Tag: 1500 – 1599

Word of the Day: BUMBLE-BATH

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

Word of the Day: HOBLOB

ETYMOLOGY
from hob (a generic name for a rustic, a clown) + lob (a country bumpkin, a clown)

EXAMPLE
“…By Phoebe to Delos, his natiue countrie seat, hastning.
Hee poincts a dawnsing, foorthwith the rustical hoblobs
Of Cretes, of Driopes, and paincted clowns Agathyrsi
Dooe fetch their gambalds hopping neere consecrat altars…”

From: Thee first foure bookes of Virgil his Æneis tr. intoo English heroical verse 
– translated by Richard Stanyhurst, 1582

Word of the Day: TICKLE-TONGUED

ETYMOLOGY
from tickle + tongue

EXAMPLE
“…yet notwithstanding he was so crost in the nycke of thys determination, that his hystorie in mitching wyse wandred through sundry hands, and being therwithall in certaine places somewhat tyckle tongued (for M. Campion dyd learne it to speake) and in other places ouer spare, it twitled more tales out of schoole…”

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

Word of the Day: FRIDAY-FACED

ETYMOLOGY
? from Friday being a day of fasting

EXAMPLE
“…without a sermon pareneticall for exhortation, that hee might seeke bethe where they were and were not, as Skoggin did the hare, and presse an army royall of arrand honest women, to scale the fortresse of modestie with friday faced scoulds, ere he coulde triump for halfe such a victory in twise so much space…”

From: Philotimus
– Brian Melbancke, 1583

Word of the Day: CLATTERFART

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

Word of the Day: CONSPURCATE

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

Word of the Day: CALOPHANTIC

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