| Word | Definition |
Babion | An early variant of baboon. From the French; also babian, babioun. Used in the 17th century as a contemptuous term for a person. Philip Massinger in THE PARLIAMENT OF LOVE (1624) says Farewell, babions! Also bavian, in which form the word appeared in Dutch. The bavian was a frequent comic figure in the old morris dance, where his long tail and tumbling antics added much to the jollity. |
Bacchation | Revelry; drunkenness. From the Bacchantes, revelers at the festival of Bacchus, Roman god of wine (and father of Hymenaeus, god of marriage) . There is also a verb, to bacchanalize (accent on the first syllable), as well as the adjective bacchant. Thus Thomas Moore in his translation (1800) of the ODES of Anacreon: Many a roselipped bacchant maid Is culling clusters in their shade; and George Gordon Byron in DON JUAN (1821) : Over his shoulder, with a bacchant air, Presented the o'erflowing cup. The word bacchanal, still used of the revel (bacchanalia) was earlier used of the reveling person; by extension, one whose emotions are out of control. Thus Thomas Nashe in NASHES LENTEN STUFFE, OR THE PRAYSE OF THE RED HERRING (1599) tells jestingly the story of Hero and Leander, which Musaeus (500 A.D.) and Christopher Marlowe (1598) had more seriously told. Nashe ends, when the tide carries the corpse of Leander away: At that Hero became a franticke bacchanal outright, and made no more bones but sprang after him, and so resigned up her priesthood, and left worke for Musaeus and Kit Marlowe. |
Baccivorous | Berry-eating; living mainly on berries. Latin bacca, berry. The accent is on the siv. Also bacciferous, berry-bearing; bacciform, shaped like a berry. |
Bace | A blow, a drubbing. In the 16th century. So O.E.D. Bace was also a variant of base, as the name of an old game, later called prisoners' bars, prisoners' base. By act of Parliament during the reign of Edward III, playing bace was prohibited in the avenues of Westminster palace while Parliament was in session. Edmund Spenser in THE FAERIE QUEENE (1596) says: So ran they all as they had been at bace, They being chased that did the others chase. |
Backare | Stand backl The origin is unknown; "Back there!"? At times spelt bacare, baccare and pronounced in three syllables, like a yokel pretending to Latin, Shakespeare, in THE TAMING OF THE SHREW (1596): Bacare, you are mervaylous forward. The word appeared in a proverbial saying, Backare, quoth Mortimer to his sow. |
Backfriend | A pretender, a false friend; an enemy masked as a friend. From the 15th century. I have had backfriends, said Robert Southey (LIFE; 1827) , as well as enemies. By a few in the 16th century, and Walter Scott in QUENTIN DURWARD (1823) backfriend was used in the opposite sense, of a backer, a friend standing firmly at one's back. |
Backrag | A wine from Bacharach, a town on the Rhine; the flavor was much appreciated in the 17th century. Hence also bacharach, backrak, bachrag, bachrach. John Fletcher and Philip Massinger's THE BEGGAR'S BUSH (1620) has: My fireworks and flap-dragons and good backrack. |
Baculine | The line of the flagellant. Relating to the rod, or to punishment by flogging. William Makepeace Thackeray in THE VIRGINIANS (1858) states that the baculine method was a common mode of argument. Bacul was used in the 15th century for a religious staff or crosier. From Latin baculus, a rod, the symbol of power, also used in English. Hence baculiferous, bearing a cane, like the dandy of yore. The common bacillus was named from its shape: Latin bacillus, little rod; diminutive of baculus. Baculometry, says Bailey in his DICTIONARY (1751), is the art of measuring accessible or inaccessible distances or lines, by one or more staves. |
Badeen | Frivolous, jesting. Via French badine, silly, from Late Latin badare, to gape. Its only literary use is in Ferrand Spence's translation (1685) of THE SECRET HISTORY OF THE HOUSE OF MEDICIS: a dialog completely bouffon, waggish, and badeen, between the head and the cap. The noun from the same source remains in use, as in Benjamin Disraeli's ENDYMION (1880), which warns: Men destined to the highest places should beware of badinage. We have used other forms: the verb to badiner -- a character in John Vanbrugh's THE RELAPSE (1697) wishes that Loveless were here to badiner a little; badinerie -- William Shenstone, in his WORKS AND LETTERS (1712) laments that the fund of sensible discourse is limited; that of jest and badinerie is infinite; badineur -- Alexander Pope wrote to Swift, on December 19, 1734: Rebuke him for it ... as a badineur, if you think that more effectual. Many a badeen badger (q.v.) has built a reputation on a caustic tongue, as in the play THE MAN WHO CAME TO DINNER; the more insulting he is, the more his sycophants -- and the audience -- laugh. |
Bailie | Bailiff |
Banneret | An old title, lower than baron, superior to bachelor and knight: a knight entitled to bring a company of vassals into the field under his own banner. From Old French baneret, bannered; cp. bandon. Later the title was awarded on the battlefield, for valiant deeds in the king's presence. Sometimes, when this occurred, the knight's pennon was cut to the shape of a banner (square) whence the suggestion in Sir William Segar's HONOR, MILITARY AND CIVIL (1602) : I suppose the Scots do call a knight of this creation a Bannerent, for having his banner rent. The official English heralds have not allowed the title since 1612, the year after the rank of baronet was created. |
Bantling | A brat; a young child. Michael Drayton in his ECLOGUES (1593) pictures lovely Venus . . . Smiling to see her wanton bantlings game. More often the word is a term of scorn; originally it meant bastard, probably a corruption of German bankling, begotten on a bench. Thus, in FATHER KNICKERBOCKER'S HISTORY OF NEW YORK (1809) George Gordon Byron mentions a tender virgin, accidentally and unaccountably enriched with a bantling. The word is also used figuratively, as when CenErr6545 wrote, in a letter of 1808: The interest you have taken in me and my poetical bantlings ... These, who has not had? |
Barbecue | From the Spanish barbacoa, perhaps from Arawak (West Indies) barbacoa "wooden frame on posts," on which people slept or used to cook meat. By 1733, it had come to mean a social gathering in the open where animals were roasted. |
Barton | Originally, this was a threshing floor, Old English bere~tun, barley enclosure. Then it was used of a farm yard; especially, of the farm a lord kept for his own use. It was also applied to a chicken coop or larger pen, but the lord kept claim (1783) to the eggs of the bartons of his demesne. A book on HUSBANDRY by George Winter (1787) declares that stale urine and barton draining are greatly preferable to dung. In contrast, we are told of a fine grove of Scotch and silver fir on the barton of Bridestow. And Robert Southey in THE POET'S PILGRIMAGE TO WATERLOO (1816) speaks of Spacious bartons clean, well-wall'd around, Where all the wealth of rural life was found. |
Bate | (1) To fight, to contend with blows or arguments. In the latter mood, replaced by debate. Also, to beat the wings (as a falcon or hawk) and flutter away from the perch. Hence, to be restless or impatient. William Shakespeare in ROMEO AND JULIET (1592) bids night Hood my unmann'd blood, bayting in my cheekes. (2) To beat or flutter down; to end. In R. Brunne's CHRONICLE (1330) we read: Bated was the strife. Also, to cast down; hence, to humble, depress; to be dejected; to lower, reduce, lessen. In these senses, a shortening of abate. At bate, at odds, contending. The word is frequent in Shakespeare, in various senses. Hence bated breath, subdued breathing, bateless, that cannot be blunted; Shakespeare in THE RAPE OF LUCRECE (1593) has: Haply that name of chaste unhappily set This bateless edge on his keen appetite. bateful, quarrelsome, batement, lessening, abatement. bate-breeding, quarrel making, inciting to strife; Shakespeare in VENUS AND ADONIS speaks of This sour informer, this bate-breeding spy. |
Bathykolpian | Deep-bosomed. Also bathykolpic; Greek bathos, deep + kolpos, breast. Both forms have been used spelled with uk, yc, uc. The word bathos, descent from the sublime to the ridiculous, springs from Alexander Pope's satire BATHOS, THE ART OF SINKING IN RHETORIC (1728) , a travesty of Longinus' essay ON THE SUBLIME. Hence bathetic, fashioned after pathetic; also bathotic. While a plain and direct road is paved to their hypsos, or sublime, said Pope, no track has been yet chalked out to arrive at our bathos, or profund. Other words formed with bathy-, deep, include: bathyal, of the deeper regions of the sea; bathybic, dwelling in the deeps, also bathypelagic.bathylimnetic, living at the bottom of a marsh or lake, like the ondines. |
Batler | A flat-sided stick with a handle, for beating clothes. William Shakespeare in AS YOU LIKE IT (1600) has: I remember the kissing of her batler. Later editions say batlet, as though a diminutive of bat. The battledore was originally a batler or beetle, sometimes cylindrical for mangling, but usually flat. Hence, other instruments of that shape: a paddle, a wood for putting loaves into an oven; especially, a small bat for hitting the shuttlecock in the game also called battledore. Other forms of this word, common from the 15th century, were batylledore, batyndore, batteldoor, and the like. The word was also used figuratively, as by James Russell Lowell in 1879: So they two played at wordy battledore. The game, once vigorously enjoyed, has been replaced by tennis, ping-pong (table tennis) and, especially badminton. Badminton, from the country seat of the Duke of Beaufort, was also in the 19th century the name of a drink, a 'grateful compound' of claret, sugar, and soda-water. The shuttlecock (also shittlecock, shoottlecock, and more) was a piece of cork tufted with feathers, used as far back as the 15th century, and is used frequently (literally and figuratively) by poets and playwrights of the 16th and 17th centuries who, as Sears said later (1858) in ATHANASIA, were only playing at shuttlecock with words. |
Battle | In addition to the too well known activity named by this word, to battle meant to furnish with battlements, and also -- quite apart -- to nourish, supply with rich pasture or food; also, to make soil fertile; hence, to grow fat, to thrive. In this sense the word was also spelled batle, battel, and is related to batten. The adjective battle meant nourishing; fertile, fruitful. Gavin Douglas in his AENEIS (1513) spoke of battill gras, fresche erbis and grene suardis. Hence also batling pastures (battling, batteling) , nourishing, fertilizing; growing fat; Thomas Fuller in A PISGAH-SIGHT OF PALESTINE (1650) exclaimed: A jolly dame, no doubt, as appears by the well-battling of the plump boy. |
Baude | Joyous; forward; gay. Old French baud, gay; Old Low German bald, bold, lively. The adjective was used in THE ROMANCE OF THE ROSE (1400) ; the noun baudery (q.v.), jollity, was more frequent. There is also a verb bawdefy, to bedeck, to make gay. Somehow, in the transfer from French to English, bawd -- perhaps compounded with bawd, earlier bad, a cat, a pussy, a rabbit, used in slang senses -- came to be applied to a pander. Shakespeare in ROMEO AND JULIET (1592) cries A baud, a baud! meaning a hare; but in AS YOU LIKE IT (1600) he has Touchstone tell Audrey We must be married, or we must live in baudrey. The earliest form of bawd in the sense of pander (male or female) is bawdstrot; this became bawstrop and, especially in the plays of Thomas Middleton, bronstrops, as in A FAIR QUARREL (1617) : I say thy sister is a bronstrops. |
Bavin | Brushwood; especially, a bundle of light wood (as for bakers' ovens) tied with one withe or band; a fagot is tied with two. The word was used figuratively, of slight things, as in George Chapman's EASTWARD HOE (1605) : If he outlast not a hundred such crackling bavins as thou art; and William Shakespeare's HENRY IV, PART ONE (1596): Shallow jesters, and rash bavin wits, Soon kindled and soon burnt. |
Bawcock | Fine fellow. A jocular term of endearment, from French beau coq, fine cock, used in the same way. William Shakespeare uses the word in TWELFTH NIGHT, and twice in HENRY V (1599) e.g.: The King's a bawcock, and a heart of gold. |
Bawdreaminy | Bawdy misbehavior. Used by Dampit, in Thomas Middleton's A TRICK TO CATCH THE OLD ONE (1608) . Like Thomas Urquhart in his translation (1653) of Francois Rabelais, Middleton liked to invent resounding words. Dampit, an unscrupulous: usurer and a drunkard, when his serving maid well, wench Audrey tries to get him from his cups to his bed, favors her with fine examples: Thou quean of bawdreaminy! . . . Out, you gernative quean! the mullipood of villainy, the spinner of concupiscency! . . . Out, you babliaminy, you unfeathered cremitoried quean, you cullisance of scabiosity! |
Baxter | Baker. Originally feminine; from 10th through 15th century used of both sexes; thereafter masculine. In the 16th century, a new feminine form was fashioned: backstress. Sir Walter Scott used the word in THE HEART OF MIDLOTHIAN (1818) : One in appearance a baxter, i.e. a baker's lad, handed her out of her chair. After about 1400, however, baxter was rarely used save in Scotland. |
Beek | To bask in the sun, or before a fire. The word is probably a mild form of bake. Hence beeking, exposure to genial warmth. Henry Cockeram (1623) defines aprication (q.v.) as a beaking in the Sunne. |
Belaccoil | Friendly greeting. Also belaccoyle. Cp. bel-. Edmund Spenser, in THE FAERIE QUEENE (1596) her salewed with seemly belaccoil, Joyous to see her safe after long toil. |
Belgard | A kind look, a loving look. Italian bel guardo. Edmund Spenser uses the word in THE FAERIE QUEENE and in his HYMNE IN HONOUR OF BEAUTIE (1596): Sometimes within her eyelids they unfold Ten thousand sweet belgards, which to their sight Doe seem like twinckling starres in frostie night. |
Belomancy | Divination -- foretelling events, predicting the future -- using arrows. |
Benim | To take away; to rob; to deprive. Also beneme; after 1500 usually benum, benumb. (Benum, to deprive, added a b by analogy with dumb, limb, etc. The meaning was gradually limited to depriving (a part of the body) of its capacity for feeling. Numb is a shortening from benumb. Benim was a common word from the 10th to the 16th century; Chaucer uses it several times -- twice in THE PARSON'S TALE (1386) : the likeness of the devil, and bynymeth man from God . . . bynymeth from man his witte. |
Benison | Blessing. A shortening of the Latin benediction, which is now the usual English word. Shakespeare, in KING LEAR (1605), refers to the bountie and the benizon of heaven. Walter Scott in THE FAIR MAID OF PERTH (1828) : I have slept sound under such a benison. Back in 1755 Samuel Johnson in his DICTIONARY said of benison: "not now used, unless luricrously," but the word still survives in historical fiction and in poetry. Cp. malison. |
Benjamin | A short coat worn by men in the late 18th and early 19th century. Brewer derives it from the name of a tailor, but it is more probably a Biblical transference, Benjamin being the youngest brother of Joseph. An 18th century ladies' riding cloak was called a joseph, from the "coat of many colors" in the Bible. Thus Oliver Goldsmith1 in THE VICAR OF WAKEFIELD (1766) pictures Olivia dressed in a green Joseph, richly laced with gold, and a whip in her hand. Thomas Love Peacock in NIGHTMARE ABBEY gives us the younger brother: His heart is seen to beat through his upper benjamin. |
Bennet | (1) An old stalk of grass, left in late winter and early spring; eaten then by cattle, or the seeds by birds. An early form of bent (grass). (2) An herb (often identified as the avens) which the middle ages believed drove the devil away; hence called (herb) bennet, Old French beneite; Latin benedicta, blessed. The ORIUS SANITATIS (1486) quotes Platearius: 'Where the root is in the house the devil can do nothing, and flies from it; wherefore it is blessed above all other herbs.' Thomas Urquhart in his translation (1653) of Francois Rabelais, ascribes to it another quality: Fervency of lust is abated by certain drugs, plants, herbs, and roots . . . mandrake, Rennet, keckbuglosse. [There is a different opinion regarding mandrake; cp. mandragora.] |
Bestiate | To make beastly. Latin bestia, beast. Used in the 17th century especially of liquor, as by Owen Feltham in RESOLVES (1628) : Drunkenness . . . bestiates even the bravest spirits. The verb was sometimes Anglicized to beastiate. Bestiary means (1) a fighter of wild beasts in the Roman amphitheatre; (2) a moralizing treatise, using animals to point lessons, as written in the Middle Ages. A bestiarian, however, is a friend of the animals, especially, in the 19th century, an antivivisectionist. |
Bezonian | A raw recruit. Later, a beggar, a rascal. William Shakespeare in HENRY VII, PART TWO remarks that Great men oft dye by vile bezonians. And Philip Massinger, in THE MAID OF HONOUR (1632) , speaks of the slut who would, for half a mouldy biscuit, sell herself to a poor bisognion. The word was originally besonio. It is from the Italian bisogno, need, want, applied in derision to the raw soldiers who came to Italy from Spain, in the 15th and 16th centuries, without proper equipment or means. Robert Johnson, in his translation (1601) of Botero's THE WORLD, AN HISTORICALL DESCRIPTION, speaks of a base besonio, fitter for the spade than the sword. Both forms, after a lapse of two centuries, were revived in historical novels: Walter Scott in THE MONASTERY (1820) : Base and pilfering besognios and marauders; Edward Bulwer-Lytton in THE LAST OF THE BARONS (1843) : Out on ye, cullions and bezonians! |
Bibliomancy | Divination -- foretelling events, predicting the future -- using the Bible. |
Bibulate | To tipple; a humorous diminutive from Latin bibere, to drink, whence also imbibe; see bib. Used in the 18th and 19th centuries. BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE (1828) tells of persons who bibulate gin and water with the housekeeper. ST. JAMES'S GAZETTE of April 12, 1882, speaks of the extraordinary capacity for bibulation displayed by the regular soldier. The word bibulous was more frequently used; it meant both fond of drinking and (technically) able to absorb moisture; Cowper in his translation (1790) of the ODYSSEY speaks of bibulous sponges. |
Bigote | The moustache. In Mabbe's translation (1623) of Aleman's GUZMAN DE ALFARACHE we read: It seeming perhaps unto them that . . . the bearing their bigotes high, turn'd up with hot yrons . . . should be their salvation and bring them to heaven. The word is Spanish, apparently unconnected with bigot. |
Bigwig | As the 1600s gave way to the 1700s, the popularity of wigs soared -- and so did their size. Important men sported larger perukes than commonfolk -- "big wigs." The term was not a compliment. |
Billingsgate | Scurrilous and violent abuse. By the 16th century Billing\'s Gate, London, brought inevitably to mind the foulmouthed workers (women as well as men) in the fish-market there, and by the midnth century the name of the gate was being used for the language there spoken. The Third Earl of Shaftesbury, in CHARACTERISTICKS (1710) speaks of philosophers and divines who can be contented to . . . write in learned billingsgate. The word is quiescent, but the practice still is loud. Nathan Bailey (1751) defines a billingsgate as "a scolding impudent slut." THE PRESENT STATE OF RUSSIA (1671) stated: If you would please a Russian with musick, get a consort of billingsgate nightingales, which, joyn'd with a flight of screech owls, a nest of jackdaws, a pack of hungry wolves, seven hogs in a windy day, and as many cats with their corrivals . . . |
Birthdom | Inheritance, birthright. So in the O.E.D. In his notes to William Shakespeare's MACBETH (1605), however, G. B. Harrison defines the word as meaning native land. Macduff is speaking, fled to England from Scotland and Macbeth's savagery: Let us rather Hold fast the mortal sword, and like good men Bestride our downfall'n birthdome. |
Bismer | Shame; mockery, scorn. Old High German bismer, ridicule, from bi, by + smier, smile. Also bismere, bysmer, bismor, busmar, busmeyr, and the like. Bismer is also a verb, to mock; and from 1300 to 1550 was applied to a person worthy of scorn. From the time of King Alfred (about 890) to the mid-16th century, the word was used, e.g. Chaucer, THE REEVE'S TALE (1386) As ful of hokir and of bissemare. (Hokir, contempt, abuse.) |
Black acre | A name used in court, to distinguish one plot of ground from another: black acre; white acre; green acre -- somewhat like "party of the first part" etc. The colors were perhaps originally chosen from various crops. After a time, to black-acre meant to litigate over land; in William Wycherley's THE PLAIN DEALER (1677) the litigious widow is Mrs. Blackacre; her son Jerry Blackacre is so well trained by her in court procedure that he wins all of her land. |
Blackguard | Usually pronounced blaggurd or blag-ahrd. A low, unprincipled, contemptible person; a scoundrel. From the 1530s, of uncertain origin. perhaps once an actual military or guard unit; more likely originally a mock-military reference to menial scullions and kitchen-knaves of noble households, black-liveried personal guards, shoeblacks, the servants of an army or camp followers. By 1736, sense had emerged as "one of the criminal class." Can be used as an adjective ("blackguard language") or as a verb, meaning "to revile (or ridicule or denounce) in scurrilous (or abusive) language" or "to behave as a blackguard." Other forms include blackguardism and blackguardly. Not to be confused with The Black Guard (aka "Masters of the Blackness"), the corps of black-African slave-soldiers assembled by the Alaouite sultan of Morocco, Moulay Ismail (reigned 1672–1727). |
Bladarius | A dealer in grain. Found only in the dictionaries (Nathan Bailey, 1751) . Blaed was Old English, from a common Teuton form, for blade (of grass, as opposed to leaf) -- though influenced by Latin bladum, Old French bled, corn, wheat. By the 11th century blade was transferred from plants to the broad flat part of an oar, a spade and the like; and by the 14th, to the blade of a knife and a sword. |
Blate | (1) Pale; bashful; backward. Used from Old English through the 17th century, surviving in dialect. Walter Scott tried to revive the word in QUENTIN DURWARD (1823) : You are not blate you will never lose fair lady for faint heart. (2) To babble, to prate. Samuel Pepys in his DIARY (1666) entered: He blates to me what has passed between other people and him. Loud talk and empty chatter being what they are, other words developed: blaterate, to babble; blateration; blateroon, a foolish talker. Also blather; blether; bletherskate; blatherskite, a noisy talker of nonsense. This word became common in the United States from the lines Jog on your gait, ye bletherskate in MAGGIE LAUDER (1650), which was a favorite song in the American Revolution. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, in TAM O' SHANTER (1790) speaks of A bletherin, blusterin, drunken blellum. Even Robert Burns (1834) was annoyed by blethering, though he did not go so far (American- wise) as to call the offender a blethering idiot! |
Bletonism | Divining; indicating "by sensation" the location of subterraneous springs. Derived from a Mr. Bleton who, according to the MONTHLY MAGAZINE of 1821 "for some years past has excited universal attention by his possessing the above faculty." A bletonist, bletonite, a practitioner with the divining-rod -- whose most effective instrument was (naturally) of witch-hazel. |
Blue | This color word was very popular in compounds and phrases. Thus blue apron, a tradesman; hence, blue-apron statesman, a tradesman who interferes in politics, blue beans, bullets (of lead) ; blue-beat, to beat black and blue, blue blanket, the sky. blue blood, (one of) aristocratic heritage, from the Spanish idea that the veins of aristocratic families show through the skin a 'truer blue' than those of commoners, blue bonnet, also blue cap, a Scotsman. To burn blue, of a candle, to burn without red or yellow light: an omen of death, or sign of the presence of ghosts or the Devil. William Shakespeare in RICHARD III (1594) says: The lights burne blew! blue bottle, a beadle; also a policeman. Shakespeare in HENRY IV, PART TWO says to a beadle: I will have you as soundly swindg'd for this, you blue-bottle rogue. Also blue coat, as in the American boy's taunt: Brass button, blue coat, Couldn't catch a nanny-goat! But blue coat likewise (Shakespeare, Dekker) , being then the garb of lower servants and charity folk, was used to mean a beggar, an almsman, blue-dahlia, a rarity or most unlikely thing. blue devil, an evil demon; in the plural, blue devils, despondency, also the blues. George Gordon Byron in DON JUAN (1823) declares: Though six days smoothly run, The seventh will bring blue devils or a dun. Also, the horrid sights in delirium tremens. blue fire, a stage light for eerie effects; hence (19th century) sensational, as blue-fire melodrama. blue funk, a spell of fright, nervous dread, blue gown; in Scotland, a licensed beggar; in England (17th century) a harlot; especially one in prison (where a blue gown marked her shame). blueman, also bloman, blamon, a Negro. From the 13th to the 17th century, blo was used for blue, bluish black, lead colored, blue hen, in the expression Your mother must have been a blue hen, a reproof given to a braggart, from the saying, No cock is game unless its mother was a blue hen. To shout blue murder, to cry out more from fear than because of actual danger, blue ruin, a bad quality of gin; gin. blue story, an obscene or pornographic story, [In French, conte bleu is an old wives' tale; a lascivious or obscene story is conte gras.] Other blue compounds, like bluebeard, blue stocking, blue ribbon, remain well known. Cp. red. |
Bluestocking | Female writer |
Blushet | A shy maiden; a modest girl (literally, little blusher). Ben Jonson in THE STAPLE OF NEWS (1625) Though mistress Band would speak, or little blushet Wax be ne'er so easy. Ben Jonson, who likes the word (and why not?) seems to be the only one who has used it. |
Bob | Among the forgotten meanings of bob are: a bunch of flowers; an ornamental pendant; an ear-drop; Oliver Goldsmith1 in SHE STOOPS TO CONQUER (1773) : My cousin Con's necklaces, bobs and all. In the 17th century, bobbed hair, a bob, meant hair drawn into a bunch in the back, or with a bunched or tassel-like curl; also, a man's wig so made. Thus, bob-wig, bob-peruke. The refrain of a song: to bear the bob, join in the chorus; Roger L'Estrange in his FABLES (1692) : To bed, to bed, will be the bob of the song. A trick, befoolment; to give the bob, to fool, mock, impose upon. A blow with the fist; a sharp rap; hence, a rap with the tongue, a rebuke -- this sense combined with the one before, to develop the meaning, a taunt, scoff, bitter jibe; thus Shakespeare in AS YOU LIKE IT (1600) : He that a foole doth very wisely hit, Doth very foolishly, although he smart, Seeme senselesse of the bob. Hence also the verb, as in Shakespeare's OTHELLO: Gold, and Jewels, that I bob'd from him. To bob off, to get rid of fraudulently. Also blind-bob, an early name for the game of blind-man's buff. |
Bombard | The earliest type of cannon. Also bumbard, boumbard. It was introduced in the late 14th century, but did not prove effective. It was usually loaded with a stone, weighing sometimes 200 pounds. Also, from the shape, a leather jug for liquor; hence, a heavy drinker (17th century) . Also, from the sound, a deep-toned wooden musical instrument, like a bassoon; bombardo. A bombardman was a pot-boy, bartender; a bombard-phrase was a loud-sounding utterance, inflated language. Shakespeare mentions the drinking jug in THE TEMPEST and in HENRY IV, PART ONE (1596) : that huge bombard of sacke. Thomas Heywood in PHILOCOTHONISTA, OR THE DRUNKARD OPENED, DISSECTED AND ANATOMIZED (1635) spoke of the great black jacks and bombards at the Court, which, when the Frenchmen first saw, they reported . . . that the Englishmen used to drink out of their bootes. (Champagne from milady's slipper?) Ben Jonson in his translation (1640) of Horace's THE ART OF POETRY said: They . . . must throw by Their bombard phrase, and foot and half-foot words. Also cp. sesquipedalian. |
Bongrace | A protection. From the French: bonne, good + grace, grace. Specifically, a shade hanging from a woman's bonnet to protect her face from the sun and, later, a broad-brimmed hat for the same purpose. A commentator of 1617 speaks of bonegraces, now altogether out of use with us. The word was also used figuratively, as by Thomas Heywood in TROIA BRITANICA (1609): A grove through which the lake doth run, Making his boughs a bongrace from the sun. Sir Walter Scott revived the word in GUY MANNERING (1815). On the sea, a frame of old rope etc. hung over a ship to protect it "from damage of great flakes of ice" (Bailey, 1751) and other encounterings was also called a bongrace. |
Boniface | Keeper of an inn |
Bookholder | A prompter in a theatre. Used in the 16th and 17th centuries. Nothing like the current bookkeeper or bookmaker. |
Boutgate | A going about; by extension, circumlocution; equivocation, quibble. About + gate (gait), going. R. Bruce in a sermon of 1591 said: The boutgates and deceites of the heart of man are infinite. |
Brazier | One who works with brass |
Brewster | Beer manufacturer |
Brightsmith | Metal Worker |
Brontomancy | Divination -- foretelling events, predicting the future -- using thunder. |
Brynnyng | A variant form of burning. John Skelton (WORKES; 1529; cp. shyderyd) declared: Oure days be datyd To be chek matyd With drauttys [moves] of deth Stopping cure breth, Oure eyen synkyng, Oure bodys stynkyng, Oure gummys grynnyng, Our soulys brynnyng. |
Bubble-bow | An 18th century fashionable case for a lady's tweezers and the like. Used by Alexander Pope; explained by John Arbuthnot in JOHN BULL (1712) as from to bubble a beau, to dazzle or fool a gallant. Also spelled bubble-boy; explained (in THE MONTHLY MAGAZINE of 1807) as probably a misspelling for bauble-buoy, a support for baubles. They now dangle from jingly bracelets or lie concealed in a purse. |
Bumbailiff | A bailiff; one that makes arrests. The term is one of contempt (bum, buttocks; cp. bumrowl) , implying that the bailiff is close upon the debtor's back. The similar French word is pousse-cul. William Shakespeare in TWELFTH NIGHT (1601) says: Scout mee for him at the corner of the orchard like a bum-baylie. The word was used by Henry Fielding and William Makepeace Thackeray (1859) . A similar word of scorn was bumtrap; The noble bumtrap, observes Abraham Tucker in TOM JONES (1749) into the hands of the jailer resolves to deliver his miserable prey. CenErr13089 in THE LIGHT OF NATURE PURSUED (1768) spoke of the two necessary ministers of justice, a bumbailiff and Jack Ketch. |
Burgomaster | Sometimes Burgonmaster. Mayor |
By-blow | A side stroke. Hence other meanings grew: (1) a calamity as a side effect of the main action, as in the statement that inequality is a by-blow of man's fall; (2) a blow that misses its aim, as in John Bunyan's PILGRIM'S PROGRESS (1684) : Now also with their by-blows they did split the very stones in pieces; (3) an illegitimate child -- an unintended side-effect; thus Peter Anthony Motteux in his translation (1708) of Francois Rabelais remarks that Kind Venus cured her beloved by-blow Aeneas, and Robert Browning in THE RING AND THE BOOK (1868) refers to A drab's brat, a beggar's bye-blow. |
Byrlakin | A contraction of By Our Ladykin, by our darling lady-- referring to the Virgin Mary, and used as a mild oath. Also the simpler byrlady -- berlady, burlady, birlady, byleddy; bylakin, belakin, berlakin, and more. William Shakespeare swears Berlady thirtie yeares in ROMEO AND JULIET (1592) and Berlaken, a parlous feare in |
Search |
A growing assortment of words and definitions used in the Early Modern era. See the Guide for more information.
| Letter | Find: | Selected: |
| Jump: |
 |  |  |
Colonial Sense is an advocate for global consumer privacy rights, protection and security.
All material on this website © copyright 2009-26 by Colonial Sense, except where otherwise indicated.
ref:T5-S25-P40-C-M
All material on this website © copyright 2009-26 by Colonial Sense, except where otherwise indicated.
ref:T5-S25-P40-C-M