She tore her attire from her head, and rent her golden hair.—The Seven Champions, b. ii. c. 13.
With the linen mitre shall he be attired.—Lev. xvi. 4. (A. V.)
Girded with girdles upon their loins, exceeding in dyed attire upon their heads.—Ezek. xxiii. 15 (A. V.)
The heralds call the Horns of a Stag or Buck his Attire.—Bradley, Fam. Dict. s. v.
Attorney. Seldom used now except of the attorney at law; being one, according to Blackstone’s definition, ‘who is put in the place, stead, or turn of another to manage his matters of law;’ and even in this sense it is going out of honour, and giving way to ‘solicitor.’ But formerly any who in any cause acted in the room, behalf, or turn of another would be called his ‘attorney;’ thus Phillips (New World of Words) defines attorney, ‘one appointed by another man to do anything in his stead, or to take upon him the charge of his business in his absence;’ and in proof of what high use the word might have, I need but refer to the quotation which immediately follows:
Our everlasting and only High Bishop; our only attorney, our mediator, only peacemaker between God and men.—A Short Catechism, 1553.
Shakespeare, King Richard II. act ii. sc. 3.
Tertullian seems to understand this baptism for the dead [1 Cor. xv. 29] de vicario baptismate, of baptism by an attorney, by a proxy, which should be baptized for me when I am dead.—Donne, Sermons, 1640, p. 794.
Authentic. A distinction drawn by Bishop Watson between ‘genuine’ and ‘authentic’ has been often quoted: ‘A genuine book is that which was written by the person whose name it bears as the author of it. An authentic book is that which relates matters of fact as they really happened.’ Of ‘authentic’ he has certainly not seized the true force, neither do the uses of it by good writers bear him out. The true opposite to αὐθεντικός in Greek is ἀδέσποτος, and ‘authentic’ is properly original, independent, and thus coming with authority, authoritative.6 Thus, an ‘authentic’ document is, in its first meaning, a document written by the proper hand of him from whom it professes to proceed. In all the passages which follow it will be observed that the word might be exchanged for ‘authoritative.’
Davenant, Gondibert, b. ii.
Should men be admitted to read Galen or Hippocrates, and yet the monopoly of medicines permitted to some one empiric or apothecary, not liable to any account, there might be a greater danger of poisoning than if these grand physicians had never written; for that might be prescribed them by such an authentic mountebank as a cordial, which the other had detected for poison.—Jackson, The Eternal Truth of Scriptures, b. ii. c. 23.
Which letter in the copy his lordship read over, and carried the authentic with him.—Hacket, Life of Archbishop Williams, part ii. p. 24.
It were extreme partiality and injustice, the flat denial and overthrow of herself [i.e. of Justice], to put her own authentic sword into the hand of an unjust and wicked man.—Milton, Εἰκονοκλάστης. c. 28.
[A father] to instil the rudiments of vice into the unwary flexible years of his poor children, poisoning their tender minds with the irresistible authentic venom of his base example!—South, Sermons, vol. ii. p. 190; cf. vol. viii. p. 171.
Men ought to fly all pedantisms, and not rashly to use all words that are met with in every English writer, whether authentic or not.—Phillips, New World of Words, Preface.
| Awful, | } |
| Awfulness. |
This used once to be often employed of that which felt awe; it is only employed now of that which inspires it.
Milton, On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity.
The highest flames are the most tremulous, and so are the most holy and eminent religious persons more full of awfulness, of fear and modesty and humility.—Bishop Taylor, Life of Christ, part i. § 5.
Awkward. In its present signification, unhandy, ungainly, maladroit; but formerly7 untoward, and that, whether morally or physically, perverse, contrary, sinister, unlucky.
Marlowe, Edward II. act iv. sc. 7.
Marlowe, The First Book of Lucan.
Shakespeare, 1 Henry VI. act iii. sc. 2.
Id., Pericles, Prince of Tyre, act v. sc. 1.
| Babe, | } |
| Baby. |
‘Doll’ is of late introduction into the English language, is certainly later than Dryden. ‘Babe,’ ‘baby,’ or puppet supplied its place.
True religion standeth not in making, setting up, painting, gilding, clothing, and decking of dumb and dead images, which be but great puppets and babies for old fools, in dotage and wicked idolatry, to dally and play with.—Homilies; Against Peril of Idolatry.
Babes of clouts are good enough to keep children from crying.—Fuller, Holy War, b. iv. c. 17.
Spenser, The Shepherd’s Calendar, May.
Think you that the child hath any notion of the strong contents of riper age? or can he possibly imagine there are any such delights as those his babies and rattles afford him?—Allestree, Sermons, part ii. p. 148.
Bacchanal. Used now generally of a drunken reveller or votary of Bacchus; but it was once more accurately applied to the ‘bacchanalia,’ or orgies celebrated in his honour.
Do not ye, like those heathen in their bacchanals, inflame yourselves with wine.—Hammond, Paraphrase on the N. T., Ephes. v. 18.
So bacchanals of drunken riot were kept too much in London and Westminster, which offended many, that the thanks due only to God should be paid to the devil.—Hacket, Life of Archbishop Williams, part i. p. 165.
Pope, Satires of Dr. Donne.
Baffle. Now to counterwork and to defeat; but once not this so much as to mock and put to shame, and, in the technical language of chivalry, it expressed a ceremony of open scorn with which a recreant or perjured knight was visited. [See quotation from Hall, Chron. in N.E.D.]
Spenser, Fairy Queen, v. 3, 37.
He that suffers himself to be ridden, or through pusillanimity or sottishness will let every man baffle him, shall be a common laughing-stock to flout at.—Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy, part ii. § 3.
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night, act v. sc. 1.
Banquet. At present the entire course of any solemn or sumptuous entertainment; but ‘banquet’ (O. Fr. banquet, cp. It. ‘banchetto,’ a small bench or table) used generally to be restrained to a slighter repast, to the lighter and ornamental dessert or refection, or the ‘banquet of wine’ (Esth. vii. 2), which followed and crowned the more substantial repast.
I durst not venture to sit at supper with you; should I have received you then, coming as you did with armed men to banquet with me? [Convivam me tibi committere ausus non sum; comissatorem te cum armatis venientem recipiam?]—Holland, Livy, p. 1066.
Then was the banqueting-chamber in the tilt-yard at Greenwich furnished for the entertainment of these strangers, where they did both sup and banquet.—Cavendish, Life of Cardinal Wolsey.
Massinger, The Unnatural Combat, act iii. sc. 1.
| Base, | } |
| Baseness. |
The aristocratic tendencies of speech (tendencies illustrated by the word ‘aristocracy’ itself), which reappear in a thousand shapes, on the one side in such words, and their usages, as καλοκἀγαθός, ἐπιεικής, ‘noble,’ on the other in such as ‘villain,’ ‘boor,’ ‘knave,’ ‘churl,’ and in this ‘base,’ are well worthy of accurate observation. Thus ‘base’ always now implies moral unworthiness; but did not so once. ‘Base’ men were no more than men of humble birth and low degree.
Spenser, Fairy Queen, v. 5, 25.
He that is ashamed of base and simple attire, will be proud of gorgeous apparel, if he may get it.—Homilies; Against Excess of Apparel.
By this means we imitate the Lord Himself, who hath abased Himself to the lowest degree of baseness in this kind, emptying Himself (Phil. ii. 8), that he might be equal to them of greatest baseness.—Rogers, Naaman the Syrian, p. 461.
Battle. Used, not as now, of the hostile shock of armies; but often of the army itself; or sometimes in a more special sense, of the main body of the army, as distinguished from the van and rear.
Shakespeare, King Henry V. act iv. Chorus.
Richard led the vanguard of English; Duke Odo commanded in the main battle over his French; James of Auvergne brought on the Flemings and Brabanters in the rear.—Fuller, Holy War, b. iii. c. 11.
Where divine blessing leads up the van, and man’s valour brings up the battle, must not victory needs follow in the rear?—Id., A Pisgah Sight of Palestine, vol. i. p. 174.
Bawd. Not confined once to one sex only, but could have been applied to pandar and pandaress alike.
Chaucer, The Freres Tale.
One Lamb, a notorious impostor, a fortune-teller, and an employed bawd.—Hacket, Life of Archbishop Williams, part ii. p. 81.
P. Fletcher, The Purple Island, c. viii.
| Beastly, | } |
| Beastliness. |
We translate σῶμα ψυχικόν (1 Cor. xv. 44) ‘a natural body;’ some have regretted that it was not rendered ‘an animal body;’ [so R.V. margin, Jude 19.] This is exactly what Wiclif meant when he translated the ‘corpus animale’ which he found in his Vulgate, ‘a beastly body.’ The word had then no ethical tinge; nor, when it first acquired such, had it exactly that which it now possesses; in it was rather implied the absence of reason, the prerogative distinguishing man from beast.
It is sowun a beestli bodi; it schal rise a spiritual bodi.—1 Cor. xv. 44. Wiclif.
These ben, whiche departen hemsilf, beestli men, not havynge spirit.—Jude 19. Wiclif.
Where they should have made head with the whole army upon the Parthians, they sent him aid by small companies; and when they were slain, they sent him others also. So that by their beastliness and lack of consideration they had like to have made all the army fly.—North, Plutarch’s Lives, p. 769.
Bedlam. An old pronunciation of Bethlehem. The Priory known by this name was in 1546 converted into a hospital for lunatics. But it was not the place only, but the unhappy occupants of it, to whom this name used often to be applied. Such a use has now quite died out.
Shakespeare, Henry V. act v. sc. 1.
Rogers, Naamam the Syrian, p. 30.
| Benefice, | } |
| Beneficial. |
[In Middle English benefice often occurs in the senses of kindness, favour, benefit, a gift, gratuity.] Persons are not now ‘beneficial,’ which word is reserved for things, but ‘beneficent.’
Richard Rolle de Hampole, Pricke of Conscience, 5582.
Nowe thanne, Lord, Thou art God, and hast spoke to thy servant so grete benefices.—1 Chron. xvii. 26. Wiclif.
The proper nature of God is always to be helpful and beneficial.—Holland, Plutarch’s Morals, p. 600.
Shakespeare, Henry VIII. act i. sc. 1.
Bring my soul out of prison, that I may praise thy name; then shall the righteous come about me when Thou art beneficial unto me.—Ps. cxlii. 7. Geneva.
Blackguard. The scullions and other meaner retainers in a great household, who, when progress was made from one residence to another, accompanied and protected the pots, pans, and other kitchen utensils, riding among them and being smutted by them, were contemptuously styled the ‘black guard.’ It is easy to trace the subsequent history of the word. With a slight forgetfulness of its origin, he is now called a ‘blackguard,’ who would have been once said to belong to the ‘black guard.’
Close unto the front of the chariot marcheth all the sort of weavers and embroderers; next unto whom goeth the black guard and kitchenry.—Holland, Ammianus, p. 12.
A lousy slave, that within this twenty years rode with the black guard in the Duke’s carriage, ’mongst spits and dripping-pans!—Webster, The White Devil.
Thieves and murderers took upon them the cross to escape the gallows; adulterers did penance in their armour. A lamentable case that the devil’s black guard should be God’s soldiers!—Fuller, Holy War, b. i. c. 12.
Where the apologist meets with this black guard, these factors for error and sin, these agitators for the Prince of darkness, God forbid he should give place to them, or not charge them home, and resist them to the face.—Gauden, Hieraspistes, To the Reader.
Dukes, earls, and lords, great commanders in war, common soldiers and kitchen boys were glad to trudge it on foot in the mire hand in hand, a duke or earl not disdaining to support or help up one of the black guard ready to fall, lest he himself might fall into the mire, and have none to help him.—Jackson, A Treatise of the Divine Essence and Attributes, b. vi. c. 28.
We have neither school nor hospital for the distressed children, called the black guard.—Nelson, Address to Persons of Quality, p. 214.
Bleak. This, a northern form, the equivalent of O.E. blāc (cp. O.N. bleikr, Mod. German bleich, pale, colourless), comes out clearly in its original relationship with ‘bleach’ in the following quotations.
When she came out, she looked as pale and as bleak as one that were laid out dead.—Foxe, Book of Martyrs; The Escape of Agnes Wardall.
And as I looked forth, I beheld a pale horse, whom I took for the universal synagogue of hypocrites, pale as men without health, and bleak as men without that fresh spirit of life which is in Christ Jesus.—Bale, The Image of Both Churches, P. S. p. 321.
Blunderbuss. In the 17th and 18th centuries a man who blunders in his work, does it in a boisterous violent way; transferred from the name given to a short, wide-mouthed, noisy gun. [This word for a gun is due to the Dutch donderbus, i.e. thunder-gun, perverted in form from sense association with blunder, perhaps with allusion to its random, casual firing.]
We could now wish we had a discreet and intelligent adversary, and not such a hare-brained blunderbuss as you, to deal with.—Milton, A Defence of the People of England, Preface.
Pope, Dunciad, b. iii. 150.
| Boistous, | } |
| Boisterous. |
The sense of noisy, turbulent, blustering, is a later superaddition on ‘boisterous,’ or ‘boistous,’ as was its earlier form. Of old it meant no more than rude, rough, strong, uncompliant; thus the ‘boisterous wind’ of Matt. xiv. 30, is simply a violent wind, ἄνεμος ἰσχυρός in the original.
No man putteth a clout of buystous clothe [panni rudis, Vulg.] into an elde clothing.—Matt. ix. 16. Wiclif.
Shakespeare, 3 Henry VI. act ii. sc. 1.
Sylvester, Du Bartas’ Weeks, The Magnificence, p. 460.
The greatest danger indeed is from those that are stolide feroces, full of those boisterous, rude, and brutish passions, which grow as bristles upon hogs’ backs, from ignorance, pride, rusticity, and prejudice.—Gauden, Hieraspistes. To the Reader.
Dryden, Sigismunda and Guiscardo, 159, 160.
The other thing in debate seemed very hard and boisterous to his Majesty, that sundry leaders in the House of Commons would provoke him to proclaim open war with Spain.—Hacket, Life of Archbishop Williams, part i. p. 79.
Bombast. Now inflated diction, words which, sounding lofty and big, have no real substance about them. This, which is now the sole meaning, was once only the secondary and the figurative, ‘bombast’ being literally the cotton wadding with which garments are stuffed out and lined, and often so used by our writers of the Elizabethan period, and then by a vigorous image transferred to what now it exclusively means.
Certain I am there was never any kind of apparel ever invented, that could more disproportion the body of man than these doublets, stuffed with four, five, or six pound of bombast at the least.—Stubbes, Anatomy of Abuses, p. 23.
Shakespeare, Love’s Labour’s Lost, act v. sc. 2.
Bombast, the cotton-plant growing in Asia.—Phillips, New World of Words.
Boot. Not the luggage, but the attendants, used once to ride in the ‘boot,’ or rather the boots, of a carriage, for there were two. Projecting from the sides of the carriage and open to the air, they derived, no doubt, their name from their shape.
His coach being come, he causeth him to be laid in softly, and so he in one boot, and the two chirurgeons in the other, they drive away to the very next country house.—Reynolds, God’s Revenge against Murder, b. i. hist.
He [James the First] received his son into the coach, and found a slight errand to leave Buckingham behind, as he was putting his foot in the boot.—Hacket, Life of Archbishop Williams, part i. p. 196.
Bounty. The tendency to accept freedom of giving in lieu of all other virtues, or at least to regard it as the chiefest of all, the same which has brought ‘charity’ to be for many identical with almsgiving, displays itself in our present use of ‘bounty,’ which, like the French ‘bonté,’ meant goodness once.
Chaucer, Clerkes Tale (Morris, p. 283).
Nourishing meats and drinks in a sick body do lose their bounty, and augmenteth malady.—Sir T. Elyot, The Governor, b. ii. c. 7.
Brat. This word is now used always in contempt, but was not so once.
Gascoigne, De Profundis.
Tusser, Points of Good Husbandry.
| Brave, | } |
| Bravery. |
The ultimate derivation of ‘brave’ is altogether uncertain (see N.E.D.); we obtained it in the fifteenth century, the Germans in the seventeenth, (Grimm [s. v. ‘brav’] says during the Thirty Years’ War,) from one or other of the Romance languages, probably from the It. bravo. I do not very clearly trace by what steps it obtained the meaning of showy, gaudy, rich, which once it so frequently had, in addition to that meaning which it still retains.
The habit also and attire of his body, manly and soldier-like, not brave nor tricked up daintily and delicately, much adorned and set him out.—Plutarch, Lives, 695.
His clothes [St. Augustine’s] were neither brave, nor base, but comely.—Fuller, Holy State, b. iv. c. 10.
If he [the good yeoman] chance to appear in clothes above his rank, it is to grace some great man with his service, and then he blusheth at his own bravery.—Id. ib. b. ii. c. 18.
Traffic encreaseth wonderfully here, with all kind of bravery and building.—Howell, Letters, i. 6, 36.
Man is a noble animal, splendid in ashes, and pompous in the grave, solemnizing nativities and deaths with equal lustre, not omitting ceremonies of bravery in the infamy of his nature.—Sir T. Browne, Hydriotaphia.
There is a great festival now drawing on, a festival designed chiefly for the acts of a joyful piety, but generally made only an occasion of bravery.—South, Sermons, vol. ii. p. 285.
| Bribe, | } |
| Bribery. |
‘To bribe’ was to rob, a ‘bribour’ a robber, and ‘bribery’ robbery, once. For an ingenious history of the steps by which the words left their former meaning, and acquired their present, see Marsh, Lectures on the English Language, 1st Series, p. 249.
They that delight in superfluity of gorgeous apparel and dainty fare, commonly do deceive the needy, bribe, and pill from them.—Cranmer, Instruction of Prayer.
Woe be to you, scribes and pharisees, hypocrites, for ye make clean the utter side of the cup and of the platter; but within they are full of bribery [ἁρπαγῆς, and in the E. V. ‘extortion’] and excess.—Matt. xxiii. 25. Geneva Version.
| Britain, | } |
| Britany. |
The distinction between these is perfectly established now: by the first we always intend Great Britain; by the second, the French duchy, corresponding to the ancient Armorica. But it was long before this usage was accurately settled and accepted by all. By ‘Britany’ Great Britain was frequently intended, and vice versâ. Thus, in each of the passages which follow, the other word than that which actually is used would be now employed.
He [Henry VII.] was not so averse from a war, but that he was resolved to choose it, rather than to have Britain carried by France, being so great and opulent a duchy, and situate so opportunely to annoy England, either for coast or trade.—Bacon, History of King Henry VII.
The letter of Quintus Cicero, which he wrote in answer to that of his brother Marcus, desiring of him an account of Britany.—Sir T. Browne, Musæum Clausum.
Cowley, The Extasy.
Brook. This, the O.E. brūcan (cp. German brauchen), has now obtained a special limitation, meaning not so much, as once it did, to use, as to endure to use.
Spenser, Fairy Queen, iii. 4, 44.
Forasmuch as many brooked divers and many laudable ceremonies and rites heretofore used and accustomed in the Church of England, not yet abrogated by the king’s authority, his Majesty charged and commanded all his subjects to observe and keep them.—Strype, Memorials of Archbishop Cranmer, vol. i. p. 412.
And, as a German writer well observes, the French kings might well brook that title of Christianissimi from that admirable exploit of Carolus Martellus, the next means under God’s providence that other parts of Europe had not Saracen tyrants instead of Christian princes.—Jackson, The Eternal Truth of Scriptures, b. i. c. 26.
Pinkerton, Scotch Comic Ballads, p. 149.
[Bullion. This word is now generally used in the sense of metal, specially precious metal in the mass: ‘gold or silver in the lump, as distinguished from coin or manufactured articles, also applied to coined or manufactured gold or silver when considered simply with reference to its value as raw material,’ N.E.D. The word was once frequently used of gold or silver below the standard purity. Bullion has no connexion etymologically either with Fr. billon or with Lat. bulla; it appears to be identical with Fr. bouillon, Late Lat. bullionem, a boiling, hence, a melting, a melted mass of metal. The Fr. billon, debased metal, meant originally mass, having the same stem as billet (of wood). No doubt the word billon has influenced the sense of the English bullion.]
Marlowe, Hero and Leander. First Sestyad.
William Hodgson, Verses on Ben Jonson.
Sylvester, Du Bartas’ Weeks, Babylon.
Milton, Paradise Lost, i. 699.
Burial. This designates now the act, but formerly the place, of interment, being the O.E. byrgels, a tomb, see N.E.D. (s. v. buriels).
And the kyng seide, What is this biriel which Y se? And the citeseyns of that citee answerèd ento him, It is the sepulcre of the man of God that cam fro Juda.—2 Kin. xxiii. 17. Wiclif.
And birielis weren openyd, and many bodies of seyntis that hadden slepte rysen up, and thei yeden out of her birielis.—Matt. xxvii. 51, 52. Wiclif.
It happed after that upon the buryels grewe a right fayr flourdelis.—Caxton, Legenda Aurea, 151. 2.
Butchery. Now a massacre where there is little or no resistance on the part of those who are its victims. It was used once as the place where animals were slaughtered. [But see N.E.D. for modern quotations of the word in this latter sense.]
Al thing that is seld in the bocherie ete ye, axynge nothing for conscience.—1 Cor. x. 25. Wiclif.
Whence came it that they call the shambles or butcherie at Rome where flesh is to be sold, macellum?—Holland, Plutarch’s Morals, p. 869.
Buxom. The modern spelling of ‘buxom’ (it was somewhat, though not much better, when it was spelt ‘bucksome’) has quite hidden its identity with the German ‘biegsam,’ ‘beugsam,’ bendable, pliable, and so obedient. Ignorant of the history of the word, and trusting to the feeling and impression which it conveyed to their minds, men spoke of ‘buxom health’ and the like, meaning by this, having a cheerful comeliness. The epithet in this application is Gray’s, and Johnson justly finds fault with it. [See N.E.D. for the two quotations.] Milton, when he joins ‘buxom’ with ‘blithe and debonair,’ and Crashaw, in his otherwise beautiful line,
show that already for them the true meaning of the word, common enough in our earlier writers, was passing away; yet Milton still uses it in its proper sense in Paradise Lost,—‘winnowing the buxom air,’ that is, the yielding air.
I submit myself unto this holy Church of Christ, to be ever buxom and obedient to the ordinance of it, after my knowledge and power, by the help of God.—Foxe, Book of Martyrs; Examination of William Thorpe.
Buxom, kind, tractable, and pliable one to the other.—Holland, Plutarch’s Morals, 316.
Spenser, Fairy Queen, iii. 2, 23.
By. The first clause in the quotation which follows from the Authorized Version of the Bible must often either fail to convey any meaning, or must convey a wrong meaning, to the English reader of the present day. The ‘nil conscire sibi’ is what the Apostle would claim for himself; and the other passages quoted show that this idiomatic use of ‘by,’ as equivalent to ‘concerning’ (it is probably related to ἀμφὶ), but with also a suggestion of ‘against,’ was not peculiar to our Translators.