i.e., one who takes to the "road," from Du. pad, path. Pad, an ambling nag, a "roadster," is the same word.
Pen comes, through Old French, from Lat. penna, "a penne, quil, or fether" (Cooper), while pencil is from Old Fr. pincel (pinceau), a painter's brush, from Lat. penicillus, a little tail. The modern meaning of pencil, which still meant painter's brush in the 18th century, is due to association with pen. The older sense survives in optics and in the expression "pencilled eyebrows." The ferrule of a walking-stick is a distinct word from ferule, an aid to education. The latter is Lat. ferula, "an herbe like big fenell, and maye be called fenell giant. Also a rodde, sticke, or paulmer, wherewith children are striken and corrected in schooles; a cane, a reede, a walking staffe" (Cooper). Ferrule is a perversion of earlier virrel, virrol, Fr. virole, "an iron ring put about the end of a staffe, etc., to strengthen it, and keep it from riving" (Cotgrave).
The modern meaning of pester is due to a wrong association with pest. Its earlier meaning is to hamper or entangle—
"Confined and pestered in this pinfold here."
(Comus, l. 7.)
It was formerly impester, from Old Fr. empestrer (empêtrer), "to pester, intricate, intangle, trouble, incumber" (Cotgrave), originally to "hobble" a grazing horse with pasterns, or shackles (see pastern, p. [76]).
Mosaic work is not connected with Moses, but with the muses and museum. It comes, through French, from Ital. mosaico, "a kinde of curious stone worke, of divers colours, checkie worke" (Florio), which is Vulgar Lat. musaicum opus. Sorrow and sorry are quite unrelated. Sorrow is from Anglo-Sax. sorg, sorh, cognate with Ger. Sorge, anxiety. Sorry, Mid. Eng. sori, is a derivative of sore, cognate with Ger. sehr, very, lit. "painfully"; cf. English "sore afraid," or the modern "awfully nice," which is in South Germany arg nett, "vexatiously nice."
It is probable that vagabond, Lat. vagabundus, has no etymological connection with vagrant, which appears to come from Old Fr. waucrant, present participle of waucrer, a common verb in the Picard dialect, perhaps related to Eng. walk. Cotgrave spells it vaucrer, "to range, roame, vagary, wander, idly (idle) it up and down." Cotgrave also attributes to it the special meaning of a ship sailing "whither wind and tide will carry it," the precise sense in which it is used in the 13th-century romance of Aucassin et Nicolette.
Other examples of mistaken association are scullion and scullery (p. [43]), and sentry and sentinel (p. [102]). Many years ago Punch had a picture by Du Maurier called the "Vikings of Whitby," followed by a companion picture, the "Viqueens." The word is not vi-king but vik-ing, the first syllable probably representing an Old Norse form of Anglo-Sax. wīc, encampment.