geason
adj/ˈɡiːzən/ · /ˈɡeɪzən/
Etymology From Middle English geson, gesene (“rare, scarce”), from Old English gǣsne (“deprived of, wanting, destitute, barren, sterile, dead”), from Proto-West Germanic *gaisnī (“barren, poor”), from Proto-Indo-European *ǵʰeh₂- (“to be gaping, yawn”). Cognate with Old High German geisini, keisini (“lack”), a noun, and more remotely with North Frisian gast (“barren”), Low German güst (“barren”).
- This white falcon rare and gaison, This bird shineth so bright.16th century, Nicholas Udall, Falcon White:
- […] ye shal finde many other word to rime with him, bycause such terminations are not geazon […]1588, George Puttenham, “Of Proportion”, in The Arte of English Poesie; republished as George Gregory Smith, editor, Elizabethan Critical Essays, volume 2, Oxford University Press, 1937, page 119:
2 more examples
- Such as this Age, in which all good is geason, […]1591, Edmund Spenser, Visions of the Worlds Vanitie:
- Lectorius, friends are geason now-a-days, / And grow to fume before they taste the fire.1594, Thomas Lodge, The Wounds of Civil War, act 2; republished as John Payne Collier, Robert Dodsley, Isaac Reed, editors, A Select Collection of Old Plays, volume 8, London: Septimus Prowett, 1825, page 32:
- Synonyms
- infrequent, raresome, selcouth