MW And when the Company of Death arrivedAt twenty-hours,–the way they reckon here,–We say, at sunset, after dinner-time,–The Count was led down, hoisted up on car,Last of the five, as heinousest, you know:Yet they allowed one whole car to each…
Category: Word of the Day
Blithesomely
MW The lord of day retired, when every bird,The plumy traveller of unbounded space,Claim’d the short hour of rest, could Labour’sShake from their freckled brows the evening dew,And homeward, blithesomely, return to quaffThe honey’d cup of joy? Could they suspireHealth’s…
Foment
There is good reason to suppose, that it was far from the intention of Ferdinand, king of Spain, to use his new subjects in America in the brutal and barbarous manner that his people did; and happy for the credit…
Exhilarate
MW I may conclude with Gregory, temporalium amor, quantum afficit, cum haeret possessio, tantum quum subtrahitur, urit dolor; riches do not so much exhilarate us with their possession, as they torment us with their loss. … “He came home sorrowful,…
Veracity
MW Veracity in Hume. This man and this whale again came together, and the one vanquished the other. I say I, myself, have known three instances similar to this; that is in two of them I saw the whales struck;…
Importunate
MW Plato, therefore, calls poverty, “thievish, sacrilegious, filthy, wicked, and mischievous:” and well he might. For it makes many an upright man otherwise, had he not been in want, to take bribes, to be corrupt, to do against his conscience,…
Delite
The OED also cites ‘delite’ as a noun, though used in a different sense: Obsolete. Delay. Also in without delite: without delay; immediately.a1400 (▸a1325) Cursor Mundi (Vesp.) l. 5790 Þar-to sal be na lang dilite [Vesp. lite, Trin. Cambr. delay].a1500 (▸?c1450) Bone Florence (1976) l. 868 The pope came…
Shrive
MW She bows her old head to a voice that speaks to her loudly, her bonesetter, her medicineman: me she slights. To the voice that will shrive and oil for the grave all there is of her but her woman’s…
Paean
MW Victory! Victory!–Yes! ah, yes, thou republican Zion,Truly the kings of the earth are gathered and gone by together;Doubtless they marvelled to witness such things, were astonished, and so forth.Victory! Victory! Victory!–Ah, but it is, believe me,Easier, easier far, to…
Frugal
MW “In which habituation to Obedience, truly, it was beyond measure safer to err by excess than by defect. Obedience is our universal duty and destiny; wherein whoso will not bend must break: too early and too thoroughly we cannot…