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NOTES AND QUERIES. [9 th s. xi. MARCH 21, iwa

Mary Carey ? It is a half-length on copper about nine inches by nine inches, and somo- what in the style of Holbein, but is certainly not by him.

I have never seen any work by Alice Carraelian, the miniaturist, and should like to know where any can be seen, as this picture may be by her. Z.

"To DIVE." In the 'N.E.D.' a special sense of the verb to dive ('Dive,' t c. spec.) is de- fined as

"to plunge a fork into a large pot containing por- tions of meat, having paid for the privilege of taking whatever the fork brings up. Obs."

The only quotation given for this use is ' Roderick Random,' chap, xiii., but the passage does not appear to bear out the definition. Roderick Random says his friend " conducted us to a certain lane, where stopping, he bade us observe him, and do as he did, and walking a few paces, dived into a cellar and dis- appeared in an instant."

He adds :-

"I followed his example, and, descending very successfully, found myself in the middle of a cook's shop, almost suffocated with the steams of boiled beef, and surrounded by a company of hackney-coachmen, chairmen, draymen, and a few footmen out of place or on board-wages ; who sat eating shin of beef, tripe, cow-heel, or sausages, at separate boards."

Subsequently the cook is overturned "as she carried a porringer of soup to one of the guests." After a painful episode, in which Strap, the cook, and a drummer of the foot- guards figureconspicuously, Roderick Random and his friends "sat down at board, and dined upon shin of beef most deliciously : our reckoning amounting to twopence half- penny each, bread and small beer included."

There is nothing here to support the 'N.E.D.' definition indeed, the mention of the several items of the bill of fare, the separate boards, the porringers of soup, would point to the scene of entertainment being simply an underground (or, as Roderick Random terms it, an "infernal") ordinary into which the guests had to "dive."

What is the authority for the 'NED.' definition ? W. F R

Button Rectory, Weston-super-Mare.

" TRAPEZA " IN RUSSIAN. - Could any reader of N. & Q.' kindly inform me as to the meaning of the word trapeza in ssian when it is used in connexion with a church? It is quite an ordinary thin <* for instance, to find in a list of Russian churches such an entry as the folio wing : "The church of the Epiphany with a wooden," and then

>Ilows the word trapeza in its proper case

According to Alexandrow the word has a great variety of meanings table, victuals, meat, viand, refectory, dining -hall, altar, nave, aisle. Here it would seem we have three if not five meanings to choose from. I suppose that, strictly speaking, the word nave cannot be applied to a Byzantine church. T. P. ARMSTRONG.

"UNRAM."

(9 th S. xi. 188.)

UNDER this head a correspondent re- marks, "The dictionaries do not seem

to have loaded themselves with all the possible words beginning with un." I think it is certain that the largest dictionaries have not loaded themselves with one-tenth, perhaps not even with one-fiftieth, of "all the possible words" in un-. When it is considered that un- may, when occasion calls or humour inclines, be prefixed to any adjective of quality in the language (unreal, unhigh, uneatable, unmentionable), to almost any present participle (unbelieving, unloving, undying, unsatisfying, unending), to any past participle (unrun, unread, umvritten, uncon- sidered, unlimited), to any abstract noun derived from any adjective or participle (as untruth, unreality, anmentionableness, unlov- ingness, unsatisfyingness, unreconciledness), to any adverb derived from any adjective or participle (untruly, unwisely, unbecomingly, unbendingly, unskilfully, unweariedly, unend- ingly), to any verb expressing an action that can be undone (unbuild, undress, unfold, unpin, uneducate, unram, unsettle, unman, unmarry), to any phrase of which the writer wishes to express the opposite, as in Humpty Durnpty's "im-birthday presents," it will be seen that to try to load a dictionary with all the possible words in un would to a great extent be to duplicate its existing mass, in the attempt to achieve a task as impossible as useless. What the lexicographer has to do is to give the history and use of the element un-, and state to what classes of words it can be prefixed at will when needed (or supposed to be needed), with sufficient examples to show the use, and with particular mention of un- words which do not fall under these classes, or of which the sense cannot be exactly gathered from that of the element un- and the positive element. He may also tell where, in forming such words (and most of them are "perpetual nonce-words," formed anew by the speaker every time he uses them), in- is better than un-. If aiming at a historical