Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 12.djvu/346

 338

NOTES AND QUERIES. [9 th s. m OCT. &, 1903.

of the customs observed at the now defunct ministerial whitebait dinner.

ALFRED F. BOBBINS. [See also !* S. xii. 144, 168.]

COON SONG (9 th S. xii. 269).; The Slang Dictionary ' says that the word is an abbre- viation of "racoon," and was of American origin, during the first American war (1776). Mr. Clay, who died in 1852, was nicknamed '* the old coon," and sometimes " that same old coon," a rough compliment to his sagacity, for the racoon is a cunning animal (3 rd S. ix. 508). The Rev. T. L. O. Davies, in his 4 Supplementary English Glos- sary,' gives the following quotation from Reade's * Never Too Late to Mend ' (1878) : " If you start in any business with an empty pocket, you are a gone coon"

EVERARD HOME COLEMAN.

NOTES ON BOOKS, &c.

A Nciv English Dictionary on Historical Principles.

Edited by Dr. James A. H. Murray. Lock (v.)

Lyyn (Vol. VI.). By Henry Bradley, Hon. M.A.

(Oxford, Clarendon Press.)

EXTENDED by sixteen pages more than usual, this double section of the 'New English Dictionary,' issued under the charge of Mr. Bradley, concludes the letter L and also finishes a half volume of the work. In the prefatory matter to the half volume, which is given at the close, acknowledgment is made by Mr. Bradley of obligation to various authorities and workers, most of whose names are familiar and welcome in our own pages. Contain- ing as it does a total of 4,468 words, the double section maintains the superiority over preceding or rival dictionaries on which we have frequently commented. This will be shown, with an avoid- ance of needless iteration, in the fact that there are 17,595 illustrative quotations against 237 in Funk's 'Standard,' 806 in Richardson, 871 in Cassell's ' Encyclopaedic,' 1,079 in Johnson, and 1,512 in the 'Century.' The words occupying most space are mainly short and of native English origin, com- prising long, look, lord, low, fo.s'.s, lot, loud, love, lust, though a few words adopted from Old Norse have had to be treated at considerable length. There are numerous adoptions from Dutch or Low Ger- man, while many words of undetermined etymology are unquestionably Germanic in origin. On the whole, then, the Germanic element is markedly predominant.

No surprising etymological discovery is claimed for the present instalment, but it is pointed out, with justifiable pride, that under various words will be found facts or suggestions not elsewhere acces- sible, and that many words mainly, but not only, of Old English and Scandinavian origin present interesting features of sense-development. The im- possibility of doing justice in a limited space or, indeed, in a space not unduly contracted to the information of absorbing interest becomes increas- ingly apparent as the pages are turned over. Of the one hundred and forty-four pages of which the

part consists there are very few that do not supply one illustration of high interest, and there are many that supply numerous such. Under the very'first word in the section, lock, used as a verb, one reads in limine the information, new to most of us, that the earlier verb with the signification of to fasten was louk, and we find the use of lock occurring so early as 1300 in the ' Cursor Mundi,' and see opportunity for comment upon almost every instance of use that is furnished. There is no early instance of the proverb "Lock the door before the steed is stolen," and the phrase to "lock up," spoken of the house generally, is surprisingly modern. Mr. Swinburne, in ' Atalanta in Calydon,' furnishes the first instance of " to lock horns," now used figuratively in America for to engage in com- bat. "Shot in the locker" is first traced in 1642. Under locust we learn that in the Hebrew Bible there are nine different names for the insect or varieties, the precise application of them being unknown. Lode, in its mining sense, is a graphic variant of load (see an illustration from Carew's 'Cornwall'). Lodestar, a guiding star, seems to have slept between Milton and Scott. An interest- ing account of the origin of lodge, sb., repays study. " My lodging is on the cold ground " is attri- buted to Davenant [D'Avenant]. Dowries, the prompter, in ' Roscius Anglicanus,' has an interest- ing allusion to this. Smollett first uses lodging-house in 1766 ; lodging-room is near two hundred years earlier. Log is "of obscure origin," some suggested derivations being of doubtful value. In the sense of a seat on which serving- men sat it is said to be obsolete. No doubt it is ; but the thing may still, we fancy, be seen in Greater London. These ob- servations are all taken from the opening pages, and might be indefinitely extended. We make no attempt to deal with words such as lour, luck, lunatic, Lollard, louver, love,, Lucifer, and others innumerable, to which the student will necessarily turn. Under lucifer, amidst much that is of signal interest, we find that the first recorded use of the word for a match occurs in 1831. We are indisposed to quit a part of this great dictionary without congratulations on the progress that has been and is being made.

Book-Prices Current, Vol. XVII. (Stock.) ' BOOK-PRICES CURRENT ' is rapidly becoming the most extensive, as it has long been the best, of books of bibliographical reference. We turn to it more fre- quently than any similar work not excluding the great compilations of Brunet, Lowndes, QueVard, and Barbier, now all of them more or less out of date, and, it is to be feared, not likely to be brought up to it and are seldom unrewarded. So many improve- ments have been effected since the work first saw the light in 1887 that little can be done in the way of further amendment. In behalf of the present volume it is claimed that the index has been ren- dered more serviceable by "the addition, within brackets, of an increased number of what may be called ' publication dates,' by means of which one edition of a book is distinguished from another at a glance." The correctness of the estimate we formed at the outset, and the opinions we have always expressed, are justified and strengthened by a com- parison between Mr. Slater's work and the con- tinental imitations its success was sure to produce. French attempts at rivalry are painfully inept, the volumes issued being so bulky and clumsy, as well as so ill arranged, that we have practically aban-