Category: Word of the Day – P

ETYMOLOGY
from Latin pedisequus (following on foot, a foot-follower), 
from pedi- (foot) + -sequus (following), sequī (to follow)

EXAMPLE
“…not onely melancholical and contumacious ones, but viscid and pituitous also, which sometimes put on the habit of Melancholly, and some adust bilious humours: and therefore we adde Rhabarb and Turbith, that we may with the Melancholical Captain-humour, educe the Pituitous, his companion inseparable, and also the Bilious, which is pedissequous.
And because this Medicament most respects melancholy, we have selected black Hellebore for this black humour; rejecting the white, as more convenient for Phlegm…”

From: A Medicinal Dispensatory: Containing the Whole Body of Physick
By Jean de Renou
Translated by Richard Tomlinson, 1657
The Apothecaries Shop: Of Liquid Electuaries

ETYMOLOGY
from plume (mark of honour or distinction) + plucked

EXAMPLE
“…Yorke. Great Duke of Lancaster, I come to thee
From plume-pluckt Richard, who with willing Soule
Adopts thee Heire, and his high Scepter yeelds
To the possession of thy Royall Hand…”

From: The Tragedie of King Richard the Second
By William Shakespeare, 1597

ETYMOLOGY
from Greek ϕιλο-, ϕιλ-, combining form from root of ϕιλεῖν (to love), ϕίλ-ος (dear, friend)
+ θήρ (wild beast)

EXAMPLE
“…It is the reply of an old fisher-woman, when reproved by some Philotherian for skinning eels alive.
“Sir,” said she, “I have skinned them thusly for nearly fifty years; and they have got so used to it, they don’t mind it one bit.”…”

From: The Harvard Advocate
Vol. XI. Cambridge, Mass., February 28, 1871. No. I
Editorial

ETYMOLOGY
from pother (disturbance, turmoil, bustle; noise, tumult) + -y

EXAMPLE
“…Meer Heat and Cold are very different things from that Pothery and Sultry, that Frosty and Congealing Weather, which alternately in Summer and Winter, at the Line and the Poles we usually now feel….”

From: A New Theory of the Earth
By William Whiston, 1696

ETYMOLOGY
from Latin placidus (pleasing, favourable, gentle, mild, calm),
from root of placēre (to please)

EXAMPLE
“…There was never any thing more strange in the nature of Dogs, then that which happened at ^*Rhodes besieged by the Turk, for the Dogs did there discern betwixt Christians and Turks; for towards the Turks they were most eager, furious, and unappeaseable but towards Christians, although unknown, most easie, peaceable and placidious, which thing caused a certain Poet to write thus…”

From: The History of Four-footed Beasts, and Serpents
By Edward Topsell, 1607

ETYMOLOGY
shortened from Middle French peripateticien, from peripateticus (a person who walks about, a traveller; also, moving about from place to place) + French -ien (-ian)

EXAMPLE
“…Yet certes Moecha is a Platonist,
To all, they say, but whoso do not list;
Because her husband, a far traffick’d man,
Is a profest Peripatecian…”

From: Virgidemiarum. The Three Last Bookes
By Joseph Hall, 1598

ETYMOLOGY
from Latin prehendere (to grasp, seize, catch), variant of præhendere, 
from præ, (pre-) + a second element; sometimes perhaps aphetic from apprehend

EXAMPLE
“…but he lay not longe ther, but was delyveryd with-owt punyshment & styll Inioyed his beneffysis; they were greatly blamed that prehended hym and comitted hym…”

From: Political, Religious, and Love Poems
By John Stowe, a1605
Edited by Frederick James Furnivall, 1866

ETYMOLOGY
from Latin plenitudinarius (full, complete, plenary),
from Latin plenitudin-, plenitudo (abundance, fullness, fullness of shape, thickness, full amount, the whole) + -arius (-ary)

EXAMPLE
“…and a strange kind of Government must that needs be, wherein the Servants Throne is above his Masters, and a Subject shall have a plenitudinary power beyond that which his Lord and King had, or, as the times then were, was capable of …”

From: An Historical and Political Discourse of the Laws & Government of England from the First times to the End of the Reign of Queen Elizabeth
By Nathaniel Bacon, 1647

ETYMOLOGY
from: a) Middle French pusille, puzil, pusil (very small, weak),
b) Latin pusillus (very small, insignificant, petty) from pusus (boy) + -illus 

EXAMPLE
“…And to amase her weake, and pusill minde,
In creepe through crannies of imagination.
Deformd Idean formes, and phansies blinde.
Sent foorth by hir sicke sences, instigation.
Like staringe greisly fendes, threatninge invasion.
Presenting to her heart, the homely iarres.
And houshold cares, accurringe nuptiall warres…”

From: Eustathia, or the Constancie of Susanna
By Robert Roche, 1599

ETYMOLOGY
from putty (in the sense of something soft, something that can be bent any way) + head

EXAMPLE
“…The pickings must be equally divided amongst both classes of the harmonious democracie ‘putty heads’ and ‘adamantines’…”

From: The Janesville Gazette (Wisconsin), 1851