1580. Lupton, Too Good to be True, 80. Lying with us is so loved and allowed, that there are many tymes gainings and prizes therefore purposely, to encourage one to outlye another. O. And what shall he gaine that gets the victorie in lying? S. He shall have a silver whetstone for his labour.
1591. Harington, Ariosto, xviii. 36. Well might Martano beare away the bell, Or else a whetstone challenge for his dew, That on the sodaine such a tale could tell, And not a word of all his tale was true. Ibid. [Nugæ Antiquæ (Park), ii. 240]. Part whereof [i.e. of his sentence] being that the knight should publicklie acknowledge how he had slandered the archbishop, which he did in words conceived to that purpose accordingly; yet his friends gave out, that all the while he carried a long whetston hanging out at the pocket of his sleeve, so conspicuous as men understood his meaning was to give himselfe the lye.
1592. Harvey, Four Letters. If Mother Hubbard, in the vein of Chaucer, happened to tell one canicular tale, father Elderton and his son Greene, in the vein of Skelton or Scoggin, will counterfeit a hundred dogged fables, libels, calumnies, slanders, lies for the whetstone, what not.
1599. Hall, Satires, iv. 6. The brain-sicke youth that feeds his tickled eare With sweet-sauc'd lies of some false traveller; Which hath the Spanish decades red awhile, Or whetstone leasings of old Mandevile.
1600. Jonson, Cynthia's Revels, i. 5. Cos? how happily hath Fortune furnish'd him with a whetstone. Ibid. (1614), Barthol. Fair, i. Good Lord! how sharp you are, with being at Bedlam yesterday! Whetstone has set an edge upon you.
c. 1603. Bacon [Z. Grey, Hudibras, Note to ii. i. 5. 60). [Nares: Sir K. Digby boasted before King James of having seen the philosopher's stone in his travels, but was puzzled to describe it, when Sir Francis Bacon interrupted him, saying, 'Perhaps it was a whetstone.']
d. 1634. Randolph, Works, 330. I thought it not the worst traffique to sell whetstones. This whetstone [he continues] will set such an edge upon your inventions, that it will make your rusty iron brains purer metal than your brazen faces. Whet but the knife of your capacities on this whetstone, and you may presume to dine at the Muses' Ordinarie, or sup at the Oracle of Apollo.
1792. Budworth, Ramble to the Lakes, vi. It is a custom in the north, when a man tells the greatest lye in the company, to reward him with a whetstone; which is called lying for the whetstone.
d. 1822. Shelley, To his Genius. Let them read Shakspeare's sonnets, taking thence A whetstone for their dull intelligence.
Whetstone-park, subs. phr.
(old).—'A Lane betwixt Holborn
and Lincoln's-Inn-Fields, fam'd
for a Nest of Wenches, now
(B. E., c. 1696) de-park'd.'
Whence many allusions in the
old dramatists: e.g. Whetstone-park
deer (mutton, etc.) = a
whore.
Whetter. See Wet.
Whew, subs. (old).—Influenza, the
flue (qv.): see quot.
1420. [Sir H. Maxwell, Notes and Queries, 10 Dec. 1901.] It is well known that the influenza is not an exclusively modern complaint, but I am not sure whether a curious reference to it by Bower, the continuator of Fordun's chronicle, has been noted. Writing of the year 1420 he says that among those who died in Scotland were Sir Henry St. Clair, Earl of Orkney, Sir James Douglas of Dalkeith, Sir William de Abernethy, Sir William de St. Clair, Sir William Cockburn, and many others, all by 'that infirmity whereby not only great men, but innumerable quantity of the commonalty perished, which was vulgarly termed le Quhew.' Now 'quh' in Scottish texts usually represents the sound of 'wh' (properly aspirated); therefore it seems that in the fifteenth century the influenza was known as 'the Whew,' just as it is known in the twentieth century as 'the Flue.' There seems little doubt that the disease was identical with that with which we are so grievously familiar.
Wheyworm. See Whayworm.
Whiblin, subs. (old).—1. A
eunuch.
