Pocher le labeur d’autruy. To poch into, or incroach upon another man’s imployment, practise or trade.—Cotgrave.
So that, to speak truly, they [the Spaniards] have rather poached and offered at a number of enterprises, than maintained any constantly.—Lord Bacon, Notes of a Speech concerning a War with Spain.
It is ill conversing with an ensnarer, delving into the bottom of your mind, to know what is hid in it. I would ask a casuist if it were not lawful for me not only to hide my mind, but to cast something that is not true before such a poacher.—Hacket, Life of Archbishop Williams, part ii. p. 113.
| Polite, | } |
| Politely. |
Between ‘polite’ and ‘polished’ this much of difference has now grown up and established itself, that ‘polite’ is always employed in a secondary and tropical sense, having reference to the polish of the mind, while it is free to use ‘polished’ in the literal and figurative sense alike.
Polite bodies, as looking-glasses.—Cudworth, Intellectual System, p. 731.
Polite; well-polished, neat.—Phillips, New World of Words.
In things artificial seldom any elegance is wrought without a superfluous waste and refuse in the transaction. No marble statue can be politely carved, no fair edifice built, without almost as much rubbish and sweeping.—Milton, Reason of Church Government, b. i. c. 7.
| Politics, | } |
| Politician. |
At the present ‘politics’ are always things, but were sometimes persons as well in times past. ‘Politician’ too had an evil subaudition. One so named was a trickster or underhand self-seeker and schemer in politics, or it might be, as it is throughout in the sermon of South, quoted below, in the ordinary affairs of life. Fuller calls his Life of the wicked usurper Andronicus, ‘The Unfortunate Politician.’