damnify, to injure. Spenser, F. Q. i. 11. 52; ii. 6. 3. Common in this sense in East Anglia and America (EDD.).
damps, dumps, fits of melancholy. Rowley, All’s Lost, iii. 1. 118.
dandiprat, a small coin worth 3 halfpence, first coined by Henry VII (of unknown origin). Middleton, Blurt, Mr. Constable, ii. 1 (Hippolito). Also, a dwarf, page; applied to Cupid (!) in Stanyhurst, tr. of Aeneid, i. p. 41 (ed. Arber); as also in Shirley, Arcadia, i. 3 (Dametas).
danger: phr. to be in (or within) one’s danger, to be in one’s debt, or under an obligation, or in one’s power, Massinger, Fatal Dowry, i. 2 (Charalois); cp. Merch. Venice, iv. 1. 180; King John, iv. 8. 84. In ME. in daunger, within a person’s jurisdiction, under his control, at his disposal (Chaucer). OF. dangier, the absolute authority of a feudal lord (Godefroy), Romanic type domniarium, deriv. of L. dominus (Hatzfeld). See Trench, Select Glossary.
Dansk, Danish. Webster, White Devil (Giovanni), ed. Dyce, p. 13. Also used to mean Denmark, Drayton, Polyolb. bk. xi. Dan. Dansk, Danish.
dant, a worthless, talkative woman. Skelton, El. Rummyng, 515. Du. dante, or dantelorie, ‘a base babling woman’; danten, ‘to bable’ (Hexham).
dappard, dapper. Triumphs of Love and Fortune, iv. 1 (Lentulo); in Hazlitt’s Dodsley, vi. 198.
daps, pl. habits, ways, peculiarities. Stanyhurst, tr. of Aeneid, iv. 447. See EDD. (s.v. Dap, sb. 11).
darby, money. (Cant.) ‘The ready, the darby’, Shadwell, Squire of Alsatia, i. 1 (Shamwell). Prob. with reference to Darby, a money-lender; see below.
Darby’s bands, supposed to have orig. meant a very strict bond exacted by some usurer of that name; see NED. (Later it meant fetters.) ‘If all be too little, both goods and lands, I know not what will please you, except Darby’s bands’, Marriage of Wit and Science (licensed in 1569-70), in Hazlitt’s Dodsley, ii. 362; Gascoigne, Steel Glas, 787 (ed. 1576).