I would not have him know so much by me.
Shakespeare, Love’s Labour’s Lost, act iv. sc. 3.
I know nothing by myself [οὐδὲν ἐμαυτῷ σύνοιδα]; yet am I not hereby justified; but He that judgeth me is the Lord.—1 Cor. iv. 4 (A. V.) R. V. has here ‘against myself.’
God is said to be greater than our hearts, and knoweth all things. He knows more by us than we by ourselves.—Gurnall, The Christian in Complete Armour, iii. 2, 8.
By and by. Now a future more or less remote; but when our Version of the Bible was made, the nearest possible future. The inveterate procrastination of men has put ‘by and by’ farther and farther off. Already in Barrow’s time it had acquired its present meaning.
And some counselled the archbishop to burn me by and by, and some other counselled him to drown me in the sea, for it is near hand there.—Foxe, Book of Martyrs; Examination of William Thorpe.
Give me by and by [ἐξαυτῆς] in a charger the head of John the Baptist.—Mark vi. 25 (A.V.) [R. V. has forthwith.]
These things must first come to pass; but the end is not by and by [εὐθέως].—Luke xxi. 9 (A.V.) [R. V. has immediately.]
When Demophantus fell to the ground, his soldiers fled by and by [εὐθὺς ἔφυγον] upon it.—North, Plutarch’s Lives, p. 308.
[Caitiff. According to present usage the word expresses contempt, often involving strong moral disapprobation. It means a base, mean, despicable wretch, a contemptible villain. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the word has often a tinge of pity, meaning a wretched, miserable person. Originally caitiff meant a captive, a prisoner, being in fact the same word as captive, the latter being derived directly from the Latin captivus, while caitiff is its Anglo-Norman form caitif, used in the sense of captive, weak, miserable; cp. It. cattivo, captive, lewd, bad, and Mod. Fr. chétif, of little value, wretched, miserable.]