Ought. Of the two perfects of the verb ‘to owe’ (see Morris, English Accidence, p. 189; and Earle, Philology of the English Tongue, § 289), namely ‘ought’ and ‘owed,’ the former has come now to be used of a moral owing or obligation only, never of a material; but it was not always so. In the passage from Spenser ‘ought’ is used in the sense of ‘possessed.’ Among the many tacit alterations which our Authorized Version has at various times undergone, the substitution in many places of ‘owed’ for ‘ought’ is one.
But th’ Elfin knight which ought that warlike wage,
Disdaind to loose the meed he wonne in fray.
Spenser, Fairy Queen, i. 4, 39.
There was a certain creditor, who had two debtors. The one ought five hundred pence, and the other fifty.—Luke vii. 41. (A. V.)
Also we forgive the oversights and faults committed against us, and the crown-tax that ye ought us.—1 Macc. xiii. 39. Geneva Version.
Overture. Not now an aperture or opening, in the literal and primary sense of the word, as formerly it was; but always in some secondary and derived.
The squirrels also foresee a tempest coming; and look in what corner the wind is like to stand, on that side they stop up the mouth of their holes, and make an overture on the other side against it.—Holland, Pliny, b. viii. c. 38.
| Painful, | } |
| Painfulness, | |
| Painfully. |
‘Painful’ is now feeling pain, or inflicting it; it was once taking pains. Many things would not be so ‘painful’ in the present sense of the word, if they had been more ‘painful’ in the earlier,—as perhaps some sermons.