beadroll, and bead, now applied only to the humble device employed in counting prayers.
Not only the Romance languages, but also German and Dutch, adopted, with the Roman character, Lat. scribere, to write. English, on the contrary, preserved the native to write, i.e. to scratch (runes), giving to scribere only a limited sense, to shrive. The curious change of meaning was perhaps due to the fact that the priestly absolution was felt as having the validity of a "written" law or enactment.
PUDDING—STICKLER
The meaning which we generally give to pudding is comparatively modern. The older sense appears in black pudding, a sausage made of pig's blood. This is also the meaning of Fr. boudin, whence pudding comes. A still older meaning of both words is intestine, a sense still common in dialect. The derivation of the word is obscure, but it is probably related to Fr. bouder, to pout, whence boudoir, lit. a sulking-room.
A hearse, now the vehicle in which a coffin is carried, is used by Shakespeare for a coffin or tomb. Its earlier meaning is a framework to support candles, usually put round the coffin at a funeral. This framework was so named from some resemblance to a harrow,[53] Fr. herse, Lat. hirpex, hirpic-, a rake.
Treacle is a stock example of great change of meaning. It is used in Coverdale's Bible (1535) for the "balm in Gilead" of the Authorised Version—
"There is no more triacle at Galaad."[54]
(Jeremiah, vii. 22.)
Old Fr. triacle is from Greco-Lat. theriaca, a remedy against poison or snake-bite (θήρ, a wild beast). In Mid. English and later it was used of a sovereign remedy. It has, like sirup (p. [146]), acquired its present meaning via the apothecary's shop.
A stickler is now a man who is fussy about small points of etiquette or procedure. In Shakespeare he is one who parts combatants—