"Relent sweet Hermia, and Lysander yield Thy CRAZED * title to my certain right, 'Till length of years And sedentary numbness CRAZE † my limbs." SHAKSPEARE. "Then through the fiery pillar and the cloud, No father his son dearer, true, to tell thee, MILTON. SHAKSPEARE, Crazedness, crazy, and craziness, are all evident formations from the verb; the last in its freqentative shape, and as gerysigen. "The nature, as of men that have sick bodies, so likewise of the people in the CRAZEDNESS § of the minds, possessed with dislike and discontentment of things present, is to imagine that any thing would help them."-HOOKER. "Come my lord We will bestow you in some better place, "The queen of night, whose large command ** "Physick can but mend our CRAZY state, SHAKSPEARE. HUDIBRAS. DRYDEN. Touching other places, she may be said to hold them as we should do a wolf by the ears; nor will I speak now of the CRAZINESS of her title to many of them." HOWEL'S VOCAL FOREST. WALLS HAVE EARS AND IIEDGES HAVE EYES. In respect to whatever you have to transfer beyond the limits of your own breast you can never * Weak. + Enfeeble, weaken, diminish the strength of. Damage, render useless. Feeble, diminish in strength. ** Feeble, worn out. § Weakness, imbecility. ¶ Injured, unsound. be certain of being safe [you must always incur some risk]. Wie al's, have hier's; aen huid je's have eys; q. e. he that has all within himself need never go from home; external possessions are always a demand upon caution for their safe keeping; he that can confide his happiness to the keeping of the inward man, is independent of trouble from others; outward riches can never be possessed without requisite precaution and consequent care and pain. The amount of the above moral, is a caution to make yourself content with the smallest rate of sufficiency and to act so as to risk no reproof of conscience, and thus to be as independent as possible of others in regard to either what they do, think, or say. Wie, who, he who, the one. Al, all, every thing, the whole. S, is, is. Have, possessions, means, riches. Huijd, hoed, heed, caution, keeping, custody. SING OLD ROSE AND BURN THE BELLOWS. As the hailing prelude to some scene of profligacy, a sort of defiance to all decency preparatory to the decisive laying it aside for the debauch in question. Singh! hold Droes end behaern de beloves; q. e. Sing! do homage to old Nick and piss upon all the vows you have made in regard to your duty; let there be singing! let the devil be the theme of our glorification, and let us free ourselves from the restraint of all promises of social and religious duty which we have openly or implicitly made. By the term vows, I suspect, this abandoned and now vulgar hallowing in of the debauch, is of monastic origin; the prelude to some friarly carousal. Singh, the imperative of singhen, singen, to sing. Holden, hulden, to inaugurate, to do homage to, to pay obeissance to. Droes, the devil, the duce [deuce]. End, and. Behaernen, to piss upon, to be-piss and thus to show contempt for, in which sense the term is still used by us; behaern, its imperative sounds burn. Beloves as the plural of belove the participle present of beloven, to vow, to promise; the more modern substantive form of which is belofte [vow, promise]; belofte aen God, is a vow to God. Het land van belofte, is, the land of promise. "Once possess'd of what with care you save ASK MY ARSE. * DRYDEN. A coarse and sulky way of saying I wont answer you, I dont chuse to tell you what you ask me; and implying offence taken either at the manner of the asker of the question, or at the subject of it. Eisch mee eer's; a question should be made respectfully; a demand should be accompanied with good manners; a question is not to be made in an illbred manner. More literally, a question implies a respectful [due] manner of asking it. Eer, respect, attention. Eer's, as eer is. Meé, mede, along with. The import of the original phrase is, a question not asked in a proper manner [or else concerning an improper subject] is not one that is entitled to an answer. The coarseness of the form is entirely due to the travesty. Eisch and ask are the same word; eisch is an asking, a demand, and sounds ASK. Mee eer's, sounds my arse. BACKGAMMON. As in the phrases, to play at backgammon; let us have a game at backgammon, &c. By hach gaế mee hun; q. e. by the effect of chance they are upon a footing; owing to the dice the one has as good a share in it as the other; the events depending upon chance give the superiority to neither. The Dutch phrase sounds backgamon, as we pro * Shew their contempt for you when dead. nounce that word; and the means of winning at it depend upon the alternate changes in the castings of the dice, whence in Dutch it is called verkeerspel; q. e. the game of counterchanging [alternating changes]. By hach, by chance, sounds back. Gae, gad, gade, equal, consorting, alike, of a piece. Meé, mede, with. Hun, them. Meé hun sounds mon. JOHNSON has suffered himself to be hoaxed into the belief, the term was as bach gammon, which somebody had told him was Welsh for a little battle! MR. THOMPSON thinks the last member of the phrase is grounded in the Teutonick gamen, or the Anglo-Saxon gaman, to game, to sport, but groundlessly, for his etymology results into nothing which will not apply to any game or sport played upon a table. In regard to our term game, as sport, play (whence to game, in Anglo Saxon gaman, in Teutonick gamen, in Gothick gamma) I believe it to be a contracted form of gaeijing, gading, the old participle present of gaeyen, gaden, to please, to amuse, to recreate, to make gay; from the rootword gaey, gay, whence our gay, as cheerful, lively, full of spirits; and thus as an enlivening, a recreating, a filling with spirit, a cheering up, a making cheerful, which is what sport or play does, either as amusement or exercise. Then changes into m, as in endless other instances, and e is the usual and ancient abbreviation of the still older ing as the participle termination. A game at cards, is as amusement [recreation] by the means of cards. Game, as the object of the chace, is that which makes or gives sport, diversion, amusement. "Yet it is better for me * For to be dedde in wifely honeste, * Joke, fun. "But Dame, here as we riden by the way, Us nedith not to spekin but of GAME And let autoritys, a Godd 'is name, To preching and to schole, eke of Clergy."-CHAUCER. "But if it like unto this cumpany I woll you of a Somner + tell a GAME‡; "Though I evir plaine, Or alwaie wepe, I am nothing to blame, RUNNER. IBID. IBID. As in the phrases, a government runner, a Bow-street runner, a treasury runner, &c.; and in the sense of a spy, a collector of information for his employers, a retainer, a messenger, a relater of what he worms out of others for the purposes of his employment. But since the recent introduction of the French system of police, the old metropolitan term bow-street runner has merged in that of policeman; as goaler has also into that of governor, but without the addition of excellency, which the French did not allow even to him of the Cold-bath fields in Paris. Ruuner; q. e. informer, spy, watcher, whisperer, earwigger. In a more modern form roener, ruener, from runen, roenen (in German raunen), to whisper, to tell to the ear, whence our obsolete to round, antiently to rowne, in the same sense. "Verraders, smekers ende oerstekers, Ruuners ende plumestrekers ¶."-MELIS STOKE. *Of something amusing, sportive, mirth-making. † An apparitor, a summoner of delinquents before an ecclesiastical court. A joke, a merry story. § Pleasure, joy. Betrayers, supplicators [courtiers], ear-wiggers, INFORMERS [RUNNERS] and parasites." Otherwise pluymstryker. |