_To fix_, in the American sense, I
find used by the Commissioners of the United Colonies so early as 1675,
'their arms well _fixed_ and fit for service.
find used by the Commissioners of the United Colonies so early as 1675,
'their arms well _fixed_ and fit for service.
James Russell Lowell
Hawkins in Hakluyt.
_Banjo_ is a negro corruption
of O. E. _bandore_. _Bind-weed_ can hardly be modern, for _wood-bind_ is
old and radically right, intertwining itself through _bindan_ and
_windan_ with classic stems. _Bobolink_: is this a contraction for Bob
o' Lincoln? I find _bobolynes_, in one of the poems attributed to
Skelton, where it may be rendered _giddy-pate_, a term very fit for the
bird in his ecstasies. _Cruel_ for _great_ is in Hakluyt.
_Bowling-alley_ is in Nash's 'Pierce Pennilesse. ' _Curious_, meaning
_nice_, occurs continually in old writers, and is as old as Pecock's
'Repressor. ' _Droger_ is O. E. _drugger_. _Educational_ is in Burke.
_Feeze_ is only a form of _fizz_.
_To fix_, in the American sense, I
find used by the Commissioners of the United Colonies so early as 1675,
'their arms well _fixed_ and fit for service. ' _To take the foot in the
hand_ is German; so is to _go under_. _Gundalow_ is old; I find
_gundelo_ in Hakluyt, and _gundello_ in Booth's reprint of the folio
Shakespeare of 1623. _Gonoff_ is O. E. _gnoffe_. _Heap_ is in 'Piers
Ploughman' ('and other names _an heep_'), and in Hakluyt ('seeing such a
_heap_ of their enemies ready to devour them'). _To liquor_ is in the
'Puritan' ('call 'em in, and liquor 'em a little'). _To loaf_: this, I
think, is unquestionably German. _Laufen_ is pronounced _lofen_ in some
parts of Germany, and I once heard one German student say to another,
_Ich lauf_ (lofe) _hier bis du wiederkehrest_, and he began accordingly
to saunter up and down, in short, to _loaf_. _To mull_, Mr. Bartlett
says, means 'to soften, to dispirit,' and quotes from
'Margaret,'--'There has been a pretty considerable _mullin_ going on
among the doctors,'--where it surely cannot mean what he says it does.
We have always heard _mulling_ used for _stirring, bustling_, sometimes
in an underhand way. It is a metaphor derived probably from _mulling_
wine, and the word itself must be a corruption of _mell_, from O. F.
_mesler_.
of O. E. _bandore_. _Bind-weed_ can hardly be modern, for _wood-bind_ is
old and radically right, intertwining itself through _bindan_ and
_windan_ with classic stems. _Bobolink_: is this a contraction for Bob
o' Lincoln? I find _bobolynes_, in one of the poems attributed to
Skelton, where it may be rendered _giddy-pate_, a term very fit for the
bird in his ecstasies. _Cruel_ for _great_ is in Hakluyt.
_Bowling-alley_ is in Nash's 'Pierce Pennilesse. ' _Curious_, meaning
_nice_, occurs continually in old writers, and is as old as Pecock's
'Repressor. ' _Droger_ is O. E. _drugger_. _Educational_ is in Burke.
_Feeze_ is only a form of _fizz_.
_To fix_, in the American sense, I
find used by the Commissioners of the United Colonies so early as 1675,
'their arms well _fixed_ and fit for service. ' _To take the foot in the
hand_ is German; so is to _go under_. _Gundalow_ is old; I find
_gundelo_ in Hakluyt, and _gundello_ in Booth's reprint of the folio
Shakespeare of 1623. _Gonoff_ is O. E. _gnoffe_. _Heap_ is in 'Piers
Ploughman' ('and other names _an heep_'), and in Hakluyt ('seeing such a
_heap_ of their enemies ready to devour them'). _To liquor_ is in the
'Puritan' ('call 'em in, and liquor 'em a little'). _To loaf_: this, I
think, is unquestionably German. _Laufen_ is pronounced _lofen_ in some
parts of Germany, and I once heard one German student say to another,
_Ich lauf_ (lofe) _hier bis du wiederkehrest_, and he began accordingly
to saunter up and down, in short, to _loaf_. _To mull_, Mr. Bartlett
says, means 'to soften, to dispirit,' and quotes from
'Margaret,'--'There has been a pretty considerable _mullin_ going on
among the doctors,'--where it surely cannot mean what he says it does.
We have always heard _mulling_ used for _stirring, bustling_, sometimes
in an underhand way. It is a metaphor derived probably from _mulling_
wine, and the word itself must be a corruption of _mell_, from O. F.
_mesler_.
