H * CONTESTED ETYMOLOGIES BAI.I.ANTYNE, HANSON AND CO. UUINBUKGH AND LONDON. CONTESTED ETYMOLOGIES IN THE DICTIONARY OF THE REV. W. W. SKEAT. BY HENSLEIGH WEDGWOOD. LONDON: TRUBNER & CO., LUDGATE HILL. 1882. [All rights reserved.] CONTENTS. AKIMBO . PAGE I Boisterous . Amercement I Bolt, to Andirons . 3 Bonfire Anvil 5 Boon . Appall, to . 6 Bout . Arbour 8 Brattice Argosy 9 Briar Average . ii Bully ) Avoid *3 Bully-rook ) Avoirdupois 14 Broker 14 Budtje Bunting BACHELOR 17 Burnish, to Backgammon . 18 Buttress . Badger . 18 Baggage . 19 CABLE Bailiwick . 21 Cad . Ballast 21 Caprice Bastard 22 Capstan Bay 23 Caterpillar Beck \ 24 Causeway . Beckon \ Cave in, to Beguine 25 Chaff, to . Bigot i . Chap . Blindman's buff . 32 Chapel Blunder J Chime Blunderbus ) 3 2 Chop, to . Blunt 33 Chinchona . Boast 34 Cinder PAGE 35 36 37 39 40 42 43 45 45 46 47 48 So 50 52 53 54 55 56 57 57 58 59 60 60 1127682 CONTENTS. PA<;E PAOE Clique . 62 Duck . . . 8 7 Cobble, to . . 63 Duffel . 88 Cochineal . 63 Coddle, to . . 64 ESCAPE . . 89 Codlins ) 65 Codlings ) FESTER, to ^9 Coke . 65 Filbert 90 Cope, to . 66 Filibuster . . 91 Cotton, to . . 67 Fit . 92 Cozen, to . . 68 Flout, to 93 Crib, to . . 69 Flue . 93 Cricket . - 69 Flute | 94 Crone . . 69 Flageolet i Crouch, to . . 70 Foin, to 94 Cud . 71 Forcemeat . 94 Cuddle, to . 7i Frith ) - Cudgel 72 Firth 1 Cue . . 72 Fuller . . 96 Curmudgeon 73 Funnel 97 Curds 74 Fuss . . 98 Curl . 75 Cushion 75 GAD, to . '. . 98 Gag, to 99 Gate . . 99 DAIRY . - 76 Gauze . . 101 Dance, to . 77 Gimlet ) . IO2 Dandle, to . . . 78 Wimble 1 Dapple 79 Gorse ) 103 Darnel . So Gorst ) Deal . 80 Grail . 104 Decoy . Si Grig . . . 104 Descry, to . . Si Gun . . 105 Deuce, the . . 82 Dine ) _ HARICOT . . 107 Dinner ) 3 Harridan . . 108 Dock . . . 84 Hatch, to . 109 Doll . . . 85 Haunt, to . . 110 Douche . 86 Hawse ) . no Dredge, to . . 86 Hawser > Drugget . . 87 Hem . . in CONTENTS. Hemlock Hie, to Higgle Hint . Hod . Hornet Huddle Huge . Huguenot Hull . Husky Hussif JAM, to Jaunt Jaunce KEEP, to . Kill, to LAWN Litter . Loiter, to . Lover l Louver ) Lounge Lout . Lown ) Loon ) Lumber Lure . MARMOSET Marmot Mastiff Medal . Mien . Monkey Muse, to Mutiny PAGE PAG E 112 NIGHTMARE 144 H3 Nightshade . 145 "3 Nuncheon, Skinktr . 145 114 114 114 OPPORTUNE Ore . 147 . 148 116 118 PAMPHLET . 149 I TO Pet . IC.O i ly Pout, to ... . 152 119 Piddle, to . . 153 Pillory . 154 I 2O Pilot .... 155 Pinfold \ 121 Pond ' . 157 Pound ) Pip j.O 1 22 123 Pittance 159 Plight . 1 60 126 Plump . 161 127 Plunge . 163 128 Poodle . 164 128 Pooh! Porridge 165 . 166 129 Possess . 166 130 Pot, go to . . 167 Putty .... . 167 131 Puzzle . 169 I 3 2 133 QUAFF, to . . 171 133 RACK wine, to . . 172 135 137 Rail, to ... Repair 173 174 J Risk .... *75 139 141 141 SCARCE . 176 143 Scorch, to . 177 Vlll CONTENTS. Scull PAGE . 178 Spell, to Sentinel ) 178 Stingy Sentry 1 / Shark . 180 TALK Shed, to ... . 182 Tippet Shed . 183 Tipple Sillabub . 183 Sketch . 184 ULLAGE, Skinker, see Nuncheon . 145 Slab .... . 184 WANION Smack . 185 Windlas PAGE 186 187 1 88 190 190 191 191 192 CONTESTED ETYMOLOGIES IN T1IK DICTIONARY OF REV. W. IV. SKEAT. AKIMBO. Professor Skeat, in his Appendix, gives up the derivation from on-cam-bow, i.e., literally, " in-a-bend-bend," in favour of the Icel. keng-boginn, bent into the form of a staple, crooked, from kengr, a staple, bend, bight. But this word does not appear ever to have been applied to the posi- tion of the arms in the sense of akimbo, and it is extremely difficult to suppose that such a word could have been caught up out of Icel. or Norse into E., and used exclusively in a special application which it never had in its native language. Moreover, the derivation does not agree with the form akem- boll, vouched by Cotgrave and Torriano. " Se quarrir, to square it, carry his arms akemboll. Anse, the handle or ear of a pot, cup, &c. Les bras courbes en anse, with arms akemboll." Cot, " With arms set on kemboll, le braccia in croce." Torr. Kimbo, or kembow, and kenebow might well be developed out of kemboll, but hardly the converse. AMERCEMENT. The expression of being at the mercy of another is common to English, French, and Spanish, in the sense of being liable to be dealt with as severely as his compassion will allow. Thus Villehardouin : " Se il le fesoit, il seroit en la merci du roi, de cors et d'avoir : " he would be at the mercy of the king both as to body and goods. In English law, an offender who had committed some default A 2 AMERCEMENT. that rendered him liable to punishment at the discretion of the court, was said esse or poni in misericordia, and the pecuniary fine imposed on such an offender was called amerciamenium, an amercement, from the Fr. a merci. When the plaintiff or defendant in any suit was amerced, the entry on the register, according to Cowel, was " Ideo in miseri- cordia." To be in the grievous mercy of the king, in the 2 Hen. VI. c. 6, is to incur the hazard of a grievous penalty. It does not appear from Skeat's article on Amerce what are the reasons that led him to reject this universal expla- nation of the word. He may possibly be influenced by his erroneous notion that it was only in late times that the Latin merces acquired the sense of mercy, pity. It is the more surprising that he should hold that opinion, because in the article upon Merces in Ducange, to which he refers, there are citations from Faustus Regiensis in the fifth century, from Gregory the Great in the sixth century, and from other early writers in which the word is distinctly used in that sense. Especially we may cite a passage from Hincmar, in the ninth century : " Cum per wadia emendaverit quod misfactum patebat, mandaveritque mihi se velle ad meant mercedem venire, et sustinere qualem illi commendassem harmiscaram : " that he would come to put himself at my mercy, and would submit to whatever amercement I should impose on him. Skeat explains the connection with merces on a totally different principle, deriving amerce from " Lat. mercedem, ace. case of merces, reward, hire, wages, also used of reward in the sense of punishment ; also of detriment, cost, trouble, pains ; and so easily passing into the sense of fine." In the same way the word wages is sometimes applied to punishment : The wages of sin is death. But it would startle us extremely to find that the word wages had come specifically to signify a fine. It must surely be through some misunderstanding that Skeat speaks of certain writers supposing that mercy and misericordia are etymologically connected, and straining their definition of the word accord- ANDIRONS. 3 ingly. Cowel, indeed, has " Amercement (from the Fr. merci, i.e., misericord to) ; " but he is thinking only of the meaning of the word, not of the etymology. ANDIRONS. Originally the iron bars which supported the two ends of the burning logs on the hearth. " Awnd- erne, aundyryn, awndyrn, andena." Prompt. Among things pertaining to the hearth, Caxton enumerates "two andyrons of yron (brandeurs)." Way, in his note on the word, cites from Herman : " I lacke a fyrepan and awnd- yars to bere up the fuel." In Wright's Vocabularies, p. 176, andena is glossed aundyre. Skeat derives the word from O.Fr. andier, and says it is clear that the ending, -iron, is a corruption upon English soil, in order to give the word some sort of meaning in English. And this, looking to the way in which Herman writes the word, may very likely be correct. As we often find age for agen, so O.E. iren some- times lost the final n. " Bynd hem herde wyj> yre and steel, and pote hem in stokkes of trow (treow?)." Sir Ferumbras, 1. 1 1 8. 5- " Ys scheld J>at was wyj gold ybattrid, and eke wij> ire ybound." Ibid., 1. 896. So in Wright's Vocabularies, p. 178, we have tripos glossed brondyr, and craticula, gredyre, for brondyren and gredyren. When Fr. andierwas imported into E., the analogy of words like the foregoing would lead to the understanding of the final syllable in the sense of -iron, and speedily to the sub- stitution of what would appear to be the true form of the word, andiron. When Skeat pushes his inquiry further, he lands us in very doubtful ground. Resting on a single pas- sage in the Arest. Parl. Paris, A.D. 1345, cited by Carpen- tier, in which andasium is understood by him in the sense of landier, Skeat connects andiron with Sp. andas, a kind of handbarrow on which relics are carried in processions, or a bier for a corpse ; and thence traces the derivation on to It. andare, Sp. andar> O.Fr. aner, "to go, walk, step move, be carried about." 4 ANDIRONS. Now, in the first place, it is very doubtful whether anda- sium really has the meaning attributed to it in the passage in question. " Fourrarii (the quartermasters) etiam tabulas, scamna, tretellos, andasia et closturas, et pannos serg*se (habere consueverint)." These are not articles among which we should expect the firedogs to be mentioned. And it is obviously a mere guess of Carpentier's, as he proceeds to say that in Perigord andanse or andause is a hook for cutting brushwood. But further, what resemblance is there between a handbarrow or bier and the dogs of a hearth ? or how could such a form as andier come out of andasj For of course all these Latinised names are corruptions of the vernacular, and not vice versa. It cannot be doubted that the name of a convenience of this kind was significant at its origin, and as it has no meaning in any of the Romance languages, we naturally turn to the Teutonic. Now the landier consists of two parts, an upright support in front, and the horizontal bar on which the logs rest. The support in front, prolonged upwards, as it commonly was, into an ornamental head of some kind, constituted the dog, Fr. chenet (dim. of chien\ properly so called ; as'we find men- tion of " andier a trois chenets " when the upright branched off into three heads. The A.S. name of the implement was brand- {sen, corresponding to which Kilian has " brand- ijser, instrumentum ferreum quod in foco ligna sustinet." But in a kitchen fireplace the upright support carried a rack in front for the spit to turn in, and this part of the framework was known in Du. by the name of wend-ijser (wenden, to turn), although it was also included under the general name of brandijser, applied to the entire imple- ment. " Brand-ijser, wend-ijser, crateuterium, ferrum in quo veru vertitur." Kilian. And that this rack, as well as the horizontal support of the logs, was included under the name of andier or andiron, is shown by a passage of the Catholicon Armoricum, quoted by Ducange : " Lander, Gall., landier, Lat. verutentum (spit-holder) ; item hasc ANVIL. 5 andena." Now, if we look at the variety of the Latinised names (andeda, andela, andena, andera, andrea, andegula, angedula) cited by Diefenbach, we shall easily believe that andier, from wend-ijser, is not beyond the limits of probable corruption in the mouth of those to whom the elements of the Flemish word had no meaning. The word, however, must have come to us through the French, because the initial w would never have been lost if we had had it direct from the Du. wend-ijser. ANVIL. A. S. anfilte, onfilt ; O.E. anvelt, anfeld. Ex- plained by Skeat from A.S. fyllan, Icel. fella, to fell, to strike down, the causal otfall. Fella, according to Cleasby and Vigfusson, signifies to fell, to make to fit, and fella jam is used by blacksmiths in the sense of working iron into bars. " Thus an anvil is that upon which iron is worked into bars, or that on which iron is hammered out." Sk. To this explanation there are many serious objections. In the first place, the sense given in Cleasby of working iron into bars is certainly not borne out by the passage which he quotes for it, viz., Didrek's Saga, 79, where the expression is not fella jam, but^W/a or jdrninu. " Fellir ok vellir nu or jar- ninu alt J>at er deigt var i : " he fells (makes to fall) and boils out of the iron all that was liquid in it. But even if the verb to fell is used in this special applica- tion by Icelandic blacksmiths, the fundamental objection remains that anvil, or any corresponding form, is unknown in Iceland, and is foreign to the whole Scandinavian stock. The name in Icel. is stedi, and in Sw. smedstad, answering to E. stithy, and the Da. amboldt is doubtless borrowed from Low G. ambolt. Moreover, when we look at the series, O.E, anvelt, A.S. anfilt, Low G. ambolt, Du. aanbeeld, aem- baeld, ambilt (Kaldschmidt), O.H.G. aneualz, we can .hardly doubt that the final dental is an essential part of the signi- ficant element of the word. Skeat indeed supposes the foregoing series to be derived from at least three different sources, without taking notice of ambolt. He regards Du. 6 APPALL. aanbeeld as derived from beelden, to form, and O.H.G. aneualz from " valdan, to fold, fold up, hence to fit." But fitting is not the notion required to give a designation to an anvil, even if the connection between the senses of folding and fitting was much clearer than Skeat supposes. When we regard the series of Romance forms, It. ancudine, Prov. en- clutge, Fr. endume, Sp.yunyue, so unlike each other, although all derived from Lat. incud-, it would be unreasonable to doubt that the Teutonic series, anevalz, anfilt, anfeld, ambolt, aanbeeld, are modifications of one original form, which, like G. ambosZy from O.H.G. bozjan, to strike, was probably a translation of the Lat. incus, t'ncudis, signifying something (cudere) to strike on. I am not prepared to maintain the derivation adopted in my Dictionary, from O.H.G. fillan, percutere, flagellare, verberare, tundere, casdere, to which some of the foregoing objections would apply. More- over, as it seems to take its significance from fel, the skin, analogous to our expression of giving one a hiding, it would be applicable only to blows inflicted on a living object. APPALL, To. To pall, to become vapid, to lose taste or spirit. Sk. Pallyn, as ale and drink. Emorior. Prompt. Parv. To Appal, to terrify, literally to deprive of vital energy, to weaken. Sk. Skeat follows my bad example in rejecting the obvious derivation from O.Fr. appalir, appallir^ to grow or to make pale (Cotgr.), in favour of that from the W. pall, loss of energy, miss, failure ; pallu, to fail, to cease, to neglect. It is certain that we were both in error. The names of things may have passed from Welsh into English, but it is impossible that a verb with the abstract meaning of W. pallu could ever have been caught up in English speech. On the other hand, the most natural figure possible to express the loss of freshness and life is the fading of colour which marks the decay of vege- table and animal life. Thus the word fade itself, which is applied in the first place to colours becoming pale, signifies APPALL. 7 also the withering and gradual loss of plant or animal life. "That weren pale and fade-hewed." Gower, C. A. i. 3 (in Sk.) We have the express witness of Palsgrave that E. pall was used in his time in the sense of losing colour. " I palle, I fade of freshness in colour or beautye, je flaistris." Then, in the sense of losing taste and spirit : " This drink wyll/// (s'appallyra) if it stand uncovered all night" " I appalle as drinke doth or wyne, whan it leseth his colour, or ale whan it hath stande long. Je appalys. This wyne is appaled all redy, and it is not an hour syth it was drawen." Mr. Herrtage, in his edition of the " Catholicon," cites from Huloet, " Pale wyne which is dead and vinewed, and hath lost his verdure. Mucidum vinum." Here pale wine is obviously synonymous with palled, while the same meta- phor is repeated in the use of verdure for the fresh savour of the wine, which is lost by exposure. There really is no reason for Skeat's supposition that Palsgrave must have made a mistake in translating the palling of drink by the Fr. appallir or s'appallir, supported as he is by the nume- rous analogies between losing colour and becoming vapid and lifeless. Appal, then, instead of being the " strange hybrid production" it appears to Skeat, arising from the addition of a Latin preposition to the English verb pall, will be a simple adoption of the O.Fr. appallir ; and pall, in- stead of being the original, must be regarded as formed from appal by the loss of the prefix. The broad a in appal, pall, corresponds to the open a in the Fr. pasle, pale, just as the open a in Fr. mask, male, was pronounced and some- times written maule in O.E. So, perhaps, pale when first adopted in English speech was pronounced paule. Skeat's objection that O.Fr. apalir is neuter, while M.E. appallen is transitive, will not hold water. Cotgrave renders appalir, to wax pale, also to make pale, while appal in the older instances is oftener used in a neuter sense than in a tran- sitive. In " an old appalled wight " there is no more reason for regarding the word as the participle of a transitive verb "8 ARBOUR. than there is with respect to the verb to fade when we speak of a. faded flower. " I make pale, as sycknesse or any other thyng dothe a /person. Je appallis. I could, tell him a thing in his eare wolde make him as pale as ashes [that would appal him] : je luy scauroys dire une chose a 1'oreille qui le apalliroyt autant que cendres." Palsgr., p. 627. Here we have a good exemplification of the connection between the primary sense of growing pale and the meta- phorical sense of consternation and loss of power. The force of the metaphor may be well illustrated also by the following quotations from Godefroy : " Le cceur d'effroy me palpite, me glace, Caille mon sang, et m'appalit ma face." " fait ton visage palir, Et tes membres si apalir, Qu'a peine te peus tu aidier." ARBOUR. "A bower made of the branches of trees. In Sidney's Arcadia, bk. i, is described 'a fine close arbor of trees, whose branches were lovingly interbraced one with another.' In Sir T. More's Works, p. 177 e, we read of ' sitting in an arber'' which was in 'the gardine.' There is no doubt, however, that this word is a corruption of harbour, a shelter, place of shelter, which has lost its initial h through confusion with the M.E. herbere, a garden of herbs or flowers, O.F. herbier, Lat. herbarium? fSfi. The assertion that there could be no doubt upon this point is a very bold one. If the original word had been really harbour, the strongly aspi- rated h would have prevented it from ever being confounded with herber, where the h would be nearly silent, and was frequently omitted in writing. " Erbare, herbarium, viri- darium." Prompt. The meaning of arbour, too, is some- thing much more definite than a simple harbour or shelter, the essential character being a structure of living foliage. On the other hand, the confusion between arbour and herbere would be promoted by the fact that the arbour was so often the main ornament of the herber or pleasure ARGOSY. 9 garden. It is an arbour or bower of clipped foliage that is clearly described under the name of herbere or herbir in the " Flower and the Leaf." The author mentions ' ' A pleasant herbir Which that benched was and with turfis new Freshly turned. The hegge also, that yedin in compas, And closid in alle the grene herbere, With sycamor was set and eglatere Within in fere so well and cunningly, That every branch and lefe grew by mesure Plain as a bord. And shapin was this herbir, rofe and all, As is a pretty parlour." The need of an arbour would, doubtless, earliest be felt in a sunnier climate than ours, and when imported into our shores, the device would naturally acquire a name that was founded at least on that which it bore in its native country. Thus we may reasonably look for the origin of the name of arbour to Ital. arborata, a bower of trees, an arbour. Florio. In O.Fr. we find arboret, arbreus, arbriere, a place planted with trees. Roquefort. Littleton, in his E.-Lat. Diet, translates "A green arbour" by "arboretum topiarium." ARGOSY. Skeat mentions the supposition that the word is a corruption of Ragosy, from Ragusa, a Ragusan vessel, but considers the more correct view to be that it is from the Low L. argis, used by Gregory of Tours for a ship of some kind. " But perhaps," he says, " our English form was taken, by the mere addition of a y, from the Sp. Argos, which is the Spanish form for the name of the noted ship (Argo). . . . The final s may have been due to the gen. case Argous of the Lat. Argo, or to the adjectival form Argons of the same. The added y seems to have been meant for /', to make the word plural, as some Latin plurals end in // at any rate, Marlowe uses Argosy as a plural form." I can see no probability in any of these conjectures. It must be remembered that argosy is exclusively an English designation, cropping up about the reign of Eliza- io ARGOSY. beth, when it is certain that Gregory's argis was a wholly forgotten term. And as the word is unknown in Spanish, the Spanish form of the name, Argos, can be no help to us. If the name came from Argo at all, it could only be from viewing the unusually large ship as a regular Argo ; but from thence to argosy is a wide step. We can hardly contemplate seriously some smatterer in Latin grammar building a plural form by the addition of an / to the Sp. Argos ; and surely a singular designation of the ship would have been wanted in the first instance. On the other hand, the connection of the argosies with Ragusa is mentioned by Lewis Roberts in his " Map of Commerce " (1638), not as an etymological speculation, but as a known fact. He says (c. 237), "Rhagtisa, then, a commonwealth of great traffique and riches^was in times past of far greater fame and name than it is now : for from hence was the original of those great ships here built, and in old times vulgarly called Argoses [not argosies], properly Rhaguses ; the last of which they were noted to have, they lent to Philip the 2d, K. of Spain, in 1588, to invade England, and had her buriall in our English seas, since which I have not heard of any they have had of any con- sequence." Sir Paul Rycaut's testimony to the same effect in " The Present State of the Ottoman Empire," 1673, c. 14, p. 119 (as cited in N. & Q.), may be a mere copying of Roberts ; but as he spent so many years in the Levant, it may just as likely be a report of the general opinion of mercantile men. And Mr. Tancock', in N. & Q., 6th S. iv. p. 490, seems to have put the derivation beyond reasonable doubt by a quotation (earlier than any produced for the form argosy} in which the name actually occurs in the form ragusy. " Furthermore, how acceptable a thing this may be to the Ragusyes, Hulks, Caravels, and other foreign rich laden ships passing within or by any of the sea-limits of Her M.'s royalty." Dr. John Dee, "The Petty Navy Royal," A.D. 1577, in Arber's "The English Garner," ii. p. 67. AVERAGE. ii AVERAGE. Average occurs in three distinct mean- ings : - 1. In old English \awaveragium signified duty-work, i.e., certain days' labour that the tenant was bound to do gratui- tously for the lord, in carrying his harvest, or the like. 2. In a sense answering to It. averia, O.Fr. avaris, later avarie, G. haferei, Du. haverij, averij, signifying damage accruing to goods in the course of transport, and all extra- ordinary charges incurred on account of them (not includ- ing freight), especially a contribution to make good the losses of those whose goods have been thrown overboard for the safety of the ship. 3. An arithmetical mean of a number of values, a sense which seems to have been developed in English in the course of the last century, and only quite recently to have been adopted in French, having as yet no place in the greater number of the modern dictionaries. Mr. Skeat holds that all these meanings may be readily explained from Low Lat. averia, the horses or oxen with which the average of the tenant was to be performed. Originally, he says, the term was used solely with reference to the employment of horses (averia) and carts. Later it meant a charge for carriage. The modern sense, of " an amount estimated as a mean proportion of a number of different amounts, has been easily developed out of an older and original meaning, viz., a proportionate contri- bution rendered by the tenant to the lord of the manor for the service of carrying wheat, turf, &c." It is not easy to understand the filiation of the two meanings, even as so explained. But, in fact, there was no reference to pro- portion in the average of the tenant, which was simply the duty of performing so many days' gratuitous labour for the lord. Moreover, the modern sense of a mean value did not arise until centuries after the sense of duty-labour had become obsolete. Nor is the attempt to account for the sense of marine 12 AVERAGE. average from the same source at all more satisfactory. The development of meaning, according to Skeat, is easy, "viz. (i) a contribution towards the work of carrying the lord's wheat; (2) a charge for carriage; (3) a contribution towards loss of things carried." It is possible, no doubt, that averagtum, from averia, beasts of draught, if such was the origin of the word, might have been used in the sense of costs of carriage, but, in point of fact, no example is given of the use of the term in such a sense, and it certainly never was used in the general sense of freight. Still, it would be a wide step from the sense of costs of carriage to that of loss or damage in the course of transport. It is, however, historically certain that the technical average of mercantile language can not be derived from the sense of duty-labour, as average in that sense is exclusively a term of English law, while the mercantile average is identical with It. averia, Fr. avaris, avarie, G. haferei, Du. haverije or averije, which cannot possibly be derived from the English word. My own conviction is that the feudal averagium is at the most an accommodation to the averia with which it was performed, being, in fact, a corruption of the Dan. hoveri of the same sense. The Da. hof was the court or hall of a manor, and thence hovgaard, the manor to which a tenant belongs ; hoveri or hovarbeide, duty-work due to the lord ; hovdag the days the tenant was bound to work gratuitously for the lord. The terminal age of average was a very common addition in law language to words of this kind ; but hoveri comes very near to avera, which, according to Spelman, is of frequent occurrence in Domesday in the sense of a day's labour due to the lord. The resemblance is still more striking between the Da. hoveri-fenge, a money payment by the tenant in lieu of duty-service, and the aver- penny of our old records. " Averpenny, hoc est, quietum esse de diversis denariis pro averagio Domini Regis." Rastal in Due. The mercantile average is explained by Worcester, " A AVOID. 13 contribution made by all the parties to a sea-adventure, according to the interest of each, to make good a specific loss incurred for the benefit of all." To average a loss among shippers of merchandise is to distribute it among them according to their interest, so as to place them all upon a level with respect to it, and from this mercantile employment of the term it seems to have been extended by analogy to cases where the mean value of a class is esti- mated by the arithmetical mean of all the individuals. It is explained by Littre from Fr. avertr, to verify ; but as the word undoubtedly arose in England,, it cannot have sprung from such a source. The origin of the mercantile average has been much dis- cussed by Mr. Marsh in his notes on the first volume of my Dictionary. He informs us that the corresponding word does not occur in any of the old Teutonic or Scandinavian sea-codes^ even in the chapters for apportioning the loss by throwing goods overboard. On the other hand, it occurs very early in French, Italian, and Spanish, in the sense of charges incurred from various causes, or duties levied by the authorities. It occurs in the " Assises de Jerusalem," cxlv., Assises de la Baisse Court : " Et sachies que celui aver qui est gete ne doit estre conte fors tant com il consta o toutes ses averies : " the goods that are thrown overboard shall only be reckoned at what they cost, with all charges. The old Venetian version gives as the equivalent of avaries, dazii e spese, *>., duties and expenses. In the " Consulado del Mar" of the thirteenth century, the notary is empowered to take pledges from the shipper for the value of " lo nolit e les averies" the freight and charges. The corresponding term in Arabic is "dwar, signifying generally a defect or flaw, " vice, defaut " (Kazomirsky), which is probably the origin of the term, arising, as it seems to have done, in the commerce of the Mediterranean. AVOID. " It is obvious," says Skeat, " that the word is closely connected with the adj. void> empty, as stated in 14 A VOID. E. Miiller. It seems almost incredible that both in Web- ster and Wedgwood it is connected with the Fr. eviter, with which the word cannot, etymologically, have any connec- tion." Anyone reading this passage would be surprised to find that both Webster and I simply derive the word from the adj. void, in precisely the same way with Skeat himself. Webster merely adds the remark, " It coincides in sense with Fr. eviter, Prov. evitar, Lat. evitare, from ex, e, from, and vitare, to avoid," plainly inferring his agreement with Skeat in the belief that there is no etymological connection between the words. My own opinion is different. I think that the ordinary derivation of Fr. vuide, void, from Lat. viduus, widowed, separated from, which differs from it so widely in sense, is wholly unsatisfactory ; and I think it far more probable that it is from O.H. G. wit, wide, vast, empty, which in some of its meanings is absolutely identical. " Uuitun, vacuas (domus). In witi, super vacuum. Uuiti, lacunas." Graff. Compare E. waste, in the sense of empty, with Lat. vastus. It may well be, then, that the Lat. vito, to avoid, is derived from an equivalent of the O.H.G. wit, empty, in the same way that the E. avoid is formed from void. There is surely nothing so obviously absurd in such a supposition as to make it incredible that I should have suggested it. AVOIRDUPOIS. Explained by Skeat as if the word sig- nified to have some weight. But avoir is here a substan- tive, and not a verb. The corresponding Latin is averia ponderis, goods of weight, or goods that are to be sold by weight. " Pro qualibet specie rerum hujusmodi ad pondus venalium, seu averia ponderis, vi. sol." Arest. Parl. Paris, A.D. 1401. " Item pro quolibet mercatore in dicta civitate mercaturas, vocatas aver de pes, pro qualibet libra iv. den. Turon." Lit. Archiep. Auxit. 1413 in Carp. AVOW, To. Two perfectly distinct words are confounded under avow, viz. : i. The obsolete avow, used both as a verb and as a sub- AVOW. 15 stantive, in the sense of the simple vow. " Avowe, votum. Avowyn, or to make avowe, voveo." Prompt. Parv. " I avowe, I make God a vowe, or I make a promise to God or to some saint, favoue or advoue." Palsgr. 2. To avow, to take upon oneself, to answer for. " Avowyn or stonde by the foresayde worde or deed, ad- voco." Prompt. Parv. " I avowe, I warrant or make good or upholde, as in marchandyse or such like, je pleuuis" Palsgr. " Advouer, to advow, avouch, warrant, protect, undertake, answer for, acknowledge, confess to be, take for his own." Cotgr. The word is explained by Littre from votum, as signify- ing, in the first place, to vow fidelity to a superior, to recog- nise him as lord or protector ; and secondly, by extension, avouer une personne, to approve what he has done in our name. And so, according to Skeat, the original sense was to swear fealty to. But votum is never used in legal lan- guage in the sense of an oath, nor is a single example adduced of a form advotare, which must have been in ample evidence if it had been the origin of a word of such con- stant occurrence in the language of feodality as Fr. advouer. The corresponding term in Latin documents is universally advocare, except in rare instances, where the French verb is merely dressed up again with a Latin termination, as advouare or advoare. The transition from advocare to advouer would be in exact analogy with that from Lat. locare, allocare, to Fr. louer, alouer, to let to hire, also to appoint or set down a propor- tion for expense, or for any other employment (Cotgr.), i.e., to allow for a certain purpose. And it may be observed that we have here the same confusion of words from differ- ent sources in a common form, that has above been pointed out in the case of avow ; viz., Fr. louer, to praise, from Lat. laudare ; and louer, to hire, from locare; or E. allow, to approve of, from allaudare, and allow, to appoint (allowyn yn rekenynge, alloco Prompt.), from allocare. No one 16 AVOW. doubts that advocare is the source of the secondary forms seen in Fr. avoue (advocatus), an advocate, or E. advowson (advocatio), the right of presenting to a living. Why, then, should there be any difficulty in the case of the verb itself, advouer, avouer, to avow? The line of development by which we pass from the radical sense of advoco to the ordi- nary meaning of Fr. avouer and E. avow, may be traced with perfect clearness in the citations of Ducange. The original sense of the verb is to call upon another to defend a right which is impugned at law or otherwise. The parson called on the patron of the living, the tenant on the lord of the fee, to make good his title. Then as the appeal to the lord to defend the impugned right was a practical admis- sion that he was lord of the fee, and entitled to all the rights incidental to that position, advocare and the deriva- tion advouer came to signify an admission by the tenant that he held the land in debate of the person appealed to, and recognised him as lord. " Nihil ab eo se tenere in feodo, aut quoquo alio modo advocabat" Chron. Nang., A.D. 1296. " Recognoscendo seu profitendo ab iilis ea tan- quam a superioribus se tenere, seu ab ipsis eadem advocando, prout in quibusdam partibus Gallicanis vulgariter dicitur advouer." Concil. Lugdun., A.D. 1274. When the word had thus come to signify recognition of title, it was applied as well to the vouchee who answered to the call and took, on him the defence, as to the tenant who appealed to him for warranty ; and thus advoco, Fr. advouer, E. vouch for, avouch, or avow, came to signify to answer for, to take upon oneself, to acknowledge. " Si vir ipsum in domo sua sus- ceperit, nutrient, et advocaverit ut filium suum : " should have avowed him as his son. Fleta. " Donee fuerit advo- catus ut burgensis noster : " should have been recognised as our burgess. Stat. Louis le Hutin. It is extraordinary that any one reading the foregoing and such-like passages should doubt that avow and avouch, like Fr. avocat and avoue, are mere doublets of each other. BACHELOR. 17 BACHELOE. A young man. Skeat says, "Low Lat. baccalarius, a farm-servant, originally a cowherd, from baccalia, a herd of cows ; which from vacca, a cow." He does not inform us where he finds baccalia, which does not appear in Ducange or Diefenbach, nor is his translation of baccalarius warranted by any authority. The meaning given in Ducange is the possessor of a baccalaria, a kind of holding in the South-West of France and in Catalonia, comprising ten or twelve mansi, a signification which we ought, according to Brachet, to connect with baccalator, a cowherd in the texts of the ninth century. There is, how- ever, nothing in the texts to justify such an etymology. There is no reason to suppose that the baccalaricz were specially pasture lands. But whether, the baccalarius was a cowherd, according to Skeat, or the owner of a metairie, according to Brachet, it is preposterous to suppose that from so confined and special a signification could have developed the sense of young man on his advancement, which is the general sense of Fr. bachelier and E. bachelor in early writings. Bacheler, -Her, -lard, is explained by Roque- fort : "Jeune homme adolescent qui n'est pas parvenu au degre qu'il desire, qui n'est pas encore parvenu a Page viril, mineur qui ne jouit pas de ses biens, gentilhomme qui- n'e"tant pas chevalier, aspire a 1'etre, apprentis soit dans les armes, les sciences, les arts, ou tel metier que ce soit." The corresponding feminine was bacele, bachele, bacelette, bache- lotte, young girl, servant, apprentice, any unsettled girl. " Eslece-toi, Jouvence, en ta bacelerie. Lsetare, Juvenis, in adolescentifi. tua." Dial, de S. Gregoire in Roquefort. Bacelage, attentions of a young man to the sex, apprentice- ship, &c. The word is essentially French and Provengal, and it certainly does not come from German. We naturally turn next to look for a Celtic origin, and from W. bach, little, we find bechan, a little female, a little girl ; bachgcn, a B 1 8 BACKGAMMON. boy, a child ; bachgenes, a young girl. Lewis. Skeat says that the derivation from bach is unsupported, and is but a bad guess. But it can hardly be called unsupported in the face of the derivatives above cited signifying child, both male and female, of which Skeat takes no notice. The root of bacele and bachelier is plainly bac, which is well explained by W. bach, little, just as bequille, a crutch, baton recourbe (Scheler), is to be explained from bach, a hook, though that derivation is missed by the French etymo- logist. BACKGAMMON. " Origin unknown. Mr. Wedgwood guesses it to mean ' tray-game,' i.e., game played on a tray or board; cf. Dan. bakke, a tray." Skeat. My etymology is surely something more than a guess. I observe that it is characteristic of the game that it is played in a tray-shaped board, and also that blot, a technical word of the game, which is without meaning in English, exactly explains itself in Danish and Swedish. To make a blot at backgammon is to leave a man exposed and unprotected, from Dan. blot, Sw. blott, exposed, naked. Sw. gb'ra blott, to make an exposed place, to make a blot at the game of trictrac, in Sw. brMspel, board-game, which is. a more intricate kind of backgammon. Nordforss. The fact that the name of the game itself, and also the technical term applied to the one important point against which the player has to guard, viz., leaving a blot, are significant in Danish, raise the strongest presump- tion that the game comes to us from that quarter, and that the Danish analysis affords the true etymology of the name. BADGER. Skeat agrees with my derivation of the name badger, signifying an itinerant corn-dealer as well as the quadruped Meles taxus, given in the " Proceedings of the Philological Society" for 1844 (vol. ii. p. 180), from Fr. bladier, a corn-dealer, the dim. of which, blaireau, is the ordinary French name of the animal. The derivation has been generally accepted by the French, although, as Diez says, the animal lays up no store of grain. The same BADGER. 19 difficulty is felt by Littre, who calls for some intermediary to account for the application of such a designation to the animal. The gap is satisfactorily filled by a passage of Herrick in which he is describing the odds and ends which lay about the cave used as King Oberon's palace. Among them he mentions " some thin Chipping the mice filcht from the bin Of the gray farmer." Herrick (Hazlitt's ed.), p. 468. The gray farmer is obviously the Gray or badger, and from this passage it is evident that at the beginning of the seven- teenth century it was the popular belief that the badger laid up a store of corn. Whether he really does so or not is, for etymological purposes, a matter of indifference. Mr. Nicol objects that the derivation Qi badger from Fr. bladier, a corn-dealer, is impossible, because the Old French word was blaier. But plainly the form blaier supposes a previous bladier, and in fact Roquefort gives both bladier and blatter, and Cotgrave blattier, in the sense of corn-dealer, while Mr. Nicol's form blaier is only argued from the dim. blaireau, a badger. Moreover, it is quite possible that the word should have come to us from a Southern dialect. Again, Mr. Nicol says that the / of the French diphthong ie never passes into the sound of/ in English. But we have a familiar instance of the passage of dier into jer in the word soldier, commonly pronounced soljer, or sojer, and in Scot- land sodger. Precisely the same change would convert badier into badger. BAGGAGE. O.Fr. bagage, a collection of bundles, from O.Fr. bague, a bundle. S.keat. But bague is not a bundle, but simply goods, valuables, an article of property. In the fifty-second of the " Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles," a loaf of brown bread, the skin of a horse, and a pair of breeches are spoken of as " ces trois bagues." " Rangonne* de robes, de vaisselle, et de aultres bagttes." Nouv. 78. " Dieu scoit s'elle partit bien baguee:" bien nipple, well provided, 20 BAGGAGE. having well feathered her nest. Nouv. 67. Vie et bagues sauves : with life and property. No doubt bagage might plausibly be explained as the collective goods of the army ; but the word means more than this, viz., what is packed up and carried on a journey, analogous to G. gepack, collection of packages ; reisegepdck, baggage. If the word had origi- nated in English, it would doubtless have signified a collec- tion of bags, and as bag is not French, we must in all pro- bability look for the derivation to Fr. baguer, to truss or tuck up. Trousser et baguer, to pack up bag and baggage. Cot. " Us firent trousser et baguer leur tresor et richesses sur chevaux et mules, chameaulx et dromedaires." " Apres ce qu'ils eurent bague leurs bagues." Gilion de Trasignie in Marsh. " Pour veoir amener le Bdarnais prisonnier en triomphe lie et bague" Satire Menippee in Jaubert. The primitive sense of baguer is probably to cord, as baga in Aragon is the cord with which the muleteers fasten on their loads. Professor Skeat is led by his erroneous rendering of O.Fr. bague, as a bundle, to connect it with W. batch, a burden or load. It is hardly doubtful that it is really iden- tical with Fr. bague, a ring, from O.N. baugr, an armlet or ring; einbaugr, tvibaugr, a single or double spiral ring. " Before minted gold or silver came into use the precious metals were rolled out in spiral rings, and pieces cut off and weighed were used as a medium of payment. Hence in old times baugr means simply money, used by the poets in numberless compounds. A.S. poetry abounds in epithets such as beag-gifa, dator auri : the Heliand speaks of vunden gold. In the law, the payment of weregild is particularly called baugr : baugatal, hofuSbaugr, logbaugr (a legal baug^ lawful payment)." Cleasby. From the sense of jewels or money to that of valuables, and finally to a portable posses- sion of any kind, is an easy transition. " En la fin monta en sa chambre et illec prepara et ordonna les bagues et joyaux qu'elle avait attains, et mis dehors pour festoier son amoureux." Cent. Nouv. Nouv., No. 100. BAILIWICK. 21 BAILIWICK. Properly the office of a bailiff or execu- tive officer, then the district over which he has jurisdiction. Skeat says : " A hybrid word from O.Fr. baillie, government, and M.E. wick, A.S. wic, a village, dwelling, station, as in Northwick, now Norwich." Bu-t this explanation of the latter element is certainly an error. The true meaning of wick is office, function. " }ef me swa beluuede, hit were sone ikudd to the kinge, ant he me walde warpen ut of mine wike (would cast me out of mine office), ant demen me to deathe." St. Juliana, p. 24. Levins has "'baylywick, villicatura ; baylyrick, villicatus ; bishopwick, episcopatus, diocesis ; bishoprick, episcopatus." Wick seems to corre- spond exactly to Lat. vicis, turn, office. Fungor vice cotis : I perform the turn or the office of a whetstone. Goth. wiko. In wikon kunjis sinis (Luc. i. 8), in ordine vicis suse ; pro- perly, in the turn of his race. Nor is there anything hybrid in the word, which is wholly formed on English ground ; the wick or office of a bailiff or baily. Another application of the same fundamental form (dis- guised only under a slight difference of pronunciation) is to be found in the name of the week, which is simply a turn of seven days. The origin is probably G. weichen, O.H.G. wichan, A.S. wican, to give way to, each turn in a succession being regarded as giving place to its successor. BALLAST. Du. and G. ballast, Da. baglast. Sw. barlast. It is agreed on all hands that the second syllable is last, a load, but the meaning of the first syllable has been much disputed. In my Dictionary I regarded the Da. baglast as retaining the original form of the word, which I understood as signifying back-load, the load which a ship takes on board to steady her on her return voyage, when she has disposed of her original cargo. Skeat explains the element in a dif- ferent way, understanding back in the sense of the stern of the ship, and supposing, with Ihre, that the ballast was called back-load because " the ballast was stowed more in the after part of the ship than in front, so as to tilt up the 22 BASTARD. bows.' The basis of this explanation is wholly imaginary. The ballast is not stowed mainly in the stern of the vessel ; nor is the after part of the ship ever spoken of as the back. Neither, on further consideration, can I defend my own explanation against the objections of Marsh. It seems unquestionable that baglast is a modern form, the word being always barlast in the Danish of the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries, as in Swedish and Norwegian. As barlast could hardly have passed into baglast by mere corruption of pronunciation, we must suppose that the change arose from the unconscious tendency to give signi- ficance to the word, of which we have so many examples. The presumption is that the original form of the word is to be found in the language of the Netherlands and Low Ger- mans, from whom we have taken many of our nautical terms. Now we learn from Kilian that bal in O.Du. had the sense of useless, bad, as in bal-daed, a misdeed ; bal- monden, to act as an unfaithful guardian ; balhoorigh, hard of hearing (Teutonista) ; and in this way Kilian explains bal-last as unprofitable load, the valueless load that is taken on board merely to steady the ship. BASTARD. O.Fr. bastard, also fits de bas or fits de bast. Skeat adopts the fanciful explanation, for which there is not a trace of historical support, from bast, bat, a packsaddle, as if it signified one begotten on a packsaddle, from the loose habits of muleteers. A most improbable guess it appears to me. Corresponding to ~Fi. fits de bast we had in O.E. born in bast. " This man was son to John of Gaunt, descended of an honorable lineage, but born in baste." Hall, in Halliwell. " Sir Richard fiz le rei, of wan we spake bevore, Gentilman was inow, thei he were a bast ibore. " Rob. Gloucester, 516. " He was begetin a bast, God it wat." Arthur and Merlin. " Baasie, or bast, not wedloke, bastardia." Prompt The word plainly comes from the French, and is consequently BA Y. 23 open to explanation from a Celtic root. Now one born out of wedlock is born in fornication, and therefore we may rationally look for the derivation to the Irish baos, fornica- ' tion ; boot's, lust ; baois-theach (house of lust), a brothel. O'Brien. Analogous designations of a bastard are Turk. chasa-oglou ; Malay, anak-baudrek, son of fornication or adultery. BAY. " An inlet of the sea. From the sense of 'inlet' the word came to mean ' a recess ' in a building Bay window, a window with a recess. I see no connection with Fr. beer, as suggested by Wedgwood." Skeat. Except this negation of a derivation from Fr. beer, Skeat traces the ety- mology of the word no farther back than the Fr. bate, or Lat. baia, in Isidore of Seville, who, however, only cites it as a proper name. " Hunc portum," he says, " veteres vocabant Baias." The connection with Fr. beer (or, as it was formerly written, baier, bayer) seems to me to require nothing to make it manifest beyond the most superficial consideration of the meaning of the two words. A bay, says Skeat, is an inlet of the sea ; that is to say, an opening or recess in the line of coast. Now, we cannot have a better type of the notion of opening so as to form a hollow recess, than the act of gaping, which seems to be the primary meaning of the O.Fr. bader, baher, baier, bayer, baer, beer, o'uvrir, etre ouvert, s'ouvrir en general. Bayement, beement, ouverture. Gode- froy, who cites bade la goule, to open the mouth, as current in Saintonge ; bader le bee, in Poitou. He gives numerous examples of gueule bahee, baiee, baee, baye, bee, in the sense of open mouth. " Et la guele baer et les dens rechigner : " to open the mouth and show the teeth. " Puis acourut bayant sa gueule vers moi comme une forsenee." Then, in the sense of opening in general : " Estre ouvert, ou bader." " Beement, ou ouverture de la bouche." " Si baera li terre sous moi et si m'englotira : " the earth will gape under me and swallow me up. " Tenir les fenestres d'iceux lieux bees 24 BECKON. et ouvertes." Baee, bay'ee, beet, bee, are also used as a sub- stantive in the sense of an opening, as a breach in a wall, the opening of a door or of a window, or any opening in the nature of a window. " Fenestres, bees, lucarnes, et aultres ouvertures par ou elles (les caves) prennent jour." We may specially note the application to the em- bouchure or outlet of a river, which may conversely be regarded as an inlet of the sea. " Telement exploiterent que en la bee du fleuve de Albule furent arrivez." The direct filiation of Fr. bate from baier, the older form of beer, to gape or open, may be further illustrated by the Catalan badar la boca, to open the mouth ; badarse, to split, to open as a flower ; badia, a bay, an opening- or hollow in the coast. BECK, BECKON. To beck, to nod, then to signify by a nod. " Nods and becks and wreathed smiles." U Allegro. " He with a nod seemed the world for to direct ; Who's he but bow'd if this great prince but becked t " Mirror for Magistrates. "To be at one's nod and beck." In Scotch it is applied to bowing as an expression of obeisance ; thence to a curtsey as sign of obeisance on the part of a woman. " He (Hardicanute) made a law that every Inglis man sud bek and discover his head when he met ane Dane." Bellenden in Jam. According to Skeat, to beck is not an original word, but a mere contraction of beckon, which is undoubtedly from A.S. beacnian, bicnian, becnan, to intimate by signs ; A.S. beacen, O.H.G. bauhhan, O.Sax. bocan, a sign, type, figure. Skeat gives no reason for his supposition, and it seems to me extremely improbable that the monosyllabic beck, designating the sensible pheno- menon of a nod with the head, should be formed by the curtailment of a word with the far more abstract meaning of a signal or something done for the purpose of making known what is not within the range of observation. BECKON. 25 Now the conception of a nod of the head may be ex- pressed in a lively way by the figure of a bird pecking. " Than peine I me to stretchen forth my neck, And East and West upon the people I becke, As doth a dove, sitting on a bern." Pardoner 's Tale. From Gael, beic, a beak, is formed beiceil, beiceis, bobbing, curtseying, skipping ; beic, a curtsey ; dean beic, to do rever- ence. From Fr. bee, beak, becquer, to peck or bob with the beak ; becqucter, to peck like a bird, also to nod with the head. Cot. N. bikka or bekka (chiefly said of fowls), to make a sudden bow or bend downwards. Aasen. So also Esthonian iwkkima, to peck ; nokkutama pead, to nod the head. -In my Dictionary I supposed the Course of derivation to run in the opposite direction to that main- tained by Skeat, regarding beckon, to indicate by signs, as derived from the notion of signalling by a nod. I believe that we are both equally wrong, and that in truth there is no etymological connection between beck and beckon. The latter, as we have said, is unquestionably the A.S. beacnian, to signal, from beacen, O.H.G. bauhhan, O.Sax. bocan, a sign or figure, used to make known something different from itself. The Verb is written becnen in the Ormulum, v. 228, and probably the change of the pronunciation to the modern beckon arose from the close approach of the mean- ing to that of beck, when the one word was chiefly used in the sense of signalling by the action of the hand, and the other by the movement of the head. But it is clear that forms like O.H.G. bauhhan or O.Sax. bocan (or conse- quently the A.S. beacen) can never have sprung from the root bee or beak. BEOrUINE, BIGOT. The same wave of religious feeling which gave such rapid growth to the preaching Orders of St. Francis and St. Dominic in the beginning of the thirteenth century, led to other associations of persons, widely spread over Europe, who, without entering into any religious Order, gave themselves up to a life of poverty and self- 26 BIGOT. denial, and went about reading the Scriptures and exhort- ing to a strict Christian life. Some of these were affiliated to the Franciscans, under the name of the Third Order of St. Francis, but others sought the shelter of no established authority, calling themselves merely Little Brothers, Bro- thers of Poor Life or of Penitence, Apostolicals, or the like, while they were popularly known under names which were Latinised as Beguini, Bichini, Beguttae or Biguttae, Bizocchi, or Beghardi, of which the latter was chiefly used in Ger- many. Like all preachers of reform, they excited great indignation in the established hierarchy, and suffered much persecution. Boniface VIII. (about 1300) denounces them as " nonhulli viri pestiferi qui vulgariter fraticelli, seu fratres de paupere vita, aut Bizocchi sive Bichini, vel aliis fucatis nominibus nuncupantur," Matthew Paris, with reference to A.D. 1243 says: " Eisdem temporibus quidam, in Aleman- nia praecipue, se asserentes religiosos in utroque sexu, sed maxime in muliebri, habitum religionis sed levem suscepe- runt, continentiam vitas private voto profitentes, sub nullius tamen regula coarctati, nee adhuc ullo claustro contend.'" Alvarus Pelagius (A.D. 1340). " Istis ultimis temporibus hypocritalibus plurimi, maxime in Italia et Alemannia et Provinciae provincia, ubi tales Begardi et Beguini vocantur, nolentes jugum subire verse obedientiae nee servare regu- lam aliquam ab Ecclesia approbatam sub manu praeceptoris et ducis legitimi, vocati Fraticelli, alii De paupere vita, alii Apostolici, aliqui Begardi, qui ortum in Alemannia habuerunt." " Beghardus et Beguina et Begutta sunt viri et mulieres tertii ordinis." Breviloquium, in Ducange. " Capellamque seu clausam hujusmodi censibus et rediti- bus pro septem personis religiosis, Beguttis videlicet ordinis S. Augustini dotarint." Charta A.D. 1518 in Due. A charter of the Bishop of Tournai, A.D. 1499, speaks of "nonnullae mulieres sive sorores, Bigutta apud vulgares nuncupatae, absque votorum emissione," &c. The notion that the name of Beguines is of Flemish origin is probably a mistake, aris- BIGOT. 27 ing from the fact that it is only in Belgium that they long remained as a settled institution. We have seen that Boniface VIII. at the close of the thirteenth century speaks of Bichini in Italy, which is undoubtedly the same name ; and Joinville in his History of St. Louis, in the middle of the century, says that the good king instituted " mesons de Beguines " in many places of his kingdom. The formation of the name in Italian is obvious enough, and is clearly stated by Ducange. It was natural that these Brothers of a Poor Life, known in Italy as Beghini or Bighini, Bizocchi or Bigotti, should be clothed in the cheapest and coarsest material, which would be cloth woven of undyed wool, where the mixture of black sheep in the flock gives a russet colour to the cloth, such as we may all have observed in the dress of the guides and peasantry of Switzerland. This was called bighino or beghino in Italian, from bigio, dusky, or, as it is explained by Florio, friar's grey or sheep's russet. " Bigello, a natural grey or sheep's russet colour or cloth ; homespun cloth. Beghino, a kind of homespun coarse grey cloth, that poor religious men wear ; but now much used," he proceeds to say, " for a lay man or woman that in life and manners will seem to be a Puritan- and dissembles his religion." In some dialects of Italian bigio becomes biso, as in French bis, dark coloured, dusky. In the same way, then, that from bigio came beghino, from biso was formed bizocco, coarse homespun cloth ; then applied to the grey-coated religionists condemned by Boniface; and finally, like Fr. bigot, to a specious pretender to religion. That bizocco was used in the sense first attributed to beghino by Florio is evident from a passage of a writer of the four- teenth century quoted by Muratori. " Per te, Tribuno," says one of the Roman nobles to Rienzi, " fora piu conve- nabile che portassi vestimenta honeste da bizuoco che queste pompose : " honesti plebeii amictus, as it is translated by Muratori. The evidence that these religionists were in fact distinguished by a grey dress is abundant Thus Borghini 28 BIGOT. in his History of the Florentine moneys in the sixteenth century says that " 1'abito bigio ovver beghino era commune degli uomini di penitenza." Sansovino, of the same period, in his Commentary on Dante, says that Bizocco "sia quasi bigiocco e bigiotto, perche i Terziari di S. Francesco si ves- ton di bigio" We learn from Kilian that an ox of a grey or dusky colour was called Beghijne, because the Beguines commonly dressed in that colour. For the same reason we are told by Ducange that religionists of a similar class were called in France les petits frtres bis, or bisets, as in England the Grey Friars. So far then as concerns the name of Beguine or Bisocco, the evidence is complete that it signifies simply Grey-coat, and there is a strong presumption of a similar origin for Bighiotto (which is given by Vauzon in his Universal Dictionary as a synonym of bighino and beg- hino) and bigotto, all used in the sense of Fr. bigot, as a specious pretender to religion. Gherardini in his " Sup- plement to the Italian Vocabularies," published in 1852, suggests that perhaps " bigotto non e altro che sincopatura di bigiotto, sapendosi che certi Ipocriti vestivano di bigio" The same hardening of the g which would convert bigiotto into bighiotto and bigotto is seen not only in bighino from bigio, but also in " bighellone, greyish," from bigello, a natural grey or sheep's russet colour. Florio. Originally, then, there would be nothing offensive in any of these designa- tions ; but the pretension to superior strictness of life easily falls under the suspicion of insincerity, and thus the names soon began to imply a charge of exaggeration, and even of hypocrisy. The " Vocabularium Utriusque Juris," quoted by Ducange, explains Beguta as " idem quod Beguina, Gal- lice, bigotte, quam vocem in pravtim hodie sensum detortam pro muliere superstitiosa fere solent accipere." An example of this offensive application as early as A.D. 1425 is given by Carpentier : " Icellui Rebours en appellant 1'abbe" de Creste Bigot, qui est un mot tres injurieux selon le langage du pays." Of beguine Gattel in his French Dictionary says : BIGOT. 29 " On le dit par injure d'une fausse devote." And beghart (probably meaning originally mendicant) in German, as bisocco in Italian, acquired the same offensive meaning. Against this rational and consistent etymology, uniting in one family the synonymous beguine, bigof, and bizocco, Skeat has only to object the well-known passage of the " Roman de Rou," 1. 9897, where it says that the French, from the enmity which they bore towards the Normans in the time of Duke William, frequently abused them and called them bigots. " Par la discorde e grant envie Ke Franceis ont vers Normendie, Mult ont Franceis Normanz laidiz, E de mefaiz e de mediz : Sovent leur dient reproviers, E claiment bigoz e draschiers, Sovent les unt medle al Rei, Sovent dient : Sire por kei Ne tollez la terre aux Bigoz ? A vos ancessors et az nos La tolerant lor ancessor Ki par mer vindrent robeor." Wace himself gives no explanation of the nickname, which Skeat translates- "Barbarians." It is said by William of Nangis in the fourteenth century that the name arose from a mocking of their swearing By God! much as in later times the English have been called by the French Goddams. And this account is accepted by Skeat as not improbable, although, as he says, the preposition by is not Scandi- navian, and therefore such an oath as By God could never have been heard in Norman speech. Whatever was the import of the term, however, it is certain that the last thing it could have been meant to impute to the Normans would be an overstrained attention to religion. ' There is, then, no community of meaning with the modern bigot, and there is as little reason for rejecting our explanation, because it is founded on circumstances long subsequent to the use of the Norman nickname, as there is in the demand 30 BIGOT. of Diez and Littre* that a sound etymology of bigot shall also give account of the Sp. bigotes, moustaches, and the It. sbigotiire, to dismay. As well might it be said that a sound etymology of the perfume civet should also explain the It. civetta, an owl, and the Fr. civet, a stew of rabbit or hare. If it is in accordance with the genius of the lan- guage that the forms bigiotto, bighiotto, bigotto should have been developed from bigio in Italian, giving rise to bigot in French, as the designation of certain greycoated religionists of the thirteenth century and onwards, how can such a pro- cess be negatived by'the fact that a couple of centuries earlier the Normans were jeered at as Bigots in France, either because they swore By God ! or for any forgotten reason ? As soon as it is recognised that our etymology is not ex- cluded by a barrier of historic fact (the only objection that has been made to it), it must be admitted as giving a rational and well-vouched account of the phenomena in question. On the other hand, the scheme proposed in Skeat's Dictionary is open to every objection. It is wholly conjectural, and is based on a violent assumption at every step. We have already had occasion to dispute his fundamental position that the name of beguine had its origin in Belgium. Starting from this persuasion, he thinks it clear that the name is derived from the verb begui, which in the dialect of Namur signifies to stammer, by the addition of a femi- nine termination analogous to that of Landgravine or heroine. We may observe, in the first place, that the feminine termination -ine is added to a masculine form to designate the corresponding female, but is never joined to a verbal root. The radical objection, however, is that there is not a shadow of evidence that these religionists were ever spoken of as stammerers. If such an idea had been afloat, there would have been no occasion for the in- vention of an eponymous hero in Lambertus le Be"gue, who was early called in to account for the designation. Skeat, BIGOT. 31 indeed, supposes that it was only another way of calling them fools ; but it was not in that point of view that they excited so much animosity. They were not despised as fools, but hated as heretics and pretenders to superior piety. He then proceeds to argue for the former existence of a Walloon form, beguard or begard, synonymous with beguine, which he supposes to have been the original of the Latinised begardus. The evidence, however, as far as it goes, shows that the Begards came from Germany ("aliqui Begardi, qui ortum in Alemannia habuerunt"), and it is only in Old German that Beghart, Baggert, or Beghard are found in the sense of lay brother, and thence hypocrite, pretender to religion. In the Vocabulary " ex quo " (A.D. 1432) cited in " Deutschen Mundarten," iii. 293, Beghardus is rendered " vir mendicans," which would explain the appli- cation of the term to the converse brothers of a convent who had to beg their own livelihood. "This begard or beguard" continues Skeat, "was confused with a much older term of derision, viz., bigot, and this circumstance gave to the word bigot its present peculiar meaning." When touching the same point under the head of Bigot, he says : " It is very likely that this old term of derision [Wace's bigot], to a Frenchman meaningless, may have been confused with the term Beguin, which was especially used of religious devotees." It is obvious that this attempt to account for the modern meaning of the word bigot, whatever satisfaction may be found in it, supposes that Wace's bigot was still in use in the thirteenth century, of which there is no evidence in ex- tant literature. Moreover, it is hard to see what inducement there could be to confound words so very unlike as beguin or begard with bigot, which by the hypothesis was at that time without meaning to a Frenchman's ear. The excep- tions to this hazy theory of the word might be carried farther, but the most satisfactory answer is to be found in the clear pedigree of the related forms from the It. bigio, which constitutes our positive belief on the subject. 32 BLUNDER. BLINDMAN'S BUFF. In West Flanders bufis a thump; buffen, to thump ; buf spelen, a game which is essentially blindman's buff without the bandaging of the eyes. One player is made the butt of all the others, whose aim is to strike him on the back without his catching them. When he catches the boy who gave him the last buffet, he is released and the other takes his place. De Bo. BLUNDER, BLUNDERBUS. Blunderbuss is said by Skeat to be " a singular corruption of Du. donderbus, which should rather have been turned into thunderbuss" No doubt the Dutch word means thunderbox^, but the English word is not a corruption, but a genuine translation. The word blunder is still current in Sussex in the sense of a loud noise as of something heavy falling. " I heard a terrible blunder overhead." Parish. The short noisy gun then was called a blunderbox in English, as a thundwbox in Dutch. Another application of the word was to a noisy man, a box of blunder, just as a chatterbox is a man full of chatter. Thus G. polterer (from poltern, to make a loud noise) is translated by Kiittner, a blunderhead, blunderbuss, a boisterous, violent man. To blunder, then, is to do anything in a noisy, uncul- tivated, violent way, the very reverse of the meaning it would have if, as Skeat supposes, it were " formed from Icel. Munda, to doze, slumber; so that it means to keep dozing, to be sleepy and stupid." The G. heraus poltern is rendered by Kiittner " to blurt or blunder out something," to bring it rudely out. Speaking of a sot staggering home, Dryden says that he " blunders on, and staggers every pace." A blunderer is a clumsy workman, as the word is explained in the Prompt. Parv. Blunderer, or blunt worker : hebe- factor. " What blunderer is yonder that playeth diddil, He findeth false measures out of his fond fiddil." Skelton. Blunder, then, was a piece of bad workmanship, and finally a mistake. A special application of the word to the sense of dabbling in water may be illustrated by the Swiss BLUNT. 33 blunschen or bluntschen, which signifies to make the sound of something heavy falling into the water; to plunge with such a sound into water. So in E. to blunder water, to stir and puddle, to make it thick and muddy. Halliwell. I blonder, je perturbe. Palsgr. It is in this sense that the word must be understood in the C. T. 12958, where the 4 alchemist says, " We blondren ever and pouren in the fyr : " we keep stirring and searching, or perhaps poking, in the fire. See To PORE. BLUNT. " Allied to blunder, and from the same root, viz., Icel. blunda, to doze, so that the original sense is sleepy, dull." Skeat. This is very unlikely. The conver- sion from a moral to a physical signification is contrary to the usual course of development. Moreover, in which lan- guage is it supposed that the word can have originated ? There is nothing corresponding to blunt, obtuse, in Ice- landic, nor any verb corresponding to blunda, to doze, in English. It seems impossible, then, that blunt could have sprung from this source, even if such an etymology had given a far more satisfactory account of the meaning than it does. We have, however, in plump and its correlatives in the other Germanic dialects an analogy which throws the clear- est light on the formation of blunt. The sound made by a heavy body falling into water is represented in Gael, by the syllable plub or plumb, in G. and Sw. by plump, in Du. by plomp. Wenn der Stein in dass Wasser fallt, so macht es plump ! Plump ! da fiel er in das Wasser. Kiittner. He smit den Stein in't Water, plump ! segt dat. Brem. Worterb. Hence plumpen, to make the noise so repre- sented, to fall into the water with such a noise ; and plump, as an adj. (of things adapted to make such a sound), heavy, massive, plump, clumsy, coarse, and fig. clownish, rude, heavy, dull. Plump mit etwas umgehen : to handle a thing blun.tly, rudely. Er fuhr plump damit heraus : he blurted or blun- dered it out, spoke it rudely, bluntly, unseemingly. Kiittn. c 34 BOAST. The Du. plomp, in addition to the foregoing senses, is specifically used in the sense of blunt, not sharp, of a knife. The sound is represented in Swedish by plums ! whence plummsa, to plump into water, bringing us to the Swiss blunschen or bluntschen, which according to Stalder designates the sound which a thick, heavy body makes in falling into the water. Es hat gebluntschet : it sounded plump ! Hence blunschig, bluntschig, thick, clumsy, a sense which, as we have seen in the case of the Du. plomp, readily passes into that of the E. blunt BOAST. Derived by Skeat from W. and Corn, bos, Gael, bosd, of the same meaning. But why should it be supposed that the English is derived from these Celtic forms, and not rather that they are an adoption of the English word ? There is no corresponding form in Breton, and it has no etymology in Welsh. On the other hand, boost occurs in O.E. in the sense of crack, loud noise. " And whether be lighter to breke, And lasse boost makith, A beggeris bagge Than an yren bounde cofre?" P. P. 9399. " Turnus thare duke reulis the middil oist, With glaive in hand made awful fere andfow/." D. V. p. 274, 29. Turnus made awful to-do and outcry. The notion of boasting is generally expressed by the figure of crack, loud noise. " Heard you the crack that that gave " is a Scotch saying when one hears an empty boast. Cracker, a boaster. Jamieson. E. Brag, boast, is identical with Dan. brag, loud noise, the roaring of thunder or of the wind. Icel. brak, noise, disturbance, outcry ; braka, insolenter se gerere. Haldorsen. Du. pof, noise of wind or of a blow ; poffen, to puff or blow, and fig. fumos jactare, efflare inanes glorias, grande' loqui, voce intonare. Poffer, a boaster. Kil. So we may connect Irish gloram, to sound or make a noise, with Lat. gloriari, to boast. It seems that at one time boast or boist was used in the general sense of loud over- BOISTEROUS. 35 bearing talk, which might specially turn either to boasting or threats. When the stealing of the miller of Trumpington became outrageous " The wardin chidde and made fare, But thereof set the miller not a tare, He crackid, bostid, swore it was not so." " Scho wald nocht tell for bost nor yeit reward." Wallace. Neither for threats nor promises. BOISTEROUS. Noisy, rough, violent. Said by Skeat to be a corrupted form, instead of the older boystous, rudis, indoctus, inordinatus ; boystousness, roydeur, impetuosite. Prompt. Parv. and note. " It can hardly be other than the "W.bwystus, brutal, ferocious. The suggested connection in Wedgwood with M.E. boost, a noise, is neither necessary nor probable ; neither is it to be confused with boast." Skeat. The author does not explain why the connection with boost is improbable. The idea of noisy violence is certainly a very prominent part of the significance in almost every quotation of the word, and it is with special frequency applied to the roaring of the wind. " The waters swell before a boisterous storm." Shakespeare. " As when the flame Lights in the corn by drift of boysterous wind." Surrey. " But whan he cast his iyes a little from Jesus, and began to look about him, and to considre the boysteousness of the wind, the hurling of the waves, and his own febleness." Udal, Matt. c. 14. " Lucia, I like not that loud boisterous man." Addison, Cdto. It seems extremely natural that a word so frequently used to signify the noisy action of the wind should have its source in forms intended to represent the sound of the air in violent action, such as give rise to the familiar G.pausten, pusten, pustern, to puff or blow. "In winter whan the weather was out of measure boistous, and the wild wind Boreas maketh the ocean so to arise." Chaucer, Test. 36 BOLT. Love. Just as Du./^/z, to puff, is used in the sense of bounce or brag, grande loqui, voce intonare (Kil. ), so Sc. boist, signifying an explosion of air, a crack, is used in the sense of loud menacing words and behaviour, which Drances in Douglas' Virgil refers to as " bustuousness." He tells Latinus that Turnus' boist cows the people from speaking, but that he will speak out 1 " All thocht with br&ik (brag) and boist or wapinnis he Me doth awate, and manace for to de." He then exhorts the king " Lat nevir demyt be The bustuousness (violentia) of ony man dant thee." D. V. 374> 45- The objection to the derivation from the W. bwystus, wild, brutal, ferocious, is not only the wide divergence of meaning, but the extreme improbability that a word of this abstract meaning should have been borrowed from the Welsh. BOLT, BOULT, To. To sift meal. O.Fr. " buleter, a corruption of bureter. Bureter means to sift through coarse cloth. O.Fr. buire (Fr. bure), coarse woollen cloth." Skeat. It is a fatal objection to this derivation that coarse woollen cloth is wholly unfit for the process of bolting flour, which requires a thin, open fabric. No doubt the O.Fr. had buretel as well as buletel for a bolting-sack, but the former is as likely to be a corruption as the latter ; and, in fact, the earliest example given by Littre" of buleter is from the " Livre des Rois " of the twelfth century, while his earliest instance of buretel is of the thirteenth. The old derivation from the G. beuteln, Du. buideln, batten, to bolt flour, appears to me far more probable. The operation was originally performed by shaking the meal to and fro in a long bag or sack (G. beutel, Du. buidel), of some open material, which allowed the flour to escape and retained the bran. The contracted form builen would give an O.Fr. boler, bouler, or buUr, of which we have evidence in Fr. boulanger, a baker, BONFIRE. 37 properly a bolter of flour; and in a passage of Bibeles- worth, by which the foregoing explanation of boulanger is vouched " De fine farine (mele) vent la flour Par la bolenge (bulting-clot) le pestour. Per bolenger (bultingge) est cevere La flur, e le furfre (of bren) demore." Wrighfs Vocab. 155. An operation like the above, in which the meal was vio- lently driven to and fro, would be peculiarly adapted for expression by a verb of frequentative form, and hence it may well be that builen on passing into French assumed a frequentative termination as buleter, whence beluter and bluter. The It. buratto, a thin open texture of silk, worsted, or goat's-hair, for sifting (from whence burattare or abbu- rattare, to bolt flour), seems a different word. It has no obvious significance in Italian, but may be explained from Fr. bourras, silk rash, also gross or coarse canvas (Cotgr.) ; doubtless as being made of bourrc de sole, tow of silk. BONFIRE. Bonnefyre, feu de behourdis. Palsgr. (A.D. 1530). Cotgrave explains behourdis, a blustering of winds; feu de behourdis, a bonefire (a violent blazing fire). In an- other place (under FEU) he writes it bondfire. It is sup- posed by Skeat that the word arose in the time of Henry VIIL, from the fires in which the bones of the saints were burnt ; resting his case on a passage of the " Romish Horseleach," 1674, p. 82 : "The English nuns at Lisbon do pretend that they have both the arms of Thomas Becket; and yet Pope Paul III. complains of the cruelty of K. Hen. 8 for causing all the bones of Becket to be scattered to the winds ; and how his arms should escape that bonefire is very strange." But it is plain that bonefire is here used only in the sense of blazing fire, which it had acquired 150 years before. Indeed, if Skeat had looked at the date of Palsgrave's work (1530), he would have seen that his expla- nation is impossible, inasmuch as the word had acquired its 38 BONFIRE. present signification two or three years before Henry began his campaigns against the Catholics. The passage, too, which he cites from Fabyan's Chronicle (" they sang Te Deum and made bonefires" Q. Marie, 1555) shows that bonfires were a Catholic demonstration, to whom they would have been an abomination if they had been a com- memoration of the burning of the saints' bones. The same is evident from the Scotch act of James VI. 1581, cited by Jamieson, which is directed against " the superstitious observaris of the festival dayes of the Sanctes setteris out of JSane-fyers, and of sik uthers superstitious and Papis- tical rites." The fact that Cotgrave spells it in one place bonefire and in another bondfire shows how little reliance ought to be placed on the mere spelling. I am unable to offer any very confident conjecture as to the origin of the element ban in bonfire. It may possibly be the Provincial E. bun, a dry stalk or kex ; in Northamptonshire, the stubble of beans, often cut, according to Mrs. Baker, for .burning and lighting fires. In Purvey's version of Isaiah, i. 31, cited by Herrtage in his edition of the " Catholicon," s.v. Hardes, bonys (buns) are mentioned as a material readily catching fire : " And 3oure strengthe shall be as a deed sparcle of bonys, ether of herdis of flax, and 3oure work schal be as a quyk sparcle, and ever either schal be brent togidere, and noon schal be that schal quenche." No doubt a heap of straw or stubble of any kind would be the readiest mode of raising a blazing fire ; and in the descrip- tions of the bonfires of the North of France, from whence their employment in religious or joyous celebration seems to have come to us, it is generally mentioned that they were made of stubble or straw. It was a widely spread custom on the first Sunday in Lent to light bonfires of straw among the orchards, when the children made torches of bunches of straw tied on sticks, which they called brandons, and carried blazing about, striking the fruit-trees and repeat- ing various rigmaroles in augury of a good crop of apples. BOON. 39 " At Buigny (Somme)," quotes Godefroy, "on the first Sun- day in Lent the young people light fires of stubble in the fields, and dance around them singing Bouhour! bouhour! envoyez nous des pommes grosses," &c. This celebration was called faire le behourdis, or behourder, or bourder les arbres, and was supposed to secure them against vermin and blight for the ensuing year. In Picardy this kind of fete was called bourdis, to be compared with Palsgrave and Cotgrave's feu de behourdis, a bonfire. The first Sunday in Lent, on which this festival was held, was called " le jour du behourdis" or simply / behourdi, behourdich, mbohourdis. Godefroy. It was otherwise called "le jour des brandons" or "dies focorum." Carpentier. In letters of remission of A.D. 1395, cited by the last-named author, it is said to be the custom in the town of Jauges and the neighbourhood " de faire chacun an le jour des Brandons apres souper feux, ausquelz les bonnes gens ont acoustume d'eulx assembler dancier, et les jeunes vallez et enfans a sauter pardessus iceulx feux." In others of the year 1414 the custom is said to be " chascun an le Dimanche des Brandons faire esbate- mens et dances environ le soir, et avoir des faloz d bou- chons de feurre boutez en un baston, et mettre le feu dedens en les appellant des Brandons." BOON. " A petition, a favour. M.E. bone, boone, Icel. bon, a petition. The sense of ' favour ' is somewhat late, and points to a confusion with Fr. ban, Lat. bonus, good." Skeat. There is no doubt that this confusion with Fr. bon has taken place, but it is not with bon in the fundamental sense of good, but in a special application which Skeat has not noticed. Bon in Old French -was used in the sense of good pleasure, what seems good to one, and thence will, desire, boon. " Se tu veus fere mon plaisir Et tout mon bon et mon desir." Barbazan, Fab. et Contes, iii. 8. 40 BOUT. " Onquez plus rien ne li en dist, Et la Dame tout son ban fist." Ibid., iii. 295. She performed all his will, did all that he desired of her. " Ain9ois vous converra et plevir et jurer Que vous feres mon boin, et sans point de fauser." Rom. de Fierabras, 21 10. In the English version " Ac arst ]>ou schalt sykery me and ]>y treuj>e surly ply3te pat J>ou for me schalt don a J>yng J>at I schall J>e saye. " Sir Ferumbras, 1. 1 282. " Quen J>e Fende had his bone, He wende he had God fordone." Cursor Mundi (Fairfax), p. 54. When the fiend had attained his desire (in persuading Eve to eat the apple) he thought he had defeated God. It is doubtless from this special application of Fr. ban that must be explained the term boondays, " days on which tenants are bound to work for their lords gratis" (Halliwell); that is, to work for the pleasure of their lord. And as occupiers having carts and horses were bound by statute to give so many days' gratis work for repairing the roads, the surveyor of the roads was called boonmaster in Lincolnshire, and the highway rates boons. A boon-wain, explained by Halliwell a kind of waggon, is doubtless a waggon employed in boon or duty work. To boon the roads, to repair them by duty- work. BOUT. Bout, signifying a certain continuance of action, as in the expressions of a drinking-bout, a bout of fair or foul Aveather, is referred by Skinner to the Ital. botta, a stroke. But the idea of recurrent action is so naturally expressed by the turns of circular motion, that bout has more gene- rally been explained as a modification of bought, a bending, the coil of a rope, from A.S. bugan, to bend. And this explanation is adopted by Skeat, as it was also by myself without misgiving in the earlier editions of my Dictionary. BRIAR. 41 I have been led, however, to believe that we were in error by finding that the Du. bot or botte, a stroke or blow (ictus, impulsus Kilian), as well as the nasalised bonte, is used in the dialect of West Flanders exactly as E. bout. Een bot regen, eene botte wind, vorst : a bout of rain, wind, frost. Bij batten : by bouts or intervals. Eene botte or bonte goed, nat, droog, weder : a bout of good, wet, dry weather. De kinkhoest is bij bonten : the chincough comes in fits. In the same way the Ital. botta, a stroke, is also, according to Florio, used in the sense of volta, a turn or time. Of the five words by which Torriano, in his English-Italian Dic- tionary, renders the E. bout, the three, botta, colpo, tratto, primarily signify a blow or a stroke. So we speak of a good stroke of business for the amount done at a certain set-to. BE ATTICK Explained by Skeat as well as in my own Dictionary as a modification of the O.E. bretage, bretasce, betrax, Sc. brcttys, Fr. bretesche, It. bertesca, a rampart, parapet. I believe, however, that the connection with these foreign words is a mistake. Brattice is a division in the air-ways of a coalmine, in the first instance made of cloth on a framework of wood ; but when the division is made of boards the same name is carried on. Now in the North of England, where our coal industry had its earliest development, the common term for cloth is brat ; and thus brattice would be a fabric constructed of brat or cloth, as a lattice is a fabric of laths. BRIAR. M.E. brere, A.S. brer. Skeat. As the word does not appear in the other Teutonic tongues, Skeat is inclined to consider it as borrowed from the Celtic, indica- ting Gael, and Ir. preas, shrub or briar, as the correlative term. There is a long way, however, from preas to brere, and borrowed terms rarely change their consonants in passing into their new quarters, unless some facility of pronunciation is gained by the change ; but there is no necessity for. resorting to the Celtic for the origin of the word. There can be no doubt either that E. briar is 42 BULLY. identical with the Norman briere (Decorde), or the latter with Fr. bruyere, heath, heathy ground. Cotgrave, indeed, gives briere as another form of bruyere. There is nothing to stagger us in the difference of signification between heath and brambles or briars, both being regarded as the waste shrubby growth of uncultivated lands ; nor is there any difficulty is supposing that the Nor. brttre passed into A.S. in early times. The It. brughiera, a heath, leads us to the origin of the word in Bret, brug, bruk, heath, Grisons bruch, brutg, both the plant so called and the waste over- grown with it. The word appears in Welsh with an initial gr instead of br, grug, which has given rise to grig, the common name for the plant heath in Shropshire and Stafford- shire. It is probably radically identical with Lat. erica. BULLY, BULLY-ROOK. A hectoring boysterous fellow. Bayley. I was misled by this application of the term into viewing it as the equivalent of Low G. Buller-bdk, Buller- brook, Bullerjaan, G. Polter Hans, a noisy blustering fellow, from bullern, Du. buldern, G. pattern, to rattle, lumber, make a noise. Skeat takes a similar view, citing also Du. bulderen, to bluster ; bulderbas, Sw. bullerbas, a rude, noisy fellow. But these forms are wholly unconnected with bully, as is shown by the earlier meaning of the word, which is used in Shakespeare as a term of familiarity and endearment. "Bully knight," "Bully Sir John," "O sweet Bully Bottom," " I kiss the dirty shoe, and from my heart- strings I love the lovely bully."" The original meaning of the word is that which is given by Jamieson for the Sc. form of it, viz., Billie, companion, comrade, lover, brother, fellow, young man. Billie Willie brother Willie. When persons are in a state of familiar intercourse they are said to be gude billies. On the Tyne the sailors navigating the coal- vessels are called billies, just as sailors address each other as mate ! " 'Twas then the billies crossed the Tweed, And by Traquair House scampered." BROKER. 43 It is, no doubt, identical with M.H.G. buole, brother, spouse, dear friend, partner in dancing. It was only in rater times that, in the shape of G. buhle, Du. boel, it came to imply illicit love. In a ballad on the condemnation of witches in 1627, the witch was tricked by a man disguised in a bearskin into believing that her familiar spirit was come to deliver her. " Alsihn die Drut anschaute, meynts Ihr Z?/6/ karri daher." She thought her bully was come, and implores him " Thu mich aus der Angst entreissen, O liebster Bule mein ! " The English word seems to have acquired its bad sense from the conduct of boon companions, "A crew of roar- ing bullies, with their wenches, their dogs, and their bottles." Lestrange. Or perhaps from the special application to the bully of a courtesan, the mate or lover with whom she lives, and whom she calls in to intimidate her customers. BROKER. According to Skeat, from the O.E. broken (A.S. brucan, G. brauchen], to have the full and free use of a thing, to digest, to brook. " The only difficulty," says Skeat, " is to explain the sense of the word, the form being quite correct. Perhaps it meant manager or transactor of business. The verb broken was used in various senses ; and the sense of to manage, or perhaps to settle, is not very widely divergent from the known uses of the verb, viz., to use. employ, have the use of, &c." But surely to explain how the meaning of a word is developed from the origin is no unimportant part of an etymology, and it is a very humble ambition if we are satisfied with arriving at a meaning " not very divergent " from that for which we have to account. Certainly it is a wide step from the notion of employing or having the use of, to the occupation of a broker, who is never to have the use of that which he 44 BROKER, buys. On the contrary, it was part of the broker's oath in the City of London that he should not deal in any of the merchandise in respect of which he intervened as broker. The object of buying through a broker is to have the advantage of a skilled judgment as to the value of the purchased goods. His business is to discover defects, and thus to find fault is recognised in " Piers Plowman " as the specific duty of a broker : " Among burgeises have I be Dwellyng at London, And gart Backbiting be a brocour, To blame men's ware." On this principle the G. designation of a broker is mdkler, from makel, a blur, stain, fault ; whence also mdkeln, to criticise, censure, find fault with, [and thence] to follow the business of a broker, to buy and sell by commission. In the same way from Lith. brokas, a defect, brokoti, to criticise, to blame ; and Lett, brdkti, to blame, to censure ; brakeris, brakmannis, a blamer, agreeing exactly both in name and office with the brocour of " Piers Plowman." The same root gives Russ. brak, refuse, rejected goods ; brakovat, to inspect, to garble ; brakovanie, inspection, rejection ; brakovstchik, the sworn inspector or trier of goods. In the German of the shores of the Baltic (with which much of our early commercial intercourse was carried on), the same element braak signifies damaged or refuse goods ; braken, to pick, to inspect, and exclude what falls below the standard ; brake, the inspectorship or in- stitution for the examination of wares and rejection of the faulty ; braker, an inspector officially appointed for the foregoing purpose in the Low German seaports, an officer who would as near as possible answer to our sworn broker. The principal difference is that in the ports of the Baltic the inspector, whose duty is to try the soundness of goods, is appointed by authority, while in London each man chooses his own broker among those who are sworn to perform the BUNTING. 45 "duty with uprightness. But the object in view is the same in both cases, viz., to obtain the guarantee of technical experience for the value of the goods; and it is difficult to believe, with Skeat, who gives no reason for his opinion, that the braker of the Baltic is a different word from the broker of English commerce. The initial r changes to wr'm the Scandinavian dialects, giving Da. vrag, Sw. wrak, Low G. wrack, refuse; Da.' vrage, Sw. wraka, Low G. wraken, to reject, as not coming up to the proper standard. The ultimate origin of the word may perhaps be found in the notion of spitting out or vomiting, expressed by forms like G. brechen, Du. braaken, to vomit ; E. dial, wreake, tussis, screatio Junius ; Icel. hraki, spittle, hrak, any refuse matter ; Fr. raquer, to spit, racaille, refuse. The Languedoc brumo, phlegm, spittle, in the expression brumos de boutigo, the refuse of a shop, has exactly the force of G. brack in brack-gut, refuse wares. Compare also Lat. respuo, to spit back, to reject, refuse. BUDGE. Fur of lambskin. Supposed by Skeat to be a doublet of bag, having budget for its diminutive. It seems to me very improbable that a word signifying a bag of skin should have been applied to such a different notion as the fur of an animal used for warmth or ornament. It appears to me far more probable that budge, dressed lambskin, is a totally different word, imported with the article itself from Russia, the great mart of furs before the discovery of Ame- rica. Russ. push\ fur ; pushner, a furrier ; puchit, to swell. BUNTING. The thin worsted material of which flags are made. Explained in my Dictionary from the West of England bunting, sifting of flour, the open fabric used for that purpose having been found appropriate for the making of flags. Skeat denounces this explanation as a mere guess. He cites from Halliwell bunting in the sense of sifting of flour, but objects that " it is not said that bunting is a bolting-cloth." But surely it is not necessary to prove that those who used bunt in the sense of bolting flour would call 46 BURNISH. it a bunting-cloth, and would naturally speak of the material used for the purpose as bunting ; as we speak of sacking or bagging, the material for making sacks or bags, or ticking, the material of bed-ticks. The truth of the explanation is established beyond ques- tion by the fact that the Fr. etamine is applied as well to the thin open tissue of which bolting-cloths are made as to the material of a ship's flag, famine, sort of woollen or silk stuff, bolting-cloth. Passer par 1' examine, to bolt, to sift. Bunting, examine. Tarver, Fr.-E. and E.-Fr. Diet. Littr explains etamine as a nautical term applied to the material of which flags are made. BURNISH, To. Immediately from Fr. brunir, which was used in two senses, apparently opposed to each other as directly as it is possible to be, viz., " to furbish or polish, [and] also to bedusk, obscure, make brown." Cotgr. The union of these significations merits further illustration than is bestowed on it by Skeat. The adj. brun, brown, was for- merly also used in the sense of polished, shining : " Dreites ces hanstes, luisant cil espie brun " (Chanson de Roland). The E. brown must have had the same meaning when the brown bills of our yeomanry were spoken of as the national weapon. No one would have spoken of their rusty bills, which brown would have implied if it had had the ordinary sense of the colour brown. Again, in the Chanson de Roland : " II fiert Charlemagne sur 1'heaume d'acier brun." " Franceis i fierent des espiez brunissans ." with their glit- tering spears. Also in German poetry, brun, in the sense of polished, glittering, was habitually used as an epithet of sword, shield, helm : " Brune Klingen ; " " ein Schwert - brun unde breit;" " bruner Schilt." Ic briune, I make brown, also I make brilliant, adorn. " Die Blumen den Garten brunent." Zarncke. In the most obvious point of view, a burning object affords the best type of brilliancy. " The barge she sat in, like a burnished throne Burnt in the water.'' Shakespeare. BUTTRESS. 47 But when the fire is extinct the colours of the object are reduced to a uniform brown; the formation of the word, as Skeat remarks, being well shown in Goth, brunnans, Icel. brunninn, burnt. BUTTRESS. Fr. boutant (Cotgr.), arc-, mur-, pilier- boutant, Skeat contests the common derivation from Fr. bouter, to thrust (the sole purpose of a buttress being to support the lateral thrust of a wall or roof), because it leaves the final portion of the word unaccounted for, and on the authority of a single passage in " P. Plowman " (A. v. 598), where in some MSS. the word is written boterased or bot- rased (buttressed), and in others bretaskid or bitrased, he supposes that buttress is a modification of O.Fr. bretesche, a battlement. " This word, being used in the sense of battlement, was easily corrupted into that of support by referring it to the Fr. bouter, the verb to which it is indebted for its present form and meaning." Buttresses must have been as old as betraxes, and must as early have had a desig- nation of their own. There is no resemblance whatever between the objects themselves, nor is the substitution of the one name for the other in different MSS. any evidence that the words were confounded. As the passage is a mere allegorical reference to the different parts of a castle, but- tressed might appear to the scribe to serve the purpose of the writer as well as brutaget (as it stands in text A.) or bretaskid, and nothing is more common than substitutions of this kind in different versions of the older versifiers. If Godefroy's Dictionary had been published a little ear- lier, Skeat would probably not have offered this very unsatis- factory etymology. We there find bouteret, buteret (of an arch -or a pillar), thrusting, bearing a thrust. " Et il y a vi ars bouterez en maniere de pillers qui boutent centre le siege du hannap." Inv. du Due d'Anjou, 1360. " Les ars bou- terez (arcs-boutants, flying buttresses) sont mis trop haut." Reg. des Delib. du Chap, de Troyes, 1362. " Deux/////Vrj 48 CABLE. bouterez" 1358. " Soubbassement avec plusseurs bouteretz (with many buttresses)." 1505. CABLE. Skeat adopts Diez's derivation from Low Lat. capulum, caplum, cited by Isidore of Seville in the seventh century, but he gives the derivation more probability than it is really entitled to by rendering Isidore's funis (in his explanation of capulum\ a cable, instead of cord. What Isidore says is, " Capulum, funis, a capiendo, quod eo indo- mita jumenta capiuntur." It is evident that he is speaking of the lasso, which is still employed by the Spanish Ameri- cans with so much skill in the catching or management of untamed cattle and horses. The word remains in the It. cappio, a slip-knot or noose, a snare or gin. Fl. The word from which cable is supposed to be derived appears to be only known from this passage, and the sense in which it is used, agreeing so well with that of It. cappio, is most unlikely to have passed into that of the 'cable which bears the strain of the ship's anchor. But further, the earliest form of cable in the French of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries is cheable, chaable, caable, the evidence of the double vowel being pre- served in the circumflex of the modern c&ble. Now it is' impossible that forms like the foregoing can have sprung from capulum, caplum. They may, on the other hand, satisfac- torily be accounted for by the slurring of the d in Low Lat. cadabulum, cadabola, originally an engine of war for hurling large stones, a sense in which the Fr. chaable, and Low Lat. cabulus were also used. " Une grande periere que Ton claime chaable." Due. " Sed mox ingentia saxa Emittit cabulus." Ibid. From the sense of a projectile engine the designation seems to have been transferred to the strong rope by which the strain of such an engine was exerted. Concesserint dis- carcagium sexaginta doliorum suis instruments, scilicet caablis et windasio tantum." Due. Didot. CABLE. 49 Littre endeavours to reconcile the O.Fr. forms chaable, cheable, with a derivation from capulum, by the supposition that cable was early confused with the radically distinct chaable, the projectile engine, and was accordingly written cable with the circumflex, in order to indicate the suppres- sion of the a. But this is obviously a begging of the ques- tion. As chaable is found both in the sense of projectile engine and of strong rope, the mainspring in all such machines, the presumption is, prima fade, that it is the same word with a certain modification of the meaning, which is not without analogy in other cases. The Prov. calabre signifies a projectile engine, while in Port, calabre or cabre is a cable. Sp. cabre or cable, cable. As we thus come round to the form cable from different quarters, we cannot help suspecting that the French cadable (evidenced by the Latinised cadabuluni), the immediate origin of the O.Fr. chaable, both engine and cable, must have been fundamentally identical with Prov. and Port. calabre. In names of this kind, without intrinsic meaning to those with whom the name was in use, we must be pre- pared for great corruption. Sanuto, speaking of the siege of Ptolemais in the year 1291, says that the Sultan "fecit erigi plures carabagas projicientes magnos lapides" (Gesta Dei per Francos in Raynouard), where carabaga is probably another version of the same name. In the patois of Cham- pagne cadawe becomes calabre, and Skeat himself admits the radical identity of chadabula and calabre " by the change of d into / (as in O.Lat. dingua, whence Lat. lingua), and by the common change of final la to re" Skeat adopts the derivation from Gr. xara/3oX?j, overthrow, destruction. In the absence of any evidence that that word was used in Low Gr. in the sense of a projectile engine (and it surely must have been forthcoming if the word had really had that meaning), I think it more probable that, like E. crab, Fr. chevre or cabre, Sp. cabria, a machine for raising weights, cabreia, a military engine for hurling stones, it is from Sp. D 50 CAD. cabra, Fr. chevre, a goat. See CRAB. A similar corruption is seen in Sp. calambre, compared with Fr. crampe, a cramp. CAD. A low fellow ; short for cadet. Cf. cadie, a boy, low fellow. Skeat. This explanation of cadiezs a low fellow is not justified by Jamieson, who merely says, " A young fellow, used in a ludicrous way." Nor is there anything offensive in the name of the Edinburgh cadies, " a frater- nity of people who run errands : individuals must, at their admission, find surety for their good behaviour." Arnot's Hist. Edinb. There is no ground for the derivation of the word from Fr. cadet, which was never used in any similar sense. Cad, on the other hand, is a term of moral dis- approbation. " He is a thorough cad:" of one whose con- duct excites our disgust. It is satisfactorily explained from the Lincolnsh. cad, carrion, used by a very natural metaphor to express disgust and contempt. Cad-crow, carrion crow. Peacock ; Gloss, of Manley and Corringham. In the North of England the word is ket, carrion, filth ; hence a term of reproach, a slut, an untidy person. Halliwell. In the same way, Du. schelm, a carcase, carrion, signifies also a pestilent fellow ; schelmstuk, a piece of wickedness ; G. schelm, a rogue. So also Fr. charogne, carrion, is used as a term of abuse : Vieille charogne ! It. Carogna, carrion, also a jade. Fl. It is probable that this cad or ket, carrion, is not con- nected with the Icel. kjot, ket, flesh, but with G. koth, filth, excrement, dialectically gaut, kaat, and in the E. Frisian laws, quad (Brem. Wort, in v. Gaui). O.H.G. quat ; M.H.G. kot, kadt (Sanders). CAPRICE. Undoubtedly from It. eapriccio, caprice, or capriahio, freak, whim, maggot, foolish fancy. Altieri (1726). Derived by Diez from It. capra, a goat, as if it were the frisk of a kid ; " but this is not at all sure," says Skeat, who thinks that my derivation of the word may really be correct. But as he erroneously represents me as deriving it from capo, head, and rezzo, an ague fit (a word CAPRICE. 51 which I do not find in that sense), and does not give enough of the evidence to produce conviction in the truth of the etymology I really maintain, while he explicitly dissents from much of my reasoning on the subject, it will be worth while to repeat the argument as concisely as is compatible with a full apprehension of the evidence. The elements of the word are clear enough ; capo, and ricdo, of which the radical meaning seems to be bristly, covered with staring hair or prickles, and thence the prickly husk of chestnuts, a hedgehog or porcupine. Riccio, crisped, curled, frizzled ; also shaggy, hairy, rough ; ricduto, frizzled, shaggy, hairy, brizly (bristly) ; arricdare, to curl, to frizzle ; also for a man's hair to bristle and stand on end through sudden fear. Fl. Arricdamento, horror, dread, trembling for fear. Alt. Capricdo then, or arricda-capo (which Florio gives as a synonym), might be used to signify any condition of mind or body that is characterised by a bristling of the hair. It is explained by Altieri in the first instance as that shivering which runs over the skin either from fever or from fright. Raccapricdarsi, to be frightened, to have one's hair stand on end for fear. Alt. Raccapricdo, raccaprezzo, a sudden commotion of the blood causing an affrightment and start- ling with one's hair on end. Fl. But horripilation and shivering are a symptom of eager desire as well as of dread, as a dog may be seen to shiver when watching for a morsel of what his master is eating. Aristophanes says ?/' ?f wr/, I shivered with love. And Captain Burton in his story of "Vikram,"p. 75: " A tumult of delight invaded his soul, and his body bristled with emotion." A note on the passage adds : " Unexpected pleasure, according to the Hindoos, gives a bristly elevation to the down of the body." It is this shivering with emotion which seems to be the radical meaning of yearn, which we now only use in the sense of earnest desire. To yearn is translated by Sherwood by frissonner, se h'erisser ; ^yearning, through sudden fear, he"ri- sonnement, horripilation. It is the sense of violent desire 52 CAPSTAN. that seems to be the prominent image in the first use of It. capriccio ; then passing on to the case of a person acting on a desire that seems excessive because the reason of it is not apparent to the spectator. " Aver capriccio d' una cosa : to long for a thing, to have a fancy for it. Esser capricdo- samente innamorato d' una persona : to be passionately in love with one." Altieri. With capo and riccio the etymology of capriccio properly ends; and it will hold equally good whatever may be thought of the view I have taken in my Dictionary of the formation of riccio itself. CAPSTAN. Fr. cabestan, Sp. cabrestante, cabestrante. Explained in my Dictionary as a " standing crab," a wind- ing engine with a standing or vertical axis (for the purpose of enabling a number of men to work at it at once), as opposed to the common crab with a horizontal axis. The name of the goat was given to different engines contrived for the purpose of exerting great force, as for hurling stones or for raising weights. O.Sp. cabra, an engine for throwing stones ; It. capra, a she-goat, by met. a skid or such engine to raise or mount great ordnance withal. Florio. Fr. chevre, a machine for raising heavy weights. In the South of France capra becomes crabo, a she-goat, also a crab or windlas. To this etymology it is objected by Skeat that Sp. estante means extant, permanent, and not standing or upright, and he derives the word from Sp. cabestra, a halter; cabestrar, to fasten with a halter, muzzle, tie. But what analogy is there between the haltering of an animal and the operation of a capstan ? The purpose to which a capstan is applied is not to hold back the anchor, but to haul it in. But even if the analogy .with a halter were very much clearer than it really is, it would be just as applicable to the old mechanism for heaving the anchor as to the capstan itself, and therefore never would have been adopted as the designation of the latter contrivance. When it was found that the old machine for heaving the anchor could be made CATERPILLAR. 53 much more effective in ships of a larger size by making the axis upright instead of horizontal, the obvious way of nam- ing the improved contrivance would be by reference to the feature by which it was distinguished from the original crab. It would naturally be called an upright or standing crab ; and as cabre in Spanish is a crab, it can hardly be doubted that the latter half of the name, estante, signified standing. It is true that estante in modern Spanish has not that sig- nification, but neither has the equivalent elant in modern French. But estant was regularly used in this sense in O.Fr., of which a few examples may be given. " Ne laissant en Chartrain ne en Dive bordel, Ne maison en estant qui soit fors du chastel." Dticange sub v. Bordel. They do not leave a hut or a house standing outside the castle walls. "A 1'entree d'une meson Trueve une povre fame estant." Fab. et Contes, iv. p. 2. He finds a poor woman standing in the entry of a house. " Avoir le mort bois en estant e k terre." Godefroy (A.D. 1451), sub v. Chaabler. " Tout bosc qui est sec en estant et sus bout ; tout bosc vert en gesant ou rompu." Ibid. The name of capstan may have originated in the South of France, but if, as is more probable, it is really of Spanish origin, it is in itself a proof that estante at that time was cur- rent in the sense of standing. There must have been a period in all the Romance languages at which the represen- tative of the Lat. stans had not merged its original concrete meaning in the more abstract sense in which it is used at the present day. CATERPILLAR. " A fanciful name, meaning literally ' hairy she-cat,' applied (unless it be a corruption) primarily to the hairy caterpillar." Skeat. Caterpillar 'no doubt cor- responds to Fr. chatepeleuse, a weevil, but it comes nearer to 54 CAUSEWAY. the form catte-pelaeure, given in Guernsey to wood-lice, weevils, millipedes. As these animals are not hairy, Meti- vier well observes that it must be from their habit of rolling themselves up like a pill, in Guernsey, pilleure, Rouchi, pilure, pelure, that the Guernsey name as well as the cor- responding E. caterpillar is derived. The etymology is put beyond doubt by the fact that in America the name of fill-bug is given to wood-lice, centipedes, and such animals as have this habit of rolling themselves up into a little ball. The corruption to Fr. chatepeleuse may be understood from the form pilleuse, preserved by Palsgrave. " Pylle for a laxe, pilleuse, pilleure." Why the name of cat should be given to a grub or caterpillar is not so obvious, but it is a fact that they are very generally known by the name of cat or dog. Guernsey, catte, the grub of the cockchafer; Lom- bard, gatta, gattola, Swiss, teufelskatz, a caterpillar; W. Flanders, harenhond, a hairy caterpillar ; Kentish, hop-dog, a pale yellow grub that infests the hops ; Milanese, can, cagnon, a silkworm ; Fr. chenille (from canicula, a little dog), a caterpillar. CAUSEWAY. Mid. Lat. calcea, calceia, calceata (rarely calciata) um, via strata. Ducange. The derivation adopted by Diez and Skeat is from calx, lime : " Calciata, pp. of calciare, to make a roadway with lime, or rather with mortar containing lime." But a limed road would be a very indirect mode of signifying that the road was paved, on account of the mortar by which the stones were joined. An antece- dent objection is made by Littre that a chaussee is especially a raised embankment without any lime in it, and he there- fore adopts the suggestion of Charpentier, and explains it from calciata, in the sense of trodden down, " De sorte que la chaussee serait la terre foule"e, pressee." Schelergets over the difficulty in a different way, deriving the word from calx, limestone : " Chaussee est une route faite avec des pierres calcaires broyees." But this is antedating the use of mac- adamised roads by many hundred years. There can be no CA VE IN. 55 doubt that the original type of a chaussee would be the great paved roads of the Romans, and the primary sense, as given by Ducange, via strata, a paved road ; the sense of a raised way (itinerarius agger, in the words of Marcellinus), and finally a simple embankment, being incidental signi- fications. But if this be the original meaning, how can it be better described than by the figure of a shod way, via calceata, protected, as Spelman explains it, as by a shoe against the wear and tear of travel. Shod with iron is a common metaphor when the extremity or the surface of anything is protected by a coating of iron. So in Sp. calzar is said of a wheel bound with an iron tire ; and in Port. calfar, to shoe, is actually used in the sense of paving the streets ; cafyada, a paved way, a pavement. In a record of Titsey Manor, A.D. 1611, is a presentment that J. H. had encroached upon the highway "by making a pavement, Anglice", a causey" &c. Orig. Gloss., Series C., E. D. S. It will be observed that the word for causeway in all the Romance languages is the very word signifying shod in each language : Prov. caussada, from caussar, to shoe ; Fr. chaussee, from c/iausser, to shoe ; Sp. calzada, from calzar, and Port, cafyada, from calfar. On the other hand, the verb calciare, to make of calx, is invented for the sake of this very etymology and is known in no other instance. More- over, the word for causeway is almost invariably calceata, very rarely calciata, as it ought to be if derived from calx. In the face of such strong presumptions we can give little weight to Scheler's bare enouncement that the etymology from calceus " doit etre ecarte"e." CAVE IN, To. Properly to calve in, as it is still pro- nounced in Lincolnshire. It is said of a steep bank of earth at which men are digging, when a portion of the wall of earth separates and falls in upon them, the falling portion being compared to a cow dropping her calf. It was written calve by John Wesley in describing an accident that hap- pened to a Cornish man : " He was sitting cleaving stones 56 CA VE IN. when the rock calved in upon him" (N. and Q., 4th S. xiL p. 1 66). At p. 274 Mr. Peacock says, " In this part of the world (Lincolns.) we all say calved in, never caved in. I remember well the first time I heard the word. I was a very little boy at the time, when one day I was walking with my father to look at some 'bankers/ who were engaged in widening a drain. Suddenly three of the men jumped out of the cutting, shouting out, 'Tak heed, lads; there's a cawlf a-comin.' I, in my simplicity, looked around for the calf, which, as I imagined, had escaped from the foldyard." This explanation of the expression is rendered certain by the W. Flanders inkalven, used in exactly the same sense. "De gracht kalft in," the ditch caves in. De Bo. Indeed it is not unlikely that the expression of an incident to which the labourers in drainage works are peculiarly liable was introduced by the Dutch navvies who came over for the large drainage works in the Lincolnshire fens. With those to whom the hollow left in the bank was a more prominent phenomenon than the dropping of the calf or detached mass of earth with which the mischief begins, the pronunciation would unconsciously change, by a false etymology, to the modern cave in. CHAFF, To. "The vulgar E. to chaff, is a mere cor- ruption of the verb to chafe, to inflame, fret, vex." Skeat. This is a most unlikely explanation, as the irritation of the party chaffed is by no means a characteristic element of the conception. Indeed, the word is almost always applied to good-natured raillery. Nor is chafe, in the sense of irritate, a word familiar enough to be at all likely to originate such a homely expression. In my Dictionary, I referred it to Du. keffen, to bark or yelp, and fig. to chatter, tattle (jaser, causer, caqueter, babiller Halma.) ; but I believe the true account of the expression to be that it is merely a metaphorical use of chaff, as the type of something light and unsubstantial, without any solid kernel in it. G. kaff, chaff, and fig. idle words, empty discourse, foolish or silly CHAPEL. 57 stuff, impertinence. Kiittner. Sanders gives the fig. sense of kaffzs worthless stuff, empty talk without coherence. CHAP. A fellow. Chap is merely a familiar abbrevia- tion of chapman. Skeat. This is a bare guess, supported by no evidence that chapman itself was ever used in such a sense. It certainly seems a strange way of speaking of a man to call him a chap, in the sense of cheek or jaw. But this mode of expression occurs in Danish, and, as in the case of E. chap, in vulgar speech. Kiceft, a chap or jaw, also a person. Ikke en kiczft, not a soul. Molbech. The same figure is used in Norway, where kjeft as well as kjakje or kjakje ( = E. cheek), a jaw, chap, cheek, are used in the sense of individual man or beast. Inkje kjaakaa, not a single one. Kvar ein kjeft, every man Jack. I have said in my Dictionary that cheek in Lincolnshire is used in the same way, but I am unable now to indicate my authority. The use of hals (neck) in German, in a depreciatory sense for a person, is a similar figure. Geiz-hals, a niggard ; schrei-hals, a bawler ; wage-hals, a daredevil. CHAPEL. Skeat adheres to the old tradition that " originally a capella was the sanctuary in which was pre- served the cappa or cope of St. Martin, and thence it was expanded to any sanctuary containing relics." The original author of the tradition seems to be Walafridus Strabo, who lived A.D. 700,, and in his book " De Exordiis et Incrementis Ecclesiasticis " says : " Dicti autem sunt pri- mitus Capellani a Cappa S. Martini quam reges Francorum ob adjutorium victorise, in prseliis solebant secum habere : quam ferentes, et custodientes cum caeteris Sanctorum reliquiis, Clerici Cappellani cseperunt vocari " (Le Duchat in Diet. Etym.) It will be observed that this is not exactly the same story with the modern theory. But in fact the assertion of these old writers respecting the origin of names is worthy of very little credit. We have to consider which is most probable, that the private oratory of the palace should have been named chapel^ because the cope of St. 58 CHIME. Martin was kept there with other relics, or that the holy relics should have been kept in the chapel or place where mass was celebrated, as being the most sacred receptacle for them? Now we find from the glossaries of Diefen- bach's Supplement that Low Lat capella, a hood, was used in the sense of a canopy, the canopy over the sacred elements, " ein himeltz, gehymels (eucaristie, &c.)," as well as a small church, " ain klain kirch." The name of the canopy would readily be extended to the recess in a church where an altar was placed and mass was sung. In accordance with this signification of the word, Fr. chapelle is applied to the vault of a baker's oven or of an aqueduct, to the vaulted covering of the binnacle on board a ship. CHIME. "A harmonious sound. The word has lost a b ; it should be chimb. M.E. chimbe or chymbe is a cor- ruption of chimbale or chymbale, a dialectic form of O.F. cimbale or cymbale, both of which forms occur in Cotgrave." Skeat. The form >chimb-bell quoted by Skeat is in all probability a travesty of Fr. chimbale^ but the rendering of the French word by such a compound is tolerably con- clusive of the independent existence in English at that time of the word chimb or chime in the sense of clanging sound. " Anon he doth his bemen blowe, V.C. (500) on a throwe. His chymbe belle he doth rynge, And doth dassche gret taborynge." K. Alisaunder, 1. 1850. Chimbe alone is also found in a similar sense in the "Cursor Mundi," 1. 12193 : "As a chimbe or a brasen belle." But surely it is a wholly unwarranted conclusion from such as passages these that the verb to chime is a deri- vation of cymbal. " Chymyn or chenkyn with bellys, tin- tillo." Pr. Pm. If Skeat's supposition is correct, we must extend the same explanation to the Da. kime and Sw. kimma or kimba, to chime or toll, to strike stroke after CHOP. 59 stroke with a wooden truncheon upon the bell. But these words could never have been borrowed from the English. The rational explanation of the relation between chime and Fr. chimbale is that both are originally from the represen- tation of a ringing sound, which would be modified in its vowel sound according to the character of the sound repre- sented, being written with an /' for sharper sounds, and with an a, o, or u for opener or deeper ones. Thus in Finnish we have kimina, sonus acutus, clangor tinniens ; with the cor- responding verb kimista, acute tinnio ; kummata, kumista, to sound as a large bell ; kommata, komista, to sound deep or hollow. On the same principle seems to be formed Albanian kemboig, I clang as a bell, I resound, and thence kembore, kembone, a large cattle-bell of tin. In Greek we have xo/iirl/f, to clang or resound ; KVfj.f3a.Xov, a cymbal. In Latin probably campana, a bell, springs from a modifica- tion of the same imitative root. CHOP, To. To turn suddenly round, as in the expression " the wind chops" i.e., changes, veers. Skeat regards this sense of the word as a particular application of chop, to barter or exchange. " Chop," he says, " is a weakened form of the M.E. copen, to buy," which he derives from the O. Du. koopen, to buy, originally to barter. But this deriva- tion of a word expressing so simple a conception as a sudden turn, from the much more complex notion of a purchase, is quite opposed to the natural development of language. Moreover, the sense of the verb chop is by no means con- fined to the notion of turning round ; it is applied to any sudden movement, as when a greyhound is said to chop up a hare. To chop logic is to bandy, to make quick retorts. " And whereas you charge me with malapertness, in that I presume to chop logike with you, being governour, by answer- ing your snappish quid with a knappish quo." Hollinshed in Richardson. " Let not the counsel at the bar chop with the judge, nor wind himself into the handling of the case anew, after the judge hath declared his sentence." Bacon, 60 CHINCHONA. in Todd. A chopping sea is when short waves come in different directions, giving sharp shocks to the vessel. To chop wood or meat, to chop off one's head, are other instances of the same general figure. In Scotch chap it is applied to the striking of a clock. To chap hands, to strike hands, to chap at a door, to knock. Jamieson. To chop in the sense of exchanging is a particular case of the notion of turning round. In the same way to swap fundamentally signifying to strike smartly, to chop, is also used in the sense of barter or exchange. To swap horses or to chop horses are synony- mous expressions. " Kastes in his clere schelde and coveres hym full faire, Sivappes of the swerde hand als he by glentis." Morte Arthure, in Halliwell. Chops off the sword-hand. The long o of copen never could have sunk down into the expressively short sound of chop. CHINCHONA. "Peruvian bark. The usual story is, that it was named after the Countess of Chinchon, wife of the Governor of Peru, cured by it A.D. 1638. Her name perhaps rather modified than originated the word." Skeat. The story of the Countess of Chinchon, from whom the name of the tree Chinchona is taken, is perfectly historical, but this has nothing to do with the name of the alcali quinine. Quina, in the language of the natives of the country, is bark, and quina-quina, the bark of barks, the medicinal bark or bark par excellence. Markham. CINDER. Cindres or cinders, in the sense of ashes, from Fr. cendres, was used by Maundeville, Surrey, Spenser. In the face of such evidence it is in vain for Skeat to say that Fr. cendre would have given us cender, as Fr. genre has given gender. The E. cinder-wench corresponds to Fr. cendrillon. As long as there were none but wood-fires, cinders in the modern sense would be unknown, but when coal-fires came into use the refuse of a burnt-out fire would consist not only CINDER. 6 1 of ashes, but of solid fragments resembling the metallic offal of a smith's fire. And as this last was known by the name of sinder, the two like-sounding words seem to have been confounded, and the name of cinders became appropriated to the solid refuse of the fire, as distinguished from the ashes or powdery remainder.' The primary meaning of sinder seems to be the bright sparks which are driven out in all directions when the glowing iron is beaten on the anvil, then to the scoria and dross of all kinds separated in the foundry and forging of iron. G. sinter, the scales which fly from iron when beaten or forged red-hot on an anvil, and they also bear this name when they are grown cold. Kvittner. Syndyr of srnythys colys. Casma. Cyndyr of the smythys fiyre. Casuma, Prompt. Parv. N. sinder, hammer-scales, small offal of iron in the smithy - } also slag, lumps of melted iron, particles in the ashes of the smithy. Aasen. The Du. sindel is explained by Kilian as scoria, slag, but in the modern shape of sintels it is applied like E. cinders to the solid offal of a coal fire. Weiland. The Da. sinder is explained by Molbech as the sparks which fly from glowing iron under the hammer, and also the ashes which fall from burning wood, as well as the scum of melted metal. According to Skeat, " The true sense of the word is that which flows, hence the dross or slag of a forge, and hence cinder in the modern sense. The parallel Sanscr. word is sindha, that which flows." But when we are inquiring into the origin of the word, we must picture to ourselves not the vast furnace of a modern foundry, but the simple operation which may still be seen in Africa or India of a single man' working with a clumsy contrivance of hand-bellows. In- such a case there would be no flowing of slag from the furnace, nor indeed is the flowing from a modern furnace at all more characteristic of the slag than of the molten iron. It is a perfectly arbitrary assertion that the true meaning of the word is "that which flows." There is no Teutonic root of the form sind signifying " flow ; " nor does it appear that 62 CLIQUE. there is any Sanscrit derivation from sindha with the sense of sinder. In the smithy of a primitive ironworker there is no making first of liquid cast-iron, which is then reduced by a second operation to malleable iron, but the malleable lump is produced at once, and the slag and scoria are driven out by the process of hammering. Of this operation the flight of the glowing sparks of " sinder " in all directions is by far the most striking phenomenon, and therefore it is very natural that they and the material of which they are composed should be called sinder, from Icel. sindra, to throw out sparks. Dat sindrar or eldinum, sparks fly out of the fire. Dat sindradi af sverdinu, the sword glittered as if with sparks of fire. Sindri, flintstone (from its use in striking fire). Haldorsen. It is objected by Skeat that the verb sindra comes from stndr, slag, and not vice versa. But that is a point on which it is rash to speak dogmatically. The N. tindra, tintra, Sw. tindra, to sparkle, glitter, are very similar forms. CLIQUR Fr. digue, G. klicke, a faction, a body of per- sons combined for purposes from which they carefully exclude the outside world. " Das volk hat sich in Splitten, Klubben und Klicken aufgeloset." Referred by Skeat to O.Fr. cliquer, to click, clack, make a noise ; Du. klikken, to click, clash ; also to inform, tell, whence klikker, an in- former. " Perhaps then," he suggests, " digue originally meant a set of informers ; otherwise it merely meant a noisy gang, a set of talkers." But there is as little warrant for attributing to the word the one as the other of these 'meanings. It simply signifies a set of people sticking "together, an exclusive body, and may reasonably be derived from Low G. klik, kliks, a separate portion, especially of something soft. Een kliks botter, a pat of butter. Bi klik un klak, bit by bit. The Fr. clique was used in the same sense. " D'aller, quand il vente, par rue, afin qu'on ait sur sa tete une clique d'une tuille (a fragment of tile) qui est tost descendue, ou cheminde ou pierre qui desclique COCHINEAL. 63 (which is broken off). Lacurne (fifteenth century) in Littre. Here we see that clique is a portion which desclique, which splits off from a body, and the application to a coterie is exactly analogous to the use of splitte as synony- mous with klicke in the passage quoted at the head of the article. In the Whitby Gl. (E. D. S.) we have deck or cletch, a cluster, a sect or party. Sc. a clatch of lime, as much as is thrown from the trowel on a wall. Jamieson. COBBLE, To. Referred by Skeat to O.Fr. cobler, coubler, to couple, join together Roquef. But there is really no resemblance between the senses of coupling and patching or cobbling. The notion of stammering or stuttering affords a natural image to signify clumsy or imperfect action, and in this way the Sc. habble, to stutter, seems connected on the one hand with E. hobble, to walk imper- fectly, and on the other with Sc. hobble, to cobble shoes. " All graith that gains to hobbill schone." Now cobble, according to Halliwell, is a dialectic variation of hobble in the sense of clumsy walking, and like Sc. hobble, it may also have been figuratively applied to the sense of clumsy mending. COCHINEAL. A scarlet dye consisting of the dried bodies of the Coccus cacti, native of Mexico. The resem- blance of cochineal to Lat. coccineus, scarlet, has naturally led to the supposition of a radical connection between the two words. It is, however, an anachronism in Skeat to cite " Lat. coccum, a berry, also cochineal, supposed by the ancients to be a berry." Cochineal was of course unknown until the discovery of America, and is a mere adoption of the Spanish name cochinilla, which cannot easily be derived from coccus. But, in point of fact, cochinilla was already a Spanish word signifying a wood-louse, before cochineal was known; and the Spaniards seem to have transferred the familiar name to the valuable insect which they found in Mexico, from the striking likeness which it has to a small wood-louse, both in shape and in the transverse streaks 64 CODDLE. across the back. The name cochinilla is the dim. of Sp. cochina, a sow, cognate with Fr. cochon, a pig. The animal is in England provincially called a sow or a sow-bug, and in Fr. pourcelet de St. Antoine, St. Anthony's pig, probably from its rounded back. CODDLE, To. To take excessive precautions for one's bodily comfort. " How many of our English princes have been coddled at home by their fond papas and mammas ! " Thackeray. " Dear Prince Pippin, Down with your noble blood, or as I live I'll have you codled." B. and F., Philaster, act v. sc. I. Shortly afterwards, on Pharamond breaking out again, the attendants ask, "Shall's geld him ? " and on the strength of this single passage Skeat gives the startling explanation that "the original sense was to castrate, hence to render effeminate." A strange origin for a word signifying "to make much of, to treat with tenderness (Webster) ! " Skeat supports his view by a passage of Dampier quoted by Richardson, *' It (the guava fruit) bakes as well as a pear, and it may be coddled, and it makes good pies." Here, he sajs, the word coddkd may very well mean stoned. But Dampier is speaking of the different ways in which the fruit may be dressed, and he evidently means to say that the fruit may be boiled or stewed. Moreover, the guava has no stone. Whatever may be the meaning of codled in the passage of Philaster, it is quite impossible that a word signifying over-indulgence or excessive care of the bodily comforts of a creature could derive its meaning from the sense of castration. I should have been inclined to think that coddling, in the sense of excessive care for the comforts of any one, was a metaphor from stewing over 'the fire, were it not for the N.E. caddie, to coax, to spoil (Halli- well) ; caddie, one superfluously careful about himself, effeminately self-indulgent (a Molly-coddle) ; as a verb, to caress, fondle, coax. Evans, Leicest. GL, E. D. S. To cade CODLINS. 65 is to treat with extraordinary indulgence, as a cade-lamb. Cadely, tame, accustomed to be petted. " It is a cadely little thing," said of a tame bantam. Fr. cadeler, to cocker, pamper, fedle, make much of. Cadel, a castling, a starve- ling, one that hath much need of cockering and pampering. Cotgr. A cosset or cade lamb or colt is explained in the Gl. of Old Country and Farming Words, E. D. S., as " a lamb or colt fallen and brought up by hand." " A cossart lamb in Hertfordshire is one left by its dam dying by disease or hurt before it is capable of getting its own living." Lat. cadere, to fall. CODLINS, CODLINGS. Explained by Skeat as a dim. of cod, a husk or pod. But it really signifies a boiling apple, an apple not ripe enough to eat raw and fit only to be boiled ; hence reckoned by Bacon among the July fruits. " In July come gillyflowers of all varieties, early pears and plums in fruit, gennitings and codlings." On Gardening. " Not yet old enough for a man nor young enough for a boy, as a codling when 'tis almost an apple." Twelfth Night. Codlyng, frute, pomme cuite. Palsgrave. A quodling, pomum coctile. Coles. From coddle or (in Suffolk) quoddle, to boil gently, a word in the first instance representing the agitation of boiling water. Icel. kvot/a, to dabble or paddle in water. Swab, quatteln, to wabble. COKE. Pitcoal or seacoal charred. Coles., 1684. Per- haps a mere variety of cake ; we talk of a lump of earth as being caked together. Skeat. In considering the origin of this name, we should not look to the scientific manufacture of coke of the present day, in which no doubt small coal is made to cake together into solid coke, but to the shape in which the substance would first attract notice, viz., as the cinders of a coal-fire, in Yorkshire called coaks (Halli- well), which of course might as well be spelt cokes. Now the cinders of the grate are as far as possible from suggest- ing the notion of caking or sticking together. Moreover, tbe change of vowel sound from cake to coke is a difficult E 66 COPE. step. It is, however, not very easy to decide what was the radical meaning of the word before it was applied to cinders. The Du. kolk (radically a swallow) is a pit, a deep hollow, and is specially applied, like aschkolk, or haardkolk, to the ashpit, the hollow under the grate which receives the cin- ders. Halma. Is it possible that the name can have been transferred from the ashpit to its contents? It certainly seems to be understood in the sense of a hollow when applied to the core of an apple in the passage from the " Prick of Conscience," 6443 : " For all eerthe by skille may likened be Til a rounde appel of a tree, That even in middes has a colke ; And swa it may be tille an egge yholke ; For als a dalk [a hollow] es even imydward The yholke of the egge, when it es hard, Ryght swa es helle pitte, als clerkes telles, Ymyddes the erthe." " Rotten at the colke" Toivneley Myst. 281. Goke, in Cleveland, is applied to the core of an apple, to the sitfast or core of an ulcer which remains when the pus has come away, the yolk of an egg, the central remnant of a haystack when it is nearly cut away. A grindle-coke is the core or central portion of a grindstone worn till it is past use. The coak of a sheave, according to Webster, is the hole guarded by metal through which the pin goes. It would seem, as Atkinson suggests, that the term was first applied to a central hollow, as the core of an apple, then to a solid core or central remnant, when the main substance of a thing is worn away or consumed, and it may be that in this way it has come to signify the burnt remnants of coal. COPE, To. To vie or contend with. Skeat adopts the etymology of Junius, who supposes that the word is a special application of the O.E. copen, to buy, from the Du. koopen, of the same signification. I believe, on the contrary, TO COTTON. 67 that these words, although identical in sound, are as dis- tinct in origin as they are different in meaning. " The original sense," says Skeat, "was to bargain with, or to chaffer with," but he brings no evidence to warrant that assertion, even with reference to the Du. koopen ; and with respect to the E. cope as used in actual speech, the signifi- cation, in the earliest instances which we find in our dic- tionaries, is not bargain or struggle, but encounter, colli- sion. " By whiche occasion he neither would nor durst once medle or coupe with the Earl's navie." Hall's Chron. in Richardson. "This course was greatly praysed. The seconde course -they met without any hurte doynge, and the thyrde course their horses refused and would not cope" Berners, Froissart, in Richardson. "The first course they failed, for their horses refused at the cope." Ibid. The word is understood by Palsgrave in the same sense. " I cope, or I joyne with myne enemye to fight with him : je me aborde a mon enemy pour me combattre." "And I coope with him aryght, he shall beare me a blowe : si je m'aborde a luy a mon desir, je luy donneray ung soufflet." This use of the word in the sense of Fr. aborder brings us to O.Fr. acoper, acouper (modern achopper), to strike against, and thence, on the one hand, to fall in with, to close with, and on the other, to stumble. " Comme iceluy suppliant se fust accoupe, ou aheurtie a un jeune homme : " encoun- tered or met with a young man. Ducange in Littre. " 'A une pierre s'acopa, si chiet en la fosse tout plat : " struck against a stone, and fell flat in the ditch. Rom. du Renart. It. incappare, to meet with, to light, to fall, to trip, to stumble upon by chance (Florio), also simply to stumble. Sc. chap, to strike or knock, and as a noun, stroke, blow. Jamieson. COTTON, To. To agree, to become thoroughly united, also to go on well, to succeed. " A quarrel will end in one of you being turned off, in which case it will not be easy to cotton with another." Swift in Todd. 68 COZEN. " So feyneth he, things true and false So always mingleth he, That first with midst, and midst with last May cotton and agree." Drant, Horace: in Richardson, Derived by Skeat from W. cyteno (should be cytuno, from cy-, together, and tynu, to draw), to agree. It is, however, quite impossible that a compound verb of this nature ever could have been caught up out of Welsh into English. The knowledge of Welsh among English people was always confined within the most restricted limits, so that if a word of Welsh had been interlarded in English speech, it would have found no one to understand it, and never could have become established in the language. Moreover, there would be little resemblance in sound between W. cytuno, in which the accent, as in all Welsh words, is on the last syllable but one, and the E. cotton or cbtten. On the other hand, both senses of the word may well be understood as a metaphor from the matting together of the fibres in the process of fulling cloth. Cot, a fleece of wool matted together in its growth (Mrs. Baker) : a lock of wool or hair clung together. Ludwig, Germ. Diet, sub v. Zote. Cotted, matted, entangled. Halliwell. " It cottons well ; it cannot chuse but bear A pretty nap." "Family of Love" in Webster. COZEN, To. To defraud. From " Fr. cousiner, to call cousin, to sponge, to live upon other people. The change of meaning from sponge, to beguile or cheat, was easy." Skeat. To me the transition of meaning seems far from 'a natural one. On the other hand, It. coglionare (from coglione, a cullion or dupe), to take one in, to make a fool of one, exactly expresses the sense of the English word. Now, coglionare in the Venetian dialect becomes cogionare, cor- responding to E. cozen, as It. prigione to E. prison, It. cugino to E. cousin, It.fregio to E. frieze. Piedm. cojone, to deride, to make a fool of. CRONE. 69 CRIB, To. To make a petty theft. Explained by Skeat, " to put into a crib, hence to confine ; also to hide away in a crib, hence to purloin." This is not a very happy explanation of the word. No one would speak of cribbing a thing in the sense of hiding it away, nor is there any reference to the concealment of the thing purloined in the expression of cribbing. It is simply the appropriation of something insignificant belonging to another. The true ex- planation is, I doubt not, to be found in the West Cornwall Glossary lately published by the English Dialect Society, where it appears that crib is used in the sense of a fragment, a little bit. It is explained, a crust of bread, fragments of meat. "Eat up your cribs" "To crib, to break off small pieces. ' He cribs a bit here and there.' Crib-a-flent (flint) is to renew the edge by breaking off small pieces." To crib, in the ordinary sense of pilfering, then, is to appropriate a bit of something. CRICKET. Explained by Skeat from the A.S. crice, a staff, whence cricket would be a little staff. Cotgrave ex- plains Fr. crosse as a " cricket-staff, or the crooked staff where- with boys play at cricket." We have, however, no evidence of the word ever having been used in the sense of a bat. We see that Cotgrave does not understand it in that sense, but speaks of a cricket-staff. It may plausibly be conjec- tured that the name was taken from the cricket or three- legged stool which was originally used as a~ wicket. N. krakk, Pl.D. krakstool, a three-legged stool. That a stool was actually used we have evidence in the name of stoolball or stobball, a kind of cricket which was played with a stool by way of a wicket. See Stoolball in Nares. "Tutch. What do you call it when the ball, sir, hits the stool ? Filbon. Why, out. Tutch. Even so am I ; out, out of all hope ever to crown my poor age at his table." Two Maids of Moreclack (1609), inN. and Q., 5th S., ii. p. 266. CRONE. i. An old sheep beginning to loose its teeth. 2. A contemptuous name for an old woman. Skeat adopts 70 CROUCH. the derivation from Gael, crion, withered, dry. It is cer- tainly possible that a name for an old sheep might have been formed in Gaelic from the sense of withered, and the name so formed might have passed over to English shep- herds, but there is no evidence whatever that a derivative from crion was ever used in such a sense in Gaelic. It appears also that there is a radical difference in the vowel sound of the two words. Crion is marked in MacAlpine's Dictionary as pronounced creen, and there is an accent on the / in Irish crion. On the other hand, it is quite impos- sible that the word should have been formed in English direct from Gael, crion, which would always have been meaningless to English ears. Moreover, the designation is found also in Du. kronie, ovis vetula, rejicula ; Ang. crone. Kilian. And in Dutch the derivation is plain. Karonie, kronie, cadaver, a dead carcase, carrion. And Halma ex- plains the same word, spelt karonje, as a term of abuse among women. Carogne, according to Trevoux, is used in the same way in French, and old carrion is an expression of coarse abuse in English. But possibly crone in the second sense may be merely a metaphor from an old sheep. CROUCH, To. "A variant of or derivative from M.E. croken, to bend." Skeat. This would no doubt offer a satisfactory explanation of the word if there were not stronger probabilities in another direction. Crouch was formerly used for the sign of the cross. The cnttched friars were those who wore the badge of the cross. The Palmer in " Piers Plowman " had " many a cruche on his cloke " (B. V. 529). To crouch, to bless with the sign of the cross. " And said his orisons as is usage, And cmtched hem, and bade God shuld hem bless." Chaucer, Merchant's Tale. Now in Italian, far croce, star colle braccia in croce (to make a crouch), is to cross the arms on the breast (often joined with bowing and kneeling) as an attitude of reverence. La CUDDLE. 71 Crusca. Hence we must explain to crouch, of the same sig- nification. " I croutche, I make humble reverence. Je me humilie. It is a sporte to see him croutche 33\& knele : cest ung passeternps que de le veoyr se humilier et se ageriouyl- lier." The term seems then to have passed on to designate the mere bodily attitude. " I croutche, I stoupe low with my body, je m' accroupis." Palsgrave. The word occurs in the same passage with crook in P. P. Crede, 750. "And lordes sones lowly to J>o loselles aloute, Kny3tes croukefy hem to & cruche^ full lowe.' A girl in Pembrokeshire, fifty or sixty years ago, was com- monly told to make her crutch or curch, i.e., to curtsey in token of respect. CUD. " Food chewed over again. No doubt cud means that which is chewed. From the same source with A.S. ceowan, to chew." Skeat. The parallel form quid should have guarded against such a derivation. But in the first place, the cud is not food chewed over again. The grass is swallowed, in the first instance, without chewing. It is taken down at once into the cud or maw, and after being duly mace- rated there, it is thrown up into the mouth to be chewed. A.S. cud) rumen. Somner. Lat. rumen, the]>en (equivalent to couthen), with the sense of cuddle, occurs in Will, of Palerne, 1. 1101. 'Than either hent other hastely in armes, and with kene kosses ku]>]>ed 72 CUDGEL. hem togidere.' " Skeat. I do not think that a frequentative verb of such a kind is ever formed from an adjective. But independent of this, the positive evidence of a different origin appears to me overpowering. Jamieson gives Sc. cushle- mushle, low whispering conversation, evidently imitative. This becomes in Banffshire cuddle-muddle, speaking in a low muttering tone. "A got thim cuddle muddlin wi' ane anither at the back of a dyke." To cuddle, to speak in a low tone of voice, mostly of lovers, to coax, entice ; cuddle, con- versation in a low tone, a very close intimacy. " They hive an unco cuddle thegeether." In the same way N.E. cutter, to whisper, to speak low, also to fondle. Halliwell. Swiss kudern, to talk together like lovers, to fondle. The G. kosen, originally to chat or talk familiarly 'with each other, is applied in a secondary sense to caresses or gestures expressive of affection ; lieb-kosen, to caress. Du. kout, familiar talk, and kouten, to talk, probably belong to the same class, as well as the E. couster, expressing the intimate chatter of two or three in private. Du. kouter, koutster, a chatterer, talker. Skeat refers to Du. kudde, a flock or herd; but surely any real connection with that word would be in- compatible with a derivation from A.S. cu, known. CUDGEL. Derived by Skeat from W. cogail, a distaff, truncheon ; cogyl, a cudgel, club ; In cuigeal, a distaff. But the hard g of W. cogyl would never have changed to the soft g of cudgel if the latter had been a borrowed word. More- over, the borrowing of Welsh words is extremely rare, and is unlikely to have taken place with the name of an object by no means peculiar to Wales. A more likely origin seems the Du. kudse, kodse, a parallel form with knudse, knodse, a club. Kil. CUE. The last words of the preceding speech, prefixed to the speech of an actor in order to let him know when he is to come upon the stage. Explained by Skeat from Fr. queue, the tail, as being the tail end of the preceding speech. But the term was certainly not borrowed from the French, CURMUDGEON. . 73 where the word for an actor's cue is replique, and cue was never used in English in the sense of tail. From the nature of the signification the word cannot have arisen earlier than the sixteenth century, when acting became professional. In Butler's English Grammar (1634), cited in N. and Q., Aug. 1865, it is explained, " Q, a note of entrance for actors, be- cause it is the first letter of qiiando, when showing when to enter and speak." * Ly4 " Had you not come upon your Q, my lord, William Lord Hastings had pronounced your part." Richard III. Minshew writes it qu, and gives a like account of the term, only making it stand for qualis instead of quando. CURMUDGEON. An ill-conditioned miserly fellow, pro- bably from the ill repute of corn-dealers, formerly called 'corn-mudgins, in times of scarcity. Holland's translation of Livy, p. 1 104, speaks of fines paid by " certain corn-tmidgins for hourding up and keeping in their graine." The question arises as to the origin of the second element of the word. It is explained by Skeat as corn-mudging in the sense of corn- hoarding, from Fr. inuscer, muchier, musser, to keep private, conceal. " Cil que musce les furmens ert escommenge's es gens. Qui abscondit frumenta maledicetur in populis." Proverbes ii. 26 in Roquef. No doubt the sense of a corn- hoarder, would do very well, and if the word had been corn- mudger there would have been nothing to object. But the obnoxious dealer never could have been called a corn- hoarding or corn-mudging. The formation of such a word from the part, present is quite against the genius of the language. It seems probable that the name has come to us from the German, in which language Mausche or Mauschel is a contemptuous name for a Jew, from their own pronuncia- tion of the name Moses. Sanders. And like the name Jude itself, Mausc/ie or Mauschel is used in Swabia in the sense of a usurer, or one who drives an underhand or 74 CURDS. usurious trade. Hence Korn-jude, a contemptuous expres- sion for a dealer in corn ; which in the mouth of those who use Mausche or Mauschel as a contemptuous version otjude, would naturally become Korn-mausche or Korn-mauschel. I have a strong recollection of having met with the first of these forms, but am unable to recover the passage. CURDS. Formerly written cruddes or croddes, which appears to be the more genuine form of the word. " Perhaps the original sense was simply milk ; cf. Irish cruth-aim, I milk. [Otherwise it is tempting to connect it with O.Gael. cruad, a stone]." Skeat. It is very unlikely that a word signifying a distinctive condition of milk should be taken from a form signifying milk itself. The proper meaning of the word seems to be simply lumps. A curdled sky is a sky in which the vapour seems to have been shaken into separate lumps or detached masses. Comp. Fr. mattes, curds or curdles (Cot), with motte, mottelet, a clod or lump of earth ; Fr. matton'e (ciel mattone, a curdled sky) with E. mottled. The word crud itself is probably cognate with Fr. crotte, a lump of dirt, dagling stuff, as Cotgrave calls it, that is, clotted dirt hanging to clothes or the wool of animals. Crottes are also the pellets of sheep's-dung and the like ; crottles, as they are dialectically called in England. Du. krotte, a lump of dirt hanging to one's clothes (Kil.); E. krote, a clod of earth (Halliwell). The radical image seems to be the shaking of what was originally a uniformly distributed substance into separate lumps. I should thus regard O.E. cruddle or the dialectic cruttle{ Halliwell), to curdle or form lumps, as identical with N.E. crudle (Halliwell), to shiver, shake, and as corresponding to Fr. crodler, Prov. crotlar, to shake, to fall in ruins. The ultimate origin seems to be the representation of a rattling sound. Gr. xsorew, to rattle, clatter, knock ; xsorat.ov, a rattle, knocker, little bell. The inversion of the liquids r and / gives Du. kloteren, to rattle, knock repeatedly (a variant of E. clatter) klotteren, to clotter or coagulate, whence klotter-melck, coagulated or CUSHION. 75 curdled milk, and klotte, a clot or clod (Kil.) The same connection between the senses of shaking or jogging and coagulation or forming into lumps is seen in Swiss hottern, to shake or jog, Du. hotsen, to jolt, and Du. hot, hotte, curds, hotten, to curdle ; Sc. hattit cream, clotted cream. CURL. Formerly crul, in accordance with Du. krul, O. Du. krol, krolle, a curl ; krollen, to curl, vibrare crines ferro. " We may regard end as a contraction of to crookle, or make crooked ; similarly Da. krolle may stand for krogle, from krog, a crook." Skeat. It seems to me more probable that the connection is with Fr. crodler, crosier, croller, Prov. crotlar, to shake, E. dial, crudle, crule, to shiver ; the notion of curling being arrived at through that of a wavy or quaver- ing movement, as we see in the case of Lat. vibro, to shake a thing, or make it to shake or quaver; to tremble, to quiver ; also to frizzle, curl, ruffle. Littleton. A precisely similar change of form is seen in the It. rotolare, and Fr. router, G. rotten, E. roll. The G. krollen, to curl, and rollen, to roll, are parallel forms analogous to E. crumple and rumple ; and as rollen is from a form corresponding to It. rotolare, the presumption is that krollen is from an equivalent of Prov. crotlar, Q.~Fr. crodler, which unquestionably passes into Fr. croller. CUSHION. O.Fr. coissin, Fr. coussin, It. coscino, cuscino. From a supposed culcitinum, a dim. of culcita, a feather-bed. Skeat. It is dangerous arguing from these supposititious forms, which threw such ridicule on etymology in the hands of Menage. Moreover, culcitinum does not appear a very probable dim. of culcita, nor is it an easy step from culciti- num to coussin. The connection with A.S. codd, a sack or bag, is much better vouched. Hence E. cod, the sack-like fruit o'f peas or beans. The word was also used in the sense of a cushion or pillow. Cod-bere, a pillow-case ; pin-cod, a pin-cushion. Halliwell. Icel. koddi, a pillow. Bret, cdd, god ; W. cod, cwd, a bag or pouch. Now the word corre- sponding to E. cod assumes in Fr. the form of cosse or gousse. 76 DAIRY. It. guscio, a pod or husk. In O.Fr. it was written cois. " Fabe silique, feves en coys" Neckam. Of this the O. Fr. coissin would be a regular derivative as an It. guscino of guscio. It is true we have cuscino, not guscino , but the two Fr. forms cosse and gousse, and the Bret, god as 'well as cod, show of how little importance this variation really is. DAIRY. It is admitted on all hands that the dairy is the domain of the dey, a female servant in husbandry, whose duty was to make cheese and butter, attend to the calves and poultry, and other odds and ends of the farm. " A deye, androchius, androchea, genatarius, genetharia; zderye, androchiarium, bestiarium, genetheum (for gynecaeum, the women's apartment, where the weaving was done)." Cath. Ang. in Prompt. Parv. Way. " Cascale, a dey-house, where cheese is made." Elyot in Halliwell. A dairy is still so called in Gloucestershire. In the 37 Edw. III., A.D. 1363, are classed together "bovers, vachers, porchers, deyes et touz autres gardeirez des bestes," the word deyes being translated in the English version deyars or dairy-men, and in 12 Rich. II. deye and deyrie-woman. The word dey is of Scandinavian origin. Sw. deja is the female manager who has charge of the cows and the dairy. Icel. deigja was the second Of the two principal bondwomen on an estate, who specially had charge of the dairy. At the present day, N. deigja or deia is applied to female servants with any special department ; budeia (bu t cattle), one who looks after the cows, milk-maid ; reid-deia, one employed to red up the house, housemaid, &c. The dispute arises as to the original meaning of the word. Skeat, resting on Cleasby's deriva- tion of the word, asserts that the older sense of the word was "a kneader of dough, and it meant at first a woman employed in baking, a baker-woman. The same maid no doubt made the bread and attended to the dairy, as is fre- quently the case to this day in farmhouses. More literally the word is dougher, from the Icel. deig, Sw. deg, dough." This assertion that the older sense of the word was kneader DANCE. 77 of dough is entirely unwarranted as a matter of fact, nor is there any other instance in which the baker is designated in this way. It is a most improbable appellation. Dough itself never comes into evidence ; it is merely a step in the making of bread, and is never thought of as an article of food. The duties of a dey are mentioned by Neckam, and do not include among them the making of the household bread. "Assit et androgia que gallinis ova pullificancia supponat et anseribus acera substernat ; que agnellos mor- bidos in sua teneritate lactefoveat alieno. Vitulos autem et subruinos (feblement dentez) ablactatos inclusos teneat in pargulo juxta fenile," &c. The milking of the cows and feeding the weanlings by hand would naturally fall to the same attendant, and hence probably the origin of the name, as pointed out by Jamieson : Da. dtzgge, to feed with foreign milk ; dagge-horn, a feeding bottle ; di/ja, N. tilja, to lay with boards or planks, which can hardly be radically distinct from Icel. tyllr, \ella, N. tolh, fella, a pine or fir-tree, especially a young tree; Sw. tail, pin.e, fir; tall-ved, fir-wood, deal. DECOY. "A coined word, made by prefixing Lat. de-, down, to O.Fr. coi or coy, quiet, tame, as though the sense were to quiet, tame." Skeat. But this is not the real sense of the word, which distinctly means, to allure into a snare. It is no doubt a met. from the use of a decoy duck, a tame duck used to allure wild ducks into a long cage built over a narrow creek of water, in which they are caught. In all probability the name came to us, with the contrivance itself, from Holland, where the watery nature of the country gives so much more opportunity for this kind of sport. Du. kooi, a cage, enclosure, sheepfold, &c. ; eenden kooi, a decoy for wild ducks. Norf. coy, a decoy for ducks, a coop for lob- sters. Forby. In the Fens, if the thing itself is still to be found there, they are called duck-coys. " Piscinas hasce cum allectatricibus et reliquo suo apparatu decoys seu duck-coys vocant ; allectatrices, coy-ducks" Ray and Willoughby, Or- nith. " Decoys, vulgarly duck-coys" Sketch of the Fens in Gardener's Chron., 1849. It was doubtless the supposition of a derivation from the verb to coy or accoy, to tame, that led to the corruption of the word, in literary language, from duck-coy to decoy. DESCRY, To. To make out, to perceive in the dis- tance, to discover. From O.Fr. descrire, Fr. decrire, Lat. describere. Skeat. " Thus the word is merely a doublet of describe" But to describe is one thing ; to descry, a totally different one. The explanation of Skinner is perfectly satisfactory : to announce by a loud cry the discovery of what is looked for ; afterwards simply to discover. It is F 82 'DEUCE. especially said of scouts in war: " Antonius caused to be forti- fied with bastillions one placed so neere to another, as trum- pets being appointed in each of them, the sound might be heard betwixt to warne one another upon the first descrieing of the enemies approach." Hollinshead, Hist. Scot, in Richard- son. The force of the word is made completely clear by the following passage : " And when thei were come, and thei hem sye, thei yaf ascry that all the forest and the river resounded." Merlin (E. E. T. S.), ii. 16. DEUCE, The. Supposed by Skeat to be a mere perver- sion of the O.Fr. Deus! God! used interjectionally. ' ' Envers Deu en son quer a fait grant clamur, Ohi Deus! fait iVffarl. MS. in Skeat. It is repeatedly used in Havelok, as at 1. 1312 " Deus ! lemman, hwat may ]>is be ?" rendered by Skeat, " Deuce ! sweetheart, what may this mean?" But why should the old Norman oath be vulgarised by such a translation? It is here clearly used just as Mon Dieu ! might be by a Frenchman at the present day. It is, however, hard to imagine how the interjectional Deus ! after it had come to be used in English as a mere exclamation of surprise, should have acquired the sense of demon or goblin. It is indeed surprising that Skeat should think the explana- tion so satisfactory as to make it not worth while to discuss the suggestion of any other origin. But the question is not to be settled exclusively on English ground. The Low G. Dmis, G. Daus, Tans, correspond exactly to E. Deuce. De JDuus/ The Deuce ! Brem. Worterb. Der Daus! The Deuce ! " Was der Daus! (what the Deuce !) gnadiger Herr, warum sotraurig?" " Ei der Daus ! du spinnst ja wie ein Daus (you spin like the Deuce)." Sanders. G. Diet. " Dass dich der Taus! (Deuce take you)." Schmid. It is obvious that no explanation of E. Deuce can be valid that is not applicable to these German forms, which plainly have no connection with the O.Fr. Deus ! Now the descent of the DINE. 83 forms above mentioned may be clearly traced from the ])urs of Northern mythology. Even in Old Norse the sound of the r was lost by assimilation, and the word was pronounced and commonly written puss. Like the A.S. tyyrs, it signified a goblin of vast size and uncouth aspect, of slow under- standing and savage nature, the giant of English fable. In modern Norse the Tuss is a goblin of mounds and caves, and we have the evidence of Outzen that in his time the Dtis was known among old people in Friesland as a super- natural being of like nature. The O.H.G. form, Turs, is applied by Nolker to the demons of Christian mythology. "Kota dero Heidenon Ttirsa:"ihe gods of the heathen are demons. In the exclamation, "Deuce take you!" it has more the sense of the Buggaboo or goblin than of the spiritual devil. But the natural transition of the ideas is witnessed by the Epinal Glossary of the seventh century, where Orcus is glossed \)yrs, heldiobal. It is a strong confirmation of the descent from Icel. tyurs that parallel forms to the foregoing are found in which the r of ])'urs has been transposed instead of assimilated to the s. Thus we have O.E. Hob-thrush, a hobgoblin. Du. Droes, Holstein Druuss, a giant, also in the same sense as E. Deuce. D: Droes! the Deuce ! as an exclamation of surprise (Bomhoff). Dat ti de Druuss hale ! Deuce take you. Schiitze. " Bi 'm Droos" Brem. Worterbuch. DINE, DINNER. O.Fr. disner, sedisner, It. desinare, disi- nare. Of unknown origin. Skeat. Derived by Diez from a supposed Lat. deccenare, to take supper. But this, as well as the explanation in my own Dictionary from Lat. desinere, to cease, as signifying the meal taken at the midday rest, is conclusively negatived by the fact that disner was originally applied to the earliest meal in the morning immediately after mass, as shown by G. Paris in "Romania," No. 29, p. 95. " Brutus de son lit s'est levez, Dinne s'un poi, puis s'est arm&" Bnit (Munich}^ v. 1694. 84 DOCK. " Et quant il est tens de lever Lors se font chaucier et vestir : Al mostier vont la messe oir, Puis repairierent maintenant, Si sf disnerent." Durmart, v. 8726. " Alons diner ysnel le pas Puis que nos heures dit avons." Miracles de N. D., vii. 468. " On the morow whan it was day They dyned, and made them yare." Morte Arthur (Furnivall), v. 217. The word, in fact, seems simply to be another form of dejeuner, and the two are used by Froissart, in speaking a few lines apart, of the same meal. " Les Gantois se des- jeunerent d'un peu de vin et de pain pour tout. Quand cestui disner fut passe"," &c. So in a " Miracle de N. D." (Anc. Th. Fr., p. 336)- "J'ay faim, si me vueil desjuner ; Delivrez vous, alez au vin ; Et vous, fille, tandis Aubin Alez querre, si disnerons" In many parts of France and in Swiss Romance diner, dinar or se dinar, dina, are still used for the early meal. The parallel forms desjeuner and disner are explained by the fact that the Lat. jejunare was corrupted in two ways, viz., first, by the elision of the second j, whence Fr. jeiiner, and desjeuner, dejeuner ; and secondly, by the aphseresis of the initial je, giving It. giunare and digiunare, Sp. ayunar, and O.Fr. juner, in numerous texts cited by Paris. " Quand remes esteit, si junout." Nicholas, by Wace, v. 1477. Hence desjuner alongside of desjeuner, and by contraction disner, as Fr. aide from Lat. adjutare, Prov. ajudar. DOCK. A basin for ships. Skeat renders O.Du. dokke, a harbour, for which he cites Kilian and Oudemans ; but Kilian at any rate does not give that meaning. His word is navale, by which he means probably a dock. Neither does doga in the passage referred to in Gregory of Tours, DOLL. 85 signify a ditch or canal, but an underground conduit. Pro- bably, however, it has nothing to do with the word dock, which is referred by Skeat after Diez to the Gr. b^x/i, a receptacle. In looking to such an origin we lose sight of the essential meaning of the word a basin, namely, into which the water can be admitted or shut off at pleasure. It is described by Bayley as a pond where the water is kept out by great floodgates till the ship is built or repaired, and then opened to let in the water to float or launch her. It was probably to these floodgates that the word was first applied. "Clausa, eyn cluse (a sluice or floodgate), tock ; idem quod docke, obturamentum piscinae." Dief. Supp. We have the authority of Adelung for the application of docke (signifying in the first instance a bunch) to the tap by which the water of a fishpond is kept in or let off.~T^ie name would naturally be transferred to any other means, as a sluice or floodgate, by which the same end was attained. DOLL. "Originally a plaything. O.Du. doll, a whip- ping-top. From the same root as Du. dot, mad." Skeat. Skeat also quotes Du. dolten, to sport, to be frolicsome, which I cannot find anywhere. Nor do I see any support for the assertion that it originally meant a plaything in general, a supposition quite opposed to the usual course of derivation. The simplest form of doll would be a bunch of rags tied up so as to give some rude imitation of a child's head and body. Accordingly, a doll is widely named on this principle. Shakespeare calls it "a babe of clouts." In Fin. nukka is a rag, and nuket or nukki a rag-doll ; pupa lusoria puellarum ex panniculis. Renvall. In all the Ger. and Scandinavian languages the word signifying a bunch of something soft is also applied to a doll. Fris. dok, a bunch, as of thread, straw, flax; also a child's doll. Outzen. G. docke, a bunch of thread, a skein, a plug, peg, stopple ; also a doll. The same meanings are united in Sw. docka and Da. dukke. In Swabia we find the dim. dokle, a doll ; dok- keln, to play with dolls ; and it appears to me in the highest 86 DOUCHE. degree probable that we have here an indication of the. true origin of the word. That the transition from dokle to doll is no violent assumption must be admitted by Skeat, who thinks it probable that E. knoll, a hillock, " may stand for knokel, a dim. of a Celtic knok" an eminence. And he relies on a similar modification when he regards the O.E. crull, curl, as " a contraction of to crookleQi make crooked." Though doll in Banffshire is used in the sense of a large lump of anything, it may very likely be that it was originally a diminutive. A violoncello should properly signify a small violin. DOUCHE. A shower-bath. Skeat follows Diez in deriv- ing it from a supposed Lat. ductiare, formed from ductus, a leading. This coining of Low Latin derivatives is a dan- gerous resource . on which Diez draws very freely, and in this instance it gives a very cold expression of the thing sig- nified, which is essentially the spouting of water or falling with violence. It. docciare, to spout, to run as water from out of a gutter, pipe, or cock ; doccia, a pipe or gutter of lead to convey water from the tops of houses, a running gutter or water-pipe ; a barber's water-spout, also the dam of a mill. Fl. The gushing of water seems the prominent phenome- non throughout. This is still more strongly marked in Sp. aguaducho, a downpour of rain, a heavy shower, where there can plainly be no connection with ductus. The Languedoc has goussa as well as doussa, to give a douche. Most pro- bably a correlative of E. douse-, from a representation of the sound of dashing water. " He was very often used to be dowssed [perfundebatur] in water lukewarme." Holland, Suetonius in R. There is no reason to suppose a connec- tion with Sw. dunsa, to fall heavily, or duna, to make a din. The analogy is rather with souse or soss, representing the sound of dashing liquid, or with gush. DREDGE, To. The name of dredge was formerly given to a mixture of different kinds of grain. " Dragge, menglyd corne, mixtio." Promptorium. " Dredge or dreg, oats and DUCK. 87 barley mingled together." Kersey, in Skeat. Hence Skeat would explain the verb to dredge, to sprinkle with flour or the like. " To dredge" he says, " is to sprinkle as in sowing dreg or mixed corn." But why should the name of mixed corn be made the basis of such a figurative expression? As the name of no one kind of grain was ever employed in English to signify the act of sowing itself, it is very unlikely that the name of any grain should have been figuratively applied to the scattering of other substances, consisting, like grain, of small particles. And if the operation of sprinkling with a powdery substance was to be signified on this principle, it is doubly unlikely that a mixture of grains should have been taken as the typical seed, instead of one of the natural species, oats or wheat or barley, which most obviously occur in connection with the thoughts of sowing. % Nor can the word be regarded as exclusively English. It must surely be a correlative of Da. drysse (Norse, drysja), to fall in small particles, or actively, to sprinkle, as sugar upon food, or sand upon a floor or upon paper. Drysse-ske, a perforated spoon for sprinkling powdered sugar. To the same family belong Sc. drush, fragments, atoms ; Da. drasle, to. fall with a rustling noise, to patter ; Swiss, droseln, troseln, to come rattling or rustling down, as fruit from a tree ; and E. drizzle, to fall in small drops. DKUGGET. Fr. droguet, a kind of stuff that's half silk, half wool. Cot. Cat. droguet, cloth of linen and wool. Esteve. " A dimin. with suffix ~et, from Fr. drogue, trash, rubbish." Skeat. It is seldom easy to explain the names of particular textures, but such a derivation as the foregoing is impossible, because no one would give a slighting name to his goods, and there is nothing in the nature of the article to justify such a reproach being cast upon it from the outside. DUCK. A pet, a darling. Skeat cites E.Friesic, dok or dokke, a doll, as the probable source of the word, suppos- ing that the word passed into English and so was used as 88 DUFFEL. a term of endearment for a child or girl. But this is pure conjecture. It does not appear that dok or dokke in the Netherlands, or dukke in Danish, were ever used as terms of endearment, or that either form was naturalised in English in .the sense of doll. Nor is it at all necessary to suppose that the term has fundamentally any other than the ordinary sense of duck, the use of which as a term of endearment wduld be exactly analogous to that of the Fr. poule, hen, in a similar sense. Mapoufe, my dear. Littre. Mon foulet, ma poulette, termes de caresse en parlant a des enfans. Gattel. My chick is a similar expression in English. DUFFEL. A shaggy kind of woollen, formerly used for cloaks. " Good duffel gray and flannel fine." Wordsworth. " Perhaps from Duffel, a town in the Netherlands." Webster. " So named from Duffel, a town not far from Antwerp." Skeat. The appeal to an eponymous origin in cases of this kind is a dangerous resource. It is rarely vouched by any valid authority, and, in the case of duffel, it is demonstrably erroneous. The word is applied in Flemish, not to any particular kind of cloth, but to any shaggy material adapted for wrapping one up warm, as flannel, frieze, plush, or even furs. " Pelswerk is duffel" "Met hoofd en hals in eenen ///^/gewonden." De Bo, West Vlaemsch. Idiot. The primary meaning of the word is a bunch of clouts, hay, straw, &c. One stops a hole with a duffel of hay, or scours a kettle with a duffel of grass and a little sand. From the notion of a bundle is formed the word duffelen, to make a bundle of, to wrap up, either for warmth or safety, as a child in its cradle, or glass and jewellery in wadding and paper : " Hij lag warm geduffeld in bed." Having thus attained the notion of wrapping up, we return to the substantival form duff el t signifying any warm material used for wrapping. ESCAPE. 89 ESCAPE. O.Fr. escaper, It. scappare. Skeat adopts Diez's derivation from Lat. ex cappa. " To escape is to excape one's-self, to slip out of one's cape, and get away." It seems to me extremely improbable that such a general notion as that of escape should have received its designa- tion from the very exceptional incident of a person in the act of escape throwing off his cloak to aid his flight, an incident that would not occur in far the most general case of a secret flight. Skeat, indeed, cites in support of his etymology the converse form, It. incappare, to invest with a cape or cope, and also to fall into a snare. But incappare in the second sense has no connection whatever with cappa, a cloak. The word is explained by Florio, " to meet with, to light, to fall, to hit, to trip, or stumble upon by chance." The radical sense is to stumble or strike against ; hence to come suddenly upon, to fall into danger or into a snare, to fall in with a person. It is used simply for stum- bling. " Lo cavallo incappb e cadde in terra : " the horse stumbled and fell to the ground. There can be no doubt that incappare in the foregoing senses is the correlative of the Fr. achopper, O.Fr. acoper, to stumble, which, like It. incappare, was used in the sense of encountering or light- ing on one by chance. Compare It. incappo, incappamento, a stumbling-block (Florio), with Fr. pierre tfachoppement, in the same sense. It must be observed that, besides scappare, the Italian has the nasalised form scampare, to escape, to save, to be saved from danger (Florio), which Diez would explain from Lat. ex campo, as if it signified running away from the field of battle. It is, however, a far more probable supposition (in accordance with the analogy of incappare and inciam- pare, to stumble) that scampare is merely a nasalised modi- fication of scappare. Thus we are led to the Du. schampen, to glance or slip aside, to escape ; abire, evadere, labi, elabi, fugere ; vulgo (says Kalian, i.e., in the Latin of the period), scappare, scampare. The radical meaning of the 90 FESTER. word is preserved in the modern Du. schampig, slippery. To escape is to slip away. " Might he have slypped to be unslayn." (Might he have escaped being slain.) Sir G aw aim, 1858. The sense of slipping is found in the Wallachian scdpd, to let slip, to escape, to fall. M'au scapatu o pasere din rnani : the bird has escaped out of my hands. Amu scdpatu unu furu : fur nobis elapsus est. Scctpd, befreien, entfliessen, entwischen, fallen aus der hand. Isser, Wallach. Deutsch. Worterb. FESTER, To. Skeat quotes from Lye "Festered, fostered, nutritus," and adds, " It is quite possible that festered is nothing but a peculiar use and form of fostered. The spelling fester iosfbsterin A.S. is not uncommon." But what possible explanation of the expression is to be found in the notion of fostering or bringing up ? A festering wound is one which turns to corrupt matter, and it mani- fests itself in the most pressing way by the offensive smell. We have then a perfectly satisfactory derivation in Walloon s'efister, se corrompre, s'empuanter ; dialect of Mx,fasen, to begin to smell disagreeably. Grandgagnage. Low G. fistrig, ill smelling, as a close chamber. Danneil. FILBERT. Skeat quotes from Cotgr. : " Philibert, the name of a certain Bourgonian saint; whereof, chaine de S. Philibert, a kind of counterfeit chain ; " and proceeds, " Perhaps the nut too was named after St. Philibert, whose name also passed into a proverb in another connection." It is, however, a strong presumption against this perfectly gratuitous suggestion, that the name of filbert 'is known only in English. There is no corresponding name either in French or German. The spelling with an initial ph seems to be only adopted by those whose theory led them to con- nect it with Phillis or Philibert. But even Peacham (in his " Emblems," 1612), who speaks of " the Philibert that loves FILIBUSTER. 91 the vale," in his note on the passage, writes it with an F : "the Filbert, so named from Philibert, a king of France." Minsheu, about the same date, and Hackluyt write it Fil- berd; Palsgrave (1530), filberde ; the Prompt. Parv., fylberde. As the name is exclusively English, and exactly expresses the distinctive character of the nut, the fact, namely, that it just fills the beard, while the beard of the common hazel leaves about half the nut exposed, it seems needless to look beyond the plain meaning of the elements of the word. FILIBUSTER. " Sp. filibuster, a buccaneer, pirate; so called from the vessel in which they sailed. Sp. filibote, flibote, a fast-sailing vessel. E. flyboat." Skeat, who here follows Webster and Boiste. But there is no mention of flyboats in the history of the buccaneers, who made their piratical descents in ships or the large canoes of the country. The true derivation is given by Jal in his " Glossaire Nautique," who says that the origin of Fr. fribustier or flibustier has been much discussed, but that it is a mere adoption of E. freebooter. Oexmelin, who was himself one of the buccaneers whose history he relates, expressly says that they gave themselves the name of flibustier from the E. word flibuster, which signifies, rover. "Voila comme le petit nombre de ces avanturiers fut divise en trois bandes, dont les uns s'appli- querent a la chasse, et prirent le nom de Boucaniers, les autres a faire des courses, et prirent le nom de Flibustiers, du mot Anglais flibuster qui signifie corsaire ; les derniers s'adonnerent au travail de la terre, et on les nomma Habi- tans." Vol. i. p. 22. The English word signifying "cor- saire," to which he alludes, can be no other than freebooter. The buccaneering captain always addresses his men as " Mes flibustiers." It was a name adopted by themselves, while such a name as flyboaters would only have been given by the victims upon whom they made their descent in boats of that kind. 92 FIT. FIT. Fyt or mete, equus (sequus), congruus. Prompt. Parv. Regarded by Skeat as of Scandinavian origin, refer- ring to Icel. fit/a, to knit together, Sw. dial, fittja, to bind together in bundles ; which last seems to be from fiitja, a handful of hemp or flax, as G. fitzen, to tie up in skeins, to contract, to knit the brows, from fitze, a skein. I can see no connection whatever between the sense of the words above quoted and the notion of fitness. There is no corre- sponding adjective in the Scandinavian dialects from which E. fit could have been borrowed, nor any English verb corresponding to the Scandinavian forms cited by Skeat from which the E. fit could have been developed in English itself. It appears to me that^/ is a shortening of the O.E. feat or fete, neat, well made, good (Halliwell), from Fr.faitf, fait, made, fashioned, viz., after a certain pattern or certain requirements. A coat is a good fit when it is made to measure. Fr. faictis, made after the likeness of another, neat, feat, comely; faidissement, neatly, featly, trimly, fitly. Cot. Affaicter, afaiter, afeitier, afeter, rdparer, s'habiller, disposer, arranger, dresser; afaitie (among other meanings), ajuste. Roquefort. " Afaited a mes mains a bataille : he has fitted my hands for battle." Livre des Rois. Reficio, to againstable or to refete (to refit). Medulla, Refecyd, or refect, refectus. Prompt. Parv. Skeat regards the O.E. fit, a portion of a poem, and fit, a sudden attack of illness, as fundamentally the same. "The original sense is a step, then a part of a poem, then a bout of fighting, struggle ; lastly, a sudden attack of pain. A.S fit, a song; also a struggle. Icel. fet, a pace, step, foot (in poetry), part of a poem." Every step in this account of the train of thought is forced and unsatisfactory. The A.S. fit is simply poem or song, a notion very unlikely to be developed out of the sense of a pace. Nor is it an easier step from a song or part of a poem to a fight or con- test, and from thence to a fit of illness. It is hard to recog- nise any connection between the successive steps of the FLUE. 93 supposed development. Moreover, Skeat gives no autho- rity for the sense of a foot in poetry, or part of a poem, which he attributes to the Icel. fet. Cleasby only gives the senses of a pace and of a foot measure, and in none of the other dictionaries (Fritzner, Jonsson, Haldorsen, Egillson) is any other meaning mentioned. The explanation otfit, a sudden seizure, a passing attack, a momentary duration, must be sought, I believe, in a totally different quarter. The G.ft! futsch ! Bav. pfutsch ! representing the sound of something whisking by, are used to signify a short rapid movement, the sudden disappearance of a thing. " Ft ! weg war er." Sanders. Swab, pfitzen, pfitschen, express the movement of something whisking by with the sound pfitz or pfitsch. Hence pfitz, a moment. Alle pfitz, every moment. Schmeller. A similar imitation gives W. wfft ! off with you ! Sw. dial./////, a very short interval of time. Rietz. FLOUT, To. "To mock. Merely a peculiar use of flute used as a verb; borrowed from O.Du. fluyten, to play the flute, also to jeer, to impose upon." Skeat. To play upon one like an instrument is a natural metaphor for imposing upon him and making him serve our purposes, but there is nothing in such a figure to suggest the idea of derision or insult expressed by flout. The Du. fluyten, however, signified not only to play the flute, and metapho- rically to lie, but to make a pop with the lips, a gesture which has always been used as a mode of expressing con- tempt and derision. O.Du. fluyte, popysmus. Kil. In the same way blurt, representing an offensive sound with the lips, was used as an interjection of derision. It. boaheggiamenti, mouthings, bhtrtings, or actions of the mouth in s^orn or in derision. Florio. FLUE. A chimney pipe. "It is a mere corruption of flute. O.Fr. fleute, a flute, a pipe ; le fleute (fun alembic, the beak or nose of a limbeck, i.e., the flue or pipe of a retort ; Cot" Skeat. This is confirmed by the fact that Skinner gives fluye as the Du. for flute. 94 FLUTE. FLUTE, FLAGEOLET. From an imaginary Low Lat. flatuare, to blow a flute. Hence L.L. flauta, flute, and an imaginary dim. flautiolus, giving rise to the O.Fr. flageol and the double dim. flageolet, a pipe or whistle. Skeat. Here are difficulties at every step. From flatuare (if there were such a form) to flauta would not be easy, and from flautiolus to flageol is a violent change. But we have no occasion for any of these hypothetical forms. The descent of flute as well as flageolet from the O.Fr. flagoler, flajoler, flageoler is perfectly clear J'oi Robin flagoler t. Raynouard. From flagoler we pass to Castrais flaguto, flute ; flaguta, to play the flute (Cousinie); Languedoc flatito, flatita, O.Fr. flahute (flahuteur, fistulator, Roquef.), flaute, fleute; the circumflex over the u in the modern flute bearing witness to the contraction. Port, fraguta, a shepherd's pipe. FOIN, To. Explained by Skeat as signifying literally " to thrust with an eelspear. O. Fr. fouine, an eelspear, ' a kind of instrument in ships, like an eelspear, to strike fish with.' Cot." To foin is to make a pass or thrust at one in fencing (Bailey) ; but who ever heard of fencing with such an implement as an eelspear or a pitchfork, which is the ordinary sense of fouine ? It foin had come from this source, there must have been a verb fouiner in French, of which there are no traces. A much more probable origin is the O.Fr. foindre (Roquef.), foigner (Cotg.), to feign, in the sense of making a feint or false thrust in fencing. The sense, in a foreign tongue, would easily pass to a thrust in general. " He an anlas J>o droj oute, And egrelyche to Charlis ran And hente hym by J>e nekke fan, And foygnede hym with J>at knyf." Sir Fenimbras, p. 175, 1. 5640. FORCE. To stuff fowls. Forcemeat, stuffing. Regarded FRITH. 95 by Skeat, as formerly by myself, as a corruption of O.E. farse, from Fr. farcir, to stuff, farce, in cookery, a compound made of several meats and herbs. Kersey, Diet, in Skeat. But the two words are clearly distinguished in the Liber Cure Cocorum, where the equivalent of Fr. farcir is con- stantly written farse, while fors is used in the sense of season- ing or spicing, i.e., strengthening the flavour with spices. " Take my Ike of almonds, Fors it with cloves or good gyngere." P. 8. " But the white (pese) with powder of pepper tho Moun \>zforsyd, with ale thereto." P. 46. Powder then take Of gynger, of kanel, that gode is, tho Enfors it wele." P. 38. Forcemeat, then, is spiced, highly seasoned meat. Florio explains It. manicaretti as "forced dishes, dainty sauces, fine quelquechoses (kickshaws)." FRITH, FIRTH. Icel. fiordr, Dan. fiord, a frith, bay, inlet. "Allied to Lat. portus, a haven, Gr. nogSpo;, a ferry. The original sense was 'ferry.'" Skeat. Like the word ferry itself, Skeat derives frith or firth from the root of E. fare, to go, and undoubtedly the consonantal skeleton as well of firth as of fare consists of the letters f-r, but there is little reason besides for connecting the two forms together. The assertion that the original meaning was a ferry is a purely etymological speculation with no historical support. A ferry is no invariable feature of a firth, and it is every way unlikely that a general name for an estuary or arm of the sea should be taken from the fact that it may be ferried over. As well might a river be called a bridge because it is crossed by a bridge. I have suggested in my Dictionary that the word may be borrowed from the Gaelic, where frith is used as a prefix to many words in the sense of small, slender, little (MacAlpine). Frith-mhuir (narrow sea), arm of the sea, loch. Macleod. The final th is now silent, but it must have been pronounced when Gaelic was first written. 96 FULL. If this is really the origin of the word, it may well be the common parent of frith and of Lat. f return, a strait or narrow sea. To FULL, FULLER Skeat distinguishes between the fulling or thickening of cloth by working it up in the wet, and full, to bleach or whiten cloth, only preserved in fuller, a bleacher or a thickener of cloth, and in the metaphorical sense of A.S. fullian, fulwian, to baptize. Fr. fouller, to full or thicken cloth in a mill ; fouler, to trample on, to press. Cot. Foule, a crowd. It. failure, to full or tuck woollen goods, also to throng or press close together ; folia, a' crowd, press, throng ; folto, thick, bushy. Florio. Lat. fullo, Fr. foulon, a fuller or thickener of cloth. Naturally the cleansing and the thickening of cloth would fall to the lot of the same tradesman, whose business was to complete the cloth for use. Indeed the two results are obtained by the same process, viz., working up the cloth in water with soap or soapy earth. It is impossible to suppose that the ele- ment /w//is radically different in the two cases. It is merely that in the one case our attention is turned to the whitening of the cloth, in the other to the thickening. The question is as to the priority of the two senses, and in this respect I think that Skeat has changed his opinion for the worse in the interval between the publication of his "Piers Plowman" and his " Etymological Dictionary." In his notes on Text B. xv. 445, he says, " I think it clear that the primary notion in the Lat. fullo was that of treading or stamping upon the cloth (cf. Fr. fouler, to tread, to stamp upon), whence both the notions of cleansing and thickening by beating took their origin ; and I think further that the A.S. fullian com- monly ignores the latter meaning, and fixes on that of cleansing only, with special reference to its metaphorical use, i.e., the cleansing of the soul in baptism.. In modern English, however, we have nearly lost sight of a reference to mere cleansing, and have rather followed the sense of Ter.foulloner" In the Dictionary on the other hand he says, FUNNEL. 97 " The original sense of Lat. fullo was probably a cleanser or bleacher; then, as clothes were commonly washed by being trampled on or beaten, the sense of stamping arose ; and the verb to full is now only used in this sense of stamp- ing, pounding, or felting wool together." The origin of the word full itself is thus left entirely unaccounted for. By far the most natural course, it appears to me, would be to seek the origin of the name in the nature of the process to which the cloth is subjected. Thus G. walken, to full, or to walk cloth (as it is still called in Scotland), is from rolling or working it in one's hands, or beneath the feet, or by some mechanical action. O. H. G. walagon, walgon, volvi, fluctuare, biwalagon, volutare ; G. walgen, to roll ; den teig auswalgen, to roll dough. Sw. walka n&got imellan handerna, to roll something between the hands ; walka ler, to temper clay, to work it up with water ; walka klade, to full cloth. The verb to full may well be radically connected with walk. The felting of cloth was probably an invention of the Sarmatian tribes, who were great shepherds, and dwelt in huts of felt, and the name may have come with the art itself from them. Now Russ. valet, is to overturn, to roll, to full cloth, to felt; Illyr. vdlgati, to roll, to full cloth. Boh. wdleti, to roll, to work up, to knead, to mangle ; wal- chowati, to full cloth. FUNNEL. An instrument for pouring in liquids into vessels, then, from the resemblance of an inverted funnel to a wide kitchen chimney narrowing upwards, a chimney pipe. The obviousness of the comparison is witnessed by the fact that tunnel also is used in the two senses. Tonnell, to fill wine with, antonnoir. Tonnell of a chymney, tuyau. Palsg". Skeat suggests a derivation from W. ffynel, an airhole ; but it is out of the question that the name of so modern a convenience as a chimney should have been borrowed from the Welsh. That explanation, moreover, would leave the ordinary sense of the word quite un- accounted for. There can be no question that the true G 98 FUSS. origin is the Lat. tnfundibuZum, from infundere, to pour in. Hence in Prov. enfounil, O.Fr. cnfonille. Roquef. In Limousin it is also enfounil. Beronie. In Breton, founiL Skeat says that it is a long way from infundibulum to E. funnel, but the difference between the two is slight indeed compared with that between Lat. phlebotomum and its undoubted representative, the E. fleam. FUSS. Derived by Skeat from A.S.fus (tor funs}, prompt, quick. O.H.G.funs, ready, willing. " Hence the true form is funs ; and this again is for funds, from A.S. fundtan, to strive after." Skeat. The assertion that A.S. fus, corre- sponding to O.H.G. funs, stands for a hypothetical funds, is supported by no historical evidence. But a prelimi- nary objection is that the proposed derivation gives no adequate account of the meaning of fuss, which signifies not eagerness to act, but importunate bustle about matters of small consequence, much ado about nothing. It seems to me that the expression may probably be taken from the fizzing of pent-up air and liquid out of a closed vessel, which keeps up a constant splutter with no visible result. The word splutter itself (written spluther), representing the sound made by drops of liquid driven out of the mouth in hasty utterance, is explained in " Leicestershire Words," E. D. S., in the sense of uproar, confusion, fuss ; and, as a verb, to make a fuss or uproar. We may compare the analogous whizz, which represents, in the first instance, the sound made by impeded motion of the air, and signifies in W. Cornwall " to bustle about fussily." Whizzing, bustling. "A dreadful old whiz, a fussy, troublesome person." E. D. S. Prov. Da. ficzsseri, occupation about trifles, may possibly be a parallel form. GAD, To. To run hither and thither without persistent aim, like cattle terrified by the hum of the gadfly. " A fierce loud buzzing breeze, their stings draw blood, And drive the cattle gadding through the wood." Dryden. GA TE. 99 Skeat does not explain what leads him to reject the old explanation from this very natural metaphor, instead of which he derives the verb from the Icel. gadda, to goad. But gatfda in Icel. is not used in the figurative sense of rambling about, and if that sense was taken from the figure of pricking or goading, why should the English speakers have resorted to an Icelandic verb for the expression while they had their own to goad at hand ? Moreover, the figure of a goaded ox, who is only driven by the goad to increased exertion in the one prescribed course in which he is working, would be extremely ill adapted to express the sense of the verb to gad, to ramble idly, as Skeat explains it, to run hither and thither. And it is certain that a closely analogous signification is de- veloped in Italian from assilo, a gadfly, a goad ; assilare, to be bitten with a horsefly, to leap and skip as a horse or an ox bitten by flies ; to be wild or raging. Florio. GAG, To. Derived by Skeat from W. cegio, to mouth, to choke (Spurrell), and that from ceg, the mouth or throat. But cegio is never used in the sense of gag, nor was gag ever used in English in the sense of choke. How, then, is it possible that the Welsh verb should have been caught up into English in a totally different sense from that in which it was used by the Welsh themselves ? The acquaintance with Welsh among English-speaking people has always been so confined that it is hardly possible under -any circumstances for a Welsh verb to have been adopted in English speech. With respect to the origin of gag there ought to be little difficulty. The syllables gag, gag, repre- sent in the most exact way the sounds made by a person endeavouring to speak with his mouth forced, open by a gag- GATE. Skeat, in the body of his work, regards^//, the carriage of a man, or his manner of walking, as a particular use of the Scotch and Northern gate, a way, and he treats the latter as identical with gate, a door or opening, observing ioo GATE. only that the use of gate in Prov. and Mid.E. in the sense of street, is Scandinavian. But in his corrections he asserts that in the modern gate two words are confounded, really distinct, although closely related, arising one from a neuter and the other from a feminine form of the radical, viz. (i.) gate, M.E. ~ y ate, yate, A.S. geat, a door or opening, cognate with Icel. gat, a hole, door, Du. gat, a hole, and formerly a door or gate Kil.; and (2.) gate (chiefly in the North), Icel. gaia, Da. gade, a way, path, street, cognate with Goth. gatwo, G. gasse, a way or street. The two forms were so distinct in M.E. as repeatedly to be found rhyming to- gether. " Thou bare the cros, and toke the gate Out at Jerusaleme's $atf." Legends of the Holy Rood, 182. And, as Skeat remarks, a Scotchman of the present day says " Gang yer gate, and steek the yett ahint ye." But although thus broadly distinguished from each other, Skeat does not withdraw his derivation of both from a common origin, which indeed is implied in his assertion that the two forms are closely related. " The root," he says, " is seen in A.S. gitan, to get, hence to arrive at, reach, so that#0& = a way to get at a thing, a passage, lane, opening. So also O.H.G. gazza, a street, is from kezzan, to get." It is not observed that in this paraphrase, intended to cover both senses of the word, and to explain the derivation from the notion of getting, the word way is introduced, the very element whose connection with the idea of getting has to be shown. As to the nature of the connection between the fundamental idea of way and that of getting, the author offers no suggestion, nor does he explain his reasons for rejecting the very natural derivation of gait or gate in the sense of mode of walking, as well as of way or street, from the notion of going. The gait of a man is the peculiarity of his going. Gate, a street or way, is what may be gone through. Sanscr. gam, to go ; gati, [going, course, gait, GA UZE. 101 way ; ga, to go ; gatu, motion, course (of life). Benfey. The difference of the initial consonant in the M.E. ^ate, yate, Sc. yett, is quite unaccounted for under Skeat's ety- mology. The natural explanation is that the words are radically distinct, nor have we, as it seems to me, far to seek for the true origin of the forms signifying outlet or opening. I would confidently trace the A.S. geat, M.E. yate, a gate, Du. and Low G. gat, an opening, hole, to the A.S. geotan, M.E. yeten, Low G. geten, to pour. The pour- ing of the inhabitants of a city through the gates is so natural a metaphor that it is constantly occurring. " London doth flour out her citizens." Shakespeare. " All his fleecy flock Before him march, and flour into the rock." Pope. " Our regiment, slowly retreating, Pours back through the citadel gates." Thackeray. 11 This girl dreamt one night that she was walking on a certain road, and encountered a flock of sheep pouring out of a gate." Letter, Jan. 1882. The derivation is still more obvious in Low G. gat, the opening, outlet, or outpouring of a river, and it cannot be doubted that this word is identical with the O.Du. gat, a gate. The Low G. gatensteen, a sink, is the stone into which the slops of the kitchen are poured away. The radical sense of outpouring belonging to gate vs. floodgate is witnessed by the O.Sw. yfo^g/wfo, a floodgate (Ihre), com- pared vfithgjuta, to pour ; the outpouring of the flood waters. From the same source are gut, the outpouring of the bodily frame, and goit, a millstream. GA.TTZE. "Of historical origin; so called because first brought from Gaza, in Palestine." Skeat. We have here an example of the way in which the guess of one etymolo- gist becomes the historical fact of another. What Ducange says is, " Gazzatum, linum vel sericum subtilissimum, vulgo gazze, forte quod Gaza, Palestinae urbe, primitus advectum 102 GIMLET. sit." Littre' overlooks the forti, and adds the fact that Gaza was the place of manufacture : " De Gaze, d'apres Ducange, ville d'Orient ou Ton fabricait cette etoffe." But the term is applied to two very different fabrics, resembling each other only in the quality of transparency, viz., cushion canvas, as it is called by Cotgrave, the open canvas used for worsted work, and thin transparent silk. Which of these was it that was imported from Gaza ? The Fr. gaze is used in general to signify a transparent veil, a covering that only half conceals. The Catalan name is g/assa, which, as the fuller form, should be truer to the original. And glass no doubt in the Germanic tongues is so named from its transparency. From the same root is Sw. gigs, what lets the light shine through, thinly scattered, open in texture. Glest sail, an open sieve ; gles tyg, thin trans- parent tissue. But a Swedish origin for a Catalan name, in our complete ignorance of facts, is a hazardous speculation. GIMLET, WIMBLE. From O.Fr. guimbelet or guibelet, gimbelet, modern gibelet, a gimlet. A parallel form is E. wimble, in the same sense. " Hence," says Skeat, " the word is formed from a Teutonic base WIMB or WIMP, which is a substitution (for greater ease of pronunciation) for the base WIND." But why should ivimb be easier of pronuncia- tion than wind? No doubt the German name of a wimble is Windel-bohrer, but we have no occasion to suppose a descent from the element wind or windel in order to explain the signification of wimble as a borer by turning round. The corresponding term in Low G. dialects was weme, wimpel (Kilian), and is still wemel in West Flanders (De Bo), which have obviously their origin in the Du. wemelen, to move to and fro (Weiland), circumagere, circumversare, et circumagi, circumversari, micare, interpositis intervallis moveri, et palpitare, frequenter et leviter movere; also, terebrare, perforare terebra. Kilian. In West Flanders it still signifies to bore. A somewhat different application of the sense of turning round gives the E. wim (identical with CORSE. 103 Kilian's weme), a vertical drum or capstan for winding out of a mine. Related forms are numerous, of which perhaps the fundamental one is seen in E. wabble, to move to and fro ; then with a nasalisation of the vowel, wamble, to roll as an uneasy stomach ; in Scotland, to writhe or wriggle, to move in an undulating way; N.E. whemmle, Sc. whummil, whommil, to turn upside down, also (as it seems), to turn round. In an old song, quoted, I think, by Hogg, occurs the passage (speaking of a cat) " Wi' her tail in her teeth she whommeled'it roun'." Bav. wammeln, wimmeln, wummeln, wimmen, to be in mul- titudinous movement, to swarm. GORSE. GORST. The prickly leafless green shrub which is nearly as characteristic a growth of open uncultivated ground as the plant heath itself. Hence in my Dictionary I derived the name from the W. gores, gorest, waste, open. But Skeat, without adverting to the analogies by which I supported my derivation, says : " Remoter origin unknown. By some compared with O.Du.gors, grass ; Wedgwood refers it to W. gores, gorest, waste, open. But gorse is neither grass nor an open space. I should rather suppose gorst = gro-st ; and refer it to A.S. growan, to grow, with the sense of growth." What I said was that it was called by this Welsh name, signifying waste or open, because it was the peculiar growth of waste places; and we have not far to seek in Skeat's own Dictionary to find an instance of the closest analogy to justify my derivation. He explains the primary meaning of heath as " wild open country," while the plant heath is said to be " so named from its growing upon heaths." But further, I showed that the plant was named on the same principle in Brittany, where lannou (pi.) signifies uncultivated ground; lann, the plant gorse, the fundamental meaning of the W. llan being probably an open space. The French in Brittany call the plant lande, and the same name is given to the uncultivated wastes of 104 . GRAIL. Western France. In the Limousin patois' gorsso is a place covered with stones and brambles. GRAIL. The holy dish at the Last Supper. " The word would appear to have been corrupted in various ways from Low Lat. cratella, a dimin. of crater, a bowl." Skeat. O.Fr. grasal, graal, great; a bowl, great dish. In the South of France grazal is still a bowl of earthen or stone ware, " bassin de terre degres >; (Cousinie) ; grazo, the stone border of a well ; Fr. pot de gres, an earthen pot; gres, sandstone. Roquefort's reason for supposing that greal cannot have signified an earthen bowl is very weak. He finds a passage in the. Assises de Jerusalem which says that all the "escuelles et les greaus" served at the first course of the coronation dinner shall be the fee of the seneschal, and he says that it cannot be supposed that these were o such a material as common pottery or stone ware. But the name might remain long after the dishes were made of more costly material. The tureen or terrine in which soup is served is undoubtedly from terre, earth, but the name is equally applied when the vessel is of silver. GRIG. A grig is a cricket or grasshopper. " High-elbowed grigs, that leap in summer grass." Tennyson. " The final g? says Skeat, " must be due to an older k, and the word is easily deducible from crick, the word- of which cricket is the diminutive." He proceeds to derive it from Sw. dial, krdk, krik, a little creature, especially a crawling creature, and that from krdka, to creep. Rietz. But neither a grasshopper nor a cricket is characteristically a crawling creature, and under Cricket itself Skeat derives the name with much greater probability from the shrill voice of the insect. O.Fr. criquer, to creak, Battle. Cotgr. It is, however, very doubtful whether there is any real connection between grig and cricket. I know no instance of a similar change from the sound of k to g in English, though it is common enough in French. In my Dictionary I had sup- GUN. 105 posed that grig might be from A.S. graghama, the grey- coated, in a passage preserved by Hickes . " Fugelas singeth, gylleth graghama" \ where grceghama is rendered cicada by Hickes and his fol- lowers. " The cricket, or grasshopper, chirps." But Grein, with greater probability, would translate it, " the wolf yells." The word is only preserved in ordinary speech in the expression " as merry as a grig" which Skeat supposes (very unnecessarily) to be a corruption of an older " as merry as a Greek." This is a mere fancy of Nares, but neither he nor Skeat produces any example of the expression in the latter form, which Nares would certainly have done, in order to support his own etymology, if he had been able. On the ether hand, the cricket, from its constant, lively cry, has always been taken by the writers of fable as the type of a careless, joyous life, and "as merry as a cricket "is as familiar an expression as " as merry as a grig." GUN. Skeat cites W. gwn, a bowl, a gun; Irish and Gael, gunna, a gun. " Perhaps the signification ' bowl ' of W. gwn points to the original sense, viz., that of the cup wherein the missile was placed." It must be observed, however, that the word gun is purely English, and is un- known in any Continental tongue. It must have sprung up in the English language itself, and it is out of the question that the name of an implement of siege should have been taken from people in the condition in which the Welsh, and still more the Gaels, have always been during the English period. W. gwn and Gael, gunna are doubtless adoptions only of E. gun. In seeking for the origin of the word, a preliminary difficulty must be cleared away in the error (as I believe) into which Skeat and others have fallen of sup- posing that the name " was first applied to a catapult or machine for throwing stones," &c. No instance is given in which a machine of that kind is called a gun, or in which the word is mentioned antecedent to the use of artillery in io6 GUN. England. In the siege sustained by King Aragus in " Sir Tryamore " it is said that he " ordeyned hym full well With gonnes, and grete stones round Were throwen downe to the grounde. " But this mention of gunnes in connection with the throwing of great stones is no argument that the term was applied to a machine of the balista or catapult kind, because in Tre- visa's version of " Vegecius," completed in 1408, allusion is made to " grete gonnes that shete now a daies stones of so grete peyse that no walle may withstande them ; as hath be well shewede bothe in the North cuntre, and eke in the werres of Wales." Prompt. Parv. in notes. Here it is certain that guns in the modern sense are intended, which Barbour mentions as having first been used by Edward III. in his expedition against the Scots in 1327. The ground of Skeat's assertion as to the original meaning of gun is in all probability the fact that it is Latinised in the diction- aries by the names of the old stone-throwing machines. " Petraria, mangonale, murusculum." Prompt Parv. " Fundibulum, murusculum." Cath. Ang. But these words were used, not that they signified exactly the same thing as a gun, which, being a new invention, could not have any proper Latin designation, but because they signified machines which were used for the same purpose as guns, and came nearest to them in their mode of operation. It is certain that at the time these dictionaries were written, towards the end of the fifteenth century, and long previous, the word gun had no other meaning than that of a firearm. The compilers of the dictionaries must have understood it in that sense when they Latinised' it by the names of the old siege machines. They only meant to explain that a gun or cannon was analogous in its use and effects to the balistas and catapults of ancient warfare, but not at all to assert that any of these engines, before the invention of gun- powder, was known by the name of gun. In the same way HARICOT. 107 the author of the " Biglotton," a Du. and Lat. Diet, of 1654, renders the word carabijn, " equestris catapulta," but no one would attribute to him on that account the supposition that carabine was an ancient synonym of the catapult. A strong presumption may indeed be drawn from a citation in Way's valuable note on the subject, that the name of gun was first heard in the early part of the fourteenth century. He quotes a passage from the " Practica " of John Arderne, a surgeon of the time of Edward III., in which, after giving a receipt for making gunpowder, he proceeds to say : " Cest poudre vault a getter pelottes de fer, ou de plom, ou d'areyne, oue un instrument qe 1'em appelle gonne;" this powder is used to throw balls of iron, lead, or brass with an instrument that is called gun. There is no appearance of the name being known to him as having been transferred from some previous object. The name itself seems to have been unknown to Barbour, who wrote about 1375, and calls cannon by the expressive name of " cracks of war," or "gins (engines) for cracks." Having disposed of the supposition that gun originally signified a catapult, the ground is left open for the deriva- tion I suggested in my Dictionary from the Fr. guigner, to wink or aim with one eye, to level at a thing winking. Cotgr. It must be observed that aiming by looking along the tube would distinguish the management of cannon from the working of any kind of catapult. Hence the engineer who directed the fire would in French be designated guig- neur, " an aimer with one eye, as a gunner taking his level." Cotgr. Passing into English in the shape of gunner, which would have no intrinsic meaning to an English ear, the name would naturally seem to be taken from the newly imported engine under the management of the gunner, which would accordingly be dubbed a gun. The ordi- nances of the household of Edward III., which commence in 1344, mention "Ingyners Ivii., Artellers vi., Gonners vi." HAEICOT. i. A mode of dressing mutton ; 2. the 108 HARRIDAN. kidney bean. " We may certainly conclude that the bean was so named from its use in the dish called haricot." Skeat. It is to be observed, however, that in none of the numerous descriptions of the dish called haricot is there any mention of the employment of beans in the composition of it. It is described by Cotgrave as made of small pieces of mutton boiled then fried ; and a receipt of the fourteenth century, cited by Littre", begins : " Hericot de mouton : despeciez le par petites pieces," &c. Now harigoter in Old French signified to cut to pieces, a word of which Genin (Recreations, i. p. 46) gives examples : " Car si les ont harigotes . " they have so hacked the shields. Haricoter in the dialect of Bayonne signifies to haggle in bargaining, a metaphorical sense implying the notion of hacking as a primitive. Grandgagnage in v. Halcoter. Haricot, then, in its original meaning, is precisely synonymous with hashed mutton, and the notion of cutting up the meat into small pieces has equally passed out of view in both cases. The reason why the same name is given to French beans is now apparent. They are sliced up in pieces when served at table, and are therefore called in Du. snijboonen, from snij- den y to cut. HARRIDAN. Skeat gives a sense to the word which it certainly does not bear in ordinary parlance : " A worn-out wanton woman." It is no imputation to a woman's char- acter to call her a harridan. We imply only that, being old, she does not suit her dress and conduct to her age. Skeat derives it from Fr. haridelle, " a poor tit, a lean, ill-favoured jade" (Cotg.), applied in contempt to a woman. " On le dit d'une personne faible et maigre." Trevoux. And no doubt, as far as the sense is concerned, the derivation might be correct, although it does not seem that old age is part of the import of the term. But haridelle in French could hardly pass into harridan in English. There is, however, a word in Walloon which agrees very closely both in sound and signification. It is a characteristic of that dialect that HATCH. 109 an initial sch of the Teutonic languages becomes simply h in Walloon. Thus the Du. schaerde, scheure, a breach or notch, becomes hard (d silent, Grandg.), har, haur, breach, nick, gap (Remacle). Hence horde, haurde, gap-toothed. Veie hardeie, vieille brechedent, old gap-toothed woman ; hardedain, brechedent, corresponding exactly to Du. schaerd- tandtg, serrse modo dentatus. Kil. To call a woman old broken-tooth implies that she forgets her age, made so apparent to others by her infirmities. HATCH, To. " To hatch birds is to produce them under a hatch or coop. Thus from Sw. hack, a coop, is formed the verb hdcka, to hatch, to breed. In German we have hecken, to hatch, from the subs, hecke, a breeding cage." It seems to me out of the question that so general a notion as that of hatching eggs should be expressed by reference to the very exceptional case of domestic fowls set to breed in a coop. It seems more probable that the primary sense of G. hecke is " the hatching or producing of young ones, but only of birds," and that it is only in a secondary sense that it is applied to " the place where small birds are kept and nourished for propagation ; a great cage." Kuttner. The true sense of the verb, viz., the liberation of the chick from the egg, is preserved only in English, a sense which might easily be extended to the more general notion of breeding, but could hardly be derived from it. The young bird is supposed to peck its way out of the shell, and, in fact, the point of its beak is just opposite the point where the egg begins to chip at the moment of hatching. " The egg is chipped, the bird is flown." The corresponding term in Dutch is kippen, translated by Kilian, " cudere, ferire, inserare ; ova percudere rostello ; excludere vel excudere ova, pullos edere." Here we see the notion of breeding developed from that of chipping the shell. Bomhoff ex- plains the same verb, "de schaal van eenj ei doorpicken (to peck through the shell of an egg) ; to hatch." Thus we see that a perfectly natural explanation of G. hecken and E. i io HAUNT. hatch may be found in G. hacken, to hack ; hacken, hecken, to peck or strike with the bill. On the same principle, the notion of hatching is expressed in Polish. Kluc, to pick or peck with the bill ; kluc sif, to chip the egg as young birds do when they are hatched ; ivy kluc, to peck outj wykluc sic., to be hatched. HAUNT, To. Immediately from Fr. hanter, to frequent. Among several proposed derivations, Skeat mentions Bret. hent, a path, and a supposed Low Lat. ambitare, from ambitus, a going about, of which he thinks the last the most probable. But he hardly gives the derivation from ~Bret.' bent fair play, when he omits all mention of the derivative verb henti, of exactly the same significance as the Fr. hanter. The meaning of hent, too, is more general than one would gather from his mention of it. It signifies road or way, not merely path. If the verbs hanter and henti stood alone, there would be little doubt that the Breton was borrowed from the French form, but that sup- position is negatived by the obvious connection between henti and hent, and the natural conclusion is that the French is an adoption of the Breton verb identical with it in sound and meaning. An analogous case may be seen in Fr. dorloter, to pet, to fondle, compared with Bret. dorlota, to caress, to fondle, the Celtic blood of which is witnessed by the W. dorlawd, a fondling, dorlota, to fondle (Spurrell), which cannot have been borrowed from the French. HAWSE, HAWSE-HOLE ; HAWSER, HALSER. The hawse or hawse-hole of a ship is the round hole in front of the bows through which the cable runs when the anchor is weighed or let go. A halser or hawser is a tow-rope. To halse, to raise or spread the sails. " He wayed up his ancors and halsed up his sayles." Grafton, Chron. All these forms are referred by Skeat to " Icel. hdls, hals, the neck ; also (as a sea term) part of the bow of a ship or boat ; also the -front sheet of a sail, the tack of a sail, the HEM. in end of a rope ; whence the verb hdlsa, to clew up a sail. Thus the original sense is neck ; then front of the bow of a ship; then a hole in the front of the bow; whence halser=a. rope passing through such a hole; also halse, to clew up a sail, from the Icel. use of the derived verb [/td/sa]." The only part of this explanation that can be admitted is the derivation of the hawse or hawse-hole of a ship, a term which, in my Dictionary, I erroneously explained as the hole through which the anchor was halsed or raised. Skeat seems to misapprehend the meaning of the Icel. hdlsa and the phrase to clew up the sails by which it is rendered in Cleasby. It differs widely from what is signified by halse in the passage from Grafton, where the verb plainly corresponds to the It. alzare le ve'le, to hoist sail. The Icel. hdlsa, on the contrary, is to take in a reef, corripere vela (Haldorsen), to lessen sail (Fritzner). Nor can a hawser be so named as a rope which passes through the hawse of a ship, because it never does so, the sole purpose of the hawse being for the passage of the anchor cable. There is no cognate word answering to hawser in the German or Scandinavian languages, and there can be little doubt that it is from It. alzare, Fr. haulser, hausser, to raise, to draw upwards, the use of which, in the sense of towing a vessel, may be gathered from It. alzdna, a halse, a rope or cable for to halse or draw barges or ships withal against the stream ; also a crane or other engine to hoist up great weights or packs, as they use in ships ; alzaniere, a halsier, or he that haleth a barge or ship by a rope ; also a halse or 'halsier in a ship (Florio) ; and Fr. haulseree, the drawing or haling of barges up a river by force of men ashcre. Cotgrave. It may be noted that the hawse-hole of a ship is perfectly different from the halsgat of the Germans and Danes, which is the hole by which the tack of the mainsail (G. and Da. hals) passes into the ship on to the deck. HEM. Connected by Skeat with Fris. hamel, hem, 112 HEMLOCK. border, boundary (Outzen), as well as with G. himmtl, heaven, canopy, originally a vault; with G. hamme, a fence, hedge, and with Lat. camera, a vault, chamber ; all from the root KAM, to bend. "Thus the original sense is a bend or curved border, edge." From the noun he derives the verb to hem in, as the G. hemmen, to stop, check, hem, from hamme, a fence, hedge. There is small ground to be found in the comparison of the forms cited by Skeat, for his assertion that the original meaning of hem is something curved, and the derivation is highly improbable in itself. There is nothing characteristic of a hem in the notion of curvature ; and what satisfaction can there be in an etymology which accounts for the word indifferently as a designation of the heavens or of the hem of a garment ? Skeat has probably started on a wrong scent by treating the verb to hem in as a derivative from the noun instead of the converse. The fundamental purpose of a hem is to protect the substance of a texture, to confine the threads of which it is composed and prevent them from ravelling out. The essential character of a hem then may be signified by the G. hemmen, to hinder or stop the motion of a body, to stop the flow of water, to drag a wheel, to hinder a pro- ceeding, &c. To hem one in is not merely to surround him, but to prevent his action in any direction. Du. hemmen, sistere, retinere. Biglotton. Nor have we to look for the ulterior origin of the word to any hypothetical root of arbitrary signification. The notion of restraining or stopping a person may be naturally expressed by the exclamation hem ! by which we call to stop a person who is moving away from us. The verb hemmen or hammen is explained by Weiland, to cry hem ! to make one turn back by crying hem ! to him, to recall. HEMLOCK. Connected by Stratman with a supposed M.E. hem, malign, of doubtful authority. "Still it pro- bably implies something bad ; and may be related to G. HIGGLE. 113 hammen, to maim." Skeat. But the. O.K. spelling humloke (Wright's Vocab., i. 226), homelok (ibid., i. 191), may point to a more probable origin in Sw. hundloka (dog-leek), wild chervil, a closely related plant. In a similar way another plant of the same family (Heracleum sphondyliuni) is called in Sw. biorn-loka, bear-lee'k, while in English it is known as cow-parsley. The names of plants were very loosely given in early times, and the hemlock and wild chervil are quite like enough to each other to have been confounded under one name. HIE, To. A.S. higian, to endeavour, to make exertion, to hasten; M.E. hiyn, hien. Connected by Skeat with Gr. Hittv, to go, move ; Lat. ciere, to summon, cause to go ; citus, quick. But we have a complete explanation of the word much nearer home. We cannot express the notion of hasting or striving after in a more lively way than by the figure of panting, the outward symptom of strong exertion. Now in Prov. Da. at hige or hie is to pant for breath ; higen, desirous, earnestly seeking after. Du. hijgen, to pant or gasp, to long for, to strive after. Weiland. Hence O. Du. hije, Fr. hie, a paviour's beetle, from the violent effort with which it is used. HIGGLE. " To chaffer, bargain. A weakened form of haggle. Der. higgler." Skeat. This would be 9. natural view of the relation between the two words if we looked no farther. But a consideration of the German correlatives shows that the connection of higler with the notion of hag- gling is deceptive. Higler cannot be separated from Bav. hugkler, hugkner, hugker, Swab, hnkler, huker, G. hoke, hoker, a petty dealer, especially in provisions, a huckster ; words which seem to be derived from the notion of carry- ing on the back, as admitted by Skeat under Huckster. Comp. Swabian hocklen, to carry on the shoulders. To higgle, then, is to act as a higgler, just as the Bav. hugkeln, hugknen, or the G. /token, ho kern, to huckster or deal in small quantities, are from the nouns respectively, and not vice H H4 ' HINT. versa. So to huck or haggle in bargaining, from huckster. I hucke, as one doth that would bye a thynge gode cheape, je harcele. Palsgr. HINT. "Properly a thing taken. A.S. hentan,to seize, to hunt after." Skeat. This appears to me a very inade- quate origin. The essence of a hint is the obscurity of the intimation, not the fact of its being taken. It could not be better expressed than by the figure of whispering or mutter- ing. Icel. ympta, ymta, Da. ymte, to whisper, talk softly, secretly of. " Og intet ord, som ymtede hans Forsset : " and not a word that gave a hint of his purpose. Icel. yniptr, yrntr, a rumour ; ymr, a dull sound. For the change of sound from mt to nt comp. Lat. ami/a, E. aunt, or E. emmet, ant. HOD. " Corrupted from hot, probably by confusion with hod, a box (lit. a hold, receptacle) Whitby Glossary ; from Fr. hotte, ' a scuttle, dorser, basket to carry on the back.' Cot." Skeat. But what evidence is there of the form hot^ of which hod is supposed to be a corruption ? And why should not the bricklayer's hod, which is a receptacle for bricks or mortar, be the very form hod with which, as Skeat supposes, the genuine hot has been confused? Certainly neither a bricklayer's hod nor a coal-hod have any resem- blance to. the implement signified by the Fr. hotte or Swiss hutte, which is a basket or tub adapted for carrying on the back, with straps to pass the arms through. In the Whitby dialect hold is pronounced hod. "They'll hod their hod:" will keep what they have got. Hod, a receptacle for various purposes. A powder-hod, a powder-flask. So a coal-hod is " a utensil for holding coals." Webster. A bricklayer's hod, what holds the bricks or mortar carried up the scaffolding. It was natural that a term connected with the use of coals should have its origin in the North. HORNET. " So called from its antennae or large horns." Skeat. The antennae, however, of the hornet are not a striking part of its appearance, and are not likely to have HUDDLE. 115 been considered as the horns of an animal endowed with so formidable a sting. The Du. hornsd or horsel (Kilian) was not only applied to the hornet, but to the gadfly, whose hum is so much dreaded by cattle. The formation of the word seems to be shown by W. chwyrnu, to hum or snore, chwyrnores, a hornet ; Da. hurre, to hum or buzz ; Swiss hurrli, a humming-top. HUDDLE. "To throw together confusedly, to crowd together. It simply meant originally to throng or crowd." Skeat. The meaning of huddle is simply heap. To huddle on one's clothes is to heap them upon one; to huddle together, to come together in a heap. To hudle up together, to accumulate or heap together. Minsheu. " Glance an eye of pity on his losses, That have of late so huddled on his back, Enough to press a royal merchant down. " (Have so heaped upon him.) Merchant of Venice. " Our adversary huddling several suppositions together." Locke in Todd. To perform in a hasty way is a figurative use of the term as if throwing things down in a heap, instead of laying them out in an orderly way. Skeat is led on a wrong scent by regarding M.E. hoderen as an equivalent form, quoting from Langtoft, " For scatred are the Scottis, and hodred in j>er hottes," which he explains as equivalent to " huddled in their huts." Whatever be the meaning of the word, it is not at all likely that it signifies huddled together, as that would be in direct opposition to the scattering of the first part of the line. " But again," he proceeds, " this M.E. hoderen also had the sense of 'cover,' as in ' hodur and happe ' = cover and wrap up ; and the true notion of huddle or h'udder was to crowd together for protection in a place of shelter, a notion still preserved when we talk of cattle being huddled together in rain. Briefly, hoderen is the frequentative of M.E. huden> to hide. Ii6 HUGE. Thus to huddle is to hide closely, to crowd together for pro- tection, to crowd into a place of shelter." This is a most unsatisfactory explanation, as there is nothing in the notion of a huddle that has anything to do with either hiding or shelter. Huddle is simply heap, corresponding to the W. Flanders huttel, a bunch or tuft. " Dat gras schiet hier en daar op in huttels : " the grass shoots up here and there in tufts. " In een huttelken vallen : " to fall in a heap, to faint away. In the same dialect we have the simple hut, a bunch, tuft of leaves, of flowers, and fig. something in the sense of E. huddle : " Het is een hut : " it is a mess, it is a bad job. Thus we are brought to the Shropshire hud, to gather into heaps ; Somerset, huddel, a heap. Halliwell. The appropriateness of the figure of a bunch or heap as the basis of the expression is shown by the use of hunch in the same sense. In a late novel it is said of a person found dead in the snow, " Huddled against the wall of the house nearest the turn to the ferry they found her." And a page or two on: "She were hunched up agen the wall of the house as stands by the turn to the river." Aunt Hepsy's Foundling, iii. 258. HUGE. "The etymology is much disguised by the loss of an initial a, mistaken for the English indefinite article. The right word is ahuge, from O.Fr. ahuge, huge, vast. Of unknown origin, but not improbably from the old form of mod. G. erhdhen, to exalt, heighten, increase, from the adj. hoch, cognate with E. high." Skeat. The assertion that an initial a has been lost in E. huge is in nowise warranted by the fact that only ahuge is historical in French. It is as easy to believe that an unrecorded huge was lost in French, as an unrecorded ahuge in English. And from the simple huge the O.Fr. ahuge may have been deve- loped, analogous to O.Fr. aseur or asseur(of which Godefroi has many examples), secure, safe, from the synonymous O.Fr. seur, Lat. securus. The descent of an adjectival form like ahuge from O.H.G. arhohjan or any earlier form of the HUGE. 117 verb appears to me extremely improbable, but the stretch from the one form to the other is too wide to admit of discussion. On the other hand, the pedigree from the interjection of shuddering ugh ! and the connection with Scandinavian forms like Icel. ugga, to dread, and the corresponding E. ug, ugge, to feel a repugnance to, to feel an abhorrence of (Halliwell), remains unimpugned. There is a natural ten- dency in excessive size to impress us with awe and terror. "The knight himself even trembled at his fall, So huge and horrible a mass it seemed." F. Q. The natural truth of the transition is witnessed by the cant use of terms like awful, dreadful, terrible, or G. entsetzlich, to express excess of any quality. The Bohe- mian hruza, shudder, horror, is also used for excessive quantity, prodigious mass, as of people or of money. The Ger. interjection of shuddering, uh ! corresponding to E. ugh! is itself used in the same sense. 1st er reich? eh? Reich ? uh ! Rich ? frightfully rich ! Sanders. The connection with the idea of horror and disgust is conspicuous also in the French ahuge: " Trop fut ahoeges (of a giant), trop fu grans, Trop lais (laid), trop gros et trop pesans." Wace, Brut, in Godefroi. " Out une biere merveillose E laide e ahoge e hisdose. " Benoit, Chron. des D. de Norm. ibid. It will be observed that the quotations oiahuge or-ahugue are almost all from Norman sources, Benoit and Wace, where the influence of Scandinavian speech might naturally be expected. The Swedish dialects have the interjections ugg ! ugg-dd, / or hugg-dd ! expressing aversion, abhorrence, astonishment; and the adj. ugg, horrible, dreadful, monstrous. Rietz. As the sound both of the hard and soft g is found in the Fr. forms ahugue and ahuge or a/wege, so in the E. Ii8 HUGUENOT. verb we have not only to ugg, but also to houge, to' feel horror at, to be in the condition which vents itself in the exclamation ugh ! Jamieson, in his Scot. Diet., under To Ug, quotes the account given by Hardyng of the Abbess of Coldingham, who, to preserve herself from the lust of the Danes, cut off her nose and upper lip, and " Counselled al her systers to do the same, To make their foes to houge so with the sight. And so they did, afore th' enemies came, Echeon their nose and ouer lippe ful right Cut of anone, which was an hougly sight." The Catholicon has to uge or ugg, synonymous with huge, hugge, abominari, rigescere, execrari, fastidire, hor- rescere (to shudder), abhorrere. HUGUENOT. Skeat considers the conjecture that the Reformers were so called after some person of the same name, who was at some time conspicuous as a Reformer, to be perfectly verified by finding that Huguenot was in early use as a Christian name. Surely this is but weak confir- mation of the conjecture, in the entire absence of any notice of any distinguished Reformer of the name in question. If there had been a leader of the name of Hugues or Huguenot of sufficient distinction to give his name to the party, he never could have lain hid at a period of such glaring publicity. Skeat then selects for con- demnation the derivation which appears to me to be all but certain, viz., that from G. eidgenossen, confederates, which was undoubtedly a designation of the Reformers. " Scheler," he says, " enumerates fifteen false etymologies of this word ; the favourite one (from G. eidgenossen) being one of the worst, as it involves incredible phonetic changes." It is a bold thing to say what phonetic changes are or are not possible when a name without significance to the popular ear gains extensive currency. Perhaps Skeat would not have spoken so positively if he had adverted to the Swiss Romance forms Eingenof, Higueno HUSSIF. 119 (Bridel in v. tsassi}, either of which might well be corrup- tions of eidgenossen. There can be little doubt that this last is the word at which Conde is aiming when he says that the Reformed Churches had usurped the name of Aignos. Me'moires de Conde in Littre. Nor can we sup- pose that the forms eingenot, aignos, higueno, huguenot, are independent of each other. HULL. The hull or body of a ship is explained by Skeat as the shell of the ship, being a special application of hull, the husk or outer shell of grain or corn. " Hull of a beane or pese, escosse. Hull or barcke of a tree, escorce." Palsgrave. And no doubt the name might have arisen in this way, though the comparison to a pea-shell does not seem a very likely figure to have given a desig- nation to the body of a ship. But so many of our nautical terms are taken from the Du. and Low G., that it is far more probable that the hull of a ship is from the G. holl, cavity, hollow, which, according to Roding and Sanders, is occasionally used in the sense of hull, the body of the ship without the masts. HUSKY. " Not connected with husk, but confused with it. A corruption vihusiy or hausty, i.e., inclined to cough." Skeat. This is a purely gratuitous supposition. No such word as husty is known, and husky is a very natural metaphor to express the quality of voice signified that is to say, sound- ing as if the throat were stuffed with husks or chaff, instead of affording a clear passage to the voice. HUSSIF. The roll of small necessaries for sewing (needle and thread, scissors, &c.) that a good huswife requires to have always at hand. It is extraordinary that Skeat should have convinced himself that this obvious origin of the term hussif is a popular error. It is certain, on the contrary, he says, that the word comes from IceL husi, a case ; skceris-husi, a scissor case. " That the word has long been confused with hussy, huswife or housewife, and hence has obtained its final /, is certain." Skeat. 120 JAM. But a hussif at the present day is never called hussy, nor would the Icel. hi'isi (lioosy) readily pass into that form ; but even if it did, there would have been no tendency to confound it 'with a word of such totally different significa- tion as housewife. It is most unlikely a priori (in the entire absence of any evidence) that the name of a homely con- trivance of this kind should have been brought to our shores together with the object itself by the rude pirates of the North. On the other hand, the designation of the article as the vade mecum of a good huswife is understood by every one, and the explanation of the word on this principle should be put beyond doubt by the analogy of the Fr. menagere, the original meaning of which exactly corresponds to that of E. housewife, while in some parts of France the name of -menagere is also given to a hussif. Mesnagiere, a housewife or housewifely woman. Cotgr. JAM, To. "The same word," says Skeat, "as cham or champ. ' Cham, to chew or champ.' Palsgrave. Champ (with excrescent/), to tread heavily, Warwickshire; to bite or chew, Suffolk. Halliwell. Whence also ' Champ, hard, firm, Sussex'; i.e., chamme'd or jammed down, as if by being trodden on." The doctrine, then, of Skeat is, that jam is for cham, to chew, and also (in the shape of champ} to tread heavily, although he gives no authority for cham in the latter sense, nor does he explain how the notion of treading can be developed out of that of chewing. More- over, the step from chammed to champ is not a very easy one. On the other hand, the ordinary derivation of jam from the figure of a door fixed between its jambs has much probability on the face of it. The fundamental meaning of jam is to thrust in between unyielding obstacles on either side. " In a stagecoach with lumber cramm'd, Between two bulky bodies jamm'd" Lloyd in Richardson. JAUNT. 121 The meaning might easily be extended to such a case as that of a crowd jammed together by its own numbers, where each individual would be jammed between his imme- diate neighbours. The soil of the spot where cattle are foddered might even be said to be jammed or compacted by treading, without supposing that jam was ever speci- fically used in the sense of " tread." JAUNT, JAUNCE. "It is clear from the examples in Shakespear that jaunt and jaunce are equivalent terms. This jaunce is from O.Fr. jancer, of which Cotgrave says: Jancer un cheval, to stirre a horse in the stable till he be swart withal, or as onx jaunt > an old word. The proper sense of jaunt is to play tricks, play the fool, hence to talk wildly, and hence to ramble, rove. Of Skand. origin. Sw. dial, ganta, to play the fool, to sport, romp, jest ; gant, a fool, buffon." Skeat. The sole support of the assertion that the proper sense of jaunt is to play tricks, play the fool, is Cotgrave's explanation of the Fr. jancer, the exact meaning of which is not very clear, but' it evidently refers to some sort of rough treatment for the purpose of breaking down the spirit of a horse, and would not be understood in the sense of playing tricks except under the foregone conclu- sion that the word was derived from the Sw. ganta. Skeat himself understands "spurgalled and tired by jauncing Bolingbroke " in the sense of hard-riding Bolingbroke, a sense which cannot possibly be deduced from the much more complex notion of playing tricks. To jounce, to bounce, thump, and jolt, as rough-riders are wont to do. Forby. The sense of talking wildly or rambling in talk is a wholly unsupported interpolation, forced in in order to bring us to the sense of rambling in space or roving about, which after all is not a very accurate or an adequate analysis of the modern notion of a jaunt. The simple meaning of the word in the earliest instances we find is jog or jolt, rough movement. "Then afterwards he was set upon an unbroken coult with his face to the 122 KEEP. horse tayle, and so caused to ride a gallop, and jaunted till he was breathless." Bale in Richardson. So also when the Nurse in "Romeo and Juliet" says " I am weary, give me leave awhile : Fie, how my bones ache ! what a jaunt have I had ! " From the sense of jolting the expression is extended, as in the case of Sw. skaka or Fr. cahoter, to shake or jolt, to an outing on horseback or in a carriage for the purpose of exercise or pleasure. Sw. Att fara ut att skaka p, sig, Fr. aller se faire cahoter un peu, to take a jog, to go out for horse or carriage exercise. Nordforss. Littleton has, To jaunt, or go up and down, discurso, vago-r. KEEP, To. Skeat, with Grein, identifies A.S. cepan, the parent of E. keep, with ceapan, cypan, the parent of cheapen, tracing keep to " A.S. cepan (weak verb), another form of cypan, orig. to traffic, sell, hence also to seek after, store up, retain, keep. In fact, keep is a mere doublet of cheapen." It is impossible to suppose that men could ever have been driven to express the much simpler notion of seeking after by a word signifying traffic, because those who traffic are led to seek after the goods in which they deal. We might as well suppose a word signifying bake to be transferred to the sense of tilling, because tilling the ground is a necessary preliminary to baking bread. Words signifying keep, guard, hold, are commonly founded on the sense of looking. Thus Fr. garder, to keep, is identical with It. guardare, to look. The primary sense of Lat. servare, to keep, is also to look. Tuus servus servet Veneri ne faciat an Cupidini : let your slave look or observe. To look itself in O.E. was frequently used in the sense of take care of, keep. The compound behold seems to preserve the original sense of hold, in which, however, the primitive sense of looking may still be discerned. To hold it a sin, is to look on it, to regard it as a sin. In accordance with these numerous analogies, we find the fundamental sense of KILL. 123 E. keep in the Frisian kijpen, which, according to Epkema, signifies to look. To take keep is to take notice, to observe. " Ac, as he out of Londen wente in a tyde, . A gret erl hym kepta ther in a wode syde With an hundred knygtes." Rob. Glouc., p. 88. Lay in wait for him, looked out for him. " Do mak thre hundreth schippes upon the sees koste To kepe tham of Norweie, and the Danes ost." Rob. Brunne, p. 41. To watch, guard against. Compare the use of look by Rob. Glouc., p. 488 : " The Bissop of Ely that this lond adde to loke : " had to keep or look after. " Now look thee our Lord : " now keep thee our Lord. P. Plowman. KILL, To. Commonly considered as a corruption of O.E. quell, A.S. cwellan, to put to death. The two, how- ever, are clearly distinguished in the Promptorium. "Quellyn or querkyn, Suffoco. Kyllyn or slone [to slay], Occido, interficio. Kyllyn, as bocheris don bestys, Macto." And Dr. Morris (Academy, September 2, 1879) has pointed to the true origin of the verb to kill or cull (as it was for- merly written) in the O.E. cull, to strike, according to the analogy of E. slay compared with G. schlagen, to strike ; Icel. drepa, to strike, and thence to slay ; Lat. cczdere^ to strike, occidere, to slay. " Adam and Eve he egged to iITe r Conseilled Kayme to kuHen his brother."' Piers Plowman, (B) i. 65. For cull in the sense of strike or stroke we may cite " Thauh a word culle the full herde up o thine heorte." Ancren Riwle, 128. "The cul oi there eax (the stroke of the axe)." Ibid. 126. 124 KILL. " Ofte me hine smot Mid swithe smorte yerdes ; Ofte me hine culde, So me sal an fole." Layamon, ii. 429. The transition from the sense of striking to that of slaying may be well illustrated by the passages where the word occurs in Sir Ferumbras : " With hure swerdes scherp ygrounde J>ai /an Jef, gan he seye, wan he soj him. pe Sarsyns Janne on him fulle : alle with herte grete, And schrewedliche J>ai dede him kulle bothe with honde and fete ; His cote armure }>ay al to-drowe J>at he had him oppon, And dude him sorwe and schame ynow ; J>er ne spared him never on. pe Ameral ]>anne gan crie an haste, y hole Je, sle him noyt." L. 2858. In the following passages we have the sense of striking to death or slaying : " And so hym dude ^e erlde Olyver alle J>at he mijte areche, A kulde hem down affbrn him there, and was hure laste leche." C. 2659. " Fifty stedes ad own a fulde, and ten ereof to dethe a kulde" L- 3735- " Mo J>an a Jousant of e schrewea wel sone L. 3442. Skeat follows Morris in deriving the word from Icel. kollr, top, summit, head, crown, through a supposed derivative, kolla, " to hit in the head, metaphorically to harm." Cleasby. The word is not mentioned in any of the other Icelandic dictionaries, and the sense to hit in the head is obviously argumentative from the supposed derivation from kollr. Cleasby only knows the word in the sense of harm- ing : pykkir nu sem J^eim muni ekki kolla. Sturlunga Saga, iii. 237. It is certain that the sense of striking in general was not developed in any of the Scandinavian dialects. The Norwegian has kolla, to top or poll, to head ; kylla, to KILL. 125 lop, to pollard trees ; Sw. dial, kulla, to cut the hair, cor- responding to Sc. coll (pronounced cole), cow, to poll or shave the head, to cut short, prune, or lop. This last is doubtless the word written cole in the " Cursor Mundi " (iii. 756), which Dr. Morris interprets in the sense of strike off: " A sargant sent he to the jaiole, And John hefd comanded to cole" In the Laud MS. the passage runs " A serjaunt to the jayle lete he gon, And John to hede right anon." It takes the'form of kylle (analogous to the N. kylla above mentioned) in the " Alliterative Poems," p. 62. " We kylle of thyn heued (we will cut off thy head)." It is extremely unlikely that the sense of striking should have been de- veloped from so definite an image as that of polling or cropping, i.e., removing the poll, crop, or top of anything. It appears to me that the origin of this O.E. cull, to strike, which is without correlative in any Scandinavian or Teutonic dialect, may be found in It. cogliere (Lat. colligere], to gather, which is also used in the sense of to strike. Cogliere scarso : to strike a slanting blow. Mi colse in testa con un bastone : he struck me on the head with a stick. As the sense of striking has undoubtedly grown out of that of gathering in the case of the It. cogliere, there can be no reason why a like train of thought might not have led our ancestors to signify strike by the same word, cull, which, in the sense of gather, is the true representative of It. cogliere and of Fr. cueillir. The act of striking is regarded in a very similar pcint of view when we speak, in familiar language, of catch- ing or of fetching one a clout on the head. It is certain, moreover, that coyle, which is only another mode of render- ing the O.Fr. coillir, cuillir, mod. cueillir, was used in the sense of striking. Palsgrave has coyle, to select or pick out good money from bad, and also to beat or strike. " I coyle 126 LAWN. one's kote, I beate him. I have coyled him as he shulde be ; je 1'ay bastonne aynsi qu'il appartient." LAWN. Fine transparent linen. Skeat mentions the supposition that it is a corruption of Fr. linon, of the same sense, which could never have given rise to such a form as lawn. I had myself quoted Sp. lona, canvas, thinking of the open texture known as cushion-canvas, used for working in worsteds ; but lona is sailcloth, a fabric as different as possible from lawn, so that the resemblance of the words must be merely accidental. The proper meaning of lawn is a transparent veil or covering, something that lets you see through it. It is thus only another application of the same word lawn which is used to signify a vista through trees, an open space in a wood : " If blush thou must, then blush thou through A lawn that thou mayst look through, As purest pearls or pebbles do When peeping through a brook." Herrick, Hesperides (1870), p. 290. *' So lillies through chrystall look So purest pebbles in the brook, As in the river Julia did, Half with a Icewne of water hid. 1 ' Ibid., p. 316. In the sense of fine linen it occurs in " Sir Generides," p. 3,1-78:- " In that chaunber was an hanged bedde, And there uppon a shete of launde was spredde." Pegge, in his " Kenticisms" (Orig. Gloss. C. : E. D. S.), explains lant flour as fine flour, i.e., lawned, or searced through a lawn. The etymology has probably been obscured by the loss of an initial g, as in E. lumber compared with I eel. glumra, to resound, to make a loud continued sound, or in E. luck compared with G. gliick. Lawn then may well be derived from N. glana, to look, to peep, to shine, as the clear sky through an opening between clouds ; glan, LITTER. 127 an opening between clouds, a clear space in the sky ; glanen, glanutt, open, scattered, as the sky when clouds are break- ing up, or a wood with open spaces. Sw. dial, glana, to shine feebly, as the sun through a mist, to peep ; glena upp, to clear up, when a clear spot appears in a cloudy sky.; glena, glinntng, a clear spot in the sky ; gldnna, N. glenna, a lawn or open space in a wood. LITTER. A brood, as of puppies or kittens. "Really derived from Icel. Idtr, Idttr, a place where animals produce their young, whence Idtrask, to litter ; all derivatives of lag, a layer, from leggja, to lay, or liggja, to lie." Skeat. The supposition that litter in the foregoing sense is a corrup- tion of Icel. Idtr, or of the Prov. E. latter or lafter, the whole number of eggs laid by a hen before she begins to sit (Atkinson), is quite gratuitous. Skeat has been misled by Cleasby, a most unsafe guide in etymology, as he fre- quently allows his etymological theory to influence his rendering of the meaning of words. In the present case, for instance, Cleasby is tempted by the similarity of sound to render Idtrask, to litter ; where the word is obviously understood by Skeat as if it meant to produce a litter of young. But if we look at the other dictionaries (Jonsson, Fritzner), we shall see that it merely signifies to prepare a lair or lying-place, to seek one's lair, to go to rest. Nor, if we believe the other dictionaries, is the term Idtr at all confined to the sense of a breeding - place. It simply means lair or lying-place. Ldtrselr, a seal which habitually lies on a particular spot. When once it is seen that Icel. Idtr is simply a lying- place, it removes every vestige of presumption in favour of the supposition that it is the parent, of E. litter, a brood of young. For litter itself (Fr. litiere, from Lat. lectuni) is used in the sense of bedding or resting-place : " the inne Where he and his horse littered" Habington, Castara, in R. 128 LOITER. From hence the sense of a brood of young may arise by a metaphor similar to that seen in Fr. accoucher, or in the English expressions of being brought to bed or being in the straw. LOITER, To." The true sense is to stoop, and fig. to sneak, from the Teut. base LUT, to stoop, appearing in A.S. lutan, Icel. luta, to stoop, lutr, stooping ; and in E. lout. Thus to loiter is to act like a lout." Skeat. The attitude of stooping, however, is by no means so characteristic of loitering as to make it at all probable that it would be used to give expression to the latter conception. Moreover, it would be a very unusual change of vowel from lout to loiter in the formation of a frequentative. The essential meaning of loitering is a slack pursuit of the object to which the effort of the agent should be directed. It has therefore the closest relation with Icel. latr (fern. / to slacken, to become faint. Honum latrar sundit : his swim- ming becomes faint. ,Eg latra, reses eo. Gudmund. Lb'tra, to loiter, lag behind carelessly (Cleasby), to go very gently. Jonsson. O.Du. leuteren (pronounced loiterat), loteren, differre, cunctari, negligenter agere, to dawdle, loiter, delay. Kilian. LOVER, LOUVER. The open lantern in the roof of a hall which allows the smoke to escape, serving the double purpose of a chimney and skylight. In the North of England it is used in the sense of a chimney, and in Old English it sometimes signified a loophole. The objection to Minsheu's derivation from Fr. Fouvert, the open, is that no such appellation is found among the names given by the old French glossarists, and also that such a use of an adjec- tive seems contrary to the genius of the language. But we are probably put upon the right track by a passage .cited by Skeat from the description of Melusina's castle in the " Romance of Partenay," 1. 1175 : LOUNGE. 129 "At lovers, lowpes, archers had plente, To cast, draw and shete, defens to be." In the original " Murdrieres il a a 1'ouuert, Pour lander, traire et deffendre ; " which Skeat translates " It had murderers [soldiers] at each loophole to cast lances, &c." The correct translation of the passage should be "It had [murdrieres a Fouuert] pierced loopholes, to lance, shoot, &c." The qualification, d Pouvert, seems to have been dropped, as unnecessary, in the modern meurtrtire, a loophole ; while it has been caught up in the English term lover, applied, in the pas- sage above cited, to a loophole, but more frequently to the opening in the roof to which the name is now con- fined. LOUNGE. " To loll about, to move listlessly. The verb is formed from a sb., being a corruption of the term lungis (a lazy inactive fellow)." Skeat. It may well be that lungis (Fr. longis] and lounge are radically connected, rest- ing, as they both do, on the characteristic idea of inactivity and listlessness, but that lounge should be a corruption of lungis is impossible. Nor is any evidence whatever adduced in support of such an origin of the word.. The suggestion is left to stand on its own intrinsic probability. On the other hand, I have cited' in my Dictionary forms from various Teutonic dialects corresponding to lounge in the closest way, both in sound and meaning. The essential meaning 'of lounge is to indulge in inactivity and sloth, and this is commonly expressed by reference to a slack, unstrung, loose condition of body, yielding everywhere to any external impulse, and consequently shaking, joggling, dangling, flap- ping. Thus we have G. loiter, lottericht, loose, slack, untied, something that hangs loose ; Bav. lottern, to shake, waggle, joggle, to move slackly; Swiss lottern, to joggle, to be shaky; lotterbettli, a lounge or couch for reclining on; i 130 LOUT. Du. lodderen int bedde, in de sonne, to lounge in bed or in the sun ; lodderbeddeken, as lotterbettli, above mentioned. Analogous forms, with a guttural instead of a dental, are G. locker, loose; E. logger, to joggle; Pl.D. luggern, lungern, to lie in bed out of laziness ; luggerbank, a lounge or couch. Then with a palatal termination, Fr. locher, to shake, joggle ; Swiss lotschen, to dangle, waggle, to be listless, slug- gish, slack ; umelotschen, to move about as if all the joints were loose (Stalder in v. Lodelen.} ; Bav. latschen, letschen, lotschen, to move or act lazily. The nasalisation of the vowel, as in P1.D. luggern, lungern, gives us Swiss luntschen (identical with E. lounge), to hang loose (of clothes), to move with slackness, to play the lazybones (den Faulen spielen) ; umeluntschen, to move about in such a manner, to lie idly about without sleeping, that is precisely, to lounge. O.H.G. lunczen, dormitare, luncz, somnolentia ; Westerwald, lonzen, lunzen, to lie in bed out of season ; Bav. lunzen, lunzeln, to doze ; lunzig, Swiss liindsch, soft, pliable, answering to E. dial, lingey, limber, pliable, also idle and loitering (Hal- liwell) ; which last may probably give the true explanation of Fr. longis, and E. lungis. LOUT. An unmannerly clown. "Obviously from the old verb lout, to stoop, bow." Skeat. It seems to me, however, that the figure of a stooping gait is quite inade- quate to account for the contemptuous force of the word. It would seem, moreover, from the O.Du. loete, homo agrestis, insulsus, bardus, stupidus, alongside Qikloete, homo obtusus, hebes, stolidus, stupidus, stipes, caudex, truncus (Kilian), that the form lout has lost an initial c. It appears indeed, from Spenser's " Colin Clout," that E. clout was formerly understood in the sense of rustic, clown. " Rough- hewn, douterly verses." Phillips in Webster. "A clown, loggerhead, douterly fellow." Kiittner. The immediate figure is probably the same which makes us call a clown a clod. Da. klods, a log or block, also a lout or clown. Du. kloet, kloete^ is a ball or lump ; klont, klonte, a clod or LOWN. 131 clot, the dim. of which, klontjen (Binnart), indicates the' origin of E. clunch, a. clodhopper (Halliwell), and of Da. klunds, an awkward clown (Bendsen, Nord Fries. Spr., p. 54). The Da. klunt, a. log or block (whence kluntet, clumsy, awkward), is doubtless identical with Du. klont, a clod, indicating the origin of Icel. klunni, N.Fris. klonne, a clown. A clod or lump affords the most obvious image of a rude, unshaped, inactive thing. Milanese lotta, a clod ; Prov. lot, heavy, indolent, slow. " Non es lotz ni coartz : he is not sluggish nor cowardly." Lot, mud, dirt LOWN, LOON. " He held them sixpence all too dear, With that he called the tailor lown." Skeat supposes the word to be a corruption of an older loom or lowm. "This is shown by the M.E. lowmishe, old spelling oilownishe. Prompt. Parv., and by the etymology. Cf. Sc. loumy, dull, slow. O.Du. lome, slow, inactive. That m is the older! letter is seen from the derived words, viz., Du. lummel, Dan. Ib'mmel, G. lummel, a lown, lubber." The reasoning here is a complete begging of the question. It does not appear that the lowmishe (or lownishe, as it is written in one MS.) of the Prompt. Parv. has anything to do with lown or loon. It is rendered by canicus, or, in other MS., by arduliosus, while lowmisman is rendered by ardulio (for ardelio), a meddler of many matters, a busy man, a smatterer in all things. Du. lummel, a clown, may possibly be derived from tome, inactive, but there is nothing to con- nect the latter with loen, homo stupidus, bardus, insulsus (Kil.), the equivalent of E. lown. It appears to me far more probable that lown is related to cloivn, as Du. loete to the synonymous kloete, a lout ; as E. log to clog, or lump to clump. It would thus, in the last resort, be made to rest upon forms like Du. klont, a clod, Da. klunt, Sw. klunn, a log or block, which point to the notion of an unformed lump as the radical conception in Icel. klunni, Da. klunds, 132 LUMBER. N.Fris. klonne (Bendsen), a clown. Compare Da. knold, a knot, knob, tuber, and fig. a lout or bumpkin. LUMBER. Old furniture. Skeat adopts Archbishop Trench's explanation that the lumber-room "was originally the Lombard-room, or room where the Lombard banker and broker stowed away his pledges. ... As these would naturally often accumulate here till they became out of date and unserviceable, the steps are easy by which the word came to possess its present meaning." To give any value to this explanation it should be shown that the pawnbroker's loft was called a Lombard-room, of which there is not the smallest evidence. It is the merest guess of the Archbishop that such a name was ever in use. On the other hand, many exact analogies may be cited in support of what Skeat contemptuously dismisses as the " fancy" of Minshew, who gives " Lumber, old baggage of household stuff, so called of the noise it maketh when it is removed." It is certain at least that G. poltern, to make a noise, to lumber or rumble, gives rise to polter-kammer, a lumber-room, a place where old furniture and useless things are kept. So Low Ci.polteri, racket, noise ; also lumber, old furniture. Danneil. In the same way we pass from G. rummeln^ rumpeln, to rumble, to make a rattling noise with wooden lumber, to Rummel^ old iron and other old things thrown one upon another, Rumpelkammer, a garret into which old useless things are thrown, a lumber-room. Kiittner. Again we have the same connection of ideas in Du, rommtlen, to rumble ("I romble, I make noise in a house with remevyng of heavy thynges." Palsgr.) ; rommelkamer, rotwtielzolder, a lumber-room, rommding, old furniture, lumber. Da. skramle, to rumble ; skram{eri, lumber, trumpery. It is impossible that the identity, in so many instances, of the word signifying a rumbling noise and a heap of old furni- ture, can be matter of accident, and we may take it to be as clearly established as any etymology can be, that a lumber- room is named on this principle. MARMOSET. 133 LURE. "O.Fr. loerre, loirre, later leurre, a falconer's lure. M.H.G. luoder (G. luder), a bait, decoy, lure. A derivation from M.H.G. and G. laden to invite, is not impossible." Skeat. The G. luder signifies carrion, the flesh of a dead carcase, the carcase itself. No doubt carrion is used as a bait to allure or invite certain animals into a trap, but it is preposterous to derive the word luder, carrion, from the notion of alluring or inviting. The prevailing idea con- nected with carrion is stink or disgust. Es stinkt wie Luder : it stinks like carrion. The root of the word may well be preserved in Bret, louz, loudour, disgusting, filthy, dirty (properly stinking) ; louz, a badger. To stink like a badger is proverbial. MARMOSET. A monkey, an animal which formerly was commonly kept as a pet by ladies. Hence the word was used in the sense of a minion or unworthy favourite. " Alwayes the erle hath these marmosettes about him, as Gyl- bert Mahewe and his brethrene, &c." Berner's Froissart, i. c. 387. The word must have come to us from Fr. mar- moset, which, however, is not vouched in the sense of a monkey, though it is in the derivative meaning of a minion or favourite of a prince, and also in that of a grotesque image, to which the name of a monkey might naturally be applied. The primitive form is preserved in Bret, mar- mouz, a monkey, while another diminutive is seen in mar- mouselle, a little puppy or pug (i.e., monkey) to play with. Cotgrave. Skeat regards a grotesque or antic image as the original sense, and supposes that it was applied to a monkey because of its grotesque antics. But a grotesque figure is an object of far too exceptional occurrence to have given rise to the name of an animal so early and so widely known as a monkey, while nothing is more natural than the converse supposition that a grotesque little image should have been called after a monkey. The probability that this was the course of development in the case of mar- mouset is greatly increased by the fact that Fr. marmot, a 134 MARMOSET. monkey, is also used in the sense of a grotesque little figure (Littre"), an ugly and ill-made little figure. Gattel. Still another instance of the union of the two significations is to be found (if we are to believe Kilian) in the case of Du. and Fr. marotte, a fool's bauble, consisting of a short stick crowned with a grotesque image of a Punch-like head with cap and long ears. Now Kilian twice over gives marotte as synonymous with marmotte, a monkey, without connect- ing such a meaning with that of the Fr. marotte, so that he is quite unbiassed by etymological theory in his citation of the word. "Marotte, marmotte, simia, cercopithecus. Ma- rotte, marotteken, imaguncula quae stultis ad lusum praebetur." The occurrence of forms in a Norman dialect, maronner and marmonner, to mutter (Decorde, Patois du Pays de Bray), makes it probable that marotte is a corruption of marmotte, and thus a satisfactory explanation would be given of the meaning of the word, of which no plausible derivation has been offered in French. With regard to Fr. marmouset, Skeat, following Scheler and Littre, derives it from a Lat. marmoretum, signifying a little object of marble, a word only known from the Rue des Marmousets in Paris being said to have been called (at a period not specified) Vicus Marmoretorum in Latin deeds. From this isolated quotation Littre draws the very forced conclusion that the word was originally marmouret, and was changed by the lisping pronunciation of the Parisians into marmouset. Even if the expression of Vicus Marmoretorum were much better vouched than it is, it would surely be a far more probable supposition that the change from s to r was made by the lawyers, who translated the name of Marmousets in accordance, with their notion of the material of which the images in question were com- monly made. The explanation, at any rate, would not apply to marmot. It is, however, hardly worth while to weigh the merits of so strained an etymology, when we have the simplest origin of the word ready to hand. I MARMOT. 135 show, under Marmot, by accumulated evidence, that the name of the Alpine rodent is from Fr. marmoter, to mutter. But the monkey, as well as the marmot, is characteristi- cally a muttering or a chattering animal, and thus we account in the simplest way for the fact of two such differ- ent animals being known by the same name of Marmot. The natural association of a monkey with the notion of muttering or chattering is so strong that Gattel, in his Fr. Diet, strangely supposes marmotter, to mutter, to be from marmot, a monkey, instead of the converse ; .and Minshew suggests that monkey itself may be derived from Du. monken, to mutter. It can only be the strongest repugnance to the admission of the imitative principle of nomenclature which could raise objections to the foregoing account of the name of marmot, a monkey. Now it has always been felt that the names of marmot and marmoset are radically connected, and as the syllables mus and mut or mot are indifferently used to represent a muttering sound in Lat. mutire, muttire, mussare, mussitare, Sp. musitar, to mutter, so we find in the dialects of Central France, marmouser or marmuser, to speak between the teeth (Littr^), to mutter, murmur ; mar- mouserie, chuchotement, murmure bas (Jaubert), which give precisely the same explanation of the Breton marmouz, Fr. marmouset, marmouselle, as has already been maintained with respect to marmot, from marmotter. It was doubtless from marmouser, in the sense of mutter or gibber, that the O.Fr. marmouserie came to signify "frenzy, doting, raving, foolish melancholy." Cotgrave. MARMOT. Fr. marmot e, marmotan, marmotaine, mar- montaine, the Alpine mouse or mountain rat. Cotgr. It. marmotana, the mountain rat, marmotan Florio ; to whom the pame of marmotta is only known in the sense of a monkey. When we observe that the German name is murmelthier, the muttering beast, we shall not be surprised at the doctrine, until of late years universally held, that marmot is from Fr. marmotter, to mutter the longer forms 136 marmotan, marmotaine, Piedm. marmotina, finding their explanation in the O.Fr. marmofonner, to grumble, mutter. Cotgr. A further corroboration of this obvious etymo- logy (agreeing, as it does, with the principle on which animals are almost universally named from the sounds which they utter) is that, in the mountainous cantons of Glarus and Schweiz, the name of the marmot is mungg, munk, from munggcn, munken, to mutter. It would be strange indeed that the animal should be known in its native districts by so many independent names having reference to muttering if there were not good grounds for the designation. And I myself can bear witness that the animal does, while feeding, keep up a remarkable muttering sound, which at once explained to me the meaning of the German name, when I observed them at the Zoological Garden. It is said by Buffon that the muttering is heard when the animal is drinking. It is true that travellers in general mention only their whistling, which seems to be their cry of alarm, and, being audible from a much greater distance, is more likely to catch the attention of a casual observer ; but mere ignorance ought never to have led etymologists to reject the obvious meaning of the name and to wander off into the region of conjecture. Yet Diez, on the faith of the Grisons names of montanella and mur- mont, without even referring to the Fr. marmotter, boldly asserts that murmont, "together with the O.H.G. mure- munto, murmenti, and Swiss murmet, sprang from (a hypothetical) mus montanus, and was gradually changed to marmotta" Skeat carries his faith in corruption still further. "The O.H.G. name," he says, "was murmenti, murmunte, murimunte, now corrupted to murmel-thier." Surely such a monstrous corruption would be impossible unless there was something in the animal to suggest the notion of muttering ; and if there was, why not suppose the name to be directly significant ? Skeat, like Diez, entirely passes over the accumulated evidence in favour of a deriva- MASTIFF. 137 tion from the notion of muttering, and declares that a com- parison of the names cited by Diez (together with the O.Fr. form marmontain, mentioned by Littre) " at once leads us, without any doubt, to the right conclusion, viz., that the word is a debased Latin one, founded on mur-, stem of mus, a mouse, and mont- or montan-, stem of mons, a mountain or montanus, belonging to a mountain." Thus he rejects the most obvious interpretation of the name, vouched over and over again by independent forms, in favour of a purely conjectural murimontus or murimontanus, which has to be constructed out of the probabilities of the case. It should be observed that a form like marmontaine might easily arise from the nalisation of the medial syllable in the much commoner marmotaine, It. marmotana ; but the converse change from a form like murmontan to mur- motan would be a very unusual corruption. The Swiss names cited by Stalder (in v. Mungg), murmde, murmetli, murmelti, murmende (in Notker murmen.fi), are easy develop- ments from the root of murmur or mutter. ' MASTIFF. Also written masty, signifying a large dog. A masty dog Hobson's Jests ; masty cur Dubartas in Halliwell. The immediate origin must have been an O.Fr. mastif, of the same meaning, but we only know the forms mastin, matin, It. ma.stino, a mastiff, with a different termination. Cotgrave's mestif, a mongrel, is a totally different word, related to Sp. mestizo, Fr. metis, a mongrel or half-breed. Skeat follows Diez in deriving the word from a supposed Low LaL masnatinus, from masnata, a household, so as to signify a house-dog. To this there are several objections. The procedure is too much in the strain of Menage. The form masnatinus is purely conjec- tural, and the supposed contraction to mastinus is a violent step. Moreover, if we had the form masnatinus, it would signify a household dog and not a house-dog. The name of mastiff m matin, however, was not specially applied to a house-dog, but signified a large dog in general, 138 MEDAL. although, of course, a house-dog would commonly be a large one. Now the Venetian dialect has mastino, large- limbed, solid, strong. Swiss mastig, fat, obese. Schmidt, Idioticon Bernense in Deutsch. Mundarten. E. dial. masty, very large and big. Halliwell. The primary sense seems to be well fed, then large, strong, from G. masten, to feed; to mastyn beestys. Promptorium. Hence, in the former sense, mestyf, hogge or swyne (a fatted hog) majalis. In the sense of superior size, mestyf , hownde, Spartanus. Promptorium. MEDAL. Skeat asserts without hesitation that the Low Lat. medalia, medal la, It. medaglia, Fr. m'edaille are cor- rupted forms due to Lat. metallum, metal. He takes no notice of the essential fact that the original meaning of medalia was a coin of half a certain value, a sense which the Fr. derivative, maille (O.Fr. meaille), always retained : " the half of a penny (in weight or money). ' Bonne la maille qui sauve le denier.' " Cotgr. In Italy the meaning of medaglia was sometimes half a danaro, sometimes half a livre. " Usavansi all 'hora le medaglte in Firenze, che le dve valevano un danaio picciolo." Novelle Antiche in La Crusca. " Tanto vago d' una cosa che, cosa che valesse \a&.medaglia t comperasse una livra: " so desirous of a thing that he would purchase for a livre what was only worth half. La Crusca. Willelmus Brito, in Ducange, incident- ally explains the meaning of the word as signifying a coin of half a certain value. "Obolus dicitur medalia, id est, medietas nummi." At a subsequent period the word came to signify any ancient coin, and finally, a coin struck, not for the purpose of being used as money, but to commemorate some person or event. How this transition in meaning took effect re- mains unexplained. The derivation from mefallum is a pure conjecture, without a suggestion of historical support, and is solely founded on the supposition that medalia cannot have sprung from medius. And no doubt the transition MIEN. 139 from such a form as medialis to medalia would be a very unusual one. But when we see that medius, adjectivally joined to the name of a coin, was used to designate one of half the value, while medalia was the substantive of cor- responding signification (medietas nummi, as it is explained by Brito), it is hard to believe that the one form is not a corrupt derivative of the other. For the use of medius in the foregoing sense, we may cite the following passage : " A singulis autem medium stuferum Brabanticum (half a Brabant stiver) postulare eum audio." Wieri Opera, p. 377- It is really no explanation of a name signifying a coin of half the value to say that it comes from being made of metal. All coins are made of metal, and even if the word had ever signified a coin in general (which it never was), the character would not have been sufficiently distinctive to give rise to a new designation of coined money. More- over, it may be remarked that the / of metallum, which is supposed to change to a d in It. medaglia, is retained un- altered in It. metallo. MIEN. Allowed on all hands to be an adoption of Fr. mine, "the countenance, look, cheere" (Cotgr.), which, according to Skeat, is derived from It. mina, of the same signification. The ground on which he rests the priority of the Italian form, is his confident assumption that mina is a dialectal variation of mena, " behaviour, fashion, carriage of a man" (Florio), from menare,.Fr. metier, Low Lat. minare, to conduct. In support of the connection with mena he appeals to the occurrence of meant in the F. Q. " The whiles that mighty man did her demeane With all the evil tearmes & cruell meant That he could make." F. Q. vi. 6, 39. " And markt her rare demeanure, which him seemed So farre the meane of shepheards to excell." Ibid. vi. 9, II. The spelling of the word meant (which Skeat supposes to 140 MIEN. be intended for mien) clearly points, he says, to the O.It. mena. It is far more probable that the word is a licentious substitute for demeane, in the sense of demeanour, be- haviour. "In mind to bene ywroken Of all the vild demeane and usage bad, With which he had those two so ill bestad. F. Q. vi. 6, 1 8. But whether or no the word written meane was intended for mien, it is plain that no mode of spelling an English word confessedly derived from Fr. mine, can furnish valid evidence as to the ulterior source of the French original. The supposed derivation of It. mina from Low. Lat. minare is quite without historical support. On the other hand, we have the express authority of Florio that mina was recognised in his time as a late introduction from the French. " It is lately used," he says, " (but borrowed of the French), for a man's look, aspect, or countenance." The internal evidence arising from a comparison of the senses of the word in the two languages, and from consideration of the further developments of the form which occur in French and not in Italian, is strongly in favour of an origin in the former language. The Italian form, like E. mien, is used only in the abstract sense of look or aspect. The Fr. mine had the concrete signification of the bodily face. " Fard est perdu sur mine de singe : " paint is thrown away on the snout of an ape. The It. mina is completely isolated in the language. From Fr. mine are formed minauder, to affect a nice expression of face, to grimace, and minois (with a ludicrous or derisive intention), a face, a pretty little face, a sour face. And further, considerations similar to those which decided in favour of a French rather than an Italian origin enable us to trace the root back into Celtic soil. The Breton mm (identical in sound with Fr. mine) signifies the face, visage, countenance of a man, snout of quadrupeds, beak of birds, point of land ; where the wider application MUSE. 141 of the Breton form makes it extremely improbable that it is borrowed from the French. And this is conclusively established by the fact that min is found in Welsh as well as in Breton in the sense of lip, and fig. edge, point. Min- gam, a wry mouth ; mingamu, to make faces. The deriva- tive mtnial, to move the lips, explains the formation of Fr. minauder, and the dim. minios, a lip or little lip (Richards), that of minois above mentioned. MONKEY. Corrupted from O.It. monicchio, dim. of mona, monna, a monkey. Skeat As ?no7ina j .ior madonna, was also used in the sense of mistress, Skeat regards the order of ideas as "-mistress, dame, old woman, monkey, by that degradation of meaning so common in all languages." But the animal must have been known .in Italy by some name before it acquired such a sobriquet as Mylady, and it is very unlikely that a nickname of this kind should have extinguished the genuine appellation of the animal in so wide a range of languages : Fr. monne,.monnine (Cotgr.), Sp. mono, motia, Breton mouna, mounika,. E. monkey^. Illyrian muna, munica. The animal must have come from the East with a name of its own> and as the Arabic name is may- moun, it seems to me far more probable that the word has sprung from the docking of the latter name than from an Italian sobriquet. The Illyrian has maimun as well as muna. MUSE, To. To meditate, to study. Minshew. To muse, dream, study, bethink himself of, pause, linger about a matter. Cotgr. To be absorbed in thought. When the object of absorbing interest is something actually before the eyes, the word takes the sense of contemplate, gaze fixedly, be intent upon, watch. Hence the word is explained by Gherardini "tenere il muso, cioe il viso, fisso in che che sia." Diez also derives the word from It. muso, the muzzle or snout, but he gives us no hint as to the train of thought by which he supposes the notion of meditation to be attained. Skeat follows Diez in his conclusion, but he I 4 2 MUSE. gives little satisfaction by the way in which he attempts to justify the derivation. "Strange as it may seem," he says, "this etymology, given by Diez, is the right one; it is amply borne out by Florio's Italian Dictionary, where we find : 'musare, to muse, to think, to surmise, also to muzzle, to muffle, to mock, to jest, to gape idly about, to hold one's muzzle or snout in the air.' This is plainly from Ital. muso, a muzzle, a snout, a face. The image is that of a dog snuffing idly about, and musing which direction to take ; and may have arisen as a hunting term." In his later editions Florio revises his explanation and shows very clearly that the passage, which Skeat relies on as giving the fundamental meaning of the word, is merely an inference of Florio's from his belief in the derivation from muso. In the edition of 1688 he has: "Musare, to muse, to surmise, to give himself to the muses, also to muzzle ; by met. to gad idly up and down, holding his muzzle in the air." Certainly a hound sniffing the ground in his endeavour to make out the scent, would be the worst possible image of absorption in thought. In fact, the mental attitude of musing is utterly incongruous to the nature of a dog. As far as the meaning of the word is concerned, there is no difficulty in deriving it from Lat. musso, to buzz, murmur, brood over, to con- sider in silence, to doubt. Mussant juvencae quis pecori imperitet : the heifers submissively await. Mussat rex ipse Latinus quos generos vocet, aut quae se ad fcedera flectat : the king muses on the choice of a son-in-law. So Papias explains musaf, "dubitat in loquendo, timet, murmurat." Ducange. The word signifies in the first instance to mutter, to utter slight low sounds, then by the aphaeresis of the negative, not even to say mut, to be silent, to be absorbed in thought. But Skeat says that the derivation from musso is phonetically incorrect It is certain, however, that the difference between musso and muso is not so great but what they may be varieties from a common origin, inasmuch as both forms are found in the N'orwegian dialects. Aasen MUTINY. 143 gives musa, mussa, and mysja, to mutter, whisper, grumble. The Gr. /ui/^w also corresponds exactly to Lat. musso, to mutter, to utter a slight sound. T/ [Av^iif; xdvTa veKoirirai xaXS? : what are you muttering at ? We come near the original signification of the word in Walloon muser, to hum a tune, to make a noise with the mouth, to mutter like scholars conning their lesson (huer doucement, comme font les ecoliers en classe). Sigart. The single s is seen in Sp. musitar, to mutter, from Lat. mussitare. The element mus, representing a low sound, is found in Fr. dial, marmuser, to whisper, mutter. Jaubert. MUTINY. O.Fr. mutin, mutinous, unquiet, stirring, seditious ; mutiner, to mutiny, factiously to repine at, seditiously to stir, or be the author of a stir against a superior; mutinateur, a mutineer, a raiser of broils, be- ginner of tumults, a firebrand of sedition. Cotgrave. Skeat adopts Burguy's derivation from O.Fr. muete, meute, military expedition, uprising, sedition (Lat. moiiere, motus). It seems to me, however, that this derivation does not give an adequate explanation of the meaning. A mutiny is a very different thing from Fr. entente, a tumult. The act of mutining is properly the stirring up to rebellion, not the rebellious conflict itself, as is well expressed in the render- ing of Cotgrave " factiously to repine at, to be the author of a stir against a superior." For this sense a perfectly satisfactory origin is to be found in the Du. muyten, to mutter, murmur, mutire, murmurare, seditiosa clanculum loqui, seditionem meditari, turbas ciere, coire, per clancu- larios susurros excitare seditionem (Gal. mutiner). Kilian. Hence muyterije, seditio, conspiratio, factio, dubioque autore susurri; Ang. mutinie, mutting. Kilian. Mutting is explained by Halliwell in the sense of sulky, glumping, muttering. The syllable mut represents a low indistinct sound, as in mutter and in the Lat mutire, to utter such a sound. The Netherlandish origin of the word is much supported by the formation of derivations like muiterij, 144 NIGHTMARE. mutiny, sedition, and muiteling, a mutineer or seditious person (Bomhoff), and especially by the adoption in O.Fr. of a form like meutimacre, seditieux, mutin (Roquefort), the second element of which would be without significance in French, from the Du. muitemaker, an agitator, seditiosus, factiosus, turbulentus. Kilian. The Fr. meute de chiens, a pack of hounds, is a totally different word, from It muta, a change. Muta di cant, a shift or change of fresh hounds in hunting, also a whole kennel of hounds. Florio. Muta is then used in the sense of a set of several kinds of things : muia di piatti, a shift or mess of dishes ; muta di vestiti, a shift or suit of clothes ; muta di cervi, a herd of stags / muta a quattro, a carriage and four, a team of four horses in a carriage. Vanzon. NIGHTMARE. Icel. O.H.G. mara, G. mahr, Low G. maar, moor, Fr.cauf/iemar, Illyr. Serv. mora, PoLtnara, Boh. mura, nightmare. " The sense is ''crusher,' from ^ MAR, to pound, bruise,, crush." Skeat. The only ground of the assertion that such is the funda- mental meaning of the word is of course belief in the theo- retical root mar with the foregoing signification. But in applying this root to the explanation of nigJitmare, Skeat is misled by an ambiguity in the meaning of crush, which signifies as well to break to pieces as to squeeze flat. It is ony in the former sense that it is attributed to the root mar (zerschlagen, zermalmen, aufreiben Fick), while it is only in the sense of heavy pressure that it has any connection with the nightmare. Moreover, this derivation would give too confined a meaning to the word. The Pol. mara signi- fies not only nightmare, but ghost, phantom, vain imagina- tion, dream. Wyglada jak mara he looks like a ghost. Boh. mura, in the pi. mury, signifies hobgoblins, haunting ghosts, Lemures nocturni. It is probably the personifica- tion only of the cause .of the oppressive dream that is expressed by the name of nightmare. It is even probable that the word was understood in the general sense of hag NUNCHION. 145 or spectre much more widely and to a later day than is commonly supposed. The Fr. cauchemar signifies literally (Lat. calcare, to tread) the treading hag. Sw. marelok, G. marlocken or mahrflechle, elf-locks, locks entangled by elves or goblins, not specially by the nightmare. In English mare is used by Skelton in the sense of hag. " From foul Alecto, With visage black and bio, And from Medusa, that man, That like a fiend doth stare." Philip Sparrow in Nares. NIGHTSHADE. A. S. nihtscadu, nihtscada. "Com- pounded of mht, night, and scadu, shade, perhaps because thought to be evil, and loving the shade of night." Skeat. It is more probable that it is a corruption. The Ger. is nacht-schade, as if from schade, injury, and not schatten, shade. The original name seems to be preserved in the Provincial Swedish nattskatagrds, literally bat-grass, from nattskata, a bat, but more properly perhaps a night-jar, as nattskava, now a night-jar, in O.Sw. signified a bat, and the expression night-pie (Sw. skata, a pie), which the name signifies, would be more applicable to a bird than a bat. Another plant which is named in a similar manner, and seems to have undergone a like corruption in English, is the Icel. skarfagras, cormorant grass, from skarfr, a cor- morant, corrupted in English into scurvygrass, being sup- posed to be good for the scurvy. NUNCHION, SKINKER. The meaning of nunchion being an afternoon's refreshment of drink, the word is justly identified by Skeat with the old form nonechenche, which occurs in a document of 27 Edw. III. as the name given to certain donations for drink to workmen. The name is obviously derived from A.S. scencan,QJSL. schenchen, to skink or pour out drink, cognate with Icel. skenkja, Da. skienke, Du. and G. schenkat, of the same signification. " The K 146 NUNCHION. derivation of A.S. scencan? says Skeat, "is very curious; it is a causal verb from A.S. scanc, sceanc, a shank. The explanation is that a shank also meant a hollow bone, a bone of the leg, shinbone, and hence a pipe ; in particular, it denoted the pipe thrust into a cask to tap it and draw off the liquor." For this latter assertion, which 1 have marked in italics, there is no warrant whatever in the history either of language or of fact. No instance has been produced of the use of shank in the sense either of a pipe in general or of the tap of a cask, nor is there any record of the practical employment of the shankbone of an animal for that purpose. The only evidence by which Skeat supports his assertion is an appeal to the Du. schenk-kan, " a pot with a pipe or gullet to pour out," and to the provincial use of shank for " the tunnel of a chimney." It is obvious, however, that schenk-kan is a compound of kan with the verb schenken, to pour, and not with the equivalent of E. shank in the sense of a spout. And shank, applied to the tunnel of a chimney, is a direct metaphor from the shank of the leg, denoting the slender column which connects the fireplace with the outer air, just as it is also applied (according to Halliwell) to the upright part of a candlestick, "between the nose and the foot." Skeat indeed says that it would be easy to add further proofs of the derivation of schenk from schank, and certainly there is urgent need of such corroboration. But Grimm, to whom the etymology is due, does not pretend that it is more than a simple guess. He says (Mdm. Berlin Acad., 1848, p. 125): "The signification leg-bone (tibia) might easily lead to that of the spout (rohre) of the vessel from which the drink was poured out." And again (Haupt, Zeitschr., vi. 191): "Our schenk and schenken are to be referred with the greatest probability to the bone (A.S. scanca) which was applied (angebracht) to the vessel out of which the drink was served (aus welchem man einschenkte)." It will be seen that Grimm's explanation is not exactly the same as Skeat's. Grimm supposes that the name of the OPPORTUNE. 147 shank, as the type of a hollow bone, passed on to signify the spout or tube of a can ; while Skeat, after Fick and others, supposes that the word, after acquiring the sense of a pipe in general, was specially appropriated to the tap or faucet by which liquor was drawn from a cask. It is plain that Grimm's unrivalled erudition could supply him with no instance of the actual use of an equivalent of E. shank in either application, and it is a grave objection to his par- ticular view that a spouted vessel could never have been the familiar vehicle for the drink served out to the guests, which in the earliest times, as now, would have been brought from the cask in open jugs. On the other hand, there is the double objection to the modified doctrine of Fick and Skeat, not only that there is no evidence whatever of the word shank ever having been used for the tap of a cask, but also, that if such had been the case, it would have given to schenken the sense of tapping or drawing liquor from the cask, and not the actual meaning of pouring into the horn of the guest, which is quite a different thing. After tracing the pedigree of nunchion, Skeat goes on to say, that by a curious confusion with lunch, a lump of bread, nuncheon was finally turned into the modern luncheon ; while under ' Lunchion ' itself he clearly shows that the original meaning of the word was a big piece of food. " At any rate," he says, " luncheon, lunchion, or lunchin, is nothing but an old provincial word, and a mere extension of lunch, a lump, without, at first, any change of meaning. It was easily extended to signify a slight meal, just as we now say ' to take a snack,' i.e., a snatch of food. It is quite distinct from nuncheon." It is unfortunate that he deserted (uncon- sciously, as it seems) this sounder view for that which he enounces at the conclusion of his article on ' Nuncheon.' OPPORTUNE. Skeat accepts the old etymology from ob and portus, literally near the harbour ; " quod navigantibus maxime utiles optatique sunt portus." Festus. It is a far- fetched and confused metaphor. The port no doubt is 148 ORE. opportune to the ship returning from a voyage, but it is the ship that is " ob portum," and it is therefore the ship to which the term ought to apply. If we would put ourselves in the position of the speakers of Latin before they had any word for opportune, we must already give them credit for the use of a verb which indicates the main feature of the character to be expressed. Opportune is behoveful, what is adapted for our behoof, quod oportet, what is need- ful at the moment. It is far more probable then that the word should have sprung as an adjectival form from the verb oportere than from such a distant metaphor as that of a ship, ob portum. It is true we have the difficulty of the double p against us, but the same difficulty (only in the opposite direction) is considered no insuperable obstacle . to the received etymology of the verbs aperio and operio, presumably for apperio and opperio, from the prepositions ab or ad and ob, and the verb /#>-/ the O.K. lodesman, a pilot, and thus making the lot of 'pilot the equi- PINFOLD. 157 valent oilcde, signifying way, in loadstone, lodestar, lodemanage, instead of referring it to the Du. loot, lead. PINFOLD, PINDAR, POUND, POND, PEN. Pinfold, a pound for cattle, is treated by Skeat as put iorpoundfold, rest- ing on the different readings in 'Piers Plowman,' B. xxvi. 264, C. xix. 282, where we find pound/old, pondfold, pynfold. He explain spindar, one who impounds stray cattle, from the A.S. pyndan, to pen up, which (he says) is itself formed from A.S. pund, a pound, a word known to us only in the expres- sion pundbreche, infractura parci, in the laws of Henry I. The origin of pound and pond is left wholly unexplained, as the Irish pont, used in both those senses, is manifestly only an adoption of the English word. It is, as it appears to me, a fatal objection to the foregoing account, that forms exactly corresponding to pinfold, pound, &f\& pindar, but based on a conception entirely different to that supposed by Skeat, are found in the cognate languages. Thus from G. pfand, Du. pand, a pawn or pledge, we have G. pfandstall, a place in which strayed beasts are confined as pawns for payment of the damage ; pfanden, Old Fris. penda, peinda, Grisons pandrer, pendrar, pindrar, to distrain, to seize by way of pawn ; das Vieh pfanden, to pound cattle; pf tinder, Du. pander, Gnsor\spandrader,pindrader, thepinder or executive officer of a court, one whose business it is to seize the property of the delinquent until payment is made. O.Fr. panner, to seize, to distrain. The name of the pound, the enclosure in which the trespassing beasts were impounded or made pawns of, may either be derived from pound, the English form of the Du. panden, to distrain, or it may come from a docking of the O. E. pond-fald ; ultimately, of course, in both cases, resting on Du. pand, a pawn. The Scotch form of the word is poind (pronounced pund, with Fr. u Jam.), to distrain; poind, poumd, the distress or goods seized as a pawn ; poindar, pundar (the pindar), one who distrains the property of another. Identical with Sc. poind is the Icel. pynda, to extort, oppress, compel by exactions 158 PIP. (not by brute force, as rendered by Cleasby), erroneously translated by Skeat, to shut in. I believe I was in error in my Dictionary when I regarded pond, an artificial pool of water, as a variant of pound, a place of confinement for distrained beasts ; and Skeat has fallen into the same mistake. The notion of pounding or damming up water can hardly be developed from the figure of pounding beasts. On the other hand, it may be derived in the most natural way from the notion of stopping an orifice, and thus the word pond, as well as the verb to pound up, may rationally be derived from a form corre- sponding to Fr. bonde, a bung, a floodgate, Swiss, punt, ponten, bonten, G. spund, a bung. As the Lap occasion- ally preserves words borrowed at a very remote period from the Gothic stock, the train of thought may be truly exhibited in Lap puodo, a stopper or covering ; puodot, to stop or shut up, to stop one's mouth, to dam up water ; quele-puodo, a fishpond (quele, fish) ; quarne-puodo, a mill- pond (quarne, a mill). The n of Swedish words in nd, is often omitted in Laplandish, as in pudd,pudde, Svv. pund, a pound. Another error I fell into in my Dictionary was grouping pen, an enclosure for cattle or coop for fowls, with pond and pound. It is probably to be explained from the figure of fastening with a bolt or////. Low G. pennen, topennen^ to bolt the door; penn, a peg, a wooden bolt for a door. "Pynnyn, or spere with a pynne; concavillo, conclave." Promptm. It is not surprising if words so closely resem- bling each other in sound and sense as penning and pound- ing were sometimes confounded, as they seem to have been by the author of the ' Ancren Riwle ' when he speaks of <; swin ipund ine sti," p. 128. PIP. "A spot on cards. The resemblance to pip, a kernel, is merely delusive. /3. The true name is pick, still preserved provincially. ' Pick, a diamond at cards ; Grose says it means a spade.' Halliwell. O.Fr. pique, a spade PITTANCE. 159 at cards, Cotgr. The word seems to have meant (i) a spade, (2) a diamond, and (3) a pip (on cards) in general." Skeat. It will be seen that this conjectural explanation of the word rests altogether on the unsupported assumption that pick, signifying either a diamond or a spade, came to be used in the sense of a single distinctive spot of any of the four suits, and was afterwards corrupted to pip. Skeat indeed says ot pick, "still preserved provincially," but he goes on to cite authorities for the sense of a spade or dia- mond, and not for that of a pip in general, It seems most improbable that the name of one of the suits should have been taken to signify an individual spot of any suit in- differently, and it would be difficult, I think, to match the change from pick to pip by a similar corruption within the modern course of the language. On the other hand, I see no improbability in the supposition that the spots on cards, when considered with reference to their number alone, irrespective of the particular suit to which they belong, should have received a designation from comparison of their appearance to that of the pips of a transversely cut pear or apple. PITTANCE. Fr. pitance, Low Lat. pitancia, pictanria. The fundamental signification of the word is clearly enough indicated by Ducange and Cotgrave (though wholly over- looked by Diez), viz., that it is the more tasty and costlier (and therefore commonly the smallest) portion of the food, such as meat, fish, eggs, cheese, as distinguished from the bread or greens which formed the substance of a meal. The assertion that the pittance was of the value ot &picta or pite, a minute coin of the Counts of Poitou, is a mere etymological guess of Ducange, without an atom of evidence ; a guess to which Skeat would have been among the last to give credence if -it had been offered by a writer of the present day. If pitance had originally (as Ducange seems to suppose) been a word of convent life, signifying the sowling or portion of appetising food allotted to the i6o PLIGHT. monk to eat with his bread, its cost could never have been fixed at so low a rate as the value of a picta or pite, the most minute of coins. But the meaning of the word was perfectly general. In the ' Lyf of Charles the Crete ' (E. E. T. Soc.) it is used with respect to the diet of Charlemagne : " Whan he took hys repaast he was contente with lytel brede, but as touchyng \hz pytaunce, he ete at- his repaast a quarter of moton, or two hennes, or a grete ghoos." Pidance is still used in Central France in the original sense of pitance, whatever is eaten as a relish with bread. " Les enfans mangent souvent plus de pittance que de pain." In the same dialect " afiidanfant, apitan$ant, appe'tissant. Un mets est apitan$ant quand il fait manger beaucoup de pain." Vocab. de Berri. As we have seen that appetising food is the essential meaning of pitance, it can hardly be doubted that it also explains the etymological origin of the word. Roquefort has the form ptdance, which brings us a step nearer to appetissant. From signifying the relishing portion of food at a meal, the sense of a small portion of anything, and the Spanish senses of ration, daily allowance, pay of troops, salary, fees, naturally follow. The more expensive kind of food would be rationed out, while bread was still allowed at dis- cretion. And frompitanza, a ration or daily pay, was pro- bably formed the verb pitar, to distribute rations or pay, and not the converse. PLIGHT. " Dangerous condition, condition ; also an engagement, promise. The proper sense is ' peril ; ' hence a promise involving risk or peril, a promise given under pain or forfeit, a duty or solemn engagement for which one has to answer. A.S. pliht, risk, danger." Skeat. The train of thought, according to Skeat, is thus danger, dan- gerous condition, condition in general ; danger, dangerous engagement, engagement in general. It is evident that by such a mode of proceeding we might advance from any meaning to any other. It might as well have run, joy, joy- PLUMP. 161 ful condition, condition in general ; advantage, advantage- ous engagement, engagement in general. Nor would there be any etymological satisfaction in tracing a meaning to so highly complex a conception as that of danger. The fact is that two totally different words are con- founded under flight, viz. : i. Plight, condition, which should properly be spelt plite, from the O.Fr. ploit, plot, fold, pleat, bending, thence state and condition. " Tantost le met en si mal plait, A po li fait le cuer criever." He soon puts him in so bad a plight he nearly breaks his heart. Fabliau of Miller and Clerks in Wright's ' Anecdota Literaria/ p. 22. In modern Fr. pli signifies habit, the turn that a business has taken. II a pris son pli : the habit is formed. Donner un bon pli a une affaire : to put it in favourable plight. A like rnetaphor is seen in Bret, pleg, plek, fold, bending, habit. 2. Plight in the sense of en- gagement is from Lat. placittim, O.Fr. plaid, plait, law pro- ceeding, negotiation, convention, engagement; placitare, to negotiate, to agree with. Taliter placitatum est fide media et condictum. Eric. Upsal. in Ducange. In the famous treaty preserved by Nithardus, " Et ab Ludher nul plaid nunquam prindrai qui meon vol cist meon fradre Karle in damno sit : " nullum pactum inibo. " Firent pais e plait al rei David : " they made peace and treaty with K. David. Livre des Rois. The Lat. pladtum appears in Provencal under the forms placht, plait, play, and in Dutch gives rise \.Qplicht,pkcht,pleyte, lis, litigium, judicium, obligatio. Plech- ten, spondere merces probas esse : to plight one's credit for the goodness of the wares. Kil. PLUMP. " However expressive the word may seem, a careful examination of its history will tend to show that it is really a peculiar use of plumb, and derived from F. plomb, Lat. plumbum, lead. ' To fall like lead ' must have been a L 1 62 PLUMP. favourite metaphor from the earliest times." Skeat. From the foregoing sense of the word Skeat entirely separates the O.E. plump, a clump, as well as the adjective plump, full, round, fleshy, which he derives from the radical verb pre- served in the provincial E. plim, to swell, without going farther back. But this separation of an identical form into two distinct words, is quite unnecessary, to an inquirer who will not shut his eyes to the clearest evidence of an imitative origin. And what better evidence can we have of the imi- tative origin of a word than its use as an interjection ? When I say, " Bang ! went the gun," or, " Crack ! went the whip," no one can doubt that bang or crack is meant to re- present the sound of the gun or the whip. Just so, when we speak of falling plump into the water, we express the sound of the fall by the syllable plump. The ' Bremisch Worterbuch ' explains////w/> as an interjection signifying the sound which something heavy makes when it falls into the water. " He smit den steen in't water ; plump ! segt dat : " he threw the stone into the water; plump ! it said. Plum- pen, to fall into the water with a noise represented by the syllable plump, to make such a noise, to splash by beating the water with a pole. He fult in't water, dat det plumpede : he fell into the water, so that it sounded plump ! To tell one something plump is to tell it at once, without circumlocu- tion, like something thrown at once upon the ground before him. On this principle must be explained the expression of plumping at an election, that is to say, casting your entire vote in favour of a single candidate, like a compact mass plumping at once into the water ; and not, as Skeat ex- plains it, giving him a swollen vote. The force of the me- taphor is well illustrated by a passage from the " Spectator " of zyth November 1880 on the scruiin deliste. " M. B. pro- poses that each elector in a department shall have as many votes as there are deputies assigned to his depart- ment. He cannot lump his votes or plump for anybody, but must give in a list containing as many names as there are PLUNGE. 163 vacancies." S\v. plumpa is not only to plump into water, but to let fall a blot of ink. The Swedish uses also the syllable plums ! to represent the sound, and thence dialec- tically, plummsa, to plump into water. The Gaelic repre- sents the sound by the syllables plub, plumb, plum, using them in the form of noun or verb to signify the noise itself, or the act of a sudden fall into water, or the sound of liquid in a half-empty cask. It is impossible to derive these wide- spread forms in such different languages from the Lat. plumbum, and the notion of falling like lead ; but we need not on that account repudiate all etymological connection between the two sets of words. It may well be that the name of plumbum was given to lead as the type of what is heaviest in nature. The heavier and the more compact is the body, the more characteristic is the plump ! with which it falls into the water. For this reason also the syllable plump is applied to what is compact, round, massy, thick, coarse, clumsy. The connection of ideas may be well illustrated by Gael, plub, sound as of a stone falling into water, a sudden plunge, any great soft and unwieldy lump ; plub-cheann, a lumpish head. Macleod. G. plump! an interjection imitating the sound made by a large, thick, and heavy body when it falls suddenly into deep water. Plump, heavy, unwieldy, thick, massive, -clumsy. Kiittner. The O. E. plump, a clump, or compact mass, is a body of a form adapted to exemplify the sound of plumping into water. Swiss bluntschen, to plump into water; bluntschig, thick and plump. PLUNGE. Skeat adopts Diez's derivation " from a Low Lat. plumbicare, not found, but the existence of which is verified by the Picard plonquer, to plunge, dive, due to the same Low Latin form." This is a mode of etymologising to which Diez has frequent resort, and which was only caricatured by Menage. No doubt that Fr. plonger might have been formed from plumbicare if there had been evi- dence of such a form having ever existed, as vcngtr, from 1 64 POODLE. vindicare. But in this instance there is no occasion to resort to any hypothetical forms, and there is the closest connection between plunge and a variety of collateral forms which can hardly be supposed to have a Latin origin. The sound of splashing in water, or of a heavy body falling into water, is one that readily lends itself to imitation, giving rise to Gaelic plub, plump, plum ; G. plump, plumpf, plumps (Schmeller); Sw. plums; G. plotz, platsch, plansch (Saunders); Bohem. blunk (Palkovitsch). The Swiss plumpsen, plumsen, are used as intensitives of the G. plumpen, to plump into water, to splash. Now the sound of a final mps, MS, is easily confounded with that of nts, nds, ns, as is seen in Sw. plummsa, plunnsa, to fall into water, to tramp in wet, Dan. plundse, to splash, and specially, as G. plumpsen, to beat the water with a pole, in order to frighten the fish. Lettish pluntschot, to splash or dabble in water. To blunge clay, in the English potteries, is to mix up clay and water with a plunger. Swiss bluntschen, blunschen, to sound like a heavy body falling into water, to fall into water with such a noise. It is not easy to see how the existence of the hypothetical plumbicare is " verified " by the Picard plonquer, Walloon plonki, to plunge. Inasmuch as Walloon plane corresponds to Fr. plomb, there is no reason why the Walloon and Picard forms should not be the true representatives of G. plumpen. In like manner the imitative plump! is represented by Bohem. blunk! POODLE. " Low G. pudel, pudd-hund, so called because he waddles after his master, or looks fat and clumsy on account of his thick hair ; allied to Low G. pudeln, to waddle, used of fat persons and short-legged animals." Skeat. But the poodle is neither peculiarly fat nor short- legged, nor has he a waddling gait. He is properly a water- dog. A satisfactory origin of the name is to be found in the Dutch poedele, to paddle in water, whence poedel-hond, a poodle, or rough water-dog. Overyssel Almanach. Wes- POOH! 165 terwald putteln, puhteln, to paddle with the hands in water. To puddle clay is to work it up with water. G. pudelnass, wet thoroughly. POOH! "An interjection of disdain. From Icel. pu! pooh ! Due to blowing away from one." Skeat. It is not easy to see why a form should be considered as derived from Icelandic merely because it is peculiar to Icelandic and English. An interjection of this kind, directly expres- sive of feeling, is the last kind of word that would be borrowed from a foreign language. The syllable is so natural a representation of the sound, not of blowing, as Skeat supposes, but of spitting, which is a much more lively expression of disgust and contempt, that the word may well have arisen independently in different languages. In fact, we find the very same syllable in use among the savages of Australia to express dislike. " The men," says Leichardt, " commenced talking to them, but occasionally interrupted their speeches by spitting and uttering a noise like pooh ! pooh ! apparently expressive of their disgust," p. 189. The spitting out of an unsavoury morsel affords a natural type for the expression of disgust and rejection all over the world. " ' Oh ! but you are a madman/ exclaimed the Grand Duke, turning from him and spiffing, as every Rus- sian spits when anything displeases him. It is the highest expression of displeasure or anger." Daily News, March 4, 1878. A slight variation of the word is pah / used by Shakespeare as an interjection of disgust, which is doubt- less a representation of the same emblematic act. " ' All very well/ grumbled Ali ; ' but you won't change the nature of these wretches. They are only half Muslim. Pah-h /' And he spat on the ground as the villager went away." Davis's "Life in Asiatic Turkey," p. 340. More frequently, however, the protrusion of the lips in the act of spitting makes the vowel u the basis of the representative syllable, with an initial /, /, pt, or tw. With the first of these initials we have Maori puhwa, to 1 66 PORRIDGE. spit out ; Lat. spitere, to spit, despuere, to express disgust or disdain, In Sanscrit, fh&fhti expresses the sound of spitting, whence, in Hindustani, the interjection seems to take the form of tuh ! or took ! " ' Beware, Moro. of the master, if thou disobey him in this.' ' Took ! ' cried Moro, spitting contemptuously, 'he dare not disobey me in this.' " Meadow Taylor's ' Tara,' p. 444. In Persian, thu kerdan, as in the Chinook jargon, mamook took, signify to make took, to spit. The double initials of the Greek crruw, to spit, appear reversed in Lith. tpuy ! fie ! In the Galla language the sound of spitting is represented by the syl- lable twu, whence may be explained Fris. twoy ! interjec- tion of disgust when one spits out (Outzen) ; and Sw. twi ! expressive of contempt or abhorrence ; together with the O.K. twish ! tush ! as further developments. PORRIDGE. " The M.E. name was porree or pore ; the suffix idge ( = age) is clearly due to confusion with pottage, '." Skeat. It. porrata, leek-pottage, from porro, a leek. Fr. porree, beets, also potherbs, and thence also pottage made with beets or with other herbs. Cotgr. The assertion that the E. porray or porree was converted \n\.Q porridge by con- fusion with pottage is perfectly arbitrary. The words are not so like as to make confusion between the two at all probable. The change from r to d is unusual, as Skeat himself notices under paddock. On the other hand, we have the Craven form, poddish, intermediate between pottage and porridge, just as eddish is intermediate between eatage and arrish or ersh. In spite of the acknowledged difficulty of the change from r to d, Skeat regards paddock as a corrup- tion of parrock ; why, then, should he boggle at the more usual change in the opposite direction from d to r in the case of pottage, poddish, porridge ? Porridge is a pottage of peas, rice, oatmeal ; but not of leeks or other herbs. POSSESS. " Probably derived from Lat. port- or porti-, towards, a conjectural form of the prefix; and sedere, to sit, remain, continue, as if the sense were to remain near, and PUTTY. 167 hence to have in possession." Skeat. Surely this appeal to a conjectural form is quite unnecessary. Skeat himself, a few lines lower down, explains possum, I am able, as short for -potis-sum or pott- sum, from poti-, crude form of potis, cognate with Sanscr. patis, a master, owner, lord, husband. On the same principle, possideo, for potis-sedeo, I sit as master or owner, would give a much better construc- tion of the meaning " I possess " than Skeat's hypothetical " I sit near." Lat. potior, I become master, have the com- mand of. POT. "The phrase 'to go to pot,' means to be put into the pot, i.e., the melting-pot, from the melting down of old metal." Skeat. To go to the melting-pot would not be a very familiar image to people in general. Evidence of a more forcible meaning of the expression may be drawn from the Swedish dialect putt, pit, abyss, and specially the pit. of hell. Far te putten t Go to hell ! Ha gikk .pyttcs : it turned out ill, went to pot. At pyttes : to the devil. Rietz. PUTTY. Explained by Skeat as equivalent to "potty, belonging to old pots." He points out that Fr. pottain signified the metal of old pots, which was used in brass- founding, and he evidently supposes (with Richardson) that Fr. pot'ee had the same fundamental meaning, although the only evidence to be found of such a signification is Cot- grave's rendering of potee as " brass, copper, tin, pewter, &c., burnt or calcinated." Now potee d'etain, or tin-putty, a material used in the polishing of marble and glass, is composed (as Skeat explains) of oxide of tin, sometimes mixed with oxide of lead. Glazier's putty, on the other hand, is composed of whiting and linseed oil, with or without white-lead. From these premises Skeat proceeds to trace the pedigree of putty, which he can only connect with pot by supposing the original meaning to be the metal of old pots, as furnishing the materials which, when calcined, were known, according to Cotgrave, by the name of potee. Skeat, 1 68 PUTTY. however, takes up the development a stage later, and re- gards the successive senses as, ist, calcined tin or oxide of tin; 2d, oxide of lead; 3d, white-lead; 4th, a preparation containing white-lead, the name being continued even after the white-lead was omitted. The whole etymology is faulty in the highest degree. It leaves several meanings of the word wholly unaccounted for. Potee d'emeril is the pasty mixture of oil and emery used in polishing jewels. Among potters the name of potee was given to a mixture of ochre and water used in glazing with lead. With iron and brass founders it is the plastic material used in making moulds. Besides these applications of the Fr. potee, the name of putty is given by English masons to a plaster of stone-dust and lime, which is used for filling cavities. "The interior of the bed was filled with fine mason's putty, con- sisting of lime and stone-dust." Report on Holborn Via- duct, Times, Dec. 17, 1869. In the next place, we must demur to the statement that putty was ever a synonym of oxide of tin or calcined tin. All that Blount (1674) says is that putty was "a powder made of calcined tin." But the true designation of the powder in question, then as now, was doubtless putty powder, viz., the powder of which putty was made ; the putty itself being the pasty compound used in polishing. The sense of white-lead is wholly unvouched. The only ground there can be for the supposition of such a meaning is the fact that glaziers' putty sometimes contains white- lead ; but it would be as preposterous on that account to conclude that the word had once the signification of white- lead, as it would be to argue that the name of custard was once applied to egg, because egg enters into the composi- tion of custard. But even if it was true that/#/& or putty had once signified calcined tin, instead of a certain pre- paration of it, the name could not have been taken from the fact that the metal calcined was the produce of broken pots, because cooking vessels were never made of solid PUZZLE. 169 tin. Thus the etymology fails at every point, and we have to look in a different direction for an explanation of the word. When we review the different kinds of material to which the name oipotee or putty is technically given, we shall find that they all agree in being a body of a plastic or pasty consistency, however various the elements of which they are composed. Now we have a familiar type of a soft pasty body in Lat. puls, pultis, pap, porridge, cooked preparation of meal and water ; from whence we pass to It. poltiglia, Milanese poltia, Piedmontese potia, pap, or the like, poul- tice, and figuratively, mud, slime, especially that which is found in the trough of a grindstone, or which dribbles down in the sawing of stones, and which, with more or less of lime, constitutes the putty of English masons. Again, the It. spoltiglia is described by Gherardini as consisting of emery powder, " ridutta in poltiglia," reduced to a pasty mass by mixture with oil or water, corresponding exactly to the Fr. potee cTemeril. The softer parts of this spoltiglia, we are informed, are used like tin-putty in the polishing of marble or brass, while the harder residue is used in the grinding and polishing of gems. The Milanese form, spoltij, is applied to a paste of emery powder, or anything of like nature, and also, like It. poltiglia, to the mud from a grind- stone. The series is so complete, from poltiglia, through poltia and potia, to Fr. potee, that we cannot doubt that it exhibits the 'true pedigree of E. putty. PUZZLE. Puzzle, according to Skeat, stands for opposal, a scholastic word signifying questioning, examination, in the same way that pose, originally to examine, and later to defeat by examination, to put to a nonplus, is for oppose, itself a corruption of oppose. " And to Pouert she put this opposayle." Lydgate. " Madame, your apposelle is well inferrid," i.e., your question is well put. Skelton. This derivation appears to me very improbable. Apposal was never a familiar word, and no traces are to be found of i?o PUZZLE. the docked form posal, which is supposed to have been the immediate parent of puzzle. Nor is apposal itself ever found in the sense of perplexity or confusion of mind. It would, moreover, be a violent change from the long o of posal to the short u of puzzle. On the other hand, the sense of perplexity or confusion is expressed in the most natural way by the figure of turbid water impeding the mental view. "My mind is troubled like a fountain stirred, And I myself see not the bottom of it." Troilus and Cressida, iii. 3. On this principle, to muddle, primarily to stir up the mud, to make turbid, in a secondary sense signifies " to cloud or stupefy, to make half drunk." Todd. "Epicurus seems to have had his brains so muddled and confounded, that," &c. Bentley in Todd. In the same sense, to muddy. " Excess muddies the best wit." Grew in Todd. So muddy-headed, muddy-mettled. Now parallel with muddy and muddle, in this figurative sense, we have the familiar muzzy, stupefied with drink, and muzzle (Lincolnshire), to drink to excess. Halliwell. In these forms we have, I believe, a clue to the true etymology of puzzle. Puddle signifies a plash of dirty water ; to puddle, like muddle, to stir up mud and water, to render turbid. It is, then, as we have seen in the case of muddle, applied to disturbance of the understanding. " Something, sure, of state Either from Venice, or some unhatched practice Made demonstrable here in Cyprus to him, Hath puddled his clear spirit." Othello, iii. 4. " The gift of tongues had fairly broken out among the crazed and weakliest of his wholly rather dim and weakly flock. How are the mighty fallen ! my own high Irving come to this, by paltry popularities and Cockney admira- tions puddling such a head ! " Reminiscences, Thos. Carlyle, i. 319. QUAFF. 171 The same degraded pronunciation which changed muddy and muddle to mitzzy and muzzle, has given \\spuzzle parallel will puddle, in the sense of mental disturbance. The puzzled will is used in ' Hamlet ' in exactly the same sense as the puddled spirit in ' Othello.' " The dread of something after death, The undiscovered country from whose bourne No traveller returns, puzzles the will." Disturbs or confuses the will. Cotgrave seems to have understood puzzle itself in the sense of physical disturbance. He translates Fr. touiller, filthily to mix or mingle, confound or shuffle together, also to bedirt, begrim, besmear; and retouiller, to mingle, meddle, puzzle, or confound again. To muddle over one's accounts and to puzzle over them are synonymous expressions. Other examples of the inter- change of ddl and zzl are seen in fuddled and fuzzled, stupefied with drink ; snuddle and snuzzle, to nestle, cuddle. Halliwell. QUAFF, To. Skeat adopts the derivation from Sc. quaich, quegh, queff, a cup ; making the word to signify, to drink out of a cup. Gaelic cuach, a cup, bowl, hollow vessel. This etymology, however, does not explain the characteristic meaning of the word, viz., to drink deeply, to drink in full draughts. Nor does it account for the form quaught, Sc. waucht, synonymous with quaff, wauch. " I quaught, I drinke all out. Wyll you quaght with me ? voulez vous boyre d'autant avecques moy ? " Palsgrave. A child is said to wacht when sucking so forcibly as to swallow a considerable quantity at once. Jamieson. The word, in fact, signifies a copious draught. A waught of ale, a draught of ale. Ramsay. " Thay skynk the wyne, and wauchtis cowpys full." Dong. Virg. t 2IO, 6. " Nather lord nor knicht he late alane, Except his coup war wachtit out alway." Nichol Burne. 172 RACK. In the same sense ivauch. " They -wauchit at the wicht wyne." Dunoar, in Jamicson. Now the bodily action in drawing a deep breath and in taking a full draught of liquid is much the same, and we speak accordingly of a draught of liquid and a draught of air. The O.Du. soeffen, scffen, is explained by Kilian in the sense of supping up or drinking, and also in that of blowing ; sorbere, sorbillare, and also, flare. Sc. south, sou/", to breathe deep in sleep = G. saufen, to drink in full draughts, to drink deep. G. blasen, to blow, is used in Swabia in the sense of drinking deep. Schmid. The inhalation of tobacco is in some languages spoken of as drinking tobacco. In accordance with these analogies it seems to me by far the most probable that quaff, with the O.E. quaught, Sc. wauch, and waucht, are to be regarded as close relations of the E. waff, whiff, waft, expressing movement of the air, W. chwaff, a puff or gust of wind. A whiff of tobacco is a single inhalation or a passing odour of it So waff is pro- vincially used in the sense of a bad smell. Halliwell. In Scotch it signifies a passing glance. To waiff or waff is also used in the fundamental sense of blowing. " Ane wilde huntreis With wind waffing hir haris lowsit of trace." Doug. Virg., 23, 2. To whiffle, to blow to and fro. " If the winds whiffle about to the south." Dampier, in Richardson. To waft, to blow along, to carry on by the movement of the air. BACK WINE, To. Explained by Skeat, " To pour off liquor, to subject it to a fermenting process." The latter half of this explanation is, however, a mistake, arising probably from an attempt to bring in the meaning of Cotgrave's vin raqu'e, " small or corse wine, squeezed from the dregs of grapes, already drained of their best moisture." To rack wine is simply to pour it off the lees, to draw it off into a clean cask. Thus Minsheu speaks of " rackt wines, i.e., RAIL. 173 wines cleaned and purged." Skeat would look for the origin of the word to an O. Fr. raquer, from an earlier rasquer, corresponding to Sp. rascar, to scrape ; the evidence of which seems to be preserved in Fr. racaille, compared with E. rascal, the offscourings or scrapings of the people. But the notion of scraping is utterly incongruous to such an operation as that of drawing off wine from the lees, or of gleaning from the dregs of the grapes the remains of their juices by an infusion of water; and therefore it affords no explanation of the expression of racking wine. Skeat does not advert to the derivation given in my Dictionary, from Languedoc araca le bi, transvaser le vin (Diet. Languedo- cien-Franc,.), which itself may be deduced in the most natural way from Langued. raco or draco, le marc de la ven- dange, the husks or dregs of the grapes, corresponding to Norman draque, Fr. drache, driche, brewers' grains. From the same source may be explained Cotgrave's vin raque, what is drawn from the dregs of the grapes. " Les marcs qui n'ont point etc pressures," says the Diet. Languedoc., "font une bonne piquette, ou de la buvande." Fr. rache de goudron, dregs of pitch. A precisely analogous formation to that of the verb araca, to rack wine, from raco, dregs, may be seen in the Vene- tian morgante, travasatore di.olio (Boerio), from morga, lees of oil. BAIL, To. Immediately from Fr. rattier, " to jest, deride, mock." Cotgrave. Skeat then, after Diez, traces the derivation through the Sp. rallar, to grate or scrape, and figuratively (rallar las tripas, to scrape one's guts), to annoy, importune, molest, to a supposed Low. Lat. radulare, dim. of radere, to scrape. And no doubt jesting or raillery may often annoy one, but the meanings are perfectly distinct j and neither is the Sp. rallar ever used in the sense of jest- ing or making sport, nor the Fr. railler in that of molest- ing or annoying. There is no word corresponding to Fr. railler in Spanish, Italian, or Provencal. In Portg. ralar 174 REPAIR. is to scrape, ralar as tripas, grievously to annoy, but ralhar, to jest, which may probably be borrowed from the Fr. railler, as the word is wanting in Spanish and Catalonian. On the other hand, the Du. rallen, rellen, to chatter, tattle, talk idly (parler dtourdiment, parler k tort et k travers, cla- bauder Halma), was formerly used in the sense of jest- ing ; blaterare, garrire, jocari, nugari, fabulare. Kil. Rel, strepitus, garrulitas. Binnart. The sense of chattering or empty talk could hardly be derived from Fr. railler, to jest, but the train of thought from rattling, empty sound, idle talk, to jesting and raillery, is in accordance with the natural course of development. One sense of rattle given by Johnson is empty and loud talk ; to rattle, to scold, to rail at with clamour. "He sent for him in a rage, and rattled\\vn\ with a thousand traitors and villains for robbing his house." L'Estrange in Todd. A rattle i as Du. ralle (babillarde. Halma), W. Flanders ratel-bek, a chatterbox. Du. ratelen, to make a rattling noise, figuratively to babble. Bomhoff. Da. ralde, ralle, to rattle, to roll along with a rattling noise. At ralde hen over steenbroen, to rattle over the pavement ; ralde or ralle, to chatter, talk idly. " Jeg troer du r alter :" I think you are joking ; said to one who is telling an im- probable story. Molbech. Norwegian radla, ralla, to talk, to jabber. ^ Compare E. rattle- in the throat, Da. ralle, Fr. rale. REPAIR. To resort to. Fr. repairer (older form re- pairier], to haunt, frequent, lodge in. Cotgr. Skeat, follow- ing Diez and Scheler, derives it from Lat. repatriare (Sp. repatriar), to return to one's country. From repatriare, however, to repairier is a wide step, and a still wider one to the It. riparare in the expression, ripararsi, to frequent, te haunt, to resort often to, to fly to for shelter or refuge. Altieri. From repatriare (if the word had been in familiar use) might have been derived the sense of returning, but it fails to give us a very natural explanation of the Fr. repaire, the den or covert wherein a wild beast lurks ; a lodging or RISK. 175 haunt, the place whereto one usually resorts. The older form of the word, repairier, shows that the verb is derived from the substantive and not vice versa. And so the Ital. ripararsi is to make one's self a riparo, a shelter or place of security, from riparare, to ward off, to defend. Far riparo in un luogo, to resort to a place. It is impossible to derive the Italian forms from repatriare, and it is not easy to un- derstand how any one can separate riparo and ripararsi from Fr. repairs and repairier. RISK. Fr. risque, It. rischio, risigo, risco. Florio. Skeat adopts Diez' conjectural derivation from Sp. risco, a steep rock. He treats it broadly as "a maritime word borrowed from Spanish, from risco, a steep abrupt rock ; from whence the sense of danger may easily have arisen among sailors." In this etymology there are difficulties at every step. The assertion that risk is a maritime word goes a step in advance of Diez, who says that it might have been a sailor's term. Then it must be noted that risk in Spanish is not risco, but riesgo, from whence Fr. risque could not have been borrowed. Nor is it a very easy step from Lat. resfcare, which Diez regards as the origin of the word, to Sp. risco itself. Skeat gives much weight to the agreement between modern Prov. rezeque, risk, and rezegd, to cut off; but as there is no corresponding form in Provencal signifying a rock, the argument entirely fails, as it is certain that there is no direct connection between the notions of a risk and of cutting off. Even if there were not the wide difference between risco and riesgo to be got over, it seems to me that we have a far more natural type of risk or danger in the notion of slipperiness expressed by Bret. . riska or riskla, to slide or slip ; riskuz, slippery. As falling in scriptural language is the usual type of destruction, so a slippery place would naturally typify danger. " Let their ways be dark and slippery," Psalm xxxv. 6. "Surely thou didst set them in slippery places ; thou castedst them down into destruction," Psalm Ixxiii. 17. The precise metaphor 1 76 SCARCE. is seen in Icel. svatt, a slippery place, and met. a risk. " Var vict svafi um at mart manna mundi drukna. It was upon the slide, was imminent (there was imminent risk) that many people should be drowned." Cleasby. It will be observed that the Ital. rischio (for riscld) corresponds to the form riskla, as Fr. risque to riska. SCARCE. It. scarso, scarce, scant, sparing, a niggard; Sp. escaso, short, little, scanty, defective, narrow, parsimonious; O.Fr., escars, eschars, scarce, needy, scanty, saving, niggard. Cotgr. Skeat adopts Muratori's derivation from Low Latin scarpsus, escarpsus, for excerpsus. " The literal sense," he says, " is selected, extracted, or picked out, hence select, and so scarce." This would apply to the mainly English sense of few in number, rare. Muratori, having in mind the Italian sense of deficient, scanty, says that cxcerpere is to pick something off a mass, and so to reduce it in quan- tity or in number. He gives the etymology as a mere guess, with the apology that if it does not hit the mark, he has nothing better to offer. And with so wide a difference, as well in sound as in meaning, between scarpsus and scarso, the guess is a very hazardous one. Skeat, indeed, cites Diez as saying that excarpsus is found just with the sense of It. scarso. But this I believe is an oversight. Diez certainly says nothing of the kind in his article on scarso, where his words are : " In der that ist ein partic. excarp- sus ganz im sinne der neuen sprachen," i.e., is just in the spirit of the newer languages, which favour the participial termination sits, rather than tus. In all the instances of scarpsus cited by Muratori (Diss. ii. 323) the word has exactly the sense of excerptus. Corresponding forms are Du. schaers, sparing, scarce, and Bret, skarz, short, scanty, niggard. Now when we come to consider whether the Bret, word was derived from the O.Fr. escars, or the latter (as well as the Italian and Spanish forms) from a Celtic root, we must observe that skarz is used also in the very different sense of purified, SCORCH. 177 cleansed, a sense which cannot possibly be derived from the French. We thus are led to seek the origin of the word in Celtic ground, where we find Bret, skarza, to diminish, retrench, shorten, and fig. to spare, to be niggardly, to rob or steal ; also to scour, cleanse, sweep. The more simple form, karza, preserves the fundamental sense of scraping, which harmonises all the applications of skarza, as well as the significations of the French, Italian, and Spanish forms above mentioned. Karza is specially applied to carrying away the dung from stables or scraping the mud from the roads. We cleanse carrots, fish, and other things by scraping them. Karza also, like skarza, is used in the sense of stealing, a signification expressed in other cases by the figure of scraping. Thus Bret, skraba, to scratch or scrape, also signifies to steal. The connection with the notions of avarice and of lessening or curtailing is obvious. It. moneta scarsa, light money, is money that has lost weight by scraping or rubbing. Cogliere scarso, is to strike obliquely, scraping or grazing the surface instead of striking it full. Du. schaers afscheren is to shave clean off, to cut off in a scraping way. The root appears in Welsh in the form of carthu, to scour or cleanse, to clean out stables or cow-houses ; ysgarth, offscourings. SCORCH, To. Derived by Skeat from O.Fr. escorcher, escorcer, to flay or pluck off the skin. But we have no instance of escorcher in the sense of scorching, nor does the English word specially signify to strip off the skin. More- over a derivation from escorcher is hardly compatible with the Old English forms scorken, scorcle. Skorkelin, ustulo, ustillo. Prompt. "All the people that the violent wind Nothus scordith, and bakyth the brennyng sandes by his drie heate." Chaucer, Boethius. "For J>att te land wass dri33edd all, And scorrcncdd J>urrh fe druhhj>e." Ormttlum, 8626. The word can hardly be distinct from Du. schroken. Low M 1 78 SCULL. G. (Osnabriick) schroggen, to scorch, singe. Probably from direct imitation of the sound. Compare Bohem. sskwrciti, to crackle or fizz as butter on the fire; zsskwrknauti, to fizz in singeing ; sskwrliti, to scorch, singe ; sskwrknautise, skwrkatise, to shrivel up. Skeat explains singe, on a similar principle, as signifying to make to sing, from the noise given out by the singed object. SCULL. " Every rowing man," says Skeat, " knows the essential difference between sculls and oars to consist in this, that the blade of the scull is hollowed out, as it were, and slightly curved, whilst the oar-blade is much flatter ; oars for sea-boats are quite flat." Hence he explains scull from Icel. skdl, a hollow ; Sw. sk&lig, concave, hollow. I have always understood the distinction between oars and sculls to be that a pair of sculls are rowed by a single sculler, while in the case of oars there is a rower to each oar. The comparative hollowness of the sculls in common use is an accidental difference. In sculling a boat, or row- ing it by a single oar at the stern, moving to and fro like a fish's tail, any hollowness of the scull would be a great disadvantage. It seems to me, from the analogy of the O.Fr. gache, an oar, gacher, to row, compared with gacher, to rinse linen in the stream, to work in wet, that the more probable origin may be found in the element scull preserved in scullery, the place for rinsing dishes ; Norse skol, splashing, dashing, of the waves or of heavy rain ; Icel. skola, to wash. SENTINEL, SENTRY. Skeat adopts Galvani's deriva- tion from Lat. sentina, the pump of a ship. The word, he says, is certainly of Italian origin, and it does not seem possible to derive it from anything but sentina, through some form equivalent to Lat sentinator, the man who pumps bilge-water out of the hold of a ship. From nautical use, the word may afterwards have been transferred to military affairs, the special sense being due to the constant SENTINEL. 179 attention which a ship's pump requires. The man in charge of the pump, if the ship is leaky, must not quit his post. The suggestion does not pretend to be anything more than a pure conjecture, and it appears to me a most improbable one. The fact that the word, in all the Romance languages, is feminine, shows that it must, in the first instance, have signified a thing, and not a person. Moreover, the suppo- sition of a person specially appointed in ships to watch the pump is wholly imaginary. There is no name for such an officer in the nautical service of any European country. And how familiar must the name of such an officer have been before it could have been used to designate the sen- tinel who keeps watch at a certain post in military service i There is no period in the history of any of the Romance nations at which the bulk of the people must not have been far more conversant with military than with nautical affairs, and it is most improbable that the name of such a primary duty as that of a sentinel should have been left to be named from any special case of watching on board a ship. The apparent anomaly of a male agent being named by a feminine noun is fully explained by the etymology offered in my Dic- tionary. The watch of a sentinel is confined to a certain beat or path, beyond the limits of which he is on no account to go, and it is, I believe, this limited path which constitutes the fundamental meaning of the word sentinel or sentry, and which may still be recognised in the expression of keeping sentinel or sentry, i.e., keeping his appointed beat. So in Fr. mettre en sent indie is to place one to watch a certain tract of ground, to set him on a certain beat ; lever de sen- tinelle, to take him from his beat, to relieve guard. The application to place and not to person may be observed in a passage of the ' Sat. Menipp.' cited by Littre" : " Qui se fasche quand on 1'appelle a la porte, a la sentinelle, a la tranchee et au rempart, il n'est point de la bonne part." Here the sentinelle is classed with other local scenes of the soldier's duty, the gate, the trenches, or the rampart. l8o SHARK. Now the name of sentinel, in the sense of a short path, may be explained in the most natural manner as a secondary diminutive of the O.Fr. sente (Lat. semita), the origin of the modern sentier, a path, of which several diminutives are noted by Roquefort : sentine, sentelle, senteret. The very common addition of a second diminutive termination would convert sentine into sentinelle ; while the last of the foregoing forms, senteret, imported unaltered (in pronunciation) into English, would become sentry (or sentery, as it is written by Milton), which Skeat vainly attempts to explain as a cor- ruption of sentinel. It is impossible that sentinel, by any slurring of pronunciation, could have changed into sentry. The derivation I have proposed from the sense of the sen- tinel's beat is felt by Skeat himself to give so natural an explanation of the word, that he supposes the corruption to sentry to have arisen, from sentinel being "understood (in English popular etymology) as being due to Fr. sentier, a path ; an idea taken from the sentinel's beat." But if the connection in meaning was so obvious, why should not sentry have come straight from Fr. senteret, to which Skeat refers in the next paragraph ? The word sentier itself, in some provinces of France, is used (according to Scheler) in the sense of watchman or police. The only objection brought by Skeat against my etymology is that the word is certainly of Italian origin, but he gives no reason what- ever for his conviction that such is the case. It is just as easy for sentinelle to pass into sentinella as the converse, and it is strongly in favour of a French origin of the word that military terms all over Europe are generally borrowed from that language. SHARK, To SHARK. Shark, as the name of the fish, says Skeat, is generally supposed to be from Lat. carcharus, a kind of dog-fish, and thence sharking, voracious, greedy, prowling. The meaning of shark or shirk is explained by Skinner, " seruscator, parasitus, qui quoquo modo qusestum capit, et alieno sumptu deliciatur." There is, however, no SHARK. 181 French form corresponding to carcharus, and it is impossible that shark, a word of English popular language, can come direct from the Latin term. And as there is no correspond- ing name of the fish in the Scandinavian or Teutonic lan- guages, the presumption is all in favour of the name of the shark being taken from his pre-eminent- voracity, rather than that the expression of sharking, or looking out eagerly for gain without regard to the means employed, should be a metaphor from the habits of the shark. In this way the word would correspond to the Du. schrok, a glutton, a miser; schrokken, to devour greedily. From this form, rather than from G. schurke, must be explained Fr. escroc, a swindler ; escroquer, to obtain by foul means ; escroquer un diner, to spunge for a dinner ; It. scroaare, to do anything at another man's costs and charges, to shark or shift for anything, to shark for victuals, to live by wit, to smell out victuals. Fl. The radical image seems to be scraping up without selection everything one can lay hands on. The Bret. skraba, to scratch or scrape, also signifies to steal. Skrapa, to claw, to carry off; also in the sense of Fr. escroquer ; to obtain by cheating. Halma renders Du. en gierige schrok by " vrek die regts en links schraapt" a miser who scrapes or sharks right and left. Where it is said that young Fortinbras " Hath in the skirts of Norway, here and there, SharKd up a list of landless resolutes For food and diet," the sense is, scraped up, got together by hook or by crook. When Laud was accused of fraud in contracting for tobacco licenses, it was said that "he might have spent his time much better and more for his grace in the pulpit than thus sherking and raking (scraping and raking) in the tobacco shops." State Trials in Richardson. The occurrence of parallel forms beginning with r and gr, or skr, shr, respec- tively, is very common. Thus we have the synonyms rub 1 82 SHED. and scrub. Fr. raper corresponds to E. scrape ; Fr. rantper to Bret, scrampa, to crawl ; E. rumple to G. schrumpel, &c. So I should explain shark (corresponding to Du. schrokK) as a sibilated form from Norw. harka, to scrape, or (with transposition of the r) of Bret, raka or graka, Norw. raka, E. rake, to scrape. Skeat might explain the word (like smirk, as an extension of the root smir, smile ; or smirch, from smear) from G. scharren, to scrape, rake, scratch. We may trace the same fundamental connection between Du. and G. schurke, a rogue, knave, shark, cheat (Kuttner), and Du. schurken, to scratch, whence schurkpaal, a scratching post for cattle. SHED, To. To part, scatter, cast abroad, pour, spill. Skeat. All these senses are supposed by him to be derived from A.S. sceadan, to part, separate, distinguish. Stratman, he says, makes a distinction between M.E. scheden,to pour, and schceden, to part, and compares the former with O.Fris. schedda, to shake. Skeat condemns this distinction, saying that all the senses go back to that of to part, hence to dis- perse, scatter. A comparison, however, of the Dutch and German forms conclusively shows, I think, that Stratman is right. The older sense of G. schutten, now obsolete, although provincially preserved, was to shake, of which Sanders gives several examples, and it is sufficiently evidenced by .the frequentatives schiitteln, schiittern. The modern use of the word is explained by Kuttner, "to shoot dry or pour liquid bodies with a kind of violence," i.e., to shake them out of the receptacle in which they are held. "Getreide, kohlen aus einem sacke schutten," to empty corn or coals out of a sack, to shake them out. The term is then transferred to liquid bodies. " Wasser schutten" to spill or shed water one is carrying in a vessel, to shake it over the rim of the vessel. " Wein in ein fassz schutten ," to pour wine into a vessel. " Blut schutten," to shed blood. The notion of shaking gives a much more lively image of shedding or scattering abroad a loose or liquid substance than that of SILLABUB. 183 dividing into parts. The / of schiitten. is exchanged for d in the Low G. schudden, schuddeln, to shake ; schudden, to pour. Brem. Wort. In O.Fris. schudden takes the form of schedda, to shake, corresponding to E. shed, in the applied sense of pouring or scattering abroad. SHED. A slight shelter, a hut. Treated by Skeat merely as another form of shade, which is written ssed (for shed] in the Ayenbite of Inwit. But shade is by no means the prominent character in our notion of a shed, the primary purpose of which is protection from the weather. It may be far more probably explained from Du. schut-dack, an open roof for shelter against the weather, a shed ; from schutten, Low G. schutten, schudden, to ward off, to protect. In Suffolk a shed is called shod or shiid. Similar changes, as well of the vowel as consonantal sounds, are seen in G. schiitten, to empty out, to pour, Low G. schudden, to pour (Brem. Worterb. ), E. shed, as in shedding tears, a tree shed- ding its leaves, &c. SILLABUB. A mess of curdled milk. " Laict aigre, whay; also a sillibub or merry bo wke." Cot. Silly bank, a sillabub. Merrybauks, a cold posset. Halliwell. From these equivalent forms Skeat argues that sillibouk is the original form, sillibub, a corruption. It is obvious, he says, that a corruption from bouk to bub is easy, whereas a change from bub to bouk is phonetically impossible. It appears to me that neither of these changes by way of mere corruption is at all easy, but that there is no great difference in the possibility of the two. The probability appears to me that sillilouk has sprung, not by corruption of sillibub, but by confusion with the synonymous merribouk, I would ex- plain sillabub from being slapped up or slubbered up. To slap up, to eat quickly, to lick up food. Halliwell. Dan. slubre, Low G. slubbern, to sup up soft food with a noise represented by the sound of the word. " We will ga to the dawnes to slubber up a sillibub" Two Lancashire Lovers, in Halliwell. On this principle the word would be the exact 1 84 SKETCH. equivalent of the Low G. slabUut, Swiss schlabutz, spoon meat, explained by Stalder as schlabb uus, from schlabbcn, schlappen, to slap or sup up food with a certain noise, and uus, out. Schlabbete, schlappete, weak soup. Stalder. A preparation like sillabub, " a certain drink made of milk, sugar, &c." (Bomhoff), is in Dutch called slemp, from slem- pen, to banquet, to eat greedily ; Bav. slampen, to lap like a dog. A similar insertion of a vowel between the initial s and / is seen in Fr. salope compared with Swab, schlappe, a slut. SKETCH. Du. schets, G. schizze, It. schizzo, an engross- ment or first rough draught of anything. Skeat follows Diez in the derivation from Lat. schedium, an extemporary poem, anything hastily made ; schedius, made hastily. This is a far-fetched explanation from a very unfamiliar Latin word, and both in form and meaning it is a wide step from schedium to schizzo. The fundamental meaning of It. schiz- zare is to spirt out liquid, to splash, to squirt, " also to dash or dabble with dirt or mire, to blur or blot ; also to draw the first rough draught or engrossment of any work, as of painting or writing." Florio. It is an obvious metaphor to speak of a drawing or writing as being hastily dashed off. So from Du. kladde, a blot, a spot of dirt, splash of mud, kladden, to splash, to dirty, we pass to kladden, to daub or paint badly (Kil.); klad, a spot, blot, stain; a draught or sketch, day-book, memorandum. Bomhoff. Low G. kladde, the first project, scheme, or design of a writing. In the same way Ital. schizzo is a splash of mud as well as a sketch. In the face of such an analogy as the foregoing it is hard to imagine what could lead any one to suppose that the two senses of It. schizzo belonged to radically different words. And certainly no one would think of de- riving schizzo, a splash, from Lat. schedium. SLAB. A flat unworked piece of marble, stone, wood, tin. A slab of wood is the outside piece of a tree sawn up into boards. Regarded by Skeat as signifying "a smooth SMACK. 185 piece, being connected with North E. slafe, which is borrowed from Icel. sleipr, slippery." Nothing but a fore- gone conclusion that the word is related with these latter forms could make the author explain it as a smooth piece. It corresponds exactly to Languedoc esdapo, a chip, slab of wood or unworked stone, from esclapa, to split wood, divide it into quarters : le faire aller en eclats. Esdapa unofusto, to rough-hew a beam. Esdapa la testa, to split one's skull. It seems to be a parallel form with Fr. edater, to fly into fragments, from the syllable clap, representing the crack of the splitting body. SMACK. Skeat supposes that smack, a sounding blow, a loud kiss, or the sound that one makes in the enjoyment of relishing food, is essentially distinct from smack, a taste, of which latter he says, " From a root SMAK, signifying taste; remoter origin unknown." The other smack he has no difficulty in referring to an imitative origin. His sole ground for this radical distinction is that he commonly finds different forms signifying to do something with a smack, and to taste. Svv. smacka, to smack the chops or lips in eating ; smaka, to taste ; Du. smakken, to cast on the ground (to smack down) ; smaken, to taste ; Low. G. smakken, to smack the lips, smekken, to taste. But in all these cases the simple idea of taste is signified by the same syllable smak, which is used as an imitation of the sound made by the lips in eating or kissing, or by a smart blow with a flat surface. When the verb was intended to bear a direct reference to such a sound, it was formed by the mere addition of a verbal ending to the imitative syllable, but when the audible characteristic of the phenomenon has passed out of view, the vowel of the root is somewhat modified in the formation of the verb, as in other cases where a verb is derived from a substantive. If any mental affection is to be designated by the representation of an outward symptom, there is none that lies so open to that principle of expression as the enjoyment of taste. 1 86 SPELL. SPELL, To." To tell the names of the letters of a word. From A.S. spelltan, to declare, relate, tell, speak, discourse. The original sense was to say or tell the letters, but it would seem that the word was sooner or later confused with the Old and Prov. E. spell in the sense of a splinter of wood, as though to spell were to point out letters with a splinter of wood. So in O.Du. we have spelle, a pin, with a striking resemblance to spellen, to spell letters or words. Neverthe- less this resemblance, brought about by long association, is due to the assimilation of the word for splinter to the verb, rather than the contrary." Skeat. So that Skeat admits that the use of a pointer in spelling was so general as to change the name of a splinter from speld, the true form of the word, to spell or spill. Of the widespread use of a splinter of wood or the like for the foregoing purpose we have ample evidence. Thus Palsgrave has " Festue, to spell with, festeu." In Swiss Romance the little stick used for the purpose is called butza (Fr. buchette) ; in Langue- doc, toco (Fr. louche). If there had been no such word as spell in the sense of speak or tell, the explanation of the spelling of words from the spell or splinter with which the letters were pointed out, would have been perfectly satis- factory, and of course the inherent probability of this de- rivation can in nowise be impaired by the fact that the verb to spell had also the sense of telling or declaring. Only we have to weigh against each other the arguments in favour of the two etymologies respectively. Now the verb spell, to declare, taken by itself without express mention of the letters of the word, would indicate no characteristic feature of the operation of spelling in the modern sense of the word. It might as well signify announcing the words of a writing, or reading it currently off. But when, in learning to read, a pointer was habitually used to call attention to one letter after another, the menrion of spell, in the sense of a pointer, would characterise the operation of spelling in the liveliest way. Moreover, we are informed by Cotgrave that the STINGY. 187 word was written speak as well as spell, a variation which has no corresponding prototype in the case of spell, to dis- course, but is clearly accounted for in the other etymology by the obsolete speal, a splinter. "A splint or speall of wood." Florio. So S\v. spiela, spi&la, Fris. spjeald, a splinter; letter-spjealding, spelling. The Du. spelle or spelde, a pin, probably signified in the first instance a splinter ; and thence spellen, to spell in reading. It is true that the Du. spellen has the same double meaning with E. spell ; but Skeat himself mentions another form which exhibits the same relation between the senses of a splinter and the operation of spelling, without being open to his explanation from the sense of telling the names of the letters. Halli- well has spelder, a splinter; spelder of wood, esclat. Palsgr. As a verb it is used in Yorkshire in the sense of spelling, and is also found in that sense in the " Ormulum," 1. 16346 " Adamess name Adam iss all Wi]>|> fowwre staffess (letters) Speldttdd? It would be a most violent assumption to suppose that the verb spelder is here a modification of the obsolete spell, to declare, and that spelder, the noun (instead of the original speld), is an accommodation arising from the use of a splinter in speldering or spelling. For one thing, the term spelder is by no means confined to such minute splinters as would be employed in spelling, but is used in the ' Avowing of King Arthur' for the splinters of a broken spear. It is also found in the Du. speldernieuw, synonymous with splinternienw, spick and span new. It is far more rational to suppose that spelder, to spell words, is from spelder, the splinter used in pointing out the separate letters ; and being driven to this explanation in the case of spelder, analogy should lead us to a similar derivation of spell in the modern sense, from spell, a splinter. STINGY. Identified by Skeat with the Norfolk stingy, nipping, unkindly, of a cold east wind ; cross, ill-humoured, 1 88 TALK. churlish, to be explained as stinging. It is in vain, how- ever, that Skeat treats it as an easy step from these senses to the ordinary signification of niggardly, meanly sparing. There is no logical connection between a cross, untoward temper and a tendency to spare. If the two senses really belong to a single word, they must be harmonised in some other way than a derivation from the notion of stinging. It is on that account that I suppose the word to be a corrup- tion of skingy, which, according to Halliwell, is used in Lincolnshire in the sense of stingy, niggardly. He says, indeed, that it has also in Suffolk the sense of cold and nipping, applied to the weather ; but as neither Moor nor Forby give it in that sense, I think that it must be a mistake of Halliwell confounding it with stingy. Skeat argues that it is as likely that skingy should be a corruption of stingy as the converse; but for skingy there is an obvious origin in the provincial skinch, to give scant measure, to pinch and spare Halliwell; schinching, niggardly, parsi- monious Mrs. Baker; from Line, kinch, Northampton s chinch^ a small bit. "Just give me a schinch of your cake." In the same way, O.E. chinch, Fr. chiche, niggardly, com- pared with Fr. chic, It. cica, a little bit. TALK, To. From Sw. tolka, Icel. tulka, Lith. tulkoti, to interpret. Skeat. "It is quite clear," he says, "that the vowel a in the English word is due to confusion with M.E. fallen, talen, to tell tales." Whenever an etymologist is inclined to say that a point is quite clear, he should take it as a warning that it will be felt as a stumbling-block by his hearers. And so it is in this instance. How should tolka in foreign speech be confounded by an English hearer with talen in his own language ? It must be observed that tolka in the Scandinavian languages is never used in the sense Qitalk, nor was talk known in English in the sense of interpret. It is hard to conceive, therefore, how the word could have been caught up into English in the much more extended sense and modified form of talk. Anyhow it is extremely improbable TALK. 189 that a word signifying so very special a mode of exercising the faculty of speech as the interpreting a foreign language should have been extended to the use of speech in general. It would be much simpler, in accordance with Skeat's own system of etymology, to regard it as an extension (talk} of Icel. tal, talk, as he explains smirk from the root SMIR-K, extended from SMIR (M.H.G. smireri), smile. But, in fact, I believe, we must look to a different quarter. We must premise that the designation of a thing seems mostly to be taken from an exaggerated exhibition of the character named, and secondly, that the idea of excessive talking is often expressed by reference to the sound of the agitation of water. Thus G. waschen is both to wash and to tattle ; Bav. schwadern, schwatteln, to splash, dabble ; also to chatter, tattle ; G. schwabbeln, to splash, is also used in the sense of chattering; Swab, schwappeln, to splash, also to speak quick and confusedly. From the same radical form, with inversion of the mute and the liquid, we have Swiss schwalpen, to splash, and Da. dial, svalpe, to tattle. E. dabble, to paddle in the wet, G. dial, dabbeln, to tattle. Deutsch. Mundarten, iii. 373. E. daggle, taggle (Mrs. Baker), to trail in wet and dirt ; bedaggled, bedabbled, dirtied ; daggly, wet, showery. Halliwell. To these last forms correspond the Ober Deutsch taggeln, tegeln, teke/n, to dabble, daub, teglich, teklich, dirty. Deutsch. Mund., iii. 344. In Ital. again we have taccolare (which must ori- ginally have signified to splash or dabble, as shown by taccato, bedashed, speckled, and taccola, a bungling piece of business), to babble or chatter. Hence taccola, a daw (to be compared with E. chatter-pie, a magpie), a tattling won.an. With inversion of the liquid and mute, as in schwappeln, schwalpen, we have Bav. dalken, to dabble in the wet, also to bungle or work unskilfully; dalken, dolken, to stutter, sputter, speak imperfectly, and finally to talk. Schmeller. G. talgen, talken, to dabble, then to tattle or talk foolishlv. Sanders. The same inversion of the con- 1 90 TIPPET. sonants above mentioned shows the correspondence of It. taccola with Low G. talk, taalke, a daw, a tattling woman. TIPPET. Borrowed, according to Skeat, from Lat. tapete, cloth, hangings. To this etymology there are objections on all sides. It is most improbable that a word signifying carpet or hangings should have been borrowed to designate so widely different a thing as a light article of clothing. And neither in Latin nor in any of the Romance languages is tapete, or any corresponding term, used in the sense of tippet. The tippet was properly an ecclesiastical or academical habiliment. "As the monks had their cowles, caprons, or whodes, and their botes, so they had their long typpettes, their prestes cappes." Bale, in Richardson. Typpet for a priest, cornette. Palsgrave. It consisted originally of the strangely lengthened tip of the hood, which could either be wound round the head or wrapped as a comforter round the neck, but otherwise hung down behind, and was called in Low Lat. liripipium, collipendium, retropendium. " Cum Hripipiis ad modum cor- darum circa caput advolutis." Knyghton in Due. "Longa tunica vestitus, nigro caputio, cum grandi liripipio collo indutus," " Liripipium sive timpam, retro latam, duplicem et oblongam habens per dorsum dependentem." Due. The synonymous timpa occurring in the last quotation is from Du. timp^ cornu, angulus (a tip), also (Fris.) focale, fascia 'coll um ambiens, et a frigore cervicem defendens (a tippet), vulgo collipendium. Kil. " Leripipium, zippe, kogelzipp, kappenzipfel, timpe van der kogelen, temp van een kaproen" (the tip of a cowl or cape). Dief. Supp. Due. Thus tippet appears to be a diminutive of tip, cor- responding to G. zipfel, the diminutive of the obsolete zipf. The French name of the tippet, cornette, a little horn, like tippet itself, signifies a lengthened tip. TIPPLR Skeat explains tipple, to drink in small quan- tities, as the frequentative of tip, to cause to slant, to in- cline. " Thus it means to be continually inclining the WAN ION. 191 drinking-glass, to be always tipping wine or beer down the throat." But tip itself is never used in this sense, and the origin of the signification is so clear in the case of the Bav. zipfeln, an exactly parallel form with tipple, that we need seek no other explanation of the latter word. Bav. zip/ or zip/el is the tip or narrow end of anything. The secondary dim. zipfelein is used in the sense of a small portion of any- thing, wet or dry. Kein zipfelein, not a bit ; zipfelweis, in small portions ; zipfelen, zipfeln, to give, eat, drink, c., in small portions. The cow zip/elf, when she lets her milk go in driblets. In Hesse, verzippeln, to scatter in small por- tions. In W. also tip or tipyn is a little bit, and probably it is from this sense that tip is provincially used for a draught of liquor. Halliwell. To tipple, then, as well as Norweg. tipla, would be to keep drinking in small quan- tities. It does not appear that tippa in the Scandinavian languages has the sense of tilting over. On the other hand, Sw. dial, tippa, Norweg. tippa or tipla, signify to drip, to fall in drops, where the element tip obviously has the sense of a drop, a small portion of liquid. ULLAGE. What a cask wants of being full. O.Fr. eullier, to fill up a cask to the bung. Roquefort. Con- nected by Skeat with O.Fr. cure, ore, the border, brim of a thing ; Sp. and It. orla, a border, margin. This gives a very unsatisfactory explanation either of the form or the meaning of the word. Onofrier,in his 'Glossaire Lyonnais,' commenting on the verb olier, ouiller, to fill to the brim, observes that in the South of France, when a flask is nearly full, they add a little oil instead of a cork to prevent evapo- ration, so that to oil a flask is equivalent to filling it to the briai. In Provence oliar signifies to anoint with oil, and also to fill up a cask. WANTON. It is a mistake of Skeat when he asserts that this word had never been explained. In the ' Philological Transactions' for 1873-74, p. 328, I gave exactly the same explanation that he does, from O.E. waniand, the waning 192 WINDLAS. of the moon, as the season of ill-luck ; and I pointed out that from the same source was to be explained the Fr. guignon, ill-luck. WINDLAS. Formerly used in the sense of a circuit. " Bidding them fetch a windlasse a great way about" Golding's ' Caesar ' in Skeat. The word is explained by Skeat from the verb to wind, and lace ; signifying a wind- ing bend, a circuitous track. " It must be remembered," he says, " that the old sense of lace was a snare or bit of twisted rope, so that the use of it in the sense of ' bend ' is not remarkable." It appears to me, on the contrary, that such a use of lace as a suffix in the sense of " bend " would be a violent change of meaning. It would, moreover, be merely a weakened repetition of the idea expressed by wind, the fundamental element of the word. The idea of a circuitous track is as effectively expressed by " a wind- ing" alone as by "a winding bend." My explanation is that the -las in windlas, like the -lace in stricklace (Littleton's Lat. Diet.), a strickle or measuring strike, is merely a form of the termination -eles, -les, -lesse, -lys, or -els, common in O.E., -else, -els, in A.S., -else in Dan., -els in Low G., and -sal, -set, in G. We may cite O.E. dremeles, meteles, a dream (pp. x. 296, 305), findles and fundles, a finding, from the 'Ancren Riwle;' smerles, A.S. smerels, O.Du. smersel, ointment; O.E. hydles (Levins), A.S. hydels, a hiding-place; O.E renlys (retilesse, K. ; renels, P.), rennet for turning milk. Prompt. Parv. In Dan. we have stavelse, a syllable, from stave, to spell ; hakkelse, chopped straw, from hakke; drovdse, affliction, from drove, to trouble, as G. triibsal, from trilben. In Du. and Low G. mengels, fegels, schabels, from mengen, fegen, schaben, corresponding to G. mengsel, fegsel, schabsel. Skeat admits that the explanation would be satisfactory, only, he adds, "Unfortunately no trace of windds (with the usual A.S. suffix -els) has as yet been detected." The objection would really have no weight if the supposition on which it WINDLAS. 193 is founded was correct, because so familiar a suffix might have been added to any verb without the compound being preserved in any extant document. But, in fact, the evi- dence demanded is at hand in Low G. windels (answering to Ger. windsel, the act of winding, the thing which winds), the thread of a screw (affording a good example of a windlas in the obsolete sense), anything in which something is wrapped up, or with which it is wrapped round. Een win- dels garn : as much yarn as is wound off at once. Brem. Wort. It is probable indeed that E. yarnwindle is for an earlier yarnwindles or yarnwindels, analogous to riddle in the room of the O.E. rydels, redels. Du. windsel, fillet swathing, ligature. THE END. PRINTED BY BALLANTYNE. HANSON AND CO. EDINBURGH AND LONDON UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY A 000 089 265 3