concernancy
English
Etymology
A Shakespearean coinage; see concern.
Noun
concernancy (uncountable)
- (obsolete, rare) Relevance.
- c. 1599–1602 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, OCLC 606515358, [Act V, scene ii]:
- Hamlet. The concernancy, sir? Why do we wrap the gentleman in our more rawer breath?
Osric. Sir?
Horatio. [aside to Hamlet] Is’t not possible to understand in another tongue? You will do’t, sir, really.
Hamlet. What imports the nomination of this gentleman?
- 1909, Paul Shorey, “Hippias Paidagogos,” The School Review, Volume 17, Number 1, January 1909, p. 6,
- But if he asks for the concernancy and relevancy of it all he is answered only by the sledge-hammer strokes of rhetoric with which each idea is emphasized as it happens to present itself.
- 1923, James Agate, “Looking and Leaping” in Fantasies and Impromptus, London: W. Collins Sons & Co., p. 234,
- At your age ‘death’ has no significance, at mine it is full of terror. One knows not how, or why, or with what concernancy, but suddenly one knows, and everything in life takes on another aspect.
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