The star-led wizards haste with odours sweet.
Milton, On the Nativity.
Womb. This is now only the ὑστέρα, but once could be ascribed to both sexes, having as wide a meaning as the κοιλία of the Greeks.
And he coveitide to fille his wombe of the coddis that the hoggis eeten, and no man gaf hym.—Luke xv. 16. Wiclif.
Of this matere, o Paul, wel canstow trete;
Mete unto wombe, and wombe eek unto mete.
Chaucer, Pardoneres Tale (Clar. Press).
Falstaff. An I had but a belly of any indifferency, I were simply the most active fellow in Europe. My womb, my womb, my womb undoes me.—Shakespeare, 2 Henry IV., act iv. sc. 3.
Worm. This, which designates at present only smaller and innoxious kinds of creeping and crawling things, once, as the German ‘wurm,’ was employed of all the serpent kind; and indeed in some of our northern dialects all snakes and serpents are ‘worms’ to the present day. In ‘blindworm,’ ‘slowworm,’ ‘hagworm,’ we have tokens of the earlier use.
There came a viper out of the heat and leapt on his hand. When the men of the country saw the worm hang on his hand, they said, This man must needs be a murderer.—Acts xxviii. 3, 4. Tyndale.