Beaumont and Fletcher, The Coxcomb, act v. sc. 2.
Convince. This and ‘convict’ have been usefully desynonymized. One is ‘convinced’ of a sin, but ‘convicted’ of a crime; the former word moving always in the sphere of moral or intellectual things, but the latter often in that of things merely external.
Your Italy contains none so accomplished a courtier to convince the honour of my mistress.—Shakespeare, Cymbeline, act i. sc. 4.
Keep off that great concourse, whose violent hands
Would ruin this stone-building and drag hence
This impious judge, piecemeal to tear his limbs,
Before the law convince him.
Webster, Appius and Virginia, act v. sc. 5.
There was none of you that convinced Job, or that answered his words.—Job xxxii. 12. (A. V.)
Copy. A more Latin use of ‘copy,’ as ‘copia’ or abundance, was at one time frequent in English. It is easy to trace the steps by which the word attained its present significance. The only way to obtain ‘copy’ (in this Latin sense) or abundance of any document, would be by taking ‘copies’ (in our present sense) of it. Then, too, it often meant the exemplar, and is so used in the quotations from Shakespeare and Jeremy Taylor.