A
SELECT GLOSSARY
OF
ENGLISH WORDS USED FORMERLY IN SENSES DIFFERENT FROM THEIR PRESENT
BY
RICHARD CHENEVIX TRENCH, D.D.
ARCHBISHOP
‘Res fugiunt, vocabula manent’
SEVENTH EDITION
REVISED BY A. L. MAYHEW, M.A.
LONDON
KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, & CO., 1 PATERNOSTER SQUARE
1890
(The rights of translation and of reproduction are reserved)
[Pg v]
This volume is intended to be a contribution, though a very slightone at best, to a special branch of the study of our own language.It proposes to trace in a popular manner and for general readers thechanges of meaning which so many of its words have undergone; wordswhich, as current with us as they were with our forefathers, yet meantsomething different on their lips from what they mean on ours. Of mysuccess in carrying out the scheme which I had set before myself,it does not become me to speak, except to say that I have fallen agood deal below my hopes, and infinitely below my desires. But of thescheme itself I have no doubts. I feel sure that, if only adequatelycarried out, few works of the same compass could embrace matter ofmore manifold[Pg vi] instruction, or in a region of knowledge which it wouldbe more desirable to occupy. In the present condition of education inEngland, above all with the pressure upon young men, which is everincreasing, to complete their educational course at the earliestpossible date, the number of those enjoying the inestimable advantages,mental and moral, which more than any other languages the Latin andthe Greek supply, must ever be growing smaller. It becomes therefore anecessity to seek elsewhere the best substitutes within reach for thatdiscipline of the faculties which these languages would better than anyother have afforded. And I believe, when these two are set aside, ourown language and literature will furnish the best substitutes; suchas, even though they may not satisfy perfectly, are not therefore tobe rejected. I am persuaded that in the decomposition, word byword, of small portions of our best poetry and prose, the compensationswhich we look for are most capable of being found; even as I havelittle doubt that in many of our higher English schools compensationsof the kind are already oftentimes obtained. Lycidas suggestsitself to me, in the amount of resistance which it would offer,as in verse furnishing more exactly what I seek than any other poem,perhaps some of Lord Bacon’s Essays in prose.
[Pg vii]
In such a decomposition, to be followed by a reconstruction, of somesmall portions of a great English Classic, matters almost innumerable,and pressing on the attention from every side, would claim to benoticed; but certainly not last nor least the changes in meaning which,on close examination, would be seen to have passed on many of the wordsemployed. It is to point out some of these changes; to suggest how manymore there may be, there certainly are, which have not been noticed inthese pages; to show how slight and subtle, while yet most real, howeasily therefore evading detection, unless constant vigilance is