Chapter Trouble to Truth of T by Brewer's Phrase & Fable

Trouble to Truth

Trouble means a moral whirlwind. (Latin, turbo, a whirlwind; Italian, tur&bgraveare; French, troubler.) Disturb is from the same root. The idea pervades all such words as agitation, commotion, vexation, a tossing up and down, etc.

Trouillogan's Advice Do and do not; yes and no. When Pantagruel asked the philosopher Trouillogan whether Panurge should marry or not, the philosopher replied “Yes.” “What say you?” asked the prince. “What you have heard,” answered Trouillogan. “What have I heard,” said Pantagruel. “What I have spoken,” rejoined the sage. “Good,” said the prince; “but tell me plainly, shall Panurge marry or let it alone?” “Neither,” answered the oracle. “How?” said the prince; “that cannot be.” “Then both,” said Trouillogan. (Rabelais: Gargantua and Pantagruel, iii. 35.)

Trout is the Latin troct-a, from the Greek troktes, the greedy fish (trogo, to eat). The trout is very voracious, and will devour any kind of animal food.

“[Roland] was ... engaged in a keen and animated discussion about Lochleven trout and sea trout, and river trout, and bull trout, and char which never rise to the fly, and par which some suppose [to be] infant sahnon, and herlings which frequent the Nith, and vendisses which are only found in the castle loch of Lochmaben.”- Sir W. Scott: The Abbot, chap. xxii.

Trouveres (2 syl.) were the troubadours of the north of France, in the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries. So called from trouver, the Walloon verb meaning “to invent.” (See Troubadours .)

Trovatore (Il) (4 syl.). Manrico, the son of Garzia, brother of the Comte di Luna. Verdi's opera so called is taken from the drama of Gargia Guttierez, which is laid in the fifteenth century. Trovatore means a troubadour.

Trows Dwarfs of Orkney and Shetland mythology, similar to the Scandinavian Trolls. There are land- trows and sea-trows. “Trow tak' thee” is a phrase still used by the island women when angry with their children.

Troxartas [bread-cater ]. King of the mice and father of Psycarpax, who was drowned.

“Fix their council ...
Where great Troxartas crowned in glory reigns ...
Psycarpax' father, father now no more”'
Parnell: Battle of the Frogs and Mice, bk. i.

Troy-Novant (London). This name gave rise to the tradition that Brute, a Trojan refugee, founded London and called it New Troy; but the word is British, and compounded of Tri-nouhant (inhabitants of the new town). Civitas Trinobantum, the city of the Trinobantes, which we might render “Newtownsmen.”

“For noble Britons sprong from Trojans bold,
And Troy-novant was built of old Troyes ashes cold.” spenser: Faerie Queene, iii. 9.

Troy-town has no connection with the Homeric “Troy,” but means a maze, labyrinth, or bower. (Welsh troi, to turn; troedle, a trodden place [? street], whence the archaic trode, a path or track; Anglo-Saxon thraw-an, to twist or turn.) There are numerous Troys and Troy-towns in Great Britain and North America. The upper garden of Kensington Palace was called “the siege of Troy.”
    A Troy-town is about equivalent to “Julian's Bower,” mentioned in Halliwell's Archaic Dictionary.

Troy Weight means “London weight.” London used to be called Troy-novant. (See above.) The general notion that the word is from Troyes, a town of France, and that the weight was brought to Europe from Grand Cairo by crusaders, is wholly untenable, as the term Troy Weight was used in England in the reign of Edward the Confessor. Troy weight is old London weight, and Avoirdupois the weight brought over by the Normans. (See Avoirdupois .)

Truce of God In 1040 the Church forbade the barons to make any attack on each other between sunset on Wednesday and sunrise on the following Monday, or upon any ecclesiastical fast or feast day. It also provided that no man was to molest a labourer working in the fields, or to lay hands on any implement of husbandry, on pain of excommunication. (See Peace Of God .)