delect

From Latin dēlectāre. Compare Middle English delect (“to ease the pain of (an ulcer)”). Doublet of delight.

delect (third-person singular simple present delects, present participle delecting, simple past and past participle delected)

1. (uncommon) To delight.
   • 1510 September 14, [Andrew Chertsey], Ihesus. The Floure of the Commaundementes of God with Many Examples and Auctorytees Extracte and Drawen as Well of Holy Scryptures as of Other Doctours and Good Auncient Faders / the Whiche Is Moche Vtyle and Prouffytable vnto All People., London: Wynkyn de Worde, folio CCxxviii, recto:

     For they were gretely delected and enioyed togiders

   • 1525 November 28, Rycharde Whytford, The Rule of Saynt Augustyne, Bothe in Latyn and Englysshe, with Two Exposicyons. And Also the Same Rule Agayn Onely in Englysshe without Latyn or Exposicyon, London: Wynkyn de Worde:

     For (many tymes) y^t thynge that doeth delect and please: is iudged or supposed profytable / althoughe in dede (moche contrary) it do noy and hurte.

   • 1530 December 20, Rycharde Whytforde, A Werke for Housholders / or for Them Y^t Haue the Gydynge or Gouernaunce of Any Company. , London: Wynkyn de Worde:

     Yf you fortune to come where they ben / & begyn somwhat to delecte in theyr maters: I aduyse you dissimule & take vpon you yt you herde thẽ not / ne set any thynge therby.

   • 1588, A. King, transl., Canisius’ Catech., section 211; quoted in “† Delect, v.”, in James A. H. Murray [et al.], editors, A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles (Oxford English Dictionary), volumes III (D–E), London: Clarendon Press, 1884–1928, →OCLC, page 156, column 1:

     The thing in this lyf that delects indures bot a moment.

   • 1630, I. C., A Handkercher for Parents Wet Eyes vpon the Death of Children. A Consolatory Letter to a Friend., London: E A for Michael Sparkes, :

     And if in the vast Petegrination of Books, it may please God, that but one delected heart may by any good word in It, be a little lifted vp; […]

   • 1809, Sir Brooke Boothby; Bart, Fables and Satires, with a Preface on the Esopean Fable, volume II, Edinburgh: George Ramsay and Company, for Archibald Constable and Co. Edinburgh; and Constable, Hunter, Park, and Hunter, London, page 219:

     Returned home, with superfluous lassitude, they delect themselves with their extreme usefulness, relate all they have said or done in the day, to-morrow to renew their impertinent futility.

   • 1865, E. H., “Milton”, in Colin C. M‘Kechnie, editor, The Christian Ambassador: A Quarterly Review, and Journal of Theological Literature, volume III, London: William Lister, , page 331:

     We had purposed to write an analytical outline of this most splendid treatise, but our limits forbid, and we invite our readers who have not done so to delect themselves with reading it.

   • 1867, William Duthie, Proved in the Fire. A Story of the Burning of Hamburg., volume I, London: Charles W. Wood, , page 108:

     This table was indeed the “festive board” of the establishment; it was not expected of the visitors to Breitenbach’s that they should delect themselves elsewhere than at its broad surface.

   • 1882, Frances Ann Kemble, Records of Later Life, New York, N.Y.: Henry Holt and Company, page 215:

     While Mr. Rogers was thus delecting himself, in anticipation, with R⸺’s execution, Mrs. Grote, by whose side I was sitting on a low stool, quietly unfolded another letter of Sydney Smith’s, and silently held it before my eyes, and the very first words in it were a most ludicrous allusion to Rogers’s cadaverous appearance.

   • 1886, Giovanni Boccaccio, translated by John Payne, The Decameron of Giovanni Boccacci (Il Boccaccio) Now First Completely Done into English Prose and Verse, volume 2, the Villon Society , page 232:

     […] he himself is a very good teacher and demonstrator how I should solace, showing me by example how I should delect myself with that wherein he delighteth, […]

   • 1890 November 25, Robert Louis Stevenson, Vailima Letters: Being Correspondence Addressed by Robert Louis Stevenson to Sidney Colvin, November 1890—October 1894, volume I, London: Methuen and Co., , published 1895, page 23:

     I could not but wonder how Henry stands his evenings here; the Polynesian loves gaiety—I feed him with decimals, the mariner’s compass, derivations, grammar, and the like; delecting myself, after the manner of my race, moult tristement.

   • 1894, A Boucard, Travels of a Naturalist. , London, page 31:

     They generally have a layer of fat which affords a good deal of oil, with which the Esquimaux delect themselves.

   • 1910, Unity, page 241, column 1:

     Two younger writers, both, however, already “laureates” of the Academy and critics of a made reputation, have offered the most agreeable series of biographical-anecdotic histories for the aid of those who delect themselves in the personalities of the great.

   • 1914, Frederick C de Sumichrast, Americans and the Britons, New York, N.Y., London: D. Appleton and Company, page 263:

     This may seem a harsh judgment to pass on the newspaper-reading public which eagerly purchases and peruses these sheets; on the men of business who hurry over their columns, on the women who study them, on the girls and boys of still tender years who impregnate their minds with all the unsavoriness and all the abominations which are coarsely and crudely told in these debased productions of the publisher’s art, on the workmen who, after a day’s toil, delect themselves in the enjoyment of attacks on all that is best in the world, and in infinite details of all that is worst.

   • 1915 August 11, Edith Wharton, edited by Richard Warrington Baldwin Lewis and Nancy Lewis, The Letters of Edith Wharton, New York, N.Y.: Charles Scribner’s Sons, published 1988, →ISBN, page 359:

     Thank you also for your pamphlet, which I had not yet seen, & with which I shall delect myself the day after tomorrow, en route to Alsace.

   • 1925, Nature Magazine: An Illustrated Monthly with Popular Articles about Nature, page 78:

     Sunflower seeds and peanuts are his favorite morsels, and his way of delecting himself is as quaint as his way of slipping down a tree trunk head first.

   • 1926 April, Paul Morand, “Archie Spencer: A Tale of the Orient in Which a Dealer in Wild Animals is Miraculously Rescued”, in Vanity Fair, page 98:

     Ah Chew, the patron, and his family were probably drinking rice-brandy or fruit-wine and delecting themselves with birds[-]nest soup with some friends or neighbours; […]

   • 1928, Wyndham Lewis, Tarr, London: Chatto and Windus, page 120:

     This boy had seemed to wish to see his hand a mass of wounds and to delect himself with the awful feeling of his own black passion.

   • 1934, Wyndham Lewis, “A Moralist with a Corn Cob: A Study of William Faulkner”, in Life and Letters, volume x, page 312, column 1:

     A gigantic 480-page Morality, like Light in August, is to me profitless and tiresome: a Calvinist moralist, delecting himself with, and turning to good library-sale’s account, scenes of chopping, gashing, hacking, and slitting, is to me ‘abomination’ if it is not ‘bitchery’ – to use the words of one of his more typical figures, ‘Old Doc Hines’.

   • 1969, Transcultural Aspects of Psychiatric Art, page 92:

     Others delect themselves in grandious ideas, wearing a crown.

   • 1989, Soledad de Montalvo, Women, Food, and Sex in History, volume II, American Atheist Press, →ISBN, page 485:

     His famous last words, before entering the arena: Allow me to delect myself with these lions, whom I would wish more cruel than they are.

   • 1993, Charles S. Merrill, Susan E. Cernyak-Spatz, editors, Language and Culture: A Transcending Bond: Essays and Memoirs by American Germanists of Austro-Jewish Descent, →ISBN, page 74:

     As such, I for one (to be both personal and nostalgic now) grew up in Austria over fifty years ago and read there my first books: […] Hauff’s Fairy Tales, consumed (how can I forget?) while perched in a neighbor’s backyard cherry tree and delecting myself on their fruit.

• delectability, delectable
• delectate, delectation
• delection