Search the Dictionary

of the learned. In the midst of this Babel of dialects there suddenly appeared a standard English language. Earle. [Charles V.] could address his subjects from every quarter in their native dialect. Prescott.

The smallest kind of type in English printing, except that called brilliant, which is seldom seen.

reserve; bashfulness. It is good to speak on such questions with diffidence. Macaulay. An Englishman's habitual diffidence and awkwardness of adress. W. Irving.

authority of. An occasion might be given to the . . . papists of discrediting our common English Bible. Strype.

A masque or masquerade. [Obs.] Disguise was the old English word for a masque. B. Jonson.

round, Convey'd the dismal tidings when he frowned. Goldsmith. A dismal description of an English November. Southey.

To offend; to disgust; to displease. [Obs.] He thought in no policy to distaste the English or Irish by a course of reformation, but sought to please them. Sir J. Davies.

Milton. It ["Pilgrim's Progress"] has been done into verse: it has been done into modern English. Macaulay.

retension to consequence; especially, the head of a college, or one of the fellows at the English universities. [Univ. Cant] "The great dons of wit." Dryden.

A translation of the Scriptures into the English language for the use of English-speaking Roman Catholics; -- done from the Latin Vulgate by English scholars resident in France. The New Testament portion was published at Rheims, A. D. 1582, the Old Testament at Douai, A. D. 1609-10. Various revised editions have since…

A road for shipping in the English Channel or Straits of Dover, near Deal, employed as a naval rendezvous in time of war. On the 11th [June, 1771] we run up the channel . . . at noon we were abreast of Dover, and about three came to an anchor in the Downs, and went ashore at Deal. Cook (First Voyage).…

rafashionable style of dress and other affectations. [Recent] The social dude who affects English dress and English drawl. The American.

The fifth letter of the English alphabet.

gfellow. The earliest poem he composed was in his seventeenth summer. J. C. Shairp. Early English (Philol.) See the Note under English. -- Early English architecture, the first of the pointed or Gothic styles used in England, succeeding the Norman style in the 12th and 13th centuries.

A part of this globe; a region; a country; land. Would I had never trod this English earth. Shak.

A native of a country eastward of another; -- used, by the English, of traders or others from the coasts of the Baltic. Merchants of Norway, Denmark, . . . called . . . Easterlings because they lie east in respect of us. Holinshed.

A very diminutive person; a dwarf. Elf arrow, a flint arrowhead; - - so called by the English rural folk who often find these objects of prehistoric make in the fields and formerly attributed them to fairies; -- called also elf bolt, elf dart, and elf shot. -- Elf child, a child supposed to be left by elves, in room o…

ure for cloth; -- now rarely used. It is of different lengths in different countries; the English ell being 45 inches, the Dutch or Flemish ell 27, the Scotch about 37.

genus Ulmus, of several species, much used as a shade tree, particularly in America. The English elm is Ulmus campestris; the common American or white elm is U. Americana; the slippery or red elm, U. fulva. Elm beetle (Zoöl.), one of several species of beetles (esp. Galeruca calmariensis), which feed on the leaves of…

A prefix signifying in or into, used in many English words, chiefly those borrowed from the French. Some English words are written indifferently with en- or in-. For ease of pronunciation it is commonly changed to em- before p, b, and m, as in employ, embody, emmew. It is sometimes used to give a causal force, as in en…