seek: phr. to blow a seek, to sound notes on a horn, summoning hounds to the chase of a deer. Gascoigne, Art of Venerie (ed. Hazlitt, i. 314).
seek: phr. to seek, at a loss, badly off; ‘The Merchant will be to seeke for Money’, Bacon, Essay 41, § 4; B. Jonson, Barth. Fair, ii. 2. Cp. Porson’s famous epigram in Museum Criticum, i. 332, ‘The Germans in Greek, Are sadly to seek’, &c. See NED. (s.v. Seek, vb. 20 b).
seel, to close up a bird’s eyelids, by means of a thread passed through them. A seeled dove, ‘She brought them to a seeled dove, who the blinder she was, the higher she strave’, Sidney, Arcadia (ed. Sommer, 65); Bacon, Essay 36. It was believed that a seeled dove would mount always higher aloft, till it sank from exhaustion; see Ford, Broken Heart, ii. 2. 3. Palsgrave has: ‘I cele a hauke, Ie cile.’ F. ciller, ‘to seele, or sow up the eyelids’ (Cotgr.); cil, an eyelash, L. cilium, an eyelid, eyelash.
seeld, seldom, Mirror for Mag., Salisbury, st. 20. See [seld].
seeling, a wainscot, wainscoting. Bacon, Essay 54; ceiling, North, tr. of Plutarch, Octavius, § 4 (in Shak. Plut. p. 238).
seemless, unseemly. Spenser, F. Q. v. 2. 25; Chapman, tr. of Odyssey, xx. 397.
seemlyhed, comeliness. Spenser, F. Q. iv. 8. 14.
seen, equipped, furnished; versed, practised; ‘Seen in many things’, Heywood, A Woman killed, ii. 1 (Frankford); well seen, Tam. Shrew, i. 2. 136; Puttenham, Eng. Poesie, bk. i, c. 8 (p. 37). In prov. use (EDD.).
sege, a seat. Morte Arthur, leaf 220. 7; bk. x, c. 16. ME. sege: ‘He schal sitte on the sege of his maieste’ (Wyclif, Matt. xxv. 31). Anglo-F. sege, seat (Ps. lxxxviii. 14), O. Prov. setge, ‘siège, banc, séance, siège d’une ville’ (Levy). See [siege].
seggs, sedges. Kyd, Cornelia, iii. 3. 15. A Northern form (EDD.).