A growing assortment of words and definitions used in the Early Modern era. See the Guide for more information.
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5
Word
Definition
Cicurate
To tame; to render mild or harmless. Latin cicur, tame. Sir Thomas Browne in PSEUDODOXIA EPIDEMICA (1646) tells of poisons so refracted, cicurated, and subdued, as not to make good their . . . destructive malignities. Cotton Mather, in THE ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY OF NEW ENGLAND (1702) : Nor did he only try to cicurate the Indians. The verb was sometimes shortened to cicure. Hence circuration, domestication.
Indigitation
The act of pointing out; indication; demonstration; a declaration. Also, calculating or conversing by means of the fingers; also, interlocking the fingers of two hands, as children used to sit in school or sweethearts walk. Also to indigit, indigitate, to proclaim, to call by name, to point out, to point to; to interlock fingers. Latin indigitare, indigitatum, associated with digitus, finger (whence also the ten digits) but probably different in origin and originally meaning to invoke a god; hence, to call upon, to proclaim, to declare. Cp. indigitament. The sense, to point out, to point to, is of course sprung from the association with digitus. Sir Thomas Browne in PSEUDODOXIA EPIDEMICA (1646) declared that Juvenall and Perseus were no prophets, although their lines did seeme to indigitate our times.
Inquinate
To pollute; to corrupt. Also inquination. Used from the 15th century, popular in the 17th. Sir Thomas Browne used the word more than once; in 1646: An old opinion it was of that nation, that the ibis feeding upon serpents, that venomous food so inquinated their . . . eggs within their bodies, that they sometime came forth in serpentine shapes and in 1682: The soul may be foully inquinated at a very low rate, and a man may be cheaply vitiom, to the perdition of himself.
Resipiscence
Repentance; recognition of one's mistakes; turning to a better path or opinion. Latin re, again + sapere, to taste, to discern. Hence resipiscent, returning to a sound state of mind. Sir Thomas Browne in a letter of 1672 spoke of some one so closely shut up within the holds of vice and iniquity, as not to find some escape by a postern of resipiscency.
Ultion
Vengeance. Latin ulcisci, ultus, to punish, to avenge oneself on. Richard Tomlinson in his translation (1657) of Renodaeus' MEDICINAL DISPENSATORY, fairly enough declares that a medicament . . . should leave in the mouth the ultion of the fault therein committed. Sir Thomas Browne in CHRISTIAN MORALS (1682) reminds us that to do good for evil is a soft and melting ultion, a method taught from Heaven to keep all smooth on earth.
