To amuse, to stop or stay one with a trifling story, to make him lose his time, to feed with vain expectations, to hold in play.—Phillips, New World of Words.
In a just way it is lawful to deceive the unjust enemy, but not to lie; that is, by stratagems and semblances of motions, by amusements and intrigues of actions, by ambushes and wit, by simulation and dissimulation.—Bishop Taylor, Ductor Dubitantium, b. iii. c. 2.
Anatomy. Now the act of dissection, but it was often used by our elder writers for the thing or object dissected, and then, as this was stripped of its flesh, for what we now call a skeleton. ‘Skeleton,’ which see, had then another meaning.
Here will be some need of assistants in this live, and to the quick, dissection, to deliver me from the violence of the anatomy.—Whitlock, Zootomia, p. 249.
Antiquity held too light thoughts from objects of mortality, while some drew provocatives of mirth from anatomies, and jugglers showed tricks with skeletons.—Sir T. Browne, Hydriotaphia.
A hungry lean-faced villain,
A mere anatomy, a mountebank,
A needy, hollow-eyed, sharp-looking wretch,
A living deadman.
Shakespeare, Comedy of Errors, act v. sc. 1.