Chapter Seven Wise Masters to Shatton of S by Brewer's Phrase & Fable

Sexagesima Sunday The second Sunday before Lent; so called because in round numbers it is sixty days before Easter.

Sextile (2 syl.). The aspect of two planets when distant from each other sixty degrees or two signs. This position is marked thus *. As there are twelve signs, two signs are a sixth.

“In sextile, square, and trine, and opposite
Of noxious efficacy.”
Milton: Paradise Lost, x. 659.

Sexton A corruption of sacristan, an official who has charge of the sacra, or things attached to a specific church, such as vestments, cushions, books, boxes, tools, vessels, and so on.

Seyd [Seed ]. Pacha of the Morea, assassinated by Gulnare, his favourite concubine. (Byron: The Corsair.)

Sforza The founder of the illustrious house which was so conspicuous in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, was the son of a day-labourer. His name was Giacomuzzo Attendolo, changed to Sforza from the following incident: - Being desirous of going to the wars, he consulted his hatchet thus: he flung it against a tree, saying, “If it sticks fast, I will go.” It did stick fast, and he enlisted. It was because he threw it with such amazing force that he was called Sforza, the Italian for force.

   Sforza (in Jerusalem Delivered) of Lombardy. He, with his two brothers, Achilles and Palamedes, were in the squadron of adventurers in the allied Christian army.

Shack A scamp. To shack or shackle is to tie a log to a horse, and send it out to feed on the stubble after harvest. A shack is either a beast so shackled, the right of sending a beast to the stubble, or the stubble itself. Applied to men, a shack is a jade, a stubble-feeder, one bearing the same ratio to a well- to-do man as a jade sent to graze on a common bears to a well-stalled horse. (Anglo-Saxon, sceacul; Arabic, shakal, to tie the feet of a beast.)

Shaddock A large kind of orange, so called from Captain Shaddock, who first transplanted one in the West Indies. It is a native of China and Japan.

Shades Wine vaults. The Brighton Old Bank, in 1819, was turned by Mr. Savage into a smoking-room and ginshop. There was an entrance to it by the Pavilion Shades, and Savage took down the word bank, and inserted instead the word shades. This term was not inappropriate, as the room was in reality shaded by the opposite house, occupied by Mrs. Fitzherbert.

Shadoff or Shadoof. A contrivance in Egypt for watering lands for the summer crops. It consists of a long rod weighted at one end, so as to raise the bucket attached by a rope to the other end.

Shadow A ghost. Macbeth says to the ghost of Banquo -

“Hence, horrible shadow! unreal mockery, hence!”
Shakespeare: Macbeth, iii. 4.

   He would quarrel with his own shadow. He is so irritable that he would lose his temper on the merest trifle. (See Schlemihl.)
   Gone to the bad for the shadow of an ass. Demosthenes says a young Athenian once hired an ass to Megara. The heat was so great and the road so exposed, that he alighted at midday to take shelter from the sun under the shadow of the poor beast. Scarcely was he seated when the owner passed by, and laid claim to the shadow, saying he let the ass to the traveller, but not the ass's shadow. After fighting for a time, they agreed to settle the matter in the law courts, and the suit lasted so long that both were ruined. “If you must quarrel, let it be for something better than the shadow of an ass.”
   May your shadow never be less. When students have made certain progress in the black arts, they are compelled to run through a subterranean hall with the devil after them. If they run so fast that the devil can only catch their shadow, or part of it, they become first-rate magicians, but lose either all or part of their shadow. Therefore, the expression referred to above means, May you escape wholly and entirely from the clutches of the foul fiend.
   A servant earnestly desireth the shadow (Job vii. 2) - the time of leaving off work. The people of the East measure time by the length of their shadow, and if you ask a man what o'clock it is, he will go into the sun, stand erect, and fixing his eye where his shadow terminates; will measure its length with his