"What is here?
The scriptures of the loyal Leonatus,
All turn'd to heresy? Away, away,
Corrupters of my faith! You shall no more
Be stomachers to my heart."
(Cymbeline, iii. 4.)
COMPOUND—CHASE
Sometimes homonyms seem to be due to the lowest type of folk-etymology, the instinct for making an unfamiliar word "look like something" (see p. [128], [n.]). To this instinct we owe the nautical companion (p. [165]). Trepan, for trapan, to entrap, cannot have been confused with the surgical trepan (p. [109]), although it has been assimilated to it. The compound in which the victims of "Chinese slavery" languished is the Malay kampong, an enclosure.
The scent called bergamot takes its name from Bergamo, in Italy, whence also Shakespeare's bergomask dance—
"Will it please you to see the epilogue, or hear a Bergomask dance between two of our company?"
(Midsummer Night's Dream, v. 1.)
but the bergamot pear is derived from Turkish beg armudi, prince's pear. With beg, prince, cf. bey and begum. The burden of a song is from Fr. bourdon, "a drone, or dorre-bee; also, the humming, or buzzing, of bees; also, the drone of a bag-pipe" (Cotgrave). It is of doubtful origin, but is not related to burden, a load, which is connected with the verb to bear.
To cashier, i.e., break, a soldier, is from Du. casseeren, which is borrowed from Fr. casser, to break, Lat. quassare, frequentative of quatere, to shatter. In the 16th and 17th centuries we also find cass and cash, which come immediately from French, and are thus doublets of quash. Cotgrave has casser, "to casse, cassere, discharge." The past participle of the obsolete verb to cass is still in military use—
"But the colonel said he must go, and he (the drum horse) was cast in due form and replaced by a washy, bay beast, as ugly as a mule."