Grasping for the Wind

Infix

You know I would have thought this word came from Ebonics. Yet according to the OED, its been around since the 1500s. Will wonders never cease?

Infix, v.

To fix or fasten (one thing) in (another); to implant or insert firmly.

1502 W. ATKYNSON tr. De Imitatione I. xii. 161 To returne vs to god; in whom if we wolde feruently infixe our selfe, it shulde nat be great nede to seke outwarde consolacions. 1533 MORE Answ. Poysoned Bk. Wks. 1114/1 Therfore hath he..suffered hymselfe..to be touched and eaten, and ye very teeth to be infixed into his flesh. 1578 BANISTER Hist. Man I. 14 So much [of the teeth] as is infixed within the Goummes to be perfect sensible. 1650 BULWER Anthropomet. 169 Infixing their Nailes in the Fronts of them, they claw off the skin. 1774 GOLDSM. Nat. Hist. (1776) IV. 145 The animal cannot infix one tooth without all the rest accompanying its motions. 1809 tr. Mad. Cottin's Amelia Mansfield I. 109 Whether it is not there that vice enfixes, in silence, her most envenomed stings. 1820 C. R. MATURIN Melmoth (1892) III. xxx. 213 Daggers..which those who wish me to live would not willingly see infixed.

Posted by John on April 19, 2007 11:29 AM | Posted to Literature and Language
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