Mr. [Raymond] Robins. I mean this, Senator. You are familiar with the old witch-hunt attitude, that when people get frightened at things and see bogies, then they get out witch proclamations, and mob action and all kinds of hysteria takes place. ["Bolshevik Propaganda," U.S. Senate su...
Witchin reference to a man survived in dialect into 20c., but the fem. form was so dominant by 1601 thatmen-witchesorhe-witchbegan to be used. Extended sense of "old, ugly, and crabbed or malignant woman" is from early 15c; that of "young woman or girl of bewitching aspect or mann...
We wrote a post in 2011 about the history of the term as well as its usage, which in various senses is referred to as “the royal we,”“the editorial we,”“the authorial we,”“the corporate we,” and so on. We also published a post in 2017 on the use of “we” in the sen...
(magic) spell upon," fromin-"upon, into" (from PIE root*en"in") +cantare"to sing" (from PIE root*kan-"to sing"). Figurative sense of "allurement" is from 1670s. Compare Old Englishgaldor"song," also "spell, enchantment," fromgalan"to sing," which also is the source of the ...
1610s, "characteristic ofhysteria," the nervous disease originally defined as a neurotic condition peculiar to women and thought to be caused by a dysfunction of the uterus; literally "of the womb," from Latinhystericus"of the womb," from Greekhysterikos"of the womb, suffering in the womb,...
Nautical sense "that part of the hemisphere to which the wind is directed" (c. 1400) is of Scandinavian origin, from the notion of the side of the ship opposite that which receives the wind as the sheltered side. As an adjective, 1510s, from the noun. Thelee shoreis that toward whic...
genus of woody vines, 1819, formed by Thomas Nuttall, English botanist, in recognition of American anatomist CasparWistar(1761-1818) of Philadelphia + abstract noun ending-ia. The-e-apparently is a misprint. TheWistar Institutewas founded in 1892 by his great-nephew and named for him. ...
1. "under, beneath, at the bottom of;" in adverbs "down, low, lower;" 2. "inferior part, agent, division, or degree; inferior, having subordinate position" (subcontractor) also forming official titles (subaltern); It also can indicate "division into parts or sections;" "next below, nea...
c. 1400,molestacioun, "action of annoying or vexing," from Old Frenchmolestacion"vexation, harassing," and directly from Medieval Latinmolestationem(nominativemolestatio), noun of action from past participle stem ofmolestare(seemolest). In Scottish law it meant "the harassing of a person in ...
By 1919 and through mid-20c. it was a general a term of abuse for revolutionaries, implying anti-social criminality without regard to political theory. Each [i.e.socialism, communism, anarchism] stands for a state of things, or a striving after it, that differs much from that which we kn...