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Calʹiban

.

Rude, uncouth, unknown; as a Caliban style, a Caliban language. The allusion is to Shakespeare’s Caliban (The Tempest), in which character Lord Falkland, etc., said that Shakespeare had not only invented a new creation, but also a new language.

“Satan had not the privilege, as Caliban, to use new phrases, and diction unknown.”—Dr. Bentley.


Coleridge says, “In him [Caliban, as in some brute animals, this advance to the intellectual faculties, without the moral sense, is marked by the appearance of vice.”


(Caliban is the “missing linkbetween brute animals and man.)

 

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Entry taken from Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, edited by the Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D. and revised in 1895.

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Caledonia
Calembour (French)
Calendar
Calendar
Calendars (The Three)
Calends
Calepin (A)
Caleys (A Stock Exchange term)
Calf-love
Calf-skin
Caliban
Calibre [kali-ber]
Caliburn
Calico
Calidore
Caligorant
Caligula
Caligula’s Horse
Caliph or Calif
Calista
Calisto and Arcas

See Also:

Caliban