Fwd: "allegory" - Word of the Day from the OED

[Dave Monroe]

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From: oedwotd at oup.com <oedwotd at oup.com>
Date: Nov 17, 2009 7:30 PM
Subject: "allegory" - Word of the Day from the OED
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OED Online Word of the Day
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allegory   SECOND  EDITION 1989


(ælgr)  Forms: 4-7 allegorie, 5-6 allegorye, 6- allegory. [ad. L.
allgoria, a. Gr.  , lit.  speaking otherwise than one seems to speak,
f.  other +  - speaking; cf.   to speak, orig.  to harangue, f.  the
public  assembly. Cf. Fr. allégorie, perh. the direct source of the
Eng. The L. allegoria was occas. used unchanged in 16th  c.]

     1. Description of a subject under the guise of some other subject
of aptly suggestive  resemblance.
1382 WYCLIF Gal. iv. 24 The whiche thingis ben seid by allegorie, or
goostly vndirstondinge [Vulg. per allegoriam]. 1477 EARL  RIVERS
(Caxton) Dictes 66 The sayd Platon dide teche his sapyence by
allegorye. 1589 PUTTENHAM Eng. Poesie (1869) 196 Properly and in his
principall vertue Allegoria is when we do speake in sence translatiue
and wrested from the owne signification, neuerthelesse applied to
another not altogether contrary, but hauing much conueniencie with it.
1712 PARNELL Spect. No. 501 1 Some of the finest  compositions among
the ancients are in allegory. 1840 CARLYLE Heroes (1858) 207 Allegory
and Poetic  Delineation, as I said above, cannot be religious Faith.

     b. attrib.
1532 MORE Confut. Tindale Wks 1557, 415/1 These heretikes nowe not
onely rob the churche in an  allegorye sense.  Answ. Frith 835/1 The
wordes of Chryste might beside the lyttarall sence bee vnderstanden in
an allegorye.

      2. An instance of such description; a figurative sentence,
discourse, or narrative, in which properties and circumstances
attributed to the apparent subject really refer to the subject they
are meant to suggest; an extended or continued metaphor.
1534 MORE On the Passion Wks. 1557, 1340/1 It might be taken for an
allegory or some other trope or figure. 1577 T. VAUTROLLIER tr.
Luther's Ep. Gal. 149 The  allegorie of the two sonnes of Abraham,
Isaacke and Ismael. 1611 BIBLE Gal. iv. 24 Which things  are an
Allegorie. 1751 JOHNSON Rambl. No. 176 11 They discover in  every
passage..some artful allegory. 1846 T. WRIGHT Mid. Ages II. xix. 257
The spirited and  extremely popular political allegory of the ‘Vision
of Piers Ploughman’

     3. An allegorical  representation; an emblem.
a1639 W.  WHATELY Protot. I. xi. (1640) 154 These two mothers and the
children borne of them were  allegories, that is, figures of some
other thing mystically signified by them. 1769 BURKE State Nat. Wks.
II 134 Procrustes..with his iron bed, the allegory of his  government.
1882 MRS. PITMAN Mission Life in Greece 30 That Hercules is only an
allegory of the sun.


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