And anoon thei leften the nettis and sueden hym.—Mark i. 19. Id.
Sure. Used once in the sense of affianced, or, as it would be sometimes called, ‘hand-fasted.’ See ‘Assure,’ ‘Ensure.’
The king was sure to dame Elizabeth Lucy, and her husband before God.—Sir T. More, History of King Richard III.
| Suspect, | } |
| Suspicion. |
To ‘suspect’ is properly to look under, and out of this fact is derived our present use of the word; but in looking under you may also look up, and herein lies the explanation of an occasional use of ‘suspect’ and ‘suspicion’ which we find in our early writers.
Pelopidas being sent the second time into Thessaly, to make accord betwixt the people and Alexander, the tyrant of Pheres, was by this tyrant (not suspecting the dignity of an ambassador, nor of his country) made prisoner.—North, Plutarch’s Lives, p. 927.
If God do intimate to the spirit of any wise inferiors that they ought to reprove, then let them suspect their own persons, and beware that they make no open contestation, but be content with privacy.—Rogers, Naaman the Syrian, p. 330.
Cordeilla, out of mere love, without the suspicion of expected reward, at the message only of her father in distress, pours forth true filial tears.—Milton, History of England, b. i.
Sycophant. The early meaning of ‘sycophant,’ when it was employed as equivalent to informer, delator, calumniator, ‘promoter’ (which see), agreed better with its use in the Greek than does our present. Employing it now in the sense of false and fawning flatterer, we might seem at first sight to employ it in a sense not merely altogether unconnected with, but quite opposite to, its former. Yet indeed there is a very deep inner connexion between the two uses. It is not for nothing that Jeremy Taylor treats of these two, namely ‘Of Slander and Flattery,’ in one and the same course of sermons; seeing that, as the Italian proverb has taught us, ‘He who flatters me before, spatters me behind.’
The poor man, that hath nought to lose, is not afraid of the sycophant or promoter.—Holland, Plutarch’s Morals, p. 261.