Tag: 1700 – 1799

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
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
from muss (a game in which small objects are thrown down to be scrambled for; a scramble);
the verb muss occurs in Lincolnshire dialect ( to scramble for, to take forcibly and by surprise)

EXAMPLE
“… because this their Cadet, from his very Cradle, had shewed so strong a Propension to hoarding, that being but five or six Years old, he denied himself the Enjoyment of such Knicknacks as were given him, and would scramble for and smuss those of other Children, his Play-fellows; yet was he so very careful and saving of his own, that he let his Fruit and Sweatmeats spoil and grow mouldy rather than he would eat them. …”

From: Histoire du Prince Titi,
A.R. The history of Prince Titi, a royal allegory
By Themiseul de Saint-Hyacinthe
Translated by Eliza Stanley, 1736