himp, to hobble, to limp; ‘Lame of one leg, and himping’, Udall, tr. of Apoph., Philip, § 35; ‘Hymping on the one legge’, id., Alexander, § 57. An E. Anglian word (EDD.). Cp. Du. dial. himp-, in himphamp, ‘een hinkend persoon’ (Boekenoogen).
hinch-boy; see [hench-boy].
hine, a farm-labourer, a ‘hind’. Phaer, tr. Aeneid, vii. 504; Waller, Suckling’s Verses, 33. This form is in prov. use in Lakeland, Yorks. and in Devon and Cornwall, see EDD. (s.v. Hind, sb.1). ME. hyne (Wyclif, John x. 12). OE. hī(w)na man, a man of the household, of the servants; hī(w)na, gen. pl. of hīwan, domestics.
hing, to hang. Machin, The Dumb Knight, in Hazlitt’s Dodsley, x. 128. In prov. use in Scotland, Ireland, and in England in the north and midland counties as far as Warwick. ME. hinge, to hang, to be hung (Wars Alex. 4565). Icel. hengja (causal vb.).
hinny, to neigh as a horse; ‘I hynnye as a horse’, Palsgrave; ‘He neigheth and hinnieth, all is hinnying sophistry’, B. Jonson, Barthol. Fair, v. 3 (Busy).
hippocras, a cordial drink made of wine flavoured with spices. Beaumont and Fl., Scornful Lady, i. 1 (Lady); Hypocrace, ‘vinum myrrhatum’, Levins, Manipulus; ipocras, Heywood, 1 Pt. Edw. IV. (Wks. ed. 1874, i. 10). ME. ipocras (Chaucer, C. T. E. 1807); see note in Wks., v. 361. OF. ipocras, ypocras, forms of the Greek proper name Hippocrates, a famous physician, died B.C. 357. The cordial was so called because it was run through a strainer or ‘Ipocras’ bag, see NED. (s.v. Hippocras bag). See Stanford.
hippodame, a name given by Spenser to a fabulous sea-monster, F. Q. ii. 9. 50; iii. 11. 40. The allusion is probably to the ‘hippocamp’, or sea-horse, a monster with a horse’s body and a fish’s tail, used by the sea-gods, cp. W. Browne, Brit. Past. ii. 1: ‘Fair silver-footed Thetis . . . Guiding from rockes her chariot’s hyppocamps.’ In the form hippodame, Spenser was probably thinking of hippotame, ME. ypotame, hippopotamus (K. Alis. 5184); see NED. (s.v. Hippopotamus).
hippogrif, a fabulous creature like a griffin, but with the body and hindquarters of a horse, Milton, P. L. iv. 542. Ital. ippogrifo (Ariosto, Orlando Furioso, iv. 4 and follg.), rendered ‘griffin-horse’ in Hoole’s Ariosto, iv. 125.
Hiren, a seductive female; ‘Haue wee not Hiren here?’, 2 Hen. IV, ii. 4. 173 (1597). An allusion to a female character in Peele’s play of ‘The Turkish Mahamet and Hyrin the fair Greek’ (ab. 1594); see NED. The initial H is superfluous, as the allusion is to the name Irene (F. Irène), Gk. εἰρήνη, peace. See Greene and Peele’s Works, ed. Dyce, p. 341. This play by Peele is lost.
his, after a sb., used instead of the genitive inflexion, chiefly with proper names; ‘For Jesus Christ his sake’, Book Com. Prayer; ‘Secretaries to the kyng his moste excellente majestie’, Robinson, tr. More’s Utopia, Ep. (ed. Lumby, 2); ‘Edward the Second of England, his Queen’, Bacon, Essay 19. See NED. (s.v. His, 4), and Notes to P. Plowman, C. xix. 236, p. 381. See Nares.