Banquet. At present the entire course of any solemn or sumptuous entertainment; but ‘banquet’ (O. Fr. banquet, cp. It. ‘banchetto,’ a small bench or table) used generally to be restrained to a slighter repast, to the lighter and ornamental dessert or refection, or the ‘banquet of wine’ (Esth. vii. 2), which followed and crowned the more substantial repast.
I durst not venture to sit at supper with you; should I have received you then, coming as you did with armed men to banquet with me? [Convivam me tibi committere ausus non sum; comissatorem te cum armatis venientem recipiam?]—Holland, Livy, p. 1066.
Then was the banqueting-chamber in the tilt-yard at Greenwich furnished for the entertainment of these strangers, where they did both sup and banquet.—Cavendish, Life of Cardinal Wolsey.
We’ll dine in the great room; but let the music
And banquet be prepared here.
Massinger, The Unnatural Combat, act iii. sc. 1.
| Base, | } |
| Baseness. |
The aristocratic tendencies of speech (tendencies illustrated by the word ‘aristocracy’ itself), which reappear in a thousand shapes, on the one side in such words, and their usages, as καλοκἀγαθός, ἐπιεικής, ‘noble,’ on the other in such as ‘villain,’ ‘boor,’ ‘knave,’ ‘churl,’ and in this ‘base,’ are well worthy of accurate observation. Thus ‘base’ always now implies moral unworthiness; but did not so once. ‘Base’ men were no more than men of humble birth and low degree.
But vertuous women wisely understand
That they were borne to base humilitie,