Puny. The present use of ‘puny,’ as that which is at once weak and small, is only secondary and inferential. ‘Puny’ or ‘puisne’ (puis né) is born after another, therefore younger; and only by inference smaller and weaker.
It were a sign of ignorant arrogancy, if punies or freshmen should reject the axioms and principles of Aristotle, usual in the schools, because they have some reasons against them which themselves cannot answer.—Jackson, The Eternal Truth of Scriptures, c. i.
[The worthy soldier] had rather others should make a ladder of his dead corpse to scale a city by it, than a bridge of him whilst alive for his punies to give him the go-by, and pass over him to preferment.—Fuller, Holy State, b. iv. c. 17.
He is dead and buried, and by this time no puny among the mighty nations of the dead; for though he left this world not very many days past, yet every hour, you know, addeth largely unto that dark society.—Sir T. Browne, Letter to a Friend, p. 1.
Purchase. Now always to acquire in exchange for money, to buy; but much oftener in our old writers simply to acquire, being properly to hunt, ‘pourchasser;’ and then to take in hunting; then to acquire; and then, as the commonest way of acquiring is by giving money in exchange, to buy. The word occurs six times in our Version of the New Testament, Acts i. 18; viii. 10; xx. 28; Ephes. i. 14; 1 Tim. iii. 13; 1 Pet. ii. 9, margin; in none of these is the notion of buying involved. At Acts i. 18, this is especially noteworthy. It is there said: ‘This man purchased a field with the reward of iniquity.’ There will always remain certain difficulties in reconciling the different records of the death of Judas; but if St. Peter had here affirmed that Judas had bought this field of blood, these difficulties would be seriously increased, for the chief priests were the actual buyers (Matt. xxvii. 7). He affirms no such thing, neither did our Translators understand him to do so, but simply that Judas made that ominous potter’s field his own (ἐκτήσατο). The Revised Version has ‘obtained.’
And therefore true consideration of estate can hardly find what to reject, in matter of territory, in any empire, except it be some glorious acquists obtained sometime in the bravery of wars, which cannot be kept without excessive charge and trouble, of which kind were the purchases of King Henry VIII., that of Tournay, and that of Bologne.—Bacon, History of King Henry VII.
The purchases of our own industry are joined commonly with labour and strife.—Id., Colours of Good and Evil, 9.
Meditation considers anything that may best make us to avoid the place and to quit a vicious habit, or master and rectify an untoward inclination, or purchase a virtue or exercise one.—Bishop Taylor, Life of Christ, part i. § 5.
[Men] will repent, but not restore; they will say Nollem factum, they wish they had never done it; but since it is done, you must give them leave to rejoice in their purchase.—Id., Sermon preached to the University of Dublin.
As it is a happiness for us to purchase friends, so is it misery to lose them.—Reynolds, God’s Revenge against Murther, b. v. hist. 21.