probably derived, consisting of the rump and the loins. Sc. birn, matrix, or rather pudendum, allied to. ISL. brund-ur. WELSH, bry. Vid. Birn in Dr. Jamieson's Supplement. BARREL-FEVER, A violent sickness occasioned by intemperance.

BARREN, It is proper to apologise for introducing into a dialectical Glossary a word of such general import. I know not by what analytical process the word barren has obtained in our language a general signification expressly contrary to its original derivation. The translation of the Gospels by Wicliff proves how long this has been the acceptation of the word which he writes bareyn. In the Saxon translation of Luke's Gospel, I chap. 3 v. Elizabeth is properly said to be unberende, from the negative un, and berende, fruitful, of the same import as fœcunda and infœcunda. But I am totally at a loss how to account for the abstraction of the negative part of the word; and why baryn or barren, signifying bearing or fruitful, should apply to animate and inanimate objects, which are unproductive and unfruitful. Dr. Johnson, making no comment on this improper use of the word, attempts to derive it from the Saxon word, bare, naked. Horne Tooke, not satisfied with the Doctor's derivation, contends that it is the past participle of the word bar, and converts barren into barred, stopped, shut, from which there can be no fruit or issue. Mr. Todd, acquiescing with neither, asserts that it comes from the old French brahaigne, meaning sterile and unfruitful, exactly corresponding with our own word. With humble submission to such great authorities, may I be allowed to conjecture, that the old French word

brahaigne, so nearly corresponding with our own word barren, may have originally been derived from the Saxon or Teutonic, and that both the French and the aboriginal Britons may have retained an imperfect knowledge of the language imposed upon them by the Saxon conquerors. Thus the Saxon word unberende may have lost its prefix or first syllable by apheresis, in the same manner as the antient word let, hindered, loses the first syllable of the Saxon gelette, impeditus, and the word like also parts with the first syllable of the Saxon gelic, and born drops the first syllable of the Saxon geboren.

Various etymons have been assigned for Britain, without any advertence to the word bro, so universal among the Celts of our Islands, and of Gaul, where it is also pronounced bru or broed; which, like the Persian bar, Syriac baro, Gothic byr, signifies a fruitful or populated country.See Preface of Thompson's Etymons of English Words, 4to. 1826.

BASTER, A heavy blow.

BASS, Matting made, not as supposed by Mr. Todd, of

rush, but of the inner bark of birch. The derivation from the Teutonic bast, bark, according to Dr. Jamieson, is very probable.

BARTLE, Bartholomew.

BAT, Blow or speed. A. S. bat, fustis, here transferred to the stroke, "Onny way for a bat."

2. "At the saam bat" is in the same manner, "he

gangs on at saam bat."

BATE, To abate, or lower the price.

"You bate too much of your merits."

Sh. Tim. 1. 2.

"No leisure bated (immediately)."

Hamlet iii. 3.

BATE, The fibres of wood, cross-bated, that is the fibres

are twisted and crooked.

BATTLE-LAND, Good and fertile land.

Rider, and Cotgrave.

"Unto ane pleasand grund cumin ar thay

Minsheu,

With battil gerse, fresche herbis and grene swardis."

D. Virg. 6 B. 187. Ruddiman explains battill, thick, rank, like men in order of battle.

"He swam ouir the same River with his beistis to refresh thaim ith the battle gers thaereof."

Bellenden's T. Livius Dr. Jamieson's Supplement. "We turn pasture to tillage, and barley into aits, and heather into greensward, and the poor yarpha, as the benighted creatures here call their peat-bogs, into baittle grass land.”

Pirate, 3 vol. p. 182.

BATTER, To build a wall with great inclination to the bank.

BATTER, Inclination. "Let't'wau hev plenty o’batter.” BAW, Ball. It may here be remarked, that words ending

in double L, cast off the L's, and take W in their place: as ball, baw; fall, faw; call, caw.

"Defecate impure blood with the infusion of sine, Savory,

Bawme-water."

Burton's Anat. p. 327.

"And the physicions embaumed Israel,"

BAWSIN,

Gen. xlix. 2.-Geneva Edit, 1542.

An imperious, noisy fellow. TEUT. bauch,

BAWSAND, S venter. Skinner.

66

-and his creist on hicht bare he

With bawsand face ryngit the further E."

D. Virg. 146 p. BAY, The space between the main beams of a barn. Hence we say of any thing valuable, "It's worth a bay of wheat."

BE, By. "Be this," an elliptical expression for "by this time," used by Gawin Douglas.

"The schippis are harbryt in the havyn, I wys

Or with bent saill enteris into the port be thys.”

"Be that it drewe to the oware of none
A hundrith fat hartes ded there lay."

BE-NOW, By this time.

Virg. p. 25.

Chevy Chase.

"What hezto done be now?"

BEAK, To bask in the heat. Sc. beek.

"She an her cat sit beeking in her yard

To speak my errand, faith, amaist I'm fear'd."

Gentle Shepherd. Ramsay.

"And beeking my cauld limbs afore the sun.'

Idem.

BEAK, Iron over the fire, on which boilers are hung; from beak, in the form of which, I suppose, they were originally constructed.

BED, The horizontal base of a stone, inserted in a wall. "Let it hev plenty o' bed."

BEAM-FILLED, The vacancy between the wall where

the timbers rest, and the slates within filled up tight

with stones and mortar. ISL. beima, domus, and fyll-a, implere. This, with all deference, appears much more likely than Dr. Jamieson's interpretation of the word in his supplement, having the eye filled with a beam.

BEATEM, The conqueror.

"Hees t'beatem of au."

BEATER, This instrument is used to beat clay on the powder in a hole previously bored in rocks or mines, to make the explosion stronger.

BEB, To sip.

BECK, A brook, universal in the Northern dialects. "From this bridge I ridd a mile on a stony and rocky bank of the Tees to the beck called Thursgylle."

Leland's Itin.

BECK-STANS, The strand of a rapid river from beck and

staan.

BED, "Thou's gitten out at wrang side o'th' bed,” i. e. thou art peevish and ill tempered.

BEE-BEE, A nurse song. GR. bauban, to sleep. Skinner. "Utrumque convenit carmini illi sopitorio nutricum Anglicarum, quod alumnis suis decumbentibus solent occinere, by by, identidem repetendo."

BEANT, Be not.

Mr. Casaubon de quatuor Ling; 12mo.

BEE-BAND, A hoop of iron which incircles the hole in

the beam of a plough, where the coulter is fixed. BEE-BREAD, A brown acid substance within the combs. A. S. beo-bread. Lye.

BEOSS, Cattle. "I sa a seet o' beeos gang t'oth fair." BEOST, A beast. "Its a vara fat beost."

It rarely happens that a substantive plural is shorter than the singular.

BEESTLING PUDDING, A pudding made of beest.

It is a custom for a farmer to make a present of beest to his poor neighbours when a cow calves.