Has in English the same hissing sound as in other languages, and unhappily prevails in so many of our words that it produces in the ear of a foreigner a continued sibilation.
In the beginning of words it has invariably its natural and genuine sound: in the middle it is sometimes uttered with a stronger appulse of the tongue to the palate, like z; as rose, roseate, rosy, osier, nosel, resident, busy, business. It sometimes keeps its natural sound; as loose, designation; for which I know not whether any rules can be given.
In the end of monosyllables it is sometimes s, as in this; and sometimes z, as in as, has; and generally where es stands in verbs for eth, as gives. It seems to be established as a rule, that no noun singular should end with s single: therefore in words written with diphthongs, and naturally long, an e is nevertheless added at the end, as goose, house; and where the syllable is short the s is doubled, and was once sse, as ass, anciently asse; wilderness, anciently wildernesse; distress, anciently distresse
SA’CKPOSSET. n.s. [sack and posset.] A posset made of milk, sack, and some other ingredients.
Snuff the candles at supper on the table, because the burning snuff may fall into a dish of soup or sackposset. SWIFT.
SA’CRILEGE. n.s. [sacrilege, Fr. sacrilegium, Lat.] The crime of appropriating to himself what is devoted to religion; the crime of robbing heaven; the crime of violating or profaning things sacred.
By what eclipse shall that sun be defac’d, What mine hath erst thrown down so fair a tower!
What sacrilege hath such a saint disgrac’d? SIDNEY.
Then ’gan a cursed hand the quiet womb Of his great grandmother with steel to wound, And the hid treasures in her sacred tomb With sacrilege to dig. FAIRY QUEEN.
We need not go many ages back to see the vengeance of God upon some families, raised upon the ruins of churches, and enriched with the spoils of sacrilege. SOUTH’S SERMONS.
SAGA’CITY. n.s. [sagacité, French;
sagacitas, Latin.]
1. Quickness of scent.
2. Acuteness of discovery.
It requires too great a sagacity for vulgar minds to draw the line nicely between virtue and vice. SOUTH.
Sagacity finds out the intermediate ideas, to discover what connection there is in each link of the chain, whereby the extremes are held together. LOCKE.
Many were eminent in former ages for their discovery of it; but though the knowledge they have left be worth our study, yet they left a great deal for the industry and sagacity of after-ages. LOCKE.
SA’ILER, sailor. n.s. [sailor is more usual, sailer more analogical;
from sail.] A seaman; one who practises or understands navigation.
They had many times men of other countries that were no sailors. BACON.
Batter’d by his lee they lay;
The passing winds through their torn canvas play, And flagging sails on heartless sailors fall. DRYDEN.
Young Pompey built a fleet of large ships, and had good sailors, commanded by experienced captains. ARBUTHNOT.
Full in the openings of the spacious main
It rides, and, lo, descends the sailer train. POPE’S ODYSSEY.
SA’INTLIKE. adj. [saint and like.]
1. Suiting a saint; becoming a saint.
If still thou do’st retain
The same ill habits, the same follies too,
Gloss’d over only with a saintlike show,
Still thou art bound to vice. DRYDEN’S PERSIUS.
2. Resembling a saint.
The king, in whose time it passed, whom catholicks count a saintlike and immaculate prince, was taken away in the flower of his age. BACON.
SA’INTLY. adj. [from saint.] Like a saint; becoming a saint.
I mention still
Him whom thy wrongs, with saintly patience borne,
Made famous in a land and times obscure. MILTON’S PARADISE LOST.
SA’INTSHIP. n.s. [from saint.] The character or qualities of a saint.
He that thinks his saintship licenses him to censures, is to be looked on not only as a rebel, but an usurper. DECAY OF PIETY.
This savours something ranker than the tenents of the fifth monarchy, and of sovereignty founded upon saintship. SOUTH.
The devil was piqu’d such saintship to behold,
And long’d to tempt him. POPE.
SALAMA’NDER. n.s. [salamandre, Fr. salamandra, Lat.] An animal supposed to live in the fire, and imagined to be very poisonous. Ambrose Parey has a picture of the salamander, with a receipt for her bite; but there is no such creature, the name being now given to a poor harmless insect.
The salamander liveth in the fire, and hath force also to extinguish it. BACON’S NATURAL HISTORY.
According to this hypothesis the whole lunar world is a torrid zone, and may be supposed uninhabitable, except they are salamanders which dwell therein. GLANVILLE’S SCEPSIS SCIENTIFICA.
Whereas it is commonly said that a salamander extinguisheth fire, we have found by experience, that on hot coals it dieth immediately. BROWN’S VULGAR ERROURS.
The artist was so encompassed with fire and smoke, that one would have thought nothing but a salamander could have been safe in such a situation. ADDISON’S GUARDIAN.
SA’LESMAN. n.s. [sale and man.] One who sells cloaths ready made.
Poets make characters, as salesmen cloaths;
We take no measure of your fops and beaus. SWIFT.
SA’LEWORK. n.s. [sale and work.] Work for sale; work carelesly done.
I see no more in you than in the ordinary
Of nature’s salework. SHAKESPEARE’S AS YOU LIKE IT.
SA’LIENT. adj. [saliens, Latin.]
1. Leaping; bounding; moving by leaps.
The legs of both sides moving together, as frogs, and salient animals, is properly called leaping. BROWN’S VULGAR ERROURS.
2. Beating; panting.
A salient point so first is call’d the heart, By turns dilated, and by turns comprest,
Expels and entertains the purple guest. BLACKMORE.
3. Springing or shooting with a quick motion.
Who best can send on high
The salient spout, far streaming to the sky. POPE.
SALI’VOUS. adj. [from saliva.] Consisting of spittle; having the nature of spittle.
There happeneth an elongation of the uvula, through the abundance of salivous humour flowing upon it. WISEMAN.
SA’LMAGUNDI. n.s. [It is said to be corrupted from selon mon gout, or sale à mon goüt.] A mixture of chopped meat and pickled herrings with oil, vinegar, pepper, and onions.
SALSOA’CID. adj. [salsus and acidus, Latin.] Having a taste compounded of saltness and sourness.
The salsoacids help its passing off; as sal prunel. FLOYER.
SALSU’GINOUS. adj. [salsugo, Latin.] Saltish; somewhat salt.
The distinction of salts, whereby they are discriminated into acid, volatile, or salsuginous, if I may so call the fugitive salts of animal substances, and fixed or alcalizate, may appear of much use in natural philosophy. BOYLE.
SALTA’TION. n.s. [saltatio, Latin.]
1. The act of dancing or jumping.
The locusts being ordained for saltation, their hinder legs do far exceed the others. BROWN’S VULGAR ERROURS.
2. Beat; palpitation.
If the great artery be hurt, you will discover it by its saltation and florid colour. WISEMAN’S SURGERY.
SALTI’NBANCO. n.s. [saltare in banco, to climb on a bench, as a mountebank mounts a bank.] A quack or mountebank.
Saltinbancoes, quacksalvers, and charlatans deceive them: were Æsop alive, the Piazza and Pont-neuf could not speak their fallacies. BROWN’S VULGAR ERROURS.
He play’d the saltinbanco’s part,
Transform’d t’ a Frenchman by my art. HUDIBRAS.
SALVABI’LITY. n.s. [from salvable.] Possibility of being received to everlasting life.
Why do we Christians so fiercely argue against the salvability of each other, as if it were our wish that all should be damned, but those of our particular sect. DECAY OF PIETY.
SA’LVATORY. n.s. [salvatoire, French.] A place where any thing is preserved.
I consider the admirable powers of sensation, phantasy, and memory, in what salvatories or repositories the species of things past are conserved. HALE’S ORIGIN OF MANKIND.
SA’LVO. n.s. [from salvo jure, Latin, a form used in granting any thing: as salvo jure putei.] An exception; a reservation; an excuse.
They admit many salvoes, cautions, and reservations, so as they cross not the chief design. KING CHARLES.
It will be hard if he cannot bring himself off at last with some salvo or distinction, and be his own confessor. L’ESTRANGE.
If others of a more serious turn join with us deliberately in their religious professions of loyalty, with any private salvoes or evasions, they would do well to consider those maxims in which all casuists are agreed. ADDISON.
SA’LUTARY. adj. [salutaire, Fr. salutaris, Latin.] Wholsome; healthful; safe; advantageous; contributing to health or safety.
The gardens, yards, and avenues are dry and clean; and so more salutary as more elegant. RAY.
It was want of faith in our Saviour’s countrymen, which hindered him from shedding among them the salutary emanations of his divine virtue; and he did not many mighty works there, because of their unbelief. BENTLEY.
SALUTI’FEROUS. adj. [salutifer, Latin.] Healthy; bringing health.
The king commanded him to go to the south of France, believing that nothing would contribute more to the restoring of his former vigour than the gentle salutiferous air of Montpelier. DENNIS’S LETTERS.
SA’MLET. n.s. [salmonet, or salmonlet.] A little salmon.
Sir Francis Bacon observes the age of a salmon exceeds not ten years, so his growth is very sudden: after he is got into the sea he becomes from a samlet, not so big as a gudgeon, to be a salmon, in as short a time as a gosling becomes a goose. WALTON’S ANGLER.
SA’NDBLIND. adj. [sand and blind.] Having a defect in the eyes, by which small particles appear to fly before them.
My true begotten father, being more than sandblind, high gravelblind, knows me not. SHAKESPEARE’S MERCHANT OF VENICE.
SA’NDISH. adj. [from sand.] Approaching to the nature of sand; loose; not close; not compact.
Plant the tenuifolia’s and ranunculus’s in fresh sandish earth, taken from under the turf. EVELYN’S KALENDAR.
SANE. adj. [sanus, Latin.] Sound; healthy. Baynard wrote a poem on preserving the body in a sane and sound state.
SA’PID. adj. [sapidus, Latin.] Tasteful; palatable; making a powerful stimulation upon the palate.
Thus camels, to make the water sapid, do raise the mud with their feet. BROWN’S VULGAR ERROURS.
The most oily parts are not separated by a slight decoction, ’till they are disentangled from the salts; for if what remains of the subject, after the infusion and decoction be continued to be boiled down with the addition of fresh water, a fat, sapid, odorous, viscous, inflammable, frothy water will constantly be found floating a-top of the boiling liquor. ARBUTHNOT.
SAPONA’CEOUS, SAPONARY. adj. [from sapo, Latin, soap.] Sopy; resembling soap; having the qualities of soap.
By digesting a solution of salt of tartar with oil of almonds, I could reduce them to a soft saponary substance. BOYLE.
Any mixture of an oily substance with salt, may be called a soap: bodies of this nature are called saponaceous. ARBUTHNOT.
SA’VANNA. n.s. [Spanish, according to Bailey.] An open meadow without wood; pasture ground in America.
He that rides post through a country may tell how, in general, the parts lie; here a morass, and there a river; woodland in one part, and savanna’s in another. LOCKE.
Plains immense,
And vast savanna’s, where the wand’ring eye,
Unfix’d, is in a verdant ocean lost. THOMSON’S SUMMER.
SAUCE. n.s. [sauce,saulse, French; salsa, Italian.]
1. Something eaten with food to improve its taste.
The bitter sauce of the sport was, that we had our honours for ever lost, partly by our
own faults, but principally by his faulty using of our faults. SIDNEY.
To feed were best at home;
From thence the sauce to meat is ceremony;
Meeting were bare without it. SHAKESPEARE’S MACBETH.
Epicurean cooks
Sharpen with cloyless sauce his appetite. SHAKESPEARE.
Such was the sauce of Moab’s noble feast,
’Till night far spent invites them to their rest. COWLEY.
He that spends his time in sports, is like him whose meat is nothing but sauces; they are healthless, chargeable, and useless. TAYLOR.
High sauces and rich spices are fetched from the Indies. BAKER.
2. To serve one the same SAUCE. A vulgar phrase to retaliate one injury with another.
SA’UCEBOX. n.s. [from sauce, or rather from saucy.] An impertinent or petulant fellow.
The foolish old poet says, that the souls of some women are made of sea-water: this has encouraged my saucebox to be witty upon me. ADDISON’S SPECTATOR.
SAU’CER. n.s. [sauciere, Fr. from sauce.]
1. A small pan or platter in which sauce is set on the table.
Infuse a pugil of new violets seven times, and it shall make the vinegar so fresh of the flower, as, if brought in a saucer, you shall smell it before it come at you. BACON.
Some have mistaken blocks and posts For spectres, apparitions, ghosts, With saucer eyes and horns. HUDIBRAS.
2. A piece or platter of china, into which a tea-cup is set.
SA’VEALL. n.s. [save and all.] A small pan inserted into a candlestick to save the ends of candles.
SA’USAGE. n.s. [saucisse, French; salsum, Latin.] A roll or ball made commonly of pork or veal, and sometimes of beef, minced very small, with salt and spice; sometimes it is stuffed into the guts of fowls, and sometimes only rolled in flower.
To SAY. v.a. preter. said. [secgan, Saxon; seggen, Dutch.]
1. To speak; to utter in words; to tell.
Say it out, Diggon, for whatever it hight;
For nought but well mought him betight,
He is so meek. SPENSER.
In this slumbry agitation what have you heard her say? SHAKESPEARE.
Speak unto Solomon; for he will not say thee nay. BIBLE 1 KINGS.
2. To allege.185
After all can be said against a thing, this will still be true, that many things possibly are, which we know not of. TILLOTSON.
In vain shall we attempt to justify ourselves, as the rich young man in the gospel did, by appealing to the great duties of the law; unless we can say somewhat more, even that we have been liberal in our distributions to the poor. ATTERBURY.
3. To tell in any manner.
With flying speed, and seeming great pretence,
Came messenger with letters which his message said. FAIRY QUEEN.
To SAY. v.n.
1. To speak; to pronounce; to utter.186
He said moreover, I have somewhat to say unto thee; and she said, say on. BIBLE 1 KINGS, II. 14.
Say nothing to any man, but go thy way. BIBLE MARK, I. 44.
To the others he said, go ye after him. BIBLE EZEKIEL, IX. 5.
The council-table and star-chamber hold, as Thucydides said of the Athenians, for honourable that which pleased, and for just that which profited. CLARENDON.
The lion here has taken his right measures, that is to say, he has made a true judgment. L’ESTRANGE.
He has left his succession as undetermined as if he had said nothing about it. LOCKE.
This ought to weigh with those whose reading is designed for much talk and little knowledge, and I have nothing to say to it. LOCKE.
Of some propositions it may be difficult to say whether they affirm or deny; as when we say, Plato was no fool. WATTS.
2. In poetry, say is often used before a question; tell.
Say first what cause
Mov’d our grand parents to fall off? MILTON.
Say, Stella, feel you no content,
Reflecting on a life well-spent. SWIFT.
SAY. n.s. [from the verb.]
1. A speech; what one has to say.
He no sooner said out his say, but up rises a cunning snap. L’ESTRANGE.
2. [For assay.] Sample.
Since thy outside looks so fair and warlike,
And that thy tongue some ’ say of breeding breathes,
By rule of knighthood I disdain. SHAKESPEARE.
So good a say invites the eye,
A little downward to espy
The lively clusters of her breasts. SIDNEY.
3. Trial by a sample.
This gentleman having brought that earth to the publick ’ say masters, and upon their being unable to bring it to fusion, or make it fly away, he had procured a little of it, and with a peculiar flux separated a third part of pure gold. BOYLE.
4. [Soie, French.] Silk. Obsolete.
5. A kind of woollen stuff.
SCALA′DE, SCALADO. n.s. [French; scalada, Spanish, from scala, Latin, a ladder.] A storm given to a place by raising ladders against the walls.
What can be more strange than that we should within two months have won one town of importance by scalado, battered and assaulted another, and overthrown great forces in the field? BACON.
Thou raisedst thy voice to record the stratagems, the arduous exploits, and the nocturnal scalade of needy heroes, the terror of your peaceful citizens. ARBUTHNOT’S HISTORY OF JOHN BULL.
SCA′LARY. adj. [from scala, Latin.] Proceeding by steps like those of a ladder.
He made at nearer distances certain elevated places and scalary ascents, that they might better ascend or mount their horses. BROWN’S VULGAR ERROURS.
SCA′LDHEAD. n.s. [skalladur, bald, Islandick. Hickes.] A loathsome disease; a kind of local leprosy in which the head is covered with a continuous scab.
The serum is corrupted by the infection of the touch of a salt humour, to which the scab, pox, and scaldhead are referable. FLOYER.
To SCA′MBLE. v.n. [This word, which is scarcely in use, has much exercised the etymological sagacity of Meric Casaubon; but, as is usual, to no purpose.]
1. To be turbulent and rapacious; to scramble; to get by struggling with others.
Have fresh chaff in the bin,
And somewhat to scamble for hog and for hen. TUSSER.
Scambling, out-facing, fashion-mong’ring boys,
That lie, and cog, and flout, deprave and slander. SHAKESPEARE.
That self bill is urg’d, and had against us past,
But that the scambling and unquiet time
Did push it out of further question. SHAKESPEARE’S HENRY V.
He was no sooner entered into the town but a scambling soldier clapt hold of his bridle, which he thought was in a begging or a drunken fashion. WOTTON.
2. To shift aukwardly.
Some scambling shifts may be made without them. MORE.
SCA′MBLER. n.s. [Scottish.] A bold intruder upon one’s generosity or table.
SCA′NTLET. n.s. [corrupted, as it seems, from scantling.] A small pattern; a small quantity; a little piece.
While the world was but thin, the ages of mankind were longer; and as the world grew fuller, so their lives were successively reduced to a shorter scantlet, ’till they came to that time of life which they now have. HALE.
SCA′NTLING. n.s. [eschantillon, French; ciantellino, Italian.]
1. A quantity cut for a particular purpose.
’Tis hard to find out a woman that’s of a just scantling for her age, humour, and fortune, to make a wife of. L’ESTRANGE.
2. A certain proportion.
The success,
Although particular, shall give a scantling
Of good or bad unto the general. SHAKESPEARE’S TROILUS AND CRESSIDA.
3. A small quantity.
Reduce desires to narrow scantlings and small proportions. TAYLOR’S RULE OF LIVING HOLY.
A scantling of wit lay gasping for life, and groaning beneath a heap of rubbish. DRYDEN.
In this narrow scantling of capacity, we enjoy but one pleasure at once. LOCKE.
SCA′RECROW. n.s. [scare and crow.] An image or clapper set up to fright birds: thence any vain terrour.
Thereat the scarecrow waxed wond’rous proud,
Through fortune of his first adventure fair,
And with big thundering voice revil’d him loud. FAIRY QUEEN.
No eye hath seen such scarecrows: I’ll not march through Coventry with them, that’s flat. SHAKESPEARE’S HENRY IV.
We must not make a scarecrow of the law,
Setting it up to fear the birds of prey,
And let it keep one shape, ’till custom make it
Their pearch, and not their terrour. SHAKESPEARE.
Many of those great guns, wanting powder and shot, stood but as cyphers and scarecrows. RALEIGH.
A scarecrow set to frighten fools away. DRYDEN.
SCA′REFIRE. n.s. [scare and fire.] A fright by fire; a fire breaking out so as to raise terrour.
The drum and trumpet, by their several sounds, serve for many kind of advertisements; and bells serve to proclaim a scare-fire, and in some places water-breaches. HOLDER.
SCA′RFSKIN. n.s. [scarf and skin.] The cuticle; the epidermis; the outer scaly integuments of the body.
The scarfskin, being uppermost, is composed of several lays of small scales, which lie thicker according as it is thicker in one part of the body than another: between these the excretory ducts of the miliary glands of the true skin open. CHEYNE.
To SCA′RIFY. v.a. [scarifico, Lat. scarifier, Fr.] To let blood by incisions of the skin, commonly after the application of cupping-glasses.
Washing the salts out of the eschar, and scarifying it, I dressed it. WISEMAN’S SURGERY.
You quarter foul language upon me, without knowing whether I deserve to be cupped and scarified at this rate. SPECTATOR.
SCATE. n.s. [skidor, Swedish; skid, Islandick.] A kind of wooden shoe, with a steel plate underneath, on which they slide over the ice.
SCATH. n.s. [sceað, Saxon.] Waste; damage; mischief; depopulation. Scath in Scotland denotes spoil or damage: as, he bears the scath and the scorn. A proverb.
She suborned hath
This crafty messenger, with letters vain,
To work new woe and unprovided scath. FAIRY QUEEN.
The ear that budded fair is burnt and blasted,
And all my hoped gain is turn’d to scath. SPENSER.
He bore a spiteful mind against king
Edward, doing him all the scath that he could, and annoying his territories. SPENSER.
My proud one doth work the greater scath,
Through sweet allurement of her lovely hue. SPENSER.
They placed them in Rhodes, where daily doing great scath to the Turk, the great warrior Soliman, with a mighty army, so overlaid them, that he won the island from them. KNOLLES.
Still preserv’d from danger, harm, and scath,
By many a sea and many an unknown shore. FAIRFAX.
SCA′VENGER. n.s. [from scafan, to shave, perhaps to sweep, Saxon.] A petty magistrate, whose province is to keep the streets clean.187
Since it is made a labour of the mind, as to inform mens judgments, and move their affections, to resolve difficult places of Scripture, to decide and clear off controversies, I cannot see how to be a butcher, scavenger, or any other such trade, does at all qualify men for this work. SOUTH’S SERMONS.
Fasting’s nature’s scavenger. BAYNARD.
Dick the scavenger, with equal grace,
Flirts from his cart the mud in Walpole’s face. SWIFT.
SCE′LERAT. n.s. [French; sceleratus, Latin.] A villain; a wicked wretch. A word introduced unnecessarily from the French by a Scottish author.
Scelerats can by no arts stifle the cries of a wounded conscience. CHEYNE.
SCE′NARY. n.s. [from scene.]
1. The appearances of place or things.
He must gain a relish of the works of nature, and be conversant in the various scenary of a country life. ADDISON.
2. The representation of the place in which an action is performed.
The progress of the sound, and the scenary of the bordering regions, are imitated from Æn. vii. on the sounding the horn of Alecto. POPE.
3. The disposition and consecution of the scenes of a play.
To make a more perfect model of a picture, is, in the language of poets, to draw up the scenary of a play. DRYDEN.
SCE′NOGRAPHY. n.s. [σxηvή and γράøω scenographie, Fr.] The art of perspective.
SCHE′MATIST. n.s. [from scheme.] A projector; one given to forming schemes.
SCHE′MER. n.s. [from scheme.] A projector; a contriver.
SCE′PTICK. n.s. See SKEPTICK.
SCI′ENCE. n.s. [science, French; scientia, Latin.]
If we conceive God’s sight or science, before the creation of the world, to be extended to all and every part of the world, seeing every thing as it is, his prescience or foresight of any action of mine, or rather his science or sight, from all eternity, lays no necessity on any thing to come to pass, any more than my seeing the sun move hath to do in the moving of it. HAMMOND.
2. Certainty grounded on demonstration.
So you arrive at truth, though not at science. BERKLEY.
3. Art attained by precepts, or built on principles.
Science perfects genius, and moderates that fury of the fancy which cannot contain itself within the bounds of reason. DRYDEN.
4. Any art or species of knowledge.
No science doth make known the first principles, whereon it buildeth; but they are always taken as plain and manifest in themselves, or as proved and granted already, some former knowledge having made them evident. HOOKER.
Whatsoever we may learn by them, we only attain according to the manner of natural sciences, which mere discourse of wit and reason findeth out. HOOKER.
I present you with a man
Cunning in musick and the mathematicks,
To instruct her fully in those sciences. SHAKESPEARE.
The indisputable mathematicks, the only science heaven hath yet vouchsafed humanity, have but few votaries among the slaves of the Stagirite. GLANVILLE’S SCEPSIS SCIENTIFICA.
5. One of the seven liberal arts, grammar, rhetorick, logick, arithmetick, musick, geometry, astronomy.
Good sense, which only is the gift of heav’n,
And though no science, fairly worth the sev’n. POPE.
SCIO′LIST. n.s. [sciolus, Latin.] One who knows many things superficially.
’Twas this vain idolizing of authors which gave birth to that silly vanity of impertinent citations: these ridiculous fooleries signify nothing to the more generous discerners, but the pedantry of the affected sciolists. GLANVILLE’S SCEPSIS SCIENTIFICA.
These passages, in that book, were enough to humble the presumption of our modern sciolists, if their pride were not as great as their ignorance. TEMPLE.
SCIO′MACHY. n.s. [schiamachie, Fr. σxíα and μαχή.] Battle with a shadow. This should be written skiamachy.188
To avoid this sciomachy, or imaginary combat of words, let me know, sir, what you mean by the name of tyrant? COWLEY.
SCI′SSIBLE. adj. [from scissus, Latin.] Capable of being divided smoothly by a sharp edge.
The differences of impressible and not impressible, scissible and not scissible, and many other passions of matter, are plebeian notions. BACON.
SCI′SSILE. adj. [scissile, Fr. scissilis, Latin.] Capable of being cut or divided smoothly by a sharp edge.
Animal fat is a sort of amphibious substance, scissile like a solid, and resolveable by heat. ARBUTHNOT.
SCI′SSION. n.s. [scission, French; scissio, Latin.] The act of cutting.
Nerves may be wounded by scission or puncture: the former way they are usually cut through, and wholly cease from action. WISEMAN’S SURGERY.
SCI′SSOR. n.s. [This word is variously written, as it is supposed to be derived by different writers; of whom some write cisors, from cÆdo, or incido; others scissors, from scindo; and some cisars, cizars, or scissars, ciseaux, Fr.] A small pair of sheers, or blades moveable on a pivot, and intercepting the thing to be cut.
His beard they have sing’d off with brands of fire;
And ever, as it blaz’d, they threw on him
Great pails of puddled mire to quench the hair:
My master preaches patience to him, and the while
His man with scissars nicks him for a fool. SHAKESPEARE.
Wanting the scissars, with these hands I’ll tear,
If that obstruct my flight, this load of hair. PRIOR.
When the lawyers and tradesmen brought extravagant bills, sir Roger wore a pair of scissars in his pocket, with which he would snip a quarter of a yard off nicely. ARBUTHNOT.
SCI′SSURE. n.s. [scissum, Latin.] A crack; a rent; a fissure.
The breach seems like the scissures and ruptures of an earthquake, and threatens to swallow all that attempt to close it, and reserves its cure only for omnipotence. DECAY OF PIETY.
SCONCE. n.s. [schantz, German.]
1. A fort; a bulwark.
Such fellows are perfect in the great commanders names, and they will learn you by rote where services were done; at such and such a sconce, at such a breach. SHAKESPEARE’S HENRY V.
2. The head: perhaps as being the acropolis, or citadel of the body. A low word.
Why does he suffer this rude knave now to knock him about the sconce with a dirty shovel, and will not tell him of his action of battery? SHAKESPEARE’S HAMLET.
3. A pensile candlestick, generally with a looking-glass to reflect the light.
Golden sconces hang upon the walls,
To light the costly suppers and the balls. DRYDEN’S LUCRETIA.
Triumphant Umbriel, on a sconce’s height,
Clapp’d his glad wings, and sat to view the fight. POPE.
Put candles into sconces. SWIFT’S DIRECTIONS TO THE BUTLER.
To SCONCE. v.a. [A word used in the universities, and derived plausibly by Skinner, whose etymologies are generally rational, from sconce, as it signifies the head; to sconce being to fix a fine on any one’s head.] To mulct; to fine. A low word which ought not to be retained.
SCOTCH Hoppers. n.s. A play in which boys hop over lines or scotches in the ground.
Children being indifferent to any thing they can do, dancing and scotch hoppers would be the same thing to them. LOCKE.
To SCRA′MBLE. v.n. [The same with scrabble; scrasselen, Dutch.]
1. To catch at any thing eagerly and tumultuously with the hands; to catch with haste preventive of another; to contend tumultuously which shall catch any thing.
England now is left
To tug and scramble, and to part by th’ teeth
The unow’d interest of proud swelling state. SHAKESPEARE.
Of other care they little reck’ning make,
Than how to scramble at the shearer’s feast,
And shove away the worthy bidden guest. MILTON.
It is not to be supposed, that, when such a tree was shaking, there would be no scrambling for the fruit. STILLINGFLEET.
They must have scrambled with the wild beasts for crabs and nuts. RAY ON THE CREATION.
2. To climb by the help of the hands: as, he scrambled up that rock.
SCRA′MBLE. n.s. [from the verb.]
1. Eager contest for something, in which one endeavours to get it before another.
As they were in the middle of their gambols, some body threw a handful of apples among them, that set them presently together by the ears upon the scramble. L’ESTRANGE.
Because the desire of money is constantly almost every where the same, its vent varies very little, but as its greater scarcity enhances its price and increases the scramble. LOCKE.
2. Act of climbing by the help of the hands.
To SCRANCH. v.a. [schrantzer, Dutch.] To grind somewhat crackling between the teeth. The Scots retain it.
SCRAPE. n.s. [skrap, Swedish.] Difficulty; perplexity; distress. This is a low word.
SCREEN. n.s. [escran, French.]
1. Any thing that affords shelter or concealment.
Now near enough: your leavy screens throw down,
And show like those you are. SHAKESPEARE’S MACBETH.
Some ambitious men seem as screens to princes in matters of danger and envy. BACON.
Our people, who transport themselves, are settled in those interjacent tracts, as a screen against the insults of the savages. SWIFT.
My juniors by a year,
Who wisely thought my age a screen,
When death approach’d, to stand between,
The screen remov’d, their hearts are trembling. SWIFT.
2. Any thing used to exclude cold or light.
When there is a screen between the candle and the eye, yet the light passeth to the paper whereon one writeth. BACON.
One speaks the glory of the British queen,
And one describes a charming Indian screen. POPE.
Ladies make their old cloaths into patchwork for screens and stools. SWIFT.
3. A riddle to sift sand.
To screen. v.a. [from the noun.]
1. To shelter; to conceal; to hide.
Back’d with a ridge of hills,
That screen’d the fruits of th’ earth and seats of men,
From cold Septentrion blasts. MILTON’S PARADISE REGAIN’D.
A good magistrate’s retinue of state screens him from the dangers, which he is to incur for the sake of it. ATTERBURY.
This gentle deed shall fairly be set foremost,
To screen the wild escapes of lawless passion. ROWE.
2. [Cerno crevi, Latin.] To sift; to riddle.
Let the cases be filled with natural earth, taken the first half spit, from just under the turf of the best pasture ground, mixed with one part of very mellow soil screened. EVELYN.
SCRUB. n.s. [from the verb.]
1. A mean fellow, either as he is supposed to scrub himself for the itch, or as he is employed in the mean offices of scouring away dirt.
2. Any thing mean or despicable.
With a dozen large vessels my vault shall be stor’d;
No little scrub joint shall come on my board. SWIFT.
3. A worn out broom. Ainsworth.
SCRU′PLER. n.s. [from scruple.] A doubter; one who has scruples.
The scruples which many publick ministers would make of the worthiness of parents to have their children baptised, forced such questioned parents, who did not believe the necessity of having their children baptised by such scruplers, to carry their children unto other ministers. GRAUNT’S BILLS OF MORTALITY.
SCRUTA′TOR. n.s. [scrutateur, Fr. from scrutor, Lat.] Enquirer; searcher; examiner.
In process of time, from being a simple scrutator, an arch-deacon became to have jurisdiction more amply. AYLIFFE.
To SCRUZE. v.a. [Perhaps from screw. This word, though now disused by writers, is still preserved, at least in its corruption, to scrouge, in the London jargon.] To squeeze; to compress.
Though up he caught him ’twixt his puissant hands,
And having scruzed out of his carrion corse
The loathful life, now loos’d from sinful bands,
Upon his shoulders carried him. FAIRY QUEEN.
To SCULK.189 v.n. [sculcke, Danish.]
To lurk in hiding places; to lie close.
It has struck on a sudden into such a reputation, that it scorns any longer to sculk, but owns itself publickly. GOVERNMENT OF THE TONGUE.
Fearing to be seen, within a bed
Of coleworts he conceal’d his wily head;
There sculk’d’till afternoon, and watch’d his time. DRYDEN.
My prophets and my sophists finish’d here
Their civil efforts of the verbal war:
Not so my rabbins and logicians yield;
Retiring still they combat; from the field
Of open arms unwilling they depart,
And sculk behind the subterfuge of art. PRIOR.
No news of Phyl! the bridegroom came,
And thought his bride had sculk’d for shame;
Because her father us’d to say
The girl had such a bashful way. SWIFT.
The immediate publishers thereof lay sculking under the wings of an act of parliament. LETTER TO PUBLISHER OF THE DUNCIAD.
SCU′RRILOUS. adj. [scurrilis, Latin.] Grosly opprobrious; using such language as only the license of a buffoon can warrant; loudly jocular; vile; low.
Yet is not their goodness so intolerable, as, on the contrary side, the scurrilous and more than satyrical immodesty of Martinism. HOOKER.
Let him approach singing.
—— Forewarn him that he use no scurrilous words in’s tunes. SHAKESPEARE’S WINTER’S TALE.
How often is a person, whose intentions are to do good by the works he publishes, treated in as scurrilous a manner as if he were an enemy to mankind? ADDISON’S FREEHOLDER.
Their characters have been often treated with the utmost barbarity and injustice by scurrilous and enraged orators. SWIFT.
SEABRE′ACH. n.s. [sea and breach.] Irruption of the sea by breaking the banks.
To an impetuous woman, tempests and seabreaches are nothing. L’ESTRANGE.
SE′ACOAST. n.s. [sea and coast.] Shore; edge of the sea.
The venturous mariner that way,
Learning his ship from those white rocks to save,
Which all along the southern seacoast lay;
For safety’s sake that same his seamark made,
And nam’d it Albion. FAIRY QUEEN.
Upon the seacoast are many parcels of land, that would pay well for the taking in. MORTIMER’S HUSBANDRY.
SEAMA′RK. n.s. [sea and mark.] Point or conspicuous place distinguished at sea, and serving the mariners as directions of their course.
Those white rocks,
Which all along the southern seacoast lay,
Threat’ning unheedy wreck and rash decay,
For safety’s sake his seamark made,
And nam’d it Albion. FAIRY QUEEN.
Though you do see me weapon’d,
Here is my journey’s end, here is my butt,
The very seamark of my utmost sail. SHAKESPEARE’S OTHELLO.
They were executed at divers places upon
the seacoast, for seamarks or lighthouses, to teach Perkins’s people to avoid the coast. BACON’S HENRY VII.
They are remembered with a brand of infamy fixt upon them, and set as seamarks for those who observe them to avoid. DRYDEN.
The fault of others sway,
He set as seamarks for himself to shun. DRYDEN.
SE′APIECE. n.s. [sea and piece.] A picture representing any thing at sea.
Great painters often employ their pencils upon seapieces. ADDISON’S SPECTATOR.
SE′ARISQUE. n.s. [sea and risque.] Hazard at sea.
He was so great an encourager of commerce, that he charged himself with all the searisque of such vessels as carried corn to Rome in the Winter. ARBUTHNOT.
SE′ASHORE. n.s. [sea and shore.] The coast of the sea.
That seashore where no more world is found,
But foaming billows breaking on the ground. DRYDEN.
Fournier gives an account of an earthquake in Peru, that reached three hundred leagues along the seashore. BURNET.
To say a man has a clear idea of any quantity, without knowing how great it is, is as reasonable as to say he has the positive idea of the number of the sands on the seashore. LOCKE.
SE′COND Sight. n.s. The power of seeing things future, or things distant: supposed inherent in some of the Scottish islanders.
As he was going out to steal a sheep, he was seised with a fit of second sight: the face of the country presented him with a wide prospect of new scenes, which he had never seen before. ADDISON’S FREEHOLDER.
SE′CRETARY. n.s. [secretaire, Fr. secretarius, low Latin.] One entrusted with the management of business; one who writes for another.
Call Gardiner to me, my new secretary. SHAKESPEARE.
That which is most of all profitable is acquaintance with the secretaries, and employed men of ambassadors. BACON.
Cottington was secretary to the prince. CLARENDON.
SE′CRETIST. n.s. [from secret.] A dealer in secrets.
Some things I have not yet thought fit so plainly to reveal, not out of any envious design of having them buried with me, but that I may barter with those secretists, that will not part with one secret but in exchange for another. BOYLE.
SE′CTARY. n.s. [sectaire, French; from sect.]
1. One who divides from publick establishment, and joins with those distinguished by some particular whims.
My lord, you are a sectary,
That’s the plain truth. SHAKESPEARE.
Romish catholick tenets are inconsistent, on the one hand, with the truth of religion professed and protested by the church of England, whence we are called protestants; and the anabaptists, and separatists, and sectaries, on the other hand, whose tenets are full of schism, and inconsistent with monarchy. BACON.
The number of sectaries does not concern the clergy in point of interest or conscience. SWIFT.
2. A follower; a pupil.
The sectaries of my celestial skill,
That wont to be the world’s chief ornament,
And learned imps that wont to shoot up still,
They under keep. SPENSER.
SECTA′TOR. n.s. [sectateur, Fr. sectator, Latin.] A follower; an imitator; a disciple.
Hereof the wiser sort and the best learned philosophers were not ignorant, as Cicero witnesseth, gathering the opinion of Aristotle and his sectators. RALEIGH.
To SEDU′CE. v.a. [seduco, Latin; seduire, French.] To draw aside from the right; to tempt; to corrupt; to deprave; to mislead; to deceive.
’Tis meet
That noble minds keep ever with their likes;
For who so firm that cannot be seduc’d? SHAKESPEARE’S JULIUS CÆSAR.
Me the gold of France did not seduce,
Although I did admit it as a motive,
The sooner to effect what I intended. SHAKESPEARE’S HENRY V.
A beauty-waining and distressed widow,
Seduc’d the pitch and height of all his thoughts
To base declension. SHAKESPEARE’S RICHARD III.
In the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits. BIBLE 1 TIMOTHY, IV. 1.
I shall never gratify the spightfulness of a few with any sinister thoughts of all their allegiance, whom pious frauds have seduced. KING CHARLES.
Subtle he needs must be who could seduce Angels. MILTON.
Nor let false friends seduce thy mind to fame,
By arrogating Johnson’s hostile name;
Let father Flecknoe fire thy mind with praise,
And uncle Ogleby thy envy raise. DRYDEN.
SEDU′CER. n.s. [from seduce.] One who draws aside from the right; a tempter; a corrupter.
Grant it me, O king; otherwise a seducer flourishes, and a poor maid is undone. SHAKESPEARE.
There is a teaching by restraining seducers, and so removing the hindrances of knowledge. SOUTH.
The soft seducer, with enticing looks,
The bellowing rivals to the fight provokes. DRYDEN.
He whose firm faith no reason could remove,
Will melt before that soft seducer, love. DRYDEN.
SE′EDTIME. n.s. [seed and time.] The season of sowing.
While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest shall not cease. BIBLE GENESIS, VIII. 22.
If he would have two tributes in one year, he must give them two seedtimes, and two harvests. BACON.
The first rain fell upon the seedtime about
October, and was to make the seed to root; the latter was to fill the ear. BROWN.
Their very seedtime was their harvest, and by sowing tares they immediately reaped gold. DECAY OF PIETY.
Day and night,
Seedtime and harvest, heat and hoary frost,
Shall hold their course, ’till fire purge all things. MILTON.
He that too curiously observes the face of the heavens, by missing his seedtime, will lose the hopes of his harvest. ATTERBURY.
SEE′KSORROW. n.s. [seek and sorrow.] One who contrives to give himself vexation.
Afield they go, where many lookers be,
And thou seeksorrow, Klaius, them among:
Indeed thou saidst it was thy friend to see,
Strephon, whose absence seem’d unto thee long. SIDNEY.
SEMICO′LON. n.s. [semi and xώλoν] Half a colon; a point made thus [;] to note a greater pause than that of a comma.
SEMIVO′WEL. n.s. [semi and vowel.] A consonant which makes an imperfect sound, or does not demand a total occlusion of the mouth.
When Homer would represent any agreeable object, he makes use of the smoothest vowels and most flowing semivowels. BROOME’S NOTES TO THE ODYSSEY.
SE′NSUALIST. n.s. [from sensual.] A carnal person; one devoted to corporal pleasures.
Let atheists and sensualists satisfy themselves as they are able; the former of which will find, that, as long as reason keeps her ground, religion neither can nor will lose her’s. SOUTH.
SE′NSUOUS. adj. [from sense.] Tender; pathetick; full of passion.190
To this poetry would be made precedent, as being less subtile and fine; but more simple, sensuous, and passionate. MILTON.
SE′NTENCE. n.s. [sentence, French; sententia, Latin.]
1. Determination or decision, as of a judge civil or criminal.
The rule of voluntary agents on earth is the sentence that reason giveth, concerning the goodness of those things which they are to do. HOOKER.
If we have neither voice from heaven, that
so pronounceth of them, neither sentence of men grounded upon such manifest and
clear proof, that they, in whose hands it is to alter them, may likewise infallibly, even in heart and conscience, judge them so; upon necessity to urge alteration, is to trouble and disturb without necessity. HOOKER.
How will I give sentence against them. BIBLE JEREMIAH, IV. 12.
If matter of fact breaks out with too great an evidence to be denied, why, still there are other lenitives, that friendship will apply, before it will be brought to the decretory rigours of a condemning sentence. SOUTH’S SERMONS.
Let him set out some of Luther’s works, that by them we may pass sentence upon his doctrines. ATTERBURY.
2. It is usually spoken of condemnation pronounced by the judge; doom.
By the consent of all laws, in capital causes, the evidence must be full and clear; and if so, where one man’s life is in question, what say we to a war, which is ever the sentence of death upon many? BACON’S HOLY WAR.
What rests but that the mortal sentence pass? MILTON.
3. A maxim; an axiom, generally moral.
A sentence may be defined a moral instruction couched in a few words. BROOME’S NOTES ON THE ODYSSEY.
4. A short paragraph; a period in writing.
An excellent spirit, knowledge, understanding, and shewing of hard sentences were found in Daniel. BIBLE DANIEL, V. 12.
SENTENTIO′SITY. n.s. [from sententious.] Comprehension in a sentence.
Vulgar precepts in morality carry with them nothing above the line, or beyond the
extemporary sententiosity of common conceits with us. BROWN’S VULGAR ERROURS.
SE′PARATIST. n.s. [separatiste, Fr. from separate.] One who divides from the church; a schismatick; a seceder.
The anabaptists, separatists, and sectaries tenets are full of schism, and inconsistent with monarchy. BACON.
Our modern separatists pronounce all those heretical, or carnal, from whom they have withdrawn. DECAY OF PIETY.
Says the separatist, if those, who have the rule over you, should command you any thing about church affairs, you ought not, in conscience, to obey them. SOUTH’S SERMONS.
SERA′GLIO. n.s. [Italian, perhaps of Oriental original. The g is lost in the pronunciation.] A house of women kept for debauchery.
There is a great deal more solid content to be found in a constant course of well living, than in the voluptuousness of a seraglio. NORRIS.
SERENA′DE. n.s. [serenade, Fr. serenata, Italian, whence, in Milton, serenate, from serenus, Latin, the lovers commonly attending their mistresses in fair nights.] Musick or songs with which ladies are entertained by their lovers in the night.
Mixt dance, or wanton mask, or midnight ball,
Or serenate, which the starv’d lover sings
To his proud fair; best quitted with disdain. MILTON.
Foolish swallow, what do’st thou
So often at my window do, With thy tuneless serenade? COWLEY.
Shall I the neighbours nightly rest invade,
At her deaf doors, with some vile serenade? DRYDEN.
Will fancies he never should have been the man he is, had not he broke windows, and disturbed honest people with his midnight serenades, when he was a young fellow. ADDISON.
SE′RGEANT. n.s. [sergent, French; sergente, Italian, from servicus, Latin.]
1. An officer whose business it is to execute the commands of magistrates.
Had I but time, as this fell sergeant, death,
Is strict in his arrest, oh, I could tell. SHAKESPEARE’S HAMLET.
When it was day the magistrates sent the sergeants, saying, let these men go. BIBLE ACTS, XVI. 35.
2. A petty officer in the army.
This is the sergeant,
Who, like a good and hardy soldier, fought. SHAKESPEARE’S MACBETH.
3. A lawyer of the highest rank under a judge.
None should be made sergeants, but such as probably might be held fit to be judges afterwards. BACON.
4. It is a title given to some of the king’s servants: as, sergeant chirurgeons.
SERMOCINA′TION. n.s. [sermoci-natio, Latin.] The act or practice of making speeches.
SE′RPENT. n.s. [serpens, Latin.] An animal that moves by undulation without legs. They are often venomous. They are divided into two kinds; the viper, which brings young, and the snake, that lays eggs.
She was arrayed all in lily white,
And in her right hand bore a cup of gold,
With wine and water filled up to the height;
In which a serpent did himself enfold,
That horror made to all that did behold. FAIRY QUEEN.
She struck me with her tongue,
Most serpent like, upon the very heart. SHAKESPEARE’S KING LEAR.
They, or under ground, or circuit wide,
With serpent error wand’ring, found their way. MILTON.
Haply piercing through the dark disguise,
The chief I challeng’d: he whose practis’d wit
Knew all the serpent mazes of deceit,
Eludes my search. POPE’S ODYSSEY.
SE′RVANT. n.s. [servant, French; servus, Latin.]
1. One who attends another, and acts at his command. The correlative of master.
We are one in fortune; both
Fell by our servants, by those men we lov’d most. SHAKESPEARE.
I had rather be a country servant maid,
Than a great queen with this condition. SHAKESPEARE’S RICHARD III.
He disdain’d not
Thenceforth the form of servant to assume. MILTON.
For master or for servant here to call
Was all alike, where only two were all. DRYDEN.
2. One in a state of subjection. Unusual.
Being unprepar’d,
Our will became the servant to defect,
Which else should free have wrong’d. SHAKESPEARE’S MACBETH.
3. A word of civility used to superiours or equals.
This subjection, due from all men to all men, is something more than the compliment of course, when our betters tell us they are our humble servants, but understand us to be their slaves. SWIFT.
SETA′CEOUS. adj. [seta, Latin.] Bristly; set with strong hairs; consisting of strong hairs.
The parent insect, with its stiff setaceous tail, terebrates the rib of the leaf when tender, and makes way for its egg into the very pith. DERHAM.
SETTE′E. n.s. A large long seat with a back to it.
SETTLE. n.s. [setol, Sax.] A seat; a bench; something to sit on.
From the bottom to the lower settle shall be two cubits. BIBLE EZEKIEL, XLIII. 14.
The man, their hearty welcome first exprest,
A common settle drew for either guest,
Inviting each his weary limbs to rest. DRYDEN.
SE′VENNIGHT. n.s. [seven and night.]
1. A week; the time from one day of the week to the next day of the same denomination preceding or following; a week, numbered according to the practice of the old northern nations, as in fortnight.
Rome was either more grateful to the beholders, or more noble in itself, than justs with the sword and lance, maintained for a sevennight together. SIDNEY.
Iago’s footing here anticipates our thoughts A se’nnight’s speed. SHAKESPEARE’S OTHELLO.
Shining woods, laid in a dry room, within a sevennight lost their shining. BACON’S NATURAL HISTORY.
2. We use still the word sevennight or se’nnight in computing time: as, it happened on Monday was sevennight, that is, on the Monday before last Monday; it will be done on Monday sevennight, that is, on the Monday after next Monday.
This comes from one of those untucker’d ladies whom you were so sharp upon on Monday was se’ennight. ADDISON.
SE′VOCATION. n.s. [sevoco, Latin.] The act of calling aside.
SEWER. v.n. [escuyer trenchant, French; or asseour, old French; from asseoir, to set down; for those officers set the dishes on the table. Newton’s Milton.]
1. An officer who serves up a feast.
Marshall’d feast,
Serv’d up in hall with sewers and seneshals:
The skill of artifice or office mean. MILTON.
The cook and sewer, each his talent tries, In various figures scenes of dishes rise. COWEL.
2. [From issue, issuer.] A passage for water to run through, now corrupted to shore.
The fenmen hold that the sewers must be kept so, as the water may not stay too long in the spring till the weeds and sedge be grown up. BACON.
Men suffer their private in judgment to be drawn into the common sewer, or stream of the present vogue. KING CHARLES.
As one who long in populous city pent,
Where houses thick, and sewers annoy the air,
Forth issuing on a summer’s morn, to breathe
Among the pleasant villages and farms
Adjoin’d, from each thing met conceives delight. MILTON.
3. He that uses a needle.
SEX. n.s. [sexe, French; sexus, Latin.]
1. The property by which any animal is male or female.
These two great sexes animate the world. MILTON.
Under his forming hands a creature grew, Manlike, but different sex. MILTON.
2. Womankind; by way of emphasis.
Unhappy sex! whose beauty is your snare; Expos’d to trials; made too frail to bear. DRYDEN.
Shame is hard to be overcome; but if the sex once get the better of it, it gives them afterwards no more trouble. GARTH.
To shab. v.n. To play mean tricks; a low barbarous cant word.
SHA′BBY. adj. [A word that has crept into conversation and low writing; but ought not to be admitted into the language.] Mean; paltry.
The dean was so shabby, and look’d like a ninny,
That the captain suppos’d he was curate to Jenny. SWIFT.
SHADE. n.s. [scadu, Saxon; schade, Dutch.]
1. The cloud or opacity made by interception of the light.
Spring no obstacle found here nor shade,
But all sunshine. MILTON.
2. Darkness; obscurity.
The weaker light unwillingly declin’d,
And to prevailing shades the murmuring world resign’d. ROSCOMMON.
3. Coolness made by interception of the sun.
Antigonus, when told that the enemy had such volleys of arrows that hid the sun, said, that falls out well; for this is hot weather, and so we shall fight in the shade. BACON.
That high mount of God whence light and shade
Shine both. MILTON.
4. An obscure place, properly in a grove or close wood by which the light is excluded.
Let us seek out some desolate shade, and there
Weep our sad bosoms empty. SHAKESPEARE.
Regions of sorrow, doleful shades. MILTON.
Then to the desart takes his flight;
Where still from shade to shade the son of God,
After forty days fasting, had remain’d. MILTON.
The pious prince then seeks the shade,
Which hides from sight his venerable maid. DRYDEN.
5. Screen causing an exclusion of light or heat; umbrage.
Let the arched knife
Well sharpen’d now assail the spreading shades
Of vegetables, and their thirsty limbs dissever. PHILIPS.
In Brazil are trees which kill those that sit under their shade in a few hours. ARBUTHNOT.
6. Protection; shelter.
7. The parts of a picture not brightly coloured.
’Tis ev’ry painter’s art to hide from sight,
And cast in shades what seen would not delight. DRYDEN.
8. A colour; gradation of light.
White, red, yellow, blue, with their several degrees, or shades and mixtures, as green come in only by the eyes. LOCKE.
9. The figure formed upon any surface corresponding to the body by which the light is intercepted.191
Envy will merit as its shade pursue. POPE.
10. The soul separated from the body; so called as supposed by the ancients to be perceptible to the sight, not to the touch. A spirit; a ghost; manes.
To Trachin swift as thought the flitting shade
Thro’ air his momentary journey made. DRYDEN.
Ne’er to these chambers where the mighty rest,
Since their foundation, came a nobler guest; Nor e’er was to the bow’rs of bliss convey’d A fairer spirit or more welcome shade. TICKELL.
SHAGRE′EN. n.s. [chagrin, French.] The skin of a kind of fish, or skin made rough in imitation of it.
To SHA′GREEN. v.a. [chagriner, French] To irritate; to provoke. Both should be written chagrin.
SHALL. v. defective. [sceal, Sax. is originally I owe, or I ought. In Chaucer, the faithe I shall to God, means the faith I owe to God: thence it became a sign of the future tense. The French use devoir, dois, doit, in the same manner, with a kind of future signification; and the Swedes have skall, and the Islanders skal, in the same sense. It has no tenses but shall future, and should imperfect.
The explanation of shall, which foreigners and provincials confound with will, is not easy; and the difficulty is increased by the poets, who sometimes give to shall an emphatical sense of will: but I shall endeavour, crassa Minervâ,192 to show the meaning of shall in the future tense.]
1. I SHALL love. It will so happen that I must love; I am resolved to love.
2. SHALL I love? Will it be permitted me to love? Will you permit me to love? Will it happen that I must love?
3. Thou SHALT love. I command thee to love; it is permitted thee to love: [in poetry or solemn diction] it will happen that thou must love.
4. SHALT thou love? Will it happen that thou must love? Will it be permitted to thee to love?
5. He SHALL love. It will happen that he must love; it is commanded him that he love.
It is a mind, that shall remain a poison where it is.
—— Shall remain!
Hear you this triton of the minnows? Mark you
His absolute shall? SHAKESPEARE’S CORIOLANUS.
This prince a priestess of your blood shall bear,
And like his sire in arms he shall appear. DRYDEN’S ÆNEIS.
That he shall receive no benefit from Christ, is the affirmation whereon all his despair is founded; and the one way of removing this dismal apprehension, is to convince him that Christ’s death, and the benefits thereof, either do, or, if he perform the condition required of him, shall certainly belong to him. HAMMOND’S FUNDAMENTALS.
6. SHALL he love? Is it permitted him to love? In solemn language, Will it happen that he must love?
7. The plural persons follow the signification of the singulars.
SHA′LLOWBRAINED. adj. [shallow and brain.] Foolish; futile; trifling; empty.
It cannot but be matter of just indignation to all good men to see a company of lewd shallowbrained huffs making atheism, and contempt of religion, the sole badge of wit. SOUTH.
SHA′MBLING. adj. [See SCAMBLING.193] Moving aukwardly and irregularly. A low bad word.
By that shambling in his walk, it should be my rich banker, Gomez, whom I knew at Barcelona. DRYDEN’S SPANISH FRYAR.
So when nurse Nokes to act young Ammon tries,
With shambling legs, long chin, and foolish eyes,
With dangling hands he strokes th’ imperial robe,
And with a cuckold’s air commands the globe. SMITH.
SHA′PESMITH. n.s. [shape and smith.] One who undertakes to improve the form of the body. A burlesque word.
No shapesmith yet set up and drove a trade,
To mend the work that providence had made. GARTH.
SHA′REBONE. n.s. [share and bone.] The os pubis; the bone that divides the trunk from the limbs.
The cartilage bracing together the two ossa pubis, or sharebones, Bartholine faith, is twice thicker and laxer in women than men. DERHAM.
SHARK. n.s. [canis charcharias, Latin.]
1. A voracious sea-fish.
His jaws horrifick arm’d with threefold fate,
The direful shark. THOMSON’S SUMMER.
2. A greedy artful fellow; one who fills his pockets by sly tricks.194
David’s messengers are sent back to him, like so many sharks and runnagates, only for endeavouring to compliment an illnature out of itself, and seeking that by petition which they might have commanded by their sword. SOUTH’S SERMONS.
3. Trick; fraud; petty rapine.
Wretches who live upon the shark, and other mens sins, the common poisoners of youth, equally desperate in their fortunes and their manners, and getting their very bread by the damnation of souls. SOUTH’S SERMONS.
To SHARK. v.a. To pick up hastily or slily.
Young Fortinbras,
Of unimproved mettle, hot and full,
Hath in the skirts of Norway, here and there,
Shark’d up a list of landless resolutes. SHAKESPEARE’S HAMLET.
To SHARK. v.n.
1. To play the petty thief.
The fly leads a lazy, voluptuous, scandalous, sharking life, hateful wherever she comes. L’ESTRANGE.
2. To cheat; to trick. Ainsworth.
There are cheats by natural inclination as well as by corruption: nature taught this boy to shark, not discipline. L’ESTRANGE.
The old generous English spirit, which heretofore made this nation so great in the eyes of all the world, seems utterly extinct; and we are degenerated into a mean, sharking, fallacious, undermining converse, there being a snare and a trapan almost in every word we hear, and every action we see. SOUTH.
SHA′RPER. n.s. [from sharp.] A tricking fellow; a petty thief; a rascal.
Sharpers, as pikes, prey upon their own kind. L’ESTRANGE.
He should retrench what he lost to sharpers, and spent upon puppet-plays, to apply it to that use. ARBUTHNOT.
I only wear it in a land of Hectors,
Thieves, supercargo’s, sharpers, and directors. POPE.
SHA′VER. n.s. [from shave.]
1. A man that practises the art of shaving.
2. A man closely attentive to his own interest.
My lord
Was now dispos’d to crack a jest,
And bid friend Lewis go in quest;
This Lewis is a cunning shaver. SWIFT.
3. A robber; a plunderer.
They fell all into the hands of the cruel mountain people, living for the most part by theft, and waiting for wrecks, as hawks for their prey: by these shavers the Turks were stript of all they had. KNOLLES.
SHAW. n.s. [scua, Saxon; schawe, Dutch; skugga, Islandick.] A thicket; a small wood. A tuft of trees near Lichfield is called Gentle shaw.
SHA′WFOWL. n.s. [shaw and fowl.] An artificial fowl made by fowlers on purpose to shoot at.
SHEE′PBITER. n.s. [from sheepbite.] A petty thief.
His gate like a sheepbiter fleering aside. TUSSER.
Wouldst thou not be glad to have the niggardly rascally sheepbiter come to some notable shame. SHAKESPEARE.
There are political sheepbiters as well as pastoral: betrayers of publick trusts, as well as of private. L’ESTRANGE.
SHEEPWA′LK. n.s. [sheep and walk.] Pasture for sheep.
He beheld a field,
Part arable and tilth; whereon were sheaves
New reap’d; the other part sheepwalks and folds. MILTON.
SHE′RIFF. n.s. [scyregepefa, Saxon, from scyre, a shire, and reve, a steward. It is sometimes pronounced shrieve, which some poets have injudiciously adopted.] An officer to whom is intrusted in each county the execution of the laws.
A great pow’r of English and of Scots
Are by the sheriff of Yorkshire overthrown. SHAKESPEARE.
Concerning ministers of justice, the high sheriffs of the counties have been very ancient in this kingdom. BACON.
Now may’rs and shrieves all hush’d and satiate lay. POPE.
SHI′FTER. n.s. [from shift.] One who plays tricks; a man of artifice.
’Twas such a shifter, that, if truth were known,
Death was half glad when he had got him down. MILTON.
SHI′LLING. n.s. [scylling, Sax. and Erse; schelling, Dut.] A coin of various value in different times. It is now twelve pence.
Five of these pence made their shilling, which they called scilling, probably from scilingus, which the Romans used for the fourth part of an ounce; and forty-eight of these scillings made their pound, and four hundred of these pounds were a legacy for a king’s daughter, as appeareth by the last will of king Alfred. CAMDEN’S REMAINS.
The very same shilling may at one time pay twenty men in twenty days, and at another rest in the same hands one hundred days. LOCKE.
SHILL-I-SHALL-I. A corrupt reduplication of shall I? The question of a man hesitating. To stand shill-I-shall-I, is to continue hesitating and procrastinating.
I am somewhat dainty in making a resolution, because when I make it, I keep it: I don’t stand shill-I-shall-I then; if I say’t, I’ll do’t. CONGREVE’S WAY OF THE WORLD.
SHI′NESS. n.s. [from shy.] Unwillingness to be tractable or familiar.
An incurable shiness is the vice of Irish horses, and is hardly ever seen in Flanders, because the Winter forces the breeders there to house and handle their colts. TEMPLE.
They were famous for their justice in commerce, but extreme shiness to strangers: they exposed their goods with the price marked upon them, and then retired. ARBUTHNOT.
SHIRE. n.s. [scir, from sciran, to divide, Sax. skyre, Erse.] A division of the kingdom; a county; so much of the kingdom as is under one sheriff.
His blazing eyes, like two bright shining shields,
Did burn with wrath, and sparkled living fire;
As two broad beacons, set in open fields,
Send forth their flames far off to every shire. FAIRY QUEEN.
The noble youths from distant shires resort. PRIOR.
SHI′TTLECOCK. n.s. [Commonly and perhaps as properly shuttlecock. Of shittle or shuttle the etymology is doubtful: Skinner derives it from schutteln, German, to shake; or sceatan, Saxon, to throw. He thinks it is called a cock from its feathers. Perhaps it is properly shuttlecork, a cork driven to and fro, as the instrument in weaving, and softened by frequent and rapid utterance from cork and cock.] A cork stuck with feathers, and driven by players from one to another with battledoors.
You need not discharge a cannon to break the chain of his thoughts: the pat of a shittlecock, or the creaking of a jack, will do his business. COLLIER.
SHOE′BOY. n.s. [shoe and boy.] A boy that cleans shoes.
If I employ a shoeboy, is it in view to his advantage, or my own convenience? SWIFT.
How each the publick good pursues,
Make all true patriots up to shoeboys,
Huzza their brethren. SWIFT.
SHOE′ING-HORN. n.s. [shoe and horn.]
1. A horn used to facilitate the admission of the foot into a narrow shoe.
2. Any thing by which a transaction is facilitated; any thing used as a medium. In contempt.
Most of our fine young ladies retain in their service supernumerary and insignificant fellows which they use like whifflers, and commonly call shoeing-horns. SPECTATOR.
I have been an arrant shoeing-horn for above these twenty years. I served my mistress in that capacity above five of the number before she was shod. Though she had many who made their applications to her, I always thought myself the best shoe in her shop. SPECTATOR.
SHOE′TYE. n.s. [shoe and tye.] The ribband with which women tie their shoes.
Madam, I do as is my duty,
Honour the shadow of your shoetye. HUDIBRAS.
SHOG. n.s. [from shock.] Violent concussion.
Another’s diving bow he did adore, Which, with a shog, casts all the hair before. DRYDEN.
He will rather have the primitive man to be produced, in a kind of digesting balneum, where all the heavier lees may subside, and a due æquilibrium be maintained, not disturbed by any such rude and violent shogs that would ruffle and break all the little stamina of the embryon. BENTLEY.
To SHOG. v.a. To shake; to agitate by sudden interrupted impulses.
After it is washed, they put the remnant into a wooden dish, the which they softly shog to and fro in the water, until the earthy substance be flitted away. CAREW.
SHOP. n.s. [sceop, Saxon, a magazine; eschoppe, French; shopa, low Latin. Ainsworth.]
1. A place where any thing is sold.
Our windows are broke down,
And we for fear compell’d to shut our shops. SHAKESPEARE.
Your most grave belly thus answer’d;
True is it, my incorporate friends,
That I receive the general food at first,
Which you do live upon; and fit it is,
Because I am the store-house and the shop
Of the whole body. SHAKESPEARE.
In his needy shop a tortoise hung,
An alligator stuft, and other skins
Of ill-shap’d fishes; and about his shelves
A beggarly account of empty boxes. SHAKESPEARE.
Scarce any sold in shops could be relied on as faithfully prepared. BOYLE.
His shop is his element, and he cannot with any enjoyment of himself live out of it. SOUTH’S SERMONS.
2. A room in which manufactures are carried on.
We have divers mechanical arts and stuffs made by them; and shops for such as are not brought into vulgar use. BACON.
SHOPBOA′RD. n.s. [shop and board.] Bench on which any work is done.
That beastly rabble, that came down
From all the garrets in the town,
And stalls, and shopboards, in vast swarms,
With new-chalk’d bills, and rusty arms. HUDIBRAS.
It dwells not in shops or work-houses; nor till the late age was it ever known, that any one served seven years to a smith or a taylor, that he should commence doctor or divine from the shopboard or the anvil; or from whistling to a team, come to preach to a congregation. SOUTH’S SERMONS.
SHO′PMAN. n.s. [shop and man.] A petty trader.
Garth, gen’rous as his muse, prescribes and gives,
The shopman sells, and by destruction lives. DRYDEN.
SHO′RTHAND. n.s. [short and hand.] A method of writing in compendious characters.
Your follies and debauches change
With such a whirl, the poets of your age
Are tir’d, and cannot score them on the stage,
Unless each vice in shorthand they indite,
Ev’n as notcht ’prentices whole sermons write. DRYDEN.
Boys have but little use of shorthand, and should by no means practise it, ’till they can write perfectly well. LOCKE.
In shorthand skill’d, where little marks comprise
Whole words, a sentence in a letter lies. CREECH.
As the language of the face is universal, so ’tis very comprehensive: no laconism can reach it: ’tis the shorthand of the mind, and crowds a great deal in a little room. COLLIER.
SHO′RY. adj. [from shore.] Lying near the coast.
There is commonly a declivity from the shore to the middle part of the channel, and those shory parts are generally but some fathoms deep. BURNET’S THEORY OF THE EARTH.
SHOULD. v.n. [scude, Dutch; sceoldan, Saxon.]
1. This is a kind of auxiliary verb used in the conjunctive mood, of which the signification is not easily fixed.
2. I SHOULD go. It is my business or duty to go.
3. If I SHOULD go. If it happens that I go.
4. Thou SHOULD’ST go. Thou oughtest to go.
5. If thou SHOULD’ST go. If it happens that thou goest.
6. The same significations are found in all the other persons singular and plural.
Let not a desperate action more engage you
Than safety should. BEN JONSON’S CATILINE.
Some praises come of good wishes and respects, when by telling men what they are, they represent to them what they should be. BACON.
To do thee honour I will shed their blood,
Which the just laws, if I were faultless, should. WALLER.
So subjects love just kings, or so they should. DRYDEN.
I conclude, that things are not as they should be. SWIFT.
7. SHOULD be. A proverbial phrase of slight contempt or irony.
The girls look upon their father as a clown, and the boys think their mother no better than she should be. ADDISON.
8. There is another signification now little in use, in which should has scarcely any distinct or explicable meaning. It should be differs in this sense very little from it is.
There is a fabulous narration, that in the northern countries there should be an herb that groweth in the likeness of a lamb, and feedeth upon the grass. BACON’S NATURAL HISTORY.
SHO′ULDERSLIP. n.s. [shoulder and slip.] Dislocation of the shoulder.
The horse will take so much care of himself as to come off with only a strain or a shoulderslip. SWIFT.
SHRILL. [A word supposed to be made per onomatopœiam, in imitation of the thing expressed, which indeed it images very happily.] Sounding with a piercing, tremulous, or vibratory sound.
Thy hounds shall make the welkin answer them,
And fetch shrill echoes from the hollow earth. SHAKESPEARE.
I have heard
The cock that is the trumpet to the morn,
Doth with his lofty and shrill sounding throat
Awake the god of day. SHAKESPEARE’S HAMLET.
Have I fall’n,
From the dread summit of this chalky bourn!
Look up a height, the shrill gorg’d lark so far
Cannot be seen or heard. SHAKESPEARE’S KING LEAR.
Shrill voic’d and loud, the messenger of morn. THOMSON.
To SHRUGG.195 v.n. [schrichen, Dutch; to tremble.] To express horror or dissatisfaction by motion of the shoulders or whole body.
Like a fearful deer that looks most about when he comes to the best feed, with a shrugging kind of tremor through all her principal parts, she gave these words. SIDNEY.
The touch of the cold water made a pretty kind of shrugging come over her body like the twinkling of the fairest among the fixed stars. SIDNEY.
Be quick, thou wert best
To answer other business; shrug’st thou malice? SHAKESPEARE.
He grins, smacks, shrugs, and such an itch endures,
As prentices or school boys which do know
Of some gay sport abroad, yet dare not go. DONNE.
They grin, they shrug,
They bow, they snarl, they scratch, they hug. SWIFT.
To SHRUG. v.a. To contract or draw up.
He shrugs his shoulders when you talk of securities. ADDISON.
Zealots will shrug up their shoulders. BLOUNT.
He shrug’d his sturdy back,
As if he felt his shoulders ake. HUDIBRAS.
SHU′FFLECAP. n.s. [shuffle and cap.] A play at which money is shaken in a hat.
He lost his money at chuck farthing, shufflecap, and all-fours. ARBUTHNOT’S HISTORY OF JOHN BULL.
SHU′TTLECOCK. n.s. [See SHITTLECOCK.] A cork stuck with feathers, and beaten backward and forward.
With dice, with cards, with balliards far unfit,
With shuttlecocks misseeming manly wit. HUBBERD’S TALE.
SI′CAMORE. n.s. [sicamorus, Latin.] A tree.
Of trees you have the palm, olive, and sicamore. PEACHAM.
SI′CCITY. n.s. [siccite, Fr. siccitas, from siccus, Latin.] Driness; aridity; want of moisture.
That which is coagulated by a firy siccity will suffer coliquation from an aqueous humidity, as salt and sugar. BROWN’S VULGAR ERROURS.
The reason some attempt to make out from the siccity and driness of its flesh. BROWN’S VULGAR ERROURS.
In application of medicaments consider what degree of heat and siccity is proper. WISEMAN’S SURGERY.
SICE. n.s. [six, French.] The number six at dice.
My study was to cog the dice,
And dext’rously to throw the lucky sice;
To shun ames-ace, that swept my stakes away. DRYDEN.
SI′DEBOARD. n.s. [side and board.] The side table on which conveniences are placed for those that eat at the other table.
At a stately sideboard by the wine
That fragrant smell diffus’d. MILTON’S PARADISE REGAIN’D.
No sideboards then with gilded plate were dress’d,
No sweating slaves with massive dishes press’d. DRYDEN.
The snow white damask ensigns are display’d,
And glitt’ring salvers on the sideboard laid. KING.
The shining sideboard, and the burnish’d plate,
Let other ministers, great Anne, require. PRIOR.
Scipio Africanus brought from Carthage to Rome, in silver vessels, to the value of 11966 l. 15 s. 9 d. a quantity exceeded afterwards by the sideboards of many private tables. ARBUTHNOT.
SI’DEBOX. n.s. [side and box.] Seat for the ladies on the side of the theatre.
Why round our coaches crowd the whiteglov’d beaus?
Why bows the sidebox from its inmost rows? POPE.
SIDERA’TION. n.s. [sideration, French; sideratio, Latin.] A sudden mortification, or, as the common people call it, a blast; or a sudden deprivation of sense, as in an apoplexy.
The contagious vapour of the very eggs produce a mortification or sideration in the parts of plants on which they are laid. RAY ON THE CREATION.
SIGN. n.s. [signe, French; signum, Latin.]
1. A token of any thing; that by which any thing is shown.
Signs must resemble the things they signify. HOOKER.
Signs for communication may be contrived from any variety of objects of one kind appertaining to either sense. HOLDER.
To express the passions which are seated in the heart by outward signs, is one great precept of the painters, and very difficult to perform. DRYDEN’S DUFRESNOY.
When any one uses any term, he may have in his mind a determined idea which he makes it the sign of, and to which he should keep it steadily annexed. LOCKE.
2. A wonder; a miracle.196
If they will not hearken to the voice of the first sign, they will not believe the latter sign. BIBLE EXODUS, IV. 8.
Cover thy face that thou see not; for I have set thee for a sign unto Israel. BIBLE EZEKIEL, XII. 6.
Compell’d by signs and judgments dire. MILTON.
3. A picture hung at a door, to give notice what is sold within.
I found my miss, struck hands, and pray’d him tell,
To hold acquaintance still, where he did dwell;
He barely nam’d the street, promis’d the wine;
But his kind wife gave me the very sign. DONNE.
Underneath an alehouse’ paltry sign. SHAKESPEARE’S HENRY VI.
True sorrow’s like to wine, That which is good does never need a sign. SUCKLING.
Wit and fancy are not employed in any one article so much as that of contriving signs to hang over houses. SWIFT.
4. A monument; a memorial.
The fire devoured two hundred and fifty men, and they became a sign. BIBLE NUMBERS, XXVI. 10.
5. A constellation in the zodiack.
There stay until the twelve celestial signs Have brought about their annual reckoning. SHAKESPEARE.
Now did the sign reign, and the constellation was come, under which Perkin should appear. BACON’S HENRY VII.
After ev’ry foe subdu’d, the sun Thrice through the signs his annual race shall run. DRYDEN.
6. Note of resemblance.
7. Ensign.
The ensign of Messiah blaz’d,
Aloft by angels borne, his sign in heaven. MILTON.
8. Typical representation; symbol.
The holy symbols or signs are not barely significative; but what they represent is as certainly delivered to us as the symbols themselves. BREREWOOD.
9. A subscription of one’s name: as, a sign manual.
SI’GNAL. n.s. [signal, French; sennale, Spanish.] Notice given by a sign; a sign that gives notice.
The weary sun hath made a golden set,
And, by the bright track of his firy car,
Gives signal of a goodly day to-morrow. SHAKESPEARE’S RICHARD III.
Scarce the dawning day began to spring,
As at a signal giv’n, the streets with clamours ring. DRYDEN.
To SI’GNALIZE. v.a. [signaler, French.] To make eminent; to make remarkable.
Many, who have endeavoured to signalize themselves by works of this nature, plainly discover that they are not acquainted with the most common systems of arts and sciences. ADDISON’S SPECTATOR.
Some one eminent spirit, having signalized his valour and fortune in defence of his country, or by the practice of popular arts at home, becomes to have great influence on the people. SWIFT.
SI’GNATURE. n.s. [signature, Fr. signatura, from signo, Lat.]
1. A sign or mark impressed upon anything; a stamp; a mark.
The brain being well furnished with various traces, signatures, and images, will have a rich treasure always ready to be offered to the soul. WATTS.
That natural and indelible signature of God, which human souls, in their first origin, are supposed to be stampt with, we have no need of in disputes against atheism. BENTLEY.
Vulgar parents cannot stamp their race With signatures of such majestick grace. POPE’S ODYSSEY.
2. A mark upon any matter, particularly upon plants, by which their nature or medicinal use is pointed out.
All bodies work by the communication of their nature, or by the impression and signatures of their motions: the diffusion of species visible, seemeth to participate more of the former, and the species audible of the latter. BACON’S NATURAL HISTORY.
Some plants bear a very evident signature of their nature and use. MORE AGAINST ATHEISM.
Seek out for plants, and signatures,
To quack of universal cures. HUDIBRAS.
Herbs are described by marks and signatures, so far as to distinguish them from one another. BAKER ON LEARNING.
3. Proof; evidence.197
The most despicable pieces of decayed nature are curiously wrought with eminent signatures of divine wisdom.
GLANVILLE.
Some rely on certain marks and signatures of their election, and others on their belonging to some particular church or sect. ROGERS’S SERMONS.
4. [Among printers.] Some letter or figure to distinguish different sheets.
SI’LENCE. interj. An authoritative restraint of speech.
Sir, have pity; I’ll be his surety. ——
——Silence: one word more
Shall make me chide thee, if not hate thee. SHAKESPEARE.
SI’LLILY. adv. [from silly.] In a silly manner; simply; foolishly.
I wonder, what thou and I
Did, till we lov’d? were we not wean’d till then,
But suck’d on childish pleasures sillily?
Or slumber’d we in the seven sleepers den? DONNE.
We are caught as sillily as the bird in the net. L’ESTRANGE.
Do, do, look sillily, good colonel; ’tis a decent melancholy after an absolute defeat. DRYDEN’S SPANISH FRIAR.
SI’LLY. adj. [selig, German. Skinner.]
1. Harmless; innocent; inoffensive; plain; artless.
2. Weak; helpless.
After long storms,
In dread of death and dangerous dismay,
With which my silly bark was tossed sore,
I do at length descry the happy shore. SPENSER.
3. Foolish; witless.
Perhaps their loves, or else their sheep,
Was that did their silly thoughts so busy keep. MILTON.
The meanest subjects censure the actions of the greatest prince; the silliest servants, of the wisest master. TEMPLE.
I have no discontent at living here; besides what arises from a silly spirit of liberty, which I resolve to throw off. SWIFT.
Such parts of writings as are stupid or silly, false or mistaken, should become subjects of occasional criticism. WATTS.
SI’LLYHOW. n.s. [Perhaps from selig, happy, and heoft, the head.] The membrane that covers the head of the fœtus.
Great conceits are raised, of the membranous covering called the sillyhow, sometimes found about the heads of children upon their birth. BROWN’S VULGAR ERROURS.
SI’MILE. n.s. [simile, Latin.] A comparison by which any thing is illustrated or aggrandized.
Their rhimes,
Full of protest, of oath, and big compare,
Want similes. SHAKESPEARE’S TROILUS AND CRESSIDA.
Lucentio slip’d me, like his greyhound,
Which runs himself, and catches for his master:
A good swift simile, but something currish. SHAKESPEARE.
In argument,
Similes are like songs in love,
They much describe; they nothing prove. PRIOR.
Poets, to give a loose to a warm fancy, not only expatiate in their similes, but introduce them too frequently. GARTH.
SIMPLE. n.s. [simple, French.] A single ingredient in a medicine; a drug. It is popularly used for an herb.
Of simples in these groves that grow,
We’ll learn the perfect skill;
The nature of each herb to know,
Which cures, and which can kill. DRAYTON’S QUEST OF CYNTHIA.
Our foster nurse of nature is repose,
The which he lacks; that to provoke in him,
Are many simples operative, whose power
Will close the eye of anguish. SHAKESPEARE’S KING LEAR.
He would ope his leathern scrip,
And shew me simples of a thousand names,
Telling their strange and vigorous faculties. MILTON.
What virtue is in this remedy lies in the naked simple itself, as it comes over from the Indies. TEMPLE.
Around its entries nodding poppies grow,
And all cool simples that sweet rest bestow;
Night from the plants their sleepy virtue drains,
And passing, sheds it on the silent plains. DRYDEN.
Med’cine is mine: what herbs and simples grow
In fields and forests, all their pow’rs I know,
And am the great physician call’d. DRYDEN.
To SIMPLE. v.n. To gather simples.
As once the foaming boar he chas’d,
Lascivious Circe well the youth survey’d,
As simpling on the flow’ry hills he stray’d. GARTH.
SI’MPLER. n.s. [from simple.] A simplist. An herbarist.
SI’MPLIST. n.s. [from simple.] One skilled in simples.
A plant so unlike a rose, it hath been mistaken by some good simplists for amomum. BROWN’S VULGAR ERROURS.
SIMULA’TION. n.s. [simulation, French; simulatio from simulo, Latin.] That part of hypocrisy which pretends that to be which is not.
Simulation is a vice rising of a natural falseness, or fearfulness; or of a mind that hath some main faults; which because a man must needs disguise, it maketh him practise simulation. BACON.
For the unquestionable virtues of her person and mind, he well expressed his love in an act and time of no simulation towards his end, bequeathing her all his mansion-houses, and a power to dispose of his whole personal estate. WOTTON.
For distinction sake, a deceiving by word is commonly called a lie; and deceiving by actions, gestures, or behaviour, is called simulation or hypocrisy.
SOUTH’S SERMONS.
SI’NISTROUSLY. adv. [from sinistrous.]
1. With a tendency to the left.
Many in their infancy are sinistrously disposed, and divers continue all their life left-handed, and have but weak and imperfect use of the right. BROWN’S VULGAR ERROURS.
2. Perversely; absurdly.
SINK. n.s. [sinc, Saxon.]
1. A drain; a jakes
Should by the cormorant belly be restrain’d,
Who is the sink o’ th’ body. SHAKESPEARE’S CORIOLANUS.
Bad humours gather to a bile, or as divers kennels flow to one sink, so in short time their numbers increased. HAYWARD.
Gather more filth than any sink in town. GRANVILLE.
Returning home at night, you’ll find the sink
Strike your offended sense with double stink. SWIFT.
2. Any place where corruption is gathered.
What sink of monsters, wretches of lost minds,
Mad after change, and desperate in their states,
Wearied and gall’d with their necessities,
Durst have thought it? BEN JONSON’S CATILINE.
Our soul, whose country’s heav’n and God her father,
Into this world, corruption’s sink, is sent;
Yet so much in her travail she doth gather,
That she returns home wiser than she went. DONNE.
SI’NUS. n.s. [Latin.]
1. A bay of the sea; an opening of the land.
Plato supposeth his Atlantis to have sunk all into the sea: whether that be true or no, I do not think it impossible that some arms of the sea, or sinus’s, might have had such an original. BURNET’S THEORY OF THE EARTH.
2. Any fold or opening.
SI’ROP, SIRUP. n.s. [Arabick] The juice of vegetables boiled with sugar.
Shall I, whose ears her mournful words did seize,
Her words in sirup laid of sweetest breath, Relent. SIDNEY.
Not poppy, nor mandragora,
Nor all the drowsy sirups of the world
Shall ever med’cine thee to that sweet sleep,
Which thou owed’st yesterday. SHAKESPEARE’S OTHELLO.
And first, behold this cordial jalap here,
That flames and dances in his crystal bounds,
With spirits of balm, and fragrant syrops mixt. MILTON.
Those expressed juices contain the true essential salt of the plant; for if they be boiled into the consistence of a syrup, and set in a cool place, the essential salt of the plant will shoot upon the sides of the vessels. ARBUTHNOT.
SITHE. n.s. [siðe, Saxon. This word is very variously written by authors: I have chosen the orthography which is at once most simple and most agreeable to etymology.] The instrument of mowing; a crooked blade joined at right angles to a long pole.
Let fame, that all hunt after in their lives,
Live registred upon our brazen tombs;
And then grace us in the disgrace of death:
When, spight of cormorant-devouring time,
Th’ endeavour of this present breath may buy
That honour which shall ’bate his scythe’s keen edge;
And make us heirs of all eternity. SHAKESPEARE.
Time is commonly drawn upon tombs, in gardens, and other places, an old man, bald, winged with a sithe, and an hourglass. PEACHAM ON DRAWING.
There rude impetuous rage does storm and fret;
And there, as master of this murd’ring brood,
Swinging a huge scithe, stands impartial death,
With endless business almost out of breath. CRASHAW.
The milk-maid singeth blithe,
And the mower whets his scithe. MILTON.
The brazen trumpets kindle rage no more;
But useless lances into sythes shall bend,
And the broad faulchion in a plough-share end. POPE.
Grav’d o’er their seats the form of time was found,
His scythe revers’d, and both his pinions bound. POPE.
But, Stella, say, what evil tongue
Reports you are no longer young?
That time sits with his sythe to mow
Where erst sat Cupid with his bow. SWIFT.
Echo no more returns the chearful sound
Of sharpening scythe. THOMSON’S SUMMER.
SIX and seven. n.s. To be at six and seven, is to be in a state of disorder and confusion.198
All is uneven,
And every thing is left at six and seven. SHAKESPEARE.
In 1588, there sat in the see of Rome a fierce thundring friar, that would set all at six and seven, or at six and five, if you allude to his name. BACON.
What blinder bargain e’er was driv’n,
Or wager laid at six and seven. HUDIBRAS.
John once, turned his mother out of doors, to his great sorrow; for his affairs went on at sixes and sevens. ARBUTHNOT.
The goddess would no longer wait;
But raising from her chair of state,
Left all below at six and seven,
Harness’d her doves and flew to heav’n. SWIFT.
SIZE. n.s. [perhaps rather cise, from incisa, Latin; or from assise, French.]
1. Bulk; quantity of superficies; comparative magnitude.
I ever verified my friends,
With all the size that verity
Would without lapsing suffer. SHAKESPEARE’S CORIOLANUS.
If any decayed ship be new made, it is more fit to make her a size less than bigger. RALEIGH.
The distance judg’d for shot of ev’ry size,
The linstocks touch, the pond’rous ball expires. DRYDEN.
Objects near our view are thought greater than those of a larger size, that are more remote. LOCKE.
The martial goddess,
Like thee, Telemachus, in voice and size,
With speed divine, from street to street she flies;
She bids the mariners prepare to stand. POPE’S ODYSSEY.
2. [Assise, old French.] A settled quantity. In the following passage it seems to signify the allowance of the table: whence they say a sizer at Cambridge.
’Tis not in thee
To cut off my train, to scant my sizes, And, in conclusion, to oppose the bolt Against my coming in. SHAKESPEARE’S KING LEAR.
3. Figurative bulk; condition.
This agrees too in the contempt of men of a less size and quality. L’ESTRANGE.
They do not consider the difference between elaborate discourses, delivered to princes or parliaments, and a plain sermon, intended for the middling or lower size of people. SWIFT.
4. [Sisa, Italian.] Any viscous or glutinous substance.
SI’ZERS. n.s. See SCISSARS.199
A buttrice and pincers, a hammer and naile,
An apron and sizers for head and for taile. TUSSER.
SK’EPTICK. n.s. [σxέπτoμα, Gr. sceptique, French.] One who doubts, or pretends to doubt of every thing.
Bring the cause unto the bar; whose authority none must disclaim, and least of all those scepticks in religion. DECAY OF PIETY.
Survey
Nature’s extended face, then scepticks say,
In this wide field of wonders can you find
No art. BLACKMORE.
With too much knowledge for the scepticks side,
With too much weakness for the stoicks pride,
Man hangs between. POPE’S ESSAY ON MAN.
The dogmatist is sure of every thing, and the sceptick believes nothing. WATTS’S LOGICK.
SKILT. n.s. [A word used by Cleaveland, of which I know not either the etymology or meaning.]
Smeitymnus! ha! what art?
Syriack? Or Arabick? Or Welsh? What skilt?
Ape all the bricklayers that Babel built.
CLEAVELAND.
SKI’MBLESKAMBLE. adj. [A cant word formed by reduplication from scamble.] Wandering; wild.
A couching lion and a ramping cat,
And such a deal of skimbleskamble stuff,
As puts me from my faith. SHAKESPEARE.
SK’IMMILK. n.s. [skim and milk.] Milk from which the cream has been taken.
Then cheese was brought: says Slouch, this e’en shall roll;
This is skimmilk, and therefore it shall go.
KING.
SKONCE. n.s. [See SCONCE.]
Reinard ransacketh every corner of his wily skonce, and bestirreth the utmost of his nimble stumps to quit his coat from their jaws. CAREW.
SKREEN. n.s. [escran, escrein, French, which Minshew derives from secerniculum, Latin. Nimis violenter ut solet,190 says Skinner, which may be true as to one of the senses; but if the first sense of skreen be a kind of coarse sieve or riddle, it may perhaps come, if not from cribrum, from some of the descendants of cerno.]
1. A riddle or coarse sieve.
A skuttle or skreen to rid soil fro’ the corn. TUSSER.
2. Any thing by which the sun or weather is kept off.
3. Shelter; concealment.
Fenc’d from day, by night’s eternal skreen;
Unknown to heav’n, and to myself unseen. DRYDEN.
To SKREEN. v.a. [from the noun.]
1. To riddle; to sift. A term yet used among masons when they sift sand for mortar.
2. To shade from sun or light, or weather.
3. To keep off light or weather.
The curtains closely drawn, the light to skreen:
Thus cover’d with an artificial night,
Sleep did his office. DRYDEN.
The waters mounted up into the air: their interposition betwixt the earth and the sun skreen and fence off the heat, otherwise insupportable. WOODWARD’S NATURAL HISTORY.
4. To shelter; to protect.
Ajax interpos’d
His sevenfold shield, and skreen’d Laertes’ son,
When the insulting Trojans urg’d him sore. PHILIPS.
He that travels with them is to skreen them, and get them out when they have run themselves into the briars. LOCKE.
His majesty encouraged his subjects to make mouths at their betters, and afterwards skreened them from punishment. SPECTATOR.
The scales, of which the scarf-skin is composed, are designed to fence the orifices of the secretory ducts of the miliary glands, and to skreen the nerves from external injuries. CHEYNE.
To SKULK. v.n. To hide; to lurk in fear or malice.
Discover’d, and defeated of your prey,
You skulk’d behind the fence, and sneak’d away. DRYDEN.
SKY’ROCKET. n.s. [sky and rocket.] A kind of firework, which flies high and burns as it flies.
I considered a comet, or in the language of the vulgar a blazing star, as a skyrocket discharged by an hand that is almighty. ADDISON.
To SLAM. v.a. [lema, Islandick; schlagen, Dutch.] To slaughter; to crush. A word not used but in low conversation.
SLA’PDASH. interj. [from slap and dash.] All at once: as any thing broad falls with a slap into the water, and dashes it about. A low word.
And yet, slapdash, is all again
In ev’ry sinew, nerve, and vein. PRIOR.
SLATE. n.s. [from slit: slate is in some counties a crack; or from esclate, a tile, French.] A grey fossile stone, easily broken into thin plates, which are used to cover houses, or to write upon.
A square cannot be so truly drawn upon a slate as it is conceived in the mind. GREW’S COSMOLOGIA SACRA.
A small piece of a flat slate the ants laid over the hole of their nest, when they foresaw it would rain. ADDISON’S SPECTATOR.
SLEAVE. n.s. [Of this word I know not well the meaning: sleave silk is explained by Gouldman floccus sericus, a lock of silk; and the women still say sleave the silk, for untwist it. Ainsworth calls a weaver’s shuttle or reed a slay. To sley is to part a twist into single fibres.]
Whose brim with pinks was platted,
The banks with daffadillies dight
With grass like sleave was matted. DRAYTON’S CYNTHIA.
SLEAZY. adj. [often written sleezy.] Weak; wanting substance. This seems to be of the same race with sleave, or from to sley.
SLEE’VELESS. adj. [from sleeve.]
1. Wanting sleeves; having no sleeves.
His cloaths were strange, though coarse, and black, tho’ bare;
Sleeveless his jerkin was, and it had been
Velvet, but ’twas now, so much ground was seen,
Become tufftaffaty. DONNE.
They put on long sleeveless coats of homespun cotton. SANDYS.
Behold yon isle by palmers, pilgrims trod,
Grave mummers! sleeveless some, and shirtless others. POPE.
2. Wanting reasonableness; wanting propriety; wanting solidity. [This sense, of which the word has been long possessed, I know not well how it obtained; Skinner thinks it properly liveless or lifeless: to this I cannot heartily agree, though I know not what better to suggest. Can it come from sleeve, a knot, or skein, and so signify unconnected, hanging ill together? or from sleeve, a cover; and therefore means plainly absurd; foolish without palliation?]
This sleeveless tale of transubstantiation was brought into the world by that other fable of the multipresence. HALL.
My landlady quarrelled with him for sending every one of her children on a sleeveless errand, as she calls it. SPECTATOR.
To SLI’DDER. v.n. [slidderen, Dutch.] To slide with interruption.
Go thou from me to fate,
Now die: with that he dragg’d the trembling sire,
Slidd’ring through clotted blood. DRYDEN.
SLI’PPY. adv. [from slip.] Slippery; easily sliding. A barbarous provincial word.
The white of an egg is ropy, slippy, and FLOYER.
SLI’PSHOD. adj. [slip and shod.] Having the shoes not pulled up at the heels, but barely slipped on.
The slipshod’prentice from his master’s door
Had par’d the dirt, and sprinkled round the floor. SWIFT.
SLI’PSLOP. n.s. Bad liquor. A low word formed by reduplication of slop.
SLI’VER. n.s. [from the verb.] A branch torn off. Sliver, in Scotland, still denotes a slice cut off: as, he took a large sliver of the beef.
There on the pendant boughs, her coronet weed
Clamb’ring to hang, an envious sliver broke,
When down her weedy coronet and herself
Fell in the weeping brook. SHAKESPEARE’S HAMLET.
To SLOCK. v.n. [slock, to quench, Swedish and Scottish.] To slake; to quench.
SLOP. n.s. [from the verb.] Mean and vile liquor of any kind. Generally some nauseous or useless medicinal liquor.200
The sick husband here wanted for neither slops nor doctors. L’ESTRANGE.
But thou, whatever slops she will have bought,
Be thankful. DRYDEN’S JUVENAL.
SLOUCH. n.s. [sloff, Danish, stupid.]
1. A downcast look; a depression of the head. In Scotland, an ungainly gait, as also the person whose gait it is.
Our doctor has every quality that can make a man useful; but, alas! he hath a sort of slouch in his walk. SWIFT.
2. A man who looks heavy and clownish.
Begin thy carrols then, thou vaunting slouch;
Be thine the oaken staff, or mine the pouch. GAY.
SLO’VENLINESS. n.s. [from slovenly.] Indecent negligence of dress; neglect of cleanliness.
Slovenliness is the worst sign of a hard student, and civility the best exercise of the remiss; yet not to be exact in the phrase of compliment, or gestures of courtesy. WOTTON.
SLO’VENRY. n.s. [from sloven.] Dirtiness; want of neatness.
Our gayness and our gilt are all besmirch’d With rainy marching in the painful field: There’s not a piece of feather in our host, And time hath worn us into slovenry. SHAKESPEARE’S HENRY V.
SLU’BBERDEGULLION. n.s. [I suppose a cant word without derivation.] A paltry, dirty, sorry wretch.
Quoth she, although thou hast deserv’d, Base slubberdegullion, to be serv’d As thou did’st vow to deal with me, If thou had’st got the victory. HUDIBRAS.
SLUG. n.s. [slug, Danish, and slock, Dutch, signify a glutton, and thence one that has the sloth of a glutton.]
1. An idler; a drone; a slow, heavy, sleepy, lazy wretch.
Fie, what a slug is Hastings, that he comes not! SHAKESPEARE.
2. An hindrance; an obstruction.
Usury dulls and damps all improvements, wherein money would be stirring, if it were not for this slug. BACON.
3. A kind of slow creeping snail.
4. [Slecg, an hammerhead, Saxon.] A cylindrical or oval piece of metal shot from a gun.
When fractures are made with bullets or slugs, there the scalp and cranium are driven in together. WISEMAN’S SURGERY.
As, forc’d from wind-guns, lead itself can fly,
And pond’rous slugs cut swiftly through the sky. POPE.
To SLUG. v.n. [from the noun.] To lie idle; to play the drone; to move slowly.
All he did was to deceive good knights,
And draw them from pursuit of praise and fame,
To slug in sloth and sensual delights,
And end their days with irrenowned shame. FAIRY QUEEN.
He lay not all night slugging in a cabbin under his mantle, but used commonly to keep others waking to defend their lives. SPENSER.
One went slugging on with a thousand cares. L’ESTRANGE.
SLU’GGARD. n.s. [from slug.] An idler; a drone; an inactive lazy fellow.
Cry mercy, lords, and watchful gentlemen,
That you have ta’en a tardy sluggard
here. SHAKESPEARE’S RICHARD III.
Up, up, says avarice; thou snor’st again,
Stretchest thy limbs, and yawn’st, but all in vain:
The tyrant lucre no denial takes;
At his command th’ unwilling sluggard wakes. DRYDEN.
Sprightly May commands our youth to keep The vigils of her night, and breaks their sluggard sleep. DRYDEN.
To SLU’GGARDIZE. v.a. [from sluggard.] To make idle; to make dronish.
Rather see the wonders of the world abroad,
Than, living dully sluggardiz’d at home,
Wear out thy youth with shapeless idleness. SHAKESPEARE.
SLU’TTERY. n.s. [from slut.] The qualities or practice of a slut.
Slutt’ry, to such neat excellence oppos’d, Should make desire vomit emptiness. SHAKESPEARE’S CYMBELINE.
Where fires thou find’st unrak’d, and hearths unswept,
There pinch the maids as blue as bilberry;
Our radiant queen hates sluts and slutt’ry. SHAKESPEARE.
These make our girls their sluttery rue,
By pinching them both black and blue;
And put a penny in their shoe,
The house for cleanly sweeping. DRAYTON.
A man gave money for a black, upon an opinion that his swarthy colour was rather sluttery than nature, and the fault of his master that kept him no cleaner. L’ESTRANGE.
SMA’LLCOAL. n.s. [small and coal.] Little wood coals used to light fires.
A smallcoal man, by waking one of these distressed gentlemen, saved him from ten years imprisonment. SPECTATOR.
When smallcoal murmurs in the hoarser throat,
From smutty dangers guard thy threaten’d coat. GAY.
SMA’LLCRAFT. n.s. [small and craft.] A little vessel below the denomination of ship.
Shall he before me sign, whom t’ other day A smallcraft vessel hither did convey;
Where stain’d with prunes, and rotten figs, he lay. DRYDEN.
SMA’LLY. adv. [from small.] In a little quantity; with minuteness; in a little or low degree.
A child that is still, and somewhat hard of wit, is never chosen by the father to be made a scholar, or else when he cometh to the school, is smally regarded. ASCHAM.
SMA’LNESS. n.s. [from small.]
1. Littleness; not greatness.
The parts in glass are evenly spread, but are not so close as in gold; as we see by the easy admission of light, and by the smalness of the weight. BACON’S NATURAL HISTORY.
2. Littleness; want of bulk; minuteness; exility.
Whatsoever is invisible, in respect of the fineness of the body, or the smalness of the parts, or subtilty of the motion, is little enquired. BACON’S NATURAL HISTORY.
The smalness of the rays of light may contribute very much to the power of the agent by which they are refracted. NEWTON.
3. Want of strength; weakness.
SMART. n.s. A fellow affecting briskness and vivacity. A cant word.
SMA’TTERER. n.s. [from smatter.] One who has a slight or superficial knowledge.
These few who preserve any rudiments of learning, are, except one or two smatterers, the clergy’s friends. SWIFT.
SME’LLFEAST. n.s. [smell and feast.] A parasite; one who haunts good tables.
The ant lives upon her own, honestly gotten; whereas the fly is an intruder, and a common smellfeast that spunges upon other people’s trenchers. L’ESTRANGE.
SMOCKFA’CED. adj. [smock and face.] Palefaced; maidenly.
Old chiefs reflecting on their former deeds,
Disdain to rust with batter’d invalids;
But active in the foremost ranks appear,
And leave young smockfac’d beaux to guard the rear. FENTON.
To SMO’OTHEN. v.a. [A bad word among mechanicks for smooth.] To make even and smooth.
With edged grooving tools they cut down and smoothen the extuberances left. MOXON’S MECHANICAL EXERCISES.
SMO’ULDERING, SMOULDRY. [This word seems a participle; but I know not whether the verb smoulder be in use: smoran, Saxon, to smother; smoel, Dutch, hot.] Burning and smoking without vent.
None can breathe, nor see, nor hear at will,
Through smouldry cloud of duskish stinking smoke,
That th’ only breath him daunts who hath escap’d the stroke. FAIRY QUEEN.
In some close pent room it crept along,
And, smould’ring as it went, in silence fed;
’Till th’ infant monster, with devouring strong,
Walk’d boldly upright with exalted head. DRYDEN.
SMU’GGLER. n.s. [from smuggle.] A wretch, who, in defiance of justice and the laws, imports or exports goods either contraband or without payment of the customs.
SNACK. n.s. [from snatch.] A share; a part taken by compact.
If the master gets the better on’t, they come in for their snack. L’ESTRANGE.
For four times talking, if one piece thou take,
That must be cantled, and the judge go snack. DRYDEN.
All my demurs but double his attacks;
At last he whispers, ‘Do, and we go snacks.’ POPE.
SNAKE. n.s. [snaca, Saxon; snake, Dutch.] A serpent of the oviparous kind, distinguished from a viper. The snake’s bite is harmless. Snake in poetry is a general name for a viper.
Glo’ster’s shew beguiles him;
As the snake, roll’d in a flow’ry bank,
With shining checker’d slough, doth sting a child,
That for the beauty thinks it excellent. SHAKESPEARE’S HENRY VI.
We have scotch’d the snake, not kill’d it:
She’ll close, and be herself; whilst our poor malice
Remains in danger of her former teeth. SHAKESPEARE’S MACBETH.
The parts must have their outlines in waves, resembling the gliding of a snake upon the ground: they must be smooth and even. DRYDEN’S DUFRESNOY.
Nor chalk, nor crumbling stones, the food of snakes
That work in hollow earth their winding tracks. DRYDEN.
SNAP. n.s. [from the verb.]
1. The act of breaking with a quick motion.
2. A greedy fellow.
He had no sooner said out his say, but up rises a cunning snap, then at the board. L’ESTRANGE.
3. A quick eager bite.
With their bills, thwarted crosswise at the end, they would cut an apple in two at one snap. CAREW.
4. A catch; a theft.
SNA’PDRAGON, or Calf’s snout. n.s. [antirrhinum, Latin.]
1. A plant.
2. A kind of play, in which brandy is set on fire, and raisins thrown into it, which those who are unused to the sport are afraid to take out; but which may be safely snatched by a quick motion, and put blazing into the mouth, which being closed, the fire is at once extinguished.
SNAST. n.s. The snuff of a candle.
It first burned fair, ‘till some part of the candle was consumed, and the sawdust gathering about the snast; but then it made the snast big and long, and burn duskishly, and the candle wasted in half the time of the wax pure. BACON’S NATURAL HISTORY.
SNE’AKER. n.s. A large vessel of drink.
I have just left the right worshipful and his myrmidons about a sneaker of five gallons. SPECTATOR.
SNIP. n.s. [from the verb.]
1. A single cut with scissars.
What! this a sleeve?
Here’s snip and nip, and cut, and slish and slash,
Like to a censor in a barber’s shop. SHAKESPEARE.
The ulcer would not cure farther than it was laid open; therefore with one snip more I laid it open to the very end. WISEMAN.
2. A small shred.
Those we keep within compass by small snips of emplast, hoping to defend the parts about; but, in spite of all, they will spread farther. WISEMAN’S SURGERY.
3. A share; a snack. A low word.
He found his friend upon the mending hand, which he was glad to hear, because of the snip that he himself expected upon the dividend. L’ESTRANGE.
SNU’FFERS. n.s. [from snuff.] The instrument with which the candle is clipped.
When you have snuffed the candle, leave the snuffers open. SWIFT’S DIRECTIONS TO THE BUTLER.
SOAP. n.s. [sape, Saxon; sapo, Latin.] A substance used in washing, made of a lixivium of vegetable alkaline ashes and any unctuous substance.
Soap is a mixture of a fixed alkaline salt and oil; its virtues are cleansing,
penetrating, attenuating, and resolving; and any mixture of any oily substance with salt may be called a soap. ARBUTHNOT ON ALIMENTS.
He is like a refiner’s fire, and like fullers soap. MALACHI.
A bubble blown with water, first made tenacious by dissolving a little soap in it, after a while will appear tinged with a great variety of colours. NEWTON’S OPTICKS.
Soap -earth is found in great quantity on the land near the banks of the river Hermus, seven miles from Smyrna. WOODWARD.
Soap -ashes are much commended, after the soap -boilers have done with them, for cold or sour lands. MORTIMER.
As rain-water diminishes their salt, so the moistening of them with chamber-lee or soap -suds adds thereto. MORTIMER.
SOAPBOI’LER. n.s. [soap and boil.] One whose trade is to make soap.
A soapboiler condoles with me on the duties on castle-soap. ADDISON’S SPECTATOR.
SOCK. n.s. [soccus, Latin; socc, Saxon; socke, Dutch.]
1. Something put between the foot and shoe.
Ere I lead this life long, I’ll sow nether socks, and mend them, and foot them too. SHAKESPEARE’S HENRY IV.
A physician, that would be mystical, prescribeth for the rheum to walk continually upon a camomile alley; meaning he should put camomile within his socks. BACON.
2. The shoe of the ancient comick actors, taken in poems for comedy, and opposed to buskin or tragedy.
Then to the well trod stage anon
If Johnson’s learned sock be on,
Or sweetest Shakespeare, fancy’s child,
Warble his native wood-notes wild. MILTON.
Great Fletcher never treads in buskins here,
Nor greater Johnson dares in socks appear;
But gentle Simkin just reception finds
Amidst the monument of vanish’d minds. DRYDEN.
On two figures of actors in the villa Mathei at Rome, we see the fashion of the old sock and larva. ADDISON.
SO’FA. n.s. [I believe an eastern word.] A splendid seat covered with carpets.
The king leaped off from the sofa on which he sat, and cried out, ’tis my Abdullah! GUARDIAN.
SOHO. interj. A form of calling from a distant place.
SOI’LINESS. n.s. [from soil.] Stain; foulness.
Make proof of the incorporation of silver and tin, whether it yield no soiliness more than silver. BACON.
SOI’LURE. n.s. [from soil.] Stain; pollution.
He merits well to have her,
Not making any scruple of her soilure. SHAKESPEARE.
To SO’JOURN. v.n. [sejourner, French; seggiornare, Italian.] To dwell any where for a time; to live as not at home; to inhabit as not in a settled habitation. Almost out of use.
If, till the expiration of your month,
You will return and sojourn with my sister
Dismissing half your train, come then to me. SHAKESPEARE.
Th’ advantage of his absence took the king,
And in the mean time sojourn’d at my father’s. SHAKESPEARE.
How comes it he is to sojourn with you?
how creeps acquaintance?
SHAKESPEARE’S CYMBELINE.
Here dwells he; though he sojourn every where
In progress, yet his standing house is here. DONNE.
The sojourning of Israel, who dwelt in Egypt, was four hundred and thirty years. BIBLE EXODUS, XII. 40.
The soldiers first assembled at Newcastle,
and there sojourned three days. HAYWARD.
To sojourn in that land
He comes invited. MILTON’S PARADISE LOST.
He who sojourns in a foreign country, refers what he sees abroad to the state of things at home. ATTERBURY.
SO’JOURN. n.s. [sejour, French, from the verb.] A temporary residence; a casual and no settled habitation. This word was anciently accented on the last syllable: Milton accents it indifferently.
The princes, France and Burgundy,
Long in our court have made their am’rous sojourn. SHAKESPEARE.
Thee I revisit now,
Escap’d the Stygian pool, though long detain’d
In that obscure sojourn. MILTON’S PARADISE LOST.
Scarce view’d the Galilean towns,
And once a year Jerusalem, few days Short sojourn. MILTON’S PARADISE REGAIN’D.
SO’LECISM. n.s. [σoλoιxισμóζ.] Unfitness of one word to another; impropriety in language. A barbarism may be in one word, a solecism must be of more.
There is scarce a solecism in writing which the best author is not guilty of, if we be at liberty to read him in the words of some manuscript. ADDISON.
SOLI’CITOR. n.s. [from solicit.]
1. One who petitions for another.
Be merry, Cassio;
For thy solicitor shall rather die,
Than give thy cause away. SHAKESPEARE’S OTHELLO.
Honest minds will consider poverty as a recommendation in the person who applies himself to them, and make the justice of his cause the most powerful solicitor in his behalf. ADDISON.
2. One who does in Chancery the business which is done by attorneys in other courts.
For the king’s attorney and solicitor general, their continual use for the king’s service requires men every way fit. BACON.
SOLIDU’NGULOUS. adj. [solidus and ungula, Latin] Wholehoofed.
It is set down by Aristotle and Pliny, that an horse and all solidungulous or whole-hoofed animals have no gall, which we find repugnant unto reason. BROWN’S VULGAR ERROURS.
SOLIFI’DIAN. n.s. [solus and fides, Latin.] One who supposes only faith, not works, necessary to justification.
It may be justly feared, that the title of fundamentals, being ordinarily confined to the doctrines of faith, hath occasioned that great scandal in the church of God, at which so many myriads of solifidians have stumbled, and fallen irreversibly, by conceiving heaven a reward of true opinions. HAMMOND.
SOLI’LOQUY. n.s. [soliloque, Fr. solus and loquor, Lat.] A discourse made by one in solitude to himself.
The whole poem is a soliloquy: Solomon is the person that speaks: he is at once the hero and the author; but he tells us very often what others say to him. PRIOR.
He finds no respite from his anxious grief,
Then seeks from his soliloquy relief. GARTH’S DISPENSATORY.
If I should own myself in love, you know lovers are always allowed the comfort of soliloquy. SPECTATOR.
SO’LIPEDE. n.s. [solus and pedes, Lat.] An animal whose feet are not cloven.
Solipedes, or firm footed animals, as horses, asses, and mules, are in mighty number. BROWN’S VULGAR ERROURS.
SOLITA’IRE. n.s. [solitaire, French.]
1. A recluse; a hermit.
Often have I been going to take possession of tranquillity, when your conversation has spoiled me for a solitaire. POPE.
2. An ornament for the neck.
SO’LVIBLE. adj. [from solve.] Possible to be cleared by reason or inquiry.
Intellective memory I call an act of the intellective faculty, because it is wrought by it, though I do not inquire how or where, because it is not solvible. HALE’S ORIGIN OF MANKIND.
SO’LUTIVE. adj. [from solvo, Latin.] Laxative; causing relaxation.
Though it would not be so abstersive, opening, and solutive as mead, yet it will be more lenitive in sharp diseases. BACON.
SO’MERSAULT, SOMERSET. n.s. [Somerset is the corruption.
Sommer, a beam, and sault, French, a leap.] A leap by which a jumper throws himself from a beam, and turns over his head.
SOMNI’FEROUS. adj. [somnifere, Fr. somnifer, Latin.] Causing sleep; procuring sleep; soperiferous; dormitive.
I wish for some somniferous potion, that might force me to sleep away the intermitted time, as it does with men in sorrow. WALTON’S ANGLER.
SOMNI’FICK. adj. [somnus and facio, Latin.] Causing sleep.
SON. n.s. [sunus, Gothick; suna, Saxon; sohn, German; son, Swedish; sone, Dutch; syn, Sclavonian.]
1. A male born of one or begotten by one; correlative to father or mother.
She had a son for her cradle, ere she had a husband for her bed. SHAKESPEARE’S KING LEAR.
Cast out this bondwoman and her son. BIBLE GENESIS, XXI. 10.
He compares the affection of the Divine Being to the indulgence of a wise father, who would have his sons exercised with labour and pain, that they may gather strength. ADDISON.
2. Descendant however distant: as, the sons of Adam.
I am the son of the wise, the son of ancient kings. BIBLE ISAIAH, XIX.
3. Compellation of an old to a young man, or of a confessor to his penitent.
Be plain, good son, and homely in thy drift;
Riddling confession finds but riddling shrift. SHAKESPEARE.
4. Native of a country.
Britain then
Sees arts her savage sons controul. POPE.
5. The second person of the Trinity.
If thou be the son of God, come down. BIBLE MATTHEW, XXVII. 40.
6. Product of any thing.
Our imperfections prompt our corruption, and loudly tell us we are sons of earth. BROWN’S VULGAR ERROURS.
Earth’s tall sons, the cedar, oak, and pine, Their parents undecaying strength declare. BLACKMORE.
7. In scripture, sons of pride, and sons of light, denoting some quality. ’Tis a Hebraism.
This new fav’rite
Of heav’n, this man of clay, son of despite. MILTON.
SONA’TA. n.s. [Italian.] A tune.
He whistled a Scotch tune, and an Italian sonata. ADDISON.
Could Pedro, think you, make no trial
Of a sonata on his viol,
Unless he had the total gut,
Whence every string at first was cut. PRIOR.
SO’NGISH. adj. [from song.] Containing songs; consisting of songs. A low word.
The songish part must abound in the softness and variety of numbers, its intention being to please the hearing. DRYDEN.
SOONLY. adv. [from soon.] Quickly; speedily. This word I remember in no other place; but if soon be, as it seems once to have been, an adjective, soonly is proper.
A mason meets with a stone that wants no cutting, and, soonly approving of it, places it in his work. MORE.
SO’OTERKIN. n.s. A kind of false birth fabled to be produced by the Dutch women from sitting over their stoves.
When Jove was, from his teeming head,
Of wit’s fair goddess brought to-bed,
There follow’d at his lying-in,
For after-birth, a sooterkin. SWIFT.
SOPE. n.s. [See SOAP.]
SOPHISTICA’TION. n.s. [sophistication, Fr. from sophisticate.] Adulteration; not genuineness.
Sophistication is the act of counterfeiting or adulterating any thing with what is not so good, for the sake of unlawful gain. QUINCY.
The drugs and simples sold in shops, generally are adulterated by the fraudulent avarice of the sellers, especially if the preciousness may make their sophistication very beneficial. BOYLE.
Besides easy submission to sophistications of sense, we have inability to prevent the miscarriages of our junior reasons. GLANVILLE.
SOPORI’FEROUS. adj. [sopor and fero.] Productive of sleep; causing sleep; narcotick; opiate; dormitive; somniferous; anodyne; sleepy.
The particular ingredients of those magical ointments are opiate and soporiferous; for anointing of the forehead, neck, feet, and back-bone, procures dead sleeps. BACON.
While the whole operation was performing, I lay in a profound sleep, by the force of that soporiferous medicine infused into my liquor. GULLIVER’S TRAVELS.
SOPORI’FICK. adj. [sopor and facio.] Causing sleep; opiate; narcotick.
The colour and taste of opium are, as well as its soporifick or anodyne virtues, mere powers depending on its primary qualities. LOCKE.
SORE. n.s. [sar, Saxon; saur, Danish.] A place tender and painful; a place excoriated; an ulcer. It is not used of a wound, but of a breach of continuity, either long continued or from internal cause: to be a sore, there must be an excoriation; a tumour or bruise is not called a sore before some disruption happen.
Let us hence provide
A salve for any sore that may betide. SHAKESPEARE’S HENRY VI.
It is a bad exchange to wound a man’s own conscience, to salve state sores. KING CHARLES.
Receipts abound; but searching all thy store, The best is still at hand to launce the sore, And cut the head; for till the core be found The secret vice is fed and gathers ground. DRYDEN.
By these all festring sores her councils heal,
Which time or has disclos’d, or shall reveal. DRYDEN.
Lice and flies, which have a most wonderful instinct to find out convenient places for the hatching and nourishment of their young, lay their eggs upon sores. BENTLEY.
SO’RROW. n.s. [sorg, Danish.] Grief; pain for something past; sadness; mourning. Sorrow is not commonly understood as the effect of present evil, but of lost good.
Sorrow is uneasiness in the mind, upon the thought of a good lost, which might have been enjoyed longer; or the tense of a present evil. LOCKE.
Sorrow on thee, and all the pack of you;
That triumph thus upon my misery! SHAKESPEARE.
A world of woe and sorrow. MILTON.
Some other hour I will to tears allow;
But having you, can show no sorrow now. DRYDEN.
SO’RRY. adj. [sarig, Saxon.]
1. Grieved for something past. It is generally used of slight or casual miscarriages or vexations, but sometimes of greater things. It does not imply any long continuance of grief.
O, forget
What we are sorry for ourselves in thee. TIMON OF ATHENS.
The king was sorry: nevertheless for the oath’s sake he commanded the Baptist’s head to be given her. BIBLE MATTHEW, XIV. 9.
I’m sorry for thee, friend; ’tis the duke’s pleasure. SHAKESPEARE.
We are sorry for the satire interspersed in some of these pieces, upon a few people, from whom the highest provocations have been received. SWIFT.
2. [From saur, filth, Islandick.] Vile; worthless; vexatious.
A salt and sorry rheum offends me:
Lend me thy handkerchief. SHAKESPEARE’S OTHELLO.
How now, why do you keep alone?
Of sorriest fancies your companions making,
Using those thoughts, which should, indeed, have died
With them they think on. SHAKESPEARE’S MACBETH.
If the union of the parts consist only in rest, it would seem that a bag of dust would be of as firm a consistence as that of marble; and Bajazet’s cage had been but a sorry prison. GLANVILLE.
Coarse complexions,
And cheeks of sorry grain will serve to ply
The sampler, and to teize the housewife’s wool. MILTON.
How vain were all the ensigns of his power, that could not support him against one slighting look of a sorry slave! L’ESTRANGE.
If this innocent had any relation to his Thebais, the poet might have found some sorry excuse for detaining the reader. DRYDEN.
If such a slight and sorry business as that could produce one organical body, one might reasonably expect, that now and then a dead lump of dough might be leavened into an animal. BENTLEY’S SERMONS.
SO’RTILEGE. n.s. [sortilege, Fr. sortilegium, Latin.] The act or practice of drawing lots.
To soss. v.n. [A cant word.] To sit lazily on a chair; to fall at once into a chair.
The winter sky began to frown,
Poor Stella must pack off to town;
From wholesome exercise and air,
To sossing in an easy chair. SWIFT.
SOU’LSHOT. n.s. [soul and shot.] Something paid for a soul’s requiem among the Romanists.
In the Saxon times there was a funeral duty to be paid, called pecunia sepulchralis & symbolum animæ, and a Saxon soulshot. AYLIFFE’S PARERGON.
SOUP. n.s. [soupe, French.] Strong decoction of flesh for the table.
Spongy morells in strong ragousts are found,
And in the soup the slimy snail is drown’d. GAY’S TRIVIA.
Let the cook daub the back of the footman’s new livery, or, when he is going up with a dish of soup, let her follow him softly with a ladle-full. SWIFT.
SO’UVENANCE. n.s. [French.] Remembrance; memory. A French word which with many more is now happily disused.
If thou wilt renounce thy miscreance,
Life will I grant thee for thy valiance,
And all thy wrongs will wipe out of my souvenance. SPENSER.
Gave wond’rous great countenance to the knight,
That of his way he had no souvenance,
Nor care of vow’d revenge. SPENSER.
SPA’DDLE. n.s. [Diminutive of spade.] A little spade.
Others destroy moles with a spaddle, waiting in the mornings and evenings for MORTIMER’S HUSBANDRY.
SPARGEFA’CTION. n.s. [spargo, Lat.] The act of sprinkling.
SPARK. n.s. [spearca, Saxon; sparke, Dutch.]
1. A small particle of fire, or kindled matter
If any marvel how a thing, in itself so weak, could import any great danger, they must consider not so much how small the spark is that flieth up, as how apt things about it are to take fire. HOOKER.
I am about to weep; but thinking that
We are a queen, my drops of tears I’ll turn
To sparks of fire. SHAKESPEARE.
I was not forgetful of the sparks which some mens distempers formerly studied to kindle in parliaments. KING CHARLES.
In this deep quiet, from what source unknown,
Those seeds of fire that fatal birth disclose:
And first, few scatt’ring sparks about were blown,
Big with the flames that to our ruin rose. DRYDEN.
Oh, may some spark of your celestial fire The last, the meanest of your sons inspire. POPE.
2. Any thing shining.
We have, here and there, a little clear light, some sparks of bright knowledge. LOCKE.
3. Any thing vivid or active.
If any spark of life be yet remaining,
Down, down to hell, and say, I sent thee thither. SHAKESPEARE.
4. A lively, showy, splendid, gay man. It is commonly used in contempt.
How many huffing sparks have we seen, that in the same day have been both the idols and the scorn of the same slaves? L’ESTRANGE.
A spark like thee, of the mankilling trade Fell sick. DRYDEN.
As for the disputes of sharpers, we don’t read of any provisions made for the honours of such sparks. COLLIER.
The finest sparks, and cleanest beaux
Drip from the shoulders to the toes. PRIOR.
I who have been the poet’s spark to day,
Will now become the champion of his play. GRANVILLE.
Unlucky as Fungoso in the play,
These sparks with aukward vanity display
What the fine gentlemen wore yesterday. POPE.
SPA’RKISH. adj. [from spark.]
1. Airy; gay. A low word.201
Is any thing more sparkish and better humour’d than Venus’s accosting her son in the desarts of Libya? WALSH.
2. Showy; well dressed; fine.
A daw, to be sparkish, trick’d himself up with all the gay feathers he could muster. L’ESTRANGE.
SPATTERDASHES. n.s. [spatter and dash.] Coverings for the legs by which the wet is kept off.
SPEA’KING Trumpet. n.s. A stentorophonick instrument; a trumpet by which the voice may be propagated to a great distance.
That with one blast through the whole house does bound,
And first taught speaking trumpet how to sound. DRYDEN.
SPECTA’TION. n.s. [spectatio, Latin.] Regard; respect.
This simple spectation of the lungs is differenced from that which concomitates a pleurisy. HARVEY.
SPE’CTRUM. n.s. [Latin.] An image; a visible form.
This prism had some veins running along within the glass, from the one end to the other, which scattered some of the sun’s light irregularly, but had no sensible effect in encreasing the length of the coloured spectrum. NEWTON’S OPTICKS.
SPECULA’TOR. n.s. [from speculate.]
1. One who forms theories.
He is dexterous in puzzling others, if they be not through-paced speculators in those great theories. MORE.
2. [Speculateur, French.] An observer; a contemplator.
Although lapidaries and questuary enquirers affirm it, yet the writers of minerals, and natural speculators, conceive the stones which bear this name to be a mineral concretion. BROWN.
3. A spy; a watcher.
All the boats had one speculator, to give notice when the fish approached. BROOME’S NOTES ON THE ODYSSEY.
SPEECH. n.s. [from speak.]
1. The power of articulate utterance; the power of expressing thoughts by vocal words.
There is none comparable to the variety of instructive expressions by speech, wherewith a man alone is endowed, for the communication of his thoughts. HOLDER ON SPEECH.
Though our ideas are first acquired by various sensations and reflections, yet we convey them to each other by the means of certain sounds, or written marks, which we call words; and a great part of our knowledge is both obtained and communicated by these means, which are called speech. WATTS.
2. Language; words considered as expressing thoughts.
In speech be eight parts. ACCIDENCE.
The acts of God to human ears
Cannot without process of speech be told. MILTON.
3. Particular language as distinct from others.
There is neither speech nor language, but their voices are heard among them. BIBLE PSALMS, COMMON PRAYER.
4. Any thing spoken.
A plague upon your epileptick visage!
Smile you my speeches as I were a fool. SHAKESPEARE’S KING LEAR.
5. Talk; mention.
The duke did of me demand
What was the speech among the Londoners,
Concerning the French journey. SHAKESPEARE.
Speech of a man’s self ought to be seldom. BACON’S ESSAYS.
6. Oration; harangue.
The constant design of these orators, in all their speeches, was to drive some one particular point. SWIFT.
7. Liberty to speak.202
I, with leave of speech implor’d, reply’d. MILTON.
To SPET. v.a. To bring or pour abundantly. [Spet in Scotland is a superabundance of water: as, that tide or fresh was a high spet.]
Mysterious dame,
That ne’er art call’d, but when the dragon womb
Of Stygian darkness spets her thickest gloom,
And makes one blot of all the air,
Stop thy cloudy ebon chair. MILTON.
SPICK and SPAN. [This word I should not have expected to have found authorised by a polite writer. Span-new is used by Chaucer, and is supposed to come from spannan, to stretch, Sax. expandere, Lat. whence span. Span-new is therefore originally used of cloath new extended or dressed at the clothiers, and spick and span is newly extended on the spikes or tenters: it is however a low word.] Quite new; now first used.
While the honour, thou hast got,
Is spick and span new, piping hot,
Strike her up bravely. BUTLER.
They would have these reduced to nothing, and then others created spick and span new out of nothing. BURNET.
I keep no antiquated stuff;
But spick and span I have enough. SWIFT.