Category: Word of the Day – B

ETYMOLOGY
apparently shortened from baty bummill (a lazy or feckless person; an idler), perhaps by association with bum (the buttocks)

EXAMPLE
“… For cozy skoug and rest;
Sae did that Abbey people a’
Effrey’t flee to the Frater-ha’,
Canon, and monk, and dean, and prior,
And batie-bum, and beggin’ freir,
A congregation wode wi’ fear,
Though fat, in dulesome dreiry cheir: …”

From: Papistry Storm’d
Or, The Dingin’ Down O’ The Cathedral
By William Tennant, 1827

ETYMOLOGY
from Latin basiat- participial stem of basiare, from basium (kiss)

EXAMPLE
(With apologies to William B. Felts;
Taken from Hernarne: A Comedy, 1891
“I kissed my love and he kissed me
And so we kissed each other” )

I basiated my love and he basiated me
And so we basiated each other

ETYMOLOGY
from bull (trivial talk or nonsense) + squitter (to squirt, to spatter, to sputter)

EXAMPLE
She had everyone running around looking for her umbrella, but it was all bull-squitter as there wasn’t a cloud to be seen.

ETYMOLOGY
probably from bump (to collide heavily or firmly, to knock) + -sy

EXAMPLE
“… How Tarlton landed at Cuckolds haven.
TArlton being one Sunday at Court all day, caused a paire of Oares to tend him, who at night called on him to be gone. Tarlton being a carousing, drunk so long to the Watermen, that one of them was bumpsie, and so indeede were all three for the most part: at last they left Greenwich, the Tide being at a great low fall the Watermen yet afraide of the Crosse Cables by the Lime-house, very dark and late as it was, landed Tarlton at Cuckolds-hauen, and said, the next day they would giue him a reason for it …”

From: Tarltons Jests Drawne into these three parts.
1 His court-witty iests.
2 His sound city iests.
3 His countrey pretty iests.
Full of delight, wit, and honest mirth.
By Richard Tarlton, 1611

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

ETYMOLOGY
from bubbly (full of bubbles) + the Scots male forename Jock 

EXAMPLE (for n. 1.)
“… there was the turkey, whom the poetical Scott calls the bubbly-jock, gobbling in the distance, with a melodious gurgle as of an oboe played softly; …”

From: With Harp and Crown, A Novel
By Walter Besant and James Rice, 1800

ETYMOLOGY
from Middle English belsyre,
from belfair (beautiful) (from Old French)

EXAMPLE
“… With those delicious Brooks, by whose immortall streames
Her greatnesse is begunne: so that our Riuers King,
When he his long Descent shall from his Bel-sires bring,
Must needs (Great Pastures Prince) deriue his stem by thee,
From kingly Cotswolds selfe, sprung of the third degree: …”

From: Poly-Olbion
By Michael Drayton, 1612

ETYMOLOGY
from bread + wright (a workman, artificer)

EXAMPLE
“… And her wrigteleslike holden in bond. 
Quað ðis bred wrigte liðeð nu me. 
me drempte ic bar bread lepes ðre. …”

From: Genesis and Exodus, composed c1250;
Joseph and his Brethren
in: Selections from early Middle English, 1130-1250
By: Joseph Hall, 1920

ETYMOLOGY
from French bel (fair) + amour (love)

EXAMPLE (for n. 1)
“… Loe loe how braue she decks her bounteous boure,
  With silken curtens and gold couerlets,
  Therein to shrowd her sumptuous Belamoure,
  Yet neither spinnes nor cardes, ne cares nor frets,
But to her mother Nature all her care she lets. …”

From: The Faerie Queene
By Edmund Spenser, 1590

ETYMOLOGY
from Old French beau (fine, good_ + pre (father), or, in sense 2, per, peer (equal, peer):

From OED: In Old French, beau père was politely used in addressing every one whom one called ‘father’; i.e. one’s own father, a ‘father’ in the church, a god-father, a step-father, a father-in-law, an elderly man occupying a fatherly position in one’s regard; about the 16th or 17th century, this use of beau became obsolete, and beau-père was retained as a distinctive term for ‘father-in-law’ and ‘step-father’ as distinct from a real father. In English the use appears to have been much more limited.

EXAMPLE
“… Tho he hadde his tale itold and ymaked al his wise,
He sat adoun and the Bischop of Cicestre gan arise. “Beau pere,” he seide to the Pope: “me thinȝth hit
faith to the,
“To desturbi thing that falleth: to harm of communeaute; …”

From: The Life and Martyrdom of Thomas Beket, c1300
Edited by J.H. Black, 1848