Careful Words

top (n.)

top (v.)

top (adv.)

top (adj.)

  I shall be like that tree,—I shall die at the top.

Jonathan Swift (1667-1745): Scott's Life of Swift.

Why, all the souls that were, were forfeit once;

And He that might the vantage best have took

Found out the remedy. How would you be,

If He, which is the top of judgment, should

But judge you as you are?

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Measure for Measure. Act ii. Sc. 2.

They fool me to the top of my bent.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Hamlet. Act iii. Sc. 2.

In the days when we went gypsying

A long time ago;

The lads and lassies in their best

Were dress'd from top to toe.

Edwin Ransford: In the Days when we went Gypsying.

  The schoolboy whips his taxed top; the beardless youth manages his taxed horse with a taxed bridle on a taxed road; and the dying Englishman, pouring his medicine, which has paid seven per cent, into a spoon that has paid fifteen per cent, flings himself back upon his chintz bed which has paid twenty-two per cent, and expires in the arms of an apothecary who has paid a license of a hundred pounds for the privilege of putting him to death.

Sydney Smith (1769-1845): Review of Seybert's Annals of the United States, 1820.