stanchless
English edit
Etymology edit
Adjective edit
stanchless (comparative more stanchless, superlative most stanchless)
- Incapable of being stanched or stopped.
- 1594, Michael Drayton, Matilda[1], London: Nicholas Ling and John Busby:
- A stanchlesse hart, dead-wounded, euer bleeding,
On whom that nere-fild vulture Loue sits feeding.
- 1819, Jeremiah Holmes Wiffen, “Aspley Wood” Canto 2, stanza 26, in Aonian Hours and Other Poems, London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme & Brown, 2nd edition, 1820, p. 82,[2]
- We see, but cannot heal the stanchless wound,
- We share its gushing sorrow, still it bleeds;
- 1856, Sydney Dobell, “Home, Wounded”, in England in Time of War[3], London: Smith, Elder & Co., page 105:
- And while I listed long,
Day rose, and still he sang,
And all his stanchless song,
As something falling unaware,
Fell out of the tall trees he sang among,
- 1974, Lawrence Durrell, “Sutcliffe, the Venetian Documents”, in Monsieur[4], New York: Viking, published 1975, page 209:
- In his little red notebook the following random thoughts formed and were jotted down, like the slow interior overflow of a stanchless music.
- (obsolete, figurative) Incapable of being satisfied.
- c. 1606 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Macbeth”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act IV, scene iii]:
- With this there grows
In my most ill-composed affection such
A stanchless avarice that, were I king,
I should cut off the nobles for their lands,
- 1612, Michael Drayton, “Song 1”, in [John Selden], editor, Poly-Olbion. Or A Chorographicall Description of Tracts, Riuers, Mountaines, Forests, and Other Parts of this Renowned Isle of Great Britaine, […], London: […] H[umphrey] L[ownes] for Mathew Lownes; I. Browne; I. Helme; I. Busbie, published 1613, →OCLC, page 9:
- This loosness to their spoyle the Troians did allure,
Who fiercely them assail’d: where stanchlesse furie rap’t
The Grecians in so fast, that scarcely one escap’t:
Synonyms edit
- (incapable of being stanched): unstaunchable
- (incapable of being satisfied): unquenchable, insatiable.