He healeth the man of the palsye, calleth Levi the customer, eateth with open synners, and excuseth his disciples.—What S. Marke conteyneth. Coverdale.
The extreme and horrible covetousness of the farmers, customers, and Roman usurers devoured it [Asia].—North, Plutarch’s Lives, p. 432.
We hardly can abide publicans, customers, and toll-gatherers, when they keep a ferreting and searching for such things as be hidden.—Holland, Plutarch’s Morals, p. 138.
| Danger, | } |
| Dangerous. |
A feudal term, beset with many difficulties when we seek to follow it as it passes to its present use; but very well worth some study bestowed upon it. Ducange has written on the subject, and Diez, and Littré (Hist. de la Langue Franç. vol. i. p. 49). [The Old French dangier, dongier, power, lordship, refusal, danger, is of Late Latin origin, representing a form dominiarium (from Latin dominium) which signified properly the strict right of the suzerain in regard to the fief of the vassal]; thus, ‘fief de danger,’ a fief held under a lord on strict conditions, and therefore in peril of being forfeited (juri stricto atque adeo confiscationi obnoxium; Ducange). There is no difficulty here; but there is another early use of ‘danger’ and ‘dangerous’ which is not thus explained, nor yet the connexion between it and the modern meaning of the words. I refer to that of ‘danger’ in the sense of ‘coyness,’ ‘sparingness,’ ‘niggardliness,’ and of ‘dangerous’ in the sense of haughty, difficult to please.
And if thi voice is faire and clere,
Thou shalt maken no grete daungere,
Whanne to synge they goodly preye;
It is thi worship for tobeye.
Romaunt of the Rose, 2317.