Chapter Whittle to Wild of W by Brewer's Phrase & Fable

(in Hebrew, toil and confusion), mean lands laid waste by war. The giant had eaten everything, so that there was “nothing to fry with,” as the French say- i.e. nothing left to live upon.

Widow (See Grass Widow .)

Widow (in Hudibras). The relict of Aminadab Wilmer or Willmot, an Independent, slain at Edgehill. She had £200 left her. Sir Hudibras fell in love with her.

Widow Bird A corruption of Whydaw bird. So called from the country of Whydaw, in Western Africa. The blunder is perpetuated in the scientific name given to the genus, which is the Latin Vidua, a widow.

Widow's Cap This was a Roman custom. Widows were obliged to wear “weeds” for ten months. (Seneca: Epistles, lxv.)

Widow's Piano Inferior instruments sold as bargains; so called from the ordinary advertisement announcing that a widow lady is compelled to sell her piano, for which she will take half-price.

Widow's Port A wine sold for port, but of quite a different family. As a widow retains her husband's name after her husband is taken away, so this mixture of potato spirit and some inferior wine retains the name of port, though every drop of port is taken from it.

“We have all heard of widow's port, and of the instinctive dread all persons who have any respect for their health have for it.”- The Times.

Wieland (2 syl.). The famous smith of Scandinavian fable. He and Amilias had a contest of skill in their handicraft. Wieland's sword cleft his rival down to the thighs; but so sharp was the sword, that Amilias was not aware of the cut till he attempted to stir, when he divided into two pieces. This sword was named Balmung.

Wife is from the verb to weave. (Saxon wefan, Danish vaevc, German weben, whence weib, a woman, one who works at the distaff.) Woman is called the distaff. Hence Dryden calls Anne “a distaff on the throne.” While a girl was spinning her wedding clothes she was simply a spinster; but when this task was done, and she was married, she became a wife, or one who had already woven her allotted task.
   Alfred, in his will, speaks of his male and female descendants as those of the spear-side and those of the spindle-side, a distinction still observed by the Germans; and hence the effigies on graves of spears and spindles.

Wig A variation of the French perruque, Latin pilucca, our periwig cut short. In the middle of the eighteenth century we meet with thirty or forty different names for wigs: as the artichoke, bag, barrister's, bishop's, brush, bush [buzz], buckle, busby, chain, chancellor's, corded wolf's paw, Count Saxe's mode, the crutch, the cut bob, the detached buckle, the Dalmahoy (a bob-wig worn by tradesmen), the drop, the Dutch, the full, the half-natural, the Jansenist bob, the judge's, the ladder, the long bob, the Louis, the periwig, the pigeon's wing, the rhinoceros, the rose, the scratch, the she-dragon, the small back, the spinach seed, the staircase, the Welsh, and the wild boar's back.
   A bigwig. A magnate. Louis XIV. had long flowing hair, and the courtiers, out of compliment to the young king, wore perukes. When Louis grew older he adopted the wig, which very soon encumbered the head and shoulders of the aristocracy of England and France, Lord Chancellors, judges, and barristers still wear big wigs. Bishops used to wear them in the House of Lords till 1880.
   `An ye faover the clough, there will be but ae wig left in the parish, and that's the minister's.” - Sir Walter Scott: The Antiquary.
   Make wigs. A perruquier, who fancied himself “married to immortal verse,” sent his epic to Voltaire, asking him to examine it and give his “candid opinion” of its merits, The witty patriarch of Ferney simply wrote on the MS. “Make wigs, make wigs, make wigs,” and returned it to the barber-poet. (See Sutor, Stick to the cow.)