The tongues of mocking wenches are as keen
As is the razor’s edge invisible.
Id., Love’s Labours Lost, act v. sc. 2.
And going in, He saith to them: Why make ye this ado, and weepe? The wenche is not dead, but sleepeth.... And holding the wenches hand, He saith to her, Talitha Cumi.—Mark v. 39, 41. Rheims.
Whirlpool. Formerly used in the sense of some huge sea-monster of the whale kind. Thus in the margin of our Bible, there is on Job xli. 1 (‘Canst thou draw out leviathan?’) a gloss, ‘that is, a whale or whirlpool.’ In Harrison’s Description of England, b. iii. c. 5, the ‘thirlepole’ is mentioned with the porpoise and whale as among the great fishes of the sea. See Wright’s Bible Word Book.
The Indian Sea breedeth the most and the biggest fishes that are, among which the whales and whirlpools, called balænæ, take up in length as much as four acres or arpens of land.—Holland, Pliny, vol. i. p. 235.
Great whirlpooles which all fishes make to flee.
Spenser, Fairy Queen, ii. 12, 23.
The ork, whirlpool, whale, or huffing physeter.
Sylvester, Du Bartas, First Day of the Week.