Tag: 1500 – 1599

ETYMOLOGY
from clatter (to talk rapidly and noisily; to talk idly; to chatter, prattle, babble) + fart (a disagreeable or annoying person)

EXAMPLE
“…The Irish enimie spieng that the citizens were accustomed to fetch such od vagaries, especiallie on the holie daies, & hauing an inkling withall by some false clatterfert or other, that a companie of them would haue ranged abrode, on mondaie in the Easter weeke towards the wood of Cullen…”

From: The firste (laste) volume of the Chronicles of England, Scotlande, and Irelande
– Raphael Holinshed, Richard Stanyhurst, 1577

ETYMOLOGY
adjective: from Latin conspurcātus past participle
verb: from Latin conspurcāt-, participial stem of conspurcāre (to defile, pollute),
from con- + spurcāre (to befoul), 
from spurcus (unclean, dirty, foul)

EXAMPLE
“…in dede I thynk they both will declare it hartely, if they should come before them. As for me, if you woulde knowe what I thynk (my good and most deare brother Laurence) bycause I am so synfull & so conspurcate (the Lord knoweth I lye not) with many greuous synnes (which yet I hope ar washed away Sanguine Christi) I neither can nor would be consulted withal, but as a siphar in augrim.…”

From: The first volume of the ecclesiasticall history contaynyng the actes and monumentes of thynges passed in every kynges tyme in this realme
– John Foxe, 1563

ETYMOLOGY
from Greek καλός (fair, excellent) + -ϕαντης (shower) (from ϕαίνειν to show) + -ic

EXAMPLE
“…T’is only wisht your work from Dolts, your Hiues from Drones were free:
T’is wisht in These, in Fugitiues, in Papists, and (more bad,
Whom to perswade to reason, were with reason to be mad)
In Calophantick Puritaines, amisse amendment had…”

From: Albions England
A continued historie of the same kingdome, from the originals of the first inhabitants thereof
– William Warner, 1596