| Word | Definition |
Hab Nab | Hit or miss; at a venture; at random; anyhow. Probably from Old English habbe, to have; nabbe, not to have. Also hab or nab; later, hob a nob, hob or nob, hob and nob; William Shakespeare in TWELFTH NIGHT (I60I) says hob, nob is his word; give't or take't. Used from the 16th century; in the 18th century it was used when glasses were lifted to drink: Hob or nob, come what may. Hence, to drink hob or nob, to drink together in companionship -- whence the current use of hobnob today. |
Hacker | Maker of hoes. |
Hadiwist | Vain regret; the heedlessness that results in this. Also had-i-wist, literally, if I had known. Used from the 13th to the 17th century. Gower In CONFESSIO AMANTIS (1390) wrote: Upon his fortune and hs grace Cometh hadiwist full ofte a place. The BABEES BOOK (1460) warned: Kepe thee will from hadde-y-wyste. There was a common 16th century proverb: A wise man saith not, had I wist. |
Haha | Apart from the sound of laughter, but perhaps arising as an exclamation of surprise, haha has been used since the 17th century (also aha, ah ah, ha! ha!, hahah, haw-haw) for a sunken fence, a trench, ditch, or other boundary to a garden that does not obstruct the view and is not visible until one is nigh into it. R. S. Surtees in SPONGE'S SPANISH TOUR (1852) tells of a hound that ran a black cart-colt, and made him leap the hawhaw. The word was also used figuratively; Mason in his EPISTLE TO SIR W. CHAMBERS (1773) wrote: Leap each ha-ha of truth and common sense. It became an 18th century fashion, as Daniel Defoe noted in his TOUR OF GREAT BRITAIN (1769) to be throwing down the walls of the garden, and making, instead of them, hawhaw walls. |
Half | In various combinations, half-bull, a pontifical letter of a new pope before his coronation -- the bulla being stamped with only one side of the seal, the side representing the apostles. half-cap, a slight and almost discourteous salute;William Shakespeare in TIMON OF ATHENS (1607): With certaine halfe-caps, and cold moving nods, They froze me into silence. half-dike, a sunken fence, a haha. half-labor, a way of paying rent: half the crops or other product of the tenant's toil, that went to the landlord. halfheaded, stupid. halflang, halfling, a stripling, one not fully grown. halfman, a eunuch. halfkirtle, a short-skirted, loose bodied gown, commonly worn by courtesans; hence, a courtesan; Shakespeare in HENRY IV, PART TWO: You filthy famish'd correctioner! if you be not swinged, I'll forswear half-kirtles. halfner, one that shares 50-50 (16th century). half-seas-over, midway toward a goal; John Dryden in 1700: I am half-seas over to death; the sense of half-drunk came in the 18th century. half-tongue, of a jury half of whom were foreigners, as used to be allowed In England, in criminal prosecution of a foreigner. half-word, an insinuation; so used by Chaucer. |
Halidom | Holiness; a holy place, a chapel; a holy relic -- by which one might take an oath; hence, since the 16th century, By my halidom, often used as a mere exclamation, e.g., In William Shakespeare's TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA (1591) : By my hallidome, I was fast asleep. In the 16th and 17th centuries, the word was often spelled halidam, holidam, holydame, as though referring to 'Our Lady.' It is from Old English halig (German heilig), holy + dom, state. |
Halieutics | The art or craft of fishing, or a treatise thereon. Halieutic, relating to fishing. Greek halieutikos; halieutes, fisher; halieuein, to fish; hals, the sea. Sir Thomas Browne in his treatise on VULGAR ERRORS (1646) mentions four books of cynegeticks or venation, five of halieuticks or piscation. Cynegetics, hunting, the chase, is also a 17th century word, from Greek kyn-, dog + hegetes, leader. President Eisenhower was an expert In halleutics as compared with President George Washington, who fished two hours In the Hudson without so much as a nibble -- which may be why many presidents after Washington have taken up halleutics. |
Haliography | Writing about the sea. Although the word was used mainly In the 17th and 18th centuries, the practice lures many; in the early 1950's there was a flood of haliographic volumes. The word is from Greek hals, hali-, the sea + graphia, writing; but note that hals also means salt (the sea is salt) as in halogen, salt-forming, and haligraphy is a treatise or writing on the nature of salts. |
Halomancy | Divination -- foretelling events, predicting the future --using salt. |
Haltersack | Gallows-bird; 'a bundle fit for the rope.' Used in the late 16th and the 17th century, especially by the dramatists. Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher[1], in THE KNIGHT OF THE BURNING PESTLE (1609) said: If he were my son, I would hang him up by the heels, and flea him, and salt him, whoreson haltersack! and in FOUR PLAYS IN ONE declared: Thy beginning was knapsack and thy ending will be haltersack [born bastard, to die hanged]. |
Handsaw | The obvious meaning, a saw used with one hand, occurs in William Shakespeare's HENRY VI, PART ONE (1596): My buckler cut through and through, my sword hackt like a handsaw. There is less immediate point to the noted remark in Hamlet: I am but mad north north-west: when the wind is southerly, I know a hawk from a handsaw. It is plausibly suggested that handsaw here is changed from dialectal harnsa, for hernsew. This is itself a variant of hernshew, hernshaw, heronsaw, heronshew, heronshaw, and more, from Old French heronceau, a little heron. Thus the expression would mean: I know the bird of prey from the bird it preys on, I know my nose from my eyebrow. Early lexicographers (Cotgrave, 1611, followed by Johnson, 1755) took the ending shaw (q.v.) to mean wood, and explained hernshaw, heronshaw, as a wood where herons breed. A menu of 1440 called for pygge rosted . . . and hernesewes. The young heronshowes (1620) are by some accounted a very dainty dish. |
Handsel | A token of good luck; specifically, a gift as a token of good wishes for the New Year or a new occupation, a marriage, the first sale of the day, and the like. Probably in origin 'a giving of the hands,' a handshake, or a gift in the hand. Also hancel, hansel. By extension, the first sum received (on a new day, or as a first instalment); hence, the first trial or experience or specimen of a thing usually with hope or sense of good luck. Bring him a six-penny bottle of ale, Ben Jonson has in BARTHOLOMEW'S FAIR (1614); they say a fool's handsell is lucky. |
Handy-dandy | A game played since the 14th century, in which an object is shaken in the two hands held together; the hands are suddenly closed, and one must guess which holds the object. Usually the question was asked in a verse e.g., Handy-pandy, Sugar-candy, which hand will you have? Hence, used of two things when it doesn't matter which is chosen; also, a shifting, as from hand to hand; an object held in the closed hand, a covertly proffered bribe. To play handy-dandy, to juggle or toy with as though of no value; Carlyle, in FREDERICK THE GREAT (1862) : You cannot play handydandy with a king's crown. Also handidandy; handy-bandy; handy-spandy. William Shakespeare in KING LEAR (1605) says, Change places, and handy-dandy, which is the justice, which is the theefe? |
Hans | A frequent nickname of Johannes; Jack. In the phrase hans en kelder (Dutch, Jack in the cellar) , an unborn child. Used by John Dryden in THE WILD GALLANT (1663) ; Richard Lovelace in a poem (1649) says: Next beg I to present my duty To pregnant sister in prime beauty, Who well I deem (ere few months elder) Witt take out hans from pretty kelder. Cleveland, the next year, used kelder figuratively: The sun wears midnight; day is beetle-brow'd, And lightning is in kelder of a cloud. |
Hap | (1) Chance, fortune; hence, good fortune (whence the present meanings of happily and happiness; haply still means by chance). Chaucer, in THE LEGEND OF GOOD WOMEN (1385) says: Hap helpeth hardy man alday. John Milton, in PARADISE LOST (1667), said the serpent wish'd his hap might find Eve separate. Hap was also a verb; Shakespeare says, in THE TAMING OF THE SHREW (1596) : Hap what hap may, I'll roundly go about her. (2) To cover; James Hogg, in THE QUEEN'S WAKE (1813) pictures Her bosom happed wi' flowerets gay. Especially, to cover to keep warm; Thomas Nashe in A WONDERFULL, STRANGE, AND MIRACULOUS ASTROLOGICALL PROGNOSTICATION (1591) says that he shall hop a harlot in his clothes all the year after. This was perhaps slantwise reference to the word hap-harlot, used in the 16th and 17th century to mean a coarse or ragged coverlet. (3) To seize (Dutch happen, to snatch). In 16th and 17th century legal writings. (4) To turn to the right. A Scotch term, used as a call to a horse; opposite of wynd, to turn to the left. Hence the 18th and 19th century expression neither to hap nor to wynd, meaning without turning, on a straight course. |
Hariolation | Divination -- foretelling events, predicting the future --by soothsaying. |
Haruspicy | Also aruspicy. Divination -- foretelling events, predicting the future -- by the appearance of things being sacrificed (i.e. by inspecting sacrificed animals). |
Hatcheler | One who combed out or carded flax. |
Hatchment | An escutcheon; especially, a square or diamond-shaped background on which are the armorial bearings of a dead person, often placed on his former home. The word is a shortened variant form of achievement, which also once had this special sense. William Shakespeare in HAMLET (1602) has No trophee, sword, or hatchment o're his bones. It was also used figuratively, as in John Fletcher's VALENTINIAN (1614): My naked sword Stands but a hatchment by me, only held To shew I was a soldier. |
Haulte | An early variant of haughty. Cp. haut Elyot in THE BOKE NAMED THE GOVERNOUR (1531) said: Yet is not majestie alwaye in haulte or fierce countenaunce, nor in speche outragious or arrogant, but in honourable and sobre demeanure . . . |
Haymonger | Dealer in hay. |
Hayward | Keeper of fences. |
Hebetation | The act of making, or the fact of being, dull or blunt. latin hebes, hebetis, dull; hebere, to be dull, sluggish. Cp. hebe. Hence English hebetate, to make or to be dull or blunt; used in the 16th and into the 19th century. In the 16th century hebete was also used as a verb, to make dull; hebescate, to grow dull or blunt Also hebetant, making dull. Both hebetate and hebete were also used as adjectives meaning dull, sluggish; Fitzgerald (translator of the RUBAIYAT of Omar Khayyam) wrote In a letter of 1840: I am becoming more hebete every hour. The 19th century chose more elaborate forms; hebetize, to make dull; hebetude, used in the 17th century for dullness, sluggishness, lethargy, became in the 19th hebetudinosity; Leigh Hunt, in THE INDICATOR (No. 37, 1820) used the adjective: dull, uninformed, hebetudinous. |
Heiromancy | Divination -- foretelling events, predicting the future --, using the entrails of sacrificed animals. |
Hellebore | A plant (e.g., the Christmas rose); also, the drug extracted therefrom. From ancient days its medicinal and poisonous properties were known; in medieval and Elizabethan times it was highly esteemed as a cure for madness. So popular was it that the O.E.D. lists 15 derivative terms, such as helleborate, prepared with hellebore; helleboric, relating to it; helleborose, helleborous, full of, or related to, it. I am represented, protested Sir W. Hamilton as late as 1856, as one who would be helleborised as a madman for harbouring the absurdity. The name itself took many forms, among them elebre, elevre, hellebarus, helleboraster, hellebory. Bishop Joseph Hall in THE INVISIBLE WORLD (1652) said: These errors are more fit for hrllebore than for theological conviction; and in 1830 Walter Scott (DEMONOLOGY) spoke of wretches fitter for a course of hellebore than for the stake. |
Heredipety | Legacy-hunting. latin heredium, legacy + petere, to seek. Hence the adjective, heredipetous. Accent on the dip. In Milman's HISTORY OF LATIN CHRISTIANITY (1855) we read: Heredipety or legacy hunting is inveighed against, in the clergy specially. Today it may mark the man that marries a millionaire's daughter. There is but coincidental similarity to serendipity, q.v. |
Hereyesterday | The day before yesterday. Probably a corruption of ereyesterday. Used in the 17th century. |
Hesperian | Relating to the west (the ancient Greeks meant Italy; the Romans meant Spain) ; to the place where the sun sets, the land of the evening star. Greek Hesperia, the land of the west; Hesperus, the evening star. The Hesperides were the nymphs (3, 4, or 7, according to the tale) , daughters of Hesperus. With a never-sleeping dragon, they guarded the tree of the golden apples in the Isles of the Blest, beyond the Pillars of Hercules at the western edge of the world. John Ruskin in MODERN PAINTERS (I860) names four Hesperides: Aegle, Brightness; Erytheia, Blushing; Hestia, Spirit of the hearth; Arethusa, Ministering. From the guardians, Hesperides came to be used for the garden, the Isles of the Blest, the Fortunate Islands; hence, a golden land of promise, of beauty and happiness, in the unreached west. William Shakspeare in PERICLES (1608) used the word as singular, referring to Antiochus" daughter -- See where she comes, appareled like the spring! -- Before thee stands this fair Hesperides, With golden fruit, but dangerous to be touch'd. Hence hesperian, hesperidian, hesperidean, relating to the Fortunate islands, idyllic, wonderful. References to the story were very common in the 16th and 17th centuries; John Milton uses it several times, e.g., in COMUS (1654) warningly: Beauty like the fair hesperian tree Laden with blooming gold, had need the guard Of dragon-watch. |
Hext | A variant form of highest. Also hexist. Found in the medieval proverb: When bale is hext, boot is next; a little later: When bale is highest, boot is nighest. Thomas Sackville differs, in lament at the fall of Troy in A MIRROR FOR MAGISTRATES (1563): O Troy, Troy, there is no boot but bale. |
Heydeguyes | A 16th and 1 7th century country dance, a variation of the hay. Perhaps the hay of Guy or Guise; there was also a 15th century French dance known as the German hay, haye d'allemaigne. Also haydeguy, heyday guise, hydegy, hydaygies, and a number of other forms that attest its popularity. Edmund Spenser in THE SHEPHERD'S CALENDAR (1579) goes With heydeguyes, and trimly trodden traces. In addition to the still current meaning of mown grass, hey (hay) meant (1) a net for catching rabbits and other small game; (2) a hedge; especially one erected, not grown, sometimes called dead hey as opposed to the quick hey, a hedge of living bushes or trees; (3) a serpentine country dance. William Hogarth[1] in THE ANALYSIS OF BEAUTY (1753) said: One of the most pleasing movements in country dancing is what they call 'the hay': the figure of it, altogether, is a cypher of S's or a number of serpentine lines interlacing or intervolving each other. Hay was also an exclamation (in fencing) on hitting an opponent; in Latin the cry was habet, he has it, when a gladiator was struck. Hence hay, a home-thrust; William Shakespeare in ROMEO AND JULIET (1592) cries: Ah the immortal! passado, the punto revcrso, the hay. |
Hickock | An early variant of hiccough, hiccup. Also hicket, hitchcock, and more. John Donne in POLYDORON (1631) said; Laughter is the hichock of a foolish spleen, but he notes himselfe judicious, or stupid, that changeth not his countenance upon his owne talke. |
Hield | To bend; to slope; to bow to, to submit; to sink, decline, fall; to bend one's course; to turn aside; also, to bend toward, to incline to, to favor. Used literally or figuratively, from the 9th to the 16th century. Also used transitively: to bend something; to pour out (by tilting the container) ; this too was used figuratively, as to hield his wrath. The word hield was likewise used as a noun, meaning a slope, an incline; on held, in a bent-over posture. Hence, figuratively, an inclination; also, a decline, as in Thomas Nashe's LENTEN STUFFE (1599) : His purse is on the heild. Among other spellings of this common word were heald, heeld, helde, hulde, heel (in nautical use, as when a ship inclines, heels over). |
Hierapicra | A bitter purgative. Greek hiera, sacred + pikra, bitter. Also hickery-pickery, higry-pigry, and the like. Hierapicra has the accent on the first syllable, pronounced high. It was used from the 14th into the 18th century; used figuratively also, as in a sermon (1639) by Bishop Ward: There is too much of this bitter zeal, of this hierapicra in all our books of controversies. |
Higgler | Itinerant peddler. |
Highgate | In the phrase sworn at Highgate, put through a ludicrous rituaL Highgate was a spot on a hill, on the north road to London, where about 1600 a gate was erected, for the collection of a toll for the Bishop of London. Taverns naturally were opened nearby; at these, it became the custom to require an oath of all that stopped there before entering London. The traveler was sworn on a pair of horns fastened to a stick -- that is, on pain of cuckoldry -- never to kiss the maid when he could kiss the mistress; never to eat brown bread when he could get white; never to drink small beer when he could get strong. [Cp. small beer.] Then he was fit to be trusted in the big city. |
Hight | Called, named. Thus Philip Sidney (1580) : Even he, the King of glory hight. This form has survived, poetic or archaic, as in Washington Irving's SALMAGUNDI PAPERS (1808): A little pest, hight Tommy Moore. From Old English haitan (cp. hest), this was one of the commonest verbs from the 8th to the 15th century; forms still survive in dialects. It meant to command, bid; call, summon; call (by name), name. It was also used in the phrase I hicht, I assure you. It had many forms. In the present tense, hat, hot, hiht, hight, hete; Chaucer in THE MAN OF LAW'S TALE (1386) : To grete God I heete. In the past tense, heht, heycht, hight, hahte, heet, heitte; hote (by error; Edmund Spenser in THE SHEPHERD'S CALENDAR, 1579): A shepheard trewe, yet not so true as he that earst I hote. Spenser also uses the word (archaic by his time) in senses not elsewhere found: THE SHEPHERD'S CALENDAR, Say it out, Diggon, whatever it hight; THE FAERIE QUEENE, Charge of them was to a damsel hight . . . But the sad steel seiz'd not, where it was hight. As a noun, hight had the same meanings as hest: a command; a promise, a vow. But also hight (from hie) meant exertion, haste; and (from Old Teutonic hycgan, to hope) meant hope, glad expectation, joy. These two forms (haste; joy) were less common, lasting from the 10th scarcely beyond the mid-13th century. Hight was also an early variant spelling of height. With these nouns were verbal meanings: hight, to hope, to rejoice, to exult; by transference, to adorn, beautify, set off. Hence highter, an embellisher. Also hightle (14th and 15th centuries) , to adorn; hightly (llth to 13 century) , hopeful, joyous; delightful. |
Hilasmic | Propitiatory. Greek hilasmos, propitiation. Used in the 19th century. |
Hilding | Something or someone worthless; applied to a beast (as a horse) , a man or (less commonly) a woman. Perhaps hilding is from hield (q.v.), to bend down, to turn waywardly. William Shakespeare uses the word In ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL (1601), in CYMBELINE: A base slave, a hilding for a livery, a squire's cloth; in ROMEO AND JULIET: Out on her, hilding; and as an adjective in HENRY IV, PART TWO (1597) : Some hielding fellow, that had stolne The horse he rode on. |
Hillier | Roof tiler. |
Himpnes | A variant of hymns. George Gascoigne in CERTAIN NOTES OF INSTRUCTION (1575) wrote that the most frequent verse form of his day, the poulter's measure . . . although it be nowadays used in all theames, yet in my judgement it would serve best for psalmes and himpnes. Poulter's measure was a rhymed couplet, an Alexandrine (12 syllables) followed by a fourteener. Its name was drawn from the practice of the poulter (poultryman) of giving two extra eggs with the second dozen. Cp. baker's dozen. For an example of poulter's measure, see appere. The fourteener rhymed couplet, broken into lines of four and three feet (thus with the rhyme in the second and fourth lines) became the common "short meter" of the metrical psalms and the popular ballads, renewed (1798) in Samuel Taylor Coleridge's RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER. Sternhold's metrical version of 19 of tht Bible PSALMS (1547; all the PSALM, 1562) popularized the form, but by his monotonous iambics with many monosyllables -- And with my myce upon the lorde I do both cal and crye, And he out of his holy hyl Doth heare me by and by -- contributed to the later quest of more varied diction. |
Hind | In addition to its still current uses (noun: the female of the deer; adjective, posterior, as the hind quarters), hind, earlier hine, meant a servant, especially a farm servant; hence, a rustic, a boor. Shakespeare uses all senses of the noun. In AS YOU LIKE IT (1600) Touchstone proves he can ring the rhymes on Rosalind -- For a taste: If a hart do lack a hind, Let him seek out Rosalind; servant in the same play and MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR; rustic in LOVE'S LABOUR'S LOST and HENRY IV, PART ONE. The use as rustic also occurs In John Milton (1645) and Ben Jonson, who in EVERY MAN OUT OF HIS HUMOUR (1599) protests: Why should such a prick-ear'd hine as this, Be rich? |
Hindermate | A spouse who is a hindrance. In his COMMONPLACE BOOK (1843) Robert Southey noted: There are hindermates as well as helpmates in marriage. [Helpmate was coined in the 18th century, modeled on helpmeet, a spouse. Helpmeet, however, is the result of a misreading, a running together, of two words in THE BIBLE, GENESIS: an help meet (suitable) for him, meaning Eve.] Thus hindersome, obstructive, harmful (from the 16th century); hinderyeap, cunning, deceitful (11th and 12th centuries); hinderful, impious, evil (13th to 16th century) . A hinderling, a mean or degenerate person; also (11th century) on hinderling, hindforth, backwards; (19th century) hinderlings, buttocks, as in Walter Scott's ROB ROY (1818). |
Hippocaust | The burning of a horse in sacrifice. The word is used in 19th century discussions of (east) Indian practice. |
Hippocrene | The fountain of inspiration; the draught that poets drink. Hippocrene (Greek, fountain of the horse; it lowed from a rock on Mt. Helicon where the hoof of Pegasus struck) was the name of a fountain sacred to the Muses. O for a beaker, cried John Keats in the ODE TO A NIGHTINGALE (1820), Full of the true, the blushful hippocrene. |
Hispid | Rough, bristly. Latin hispis, hispidem, with rough hairs. Used from the 17th century; also hispidity. Hence hispidulate, hispidulous, somewhat hispid. Used still in zoology and botany, the word has been used figuratively, as (1848) in the harsh and hispid law. |
Hodgepot | A stew of various meats and vegetables. Also hotchpot, hotch-potch, hodgepodge. The earliest form was hotchpot, hotch, to shake, mix + pot. It was changed to hodge probably because of the wide use of the name Hodge to mean a farmer or countryfellow in general. Hodge is a nickname for Roger. Hence, hodge-razor, a razor to sell to a greenhorn; hence Thomas Carlyle used the term to mean something only to sell, a sham -- in his MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS (1843; DR. FRANCIA) : Hodge-razors, in all conceivable kinds, marketed, 'which were never to but only to be sold!' The other meanings of hodge-podge are still used. Cp. Olio. |
Hodgepudding | A pudding made with many ingredients. William Shakespeare uses the word figuratively, of the big-bellied Falstaff, in THE MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR (1598) : Ford: What, a hodgepudding? a bag of flax? Mistress Page: A puft man? |
Hody-moke | Secrecy, concealment; hence intrigue; hence muddle, confusion, trouble. Also, one who keeps things secret; hence, a hoarder, a miser. This is one of a group of terms with the same meaning, from the 15th century: hudder-mudder, hucker-moker, hokermoker; the form that has survived is hugger-mugger, sometimes shortened to hugger-mug. In hugger-mugger, secretly. Speaking of Polonius, in William Shakespeare's HAMLET (1602) , the King says We have done but greenly In huggermugger to inter him. Hugger-mugger and hugger are also verbs, meaning to keep secret, to act or meet in a clandestine manner, to act in a muddled way. (Hugger also, in the 18th and 19th centuries, especially in Scotland, meant a stocking without a foot.) Mary Charlton in THE WIFE AND THE MISTRESS (1803) spoke of someone who had saved a mort of money . . . and behold, it was all hugger-muggered away. |
Hogmanay | The last day of the year; also, a gift given on that day. Especially in Scotland and northern England, since the 17th century. The children go from house to house, singing carols and crying Hogmanay! -- hagman heigh; hanganay; hogmynae -- in hope of a present. A similar custom had developed earlier in France, to the cry of Aguillanneuf! Note, however, that hogmoney was the name given, to the early 17th century coinage of the Seiners (now Bermudas) Isles: copper pieces, silvered, with a hog on the obverse. |
Hogoo | A high or piquant flavor; a relish; a highly flavored dish. Also, a 'high' or putrescent flavor, an offensive taste or smell, a stench. Also hogo, hough goe, how go, huggo, and the like; corruptions of French haut gout, high taste. Walton in THE COMPLEAT ANGLER (1653) favors garlic: To give the sawce a hogoe, let the dish (into which you let the pike fal!) be rubbed with it. Hogoo is also used figuratively, as by Crowne, in his play SIR COURTLY NICE (1685) : Lock up the women till they're musty; better they should have a hogo, than their reputations. |
Holt | A copse, a grove. Used from the 8th century (BEOWULF), often in the phrase holtis hie, which may have led to the 16th and 17th century use of holt to mean a wooded hill. Walter Scott differentiates, in THE WILD HUNTSMAN (1796) : The timorous prey Scours moss and moor, and holt and hill. Hence holtfelster, holtfeller, a woodcutter. |
Homager | One that owes homage to a king or overlord; hence, an humble servant. Used figuratively, as by William Shakespeare in ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA (1606): Thou blushest Anthony, and that blood of thine Is Caesar's homager. |
Hooker | Reaper |
Hooper | One who made hoops for casks and barrels. |
Hostler | Also Holster. Also Ostler. A groom who takes care of horses, often at an inn. |
Huckster | One who sold small wares. |
Hurricano | An early variant of hurricane. Shakespeare, followed by Michael Drayton, used the word for a waterspout, as in KING LEAR (1605) : Rage, blow, you cataracts, and hyrricanos spout. |
Husbandman | A farmer who cultivated the land. |
Husting | In Saxon times (hus-thing: house-assembly) a special council called by the king. In King Cnut's reign (1016-35) the hustings-weight set the standard for precious metals. The word husting (usually plural) was later used of the highest court of London; also, of the temporary platform from which nominations for Parliament were made; hence, the parliamentary election proceedings. Commenting on Thomas Babington Macaulay's words against the "Jewish disabilities" in Parliament, THE LONDON QUARTERLY REVIEW (September, 1847) said: The principle, then, which is to receive its final triumph and complete development in a Judaizing parliament, is that the end of government has nothing to do with religion or morality; that 'an essentially Christian government' is a phrase meaning just as much as 'essentially Protestant cookery' or 'essentially Christian horsemanship'; that government exists solely for purposes of police and that therefore ( to quote the words of Lord J. Russell himself the other day on the London hustings) --'a man's religious opinions ought not to affect his civil privileges'. But the misfortune is that the proposition involved in this great principle is both philosophically untenable and historically false. |
Hydromancy | Also Ydromancy. Divination -- foretelling events, predicting the future -- with water (in many ways). |
Hydroptic | With an insatiable thirst. The medical term (thirsty as a man with hydropsy or dropsy) is hydropic; hydroptic is favored by the poets. Thus John Donne in A NOCTURNAL UPON ST. LUCY'S DAY (1649) says The general balm th' hydroptic earth hath drunk, and Robert Browning in A GRAMMARIAN'S FUNERAL (1855) has Soul-hydroptic with a sacred thirst. |
Hyne | An old form of hence, away from here, departed. Thus gone hyne, is no more. Also heir and hyne, in this world and the next. Hyneforth, hyneforward, hyneward; henceforth, hence. John Rolland in THE COURT OF VENUS (1560) said God ordanit luve to be baith heir and hine. |
Hyomancy | Divination -- foretelling events, predicting the future --using the "tongue bone" or how the tongue wags. |
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A growing assortment of words and definitions used in the Early Modern era. See the Guide for more information.
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