of divine and of natural law. When at length the common sense of men overcame this strange but deep-rooted prejudice, the word was too deeply stained with dishonour to be employed to express the lawful receiving of a measurable interest; but ‘usury,’ taking up a portion only of its former meaning, was now restricted to that which still remained under a moral ban, namely the exacting of an excessive interest for money lent.
On the other side, the commodities of usury are: first, that howsoever usury in some respects hindereth merchandising, yet in some other it advanceth it; for it is certain that the greatest part of trade is driven by young merchants upon borrowing at interest; so as if the usurer either call in or keep back his money, there will ensue presently a great stand of trade.—Bacon, Essay, 41.
Wherefore then gavest not thou my money into the bank, that at my coming I might have required mine own with usury [σὺν τόκῳ]?—Luke xix. 23. (A.V.)
Brokers, takers of pawns, biting usurers I will not admit; yet because we converse here with men, not with gods, and for the hardness of men’s hearts, I will tolerate some kind of usury.—Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy; Democritus to the Reader.
Varlet. Littré, dealing with this very word, has truly said, ‘Les mots, soit en changeant de pays, soit en changeant de siècle, s’ennoblissent ou s’avilissent d’une façon singulière’ (Hist. de la Langue Française, vol. ii. p. 166). There could be no more signal proof of this than that which the word ‘varlet’ supplies. I continue to quote his words, ‘Vaslet, ou, par une substitution non rare de l’r à l’s, varlet, est un diminutif de vassal; vassal signifiait un vaillant guerrier, et varlet un jeune homme qui pouvait aspirer aux honneurs de la chevalerie.’ From this it fell to the use in which we find it in the passage quoted below from Shakespeare of squire or attendant, which is also the continually recurring use in the Old English translation of Froissart. In this sense it survives as ‘valet;’ but not pausing here, ‘varlet’ is now tinged with contempt, and implies moral worthlessness in him to whom it is applied.
Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida, act i. sc. 1.
Right so there came in a varlet; and told Sir Tristram how there was come an errant knight into the town with such colours upon his shield.—Sir T. Malory, Morte d’Arthur, b. x. c. 56.
Vassalage. This, like the Old French ‘vasselage,’ had once the meaning of courage, prowess, superiority. See in explanation the quotation from Littré under ‘Varlet.’
Chaucer, The Knightes Tale, 2189 (Clar. Press).
Lydgate, Minor Poems, Halliwell’s ed., p. 176.
Vermin. Now always noxious offensive animals of the smaller kind, but employed formerly with no such limitation.
But he shouke of the vermen into the fyre and felt no harme.—Acts xxviii. 5. Geneva Version.
This crocodile is a mischievous four-footed beast, a dangerous vermin used to both elements.—Holland, Ammianus, p. 212.
Wherein were all manner of four-footed beasts of the earth, and vermin [καὶ τὰ θηρία], and worms, and fowls of the air.—Acts x. 12. Geneva.
The Lord rectifies Peter, and frames him to go by a vision of all crawling vermin in a clean sheet.—Rogers, Naaman the Syrian, p. 42.
Vilify. This now implies a great deal more than to hold morally cheap, which was all that in the seventeenth century it involved.
Can it be imagined that a whole people would ever so vilify themselves, depart from their own interests to that degree as to place all their hopes in one man?—Milton, Defence of the People of England, c. 7.
The ears of all men will be filled with deceitful figments and gainful lies, the merits of Christ’s passion will be vilified and maimed.—H. More, The Mystery of Iniquity, b. ii. c. 7, § 11.
The more I magnify myself, the more God vilifies me.—Rogers, Naaman the Syrian, p. 469.
| Villain, | } |
| Villany. |
A word whose story, like that of ‘churl,’ is so well known that one may be spared the necessity of repeating it. It was, I think, with ‘villany’ that there was first a transfer into an ethical sphere, though it is noticeable how ‘villany’ till a very late day expressed words foul and disgraceful to the utterer much oftener than deeds.
Pour the blood of the villain in one basin, and the blood of the gentleman in another; what difference shall there be proved?—Becon, The Jewel of Joy.
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.