achebone

bone. ( Wright.) Mr. H. T. Riley, editor of the Muniment a Gildhallæ Londinensis , says, in his preface, p. xviii., that in the fourteenth and the beginning of the fifteenth centuries the more educated cla es used the French word achat , probably pronounced by the English acat , to designate buying or selling at a profit. This "achat" was the source of Whittington's * a-chěk-id, a. wealth. When the term had gone into disuse, and its meaning had become forgotten, some inventive genius, not understanding it, devised the story of "Whittington and his Cat." Max Müller declined pronouncing an opinion upon this hypothesis till he had traced the story or myth now mentioned to its earliest form. (See Science of Lang., 6th ed., 1871, p. 605.) II. Plural. Ord . Lang .: Provisions, viands. "The kitchin clerke, that hight Digestion, Did order all th' achates in seemely wise." Spenser: F. Q., II. ix. 81. It is so in the first and second quartos, but in the folios it is cates . a-cha-tes, S. [Gr. ἀχάτης ( achatës ), Lat. achates the agate; also in part the onyx. Pliny says that it was first found on the banks of the Achates, now the Drillo, a river in Sicily.] An agate. ( Minsheu , .) "These following bodies do not draw, smaragd, achates."-Bacon: Physiol. Rem.