varsal
English edit
Etymology edit
Short for universal.
Adjective edit
varsal (not comparable)
- (obsolete, colloquial, usually with world) Whole, entire.
- 1731, Jonathan Swift, A Complete Collection of Genteel and Ingenious Conversation:
- Why, my Lord, you see he's the provokingest Creature in Life: I believe, there is not such another in the varsal World.
- 1826, Richard Lovell Edgeworth, The Rose, Thistle and Shamrock, act III, scene II:
- Now I would give five golden guineas this minute, that her father or any mortal man, woman or child in the varsal world, would come in and say something; for 'tis so awk'ard for I to be sitting here, and I nothing to say to she.
- 1855, Elizabeth Gaskell, North and South:
- Yo' see, if yo'd spoken o' religion as a thing that, if it was true, it didn't concern all men to press on all men's attention, above everything else in this 'varsal earth, I should ha' thought yo' a knave for to be a parson; and I'd rather think yo' a fool than a knave.
References edit
- “Varsal” listed on page 56 of volume X, part II (V–Z) of A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles [1st ed., 1928]