Gerard's Herbal

Glossary

Of obsolete words, or words used in an obsolete sense

Abstersion	Cleaning or scouring
Abstersive	Having a cleansing or purging nature
Acin	One of the individual sections of which a fruit like the blackberry is formed.
Adjutories	Substances added to a medicine in order to increase or assist the action of another ingredient.
Adust	Scorched or dried by heat
Adustion	Scorching or drying by heat
Ægilops	An ulcer in the inner corner of the eye
Ague	Malaria
Alexipharmical	Being an antidote against poisons
Allay	To dilute
Allege	To advance as evidence or in argument.
Almonds in the throat	Tonsils
Ancome	A small sore or boil
Angina	Tonsilitis or swollen neck glands
Aposteme	An abscess
Argema	An ulcer on the eyeball
Astonied	Numbed
Astriction	Binding together
Available	Effective
Axungia	Goose grease
Baggage	Filth or refuse
Banquet	A sweetmeat
Barrow	A castrated pig
Bastard	A strong sweet Spanish wine
Beach	Shingle, pebbles by the seashore
Bear-worm	A centipede or hairy caterpillar
Bewray	To expose or reveal
Bezoar-stone	A hard stone-like deposit found in the digestive system of certain ruminants, as goats, llamas, etc.; believed to have great effect as an antidote to poisons.
Bifid	Divided into two parts
Bird-lime	A sticky substance used for catching birds, by smearing it on twigs on which they perch, and are stuck fast.
Bletch	Shoe blacking
Blowing	Blossoming
Blunket	Greyish blue
Bole Armeniac	An astringent clay from Armenia, used as an antidote and styptic.
Bombast	Cotton-wool
Botch	A swelling, wen or tumour
Bray	To crush in a mortar
Buckler	A shield
Bunny	A lump or soft watery swelling of a joint
Burgundian cross	A St. Andrew's cross, one in the shape of the letter X
Bursting	Hernia
Calcitheos	Litharge (Lead oxide)
Calends	The first of the month
Candia, Candy	Crete
Capillary	Hair-like
Caria	A region now in south-western Turkey
Carinated	Having a central ridge, like the keel of a boat
Carole	A syphilitic sore
Caudle	A warm drink consisting of thin gruel, mixed with wine or ale, sweetened and spiced.
Cellar	A store room
Censure	To decide definitively
Cerecloth	A cloth impregnated with wax or ointment.
Cerot	A mixture of wax and tallow used as a basis for ointments
Ceruse	White lead, a mixture of lead monoxide and lead carbonate
Chamfered	Grooved
Champion	Fertile open country
Chap	A jaw
Cheer	Face, appearance
Chiches	Chickpeas
Chimetla	Chilblains
Chincough	Whooping cough or pertussis
Chirurgeon	A surgeon
Chirurgery	Surgery
Chives	(If not the herb of the onion family) Thread-like stamens or pistils of a flower.
Chœrada	The swellings of scrofula or King's evil
Choler	Bile
Chylisma	The juice of a plant boiled until thick
Cimolia	A kind of soft clay like fuller's earth
Classis	A group of plants classed together; what modern botanists call a taxon
Clog	A tuber
Clout	A piece of cloth
Clown	A peasant or countryman
Clyster	An enema
Cod	Of a plant, a seed-pod; of a man, a testicle.
Collyrium, Collyrie	An eye-wash
Commodity	Ease of being obtained
Concocted	Digested
Cony-berry	A rabbit warren
Copperas	Sulphate of iron
Courses	(Of a woman) Menstrual flow
Cousin german	A first cousin
Crag	A projecting rough piece of stone or the like
Crambling	Twisting about while creeping along the ground
Cray	A disease of hawks, whose symptoms are severe constipation.
Cross Week	The sixth week after Easter, the Thursday of which is the Feast of the Ascension of Jesus Christ
Crudities	Defined as "Imperfect concoction of the humours"
Cubit	About 18 inches or 45 centimetres
Cuit	Sweet wine boiled down until it is thick
Degree	As in e.g. Galen maketh them hot in the third degree, and dry in the second degree &c.: "Upon the subject both of simple medicines, and of compounding them, Galen wrote many treatises; and he exercised the utmost stretch of imagination in determining the properties of simples. For these properties were deduced from the four primary qualities of hot, cold, moist, and dry, and were conceived by him to exist each in four different degrees. Thus the quality of hot, for instance, was possessed by different substances in the first, second, third, or fourth degree. Chicory was believed to be cold in the first degree, and pepper to be hot in the fourth degree. By the different combinations of these qualities, in their different degrees, he supposed that all medicines operated; and he even explained the sensible qualities of certain substances, such as sour, salt, acrid, &c. as depending upon the primary qualities just mentioned. Thus saltiness, he said, originated in the principle of heat: bitterness he deduced from dryness; sourness from cold; &c." From The Cyclopædia, Or, Universal Dictionary of Arts, Sciences, and Literature by Abraham Rees (1824)
Delay	To dilute
Delayed	Weakened or diluted
Deletery	Noxious, deleterious
Depured	Purified
Desired sickness	Menstruation, in cases of amenorrhoea or delayed menarche.
Dial	A navigator's compass
Discuss	To dissolve, disperse or drive away.
Divers	Several
Dodkin	A bud or shoot
Doted	Decayed internally
Dram	One eighth of an apothecary's ounce, or about 3.9 g.
Earsh	A stubble field
Electuario Aromaticum	A medicine compounded of aromatic herbs and spices, with honey
Electuary	A medicine made by mixing a drug with honey or thick syrup
Empiric	A quack doctor
Emplastic	Adhesive, glutinous
Enterocele	A internal hernia where the small intestine has ruptured through its containing membrane
Epinyctides	Pustules which appear only at night
Eschar	A dry brown dead patch on the skin, caused by a burn or some corrosive substance.
Falked	Curved
Falling sickness	Epilepsy
Feculent	Polluted with filth
Fell	The skin of an animal
Felon	A sore on the skin, like a boil, but smaller
Ferulous	Resembling or related to Fennel
Flash	Watery
Floating	Having scum floating on the top
Flowers	(Of a woman) Menstrual flow
Flux	A discharge; if substance is not specified, of bloody excrements i.e. dysentery
Foggy	Mossy or marshy
French pox, French disease	Syphilis
Friezed	Covered with a downy coating
Fuliginous	Sooty
Fundament	The anus
Gagate Lapide	Jet, a black semiprecious stone
Galbineous	Yellowish in colour
Gallipot	A small glazed pot used for holding medicine etc.
Gang Week	The sixth week after Easter, the Thursday of which is the Feast of the Ascension of Jesus Christ
Gargarise	To gargle
Gargarism	A gargle
Garner	A storehouse for grain or other food.
Garum	A salty condiment prepared from fish offal; Thai fish sauce is the modern equivalent.
Good-morrow	Something trifling or unimportant
Grain	(Measure) One 480^th of an apothecary's ounce, or about 65 mg.
Graver	A maker of engravings or woodcuts.
Grim the Collier	A character in old songs, plays and nursery rhymes; he sold coal in Croydon and was involved in various adventures
Gum elemi	The resin of various tropical trees used for making plasters, ointments and varnish. It has a piny and lemony smell.
Handful	4 inches, or approximately 10.2 cm
Haw	(Of the eye) a film-like growth on the cornea
Helvetian	Swiss
Hicket	Hiccups
Hippocras bag	A conical cloth bag used as a strainer
Horse-leech	A horse doctor
Hose	The sheath enclosing a seed-head or inflorescence
Hoven	Swollen
Huckle	The hips
Hydromel	Honey and water mixed
Imbibed	Steeped in liquid until it has been absorbed
Impertinent	Irrelevant
Impostume	An abscess
Incarnative	Promoting the growth of flesh
Inoculated	Propagated by bud-grafting
Jade	A worn-out horse
Joan Silver Pin	According to Marriam-Webster "probably from English dialect Joan's silver pin, an article of beauty in a sordid setting; from the fact that this showy flower is often found among weeds. " Also a character in Thomas Middleton's The Black Book; she was "Fair without and foul within"
Keel	A brewing vessel
Kernel	An enlarged lymph gland in the neck or groin.
Kex	The hollow stem of a plant
Kibed	Afflicted with chilblains
Kine	Cattle, specifically bovine
King's Evil	Scrofula, an infection of the lymph nodes in the neck by the tuberculosis bacterium. It was so called because it was believed that being touched by a King would cure it.
Knop	A flower-bud
Lady Day	One of the feasts of the Virgin Mary: March 25th, the Annunciation; Aug. 15th, the Assumption; Sep. 8th, the Nativity; or Dec. 8th, the Immaculate Conception
Lask	Diarrhoea
Leasing	Telling lies
Lenitive	Soothing
Lentils	Freckles
Lepry	Leprosy
Lichen	A skin disease involving patches of reddish bumps which itch intensely.
Liefland, Livland	An area on the eastern shore of the Gulf of Riga, in the Baltic Sea, now divided between Latvia and Estonia.
Lieger	An ambassador
Limner	A manuscript illuminator
Link	A torch made of tow and pitch, used for guiding people on  the street at night
Litharge of gold	A mixture of white lead (lead carbonate) and red lead (lead tetroxide)
Lithy	Pliable
Loafed	Having a compact head, resembling a loaf of bread.
Loam	A mixture of clay, sand and straw, used for plastering and making bricks
Loblolly	A kind of thick soup
Lohoch	A cough syrup
Lousy evil	An ailment which causes the body to be infested with great numbers of lice.
Marchpane	Marzipan
Massicot	Yellow lead oxide
Massilia	Marseille
Massilians	People of Marseille and surrounding districts
Matrix	The womb. Sickness of the matrix = hysteria
Mattering	Oozing pus
Medullous	Pithy
Merry-gall	A sore caused by chafing of the skin
Mesaraic, Mesaraical	Relating to the mesentery, a membrane surrounding the intestines.
Metheglin	Mead flavoured with spices
Midland Sea	The Mediterranean
Milt	The spleen
Mithridate	A compound of many different ingredients, believed to be a universal antidote against all poisons.
Morphew	A scurfy or leprous skin condition, usually of the face.
Mother	The womb
Mucronata cartilago	The xiphoid process
Mundify	To clean a wound or sore of noxious matter.
Murr	Excessive production of mucus from the nose
Murrey	A purplish red colour
Muscatel	A strong sweet wine made from Muscat grapes
Nail	The narrower part of a petal, which is joined to the stalk or base of the flower
Nave	The central hub of a wooden wheel, into which the axle is inserted
Neeze	To sneeze
Nemausium	Nȋmes, a city in the South of France
Nervous	(Of a leaf) Having prominent veins
Nitre	Sodium carbonate, not potassium nitrate
Node	A hard swelling, especially on a joint afflicted with arthritis or gout.
Norembega	A vaguely defined area somewhere in eastern Canada or USA.
Nugament	A small or trivial thing
Œdemata	Fluid-filled swellings or tumours
Oil of vitriol	Concentrated sulphuric acid
Olivet	An olive grove
Oppilation	A stopping or obstruction
Orient	Brilliant or brightly shining
Ounce	The apothecary's ounce was approximately 31 grams, which is about 10% heavier than the avoirdupois ounce of 28.35 g. used today.
Overflown	Flooded
Oxycrate	Vinegar diluted with water
Oxymel	A mixture of vinegar and honey
Painful	Painstaking
Pale	A fence
Palmer-worm	A large hairy caterpillar
Pamphylia	A region now in south-eastern Turkey
Panicle	A spike of flowers
Pantofles	Slippers
Pappose	Of a seed, having a feather-like appendage to allow it to be carried away by the wind
Parbreak	Vomit
Pearl	(Of the eye) a cataract
Peevish	Stupid or crazy
Pennyweight	One twentieth of an apothecary's ounce, or approximately 1.5 grams
Per accidens	Accidentally
Perting	Standing upright
Phlegmon	A boil or similar inflammatory tumour
Phthisis	Tuberculosis of the lungs
Phymata	Tuberculous swellings
Physic	Medicine
Physical	Medicinal
Pilled	Skinned or peeled
Pilling	The skin or bark
Pineapple	A pine-cone
Pituitous	Caused by or containing excess of phlegm
Pointel	A pistil (or sometimes, a stamen) of a flower
Pomander	A small cloth bag, or a box with many small holes, filled with aromatic herbs, and carried on the person or hung in a room or wardrobe to perfume the air.
Pontic	a) Sour and astringent or b) Of Pontus, a region in Asia Minor
Populeon	An ointment made from Poplar buds.
Pose	A cold in the head
Posset	A warm drink consisting of rich milk, mixed with wine or ale, sweetened and spiced.
Precious	Afflicted with carbuncles or similar swellings
Pretermit	To omit
Privy maim	An injury to the private parts
Pterygium	A (usually harmless) growth of pink tissue in the corner of the eye. Also called a haw
Pugil	A small handful
Pullen	Poultry
Pulsy	Tasting like peas or beans
Purples	Purpura, an ailment characterised by purple spots, caused by bursting of small blood vessels under the skin
Pursy	Asthmatic, short-winded
Push	A boil or pustule
Quacksalver	A quack doctor
Quartan	A fever recurring every third (fourth, by inclusive reckoning which is no longer used) day
Quickset	A hedge
Quitter	Pus
Rankle	To fester, become ulcerated
Rathe	Early
Rear	(Of eggs) very lightly cooked.
Reds	Menstrual flow
Reins	Kidneys
Remove	To transplant
Rhaetia	Eastern Switzerland and nearby areas of Bavaria and Austria
Rim	The peritoneum, a membrane surrounding the abdominal organs
Rogation Week	The sixth week after Easter, the Thursday of which is the Feast of the Ascension of Jesus Christ
Rosinniness	Resinousness
Ruby	A large, bright red boil or pimple on the face
Saint Anthony's Fire	Erysipelas, a streptococcal infection causing reddish inflamed patches on the skin; or any similar ailment
Saintonge	A former province of France, between the rivers Gironde and Loire
Sal gemmæ, Salgem	Rock salt
Salve colour	Dark brown
Sandarac	Red arsenic sulphide
Sanguine	Of, or resembling, blood; blood-coloured
Sanguinolent	Bloody
Sanguis draconis	"Dragon's blood:" the resin of the dragon tree (Dracæna draco); also used of other red juices.
Sanies	A thin pus or fluid discharge
Sanious	Oozing a thin pus or fluid discharge
Saucefleme	A swelling of the face accompanied by inflammation
Saunders	Red sandalwood
Scab of Naples	Syphilis
Scirrhus	A hard and painless tumour
Scoggin's heirs	Farts
Scolopender	A centipede
Scouring	Violent diarrhoea
Scruple	One twenty-fourth of an apothecary's ounce, or about 1.3 grams
Searced	Sieved
Secondine	The afterbirth or placenta
Sere	Withered
Serpigo	Ringworm (Tinea), a fungal disease of the skin
Several	Separate
Share	The groin
Shiver	A splinter of stone
Siege	Excrement or excretion
Simple	A medicinal herb
Simpling	Collecting plants for medical use
Sith	Since
Sleightly	Skilfully
Smitted	Infected with smut disease
Sod, Sodden	Boiled
Soluble	Not constipated
Sound of a fish	A swim-bladder
Span	Nine inches, or approximately 23 cm
Spather	A spatula
Spature	A spatula
Spittle	A hospital
Squat	A violent jolt or jar.
Squinancy, squincy	Illness: Tonsilitis; Plant: Blackcurrant
Stammel	Red
Staphyloma	An inflammation of the eye which results in it bulging out of its socket
Stean	A large earthenware pot with two handles
Stones	Testicles
Strangury	Slow and painful flow, or complete stoppage, of urine.
Stripe	A blow with a whip, cane, or similar weapon; the welt produced by it.
Stufe	A piece of cloth etc. made very hot with boiling water, for applying to a sore or swelling.
Sub præputio	Under the foreskin
Succade, sucket	Fruit or nuts preserved in sugar or syrup.
Succedaneum, (pl. Succedanea)	A substitute
Sugar roset	A sweetmeat of crystallised sugar flavoured with rose-water
Surculous	Having or producing shoots
Surname	A nickname
Swart	Blackish or dark-coloured
Tansy	(If not the name of a plant) A custard pudding
Tare	The common vetch (Vicia sativa) or its seed
Temperature	Degree of "hotness" or "coldness" – see Degree above
Terms	(Of a woman) Menstrual flow
Terra Sigillata	A reddish astringent clay from Lemnos
Tertian	A fever recurring every second (third, by inclusive reckoning which is no longer used) day
Testern	A sixpenny piece
Tetter	An itchy skin rash
Thrum	A bunch of loose threads, or the stamens of a flower resembling such
Treacle	Generally, any kind of medicine; more specifically, a salve composed of a number of different ingredients, regarded as useful against a wide variety of ailments
Treacle of Vipers	A medicine containing, amongst other ingredients, viper's flesh. It was believed to be a sovereign antidote against poisons, and especially snakebite
Trochisk	A tablet or pastille
Tunned	Brewed
Tympany	Swelling of the abdomen caused by gas in the digestive tract.
Unsavoury	Tasteless and scentless
Untoiled	Uncultivated
Vallesians	Inhabitants of the Valais, an area in Southern Switzerland and the contiguous part of Italy
Venenate	Poisonous
Verjuice	Sour apple or grape juice
Vindelicia	An area now in southern Germany, east of the Black Forest
Vulnerary	A medicine used for healing wounds
Wamble	Of the belly, to seem to move about within the body, as happens with acute nausea.
Wambling	Nausea
Warden	A large variety of pear
Watchet	A light blue colour
Welt	A narrow strip of material put on the edge of a garment, etc., as a border, binding, or hem; a frill, fringe, or trimming. (OED)
Whites	Leucorrhoea, a whitish purulent discharge from a woman's genitals.
Whitlow	An inflamed sore beside or under the fingernail or in a finger joint.
Wimble	A gimlet or drill-bit
Writhen	Twisted
Yard	The penis. Conduit of the yard: The urethra
Yexing	Hiccuping