Chapter MORDEXIM to MOSQUITO of M by The Hobson Jobson Dictionary

the body should be burned as a Gentue, and not buried by the Moors, it being apprehended to be of dangerous consequence to admit the Moors such pretences in the Towne.”—Notes and Exts. No. iii. p. 14.

1719.—“On condition they had a Cowle granted, exempting them from paying the Pagoda or Musqueet duty.”—In Wheeler, ii. 301.

1727.—“There are no fine Buildings in the City, but many large Houses, and some Caravanserays and Muscheits.”—A. Hamilton, i. 161 ; [ed. 1774, i. 163].

c. 1760.—“The Roman Catholic Churches the Moorish Moschs, the Gentoo Pagodas, the worship of the Parsees, are all equally unmolested and tolerated.”—Grose, i. 44.

[1862.—“…I slept at a Musheed, or village house of prayer.”—Brinckman, Rifle in Cashmere, 78.]

MOSQUITO, s. A gnat is so called in the tropics. The word is Spanish and Port. (dim. of mosca, ‘a fly’), and probably came into familiar English use from the East Indies, though the earlier quotations show that it was first brought from S. America. A friend annotates here : “Arctic mosquitoes are worst of all ; and the Norfolk ones (in the Broads) beat Calcutta !”

It is related of a young Scotch lady of a former generation who on her voyage to India had heard formidable, but vague accounts of this terror of the night, that on seeing an elephant for the first time, she asked : “Will yon be what’s called a musqueetae ?”

1539.—“To this misery was there adjoyned the great affliction, which the Flies and Gnats (por parte dos atabões e mosquitos), that coming out of the neighbouring Woods, bit and stung us in such sort, as not one of us but was gore blood.”—Pinto (orig. cap. xxiii.), in Cogan, p. 29.

1582.—“We were oftentimes greatly annoyed with a kind of flie, which in the Indian tongue is called Tiquari, and the Spanish call them Muskitos.”—Miles Phillips, in Hakl. iii. 564.

1584.—“The 29 Day we set Saile from Saint Johns, being many of vs stung before upon Shoare with the Muskitos ; but the same night we tooke a Spanish Frigat.”— Sir Richard Greenevile’s Voyage, in Hakl. iii. 308.

1616 and 1673.—See both Terry and Fryer under Chints.

1662.—“At night there is a kind of insect that plagues one mightily ; they are called Muscieten,—it is a kind that by their noise and sting cause much irritation.” —Saar, 68–69.

1673.—“The greatest Pest is the Mosquito, which not only wheals, but domineers by its continual Hums.”—Fryer, 189.

1690.—(The Governor) “carries along with him a Peon or Servant to Fan him, and drive away the busie Flies, and trouble-some Musketoes. This is done with the Hair of a Horse’s Tail.”—Ovington, 227–8.

1740.—“…all the day we were pestered with great numbers of muscatos, which are not much unlike the gnats in England, but more venomous.…”—Anson’s Voyage, 9th ed., 1756, p. 46.

1764.—

“Mosquitos, sandflies, seek the sheltered roof,
And with full rage the stranger guest assail,

—Grainger, bk. i.

1883.—“Among rank weeds in deserted Bombay gardens, too, there is a large, speckled, unmusical mosquito, raging and importunate and thirsty, which will give a new idea in pain to any one that visits its haunts.”—Tribes on My Frontier, 27.