Fastidious. Persons are ‘fastidious’ now, as feeling disgust; things, and indeed persons too, were ‘fastidious’ once, as occasioning disgust. The word has shifted from an objective to a subjective use. ‘Fastidiosus’ had both uses, but our modern quite predominated; indeed the other is very rare.
That thing for the which children be oftentimes beaten, is to them ever after fastidious.—Sir T. Elyot, The Governor, b. i. c. 9.
Feature. This, the Old French ‘faiture,’ Latin ‘factura,’ is always the part now of a larger whole, a ‘feature’ of the landscape, the ‘features’ of the face; but there was no such limitation once; anything made, any ‘fattura,’ was a ‘feature’ once. ‘Facies’ in Latin, according to Aulus Gellius (xiii. 29), underwent a not very dissimilar change of meaning. In addition to the examples which follow, see Spenser, Fairy Queen, iv. 2, 44; iii. 9, 21.
A body so harmoniously composed,
As if nature disclosed
All her best symmetry in that one feature.
Ben Jonson, The Forest, xi.
We have not yet found them all [the scattered limbs of Truth], nor ever shall do, till her Master’s second coming; He shall bring together every joint and member, and shall mould them into an immortal feature of loveliness and perfection.—Milton, Areopagitica.
So scented the grim feature, and upturned
His nostril wide into the murky air.