word." Nares gives examples from the "Merry Wives" and “Hudibras.” It is also used frequently in Mabbe's translation of Aleman's "The Rogue," where the old obsolete idioms have the time of their lives. 66 The Renaissance was a great and glorious age for finding terms of abuse for your enemy. Take "hoddy-peke," "a ludicrous term of reproach, generally equivalent to fool." It is perhaps derived from "hodmandod," which means a snail. It is used by Nash, Latimer, and in "Gammer Gurton's Needle." "Peeter" was a slang term for wine (Dekker explains it "a pottle of Greek wine "), which was abbreviated from "Peter-see-me," a term which presumably implied adulteration. So Beaumont and Fletcher : "By old claret I charge thee, "Ephesian,” again, (used in Henry VI) is a slang term for a toper. Steevens says that it is merely a "sounding' word, like "anthropophaginian," to "astonish Simple." Whether or no it is derived from the widow of Ephesus, who so speedily consoled herself, I do not know. "Flapse" and " Flibbergibbe" (a sycophant) are exceedingly rare terms of invective, which have not only dropped clean out of the language, but are, I think, only used once each in the whole range of English literature, the former by Alexander Brome and the latter by Latimer in his, shall I say, racy "Sermons." "Fustilarian " is as good as a blow, and "lungis," according to Minshew, "a slimme slow back, a dreaming gangrill, a tall and dull slangam that hath no making to his height, no wit to his making,” is still better. Lastly, does anyone but the etymologist know that "giambeux" (from old French gambeux) means "boots"? It was borrowed by Spenser from Chaucer's "Rime of Sir Topas ": "His giam beux were of quirboilly (boiled and softened leather)." But it is far more exciting to trace the meanings of words which still cling precariously to the present. "Costermonger" is well rooted in tradition. It is derived of course from "costard (custard)-monger," a seller of apples. From that its meaning was extended to sharper and brawler, so much so that old Morose, in "Epicoene," is said to swoon at the voice of one. "Applesquire," another word for the same thing, had a still more unworthy connotation. "Zany" is interesting. Florio ("World of Words ") says that "it is the name of John in some parts of Lombardy, but commonly used for a silly John, a simple fellow, a servile drudge, a foolish clowne in any comedy or interlude play." More probably it is a corruption of Giovanni. Dr. Johnson, on the other hand, derives it from "Sanese," a native of Siena, or, in other words, a fool! "Piccadilly," again, once the name of a famous ordinary built by one Higgins, a tailor, has a splendid longevity. It comes from "Piccadel" (Dutch—“ Pickedillekens "), meaning a piece set round the edge of a garment, generally a collar. "Picots " (the same word), borders with little projections or turrets, are, I believe, fashionable to-day. "Tooth-pick," which Nares calls "this common and necessary implement,” was more commonly "Pick-tooth," and was imported by travellers from Italy and France. It was frequently dis played, as a trophy or to mark an affected gentility, in the hat! Sir Thomas Overbury thus arraigns a gallant in the pink of fashion: "If you find him not heere, you shall find him in Paules, with a pick-tooth in his hat, a cape cloke, and a long stocking." 66 To my pleasure, I think I have discovered through Nares the derivation of the slang "tout," from the verb to toot"--to pry or search. The tradesmen of Tunbridge Wells were wont to hunt out their customers on the road, on their arrival. Hence they were called 66 tooters." They are now, I believe," says Nares, in all innocence," above such practices." They come more surely to the door instead! Dr. Johnson gives the same explanation for "tooters," and adds that Derbyshire beans are said to "toot" or to "look up sharp." Skeat gives" project "from the Danish "toethoran." "Tout" and "toot" are still used, I believe, in country dialect to express the upward thrust of sprouting vegetables. In an Elizabethan song-book-Weelkes' "Airs and Fantastick Sprites"-I encountered the refrain, "Toodle, loodle.” I leave it to you whether this genuine antique has anything to do with "toot"; but let it be no longer arraigned as a purely modern colloquialism! "Giggle," again, comes apparently from the Shakespearean" giglot " or "giglet " ("Measure for Measure"), and means a minx, a hussy, or I wanton wench." Fortune is a giglet" in Cymbeline. I wonder whether "jig" in the nursery rhyme of Robin Redbreast is the same word— "out upon you, fie upon you, bold-faced jig." "Bullion" is curious. In the old sense it meant copper-plate set on the bridles of horses for display. Then colloquially it was a synonym for copper lace, tassels, or imitation gold 66 ornaments. Then, in a still more debased form, it meant finery used by shabby gamesters to attract the ingenuous. "Fast and Loose" has been handed down direct from the coney catchers. It was "a cheating game, whereby gipsies and other vagrants beguiled the common people of their money," and under its own name or its alternative "pricking at the belt or girdle," flourished well on into the nineteenth century. "Cat's-cradle " is derived, I fancy, from "cratch" (French-crèche), a manger. There was an old game called "scratch-cradle," in which a packthread was wound double round the hands into a rude semblance of a manger. "Cot-quean," which still faintly survives in dialect, is probably "cock-quean," or a male quean, a man who troubles himself with female affairs." Ben Jonson and Addison use it in the sense of a masculine bussy, and in the seventeenth century its common meaning was a hen-pecked husband! No wonder that our literature is the proudest in the world since the birth of Christ. No wonder that we found an Urquhart to match a Rabelais. our words has been like a host, like a sea, the heath." The sound of like 66 a wind on XXVI MODERN REALISTIC NOVELS MY DEAR X, On your coast of Coromandel you do not, I know read novels. Neither do you travel in Tubes and eat Grape-nuts. But we do: we cannot help ourselves. This tyrannic age forms certain habits for us, and in order to live we have to be planed down to its uniformity. So if I talk to you about novels, please understand that I am as a burning-glass, concentrating myself upon the indispensable things-as indispensable to the curriculum of life as food, air, sleep, light, collars, newspapers, orators and armaments. To write a novel is indeed the first scalp, the toga virilis of adolescence. A young man is hardly trousered without this initiation to life. It is simply the formula to the free-masonry of citizenship. Some men, of course, undergo the ceremony and then pass on to more genial occupations. Others make a career of it, putting out three novels a year, as they put in three meals a day. A good many of them are quite sensible about it and no more call attention to their custom than they would point out the varieties of food they had consumed a day. Others, as the old gentlemen |