ETYMOLOGY
from trub (a little, squat woman)
EXAMPLE
“… 1st Peasant. Husband, did’st hear he called me woman! called Me whore! Me! me, thy wife!
2nd Peasant: Keep quiet, shrew! I’ll teach thee, trub-tail, what this meddling means! …”
From: The Trinity: A Nineteenth Century Passion-Play
By Karl Pearson, 1882
ETYMOLOGY
? Shakespeare’s Gray-Malkin, in “Macbeth,” 1605 = Gray cat
EXAMPLE
“… Your Muses, th’one a Youth, and one an Infant,
Gaue me two Panegericks at one Instant:
The first Pen, the first line it pleas’d to walke in,
Did make my Art a Rat, and like Grimalkin,
Or a kinde needfull Vermin-coursing Cat.
By Art I play, but will not care your Rat.
I thanke you that you did so soone determine,
To Anagram my Art into a Vermine,
For which I vow, if e’re you keeps a Dayrie,
Of (now and then) a Cheese I will impaire yee. …”
From: All the vvorkes of Iohn Taylor the water-poet
By John Taylor, 1630
PRONUNCIATION
grim-AL-kin
ETYMOLOGY
from French comestible (edible), or from Latin comestibilis (fit to eat, edible);
from comest- variant of comes- past participial stem of comedere (to eat up, devour);
from com- (altogether) + edere (to eat)
EXAMPLE (for adj.)
“… And they mocked hym and said that he raued and was a foole and gaf no faith to his sayeng, and contynued in theyr synnne and wickednes. Thenne whan the Arcke was parfyghtly maad god bad hym to take in to it of all the beestis of therthe, and also of the fowles of thayer of eche two male and female, that they may lyue and also of all the metes of therthe that ben comestible, that they may serue and fede the and them. And Noe dyde all that our lord commanded hym. Thenne said our lord to Noe entre thou and all thy houshold in to the Arke, that is to saye thou and thy wyf and thy thre sones & theyr thre wiuys I haue seen that thou art rightful in this generacion. …”
From: Legenda aurea sanctorum, sive, Lombardica historia/The Golden Legend
By Jacobus de Voragine
Translated by William Caxton, 1483
ETYMOLOGY
from pig + whisper
EXAMPLE (for n. 1.)
“… Frank.
Yes, sir; there are tailors, shoemakers, milliners, perfumers, dancing-masters, music masters and boxing masters.
Tickle.
I’ll be with them in a pig’s whisper.
Frank.
Pig’s whisper! what a fellow for a gentleman’s tutor! O! he’s a shocking dog!…”
From: Tony Lumpkin in town: A Farce
By John O’Keeffe, 1780
ETYMOLOGY
coined by Jonathan Swift as the name of an imaginary animal of approximately human size mentioned in Gulliver’s Travels
EXAMPLE
“… It now began to be known and talked of in the neighbourhood, that my master had found a strange animal in the field, about the bigness of a splacknuck, but exactly shaped in every part like a human creature; which it likewise imitated in all its actions; seemed to speak in a little language of its own, had already learned several words of theirs, went erect upon two legs, was tame and gentle, would come when it was called, do whatever it was bid, had the finest limbs in die world, and a complexion fairer than a nobleman’s daughter of diree years old. …”
From: Gulliver’s Travels
By Jonathan Swift, 1726
ETYMOLOGY
from flisk (to move or dance about in a frolicsome way, to frisk) + -y
EXAMPLE
“… An’ nane can nature’s charms enjoy, or manage weel the day’s employ,
Wha ay gang donarin nidy noy
To houſes flisky,
An bletherin’ gie douse fock annoy,
Whan ramm’d wi Whisky…”
From: Poems Pastoral, Satirical, Tragic, and Comic
By John Learmont, 1791
The Condemnation of Whisky
ETYMOLOGY
irregular from Stentor (a Greek warrior in the Trojan war, ‘whose voice was as powerful as fifty voices of other men’) + -ic
EXAMPLE
“… And to chain up the tongues of five hundred cackling gossips he held, and with great reason, an exploit worth recording. Indeed he appears to have taken the most effectual method with them, that is, to out-clamour them: For thus he measures out his own Stentoronic voice. …”
From: The Doctrine of Grace: or, the Office and Operations of the Holy Spirit vindicated from the Insults of Infidelity, and the Abuses of Fanaticism
By William Warburton, 1763
ETYMOLOGY
alteration of cockabell, cockerbell, variants of cocklebell (an icicle);
probably after English dialect conker (snail-shell)
EXAMPLE
“… An’ leetle Bob! tha daps o’s veather,
Hoi, wull, us did count on un, reather :
Yer Bobby yer’s tha crickett,
Tha chield’s avroared, tha conkerbells
Be hangin’ to un — Yett theesel,
Bob — Yen thick auther thicket. …”
From: Jim and Nell: a Dramatic Poem in the dialect of North Devon
By William Frederick Rock, 1867
ETYMOLOGY
from Dutch hondsvot, German hundsfott (scoundrel, rascal), lit. cunnus canis
EXAMPLE
“… If the Violence of a hooping Cough can cauſe a Rupture , what may not one justly dread from such an Explosion of Wind and Vapour? But hold, Sirs! Methinks I shou’d know the Skream, I have heard something like it before now. O pox! It’s that Hounsfoot Tom Whigg, A Son of a—! He’ll skream to be heard from London to Geneva, when he’s no more hurt than I am this Minute. …”
From: A True and Faithful Account of the Last Distemper and Death of Tom Whigg, Esq., 1710
ETYMOLOGY
from gripe (to grasp strongly) + penny
EXAMPLE
“… Is it not “astounding” that some gripe-penny should live in squalor in order to make rich at the end of some unknown and never seen relatives in Ireland or Scotland? …”
From: The New York Times
1924-01-26: Vol 73
“The Mysterious Visitor”
Lexicophilia 