Officious, innocent, sincere,
Of every friendless name the friend.
S. Johnson (A.D. 1782).
Which familiar and affectionate officiousness and sumptuous cost, together with that sinister fame that woman was noted with [Luke vii. 37], could not but give much scandal to the Pharisees there present.—H. More, Grand Mystery of Godliness, b. viii. c. 13.
Orient. This had once a beautiful use, as clear, bright, shining, which has now wholly departed from it. Thus, the ‘orient’ pearl of our earlier poets is not ‘oriental,’ but pellucid, white, shining. Doubtless it acquired this meaning originally from the greater clearness and lightness of the east, as the quarter whence the day breaks.
Those shells that keep in the main sea, and lie deeper than that the sunbeams can pierce unto them, keep the finest and most delicate pearls. And yet they as orient as they be, wax yellow with age.—Holland, Pliny, vol. i. p. 255.
He, who out of that dark chaos made the glorious heavens, and garnished them with so many orient stars, can move upon thy dark soul and enlighten it, though now it be as void of knowledge as the evening of the first day was of light.—Gurnall, Christian in Complete Armour, ii. 22, 1.
Her wings and train of feathers, mixed fine
Of orient azure and incarnadine.
Sylvester, Du Bartas, Fifth Day.