Chapter Miramont to Misprision of M by Brewer's Phrase & Fable

a year, but his expenses never exceeded £30. He lived at the head of Lake Ulleswater. His last words were, “What a fortune a man might make if he lived to the age of Methuselah!” He died at the age of eighty-nine.
   (16) Guy Wilcocks, a female miser.    (See Euclio, Harpagon, etc.)

Miserere (4 syl.). Our fifty-first psalm is so called. One of the evening services of Lent is called miserere, because this penitential psalm is sung, after which a sermon is delivered. The under side of a folding seat in choir-stalls is called a miserere; when turned up it forms a ledge-seat sufficient to rest the aged in a kneeling position.

“Misfortune will never Leave Me till I Leave It,” was the expression of Charles VII., Emperor of Germany. (1742-1745.)

Mishna Instruction. A word applied by the Jews to the oral law. It is divided into six parts: (1) agriculture; (2) Sabbaths, fasts, and festivals; (3) marriage and divorce; (4) civil and penal laws; (5) sacrifices; (6) holy persons and things. The commentary of the Mishna is called the Gemara. (Herbrew, shanah, to repeat.)

Misnomers
   Absalom means a Father's Peace, a fatal name for David's rebellious son.
   Acid (sour) applied in chemistry to a class of bodies to which sourness is only accidental and by no means a universal character- thus, rock-crystal, quartz, flint, etc., are chemical acids, though no particle of acidity belongs to them.
   America. So called from Amerigo Vespucci, a naval astronomer of Florence. He wrote an account of his discoveries, which were very popular in Germany, but certainly he did not discover the New World.
   Ant. Go to the ant, thou sluggard. (See Ants, Honeycomb.)
   Antelope is a hopeless absurdity for the Greek anthos- ops, beautiful eye.
   Arabic figures were not invented by the Arabs, but by the Indians.
   Baffin's Bay is no bay at all.
   Blacklead is a compound of carbon and iron.
   Blind-worms are no more blind than moles are; they have very quick and brilliant eyes, though somewhat small.
   Brazilian grass does not come from Brazil, or even grow in Brazil, nor is it a grass at all. It consists of strips of a palm-leaf (Chamærops argente'a), and is chiefly imported from Cuba.
   Bridegroom has nothing to do with groom. It is the old English guma, a man, bryd-guma.
   Burgundy pitch is not pitch, nor is it manufactured or exported from Burgundy. The best is a resinous substance prepared from common frankincense, and brought from Hamburg; but by far the larger quantity is a mixture of rosin and palm-oil.
   Canopy, as if from Canopus (the star in the southern hemisphere), is the Greek konopeion (from konops, a gnat), and means a cloth to keep off gnats.
   Catgut is not the gut of cats, but of sheep.
   Celandine should be chelidon, Greek and Latin for a swallow; so called because it was at one time supposed that swallows cured with it the blindness of their young. (Pliny, xxv. 50.)
   China, as a name for porcelain, gives rise to the contradictory expressions British china, Sèvres china, Dresden china, Dutch china, Chelsea china, etc.; like wooden milestones, iron milestones, brass shoe-horns, iron pens, etc.
   Cinerary, for a cemetery, should be “Cinery.” Cinerarius is a woman's tailor.
   Cuttle-bone is not bone at all, but a structure of pure chalk embedded loosely in the substance of a species of cuttlefish. It is enclosed in a membranous sac, within the body of the “fish,” and drops out when the sac is opened, but it has no connection whatever with the sac or the cuttlefish.
   Cleopatra's Needles were not erected by Cleopatra, or in honour of that queen, but by Thothmes III.
   Crawfish for cravis (Latin carabus, a lobster, French écrevisse).
   Cullander, a strainer, should be “colanter” (Latin colans, colantis, straining).
   Custard, the food, is from the Welsh for curded milk; but “custard,” for a slap on the hand, should be custid, from the Latin custis, a club.
   Down for adown (the preposition) is a strange instance of caprice, in which the omission of the negative (a) utterly perverts the meaning. The Saxon dun is an upland or hill, and a-dun is its opposite— i.e. a lowland or descent. Going down stairs really means “going upstairs,” of ascending; and for descending we ought to say “going a down.”
   Dutch clocks are not of Dutch but German (Deutsch) manufacture.
   Elements. Fire, air, earth, and water, called the four elements, are not elements at all.
   Fish, a counter, should be fiche (a five-sou piece), used at one time in France for card-counters. One of them, given “for the rub,” was called la fiche de consolation.
   Foxglove is not the glove of the fox, but of the fays, called folk - the little folk's glove; or else from fosco, red.
   Frontispiece. A vile corruption of frontispice (Latin frontispicium, a view on the front page). The “piece” is specium. Frontispiece is an awful hybird.
   Fusiliers. These foot-soliders now carry Enfield rifles, and not fusils.
   Galvanised iron is not galvanised. It is simply iron coated with zinc, and this is done by dipping it in a zinc bath containing muriatic acid.
   German silver is not silver at all, nor was the metallic mixture invented by a