en us
_endeavour_, due to the phrase _se mettre en devoir_--

"Je me suis _en debvoir_ mis pour moderer sa cholere tyrannicque."[11]
(_Rabelais_, i. 29.)

[Page Heading: NEOLOGISMS]

No dictionary can keep up with the growth of a language. The _New
English Dictionary_ had done the letter _C_ before the _cinematograph_
arrived, but got it in under _K_. Words of this kind are manufactured in
such numbers that the lexicographer is inclined to wait and see whether
they will catch on. In such cases it is hard to prophesy. The population
of this country may be divided into those people who have been operated
for _appendicitis_ and those who are going to be. Yet this word was
considered too rare and obscure for insertion in the first volume of the
_New English Dictionary_ (1888), the greatest word-book that has ever
been projected. _Sabotage_ looks, unfortunately, as if it had come to
stay. It is a derivative of _saboter_, to scamp work, from _sabot_, a
wooden shoe, used contemptuously of an inferior article. The great
French dictionaries do not know it in its latest sense of malicious
damage done by strikers, and the _New English Dictionary_, which
finished _Sa-_ in the year 1912, just missed it. _Hooligan_ is not
recorded by the _New English Dictionary_. The original _Hooligans_ were
a spirited Irish family of that name whose proceedings enlivened the
drab monotony of life in Southwark towards the end of the 19th century.
The word is younger than the Australian _larrikin_, of doubtful origin
(see p. 190), but older than Fr. _apache_. The adoption of the Red
Indian name _Apache_ for a modern Parisian bravo is a curious parallel
to the 18th-century use of _Mohock_ (Mohawk) for an aristocratic London
ruffler.

_Heckle_ is first recorded in its political sense for 1880. The _New
English Dictionary_ quotes it from _Punch_ in connection with the Fourth
Party. In Scottish, however, it is old in this sense, so that it is an
example of a dialect word that has risen late in life. Its southern form
_hatchell_ is common in Mid. English in its proper sense of "teasing"
hemp or flax, and the metaphor is exactly the same. _Tease_, earlier
_toose_, means to pluck or pull to pieces, hence the name _teasel_ for
the thistle used by wool-carders. The older form is seen in the
derivative _tousle_, the family name _Tozer_, and the dog's name
_Towser_. _Feckless_, a common Scottish word, wa