Drayton, On Poets and Poesy.
Prune. At present we only ‘prune’ trees; but our earlier authors use the word where we should use ‘preen,’ which indeed is but another form of the word. With us only birds ‘preen’ their feathers, while women, as in the example which follows, might ‘prune’ themselves of old.
A husband that loveth to trim and pamper his body, causeth his wife by that means to study nothing else but the tricking and pruning of herself.—Holland, Plutarch’s Morals, p. 318.
Publican. Formerly one who gathered the taxes, and paid them into the publicum or treasury; but now—though, as Johnson assures us, ‘in low language’—a man that keeps a house of public entertainment.
The late king’s extorting publicans (whereof Ranolf Flambard, Bishop of Durham, the principal) were closely imprisoned.—Fuller, Church History, ii. 3, 13.
They would not suffer him to take that money out of the treasury which was pressed and ready for him, but assigned and ordained certain moneys from the publicans and farmers of the city’s customs and revenues to furnish him.—Holland, Plutarch, p. 435.
Pulpit. We distinguish now between the ‘pulpit’ and the rostrum; our ancestors did not so.
I will myself into the pulpit first,
And show the reason of our Cæsar’s death.
Shakespeare, Julius Cæsar, act iii. sc. 1.