Spenser, Fairy Queen, iv. 7, 16.
| Mechanic, | } |
| Mechanical. |
A word which now simply expresses a fact, and is altogether untinged with passion or sentiment; but in its early history it ran exactly parallel to the Greek βάναυσος, which, expressing first one who plied a handicraft, came afterwards, in obedience to certain constant tendencies of language, to imply the man ethically illiberal. See the quotation from Holland, s. v. ‘Fairy.’
Base and mechanical niggardise they [flatterers] account temperate frugality.—Holland, Plutarch’s Morals, p. 93.
Base dunghill villain and mechanical.
Shakespeare, 2 Henry VI., act i. sc. 3.
It was never a good world, since employment was counted mechanic, and idleness gentility.—Whitlock, Zootomia, p. 30.
Meddle. This had once no such offensive meaning of mixing oneself up in other people’s business as now it has. On the contrary, Barrow in one of his sermons draws expressly the distinction between ‘meddling’ and being meddlesome, and only condemns the latter.
In the drynke that she meddlid to you, mynge ye double to hir.—Apoc. xviii. 6. Wiclif.
How is it that thou, being a Jew, askest drink of me, which am a Samaritan? For the Jews meddle not [oὐ συγχρῶνται] with the Samaritans.—John iv. 9. Cranmer.