(Cloister and Hearth, Ch. 26.)
he was unaware that both leeches represent Anglo-Sax. læce, healer. On the other hand, a resemblance of form may bring about a contamination of meaning. The verb to gloss, or gloze, means simply to explain or translate, from Greco-Lat. glossa, tongue; but, under the influence of the unrelated gloss, superficial lustre, it has acquired the sense of specious interpretation.
That part of a helmet called the beaver—
"I saw young Harry, with his beaver on,
His cuisses on his thigh, gallantly arm'd,
Rise from the ground like feather'd Mercury."
(1 Henry IV., iv. 1.)
has, of course, no connection with the animal whose fur has been used for some centuries for expensive hats. It comes from Old Fr. bavière, a child's bib, now replaced by bavette, from baver, to slobber.
It may be noted en passant that many of the revived medieval words which sound so picturesque in Scott are of very prosaic origin. Thus the basnet—
"My basnet to a prentice cap,
Lord Surrey's o'er the Till."
(Marmion, vi. 21.)
or close-fitting steel cap worn under the ornamental helmet, is Fr. bassinet, a little basin. It was also called a kettle hat, or pot. Another obsolete name given to a steel cap was a privy pallet, from Fr. palette, a barber's bowl, a "helmet of Mambrino." To a brilliant living monarch we owe the phrase "mailed fist," a translation of Ger. gepanzerte Faust. Panzer, a cuirass, is etymologically a pauncher, or defence for the paunch. We may compare an article of female apparel, which took its name from a more polite name for this part of the anatomy, and which Shakespeare uses even in the sense of Panzer. Imogen, taking the papers from her bosom, says—