Dictionary

æolian harp or lute

a stringed instrument that produces sounds when the wind blows over it

aught; nought (or naught)

anything; nothing

to look blue; blue devils

Captain Francis Grose, A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue (1796) - to be confounded, terrified, or disappointed; low spirits

blow

bloom

breeches

Daniel Pool, What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew - pants that descended only to the knee and were worn with stockings

Bristowa

Bristol (city in southwest England)

Channel (in Reflections on Having Left a Place of Retirement)

the Bristol Channel

communicate

to open into each other, to be connected

complacency

satisfaction, I think

corn

wheat

corse

corpse

costive

constipated

cot

cottage

cravat

a band or scarf of a loose kind of fine cloth worn around the neck and tied in a bow

to defecate

Samuel Johnson, Dictionary - (1) To purge liquors from lees or foulness; to purify; to cleanse. (2) To purify from any extraneous or noxious mixture; to clear; to brighten.

Demogorgon

a mysterious, awful mythical being of the underworld

depth

or volume, three dimensions

dinner

In the very early 19th century (according to D. Pool, 1993: What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew, Simon & Schuster), the meals were generally breakfast, dinner (3 or 4 in the afternoon), and supper, with no formal afternoon tea. I don't know whether or how this might have differed for passengers aboard ship. (That also seems to be quite a long time between breakfast and lunch to go without food--enlighten me, anyone?)

to discover

to reveal

dropsy

tendency to swell up due to diseases such as rheumatic heart disease--edema, an accumulation of fluid in connective tissue, including the skin (dropsical = tendency to dropsy)

esemplastic

STC, Biographia Literaria - ``Esemplastic. The word is not in Johnson, nor have I met with it elsewhere.'' Neither have I. I constructed it myself from the Greek words, , to shape into one; because, having to convey a new sense, I thought that a new term would both aid the recollection of my meaning, and prevent its being confounded with the usual import of the word, imagination.

According to STC, 'Tis Punic Greek for ``He hath stood!'' (and pronounced essteesee, of course!). He often published as S.T.C. and referred to himself in his notebooks as S.T.C, Essteesee, or Essteesi (and other variations)

ex. gr.

e.g., for example

experimental philosophy, experimental philosophers

experimental science, scientists

falling abroad

something like collapse, falling apart, confusion, I guess

fell

seems to be the English Lake-Country equivalent of a Southern California mesa, only higher & more rugged

film (in Frost at Midnight)

bit of soot fluttering on the grate

fond

also meant foolish, injudicious

fortnight

two weeks

frame

frame = body, framed = embodied, incorporated

friend (in The Garden of Boccaccio)

Ann Gillman

furlong

220 yards

genial

kindly, inborn, native, creative

glass

magnifying glass

glory

a ring or spot of light (a natural phenomenon during misty weather in the mountains of the English Lake Country)

Greta

River adjoining STC's house in Keswick, the Lake Country

haply

perhaps, by chance, luck, or accident

Howard

John Howard, philanthropist & prison reformer, 1726-1790

intensify

You know what it means - a Coleridge invention that survived him! (though he confessed that ``it sounds uncouth to my own ear.'')

intercourse

social interaction in general

to hazard

to attempt, venture, risk

Idoloclastes

idol-breaker

laudanum

alcoholic solution of crude opium

lay

song

to make a leg

Captain Francis Grose, A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue (1796) - to bow

length

line, one dimension

limbo

the abode (neither heaven nor hell) of the souls of unbaptized pagans and infants

lime tree

linden tree

locks

hair

main

sea

Greek, odious

momently

every moment

Morgan family

Mary & John Morgan and her sister Charlotte Brent, old friends of Coleridge

myrtle

plant, sacred to Venus

Otway

Thomas Otway, poet, 1652-1685

palfrey

horse

pocket-book

notebook

Psyche

STC, Note to Psyche: Psyche means both Butterfly and Soul.

Quantock

area of England between Bristol and Nether Stowey, where STC lived approx. 1796-1800

Reason

Kathleen Raine, Introduction, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Selected Poetry and Prose, Penguin, London - Reason, as Coleridge uses the word, is the equivalent of Plato's noesis ... what William Blake calls vision; it is `the mind's eye', a direct intuition of truth, `an inward beholding, having a similar relation to the intelligible or spiritual, as sense has to the material or phenomenal'. What is commonly called reason--in the modern sense of the word rationalism--Coleridge calls the understanding. ... Coleridge's reason, then, is at once the act of knowing, and that which is known.

STC, Aids to Reflection - Understanding is discursive; Reason is fixed. The Understanding in all its judgments refers to some other faculty as its ultimate authority; The Reason in all its decisions appeals to itself as the ground and substance of their truth. Understanding is the faculty of reflection; Reason [the faculty] of contemplation. Reason is much nearer to Sense than to Understanding: for Reason is a direct aspect of truth, an inward beholding, having a similar relation to the intelligible or spiritual, as Sense has to the material or phenomenal. ... The Understanding then, considered exclusively as an organ of human intelligence, is the faculty by which we reflect and generalize. ... The Understanding is truly and accurately defined in the words of Leighton and Kant, a faculty judging according to sense. ... the speculative Reason,--(that is, the reason considered abstractedly as an intellective power--we call it ``the source of necessary and universal principles, according to which the notices of the senses are either affirmed or denied;'' or describe it as ``the power by which we are enabled to draw from particular and contingent appearances universal and necessary conclusions'' ... The dependence of the Understanding on the representations of the senses, and its consequent posteriority thereto, as contrasted with the independence and antecedency of Reason, are strikingly exemplified in the Ptolemaic system--that truly wonderful product and highest boast of the faculty, judging according to the senses--compared with the Newtonian, as the offspring of a yet higher power, arranging, correcting, and annulling the representations of the senses according to its own inherent laws and constitutive ideas.
STC, in The Friend.

sate

sat

Satyrane

In Spenser's Faerie Queene (Book I, Canto vi, l. 21 inter alia), Sir Satyrane was a knight who was half-satyr, half-human. He rescued a maiden (of course) and also ``raungd abroad to seeke aduentures wilde'' (Book III, Canto vii) & apparently sent letters home. STC published some of his letters home from Germany (one of which rivals Mark Twain in its writing-in-accent!) as Satyrane's Letters, once in the first (serial) edition of The Friend, again later in the Biographia Literaria.

save

except

Science (with upper-case S)

knowledge in general

score

twenty

several

also meant respective, different

shrouds

the standing rigging of a ship, especially the ropes leading from the mastheads to support the masts laterally

subsultus

spasm? trembling? shaking?

surface

or area or plane, two dimensions

tairn

STC, note to Dejection: An Ode - Tairn is a small lake, generally if not always applied to the lakes up in the mountains and which are the feeders of those in the valleys. This address to the Storm-wind will not appear extravagant to those who have heard it at night and in a mountainous country.

STC, note to Christabel - Tairn or Tarn (derived by Lye from the Icelandic Tiorn, stagnum, palus) is rendered in our dictionaries as synonymous with Mere or Lake; but it is properly a large Pool or Reservoir in the Mountains, commonly the Feeder of some Mere in the valleys. Tarn Watling and Blellum Tarn, though on lower ground than other Tarns, are yet not exceptions, for both are on elevations, and Bellum Tarn feeds the Wynander Mere.

troll

Samuel Johnson, Dictionary - (1) To roll; to run round.

twain

two

vicious

Johnson uses viciously to mean corruptly (in language)

viewless

invisible

vitriol

sulfuric acid

waistcoat

vest

want

much more of a sense of ``lack'' than it has today

wont

adjective: accustomed, used, inclined, apt; noun: habitual way of doing; verb: accustom, habituate, to have the habit of doing

wroth

angry

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