† ˈpioned, ppl. a. Obs.
[? f. pion v.]
? Dug, excavated, trenched.
The meaning of pioned in the Shakes. passage has been much disputed: see Aldis Wright in Clarendon Pr. ed. ‘Tempest’. (The conjecture ‘overgrown with marsh-marigold’, offered in Edin. Rev. Oct. 1872, 363, and adopted by Schmidt, etc., is not supported by any sense of peony, known to Britten and Holland Eng. Plant names, or to Eng. Dial. Dict.) Bulwer's fig. use in quot. 1650, rendering demissos ‘sloping down, low’, is also obscure.
| 1610 Shakes. Temp. iv. i. 64 Thy bankes with pioned, and twilled brims Which spungie Aprill at thy hest betrims. 1650 Bulwer Anthropomet. 163 Terence in the description of a handsome slender woman, makes her to have demissos humeros, as it were Pion'd shoulders. |