Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 3.djvu/186

 180

NOTES AND QUERIES, [is s. m. MARCH 3, 1917.

Of the compounds of " super " which have become settled English words the most interesting

-and oldest group is the ecclesiastical. " Superero- gation ' ' and its^ congeners form a good article ; we confess ourselves surprised to find that the earliest quotation comes only from 1526. In the definition of " supercilious " some connexion between the etymology and the present sense of

(the word should, we think, have been indicated. It seems a pity that, in the mid-nineteenth

century, " superaltar " should have established

'itself as the name for a structure above and at the back of an altar, when it was already a good ecclesiastical word come down from the Middle Ages in the sense of a portable stone slab conse-

crated as an altar. " Supernatural " goes back

only to the beginning of the sixteenth century. Something more in the way of a note on " super- substantial " would have been welcomethough we are duly grateful for Wyclif's rendering. We

turned with much interest to " superstition," but the puzzle of its etymology in connexion with its ordinary meaning remains where it was.

Another fine article is " sum." The definition -of the phrase "sum and substance," however, .appears to us slightly incorrect. " The essence (of anything) ; the gist or pith (of the matter)," says the Dictionary ; but the sense of " totality " in addition to " essence " is surely the force of " sum " here, as the quotations given themselves indicate. "Sum-total," we notice, goes back as far as c. 1395, ' The Plowman's Tale.' Under " sumach " we have a good note, and three excellent collections of quotations, the first of which goes back to the fourteenth century. " Summed," used of a stag or a hawk, with in- stances between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries, takes us back to old hunting phrases and their metaphorical uses. " Summer," again, is admirably done, both as to the mass and the arrangement of the material. We do not think that the popular use of the word keeps so strictly to the limit of a quarter of a year as to reckon " summer " from mid-May to mid-August. The whole of August and even the first few days of September seem to be usually included under the word influenced, we imagine, by the " summer holidays " of the schools. We did not find "summer holidays" except for the quotation from Lamb, which is only general. Since the phrase has so definite a meaning it would have been as well both to define and to illustrate it here. The Dictionary records the " summer- time " instituted last year, quoting the Act, which, as the preface remarks, sets its seal upon the new use. But why not have stated by how much in advance of ordi- nary time was this "summer-time" of 1916? " Sumptuosity " provides an amusing example of Renaissance learning: " Simonides namyd a

woman to be the poyson of lyffe the

battell off Sumptuositie." Another word of major importance in this section is " sun." Historically it is of thejgreatest interest, especially as to the phrases and proverbial expressions which have gathered round it. There is a good collection of instances illustrating the seventeenth-century use of the boast of empire " on which the sun never sets " which was then applied to Spain. From The Times of Aug. 28, 1911, is quoted the Kaiser's speech at Hamburg, which popularized ithe idea, first found in Pascal, of " a place in the
 * sun " as a metaphor for a position favourable

"for the development of personal or national life." The German words are " den uns zustehen- den Platz an der Sonne." It would be interesting to ascertain whether Wilhelm knew the passage in Pascal. From Ascham comes a quaint phrase, " seeming, and sonburnt [i.e., superficially learned] ministers " ; and the adverb " sondayly " for " every Sunday " has been found in a fifteenth- century book of accounts. " Sunrise " and " sunset " may not be generally known to be derived from a phra.se by a felicitous mis- take : " for to the sun rise " = until the sun rise. For " sunrise " transatlantic speech as willingly Uses " sun up " which is no doubt to be justified by the analogy of " sundown," yet seems a less happy invention. Under "supper" the com- pilers have virtually ignored the ball-supper for which so many instances are readily forthcoming. We expected to be reminded of Mr. Darcy gazing attentively at Mrs. Bennet and making his unfor- tunate determination to interfere with the happiness of Jane.

These few notes must suffice. We should have liked to say something of the legal words and of those from Eastern languages ; and we had marked also one or two examples of what appear to be ira \fy6^eva, which testify to the minute industry of the compilers.

One thousand eight hundred and seventy-five words are recorded in this section, and the illus- trative quotations number 8,512.

The AthencEum now appearing monthly, arrange- ments have been made whereby advertisements of posts vacant and wanted, which it is desired to publish weekly, may appear in the intervening weeks in ' N. & Q.'

to

ON all communications must be written the name and address of the sender, not necessarily for pub- lication, but as a guarantee of good faith.

CORRESPONDENTS who send letters to be f orwarded to other contributors should put on the top left- hand corner of their envelopes the number of the page of 'N. & Q.' to which their letters refer, so that the contributor may be readily identified.

LANGPORT. Forwarded to H. C.

F. J. T. Notes on the disappearance of the long a will be found at 10 S. viii. 205, 258, 372 ; 11 S. vi. 386 ; vii. 14, 255.

UVEDAT/E, GARY, AND PRICJE FAMILIES (12 S. iii. 19). MR. J. W. FAWCETT writes : " Victoria, second daughter of Sir Henry Gary, K.B. (first Viscount Falkland, 1620-33), by his wife Elizabeth, only daughter and heir of Sir Laurence Tanfield, Ghief Baron of the Exchequer, married 1st to Sir William Uvedale of Wickham, and 2ndly to Bartholomew Price of Linlithgow. Burke's 'Peerage' (1892), 520."

CORRIGENDA. Ante, p. 71, col. 1, 'Sir Isaac Newton : Capt. Newton.' The opening lines of this query should have read as follows : " My great-great-grandfather, Dr. Dominic Lee of Kilkenny, married a daughter of a certain Capt. Newton," not " officiated at the marriage of," &c. P. 126, col. 2, line 13, for "Goundon" read Crunden.

fU

!CC.

ad