practive, practical, active, expert; ‘Most hardy practive knights’, Phaer, Aeneid viii, 518. See NED.
†prage, a spear or similar weapon; ‘Their blades they brandisht, and keene prages goared in entrayls Of stags’, &c., Stanyhurst, tr. of Aeneid, i. 197. Is prage a misreading of prāge = prange = prong (see NED.)?
praise, to appraise, value. Puritan Widow, ii. 2. 14. In prov. use in Somerset, see EDD. (s.v. Prize, v.2 1).
prancome, a prank, trick. Gammer Gurton’s Needle, i. 2 (Hodge). Not found elsewhere.
prank, showily dressed; ‘Pretie pranck parnel’, Appius and Virginia, in Hazlitt’s Dodsley, iv. 120. See Dict. (s.v. Prank, 1).
prankie-cote, pranky coat; a jocose term for a fellow full of pranks. Udall, Roister Doister, iii. 3. 117. Not found elsewhere.
prats, buttocks (Cant); ‘Prat, a buttocke’, Harman, Caveat, p. 82; ‘Set me down here on both my prats’, Brome, Jovial Crew, ii. 1 (Mort).
prease, to press. Spenser, F. Q. i. 12. 19; to throng, F. Q. ii. 7. 44; a press, crowd, throng, F. Q. ii. 10. 25; Chapman, tr. of Iliad, i. 226. Gk. ὄχλος in Luke viii. 19 is rendered by prease in Tyndale and in Cranmer’s Bible, also in the Geneva and AV. versions. See Nares. This is still the pronunc. of ‘press’ in Lanc. (EDD.).
precisian, one who is very punctilious, Merry Wives, ii. 1. 5; synonymous with ‘Puritan’, ‘He’s no precisian, that I’m certain of, Nor rigid Roman Catholic’, 13. Jonson, Every Man in Hum. iii. 3. 102; Massinger, New Way to Pay, i. 1. 6. See Nares.
pree, short for pree thee, prithee, i.e. I pray thee. Marston, What you Will, iii. 2 (Holofernes).