370 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences^ Arts, and Letters. 



so gained tlie name of carpet-Jcnights. Last of all was the sense 

 of covering a floor in full. 



The word lamj) is from a Greek root whicli means to shine. 

 The text "Let vour light so shine hefore men" is literally, Let 

 it so lamp before them. The same element forms the middle 

 syllable in Olympus, which is thus the shiner, or lamp of moun- 

 tains. The mirror Avith wings like a butterfly gets its name of 

 J^syclie-qlass because a butterfly was called Psvche by the 

 Greeks. The table before such a glass being covered with cloth 

 was called toilet from a word meaning to weave. The origin 

 of hureau is derived from a name of the baize that covers it. 



Dressing is more than putting on clothes. It implies that 

 it is hard to know how to put one's things on, going through that 

 process comme it faut, that is rightly; yes, those laborsome 

 and dainty trims wherein, as Shakespeare tells us, daughters of 

 '■earth make great Juno jealous. Its Latin root means to make 

 straight and is illustrated by the military orders : ''Right dress" 

 and "Left dress," and our vernacular "put to rights" which is 

 to re-dress. Spelling prevents some persons from noticing that 

 Taim,ent is an abbreviated form of arrayment and. so means 

 somethins; more than clothino'. 



The vocabulary of our vesture is often no less obscure than 

 that of architecture or furniture. Cloak and clock are doub- 

 lets, coming from the German word for bell, the latter so called 

 as sounding the hours with a bell, and the former as giving its 

 wearer the shape of a bell. Mantle comes from the Latin word 

 for hand. In Yirgil it means a table-napkin for wiping the 

 hands. Its sense was extended to a table-cloth, and in dress to 

 mantle as covering everything like such a cloth, and then the 

 meaning narrows in the diminutive mantilla. The noun stock- 

 ing comes from the verb stick as it denotes that into which a 

 foot is stuck, as a malefactor's feet were stuck through holes in 

 a plank, — ^the village stocks still to be seen in England. Sock, 

 a doublet of stocking, is a variant of the socket into which a foot 

 is set. The form stock for stocking occurs in The Taming of 

 the Shrew where Petruchio's lackey comes in "with a linen stock 

 on one leg" (iii. 2, 67). Nether-stocks is a Shakespearian name 

 for locking. Falstaff says, "I will sew nether-stocks and mend 

 them and foot them too." 1 H. lY. ii. 4, 130. The word 



