They [infidels] explode all natural difference of good and evil; deriding benignity, mercy, pity, gratitude, ingenuity; that is, all instances of good-nature, as childish and silly dispositions.—Id., Sermon 6 on the Apostles’ Creed.
Xenophon, in the Life of his imaginary Prince, is always celebrating the philanthropy or good-nature of his hero, which he tells us he brought into the world with him.—Spectator, no. 169.
Gospeller. Now seldom used save in ritual language, and there designating the priest or deacon who in the divine service reads the Gospel of the day; but employed once as equivalent to ‘Evangelist,’ and subsequently applied to adherents of the Reformed faith; both which meanings have since departed from it.
Marke, the gospeller, was the goostli sone of Petre in baptysm.—Wiclif, The Prologe of Marke.
The persecution was carried on against the gospellers with much fierceness by those of the Roman persuasion.—Strype, Memorial of Archbishop Cranmer, b. iii. c. 16.
Gossip. It would be interesting to collect instances in which the humbler classes of society have retained the correct use of a word, which has been let go by those of higher education. ‘Gossip’ is one, being still used by our peasantry in its first and etymological sense, namely as a sponsor in baptism—one sib or akin in God, according to the doctrine of the medieval Church, that sponsors contracted a spiritual affinity with the child for whom they stood. ‘Gossips,’ in this primary sense, would often be familiar with one another—and thus the word was applied to all familiars and intimates. At a later day it came to signify such idle talk, the ‘commérage’ (which word has exactly the same history), which too often would find place in the intercourse of such.
They had mothers as we had; and those mothers had gossips (if their children were christened), as we are.—Ben Jonson, The Staple of News, The Induction.
Thus fareth the golden mean, through the misconstruction of the extremes. Well-tempered zeal is lukewarmness; devotion is hypocrisy; charity, ostentation; constancy, obstinacy; gravity, pride; humility, abjection of spirit; and so go through the whole parish of virtues, where misprision and envy are gossips, be sure the child shall be nicknamed.—Whitlock, Zootomia, p. 3.
Should a great lady that was invited to be a gossip, in her place send her kitchen-maid, ’twould be ill-taken.—Selden, Table-Talk, Prayer.
Grave. The O.E. ‘grafan’ (compare German ‘graben,’ ‘to grave’) was once used in the senses which ‘graben’ still retains. See ‘Engrave.’