402 ERRATA RECEPTA. 



palais, literally palace. Here is a confusion between palatum and 

 palatium. Palatum is palate, witb tlie secondary sense of "vault," 

 from the form of the roof of the mouth. In this secondary sense 

 palatum is applied to the koilon, the ece^estial vault, and is played 

 upon by Cicero: "Epicurus, dum palato quid sit optimum judicat, 

 coeli palatum (xit^ait Ennius) non suspexit." De Nat. Deor. 2, 18. — 

 Ennius lived B. C. 237. Palatium for palace, i. e. "imperial resi- 

 dence of the Palatine," is said not to have been in use until after the 

 time of Augustus. — One more mongrel French term, having its origin 

 in Latin, is malingres. We make of it malingerers, " men who feign 

 sickness." The expression really is maV oegri. — The residuary French 

 of the long Latin word codicarium is cahier. It is properly a codex, 

 or book consisting of separate leaves, as distinguished from a volumen, 

 "a roll of sheets fastened together." Cahier, with us, has become 

 quire, in the sense of " twenty-four sheets." — Hoche-pot, hautes 

 coquilles, chair cuite, potee, foire, sursault, we render by vernacular- 

 isms too commonplace to mention. And has not partir something to 

 do with the signal-flag blue-peter, hoisted when a vessel is on the 

 point of setting sail ? Pologne we make Vo-land, and amiral (Arabic 

 amir-al-hahr, commandant at sea), admiral. Another Arabic designa- 

 tion, fargoman for interpreter, we persist in calling dragoman, as 

 though we found him a drawback to pleasure-travel in the East. — 

 Point-device is an expression used by Bacon and Shakspeare in a way 

 exclusively English. " Mens' behavioui*," the former says in his 

 Essay 0/ Ceremonies and Respects, " should be like their apparel, not 

 too strait or point-device, but free for exercise 'or motion." The 

 latter puts into the mouth of Malvolio — 



" I will be point-de-vise, the very man." 



Point-de-vise (so printed in the less recent editions) is understood to 

 be ' precise, finical, over-exact.' Point de vice, as the phrase really 

 is, is of course 'faultless,' 'immaculate,' ' absolutely perfect.' It is 

 not easy to see, then, why it should have been explained in Whately's 

 notes to Bacon's essays, p. 549, as denoting "the nicety and preci- 

 sion of a stitch (French point) devised or made with the needle." — 

 Certain ecclesiastical addresses or homilies are called in old English 

 pastils. Being grounded usually on a passage just read, they frequently 

 begin with some such phrase as post ilia, sc. verba. The French 

 have moulded the expression into a word of satisfactory sound to the 

 common ear — apostille. — Another ecclesiastical term with us isparvis, 



