Shakespeare, Julius Cæsar, act iv. sc. 3
As that empty barren companion in St. James who bids the poor be warm and fed and clothed (as if he were all made of mercy), yet neither clothes, feeds, nor warms his back, belly, or flesh, so fares it with these lovers.—Rogers, Naaman the Syrian, p. 391.
The young ladies, who thought themselves too much concerned to contain themselves any longer, set up their throats all together against my protector. ‘Scurvy companion! saucy tarpaulin! rude, impertinent fellow! did he think to prescribe to grandpapa!’—Smollett, Roderick Random, vol. i. c. 3.
| Conceited, | } |
| Conceitedly. |
‘Conceit’ is so entirely and irrecoverably lost to the language of philosophy, that it would be well if ‘concept,’ used often by our earlier philosophical writers, were revived.13 Yet ‘conceit’ has not so totally forsaken all its former meanings (for there are still ‘happy conceits’ in poetry), as have ‘conceited,’ which once meant well conceived, and ‘conceitedly.’
Shakespeare, A Lover’s Complaint.
Drayton, The Miseries of Queen Margaret.
The edge or hem of a garment is distinguished from the rest most commonly by some conceited or costly work.—Cowell, The Interpreter, s. v. Broderess.
Cicero most pleasantly and conceitedly.—Holland, Suetonius, p. 21.
Concubine. Our Dictionaries do not notice that the male paramour no less than the female was sometimes called by this name; on the contrary, their definitions exclude this.
The Lady Anne did falsely and traiterously procure divers of the King’s daily and familiar servants to be her adulterers and concubines.—Indictment of Anne Boleyn.
Conjure. The quotation from Foxe shows that this use of ‘to conjure’ as to conspire is not, as one might at first suspect, one of Milton’s Latinisms, and as such peculiar to him.
Divers, as well horsemen as footmen, had conjured among themselves and conspired against the Englishmen, selling their horses and arms aforehand.—Foxe, Book of Martyrs, 1641, vol. i. p. 441.
Milton, Paradise Lost, ii. 689.
Contemptible. ‘Adjectives in “able” and “ible,” both positive and negative ones, are frequently used by old writers in an active sense’ (S. Walker, Criticisms on Shakespeare, vol. i. p. 183: whom see). ‘Contemptible’ where we should now use ‘contemptuous’ is one of these; ‘intenible’ (All’s Well that Ends Well, act i. sc. 3) another; ‘discernible’ a third.
Darius wrote to Alexander in a proud and contemptible manner.—Lord Sterling, Darius, 1603 (in the argument prefixed to the Play).
If she should make tender of her love, ’tis very possible he’ll scorn it, for the man, as you know all, hath a contemptible spirit.—Shakespeare, Much Ado about Nothing, act ii. sc. 3.
Beaumont and Fletcher, The Coxcomb, act v. sc. 2.
Convince. This and ‘convict’ have been usefully desynonymized. One is ‘convinced’ of a sin, but ‘convicted’ of a crime; the former word moving always in the sphere of moral or intellectual things, but the latter often in that of things merely external.
Your Italy contains none so accomplished a courtier to convince the honour of my mistress.—Shakespeare, Cymbeline, act i. sc. 4.
Webster, Appius and Virginia, act v. sc. 5.
There was none of you that convinced Job, or that answered his words.—Job xxxii. 12. (A. V.)
Copy. A more Latin use of ‘copy,’ as ‘copia’ or abundance, was at one time frequent in English. It is easy to trace the steps by which the word attained its present significance. The only way to obtain ‘copy’ (in this Latin sense) or abundance of any document, would be by taking ‘copies’ (in our present sense) of it. Then, too, it often meant the exemplar, and is so used in the quotations from Shakespeare and Jeremy Taylor.
We cannot follow a better pattern for elocution than God Himself. Therefore He using divers words in his Holy Writ, and indifferently for one thing in nature, we may use the same liberty in our English versions out of Hebrew or Greek, for that copy or store that He hath given us.—The Translators [of the Bible, 1611] to the Reader.
Shakespeare, Henry V. act iii. sc. 1.
Drayton’s Heroical Epistles are well worth the reading also, for the purpose of our subject, which is to furnish an English historian with choice and copy of tongue.—Bolton, Hypercritica, p. 235.
The sun, the prince of all the bodies of light, is the principal, the rule and the copy, which they in their proportions imitate and transcribe.—Bishop Taylor, Exhortation to the Imitation of Christ.
Coquet. At present all our ‘coquets’ are female. But, as in the case with so many other words instanced in this volume, what once belonged to both sexes is now restricted to one.
Cocquet; a beau, a gallant, a general lover; also a wanton girl that speaks fair to several lovers at once.—Phillips, New World of Words.
Corpse. Now only used for the body abandoned by the spirit of life, but once for the body of the living equally as of the dead; now only = ‘cadaver,’ but once ‘corpus’ as well. It will follow that ‘dead corpses’ (2 Kings xix. 35 and often) is not a tautology.
Surrey, On the Death of Sir T. Wyatt.
Butler, Hudibras, iii. 1. 1349.
Women and maids shall particularly examine themselves about the variety of their apparell, their too much care of their corps.—Richeome’s Pilgrim of Loretto, by G. W.
Ben Jonson, The Alchemist, act i. sc. 1.
Counterfeit. Now, to imitate with the purpose of passing off the imitation as the original; but no such dishonest intention was formerly implied in the word.
Chaucer, The Pardoner’s Prologue (Morris, p. 90).
Christ prayseth not the unrighteous stuard, neither setteth him forth to us to counterfeit, because of his unrighteousness, but because of his wisdom only, in that he with unright so wisely provided for himself.—Tyndale, The Parable of the Wicked Mammon.
But for the Greek tongue they do note in some of his epistles that he [Brutus] counterfeited that brief compendious manner of speech of the Lacedæmonians.—North, Plutarch’s Lives, p. 818.
Courtesan. The Low Latin ‘cortesanus’ was once one haunting the court, a courtier, ‘aulicus,’ though already in Shakespeare we often meet the word in its present use.
By the wolf, no doubt, was meant the Pope, but the fox was resembled to the prelates, courtesans, priests, and the rest of the spirituality.—Foxe, Book of Martyrs, ed. 1641, vol. i. p. 511.
Courtship. We now assign to this and to ‘courtesy’ their own several domains of meanings; but they were once promiscuously used. See for another example of the same the quotation from Fuller, s. v. ‘Defalcation.’
As he [Charles I.], to acquit himself, hath not spared his adversaries, to load them with all sorts of blame and accusation, so to him, as in his book alive, there will be used no more courtship than he uses.—Milton, Iconoclastes, The Preface.
| Cumber, | } |
| Cumbrous. |
This word, the Old French combrer, has lost much of the force which it once possessed; it means now little more than passively to burden. It was once actively to annoy, disquiet, or mischief. It was as possessing this force that our Translators rendered ἵνα τί καὶ τὴν γῆν καταργεῖ; ‘why cumbereth it the ground?’ (Luke xiii. 7.)
The archers in the forefront so wounded the footmen, so galled the horses, and so combred the men of arms that the footmen durst not go forward.—Hall, Henry V. fol. 17, 6.
We have herde that certayne of oures are departed, and have troubled you and have combred [ἀνασκευάζοντες] your myndes, sayenge, Ye must be circumcised and must keep the law.—Acts xv. 24. Coverdale.
But Martha was cumbered [περιεσπᾶτο, cf. ver. 41: μεριμνᾷs καὶ τυρβάζῃ] about much serving.—Luke x. 40. (A.V.)
Spenser, Fairy Queen, i. 1. 23.
Cunning. The fact that so many words implying knowledge, art, skill, obtain in course of time a secondary meaning of crooked knowledge, art that has degenerated into artifice, skill used only to circumvent, which meanings partially or altogether put out of use their primary, is a mournful witness to the way in which intellectual gifts are too commonly misapplied. Thus there was a time when the Latin ‘dolus’ required the epithet ‘malus,’ as often as it signified a treacherous or fraudful device; but it was soon able to drop this as superfluous, and to stand by itself. Other words which have gone the same downward course are the following: τέχνη, ‘astutia,’ ‘calliditas,’ ‘List,’ ‘Kunst,’ and our English ‘craft’ and ‘cunning,’—the last, indeed, as early as Lord Bacon, who says, ‘We take cunning for a sinister or crooked wisdom,’ had acquired what is now its only acceptation; but not then, nor till long after, to the exclusion of its more honourable use. How honourable that use sometimes was, my first quotation will testify.
I believe that all these three Persons [in the Godhead] are even in power and in cunning and in might, full of grace and of all goodness.—Foxe, Book of Martyrs; Examination of William Thorpe.
So the number of them, with their brethren, that were instructed in the songs of the Lord, even all that were cunning, was two hundred fourscore and eight.—1 Chron. xxv. 7. (A.V.)
Curate. Rector, vicar, every one having cure of souls in a parish, was a ‘curate’ once. Thus ‘bishops and curates’ in the Liturgy.
They [the begging friars] letten curats to know Gods law by holding bookes fro them, and withdrawing of their vantages, by which they shulden have books and lerne.—Wiclif, Treatise against the Friars, p. 56.
If there be any man wicked because his curate teacheth him not, his blood shall be required at the curate’s hands.—Latimer, Sermons, p. 525.
Henry the Second of England commanded all prelates and curates to reside upon their dioceses and charges.—Bishop Taylor, Ductor Dubitantium, b. iii. c. 1.
Curate, a parson or vicar, one that serves a cure, or has the charge of souls in a parish.—Phillips, New World of Words.
Customer. One sitting officially at the receipt of customs, that is, of dues customably paid, and receiving these, and not one repairing customably to a shop to purchase there, was a ‘customer’ two and three centuries ago.
He healeth the man of the palsye, calleth Levi the customer, eateth with open synners, and excuseth his disciples.—What S. Marke conteyneth. Coverdale.
The extreme and horrible covetousness of the farmers, customers, and Roman usurers devoured it [Asia].—North, Plutarch’s Lives, p. 432.
We hardly can abide publicans, customers, and toll-gatherers, when they keep a ferreting and searching for such things as be hidden.—Holland, Plutarch’s Morals, p. 138.
| Danger, | } |
| Dangerous. |
A feudal term, beset with many difficulties when we seek to follow it as it passes to its present use; but very well worth some study bestowed upon it. Ducange has written on the subject, and Diez, and Littré (Hist. de la Langue Franç. vol. i. p. 49). [The Old French dangier, dongier, power, lordship, refusal, danger, is of Late Latin origin, representing a form dominiarium (from Latin dominium) which signified properly the strict right of the suzerain in regard to the fief of the vassal]; thus, ‘fief de danger,’ a fief held under a lord on strict conditions, and therefore in peril of being forfeited (juri stricto atque adeo confiscationi obnoxium; Ducange). There is no difficulty here; but there is another early use of ‘danger’ and ‘dangerous’ which is not thus explained, nor yet the connexion between it and the modern meaning of the words. I refer to that of ‘danger’ in the sense of ‘coyness,’ ‘sparingness,’ ‘niggardliness,’ and of ‘dangerous’ in the sense of haughty, difficult to please.
Romaunt of the Rose, 2317.
We ourselves also were in times past unwise, disobedient, deceived, in danger to lusts [δουλεύοντες ἐπιθυμίαις].—Tit. iii. Tyndale.
Shakespeare, Venus and Adonis.
Chaucer, The Freres Tale (Morris, p. 250).
Romaunt of the Rose, 1480.
Deadly. This and ‘mortal’ (which see) are sometimes synonyms now; thus, ‘a deadly wound’ or ‘a mortal wound;’ but they are not invariably so; ‘deadly’ being always active, while ‘mortal’ is far oftenest passive, signifying not that which inflicts death, but that which suffers death; thus, ‘a mortal body,’ or body subject to death, but not now ‘a deadly body.’ It was otherwise once. ‘Deadly’ is the constant word in Wiclif’s Bible, wherever in the later Versions ‘mortal’ occurs.
Elye was a deedli man lijk us, and in preier he preiede that it schulde not reyne on the erthe, and it reynede not three yeeris and sixe monethis.—Jam. v. 17. Wiclif.
Many holy prophets that were deadly men were martyred violently in the Old Law.—Foxe, Book of Martyrs; Examination of William Thorpe.
| Debate, | } |
| Debater. |
This word was only true to its etymology (débattre) so long as an element of strife, of war waged by the tongue or by the sword, was included in it. Thus, in some memorable lines attributed to Queen Elizabeth, Mary Queen of Scots is described as ‘the daughter of debate.’ It has now a far more harmless meaning, the element of strife having quite gone out of the word.
It is not the possession of a man’s own, but the usurping of another man’s right that hath brought injustice, debate, and trouble into the world.—Holland, Plutarch’s Morals, p. 680.
Prevy bacbiteris, detractouris, hateful to God, debateris [contumeliosi, Vulg.], proude.—Rom. i. 30. Wiclif.
| Deceivable, | } |
| Deceivableness. |
So far as we use ‘deceivable’ at all now, we use it in the passive sense, as liable to be, or capable of being, deceived. It was active when counted exchangeable with ‘deceitful’ as at 2 Pet. i. 16, where the ‘deceivable’ of Tyndale appears as the ‘deceitful’ of Cranmer’s Bible. It has fared in like manner with ‘discernible,’ ‘contemptible,’ which see, and with other words which, active once, are passive now.
Richard Rolle de Hampole, Pricke of Conscience, 1088.
The most uncertain and deceivable proof of the people’s good will and cities’ toward kings and princes are the immeasurable and extreme honours they do unto them.—North, Plutarch’s Lives, p. 743.
For we folowed not decevable fables, when we openned unto you the power and commynge of our Lorde Jesus Christ.—2 Pet. i. 16. Geneva Version.
Whose coming is after the working of Satan with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish.—2 Thess. 9, 10. (A.V.)
Defalcation. A word at present of very slovenly and inaccurate use. We read in the newspapers of a ‘defalcation’ of the revenue, not meaning thereby an active lopping off (‘defalcatio’) of certain taxes with their proceeds, which would be the only correct use, but a passive falling short in its returns from what they previously were. Can it be that some confusion of ‘defalcation’ with ‘default,’ or at least a seeing of ‘fault’ and not ‘falx’ in its second syllable (there was once a verb ‘to defalk’), has led to this?
My first crude meditations, being always hastily put together, could never please me so well at a second and more leisurable review, as to pass without some additions, defalcations, and other alterations, more or less.—Sanderson, Sermons, 1671, Preface.
As for their conjecture that Zorobabel, at the building of this temple purposely abated of those dimensions assigned by Cyrus, as too great for him to compass, in such defalcation of measures by Cyrus allowed, he showed little courtship to his master the emperor, and less religion to the Lord his God.—Fuller, A Pisgah Sight of Palestine, b. iii. c. 2.
| Defend, | } |
| Defence. |
Now, to protect, but once to protect by prohibiting or fencing round, to forbid, as ‘défendre’ is still in French.
Now wol I you defenden hasardrye.—Chaucer, The Pardoneres Tale. (Clar. Press.)
Id., The Wife of Bath’s Tale.
And oure Lord defended hem that thei scholde not tell that avisioun till that He were rysen.—Sir John Mandeville, Voiage and Travaile, p. 114.
Milton, Paradise Lost, xi. 84.
Piers Plowman, B-text, Passus xviii. 193.
| Defy, | } |
| Defiance. |
This means now to dare to the uttermost hostility, and so, as a consequence which will often follow upon this, to challenge. But in earlier use ‘to defy’ is, according to its etymology, to pronounce all bonds of faith and fellowship which existed previously between the defier and the defied to be wholly dissolved, so that nothing of treaty or even of the natural faith of man to man shall henceforth hinder extremest hostility between them. But still, when we read of one potentate sending ‘defiance’ to another, the challenge to conflict did not lie necessarily in the word, however such a message might provoke and would often be the prelude to this: it meant but the releasing of himself from all which hitherto had mutually obliged; and thus it came often to mean simply to disclaim, or renounce.
No man speaking in the Spirit of God defieth Jesus [λέγει ἀνάθεμα Ἰησοῦν].—1 Cor. xii. 3. Tyndale.
Despise not an hungry soul, and defy not the poor in his necessity.—Ecclus. iv. 2. Coverdale.
Shakespeare, 1 Henry IV. act i. sc. 8.
There is a double people-pleasing. One sordid and servile, made of falsehood and flattery, which I defy and detest.—Fuller, Appeal of Injured Innocence, p. 38.
Now although I instanced in a question which by good fortune never came to open defiance, yet there have been sects formed upon lighter grounds.—Bishop Taylor, Liberty of Prophesying, § 3, 5.
Delay. Like the French ‘délayer,’ used often in old time where we should now employ ‘allay.’ Out of an ignorance of this, and assuming it a misprint, some modern editors of our earlier authors have not scrupled to change ‘delay’ into ‘allay.’ This is quite a different word from delay, to put off.
Wine delayed with water.—Holland’s Camden, p. 20.
Earl of Surrey, The Faithful Lover, p. 34 (ed. 1717).
Even so fathers ought to delay their eager reprehensions and cutting rebukes with kindness and clemency.—Holland, Plutarch’s Morals, p. 16.
Cup-bearers know well enough, and in that regard can discern and distinguish, when they are to use more or less water to the delaying of wines.—Id., Ib. p. 652.
| Delicacy, | } |
| Delicate, | |
| Delicately, | |
| Delicious, | |
| Deliciously. |
In the same way as self-indulgence creeps over us by unmarked degrees, so there creeps over the words that designate it a subtle change; they come to contain less and less of rebuke and blame; the thing itself being tolerated, nay allowed, it must needs be that the words which express it should be received into favour too. It has been thus, as I shall have occasion to note, with ‘luxury;’ it has been thus also with this whole group of words. See the quotation from Sir W. Raleigh, s. v. ‘Feminine.’
Thus much of delicacy in general; now more particularly of his first branch, gluttony.—Nash, Christ’s Tear’s over Jerusalem, p. 140.
Cephisodorus, the disciple of Isocrates, charged him with delicacy, intemperance, and gluttony.—Blount, Philostratus, p. 229.
The most delicate and voluptuous princes have ever been the heaviest oppressors of the people, riot being a far more lavish spender of the common treasure than war or magnificence.—Habington, History of King Edward IV., p. 196.
Piers Plowman, C-text, Passus vii. 166 (Skeat).
She that liveth delicately [σπαταλῶσα] is dead while she liveth.—1 Tim. v. 6. A.V. (margin).
Yea, soberest men it [idleness] makes delicious.—Sylvester, Du Bartas, Second Week, Eden.
How much she hath glorified herself and lived deliciously [ἐστρηνίασε], so much torment and sorrow give her.—Rev. xviii. 7. (A.V.)
Demerit. It was plainly a squandering of the wealth of the language, that ‘merit’ and ‘demerit’ should mean one and the same thing; however this might be justified by the fact that ‘mereor’ and ‘demereor,’ from which they were severally derived, were scarcely discriminated in meaning. It has thus come to pass, according to the desynonymizing processes ever at work in a language, that ‘demerit’ has ended in being employed only of ill desert, while ‘merit’ is left free to good or ill, having predominantly the sense of the former.
Shakespeare, Othello, act i. sc. 2.
By our profane and unkind civil wars the world is grown to this pass, that it is reputed a singular demerit and gracious act, not to kill a citizen of Rome, but to let him live.—Holland, Pliny, vol. i. p. 456.
But the Rhodians, contrariwise, in a proud humour of theirs, reckoned up a beadroll of their demerits toward the people of Rome.—Id., Livy, p. 1179.
| Demure, | } |
| Demureness. |
Used by our earlier writers without the insinuation, which is now always latent in it, that the external shows of modesty and sobriety rest upon no corresponding realities. On the contrary the ‘demure’ was the truly modest and virtuous and good. It is one of the many words to which the suspicious nature of man, with the warrants to a certain extent which these suspicions find, has given a turn for the worse.
These and other suchlike irreligious pranks did this Dionysius play, who notwithstanding fared no worse than the most demure and innocent, dying no other death than what usually other mortals do.—H. More, Antidote against Atheism, b. iii. c. 1.
Which advantages God propounds to all the hearers of the Gospel, without any respect of works or former demureness of life, if so be they will but now come in and close with this high and rich dispensation.—Id., Grand Mystery of Godliness, b. viii. c. 5.
True History of King Leir, 1605.
In like manner women also in comely attire; with demureness [cum verecundiâ, Vulg.] and sobriety adorning themselves.—1 Tim. ii. 9. Rheims.
Spenser, Fairy Queen, ii. 1, 6.
Depart. Once used as equivalent with ‘to separate’ (divido, partior, Promptorium Parvulorum)—a fact already forgotten, when, at the last revision of the Prayer-Book in 1662, the Puritan divines objected to the form as it then stood in the Marriage Service, ‘till death us depart;’ in condescension to whose objection the words, as we now have them, ‘till death us do part,’ were introduced.
And he schal departe hem atwynne, as a scheepherde departith scheep fro kidis.—Matt. xxv. 32. Wiclif.
And whanne he hadde seid this thing, dissencioun was maad bitwixe the Fariseis and the Saduceis, and the multitude was departid.—Acts xxiii. 7. Id.
If my neighbour neede and I geve him not, neyther depart liberally with him of that which I have, than withholde I from him unrighteously that which is hys owne.—Tyndale, Parable of the Wicked Mammon.
Neither did the apostles put away their wives, after they were called unto the ministry; but they continued with their wives lovingly and faithfully, till death departed them.—Becon, An Humble Supplication unto God (1554).
Deplored. It is well known that ‘deploratus’ obtained in later Latin, through a putting of effect for cause, the sense of desperate or past all hope, and was technically applied to the sick man given over by his physicians, ‘deploratus a medicis.’
The physicians do make a kind of scruple and religion to stay with the patient after the disease is deplored; whereas, in my judgement, they ought both to inquire the skill, and to give the attendances, for the facilitating and assuaging of the pains and agonies of death.—Bacon, Advancement of Learning, ii. 10. 5.
If a man hath the mind to get the start of other sinners, and desires to be in hell before them, he need do no more but open his sails to the wind of heretical doctrine, and he is like to make a short voyage to hell; for these bring upon their maintainers a swift destruction. Nay, the Spirit of God the more to aggravate their deplored state, brings on three most dreadful instances of divine justice that ever were executed upon any sinners.—Gurnall, The Christian in Complete Armour, pt. ii. p. 317.
Deprave. As ‘pravus’ is literally crooked, we may say that ‘to deprave’ was formerly ‘untruly to present as crooked,’ to defame; while it is now ‘wickedly to make crooked.’ See the quotation from Bacon, s.v. ‘Disable.’
Their intent was none other than to get him [Cardinal Wolsey] from the king out of the realm; then might they sufficiently adventure, by the help of their chief mistress, to deprave him with the king’s highness, and so in his absence to bring him in displeasure with the king.—Cavendish, Life of Cardinal Wolsey.
Shakespeare, Much Ado about Nothing, act v. sc. 1.
I am depraved unjustly; who never deprived the Church of her authority.—Fuller, Appeal of Injured Innocence, pt. i. p. 45.
Milton, Paradise Lost, vi. 174.
Derive. Tropical uses of the verb ‘to derive’ have quite superseded the literal, so that we now ‘derive’ anything rather than waters from a river.
An infinite deal of labour there is to lade out the water that riseth upon the workmen, for fear it choke up the pits; for to prevent which inconvenience they derive it by other drains.—Holland, Plutarch’s Morals.
Nor may the industry of the citizens of Salisbury be forgotten, who have derived the river into every street therein, so that Salisbury is a heap of islets thrown together.—Fuller, Worthies of England: Wiltshire.
Descry. This verb had a technical meaning in the seventeenth century, which it afterwards lost; its loss leading to the introduction of the French verb ‘to reconnoitre,’ ridiculed as an outlandish term by Addison (1711), and more than half a century later not admitted by Johnson into his Dictionary. It was exactly this which ‘to descry,’ as used by Shakespeare and by Milton, meant. [The verb is the equivalent of the Old French descrire, descrivre, Latin describere, to describe.]
Shakespeare, Richard III. act v. sc. 3.
The house of Israel sent to descry (to spy out, R.V.) Bethel.—Judg. i. 23. (A.V.)
Milton, Paradise Lost, vi. 530.
Desire. ‘To desire’ is only to look forward with longing now; the word has lost the sense of regret or looking back upon the lost but still loved. This it once possessed in common with ‘desiderium’ and ‘desiderare,’ from which more remotely, and ‘désirer,’ from which more immediately, we derive it.
He [Jehoram] reigned in Jerusalem eight years, and departed without being desired.—2 Chron. xxi. 20. (A.V.)
She that hath a wise husband must entice him to an eternal dearness by the veil of modesty and the grave robes of chastity, and she shall be pleasant while she lives, and desired when she dies.—Bishop Taylor, The Marriage Ring, Sermon 18.
Chapman, Homer’s Iliad, xvii. 379.
Detest. For the writers of the seventeenth century ‘to detest’ still retained often the sense of its original ‘detestari,’ openly to witness against, and not merely to entertain an inward abhorrence of, a thing; as in ‘attest’ and ‘protest’ the etymological meaning still survives. It is not easy to adduce passages which absolutely prove this against one who should be disposed to deny it. There can, however, be no doubt whatever of the fact. In Du Bartas’ Weeks, 1621, p. 106, an invective against avarice is called in the margin ‘Detestation of Avarice, for her execrable and cruel effects.’