badger, badgeard, bageard

[Fr. blaireau = a badger; O. Fr. bladier = & corn dealer; Low Lat. bladarellus = a little corn-dealer; bladarius, blader i us = a corn dealer, a badger, from bladum, blad us, blad a = corn, which the badger was evidently believed to carry away.] *A. Of persons: A person who bought corn or other provisions in one place and carried them to another, with the view of making profit on the transaction. [BADGERING.] "Some exemption ought not to extend to badgers , or those who carry on a trade of buying of corn or grain, selling it again without manufacturing, or of other goods unmanufactured to sell the same again." -Nicols on and Burn: Hist . of Cumber land , p. 312. B. Of animals (believed to carry off corn in the same manner as the persons now described). I. Ordinary Language: 1. A mammalian animal found in England as well as on the Continent. It stands intermediate between the weasels and the bears, and was called by Linnæus Ursus meles , but is termed by modern naturalists Meles vulgar is . [MELES.] It is a nocturnal and hybernating animal, with powerful claws, which enable it The American Dictionary and Cyclopedia 408 to burrow in the ground. It feeds chiefly on roots. It can bite fiercely when brought to bay. It is of a light colour above, and dark beneath. It secretes an oily matter of a very offensive odour. Country people speak of a dog and a hog badger, but they are not distinct even as varieties. "That a brock, or badger , hath legs of one side shorter than the other, is received not only by theorists and inexperienced believers, but most who behold them daily. "-Browne. 2. The English designation of the genus Meles, which contains one or two other species. II. Technically : 1. Her. The badger is often introduced in heraldic blazonry: it is sometimes called a "brock" (see example under B., I. 1), and sometimes a gray. (Glo . of Her .) 2. The Badger of Scripture, Hebrew תַּחַשׁ (tachhash), has not been identified with certainty. The Septuagint translators render the Heb. tachhash , not by a substantive, but by the adjective ὑακίνθινa (huakinthina) = hyacinthine, hyacinth-coloured as, however, the word is at times used in the plural, it cannot be an adjective. It is probably an animal, but which is far from determined. Gesenius thinks it the seal or badger itself; the Talmud an animal like a weasel or marten; Col. Hamilton Smith a kind of antelope, such as the tachmotse, taca e, or paca e of Eastern Africa. Other opinions make it a dolphin or a sea-cow, or a dugong, or a kind of hyæna. Such diversities of opinion make darkne visible instead of removing it. "And thou shalt make a covering for the tent of rams skins dyed red, and a covering above of badgers ' skins."- Exod . xxvi. 14. Cape- badger . [HYRAX.] Honey-badger: A name sometimes given to the ratel. [RATEL.] Pouched - badger : The English name of a genus of Marsupial Mammal i a. [PARAMELES.] Rock- badger : The rendering in Griffith's Cuvier of Klip-daa ie, the name given by the Dutch colomsts at the Cape of Good Hope to the Hyrax of Southern Africa. ( Griffith : Cuv., vol. iii., p. 429.) The word badger , in the general sense of a hawker, still lingers in the Midland counties of England and some other localities, often under the form bodger .