There cannot be in a maker a fouler fault than to falsify his accent to serve his cadence, or by untrue orthography to wrench his words to help his rhyme.—Puttenham, Art of English Poesy, b. ii. c. 8.
The Greeks named the poet ποιητής, which name, as the most excellent, hath gone through other languages. It cometh of this word ποιεῖν, to make; wherein I know not whether by luck or wisdom we Englishmen have met well with the Greeks in calling him a maker.—Sir P. Sidney, Defence of Poesy.
Mansion. This is a finely selected word, suggested no doubt by the ‘mansiones’ of the Vulgate, whereby our Translators, and Tyndale before them, rendered the μοναί of John xiv. 2. Knowing, however, as we do that μοναί never meant ‘mansions’ in our modern, or auctioneers’ sense of the word, we cannot doubt that by this word they intended places of tarrying, which might be for a longer or a shorter time; resting places which remained for the Christian traveller who should have reached at length his heavenly home. This use of ‘mansion’ as a place of tarrying is frequent enough in our early literature, although our modern use is by no means unknown.
They [the Angels] be pure minds and were never neither blinded through sin, ne hindered through any earthly mansion and corruptible body.—Hutchinson, Works, p. 160 (ed. 1842).
Before the starry threshold of Jove’s court
My mansion is, where those immortal shapes
Of bright aerial spirits live unsphered,
In regions mild of calm and serene air.
Milton, Comus, i. 4.
Manure. The same word as ‘manœuvre,’ to work with the hand; and thus, to till or cultivate the earth, this tillage being in earlier periods of society the great and predominant labour of the hands. We restrain the word now to one particular branch of this cultivation, but our ancestors made it to embrace the whole.