hedgeborn
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English
[edit]Etymology
[edit]Adjective
[edit]hedgeborn (not comparable)
- (obsolete) Born under a hedge or of low birth.
- 1591 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The First Part of Henry the Sixt”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act IV, scene i]:
- Be quite degraded, like a hedge-born swine
- (obsolete) growing in a hedge
- 1869, George Eliot, How Lisa Loved the King:
- The trader's child, whose soaring spirit rose
As hedge-born aloe-flowers that rarest years disclose
References
[edit]“hedgeborn”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.