Union. The elder Pliny (H. N. ix. 59) tells us that the name ‘unio’ had not very long before his time begun to be given to a pearl in which all chiefest excellencies, size, roundness, smoothness, whiteness, weight, met and, so to speak, were united; and as late as Jeremy Taylor the word ‘union’ was often employed to designate a pearl of a rare and transcendent beauty. See Skeat’s Dictionary (s. v. ‘Onion’).
And in the cup an union shall he throw,
Richer than that which four successive kings
In Denmark’s crown have worn.
Shakespeare, Hamlet, act v. sc. 2.
Pope Paul II. in his pontifical vestments outwent all his predecessors, especially in his mitre, upon which he had laid out a great deal of money in purchasing at vast rates diamonds, sapphires, emeralds, crysoliths, jaspers, unions, and all manner of precious stones.—Sir Paul Rycaut, Platina’s History of the Popes, p. 114.
Perox, the Persian king, [hath] an union in his ear worth an hundred weight of gold.—Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy, mem. ii. sect. 3.
| Unkind, | } |
| Unkindness. |
‘Unkind’ has quite forfeited now its primary meaning, namely that which violates the law of kind, thus ‘unkind abominations’ (Chaucer), meaning incestuous unions and the like; and has taken up with the secondary, that which does not recognise the duties flowing out of this kinship. In its primary meaning it moves in a region where the physical and ethical meet; in its secondary in a purely ethical sphere. How soon it began to occupy this the passages which follow will show; for out of a sense that nothing was so unnatural or ‘unkind’ as ingratitude, the word early obtained use as a special designation of this vice.
Unkynde [ingrati, Vulg.], cursid, withouten affeccioun.—2 Tim. iii. 2, 3. Wiclif.