digladiation, a fencing contest, hand-to-hand fight; fig. disputation, wrangling. Pattenham, E. Poesie, bk. i, c. 17 (ed. Arber, p. 52). B. Jonson, Discoveries, cxl. Deriv. of L. digladiari, to fight for life and death (Cicero).
dildo, ‘a word of obscure origin, occurring in the refrains of ballads,’ NED. In Winter’s Tale, iv. 4. 195.
dill, a sweetheart; a cant term; the same as [dell]. Middleton, Span. Gipsy, iv. 1 (Sancho).
dilling, a darling, a well-beloved; ‘Vespasian the dilling of his time’, Burton, Anat. Mel. (ed. 1896) iii. 27; the youngest, and therefore the best-beloved child, Drayton, Pol. ii. 115. The word is in common prov. use for the youngest child, also, the least and weakest of a brood or litter (EDD.).
dimble, a dingle, a deep dell. B. Jonson, Sad Shepherd, ii. 2 (Alken); Drayton, Pol. ii. 190. Allied to dimple, dingle. Still in use in the Midlands, see EDD.
dint, to strike. Spenser, F. Q. vi. 10. 31; a stroke, blow, id. i. 7. 47.
dipsas, a snake whose bite was said to produce extreme thirst. Milton, P. L. x. 526; Marston, Malcontent, ii. 2. 1. Gk. δίψας, causing thirst; from δίφα, thirst.
dirige, a ‘dirge’. Bacon, Henry VII (ed. Lumby, p. 5). ME. dirige (dyryge) ‘offyce for dedeman’ (Prompt.). L. dirige: this word begins the antiphon, ‘Dirige, Dominus meus, in conspectu tuo vitam meam’, used in the first nocturn at mattins in the Office for the Dead; see Way’s note in Prompt., and Notes to Piers Plowman, C. iv. 467.
dirk, to darken, to obscure; ‘Thy wast bignes . . . dirks the beauty of my blossomes rownd’, Spenser, Shep. Kal., Feb., 134. See EDD. (s.v. Dark, 8). ME. derhyn, or make derk, ‘obscuro, obtenebro’ (Prompt. EETS., 137).
disable, to disparage. As You Like It, iv. 1. 34; Heywood, Eng. Traveller, iv. 1 (Reignald); Fletcher, Island Princess, iv. 3 (Armusia); spelt dishable, Spenser, F. Q. ii. 5. 21.