“To my trust true,
So, love to you!
Working or waiting, good night!”
One night the whistle was not heard.
“Guild lay under his engine dead.”—Francis Bret Harte, Guild’s Signal.
Guil´denstern, one of Hamlet’s companions, employed by the king and queen to divert him, if possible, from his strange and wayward ways.—Shakespeare, Hamlet (1596).
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are favorable examples of the thorough-paced time-serving court knave ... ticketed and to be hired for any hard or dirty work.—Cowden Clarke.
Guillotine (3 syl.). So named from Joseph Ignace Guillotin, a French physician, who proposed its adoption, to prevent unnecessary pain. Dr. Guillotin did not invent the guillotine, but he improved the Italian machine (1791). In 1792 Antoine Louis introduced further improvements, and hence the instrument is sometimes called Louisette, or Louison. The original Italian machine was called mannaja; it was a clumsy affair, first employed to decapitate Beatrice Cenci, in Rome, A.D. 1600.
It was the popular theme for jests. It was [called La mère Guillotine], the “sharp female,” the “best cure for headache.” It “infallibly prevented the hair from turning grey.” It “imparted a peculiar delicacy to the complexion.” It was the “national razor,” which shaved close. Those “who kissed the guillotine, looked through the little window and sneezed into the sack.” It was the sign of “the regeneration of the human race.” It “superseded the cross.” Models were worn[as ornaments].—C. Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities, iii. 4 (1859).
Guinart (Roque), whose true name was Pedro Rocha Guinarda, chief of a band of robbers who levied black mail in the mountainous districts of Catalonia. He is introduced by Cervantes in his tale of Don Quixote.