ETYMOLOGY
from puzzle + head
EXAMPLE
“… Forgot! Forgot! A puzzle-head like you might forget indeed. ’Troth matters would go on prettily in the house if I hadn’t an eye to everything. …”
From: America’s Lost Plays (1940)
Trial Without Jury
By John Howard Payne, 1815
ETYMOLOGY
from nuptial (relating to marriage or a wedding) + -ize
EXAMPLE
“… Vain.
Thou art enthusiastically congnitiant, but I must make an est inventus of Owmuch.
Fop.
And I’le voyage the while towards the straights of your Sisters affection.
Vain.
Hold Armiger, you must a while retire; the Knight must nuptialize before the ‘Squire …”
From: Tunbridge-Wells, or, A Days Courtship A Comedy
By Thomas Rawlins, 1678
ETYMOLOGY
from lean (adj.) + witted (having wit)
EXAMPLE
“… A lunatike leane-witted foole,
Presuming on an agues priuiledge,
Darest with thy frozen admonition
Make pale our cheeke, chasing the royall bloud
With furie from his natiue residence.
Now by my seates right royall maiestie,
Wert thou not brother to great Edwards sonne,
This tong that runnes so roundly in thy head,
Should runne thy head from thy vnreuerent shoulders. …”
From: The Tragedie of King Richard the Second
1st Quarto
By William Shakespeare, 1597
ETYMOLOGY
from Latin obmiss-, participial stem of obmittere, late spelling of omittere (to omit)
EXAMPLE
“… but to thende that eny gaynsaynge sholde be Imputed ayenst me to haue obmyssed for to dyscute som of the condycyons and euyll operacyons of the cursed proserpyne …”
From: Caxton’s Eneydos, 1490
English from the French Liure Des Eneydes, 1483
Edited by W.T. Culley, and F.J. Furnivall, 1890
ETYMOLOGY
from crab (the common name of the wild apple) + stick
EXAMPLE (for n. 2.)
“… Yes, I remember. I was remarking that sangaree and calipash, mangoes and guava jelly, dispose the heart to love, and so they do. I was not more than six weeks in Jamaica when I felt it myself. Now, it was a very dangerous symptom, if you had it strong in you, for this reason. Our colonel, the most cross-grained old crabstick that ever breathed, happened himself to be taken in when young, and resolving, like the fox who lost his tail and said it was not the fashion to wear one, to pretend he did the thing for fun, determined to make every fellow marry upon the slightest provocation. …”
From: Charles O’Malley
The Irish Dragoon
By Charles Lever, 1840
ETYMOLOGY
from Latin coævus (of the same age),
from co- + ævum (age) + -ous
EXAMPLE
“… Finally, the Tetrad connects all Beings, of Elements, Numbers, Seasons of the Year, Coaevous Society; neither can we name any thing, which depends not on the Tetractys, as its Root and Principle: …”
From: The History of Philosophy: containing the lives, opinions, actions and discourses of the philosophers of every sect
By Thomas Stanley, 1660
ETYMOLOGY
of obscure origin
EXAMPLE
“… be sure to give it a second plowing, just overthwart all the lands, and so cut the Turfe, that the Soard may have all the Winters frost to wroxe, and moulder it, which towards March thou mayst plow again, and so cast it, or raise it, as thy Land requireth …”
From: The English Improver, or a New Survey of Husbandry discovering to the kingdome that some land, both arrable and pasture, may be advanced double or treble
By Walter Blith, 1649
Reducement of Land to Pristine Fertility
ETYMOLOGY
from respect (n.) + -uous,
originally after French respectueux (showing respect, respectful)
EXAMPLE
“… Howbeit, they are themselves partly the cause that they doe incurre this obscuritie and ignorance: who being of divers and contrarie natures, yet fall into one and the selfesame inconvenience. For some upon a certaine respectuous reverence which they bare unto their Reader and Doctour, or because they would seeme to spare him, are afraid to aske questions, and to be confirmed and resolved in doubts arising from the doctrine which he delivereth: and so give signes by nodding their heads that they approove all, as if they understood everie thing verie well. …”
From: The Philosophie, commonlie called, The Morals
By Plutarch of Chæronea
Translated out of Greeke into English, and conferred with the Latine translations and the French, by Philemon Holland, 1603
ETYMOLOGY
from Latin prandiculum (a light meal),
from prandium (luncheon) + -culum (-cule)
EXAMPLE
Most children cannot make it through to the evening meal without a prandicle.
ETYMOLOGY
from belly + mountain + -ed
EXAMPLE
“… and such a one he confesseth himself, that some of his own kindred (whom therefore he styles Jewish Presbyterians) suspect him to be; yea he complains of, or exclaims rather against one, (whom he calls a man of pufpast, like that fat bellie-mountaind Bishop) who lighting on one of his Works, said no more of it, but wrote onely upon it, Spalatensis. …”
From: A Discours Apologetical; wherein Lilies lewd and lowd lies in his Merlin or Pasqil for the yeer 1654. are cleerly laid open
By Thomas Gataker, 1654
Lexicophilia 