Dictionary of Obsolete and Provincial English: Containing Words from the English Writers Previous to the Nineteenth Century which are No Longer in Use, Or are Not Used in the Same Sense. And Words which are Now Used Only in the Provincial Dialects, Volume 1

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Page iii - DICTIONARY OF OBSOLETE AND PROVINCIAL ENGLISH, Containing Words from the English Writers Previous to the Nineteenth Century which are No Longer in Use or are Not Used in the Same Sense, and Words which are Now Used Only in the Provincial Dialects Edited by Thomas Wright Defines thousands of obsolete words used from the fourteenth to the nineteenth century.
Page 57 - Oxfordshire, and are conducted in the following manner : Two persons are chosen, previously to the meeting, to be lord and lady of the ale, who dress as suitably as they can to the characters they assume. A large empty barn, or some such building, is provided for the lord's hall, and fitted up with seats to accommodate the company. Here they assemble to dance and regale in the best manner their circumstances and the place will afford ; and each young fellow treats his girl with a riband or favour.
Page 172 - London : they were sold piping hot, in booths and on stalls, and ostentatiously displayed, to excite the appetite of passengers. Hence a Bartholomew...
Page 70 - A trick to duck some ignorant fellow or landsman, frequently played on board ships in the warm latitudes. It is thus managed: A large tub is filled with water, and two stools placed on each side of it. Over the whole is thrown a tarpaulin, or old sail: this is kept tight by two persons, who are to represent the king and queen of a foreign country, and are seated on the stools. The person intended to be ducked plays the Ambassador, and after repeating a ridiculous speech dictated to him, is led in...
Page 400 - I'll be sworn, Master Carter, she bewitched Gammer Washbowl's sow to cast her pigs a day before she would have farrowed : yet they were sent up to London and sold for as good Westminster dog-pigs at Bartholomew fair as ever great-bellied ale-wife longed for.
Page 289 - Canarie-wine, which beareth the name of the islands from whence it is brought, is of some termed a sacke, with this adjunct, sweete; but yet very improperly, for it differeth not only from sacke in sweetness and pleasantness of taste, but also in colour and consistence, for it is not so white in colour as sack, nor so thin in substance; wherefore it is more nutritive than sack, and less penetrative.
Page 23 - It appears that it was fashionable in the Poet's time to introduce this word accommodate upon all occasions. Ben Jonson, in his Discoveries, calls it one of the perfumed terms of the time.
Page 63 - ... peg. Should the button fly out of the ring, the player is entitled to double the stipulated value of what he gives for the stick. The game is also practised at the Newcastle races, and other places of amusement in the north, with...
Page 19 - We have been called so of many; not that our heads are some brown, some black, some abram, some bald, but that our wits are so diversely coloured: and truly I think, if all our wits were to issue out of one skull, they would fly east, west, north, south; and their consent of one direct way should be at once to all the points o
Page 189 - They could not get it off; they wore about their necks a great horn of an ox in a string or bawdry, which, when they came to a house, they did wind, and they put the drink given to them into this horn, whereto they put a stopple. Since the wars I do not remember to have seen any one of them.

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