_Encore_ (Vol. viii., p. 387.).--If A. A. knows the meaning of "this French word" I am a little surprised at his Query. Perhaps he means to ask why a French word should be used? It probably was first used at concerts and operas (_ancora_ in Italian), where the performers and even the performances were foreign, and so became the fashion. Pope says: "To the same notes thy sons shall hum or snore, And all thy yawning daughters cry _encore_." It was not, I think, in use so early as Shakspeare's time, who makes Bottom anticipate that "the Duke shall say, Let him roar _again_, let him roar _again_," where the jingle of "encore" would have been obvious. It is somewhat curious that where we use the French word _encore_, the French audiences use the Latin word "bis." C. _"Hauling over the Coals"_ (Vol. viii., p. 125.).--This saying I conceive to have arisen from the custom prevalent in olden times, when every Baron was supreme in his own castle, of extracting money from the unfortunate Jews who happened to fall into his power, by means of torture. The most usual _modus operandi_ seems to have been roasting the victims over a slow fire. Every one remembers the treatment of Isaac of York by Front-de-Boeuf, so vividly described in Sir Walter Scott's _Ivanhoe_. Although the practice has long been numbered amongst the things that were, the fact of its having once obtained is handed down to posterity in this saying, as when any one is taken to task for his shortcomings he is _hauled over the coals_. JOHN P. STILWELL. Dorking. _The Words "Cash" and "Mob"_ (Vol. viii., p. 386.).--MR. FOX was right: _mob_ is not genuine English--teste Dean Swift! A lady who was well known to Swift used to say that the greatest scrape she ever got into with him was by using the word _mob_. "Why do you say that?" he exclaimed in a passion; "never let me hear you say that again!" "Why, sir," she asked, "what am I to say?" "The rabble, to be sure," answered he. (Sir W. Scott's _Works of Swift_, vol. ix.) The word appears to have been introduced about the commencement of the eighteenth century, by a process to which we owe many other and similar barbarisms--"beauties introduced to supply the want of wit, sense, humour, and learning." In a paper of _The Tatler_, No. 230., much in the spirit, and possibly from the pen, of Swift, complaint is made of the "abbreviations and elisions" which had recently been introduced, and a humorous example of them is given. By these, the author adds,