Chapter Nemesis to New Christians of N by Brewer's Phrase & Fable

Nemesis to New Christians

Nemesis Retribution, or rather the righteous anger of God. A female Greek deity, whose mother was Night.

Nemo Me Impune Lacessit No one injures me with impunity. The motto of the Order of the Thistle. It was first used on the coins of James VI. of Scotland (James I. of England). A strange motto for Puritans to adopt (Matt. xviii. 21, 22).

Neology The Rationalistic interpretation of Scripture. The word is Greek, and means new-(theo)-logy. Those who accept this system are called Neologians.

Neoptolemos or Pyrrhos. Son of Achilles; called Pyrrhos from his yellow hair, and Neoptolemos because he was a new soldier, or one that came late to the siege of Troy. According to Virgil, it was this young man that slew the aged Priam. On his return home he was murdered by Orestes, at Delphi.

Nepenthe (3 syl.) or Nepenthes, a drug to drive away care and superinduce love. Polydamna, wife of Thonis (or Thone, 1 syl.), King of Egypt, gave nepenthe to Helen (daughter of Jove and Leda). Homer speaks of a magic potion called nepenthe, which made persons forget their woes. (Odyssey, iv. 228.)

“That nepenthes which the wife of Thone
In Egypt gave the Jove-born Helena.”
Milton: Comus, 695, 696.

    The water of Ardenne had the opposite effect.

Neper's Bones (See Napier .)

Nephelo-coccygia A town in the clouds built by the cuckoos. It was built to cut off from the gods the incense offered by man, so as to compel them to come to terms. (Aristophanes: The Birds.)

“Without flying to Nephelo-coccygia we can meet with sharpers and bullies.”- Macaulay.

Nephew (French neveu, Latin nepos). Both in Latin and in archaic English the word means a grandchild, or descendant. Hence, in 1 Tim. v. 4, we read- “If a woman have children or nephews [grandchildren].” Propertius has it, “Me inter seros laudabit Roma nepotes [posterity].”
    Niece (Latin neptis) also means a granddaughter or female descendant. (See Nepotism.)

Nepomuk St. John Nepomuk, a native of Bohemia, was the almoner of Wenceslas IV., and refused to reveal to the emperor the confession of the empress. After having heroically endured torture, he was taken from the rack and cast into the Moldau. Nepomuk is the French né, born, and Pomuk, the village of his birth. A stone image of this saint stands on the Carl Brücke over the Moldau, in Prague. (1330- 1383.)

Nepotism An unjust elevation of our own kinsmen to places of wealth and trust at our disposal. (Latin, nepos, a nephew or kinsman.)

Neptune (2 syl.). The sea. In Roman mythology, the divine monarch of the ocean. (See Ben .)
   A son of Neptune. A seaman or sailor.

Neptune's Horse Hippocampos; it had but two legs, the hinder part of the body being that of a fish. (See Horse .)

Neptunian or Neptunist. One who follows the opinion of Werner, in the belief that all the great rocks of the earth were once held in solution in water, and have been deposited as sediment. The Vulcanists or Plutonians ascribe them to the agency of fire.

Nereids (2 syl.). Sea-nymphs, daughter of Nereus (2 syl.), fifty in number.
   Nereids or Nereides (4 syl.). Sea-nymphs. Camoens, in his Lusiad, gives the names of three- Doto, Nyse, and Nerine; but he has spiritualised their office, and makes them the sea-guardians of the virtuous. They went before the fleet of Gama, and when the treacherous pilot supplied by Zacocia, King of Mozambique, steered the ship of Vasco da Gama towards a sunken rock, these guardian nymphs pressed against the prow, lifting it from