A glossary of Tudor and Stuart words, especially from the dramatists

by Walter W. Skeat

wae; see [woe].

wafer-woman, a seller of wafer-cakes, freq. mentioned in the dramatists as employed in amorous embassies; ‘Am I not able . . . to deliver a letter handsomely? . . . Why every wafer-woman will undertake it’, Fletcher, Maid in the Mill, i. 3. 12; Beaumont and Fl., Woman-hater, ii. 1 (Valerio); Webster, Devil’s Law-case, i. 2 (Romelio). Cp. what Chaucer says of wafereres (C. T. C. 479).

waff, to wave, waft; ‘He waffes [wafts] an armie out of France’, Warner, Albion’s England, bk. iii, ch. 18; waft, waved, beckoned; Merch. Ven. v. 1. 11. Still in prov. use in Scotland, see EDD. (s.v. Waff, vb.¹ 1), and in the north Midlands (Dr. Henry Bradley). See [waft] (2).

waft, a passing smell or taste, a ‘twang’. A Mad World, iv. 3 (near end); spelt weft, ‘Ill malting is theft, Wood-dride hath a weft’ (i.e. malt wood-dried has a tang), Tusser, Husbandry, § 84. See EDD. (s.v. Waft, sb.¹ 3).

waft, to wave; ‘Wafts her hand’, Heywood, Love’s Mistress, i. 1 (Admetus); vol. v, p. 100; to convey by water, King John, ii. 1. 73; 2 Hen. VI, iv. 1. 116; to invite by a motion of the hand, ‘Whom Fortune with her ivory hand wafts to her’, Timon, i. 1. 70; Hamlet, i. 4. 78; to turn quickly, ‘Wafting his eyes to the contrary’, Wint. Tale, i. 2. 372; to float, ‘Satan . . . now with ease wafts on the calmer wave’, Milton, P. L. ii. 1042.

waftage, passage by water, Tr. and Cr. iii. 2. 11.

wafture, the act of waving; ‘With an angry wafture of your hand’, Jul. Caes. ii. 1. 246. See [waft] (2).

wage, to stake as a wager; ‘The King hath waged with him six Barbary horses’, Hamlet, v. 2. 154; King Lear, i. 1. 158; to reward with wages, Coriolanus, v. 6. 40; to barter, exchange, Spenser, F. Q. ii. 7. 18; to be opposed in combat, to contend, to strive, ‘To wage against the enmity o’ the air’, King Lear, ii. 4. 212; Webster, Appius, iii. 1 (Valerius); iii. 2 (Mar. Claudius).

wag-halter. Once a common term for a rogue or gallows-bird, one who is likely to make a halter wag or shake; ‘A wag-halter page’, Ford, The Fancies, i. 2; ‘Baboin, a trifling, busie or crafty knave; a crack rope, wag-halter, unhappy rogue, wretchless villain’, Cotgrave.

wagmoire, a quagmire. Spenser, Shep. Kal., Sept., 130. ‘Wagmire’ was once in prov. use in Glouc. and Devon (EDD.). From wag, to shake, see EDD. (s.v. Wag, 2).