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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

That says his bravery [finery] is not of my cost?”


Shakespeare: As You Like It, ii. 7.

Fly pride, says the peacock, proverbial for pride. (Shakespeare: Comedy of Errors, iv. 3.) The pot calling the kettleblack face.”

Sir Pride. First a drayman, then a colonel in the Parliamentary army. (Butler: Hudibras.).

 

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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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Pretext
Prettyman (Prince)
Prevarication
Prevent
Previous Question
Priam
Priamond
Priapus
Prick-eared
Prick the Garter
Pride
Pride of the Morning
Pride’s Purge
Pridwen
Pridwin
Priest … Knight
Priest of the Blue-bag
Prig
Prima Donna (Italian)
Prima Facie (Latin)
Primary Colours