Seward’s new words or senses

Note: pages in our 18c Leverhulme study section were originally published on the website in 2010. Links have since been checked and updated.

Words or usages in Seward’s poetry at present unrecorded in OED: Seward Table 1

WordQuotationDate of textComments
sea-zoned'Where the soul's glory shines with clearer beam, / Than in our sea-zon'd bulwark of the west' (Llangollen Vale, p. 9)1795OED1/2 has several examples of such compounds (s.v. sea, sense 21) - sea-bathed, -blown, -bounded, -boke, -circled, -deserted, -divided, -driven, -encircled, -fed, -lulled, -scented, -strewn, -sucked, -tossed, -wrecked - but not this one.
choir, v.'angels choir him, while he waits for THEE' (Elegy on Captain Cook, p. 18)1780OED1/2 does not record this transitive use, 'sing in praise of'. Sense a = 'intr. To sing, as a choir; to sing in chorus' (OED quotations dated 1596, 1610, 1804); sense b (trans.) is undefined, and illustrated with one quotation only - from Seward's mentor Erasmus Darwin: '1791 E. DARWIN Bot. Gard. I. 18 To the sacred Sun, Spontaneous Concords quired the matin strain'. But choir here takes what is sung as its grammatical subject, not the person to whom the song is address.
unsubside'no sad course of desolated hours / Here vainly nurse the unsubsiding woes' (Llangollen Vale, p. 11)1796No OED entry for unsubside or for unsubsiding. There is one for unsubsided, which is furnished with two quotations, dated 1804 and 1815.

Last updated on 16 September 2019