- Davies, Supplementary English Glossary, 1881.
- Grimm, J. and W., Deutsches Wörterbuch, 1854 ff.
- Halliwell, Dict. of Archaic and Provincial Words, 1874.
- Kluge, Etym. Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache, 1888.
- Marsh, Lectures on the English Language, 1861.
- Mätzner, Altenglisches Wörterbuch (A-I), 1878 ff.
- Mayhew-Skeat, Concise Dict. of Middle English, 1888.
- N.E.D., New English Dict., ed. Murray, 1884 ff.
- Oliphant, The New English, 1886.
- Skeat, Etym. Dict. of Eng. Lang., 1884.
- Trench: Study of Words, 1888; English Past and Present, 1889; Synonyms of the New Test., 1886.
- Wright-Wülcker: Old English Vocabularies, 1884.
A
SELECT GLOSSARY
ETC.
[Abandon. Now only used in the sense of to give up absolutely, to forsake, or desert; but in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries often found in the sense of to put to the ban, to proscribe, to cast out, reject. O. Fr. abandoner, to give up into the power of another, is due to the phrase mettre à bandon, to put under anyone’s jurisdiction; O. Fr. bandon (Low Lat. bandonem) is a derivative of Low Lat. bandum for older bannum; O. H. G. ban, an order, decree, proclamation. For O. Fr. bandon, used in the sense of free disposal, unfettered authority, compare Chanson de Roland, 2703: ‘All Spain will be to-day en lur bandun,’ i.e. in their power. The Germanic word bann, an open proclamation, survives in our ‘banns of marriage.’ The word bandit, It. bandito, means properly a proclaimed, proscribed man.]
Blessed shall ye be when men shall hate you, and abandon your name as evil [et ejecerint nomen vestrum tanquam malum, Vulg.] for the Son of man’s sake.—Luke vi. 22. Rheims.
Beggar. Madame wife, they say that I have dreamed
And slept above some fifteen years or more.
Lady. Aye, and the time seems thirty unto me,
Being all this time abandoned from thy bed.
Shakespeare, Taming of the Shrew, act i. sc. 1.
Achievement. Of ‘achievement’ and ‘hatchment’ it need hardly be said that the latter is a contracted and corrupted manner of pronouncing the former. This ‘achievement’ or ‘hatchment’ is an escutcheon or coat of arms erected when a person of distinction has died; originally so called from its being granted in memory of some ‘achievement’ or distinguished feat. In the Heralds’ College there are ‘achievements’ still, as there were for Milton two centuries ago; but in our common language we call them ‘hatchments,’ and have let any such employment of ‘achievement’ go.