Authority Cited: Steevens
Author name and dates: George Steevens (1736-1800)
BKG Bio-tweet: Elizabethan library; Shakespeare editor w/SJ; Malone competitor; conspired w/Burney & Boswell against Hawkins; hoaxer, exposer
Categories (list of works cited – preliminary) [BKG Note: one Steevens cite in 1773 Dict., indicated in bold italic below.]
Author name and dates: George Steevens (1736-1800)
BKG Bio-tweet: Elizabethan library; Shakespeare editor w/SJ; Malone competitor; conspired w/Burney & Boswell against Hawkins; hoaxer, exposer
Categories (list of works cited – preliminary) [BKG Note: one Steevens cite in 1773 Dict., indicated in bold italic below.]
- Personal communication; bumbast [BKG Note: The OED has bumbast as an alternative spelling to bombast, but not in this sense. The etymology and definition for bumbast in the 1755 Dict. reads: "[falsely written for bombast; the etymology of which I am now very doubtful of; bombast and bombasine being mentioned, with great probability, by Junius, as coming from boom, a tree, and sein, silk; the silk or cotton of a tree.] 1. A cloth made by sewing one stuff upon another; patchwork." SJ adds to the etymology for bumbast in the 1773 Dict.: "Mr. Steevens, with more probability, deduces them all from bambyainus." (bombycinous, L. = of silk; perhaps a typesetter misreading of SJ's handwriting.) The Folio Dict. 5th edition reads the same, but in my copy of the Quarto Dict. 6th edition (1785, but may be a slightly later "hidden" edition) and later editions the correction to bombycinous is made.