We yield not ourselves to be your villains and slaves [non in servitutem nos tradimus], but as allies to be protected by you.—Holland, Livy, p. 935.
[He] was condemned to be degraded of all nobility, and not only himself, but all his succeeding posterity declared villains, and clowns, taxable and incapable to bear arms.—Florio, Montaigne, b. i. c. 15.
In our modern language it [foul language] is termed villany, as being proper for rustic boors, or men of coarsest education and employment, who, having their minds debased by being conversant in meanest affairs, do vent their sorry passions in such strains.—Barrow, Of Evil-speaking in general, Sermon 16.
Virtuous. Virtue is still occasionally used as equivalent to might or potency; but ‘virtuous’ has quite abdicated the meaning of valorous or potent which it once had, and which its etymology justified.
With this all strengths and minds he moved; but young Deiphobus,
Old Priam’s son, amongst them all was chiefly virtuous.
Chapman, Homer’s Iliad, xiii. 147.
Or call up him that left half told
The story of Cambuscan old,
Of Camball and of Algarsife,