overture, used to mean overthrow. Middleton, Family of Love, i. 1 (Glister). See NED. for other examples.
overwent, oppressed, subdued. Spenser, Shep. Kal., March, 2. The gloss has: ‘overwent, overgone.’
owch, a clasp, esp. a jewelled clasp, jewel. Spenser, F. Q. i. 10. 31. See [ouch].
owdell, a kind of poem. Drayton, Pol. iv. 184. Welsh awdl, a rime or assonance.
owe, to possess. Tempest, i. 2. 407; Meas. for M. i. 4. 83; ii. 4. 123. ME. owen, to possess (Chaucer, C. T. C. 361); OE. āgan. See [ought].
ower, a form of oar; ‘And there row’d off with owers of my hands’, Chapman, tr. of Odyssey, xii. 628; cp. ‘my hands for oars’, id., x. 482.
Owlglass, a jester, buffoon. B. Jonson, Poetaster, iii. 1 (Tucca to Histrio). The word is an English equivalent of German Eulenspiegel; see below. ‘A merye jeste of a Man that was called Howleglas’, Title of an old German jest-book translated into English in 1560.
owl-spiegle, an English part-rendering of German Eulenspiegel (Eule, owl + spiegel, glass mirror), the name of a German jester of mediaeval times, the hero of a jest-book. Used as a term of abuse: ‘Out, thou houlet! . . . owl-spiegle!’, B. Jonson, Sad Sheph. ii. 1 (Maud.); ‘Ulen Spiegel!’, Alchemist, ii. 1 (Subtle). Hence F. espiègle (Hatzfeld). See above.
ox: Proverbial saying—The black ox has trod on his foot, i.e. he has fallen into decay or adversity; it often implies old age: ‘She was a pretty wench . . now . . the black oxe hath trod on her foote’, Lyly, Sapho and Phao, iv. 2 (Venus); ‘When . . the blacke Oxe (shall) treade on their foote—who wil like of them in their age who loved none in their youth’, id., Euphues (ed. Arber, 55); ‘The black ox had not trod on his nor her foot’, Heywood’s Proverbs (ed. Farmer, p. 17); ‘The black ox never trod on his foot, i.e. he never knew what sorrow or adversity meant’, Ray, Prov. Phrases (ed. Bohn, 173). Cp. Gascoigne, Glasse of Governement, v. 6 (Gnomaticus). The saying is still in prov. use, see EDD. (s.v. Black, 5 (11)).