A select glossary of English words used formerly in senses different from their present

by Richard Chenevix Trench

Most bloody, fiery, and most terrible.

Shakespeare, Julius Cæsar, act i. sc. 3.

I took it for a faery vision

Of some gay creatures of the element,

That in the colours of the rainbow live,

And play in the plighted clouds.

Milton, Comus, 298.

Elephant. I have little doubt that ‘elephant’ as an equivalent for ivory is a Grecism not peculiar to Chapman, in whose translations from Homer it several times occurs; but I cannot adduce an example from any other. The use of ‘olifant’ in this sense is quite common in the older French (see Didot’s Glossary in Ducange, ed. 1887).

I did last afford

The varied ornament, which showed no want