All to break (Judges ix. 53)

“A certain woman cast a piece of millstone upon Abimelech’s head, and all to brake his skull” does not mean for the sake of breaking his skull, but that she wholly smashed his skull. A spurious form, owing its existence to a typographical mistake. The to really belongs to the verb; and in the last passage quoted it should be read “all to-brake.” The to is a Teutonic particle, meaning asunder, in pieces. It is very common in Old English, where we have “To-bite,” i.e. bite in pieces, tocleave, to-rend, to-tear. All is the adverb = entirely, wholly. So “all to bebattered” = wholly battered to pieces. All-to-frozen. Here to-frozen is intensitive. So in Latin dis-crucior = valde crucior. Plautus (in his Menœchmi, ii. line 24) uses the phrase “dis-caveas malo,” i.e. be fully on your guard, etc., be very much beware of.