The manuring hand of the tiller shall root up all that burdens the soil.—Milton, Reason of Church Government.
It [Japan] is mountainous and craggy, full of rocks and stony places, so that the third part of this empire is not inhabited or manured.—Memorials of Japan (Hakluyt Society), p. 3.
A rare and excellent wit untaught doth bring forth many good and evil things together; as a fat soil, that lieth unmanured, bringeth forth both herbs and weeds.—North, Plutarch’s Lives, p. 185.
Every man’s hand itching to throw a cudgel at him, who, like a nut-tree, must be manured by beating, or else would never bear fruit.—Fuller, Holy War, ii. 11.
| Mean, | } |
| Meanness. |
O.E. ‘gemǽne,’ Goth. ‘gamains’ (compare Germ. ‘gemein’), cognate with Latin ‘communis’ (our ‘common’)—all with a history very closely corresponding to that of the Greek κοινός (see Acts x. 14). The connotation of moral baseness only accrued to the word by degrees.
And the mean man boweth down, and the great man humbleth himself.—Isai. ii. 9. (A.V.)
But, for his meannesse and disparagement,
My Sire, who me too dearely well did love,
Unto my choice by no meanes would assent.