Disease. Our present limitation of ‘disease’ is a very natural one, seeing that nothing so effectually wars against ease as a sick and suffering condition of body. Still the limitation is modern, and by ‘disease’ was once meant any distress or discomfort whatever, and the verb had a corresponding meaning.
Wo to hem that ben with child, and norishen in tho daies, for a greet diseese [pressura magna, Vulg.] schal be on the erthe and wraththe to this puple.—Luke xxi. 23. Wiclif.
Thy doughter is deed; why diseasest thou the master eny further?—Mark v. 35. Tyndale.
This is now the fourteenth day they [the Cardinals] have been in the Conclave, with such pain and disease that your grace would marvel that such men as they would suffer it.—State Papers (Letter to Wolsey from his Agent at Rome), vol. vi. p. 182.
His double burden did him sore disease.
Spenser, Fairy Queen, ii. 2, 12.
Dismal. Minsheu’s derivation of ‘dismal,’ that it is ‘dies malus,’ the unlucky, ill-omened day, is exactly one of those plausible etymologies which one learns after a while to reject with contempt. Yet there can be no doubt that our fathers so understood the word, and that this assumed etymology often overrules their usage of it.
Why should we then be bold to call them evil, infortunate, and dismal days? If God rule our doings continually, why shall they not prosper on those days as well as on other?—Pilkington, Exposition on Aggeus, c. 1.
Then began they to reason and debate about the dismal days [tum de diebus religiosis agitari cœptum]. And the fifteenth day before the Kalends of August, so notorious for a twofold loss and overthrow, they set this unlucky mark upon it, that it should be reputed unmeet and unconvenient for any business, as well public as private.—Holland, Livy, p. 217.
The particular calendars, wherein their [the Jews’] good or dismal days are distinguished, according to the diversity of their ways, we find, Leviticus 26.—Jackson, The Eternal Truth of Scriptures, b. i. c. 22.