Thursday, March 30, 2006




fruits of "research", some words from the OED where Jonathan Swift is the first recorded user--worth it for the daply spaniels, at the very least!--

anonymously, adv.
In an anonymous manner; without any name being given or attached.
a1745 Swift (J.) I would know whether the edition is to come out anonymously.

bantering, vbl. n.
Raillery, jesting, banter, chaff.
1710 Swift T. Tub Apol. (R.), If this bantering, as they call it, be so despicable.

bedraggle, v.
a. To wet (dress, skirts, or the like) so that they drag, or hang limp and clinging with moisture. b. To soil clothes by suffering them, in walking, to reach the dirt. Johnson. (Rare in the active till modern times.)

1727 Swift Past. Dial. Wks. 1755 IV. i. 78 Poor Patty Blount, no more be seen Bedraggled in my walks so green.

belles-lettres, n. pl.
[Fr.; lit. fine letters, i.e. literary studies, parallel to beaux arts the fine arts; embracing, according to Littr, grammar, rhetoric, and poetry.]

Elegant or polite literature or literary studies. A vaguely-used term, formerly taken sometimes in the wide sense of the humanities, liter� humaniores; sometimes in the exact sense in which we now use literature; in the latter use it has come down to the present time, but it is now generally applied (when used at all) to the lighter branches of literature or the aesthetics of literary study.

1710 Swift Tatler No. 230 32 The Traders in History and Politicks, and the Belles Lettres.

boyhood
(Johnson has only the quotation from Swift, and says "This is perhaps an arbitrary word". It occurs in no edition of Bailey.)

a. The state of being a boy; the time of life during which one is a boy; also fig. the early period of anything. b. Boys taken collectively. c. Boyish feeling; light-heartedness.

1745 Swift (J.), Look at him, in his boyhood, through the magnifying end of a perspective, and in his manhood, through the other.

cajoling, vbl. n.
The action of the verb cajole.

1745 Swift Wks. (1841) II. 29 Fawning and cajoling will have but little effect.

charmless, a.
Destitute of charms; personally unattractive.

1710 Swift Lett. (1768) III. 5 Ophy Butler's wife, who is grown a little charmless.

cow-boy, cowboy
1. A boy who tends cows.

1725 Swift Receipt to Stella, Justices o' quorum, Their cow-boys bearing cloaks before 'um.


dapply, a.
= dapple a. dapply-grey = dapple-grey.

17+ Swift Poems, On Rover, Make of lineaments divine Daply female spaniels shine.


desi"derium
[L. = longing, sense of want, desire, f. stem of dUsWderQre: see desiderate.]
An ardent desire or wish; a longing, properly for a thing once possessed and now missed; a sense of loss.

1715 Swift Let. to Pope 28 June, When I leave a country I think as seldom as I can of what I loved or esteemed in it, to avoid the desiderium which of all things makes life most uneasy.


droning, vbl. n.
1. Continued monotonous emission of sound, as of buzzing or humming; monotonous talk.

1704 Swift Mech. Operat. Spirit ii. Wks. 1778 II. 20 Cant and droning supply the place of sense and reason.


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