D — Deception to Deities (Part 2 of 3)

Dee Mills If you had the rent of Dee Mills, you would spend it all. Dee Mills, in Cheshire, used to yield a very large annual rent. (Cheshire proverb.)

"There was a jolly miller
Lived on the river Dee;
He worked and sung from morn to night;-
No lark so blithe as he;
And this the burden of his song
For ever used to be -
I care for nobody, no, not I
If nobody cares for me.' "
Bickerstaff: Love in a Village (1762).

Deer Supposed by poets to shed tears. The drops, however, which fall from their eyes are not tears, but an oily secretion from the so-called tear-pits.

"A poor sequestered stag ...
Did come to languish ... and the big round tears
Coursed one another down his innocent nose
In piteous chase."
Shakespeare: As You Like It, ii. 2.

   Small deer. Any small animal; and used metaphorically for any collection of trifles or trifling matters.

"But mice and rats, and such small deer,
Have been Tom's food for seven long year."
Shakespeare: Lear, iii.4.

Deerslayer The hero of a novel so called, by F. Cooper. He is the beau-ideal of a man without cultivation - honourable in sentiment, truthful, and brave as a lion; pure of heart, and without reproach in conduct. The character appears, under different names, in five novels - The Deerslayer, The Pathfinder, The Last of the Mohicans, The Pioneers, and The Prairie. (See Natty Bumpo.)

Dees (The). (See above Dee .)

Deev-Binder Tamnuras, King of Persia, who defeated the Deev king and the fierce Demrush, but was slain by Houndkonz, another powerful Deev.

Default Judgment by default is when the defendant does not appear in court on the day appointed. The judge gives sentence in favour of the plaintiff, not because the plaintiff is right, but from the default of the defendant.

Defeat "What though the field be lost? all is not lost." (Milton: Paradise Lost, i, line 105-6.)
"All is lost but honour" (Tout est perdu, madame, fors l'honneur) is what François I. is said to have written to his mother, after the Battle of Pavia in 1525.

Defeat There is a somewhat strange connection between de-feat and de-feature. Defeat is the French de-fait, un-made or un-done, Latin, de-factus (defectus, our "defect"); and feature is the Norman faiture, Latin factura, the make-up, frame, or form. Hence old writers have used the word "defeat" to mean disfigure or spoil the form.

"Defeat thy favour [face] with an usurped beard." -Shakespeare: Othello, i. 3.

Defender of the Faith A title given by Pope Leo X. to Henry VIII. of England, in 1521, for a Latin treatise On the Seven Sacraments. Many previous kings, and even subjects, had been termed "defenders of the Catholic faith," "defenders of the Church," and so on, but no one had borne it as a title. The sovereign of Spain is entitled Catholic, and of France Most Christian.

"God bless the king! I mean the `faith's defender! '
God bless - no harm in blessing the Pretender.
But who Pretender is, or who is king-
God bless us all! that's quite another thing."
John Byron: Shorthand Writer.

    Richard II., in a writ to the sheriffs, uses these words: "Ecclesia cujus nos defensor sumus," and Henry VII., in the Black Book, is called "Defender of the Faith;" but the pope gave the title to Henry VIII., and from that time to this it has been perpetuated. (See Graceless Florin.)

Deficit (Madame). Marie Antoinette. So called because she was always demanding money of her ministers, and never had any. According to the Revolutionary song:

"La Boulangère a des ecus
Qui ne lui content guère."

   (See Baker.)

Degenerate (4 syl.) is to be worse than the parent stock. (Latin, de genus.)