Notes and Queries, Number 189, June 11, 1853 | Page 3

the Ninth of January, A.D. MDXCII.: Andrewes' Sermons, vol. v. p. 55. Lib. Ang.-Cath. Theol.
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Trash, to shred or lop.--So said Steevens, alleging that he had met with it in books containing directions for gardeners, published in the time of {567} Queen Elizabeth. I fear his memory deceived him, or why should a man of his sound learning afterwards incline to vail bonnet to the dogmatist Warburton? whose knowledge of dogs, by the way, must have been marvellously small, or he could never have imagined them to overtop one another in a horizontal course. Overrun, overshoot, overslip, are terms in hunting, overtop never; except perchance in the vocabulary of the wild huntsman of the Alps. Trash occurs as a verb in the sense above given, Act I. Sc. 2. of the Tempest: "Who t'aduance, and who to trash for over-topping." I have never met with the verb in that sense elsewhere, but overtop is evermore the appropriate term in arboriculture. To quote examples of that is needless. Of it metaphorically applied, just as in Shakspeare, take the following example:
"Of those three estates, which swayeth most, that in a manner doth overtop the rest, and like a foregrown member depriveth the other of their proportion of growth."--Andrewes' Sermons, vol. v. p. 177., Lib. Ang.-Cath. Theol.
Have we not the substantive trash in the sense of shreddings, at p. 542. book iii. of a Discourse of Forest Trees, by John Evelyn? The extract that contains the word is this:
"Faggots to be every stick of three feet in length, excepting only one stick of one foot long, to harden and wedge the binding of it; this to prevent the abuse, too much practised, of filling the middle part and ends with trash and short sticks, which had been omitted in the former statute."
Possibly some of the statutes referred to by Evelyn may contain examples of the verb. In the meantime it will not be impertinent to remark, that what appears to be nothing more than a dialectic variety of the word, namely trouse, is of every-day use in this county of Hereford for trimmings of hedges; that it is given by Grose as a verb in use in Warwickshire for trimming off the superfluous branches; and lastly, that it is employed as a substantive to signify shreddings by Philemon Holland, who, if I rightly remember, was many years head master of Coventry Grammar School:
"Prouided alwaies, that they be paued beneath with stone; and for want thereof, laid with green willow bastons, and for default of them, with vine cuttings, or such trousse, so that they lie halfe a foot thicke."--The Seuenteenth Booke of Plinie's Naturall History, chap. xi. p. 513.: London, 1634.
Trash no one denies to be a kennel term for hampering a dog, but it does not presently follow that the word bore no other signification; indeed, there is no more fruitful mother of confusion than homonomy.
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Clamor, to curb, restrain (the tongue):
"Clamor your tongues, and not a word more." The Winter's Tale, Act IV. Sc. 4.
Most judiciously does NARES reject Gifford's corruption of this word into charm, nor will the suffrage of the "clever" old commentator one jot contribute to dispel their diffidence of this change, whom the severe discipline of many years' study, and the daily access of accumulating knowledge, have schooled into a wholesome sense of their extreme fallibility in such matters. Without adding any comment, I now quote, for the inspection of learned and unlearned, the two ensuing extracts:
"For Critias manaced and thretened hym, that onelesse he chaumbreed his tongue in season, ther should ere l[=o]g bee one oxe the fewer for hym."--Apoptheymis of Erasmus, translated by Nicolas Vdall, MCCCCCXLII, the First Booke, p. 10.
"From no sorte of menne in the worlde did he refrein or chaumbre the tauntying of his tongue."--Id., p. 76.
After so many Notes, one Query. In the second folio edition of Shakspeare (my first folio wants the whole play), I find in Cymbeline, Act V. Sc. 3., the next beautiful passage:
"Post. Still going? This is a lord: Oh noble misery To be ith' field, and aske what newes of me: To-day how many would have given their honors To have sav'd their carkasses? Tooke heele to doo't, And yet dyed too. I in mine owne woe charm'd, Could not find death, where I did heare him groane, Nor feele him where he strooke. Being an ugly monster, 'Tis strange he hides him in fresh cups, soft beds, Sweet words; or hath moe ministers then we That draw his knives ith' war. Well I will finde him: For being now a favourer to the Britaine, No more a Britaine, I have resum'd againe The part I came in."
In the antepenultimate line, Britaine was more than a century ago changed by