Arnold Zwicky's Blog

(The tiniest of postings, put up only because it tickles me.)

Over on ADS-L, Stephen Goranson has antedated the word gazebo from the OED’s 1752:

Unto the painful summit of this height
A gay Gazebo does our Steps invite.

From “An essay on the pleasures and advantages of female literature … and three Poetic Landscapes” by Wetenhall Wilkes (1741). (ADS-Lers are into antedating as a kind of sport.)

I was charmed by the alliterative gay gazebo (with, of course, an older, non-sexual, sense of gay, plus the great word gazebo). The poem continues, less excitingly:

From this, when favour’d with a Cloudless Day,
We fourteen Counties all around survey.
Th’ increasing prospect tires the wandring Eyes:
Hills peep o’er Hills, and mix with distant Skies.

This entry was posted on January 25, 2012 at 4:02 pm and is filed under Language change, Poetry. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.