Tag: 1600 – 1699

Word of the Day: BROW-SICK

ETYMOLOGY
from brow + sick

EXAMPLE
“… Besides though, I confess, Parnassus hardly,
Yet Helicon this Summer-time is dry:
Our wits were at an ebbe or very low,
And, to say troth, I think they cannot flow.
But yet a gracious influence from you
May alter Nature in our  Brow–sick crew.
Have patience then, we pray, and sit a while;
And, if a laugh be too much, lend a smile. …”

From: The Last Remains of Sr John Suckling
A Prologue of the Author’s to a Masque at Witten, 1659

Word of the Day: CUFFER

ETYMOLOGY
for. n. 1. & n. 2. from cuff (to strike with the fist or open hand, to buffet) + -er
for n. 4. from cuff (to discuss, to talk over) + -er

EXAMPLE (for n. 1.)
“… LET US LEARN THE LAWS OF FASTING, that we run not uncertainly, nor beat the air, nor be as such cuffers who fight as it were with their shadow. Fasting is a medicine; but physick, although it be never so good, that is prescribed, oftimes becomes unprofitable, by reason of the imprudence of him that useth it. …”

From: The Paschal or Lent-Fast, Apostolical & Perpetual at first deliver’d in a sermon preached before His Majesty in Lent and since enlarged
By Peter Gunning, 1662

Word of the Day: MULLIGRUBS

also MA-LE-GRUBBLES, MOULDY-GRUBS, MULLEYGRUBS, 
MULLIEGRUMS, MULLIGRUMPHS (Sc.), MULLYGRUBS

ETYMOLOGY
alteration (probably influenced by grub) of earlier mulliegrums, perhaps alteration (perhaps influenced by obsolete English mully (dusty, mouldy), from English mull + -y) of megrims (low spirits) 

EXAMPLE (for n. 1.)
“… Hee was as good as his word, and had no sooner spoke the worde, but he did as he spoke. with a heauy heart to the pallace the yeoman of the mouth departed, and rehearsed this second il successe, wherwith Peters successour was so in his mulliegrums that he had thought to haue buffeted him, & cursed him with bell, book, & cndle ; but he ruled his reaso[n], & bad him, thgh it cost a million, to let him haue that third that rested behind, and hie him expeditely thither, lest some other snatched it vp, and as fast from thence againe, for hee swore by his triple crowne, no crumme of refection woulde he gnaw vpon, till he had sweetened his lippes with it. …”

From: Lenten Stuffe
By Thomas Nashe, 1599
“The Praise of the Red Herring”

Word of the Day: PUDIBUND

ETYMOLOGY
from Latin pudibundus (easily ashamed, bashful, modest, also shameful),
from pudere (to make or be ashamed) + -bundus 

EXAMPLE (for adj. 1)
“… If any man do vse to drynke water with wyne, let it be purely strayned, & than seth it and after it be cold let hī put it to his wyne, but better it is to drīke with wyne stylled waters, specyally ye water of strawberes or the water of buglos or the water of endyue, or the water of cycory, or ye water of southystel, & dandelyon. And yf any man be cobred with the stone or doth burne in the pudybunde places, vse to drynke with whyte wyne the water of hawes, & the water of mylke, voke for thys mater in a boke of my makynge named the breuyary of health …”

From: A Compendyous Regyment or a Dyetary of Healthe Made in Mountpyllyer,
By Andrewe Boorde, 1542

PRONUNCIATION
PYOO-duh-bund

Word of the Day: GOTCH-GUTTED

ETYMOLOGY
from English dialect gotch (a big-bellied earthenware pot or jug) + bellied

EXAMPLE
“… Then did ye see e’r an old Bald-pated, Beetle-Brow’d, Gotch-Gutted, Squint-Ey’d, Sowr-Fac’d Ra­scal, the very Canker-Worm of Heaven and Earth, and Store-House o’ Mischief, Roguery, and Villany, leading o’ two good likely Girls? …”

From: Plautus’s Comedies, 
By Titus Maccius Plautus
Translated by Laurence Echard, 1694

Word of the Day: GRAVILOQUENCE

ETYMOLOGY
from Latin gravis (grave, weighty, important) + loqui, loquent- (to speak)

EXAMPLE
“… I treasure her unsentimental, enterprising, and no-nonsense-responsible spirit, her gravitas and graviloquence. I’d like to be capable (at least at times) of such classical conservatism, a necessary leaven for my mushy murky utopian pink political daydreaming …”

From: The Theater of Maria Irene Fornes, 1999