"Like men condemned to thunderbolts,
Who, ere the blow, become mere dolts."
C.I.R.
Shrew (No. 24. p. 381.).—The word, I apprehend, means sharp. The mouse, which is not the field-mouse, as Halliwell states, but an animal of a different order of quadrupeds, has a very sharp snout. Shrewd means sharp generally. Its bad sense is only incidental. They seem connected with scratch; screw; shrags, the end of sticks or furze (Halliwell); to shred (A.-S., screadan, but which must be a secondary form of the verb). That the shrew-mouse is called in Latin sorex, seems to be an accidental coincidence. That is said to be derived from [Greek: urax]. The French have confounded the two, and give the name souris to the common mouse, but not to the shrew-mouse.
I protest, for one, against admitting that Broc is derived from broc, persecution, which of course is participle from break. We say "to badger" for to annoy, to teaze. I suppose two centuries hence will think the name of the animal is derived from that verb, and not the verb from it. It means also, in A.-S., equus vilis, a horse that is worn out or "broken down."
C.B.
Zenobia (No. 24. p. 383.).—Zenobia is said to be "gente Judaea," in Hoffman's Lexicon Universale, and Facciolati, ed. Bailey, Appendix, voc. Zenobia.
M.
Oxford.
Cromwell's Estates (No. 24. p. 389.).—There is Woolaston, in Gloucestershire, four miles from Chepstow, chiefly belonging now to the Duke of Beaufort.