cento
(ˈsɛntəʊ)
Also 7 centon.
[a. L. cento, centōn-em, pl. centōnes, garment of patchwork, also the title of a poem (as the cento nuptialis of Ausonius) made up of various verses. In It. centone, F. centon. Orig. with L. pl. centones; afterwards centoes, now usually centos; the F. and It. forms of the sing. have also been used.]
† 1. A piece of patchwork; a patched garment.
| 1610 Healey St. Aug. City of God (1620) 605 Centones are peeces of cloath of diuerse colours; vsed anyway, on the back, or on the bed. 1628 Shirley Witty Fair ii. ii, His apparel is a cento. 1643 Sir T. Browne Relig. Med. ii. §13 There is under these Centoes and miserable outsides..a soule of the same alloy with our owne. |
2. ‘A composition formed by joining scraps from other authors’ (J.).
| 1605 Camden Rem. (1614) 14 Quilted..out of shreds of diuers Poets, such as Schollers do call a Cento. 1646 Jer. Taylor Apol. Liturgy Pref. §16 A very Cento composed out of the Massbook, Pontifical, Breviaries, Manuals, and Portuises of the Roman Church. 1730 A. Gordon Maffei's Amphith. 95 They affected a kind of Medley or Cento. 1882 Farrar Early Chr. I. 554 A cento of Scripture phrases. |
b. more loosely: cf. ‘string’, ‘rigmarole’.
| 1780 T. Jefferson Corr. Wks. 1859 I. 264 Henry's map of Virginia.. is a mere cento of blunders. 1822 Hazlitt Table-t. II. viii. 194 A cento of sounding common-places. |
3. transf. (of persons, etc.) Obs.
| 1626 W. Sclater Expos. 2 Thess. (1629) 158 Amongst the many Centones of reuolters of Poperie. 1647 Sanderson Serm. II. 217 The Moabites and the Agarens, Gebal and Ammon..a cento and a rhapsody of uncircumcised nations. |
Hence ˈcentoism (also ˈcentonism); cenˈtonical a., of the nature of a cento; ˈcentoize v., to make into a cento.
| c 1618 E. Bolton Hypercr. in Haslewood Anc. Crit. Ess. (1811) II. 237 The vast vulgar Tomes procured for the most part by the husbandry of Printers..in their tumultuary and centonical writings, do seem to resemble some huge disproportionable Temple. 1838–9 Hallam Hist. Lit. I. i. iii. §80 Not too ambitiously chosen, nor in the manner called centonism. Ibid. viii. §2 Tassoni has ridiculed its centonism, or studious incorporation of lines from Petrarch. 1842 Mrs. Browning Grk. Chr. Poets 24 The tragedy is..a specimen of centoism, which is the adaptation of the phraseology of one work to the construction of another. Ibid. 54 Eudocia..thought good to extend her sceptre..over Homer's poems, and cento-ize them into an epic on the Saviour's life. 1859 Sat. Rev. VIII. 257/1 Warton seems to have imagined the text of Comus, Lycidas, etc., to have been little more than a centonism of borrowed thoughts. |