We beseech you, brethren, that ye study to be quiet, and to meddle with your own business.—1 Thess. iv. 10, 11. Tyndale.
Tho he, that had well y-cond his lere,
Thus medled his talke with many a teare.
Spenser, The Shepherd’s Calendar, May.
Mediterranean. Only seas are ‘mediterranean’ now, and for us only one Sea; but there is no reason why cities and countries should not be characterized as ‘mediterranean’ as well; and they were so once. We have preferred, however, to employ ‘inland.’
Their buildings are for the most part of tymber, for the mediterranean countreys have almost no stone.—The Kyngdome of Japonia, p. 6.
An old man, full of days, and living still in your mediterranean city, Coventry.—Henry Holland, Preface to Holland’s Cyropædia.
It [Arabia] hath store of cities, as well mediterranean as maritime.—Holland, Ammianus.
Medley. The same word as the French ‘mêlée.’ It is plain from the frequent use of the French ‘mêlée’ in the description of battles that we feel now the want of a corresponding English word. There have been attempts, though hardly successful ones, to naturalize ‘mêlée,’ and as ‘volée’ has become in English ‘volley,’ that so ‘mêlée’ should become ‘melley.’ Perhaps, as Tennyson has sanctioned these, employing ‘mellay’ in his Princess, they may now succeed. But there would have been no need of this, nor yet of borrowing the modern French form, if ‘medley’ had been allowed to keep this more passionate use, which once it possessed.
The consul for his part forslowed not to come to handfight. The medley continued above three hours, and the hope of victory hung in equal balance.—Holland, Livy, p. 1119.