the term implies no more than a letting self out for the unlimited purpose of another, and is thus groundedly a degrading appellative. Mr. HORNE TOOKE thinks the word is as horelet, and so as either a tiny whore or a little bit of one! And this is he, who sneers and snarls at those who knew more about the subject of language, a thousand times over, than he did himself. Besides let is not a diminutive form belonging to our language. A horelet! What an idea! Who would pick her up but Tom Thumb? Huere, hoere, a hireling, and consequently a letting out of; and also the same word with our term whore; and sometimes the way that ure (hour) is spelt. Hueren, is the same word with our to hire. Huere sounds hire, and hoere, whore. Lot the same word as at present with us. "And take hede now, that he that repreveth his neighbour ether he repreveth him by some harme of pain, that he hath upon his bodie, as mesell,* croked, harlot, or by some sinne that he doeth." CHAUCER. * "Theyt give ther almis to the riche, To mayntenovrs‡ and men of lawe, For to lordis they wol be liche, An HARLOTTE'S SONNES not worth a haw." "Sothfastnesse alle suche han slawe. Thei kembe ther crokettes || with crystall, "They make parsouns for the pennie, That ne hath glosed the gospel fals Leprous; and the same word with measles. + The Popes. Partakers in the event of a lawsuit, which they undertake on that condition. Son of a whore. Adorn the tops of their crosiers with chrystal. Ne with him was no cardinall "They takin to ferme ther sompnours* To multiplie 'hem more metall, When al sнche falshed shal foule fall." "Such HARLOTTES † shul men disclaunder, And sain to the pore, wo be ye? Suche herdes** shul wel evil the ++ IDEM. And al suche false shal foule befall."-CHAUCER. 'And up he gaf a roring and a crie, The Merchant's Tale.-CHAUCER. JACKASS. The animal. Er j'ach aes; q. e. there's the creature of chance food; there's that which is left to seek its food from the hand of chance alone. He is worked, and then turned loose to seek his sustenance out of thistles and briars [what chance may offer]; he is, in fact, the only domestic animal which is habitually so treated; and thus a sample * A sort of ecclesiastical Attorney General. + Vile wretches. Before, rather. § Do them pleasure, court them, make the agreeable to. Bribe. The calls of the Pope's mistresses.-Who though not worth a farthing, wants to live like a rich woman. ** Pastors, Popes. tt Thrive. of content and patience, of ill-requited service and unrewarded drudgery. The Jack in the phrase has no original relation to sex. Ass is the ellipsis of Jack-ass. We can say a she jack-ass, although against common usage. BALDERDASH. Empty talk. Bolder-das; q. e. that's all empty noise; there is nothing but sheer noise in what you are bawling out by way of discourse. (See article Hobgoblin, page 141.) THING-A-ME. Said when at fault, at a stand, at a loss for a name [for to recall something]. 'Thing her mij; q. e. bear with me in this affair; suffer me here; give me time; allow me time in this case; and implies, wait till I can recall the name or circumstance to my memory. Hingen, hengen, gehengen, to allow, to bear with. Er mij, there, to me in this instance. TO THROW IN HIS TEETH. I will throw it in his teeth; I will reproach him with it, make him repent of it, be sorry for it. Te seer rouw hin is tijt; q. e. from this point we go straight to sore repentance; hence we start off to severe sorrow; what I have said must lead to grief, and consequently, to repentance. Hin, from this point, hence. Tijt, sounds teet and so teeth; th has no other representative in Dutch thand or t. Seer, sore, much, very. Seer-rouw sounds throw. TO BURN DAYLIGHT. To waste time, to misemploy means; to take the long and the wrong, instead of the short and the right road, to arrive at a due point. Te behoor'n dee leyd; q. e. virtue [honesty] leads straight to duty [propriety]; never quit the path of probity, and you may be sure you are going right; take the means which conscience approves, and you may be certain you are not misemploying your time as regards yourself. And thus axiomatically impressing, that to swerve from the path of integrity, is misemploying the best means which are in your power, and amounting to an analogous import with that in which the travestied expression is used. Behoor, propriety, duty, that which is becoming, behoving. Leyden, to conduct, to lead, and leyd sounds light. Deghe, deé, virtue, probity; dee sounds day. 'N, in, in. Te behoor 'n sounds to burn. EARTH TO EARTH, ASHES TO ASHES, DUST TO DUST. As in the known Rubrick at the burial of the dead; the official farewell to the departed, pronounced for the community, by him who is authorised to perform that service. Eerd toe eerd aes is, toe aes is deyst, toe deyst! q. e. earth food to earth, is returned to food, returned for ever! earth is gone back to fatten earth, carrion is gone back to food, entirely gone. The words are emphatically applied to the body [carcase], as that which is alone within the dominion of the grave. In the usual and common form, if literally construed, unmeaning; but in sound sense conveying a solemn and affectionate recognition of the frailness and comparative unimportance of that form by which the departed was known to us, and of its true destination as distinguished from that which is beyond the reach of death. That our body is of the earth, and returns to the earth, is duly expressed; but we never are ashes, nor do we ever return to ashes unless we happen to be burnt, and not always then; neither are we dust, even though some of us may happen to be dustmen; nor do we return to dust unless under special circumstances, so that neither ashes nor dust can have any general relation to the state of man, alive nor dead. Nor are these words ever employed, even as tropes, in such sense, except in relation to the customary use of them in this form in our well known rubrick. In the phrase as pale as ashes, the term ashes is the travesty of aes is, and thus pale as a corpse, or as that which is dead meat [carrion], for ashes are not necessarily pale. Aerde, eerde, earth, formerly spelt ert and yerth by us. Aes, aas, food, carrion, flesh, meat,and so as that which is fit to feed [fatten] in a general sense; formerly aet, aat, and grounded in ik ete, ik ate, Ieat; but ashes as the plural of ash (cinder) is as assche in the same sense and as the Greek a&a, soot, filth from smoke, remains from fire, sordes ex ignis flammá adherentes camino. JOHNSON says the word has no singular; yet ash-heap, ash-cart, ash-wednesday, ash-box, &c., are all good English. Deyst, gedeyst, the participle past of deysen, deynsen, to go back, to retreat, to back out, to retire, reculer, retrocedere, retrogredi, pedem referre; and sounds as we utter dust; but which word, in its unsophisticated sense, is as dust, duijst, doest, donst, dunst, powder in general, pollen, flour-dust, farina, detritus of sawing, filing, &c., saw-dust; the word had once the form of doen; i. e. doën, from the obsolete dowe [the French doux, the Latin dulcis, and Italian dolce] to which stock our down, as soft feathering, also belongs; so that the ground sense of dust is as comparative softness in relation to solid cohesion. Toe has both the meaning of to, and also of entirely, finally. "We therefore commit his (this) body to the ground, EARTH TO EARTH, ASHES TO ASHES, DUST TO DUST. The order for the burial of the body in Common Prayer Book. Ashes was once spelt with us ashin, and even askis. "For certis Lorde, so sore has she me wounded, M |