Category: Word of the Day – B

ETYMOLOGY
from be- + gab (to impose upon)

EXAMPLE
“…And wend [þat] he begabbit had bene Be wesch-crafte…”

From: Legends of the Saints in the Scottish dialect of the fourteenth century
St. Clemens c1375

ETYMOLOGY
for the verb: probably a nursery or jocular word, imitating the action of the lips in an infant’s kiss; 
Old French has baer, beer (to open the mouth, to gape);
also, possibly a contracted form of basse (to kiss)

EXAMPLE (for verb)
“…Thanne wolde I seye, “Goode lief, taak keep
How meekly looketh Wilkyn, oure sheep!
Com neer, my spouse, let me ba thy cheke!
Ye sholde been al pacient and meeke…”

From: The Wife of Bath’s Prologue
By Geoffrey Chaucer, c1386

ETYMOLOGY
from buffle (buffalo; a fool) + brained (having a brain of the specific kind)

EXAMPLE
“…An’ there we would swing, an’ hang there we must,
Till the hoodoo was busted. Eternally cussed,
So he said, was the buffle-brained feller that dared
To touch the witch-web that was holding us snared…”

From: Up in Maine:
Stories of Yankee Life Told in Verse
– Holman Day, 1900

ETYMOLOGY
?? possibly from brabble (a quarrel)

EXAMPLE
“…You nasty brabagious creature…”

From: A Dictionary of the Sussex Dialect and Collection of Provincialisms in Use in the County of Sussex
– William Douglas Parish, 1875

ETYMOLOGY
of uncertain origin

EXAMPLE
“…This Stymphalist is he that with fiue or sixe Tenements, and the retinue thereunto belonging, infectes the aire with stench, and poisons that parish, yea and twentie parishes off with the contagion of such carrion as lies there in their bumble baths, and stinke at both ends like filthie greene elder pipes. For him and them master, such Landlordes and such Tenants. Good master wish as I wish…”

From: Maroccus Extaticus.
Or, Bankes bay horse in a trance
A discourse set downe in a merry dialogue, betweene Bankes and his beast: anatomizing some abuses and bad trickes of this age.
– By Iohn Dando the wierdrawer of Hadley, and Harrie Runt, head ostler of Bosomes Inne, 1595

ETYMOLOGY
from bigot + -ical 

EXAMPLE
“…Or is any thing the more excellent and Venerable, because it exceeds all Understanding? Is he to be deemed the fittest subject for Religion, who is most Bigotical and carelesly credulous? Are we to put off Humane Nature that we may become Religious?…”

From: A discourse of the use of reason in matters of religion shewing that Christianity contains nothing repugnant to right reason, against enthusiasts and deists
– George Rust, translated Henry Hallywell, a1670

ETYMOLOGY
– from belly + furniture (a provision, stock, or supply of anything; stores in general, provisions; necessaries obs.)

EXAMPLE
“…For that, having a great desire to obey the pleasure of the king, I armed myself from toe to top with belly furniture, of the soles of good venison-pasties, to go see how my grape-gatherers and vintagers had pinked and cut full of small holes their high-coped caps, to lecher it the better, and play at in and in…”

From: The Works of Mr. Francis Rabelais
Printed for The Navarre Society, Volume I, 1653
The Second Book of Dr. Francis Rabelais
Chapter XI. How the Lords of Kissebreech and Suckfist did plead before Pantagruel without an Atturney

ETYMOLOGY
– from belly + slave

EXAMPLE
“…The Sermon against to himself, by drinking, sorrow and care, with perpetual infamy and reproach unto the world’s end. If God spared not his servant Lot, being otherwise a godly man, nephew what will he do to these beastly belly-slaves, which, void of all godliness or virtuous behaviour, not once, but continually day and night, give themselves wholly to bibbing and banqueting?…”

From: Certain Sermons or Homilies Appointed to be Read in Churches 
in the Time of the Late Queen Elizabeth of Famous Memory
The Church of England, 1822
An Homily Against Gluttony and Drunkenness, 1562