Awake the pert and nimble spirit of youth.
Shakespeare, Midsummer Night’s Dream, act i. sc. 1.
And on the tawny sands and shelves
Trip the pert faeries and the dapper elves.
Milton, Comus, 117.
Pester. There is no greater discomfort or annoyance than extreme straitness or narrowness of room; out of which in Greek the word στενοχωρία, signifying this, has come to have a secondary signification of trouble or anguish. [In English, ‘to pester’ bears witness to the same fact, having first the meaning of to encumber or clog, then the second meaning of painfully cooping-up in a narrow and confined space, and lastly the meaning of to vex or annoy, which sense it still retains.]
Now because the most part of the people might not possibly have a sight of him, they gat up all at once into the theatre, and pestered it quite full.—Holland, Livy, p. 1055.
They within, though pestered with their own numbers, stood to it like men resolved, and in a narrow compass did remarkable deeds.—Milton, History of England, b. ii.
The calendar is filled, not to say pestered with them [that is, with Saints’ Days], jostling one another for room, many holding the same day in copartnership of festivity.—Fuller, Worthies of England, c. 3.
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