A growing assortment of words and definitions used in the Early Modern era. See the Guide for more information.
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Word
Definition
Bestiate
To make beastly. Latin bestia, beast. Used in the 17th century especially of liquor, as by Owen Feltham in RESOLVES (1628) : Drunkenness . . . bestiates even the bravest spirits. The verb was sometimes Anglicized to beastiate. Bestiary means (1) a fighter of wild beasts in the Roman amphitheatre; (2) a moralizing treatise, using animals to point lessons, as written in the Middle Ages. A bestiarian, however, is a friend of the animals, especially, in the 19th century, an antivivisectionist.
Ored
Adorned or covered with ore or metal. Owen Feltham in RESOLVES DIVINE, MORALL, AND POLITICAL (1623) cried out upon obscene scurrilities that the stage presents us with . . . or'd and spangled in their gaudiest tyre. Oredelf (ore + delve, dig) was the early term (to the I7th century) for the right a man might claim to the minerals dug in his ground.
Spurcidical
Bawdy in speech. Latin spurcus, foul + dicere, to speak. Hence spurcitious, foul, obscene; spurcity, foulness, obscenity. Thus Owen Feltham in RESOLVES (1628): Loose and unrinsed expressions are the purulent and spurcitious exhalations of a corrupted mind.
