Virtuous-Vivacious.

265

VIRTUOUS. Virtue is still occasionally used as equivalent to might or potency, but virtuous' has quite abdicated the meaning of valorous or potent which it once had, and which its etymology justified.

With this all strengths and minds he moved; but young Deiphobus,

Old Priam's son, amongst them all was chiefly virtuous.

CHAPMAN, Homer's Iliad, xiii. 147.

Or call up him that left half told
The story of Cambuscan old,
Of Camball and of Algarsife,

And who had Canace to wife,

That owned the virtuous ring and glass.

MILTON, Il Penseroso.

Tho lifting up his vertuous staff on high

He smote the sea, which calmèd was with speed.

VIVACIOUS,
VIVACITY.

SPENSER, Fairy Queen, ii. 12, 26.

Longevity,' as one might expect to find it, is a comparatively modern word in the language. 'Vivacity,' which has now acquired the mitigated sense of liveliness, served instead of it; keeping in English the original sense which 'vivacitas' had in the Latin,

James Sands, of Horborn in this county, is most remarkable for his vivacity, for he lived 140 years.-FULLER, Worthies of England, Staffordshire.

Fables are raised concerning the vivacity of the deer; for neither are their gestation nor increment such as may afford an argument of long life.—Sir T. BROWNE, Vulgar Errors.

Hitherto the English bishops had been vivacious almost to wonder. For, necessarily presumed of good years before entering on their office in the first year of Queen Elizabeth, it was much that but five died for the first twenty years of her reign.Id., Church History of Britain, b. ix. § 27.

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Voluble-Wainscot.

VOLUBLE. This epithet always insinuates of him to whom it is now applied that his speech is freer and faster than is meet; but it once occupied that region of meaning which 'fluent' does at present, without any suggestion of the kind. Milton (P. L. ix. 436) recalls the word, as he does so many, to its primary meaning.

He [Archbishop Abbott] was painful, stout, severe against bad manners, of a grave and a voluble eloquence.-HACKET, Life of Archbishop Williams, part i. p. 65.

WAINSCOT. I transcribe a correction of the brief and inaccurate notice of this word in my first edition, which a correspondent, with the best opportunity of knowledge, has kindly sent me: ""Wainscot" is always in the building trade applied to oak only, but not to all kinds of oak. The wainscot oak grows abroad, chiefly, I think, in Holland, and is used for wainscoting, or wood lining, of walls of houses, because it works very freely under the tool, and is not liable to "cast" or rend, as English oak will do. It is consequently used for all purposes where expense is no object. Formerly all panelling to walls was done in wainscot, and was called "wainscoting." It was never painted. In modern times it was imitated in deal, and was painted to represent real wainscot, or of any other colour, while the name of "wainscoting" adhered to it, though the material was no longer wainscot. At present, however, the word "wainscot" is always used to designate the real wainscot oak.' It will be seen from this very interesting explanation that within the narrow limits of a particular trade, the old meaning of 'wainscot,' which

Want-Whirlpool.

267

has everywhere else disappeared, still survives. It would be curious to trace how much in this way of earlier English within limited technical circles lives on, having everywhere else died out.

A wedge of wainscot is fittest and most proper for cleaving of an oaken tree.-Sir T. URQUHART, Tracts, p. 153.

Being thus arrayed, and enclosed in a chest of wainscot, he [Edward the Confessor] was removed into the before-prepared feretry.-DART, History of St. Peter's, Westminster, b. ii. c. 3.

WANT. Among other differences between 'carere' and 'egere,' this certainly is one, that the former may be said of things evil as well as good, as well of those whose absence is desirable as of those whose absence is felt as a loss, while 'egere' always implies not merely the absence but the painful sense of the absence. To want' which had once the more colourless use of carere,' has passed now, nearly though not altogether, into this latter sense, and is ́='egere.'

If he be lost, and want, thy life shall go for his life.—1 Kings XX. 39. Geneva.

In a word, he [the true gentleman] is such, that could we want him, it were pity but that he were in heaven; and yet I pity not much his continuance here, because he is already so much in heaven to himself.-CLEMENT ELLIS, Character of a True Gentleman.

Friend of my life, which did you not prolong,
The world had wanted many an idle song.

POPE, Lines to Arbuthnot.

WHIRLPOOL. Dr. Latham, in his edition of Johnson, is the first to notice the use of 'whirlpool' to designate some huge sea-monster of the whale kind,

268

Whisperer-Whiteboy.

the sperm whale or cachalot has been suggested. Thus in the margin of our Bible, there is on Job xli. 1, ('Canst thou draw out leviathan ?') a gloss, 'that is, a whale or whirlpool.'

The Indian Sea breedeth the most and the biggest fishes that are; among which the whales and whirlpools, called balanæ, take up in length as much as four acres or arpens of land.HOLLAND, Pliny, vol. i. p. 235.

The ork, whirlpool, whale, or huffing physeter.

SYLVESTER, Dubartas, First Day of the Week. About sunset, coming near the Wild Island, Pantagruel spied afar off a huge monstrous physeter, a sort of whale, which some call a whirlpool.-Rabelais, Pantagruel, b. iv. c. 33.

WHISPERER, There lay in 'whisperer' once, as WHISPERING. in the upcorns of the Greeks, the susurro of the Latins, the suggestion of a slanderer or false accuser, which has now quite passed away from the word.

Now this Doeg, being there at that time, what doeth he? Like a whisperer or man-pleaser goeth to Saul the king, and told him how the priest had refreshed David in his journey, and had given unto him the sword of Goliath.-LATIMER, Sermons, Parker edit., p. 486.

A whisperer separateth chief friends.-Prov. xvi. 28. Authorized Version,

Kings in ancient times were wont to put great trust in eunuchs. But yet their trust towards them hath rather been as to good whisperers than good magistrates and officers.-BACON, Essays, Of Deformity.

Lest there be debates, envyings, wraths, strifes, backbitings, whisperings, swellings, tumults.-2 Cor. xii. 20. Authorized Version.

WHITEBOY. Formerly a cockered favourite (compare Barnes's use of' white son,' Works, 1572, p. 192),

but in later years one of the many names which the perpetrators of agrarian outrages in Ireland either assumed to themselves, or had given to them by others.

His first address was An humble Remonstrance by a dutiful son of the Church, almost as if he had said her whiteboy.-MILTON, Prose Works, vol. i. p. 172.

The Pope was loath to adventure his darlings into danger. Those whiteboys were to stay at home with his Holiness, their tender father.-FULLER, Holy War, i. 13.

WIFE. It is a very profound testimony, yielded by language, to the fact that women are intended to be wives, and only find the true completion of their being when they are so, that in so many languages there is a word which, meaning first a woman, means afterwards a wife, as yʊvý, 'mulier,' 'femme,' 'weib,' and our English 'wife.' With us indeed the secondary use of the word has now overborne and swallowed up the first, which only survives in a few such combinations as 'midwife,' 'fishwife,' 'huswife,' and the like; but it was not always so; nor in our provincial dialects is it so now. An intelligent correspondent who has sent me a 'Glossary of Words used in Central Yorkshire' writes as follows: 'In rural districts a grown woman is a young wife, though she be unmarried.'

And with that word upstart this olde wife.

CHAUCER, The Wife of Bath's Tale Like as a wife with childe, when hir travaile commeth upon her, is ashamed, crieth, and suffreth the payne, even so are we, O Lorde, in thy sight.-Isai. xxvi. 17. COVERDALE,

WIGHT. The best discussion on this interesting word is in Grimm's Deutsche Mythologie, pp. 408-410,