been a common name for a spangle.
See Bacon, cited by Todd. Also for
the globe of the earth, Ant. and
Cleop., v, 2; the circle of a theatre,
Hen. V, i, Chorus. Also for spots in
a person's face, L. L. L., v, 1.
2. For a lamentation, or exclamation
of sorrow:

Why should you fall into so deep an 0.
Rom. & Jul., iii, 3.
Twelfth N., ii, 5.

And O shall end I hope.

Like to an O, the character of woe.

Hymen's Triumph, cited by Steevens.

With the like clamour, and confused Ŏ,

To the dread shock the desp'rate armies go.
Drayt. Barons' Wars, ii, 35.

3. For the arithmetical cipher, called by the French zero:

Now thou art an O without a figure.

Lear, i, 4.

Consequently, worth nothing; the
Fool adds,

I am better than thou art now; I am a fool, thou art nothing. Ibid. O YES, for oyez, the usual exclamation of a crier, is used in the following passage as a substantive, in the sense

of exclamation.

yes,

On whose bright crest, Fame, with her loud'st O Cries, this is hie. Tro. & Cress., iv, 5. Fairy, hobgoblin, make the fairy O yes. Merr. W. of W., v, 5. OAF, 8. A fool. This word, which is hardly enough disused to require insertion here, is well illustrated and exemplified in Todd's Johnson. +OAKS, FELLING OF. A popular term for sea-sickness.

The word signifieth to bee provoked, or to have apetite or desire to vomit properly upon the sea, or in a ship. They call it felling of oakes merilie.

Withals' Dictionarie, ed. 1608, p. 39. +OAR. He loves to have an oar in every one's boat, i. e., he likes meddling with other people's business. Howell, 1659.

Lodge for his oare in every paper boate,
He that turnes over Galen every day,
To sit and simper Euphues legacie.
Return from Pernassus, 1606.

†OATS, WILD. A term applied commonly to a very extravagant fellow.

The tailors now-a-days are compelled to excogitate, invent, and imagine diversities of fashions for apparel, that they may satisfy the foolish desire of certain light brains and wild oats, which are altogether given to new fangleness. Becon's Works, ed. 1843, p. 204. Well, go to, wild oats! spendthrift! prodigal!

How a Man may chuse a Good Wife, 1602. OAT-MEAL, 8. Seems to have been a current name for some kind of profligate bucks, being mentioned with the Roaring Boys, in a ballad by Ford or Decker:

Swagger in my pot-meals,
D-n me's rank with,
Do mad prank with

Roaring boys and oatmeals,

Sun's Darling, i, l. No trace of this odd appellation has yet been found, except that the author of a ludicrous pamphlet has taken the name of Oliver Oat-meale. See Weber's Ford, ii, 335.

OATH. A burlesque one, like that administered by old custom at Highgate, was a species of humour practised on other occasions. In Gammer Gurton's Needle, the Bayly administers this oath to Diccon :

Thou shalt take an othe of Hodge's leather breache.
First for master doctor, upon paine of his curse,
Where he will pay for all, thou never draw thy purse.
And when ye meete at one pot, he shall have the first
pull;

And thou shalt never offer him the cup but it be full.
To good wife Chat, thou shalt be sworne, even on the
same wyse,

If she refuse thy money once, never to offer it twise,
&c. &c.
O. Pl., iì, 74.

OBARNI, s. A liquor apparently factitious, and composed of some preparation of mead, with the addition of spices.

Carmen

Devil is an Ass, i, 1.

Are got into the yellow starch; and chimney sweepers
To their tobacco and strong waters, hum,
Meath, and obarni.
With spiced meades (wholsome but dear),
As meade obarne, and meade cherunk,
And the base quasse, by pesants drunk.

Pymlyco, or Runne Redcap, cited by Gifford
in B. Jons., vii, 211.

Qu. Can quasse have any reference to the drug now called quassia? Obarni seemed likely to be Welch, being joined with mead, or metheglin; but on consulting Welch dictionaries, no such word appeared. †OBDURE. To become hard.

Sencelesse of good, as stones they soone obdure.
Heywood's Troia Britanica, 1609.

+To OBFUSCATE. To obscure. Úsed
also as an adjective, dull, obscure.
E. The daughters beautie is the mothers glory; light
becomes more obfuscate and darke in my hands, and
in yours it doth atchieve the greater blaze.
Passenger of Benvenuto, 1612.
It is hard to digest, obfuscates the sight, generates
bad humours, it hurts the head.
Ibid.

OBIT, s. A funeral celebration, or office for the dead; from the Latin verb obiit, he died. Sometimes an anniversary celebration in honour of the dead. Coles has, "An obit, [funeral obsequies] epicedium, feraliorum dies anniversariæ," &c.

The queene enterde, and obit kept, as she in charge
did give.
Warner's Alb. En., B. ii, 42.

+OCCASION. Need; business.

He makes his time an accomptant to his memorie, and of the humours of men weaves a net for occasion;

to the eye onely he is not visible.

Overbury's New and Choise Characters, 1615. Though 'twas the multiplicity of his occasions often hindered him from coming home betimes, shee'd scould, and say his drunken companions had made him stay bowzing in some scurvy cabaret.

History of Francion, 1655. Tenure or

+OCCUPATION. Trade.
occupation in old leases.
OCCUPANT, s. (from the indecent sense
of the following word). A prostitute.
He with his occupant

Are cling'd so close, like dew-wormes in the morne,
That he'll not stir.
Marston's Satires.

Whose senses some damn'd occupant bereaves. Ibid.

OCCUPY, [sensu obsc.] To possess, or enjoy.

These villains will make the word captain, as odious
as the word occupy.
2 Hen. IV, ii, 4.
Groyne, come of age, his state sold out of hand
For's whore; Groyne still doth occupy his land.
B. Jons. Epigr., 117.
Many, out of their own obscene apprehensions, refuse
proper and fit words, as occupy, nature, and the like.
Ibid., Discoveries, vol. vii, p. 119.

It is so used also in Rowley's New
Wonder, Anc. Dr., v, 278.

[To use.]

+Inke made of soote, such as printers occupie. Nomenclator, 1585.

+OCCUPIER. A merchant.

Waste paper, or other stuffe, wherein occupiers wrap their severall wares. Nomenclator, 1585.

OD'S-PITIKINS. A diminutive adjuration, corrupted from God's pity, quasi God's little pity.

Od's-pitikins! can it be six miles yet. Cymb., iv, 2. It occurs also in other dramatic writers, as in Decker and Webster's Westward Hoe, and the Shoemaker's Holiday, referred to by Steevens. ODD, adj. The only one.

For our time, the odd man to perform all things perfectly, whatsoever he doth, and to know the way to do them skilfully, whensoever he list, is, in my poor opinion, Joannes Sturmius.

Ascham, Scholemaster, p. 124. +ODD. Peerless; without an equal.

The servants al do sobbe and howle with shrill and heavy cryes,

Beweeping Hector thus they say: On this odde knighte, alacke!

We never shall set eye's again.

4. Hall's Homer, 1581, Il., vi. I cried out, envying Virgils prosperitie, who gathered of Homer, that he had fallen into the oddest mans

hands that ever England bred. Ibid., Preface. ODE, or OADE, 8. A peculiar orthography, for woad, the herb used in dying. Coles has, "oad to dye cloth, glastum."

Must relish all commodities alike, and admit no diffe-
rence between ode and frankincense.
B. Jons. Poelaster, ii, 1.

has not yet been discovered, though it must have some relation to tricking and cheating. It occurs only in B. Jonson's description of the character of Shift, prefixed to his Every Man out of his Humour. He describes him as,

A thread-bare shark; one that never was a soldier, yet lives upon lendings. His profession is skeldering and odling; his bank Paul's, and his warehouse Picthatch.

Mr. Gifford says, "Of odling I can say nothing with certainty, having never met with the word elsewhere." Ibid. CEILIAD, s. A glance of the eye, an ogle; from oeillade, French. Thus the commentators agree to write this word, which was variously misspelt in the early editions of Shakespeare. See EYLIAD.

I know your lady does not love her husband;
I am sure of that; and at her late being here,
She gave strange ailiads, and most speaking looks,
To noble Edmund.
Lear, iv, 5.
Mr. Steevens found the word in Greene
also:

Amorous glances, smirking oeiliades.

OF was very anomalously used in some ancient phrases; as, of bless beseech, for "whom I pray to bless."

Disputation between a He and She Coneycatcher.

mentators. The lower parts of London houses are always called the offices; nor is it confined to London, as every advertisement for the sale of a mansion will show.

The king's abed; He hath been in unusual pleasure, and Sent forth great largess to your offices. Macb., ii, 1. This is the original reading, for which some have absurdly proposed officers. Largess was given to servants, not to officers.

Alack, and what shall good old York there see, But empty lodgings and unfurnish'd walls, Unpeopled offices, untrodden stones. Rich. II, i, 2. That is, a complete picture of desolation. Rooms untenanted and unfurnished, offices without attendants, and the very stones untrodden. Thus also:

When all our offices have been oppress'd
With riotous feeders.

Timon, ii, 2.

The speaker means to say, that the offices below were full of riot, while the apartments above were occupied with ruinous luxuries. As the only doubt respecting this word has reference to the interpretation of Shakespeare, it is sufficient to bring his several passages together, to clear up the meaning of them all. See FEEDERS. OFFSPRING. for origin.

Very peculiarly used

Nor was her princely off-spring damnified,
Or ought disparaged by those labours base.
Fairf. Tasso, vii, 18.

OFTEN, as an adjective, frequent.

Use a little wine for thy stomach's sake, and thine
often infirmities.
1 Tim., v, 23.
His mother's often 'scapes, though truly knowne,
Cannot divert him. Browne, Brit. Past., ii, p. 77.
As many brookes, foords, showres of rain and springs,
Unto the Thames their often tribute brings.

Taylor's Workes, 1630. +For whom I sighed have so often sithe.

Gascoigne's Workes, 1587. An old jocular name for a severe beating. It occurs Withals' Dictionarie, ed. 1608, p. 308. We find oil of whip, similarly used.

+OIL-OF-BASTON.

in

Poor Robin, 1693.

Now for to cure such a disease as this,
The oyl of whip the surest medicine is.
OIL OF TALC. See TALC.
†OILSTONE. A whetstone.

An oylestone, or a barbars whetstone smeared with
oyle or spittle.
Nomenclator.

+OINTED. For anointed.

Mis. Thou shalt sit

Queen of that kingdom in a chair of light,

And doves with ointed wings shall hover o'r thee, Shedding perfumes. Cartwright's Siedge, 1651. OLD, s., for wold. So read in the original edition of Lear, iii, 4. Spelman also has olds for wolds; and other writers.

OLD, a. In the sense of frequent, abundant; a burlesque phrase, which it has been thought necessary to illustrate in our early writers, but which is by no means disused at this hour.

Here will be an old abusing of God's patience and the
king's English.
Merry Wives of W., i, 4.
If a man were porter to hell-gate, he would have old
turning the key,
Macb., ii, 3.

I imagine there is old moving among them.

Lingua, O. Pl., v, 163. Here's old cheating. Roaring Girl, O. PL., vi, 109. See also the notes on those passages. See Todd, in Old, 9. †OLD-RELIGION. So the Roman Catholic religion was called long after the Reformation.

OLD SHOE. To throw an old shoe
after a person. See SHOE, OLD.
+OLD-SHOW. "The play called king
by your leave, or the old shewe."
Nomenclator, 1585, p. 298.
ONE, as a substantive. An individual,
a single person.

There's not a one of them, but in his house
I keep a servant feed.
Macb., iii, 4.
Not a one shakes his tail, but I sigh out a passion.
Albumazar, O. Pl., vii, 155.

One was sometimes pronounced, and
even written, on. Thus the Echo, in

the Arcadia:

Pembr. Arc.

What salve, when reason seeks to be gone? One.
V. Not mine, my gloves are on.
Sp. Why then this may be yours, for this is but one.
Two Gent. Ver., ii, I.

The quibble here intended depends upon the word being so pronounced. The original editions of Shakespeare frequently have on for one. Thus in King John:

If the midnight bell Did, with his iron tongue and brazen month, Sound on unto the drowsy race of night. Act iii, sc. 3. See the abundant proofs adduced by Mr. Malone, in the note upon that passage. It is so written in the older writers still more frequently, as in Chaucer. See Tyrwhitt's Glossary. So in Holland's Suetonius:

He caught from on of them a trumpet.

Spenser too has it :

It chaunced me on day beside the shore
Of silver-streaming Thamesis to bec.

P. 14.

Ruines of Time, ver. 1.