Pride
,meaning ostentation, finery, or that which persons are proud of. Spenser talks of “lofty trees yclad in summer’s pride” (verdure). Pope, of a “sword whose ivory sheath [was] inwrought with envious pride” (ornamentation); and in this sense the word is used by Jacques in that celebrated passage—
“Why, who cries out on pride [dress]
That can therein tax any private party?
What woman in the city do I name
When that I say ‘the city woman bears
The cost of princes on unworthy shouldersʹ?
… What is he of baser function
Fly pride, says the peacock, proverbial for pride. (Shakespeare: Comedy of Errors, iv. 3.) The pot calling the kettle “black face.”
Sir Pride. First a drayman, then a colonel in the Parliamentary army. (Butler: Hudibras.).
