Querulous. Not formerly, as now, addicted to the making of complaints, but quarrelsome.
There inhabit these regions a kind of people, rude, warlike, ready to fight, querulous, and mischievous.—Holland, Camden’s Scotland, p. 39.
Not querulous, or clamorous in his discourse; ‘He shall not strive nor cry, neither shall any hear his voice in the streets;’ but meek and quiet.—Fuller, A Pisgah Sight of Palestine, b. iii. c. 6.
Race. Formerly ‘race,’ the Old French ‘raïs,’ the same word as the Latin ‘radicem,’ was used in the sense of a root.
A race of ginger.—Shakespeare, Winter’s Tale, act iv. sc. 3.
Raisin. It is conveniently agreed now that ‘raisin’ shall be employed only of the dried grape, but this does not lie in ‘racemus,’ of which ‘raisin’ is the French equivalent, nor yet in its earlier uses; indeed, ‘raisins of the sun’ (Sir J. Harington) was a phrase commonly employed when the dried fruit was intended.
Nether in the vyneyerd thou schalt gadere reysyns and greynes fallynge doun, but thou schalt leeve to be gaderid of pore men and pilgryms.—Lev. xix. 10. Wiclif.
| Rascal, | } |
| Rascality. |
The lean unseasonable members of the herd of deer were formerly so called; then the common people, the plebs as distinguished from the populus; it is only in comparatively modern English that the word is one of moral contempt. [In Anglo-French the word ‘rascaille’ was used in the sense of a rabble; for references and etymology see Mayhew-Skeat, Dict. of Middle English.]
And he smoot of the puple seventi men, and fifti thousandis of the raskeyl [Et percussit de populo septuaginta viros et quinquaginta millia plebis (Vulg.)].—1 Kin. vi. 19. Wiclif.