haras, harres, a stud of horses; troop, collection. Skelton, Against Garnesche, ed. Dyce, i. 128; l. 77. OF. haras, a stud of horses (Hatzfeld); Med. L. haracium, ‘armentum equorum et jumentorum’ (Ducange). Arab. faras, horse; cp. O. Span. alfaras, ‘cavallo generoso’; see Dozy, 108.
harass, harassment, devastation. Milton, Samson, 257.
harborough, ‘harbour’, shelter. Spenser, Shep. Kal., June, 19; Tanered and Gismunda, v. 2 (Gismunda); in Hazlitt’s Dodsley, vii. 85. See [herberow].
harborowe, to lodge; to track a stag to his harbour or covert. A hunting term. Sir T. Elyot, Governour, bk. i, c. 18, § 6; harbord, pp. lodged, Gascoigne, Art of Venerie, ed. Hazlitt, ii. 311, l. 6. See Dict. (s.v. Harbour).
hardel, a hurdle; ‘Hardels made of stickes’, Golding, Metam. i. 122; fol. 2, bk. (1603); a kind of frame or sledge on which traitors used to be drawn through the streets to execution, ‘Upon an hardle or sled’, Harrison, Desc. England, ii. 11 (ed. Furnivall, 222).
hardocks, some kind of wild flowers. In King Lear, iv. 4. 4 (ed. 1623), Lear is ‘Crown’d . . . with Hardokes, Hemlocke, Nettles, Cuckoo flowres, Darnell, and all the idle weedes that grow In our sustaining Corne.’ As Hardokes are not known, I suggest that the right word is Hawdods; indeed, the quartos have hordocks. The hawdod (described by Fitzherbert, Husbandry, 1534) is the beautiful blue cornflower, the most showy and attractive of all the flowers that grow in the corn; see EDD. The prefix haw means ‘blue’, see NED.; from OE. hǣwe, blue.
hare: phr. there goeth the hare, ‘That’s the direction in which the hare goes, that is the way to follow up’, New Custom, ii. 3 (Perverse Doctrine); in Hazlitt’s Dodsley, iii. 39; ‘Hic labor, hoc opus est, there goeth the hare away’, Stubbes, School of Abuse (ed. Arber, p. 70).
hare, to frighten, scare. B. Jonson, Tale of a Tub, ii. 1 (Dame Turfe). In prov. use in Oxfordshire and the south country, see EDD. (s.v. Hare, vb.).
†harlock, an unknown flower; perhaps for hawdod, the blue cornflower. Drayton, Pastorals, Ecl. iv; Ballad of Dowsabel, l. 34. Harlocks is a conjectural emendation for hardokes in King Lear, iv. 4. 4. See [hardocks].
harlot, a vagabond, rascal. Tusser, Husbandry, § 74. 4; Coriol. iii. 2. 112. ME. harlot, a person of low birth, a ribald, rogue, rascal (Chaucer), see Dict. M. and S.; OF. herlot, arlot, ribaud (Godefroy); O. Prov. arlot, ‘gueux, ribaud’ (Levy). See Dict.