An axe shall hang, like a prodigious meteor,
Ready to crop your loves’ sweets.
Beaumont and Fletcher, Philaster, act v. sc. 1.
Without this comely ornament of hair, their [women’s] most glorious beauty appears as deformed, as the sun would be prodigious without beams.—Fuller, The Profane State, b. v. c. 5.
I began to reflect on the whole life of this prodigious man.—Cowley, On the Government of Oliver Cromwell.
| Promote, | } |
| Promoter, | |
| Promotion. |
‘To promote,’ that is, to further or set forward, a ‘promoter,’ a furtherer, are now words of harmless, often of quite an honourable, signification. They were once terms of extremest scorn; a ‘promoter’ being a common informer, and so called because he ‘promoted’ charges and accusations against men (promotor litium: Skinner).
There lack men to promote the king’s officers when they do amiss, and to promote all offenders.—Latimer, Last Sermon before Edward VI.
Thou, Linus, that lov’st still to be promoting,
Because I sport about King Henry’s marriage,