,2 s. ii. DEC. lo. 1916.] NOTES AND QUERIES.
on Itoohs,
A New English Dictionary on Historical Prin- ciples. (Vol. X., TI Z) F Verificative. By W. A. Craigie. (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 5s. net.)
THE main historical interest of this new section of the ' N.E.D.' is romantic. The letter V itself carries a suggestion of romance. Its description and changes contain more of a story than other letters boast ; it eludes exact definition, and its very symbol is uncertain. It represents not so much a true, independent sound as an utterance in which three sounds meet, now one and now another of the three predominating. In the English of the present day it is sufficiently stable, and as an initial letter belongs to words of other than Teutonic, principally of Latin, origin. Of these Latin words a great proportion have come to us not through direct borrowing from the classics, but by way of mediaeval Latin and, still more largely, of mediaeval French. Many of them have grown obsolete ; and the obsolete words and uses in this section are both unusually numerous and unusually picturesque. In order to avoid tedious repetition we may also say that this section strikes us as particularly good in the wealth, appositeness, and intrinsic interest of the illustrative quotations. One of the first words noted is " vac " the familiar University abbreviation for " vacation," allowed the dignity of separate existence. It goes back to 1709. " Vacancy " is used by Johnson in The Rambler, of the mind, in a curiously good sense : " Nor was he able to disengage his attention, or mingle with vacancy and ease in any amusement." The deplorable use of " vacate " in the sense of " spend a vacation " is recorded from Chicago. " Vaccina- tion " is one of the principal words of historical interest : a statement of the date of the intro- duction of vaccination might have been given, either in a quotation or in the definition. " Vacillant," found in 1521 and 1662, drops for two centuries and reappears in Blackwood's Magazine, 1901 ; " vacillation " goes back as far as c. 1400. Under " vacuity " we have an amusing dictum of Cobbett's : " A great fondness for music is a mark of .... great vacuity of mind." That " nature abhors a vacuum " (" Naturall reason abhorreth vacuum ") seems first to appear in English in Cranmer's ' Lord's Supper ' (1550). " Vagabond," with its cognate words, makes a good series of articles ; and " vagary," a favourite word of the late sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries, contains a good deal of entertaining matter. " Vague " we think somewhat over-divided. We observe that its first use in connexion with the EgyptiaVi reckoning of time was found in Ussher, a. 1656. One or two modern writers seem to be trying it as a verb not, perhaps, very happily. " Vail " as substantive, and yet more as verb, makes one of the best articles, and in its second use the sense " to lower " it may serve as a good example of the interesting obsolete words of which we have spoken. The well-known phrase " To take the name of God in vain " comes from a literal rendering of the Vulgate in Exod. xx. 7 : assumere ... .in vanum, and the first instance is from the ' Cursor Mundi.' The account of " vair," heraldic, is well selected ; from the point of view
of tin- fur, while Cotgrave's definition of it as " of
Ermines powdered thicke with blue haires " is
dismissed, the variety of the squirrel from which
it is now thought to be derived is not identified,
nor is the authority for its being grey illustrated
we think rather a regrettable omission. " Valance,"
which appears first in the fifteenth century,,
remains of obscure origin, the Dictionary inclining
towards a connexion with O.F. avaler, to descend,
which is taken as the source of "vail," v. 2.
Among American words of the dignified order
we have "valedictorian," recorded by Webster
in 1847, and applied to the student in an American
college who is appointed to deliver the valedictory
oration on Commencement Day. It may not be
commonly known that on Feb. 14 two saints
both Italian of the name of Valentine are
commemorated. The custom of a " Valentine "
for the year seems, according to the quotations
under this word, to go no further back than the
mid-fifteenth century. The application of the
word to God or to one of the saints is curious, and
is found early (c. 1450, ' Godstow Register,' " O
true valeyntyne is oure lord to me "). Curious,
too, is its use, not merely for a folded paper in-
scribed with the name of the person to be drawn
as a valentine, but in a Scots Act of Parliament :
" To draw lottis and valentines 3eirlie at ilk
parliament for thair places." Was Gray indeed
the first to introduce Valhalla and the Valkyrie
into English literature ?
The numerous words derived ultimately or directly from the Latin valere especially " valiant " and its cognates have furnished occasion for many instructive columns which bear witness to the variety of works consulted by the compilers. We are rather sorry they did not allow The Pall Mall's attempt at using " valid " as a substantive opposed to " invalid " to perish in well-merited oblivion ( ' ' Kuristen and valids "). " Vallar," a finely suggestive military word, though not marked as obsolete, seems not to have been taken up by poets in search of fresh verbal aids to metaphor. The article on " value " affords a most instructive example of the popular development of the sense of a common abstract word. We should hardly have marked as obsolete the use illustrated in the quotation : ' ' Men of learning have always had a proper value for the Greek language." " Theory of values " is a phrase which should have received notice. " Vampire " occurs first in an early eighteenth- century travel-book ; in 1741, however, and, by Goldsmith, in 1760, we find it used in a manner- which indicates that it was by then well estab- lished. Surely one of the quotations showing the modern use of the word should have been drawn from ' Dracula.' The first use of " vanish " illustrated is with " away " of rapid and mysterious disappearance ; but, alas ! ' The Hunting of the Snark' is not quoted. "Vanishing point" in perspective is quoted first from 1797. "Vanity Fair," after its invention by Bunyan, seems not to be found again till the beginning of the nineteenth century J. Scott in 1816 being the first author to revive it. The words aphetic from " avant " form a very striking group ; and so do those derived from vapor and from rarixtt. " Variation " in its biological sense is somewhat inadequately illustrated.
" Vassal " and its cognate words as need hardly be said make one of the most important- historical groups, and the quotations for such.
