Category: Word of the Day – S

ETYMOLOGY
from sleuth (sloth, laziness obs.) + -ful

EXAMPLE
“…And he þat hauys greet egℏen̛ ys enuyous & witℏ-outen shame, sleuthful, and vnobeyssant. He þat hauys lityƚƚ eghen̛, lyk to heuenly colour, or blake, ys of sharpe vnderstondynge, curteys, and leel…”

From: Secreta Secretorum,
(a treatise which purports to be a letter from Aristotle to his student Alexander the Great on an encyclopedic range of topics, including statecraft, ethics, physiognomy, astrology, alchemy, magic, and medicine)

ETYMOLOGY
from Latin scrīpt-, past participial stem of scribere (to write) + -itious 

EXAMPLE
“…DIDACTIC OPERATION,  Delivery, oral or scriptitious, of these same portions of discourse…”

From: Chrestomathia
By Jeremy Bentham, 1815
‘Chrestomathic Tables. Table II’

ETYMOLOGY
from smart (sharp physical pain) + -ful

EXAMPLE
“…What kind harted husband: can se his kind wife,
In like carefull case, without wo at his hart.
What naturall father can se: for his life,
His naturall childerne, in dread quake and start.
Without his hart smarting, in most smartfull smart.
I thinke, ye thinke none: and euin so thinke I.
Meruell not then: though the spider be toucht nie…”

From: The Spider and the Flie 
By John Heywood, 1556

ETYMOLOGY
from slow (adj.) + back (n.)

EXAMPLE
“…For God doth not assiste slouthfull persons and idle slowbackes. Now I call those needelesse occupations, whiche idle and ill disposed people do vse, thereby to be troublesome to their neighbours and to deceiue other men, exercising, I confesse, an occupation, but such an one as is vtterly vnlawfull & vnprofitable to all men…”

From: Fiftie Godlie and Learned Sermons Diuided into Fiue Decades
By Heinrich Bullinger, 1577

ETYMOLOGY
from Samson (in reference to his enormous strength) + -istic

EXAMPLE
“…The new Governor-General seemed to be impressed with the idea that all political officers, small and great, were in fault. Forthwith he commenced dealing out upon them the most ferocious and Samsonistic blows. The shower unfortunately fell, like Don Quixote’s strokes on a certain occasion, upon an innocent race of puppets…”

From: Dry Leaves from Young Egypt
Being a Glance at Sindh Before the Arrival of Sir Charles Napier,
By An Ex-Political (Edward Backhouse Eastwick), 1849
Chapter XII. A Flea

ETYMOLOGY
from present pple. of Latin splendicare to shine

EXAMPLE
“…and yet cast into a curious desire to vnderstand and knowe what should be the reason and cause that the purple humiditie in the touch of hir bodie, in the smoothnes of hir hand should be as white as pure milke: and by what meanes that nature had bestowed in hir faire bodie the fragrant sweetnes of Arabia. And by what industrie in hir starrie forehead pampynulated with threds of gold aptly disposed, she had infixed the fairest part of the heauens, or the splendycant Heraclea…”

From: Hypnerotomachia: The Strife of Loue in a Dreame
By Francesco Colonna
Translated by Robert Dallington, 1592

ETYMOLOGY
from Latin suspectus (u-stem) (suspect n.) + -ous

EXAMPLE
“…I thynke as our Cytezens be suspectuous and full of coniectoures; so dyd hee feare the comodyte of the place, and woulde eschewe the occasyon …”

From: The goodli history of the moste noble and beautyfull Ladye Lucres of Scene in Tuskane, and of her louer Eurialus verye pleasaunt and delectablevnto ye reder
By Pope Pius II, 1553

ETYMOLOGY
– a stiver was a small coin (originally silver) of the Low Countries:
applied to the nickel piece of 5 cents of the Netherlands

EXAMPLE
“…as, according to a very nice calculation, that cutaneous reservoir, vulgarly called the breeches-pocket, and notorious for its unaffected sympathy with the animal spirits, will be stiver-cramped: I shall then indulge them with a touch of the sublime!…”

From: The Life and Extraordinary Adventures of James Molesworth Hobart
By N. Dralloc, 1794