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special import, is evidently of a same stock as the Dutch stael, stele, steel, stem, stalk, stick, of which the diminutive would be staelke, as a little stem or STALK. The thema is sta-en, to stand; whence sta-el, stael, as the standing, or that upon which it is stood, and thus the supporter, which a stalk is. Horne Tooke derives the term from the AngloSaxon stigan [ascendere], which is the Dutch steigen, to mount, and thinks it should be spelt stawk; but how is stalk connected either in sound or sense with that verb? And why should it be written stawk? is it to be found any where under that form? But the phrase a stalking-horse, in the sense of a blind or cover, a concealment, is, I suspect, as the travesty of er staacking hoore's; q. e. in this case a blind [a covering] is requisite [proper, necessary]. Staacking, staaking, as the old form of the participle present of the obsolete verb staecken, staaken, to stake up or round, to block up, to environ, to beset by stakes, to obstruct or prevent the seeing into by that which stops or surrounds; unless, instead of staecking, the original form was staecke hin, and thus as covering in this case, staecke being the contracted form of staecking, and hin, heen, hence; but, either way, it comes to the same thing. Hoore, the contracted participle present of hooren, behooren, to belong to, to appertain to, to be proper for, to behove. 'S, is, is. The l in stalk is paragogical, and introduced merely to lengthen the sound, so as to represent the original pronunciation of the double broad a. Johnson derives the phrase from stalking and horse, and says it is as a horse, real or fictitious, by which a fowler shelters himself from the sight of the game; but does he mean to imply that stalking stands for real or fictitious? or else what does he mean to make of this term? It is a groundless fancy. When however he defines the phrase as a mask, a pretence, it is in a true sense; for the ground import refers simply to a covering or

concealing, an obstacle to the being seen; a putting out of sight [view].

"Let the counsellor give counsell not for faction, but for conscience, forbearing to make the good of the state the STALKING HORSE of his private ends."

HAKEWILL ON PROVIDENCE.

"Hypocrisy is the Devil's STALKING-HORSE, under an affectation of simplicity and religion."-L'ESTRANGE.

In Bailey's dictionary, will be found the phrase STALKING HEDGE as a hedge made use of by fowlers to conceal themselves, while lying in wait for their prey; and stalking is there as in stalking-horse explained above.

A STAG.

As the full grown buck or male of the deer-kind; a male deer five years old. In the first year called a fawn, in the second a pricker, in the third a sorel, in the fourth a sore or staggard, in the fifth a stag, as then full grown. And I take the term to be as staeck [staak] in the sense of stem, stock, and thus source [producer] of the race; and staeck is groundedly the same word with the Dutch and our stock, when in the sense of a race, family, source of descendants [progeny]. So that stag, as stock [progenitor] producer of its race, has the same import as sire in regard to the horse-kind, which I take to be formed in an analogus direction of sense, and to be the travesty of the Dutch saeijer, sower, scatterer of that which produces the sort again, breeder, originator, seminator; also spelt saeder, and then the source of the Latin sator [sower] begetter, [father], and in both forms rooted in saeyen, saeden, to sow, to seed, to scatter [spread] seed. Stueck sounds stag, the g and ck intermutating in the utterance. Saeyer sounds precisely as we pronounce sire. When sire is used by us in relation to the head of a social state, it is in the patriarchal import

of father of those over whose means of happiness he is appointed to preside; and so it is when the term is used by the French for the same magistrate, and though now become a solecism in language, was not so in its origin and in another form of society. To add the ground themas of staeck, stock, and saeyer, so as to connect their various offsets and meanings, would be an over-tedious prolonging of this article. Agrorum SATOR; oleæ SATOR; SATOR hominum atque deorum; omnium rerum pater et SATOR; omnium rerum SEMINATOR et SATOR; SEMINATOR omnium malorum; are all sound phrases, and in a same direction of sense. Serere [sevi, satum] has the import of to produce, to beget, as well as to sow, and is at bottom a same word with our to sire, in the sense of to father, to beget. HORNE TOOKE, the sire of a long race of conundrums, tells us stag is the past participle of the Anglo Saxon stigan, the Dutch steyghen, to ascend; and thus as the animal which strikes you at first sight with his raised and lofty head; but this would do better for a giraffe [camelopardalis], or even a camel, and is a mere conceited guess; as a justification of which he has quoted the following line from ARIOSTO,

"E cervi con la fronte alta e superba ;"

but what has that to do with a five-year old male deer? His corroborative extract from the Polyalbion is still more vague and irrelevant. JOHNSON observes with a better tact, that the etymology of the term was uncertain to him.

"Say what STOCK he springs of."-SHAKSPEARE.

"Thou hast seen one world begin, and end,

And man, as from a second STOCK, proceed."-MILTON. That staeck, staak, should resound into stag, or that the k should intermutate with g, is not an unprecedented instance, even in our own dialect, for to stagger was formerly spelt to staker.

"The night is wastid and he fell aslepe,
Full tendirly beginnith she to wepe,

She rist her up, and dredefully she quaketh,
As doeth the braunch, that Zephyrus yshaketh;
And husht was all in Aragone that cite.
As colde as any froste now wexith she,
For pite by the herte strained her so,

And drede of deth doith her so muche wo,
That thryis doune she fill in soche a were

*

She riste her up, and STAKERETH † here and there,
And on her handis faste lokith she;
Alas! quoth she, shall my handis blodie ?

WAR.

In the usual sense, is the same word as the Dutch wer, were, weer, weyr, arms, means of defence, and impliedly, of offence also; whence geweer, armour, weeren, to ward off, to defend, with numerous other words. War, in the Cimbrian dialect, was lettered oer, but pronounced war. From the most remote antiquity, the terms war, wer, have been used in the Dutch and its collateral dialects, in the sense of confusion, disorder, disturbance, discord; and is, I believe, to be met with in Melis Stoke's Chronicle. Of equal antiquity in use is also the verb warren, werren, to confound, to create dispute [disorder], to cause contention [confusion], to annoy, to offend; and the same verb with our old to warray, to warrie, to warre, now to worry. French guerre, as well as the Italian and Spanish guera, are evidently a same word; and the Dutch oerlog [state of war] is the same word differently lettered with warlage; q. e. the state of war, status belli, lage, position, lay, as the past tense of ik

The

*Confusion, disorder, and at bottom the same worde with WAR.-See following article.

+ Staggereth.

Are my hands of a kind to commit murder [kill a man] ? am I a woman suited to murder?

leg, ik lage, from liggen [to repose, to lie down, to lie]. W is a very fluctuating aspirate, and has little or no stability, except where it forms the thema [characteristic syllable or letter] of a word. The Danish and Icelandick Oord, is the Dutch woord, and our word; their Orm and our worm are also one word; and the Dutch oord, oort [a place, a locality] is the same with the Dutch waard [a ward, a quarter, a region]. The Franco-teutonick heimortes, our homewards, is the Dutch huiswaart. The Dutch woeker [usury], is as oecker, increaser, increase, augmenting, from oecken, to increase, to multiply, to add to, whence our to eke, in the same sense, and is the very word used by the old Germans to express the Latin epithet Augustus, in the formula of the title of their emperors. Oorkonde, proof, testimony, is waarkonde, true knowledge, visible proof, certain acquaintance with. Oorlof, leave, is the same with verlof [whence our furlough]. Gedeelen, to judge, to decide, makes the anglo-Saxon oordeelen; in which dialect we also find ordele, urdal, ardal, used interchangeably for trial, and as our ordeal. Wanorde, disorder, is the same with onorde. The Swedish önska, the Danish Onske, is the same verb with the Dutch wenschen, to wish. Want, went, as the preposition used by the earlier Dutch writers, and in the still earlier Franco-teutonick idiom, as equivalent to the present tot [towards, coming counter to, unto] is nothing more than the still older Gothic and, whence the Anglo-Saxon and, still surviving in the Dutch antwoard [whence our answer] as counterword, or that which was said from the other side to the question. Wippertjen, uppertjen, upperken, [whence our now vulgar nipperkin] a sort of drinking vessel or tumbler, are the same word. The old German orlich is as warlich, warlijk, warlike, contentious, looking war. With us, wer, as confusion, was sometimes spelt where.