Page:Evolution of English Lexicography.djvu/32

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The Evolution of English Lexicography
29

explanation in ordinary language; and instructive it is to see what words were then considered hard and unknown. Many of them certainly would be so still: as, for example, abgregate, 'to lead out of the flock'; acersecomick, 'one whose hair was never cut'; adcorporated, 'married'; adecastick, 'one that will do just howsoever'; bubulcitate, 'to cry like a cow-boy'; collocuplicate, 'to enrich'—concerning which we wonder who used them, or where Cockeram found them; but we are surprised to find among these hard words abandon, abhorre, abrupt, absurd, action, activitie, and actresse, explained as 'a woman doer,' for the stage actress had not yet appeared. Blunder, 'to bestir oneself,' and Garble, 'to clense things from dust,' remind us that the meanings of words are subject to change. The Second Part contains the ordinary words 'explained' by their hard equivalents, and is intended to teach a learned style. The plain man or gentlewoman may write a letter in his or her natural language, and then by turning up the simple words in the dictionary alter them into their learned equivalents. Thus 'abound' may be altered into exuperate, 'too great plenty' into uberty, 'he and I are of one age' into we are coetaneous, 'youthful babbling' into juvenile inaniloquence—a useful expression to hurl at an opponent in the Oxford Union.

The last part is the most entertaining of all: it is headed 'The Third Part, treating of Gods and Goddesses, Men and Women, Boyes and Maides, Giants and Diuels, Birds and Beasts, Monsters and Serpents, Wells and Riuers, Herbes, Stones, Trees, Dogges,