Mutton. It is a refinement in the English language, one wanting in some other languages which count themselves as refined or more, that it has in so many cases one word to express the living animal, and another its flesh prepared for food; ox and beef, calf and veal, deer and venison, sheep and mutton. In this last instance the refinement is of somewhat late introduction. At one time they were synonyms.
Peucestas, having feasted them in the kingdom of Persia, and given every soldier a mutton to sacrifice, thought he had won great favour and credit among them.—North, Plutarch’s Lives, p. 505.
A starved mutton’s carcass would better fit their palates.—Ben Jonson, The Sad Shepherd, act i. sc. 2.
Namely. Now only designates; but, like the German ‘namentlich,’ once designated as first and chief, as deserving above all others to be named.
For there are many disobedient, and talkers of vanity, and deceivers of minds, namely [μάλιστα] they of the circumcision.—Tit. i. 10. Tyndale.
For in the darkness occasioned by the opposition of the earth just in the mids between the sun and the moon, there was nothing for him [Nicias] to fear, and namely at such a time, when there was cause for him to have stood upon his feet, and served valiantly in the field.—Holland, Plutarch’s Morals, p. 265.
Naturalist. At present the student of natural history; but in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the name was often given to the deist, as one who denied any but a religion of nature, ‘Natural religion men’ such were sometimes called. See the quotation from Rogers, s. v. ‘Civil.’
But that he [the atheist] might not be shy of me, I have conformed myself as near his own garb as I might, without partaking of his folly or wickedness; and have appeared in the plain shape of a mere naturalist myself, that I might, if it were possible, win him off from downright atheism.—H. More, Antidote against Atheism, Preface, p. 7.
This is the invention of Satan, that whereas all will not be profane, nor naturalists, nor epicures, but will be religious, lo, he hath a bait for every fish, and can insinuate himself as well into religion itself as into lusts and pleasures.—Rogers, Naaman the Syrian, p. 115.
Heathen naturalists hold better consort with the primitive Church concerning the nature of sin original than the Socinians.—Jackson, Of Christ’s Everlasting Priesthood, b. x. c. 8, § 4.