Learning is necessary to him [the heretic], if he trades in a critical error; but if he only broaches dregs, and deals in some dull sottish opinion, a trowel will serve as well as a pencil to daub on such thick coarse colours.—Fuller, Profane State, b. v. c. 10.
The first thing she did after rising was to have recourse to the red-pot, out of which she laid it on very thick with a pencil, not only on her cheeks, chin, under the nose, above the eyebrows and edges of the ears, but also on the inside of her hands, her fingers, and shoulders.—The Lady’s Travels into Spain, Letter 8.
Penitentiary. It is curious that this word has possessed three entirely independent meanings, namely penitent, ordainer of penances in the Church, and place for penitents; only the last is current now.
So Manasseh in the beginning and middle of his reign filled the city with innocent blood, and died a penitentiary.—Jackson, Christ’s Session at God’s Right Hand, b. ii. c. 42.
’Twas a French friar’s conceit that courtiers were of all men the likeliest to forsake the world and turn penitentiaries.—Hammond, The Seventh Sermon, Works, vol. iv. p. 517.
Penitentiary, a priest that imposes upon an offender what penance he thinks fit.—Phillips, New World of Words.
| Pensive, | } |
| Pensiveness. |
He is ‘pensive,’ according to our present estimate of the word, in whom a certain mild and meditative sadness finds place; and in thus attaching to the word this meaning of a thoughtful sadness we are truer to its etymology than were our ancestors, when they used it, as they often did, to express the sharpest anguish of grief. Thus, in my first quotation, by ‘the pensive court’ is meant the Court of David, which has just received tidings of the slaughter by Absalom of all the king’s sons.
The pensive court in doleful dumps did rue
This dismal case.