{96} [But Wolsey’s jester was most probably so called from his wearing a varicoloured or patchwork coat; compare the Shakespearian use of ‘motley’. Similarly the _maquereaux_ of the old French comedy were clothed in a mottled dress like our harlequin, just as the Latin _maccus_ or mime wore a _centunculus_ or patchwork coat, his name being perhaps connected with _macus_ (in _macula_), a spot (Gozzi, _Memoirs_, i, 38). In stage slang the harlequin was called _patchy_, as his Latin counterpart was _centunculus_.] {97} [An error. Prof. Skeat shows that ‘tram’ was an old word in Scottish and Northern English (_Etym. Dict._, 655 and 831).] {98} Several of these we have in common with the French. Of their own they have ‘sardanapalisme’, any piece of profuse luxury, from Sardanapalus; while for ‘lambiner’, to dally or loiter over a task, they are indebted to Denis Lambin, a worthy Greek scholar of the sixteenth century, whom his adversaries accused of sluggish movement and wearisome diffuseness in style. Every reader of Pascal’s _Provincial Letters_ will remember Escobar, the great casuist among the Jesuits, whose convenient subterfuges for the relaxation of the moral law have there been made famous. To the notoriety which he thus acquired he owes his introduction into the French language; where ‘escobarder’ is used in the sense of to equivocate, and ‘escobarderie’ of subterfuge or equivocation. The name of an unpopular minister of finance, M. de Silhouette, unpopular because he sought to cut down unnecessary expenses in the state, was applied to whatever was cheap, and, as was implied, unduly economical; it has survived in the black outline portrait which is now called a ‘silhouette’. (Sismondi, _Histoire des Français_, tom. xix, pp. 94, 95.) In the ‘mansarde’ roof we have the name of Mansart, the architect who introduced it. I need hardly add ‘guillotine’. {99} See Col. Mure, _Language and Literature of Ancient Greece_, vol. i, p. 350. {100} See Génin, _Des Variations du Langage Français_, p. 12. {101} [Dr. Murray in the N.E.D. calls these by the convenient term ‘nonce-words’.] {102} _Persa_, iv. 6, 20-23. At the same time these words may be earnest enough; such was the ἐλαχιστότερος of St. Paul (Ephes. iii, 8); just as in the Middle Ages some did not account it sufficient to call themselves “fratres minores, minimi, postremi”, but coined ‘postremissimi’ to express the depth of their “voluntary humility”.