The chronology of the sense-history of many words is full of surprises. "Wink" is an ancient word from the original stock, but its most [familiar current use, to close one! "ye momentarily, in a flippant or frivolous manner, especially to convey intimate information or to ex-ress good-humoured interest," is no older than Dickens. On the other hand, one would hardly have supposed the "wire," telegram, was early as 1859. The fact that most Evropean languages use some compound equivalent in sense to our wisdom-tooth" would suggest that this is a very ancient phrase, but the first record of "wisdom-tooth" is from Quain's Anatomy (1848), the lier "tooth of wisdom," used by' Vith century anatomists, being a comparatively modern translation from Greek or Arabic.
Words of recent introduction from dialect are "wilt" and "winsome" Rey gives "wilt" as a North Country word in 1691, and, as early' as 1779, it is noted as being espe-jolly used in America, where often has a figurative sense "Winsome" disappeared from English in the 13th century, but survived in Lowland Seats. Its first modern-record is the "winsome marrow" of
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