stanck

Updated: May 9, 2025

What goes far towards justifying Jonson's acrimony is the wanton confusion of different dialectal forms; the indiscriminate use for the mere sake of archaism of such variants as 'gate' beside the usual 'goat, of 'sike' and 'sich' beside 'such'; the coining of words like 'stanck, apparently from the Italian stanco; and lastly, the introduction of forms which owe their origin to mere etymological ignorance, for instance, 'yede' as an infinitive, 'behight' in the same sense as the simple verb, 'betight, 'gride, and many others all of which do not tend to produce the homely effect of mother English, but reek of all that is pedantic and unnatural.

Walter W. Greg - Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama: A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration: Stage in England