Wine whets the wit, improves its native force, And gives a pleasant flavour to discourse; By making all our spirits debonair, Throws off the lees and sediment of care.

And when he whets his Tuskes you would sweare there were a sea in's belly, and that his chops were the shore to which the Foame was beaten: if his Foame were frothy Yest 'twere worth tenne groats a paile for Bakers.

We whet our conscience on our neighbors' faults, as sober Spartans were made by the spectacle of drunken Helots;though he who makes habitual talk about his neighbors' faults whets his conscience across the edge.

Come, lads; this wine whets your resolution in our design: it's a needy world with subtle spirits; and there's a gentlemanlike kind of begging, that may beseem poets in this age.

[Either whets their appetite, or prostrates them.

Wine whets the wit, improves its native force, And gives a pleasant flavour to discourse:

Pembrooke and Ferdinand, in mutual strife, Slayne by eche other doth confirme my words And for revenge whets keene the two Kings swords.

How she goads and never spares him, How she whets him and she frets him And in poverty begets him....

"Mirth," (saith Vives) "purgeth the blood, confirms health, causeth a fresh, pleasing, and fine colour," prorogues life, whets the wit, makes the body young, lively and fit for any manner of employment.

The defence is carefully worded so that it does not constitute an absolute denial, but rather whets the curiosity.

We take a pipe of consolation, but it only whets our appetites.

Nor hate, nor vengeance whets the poniard now; A loving sister is constrain'd to deal The fatal blow.

"And the milkmaid singeth blithe, And the mower whets his sithe.

It whets the assassin's dagger, and pours poison into the cup of the suicide.

His first bottle of wine just whets his whistle.

The baited stag will turn, and with the show Of his dread antlers hold the hounds at bay; The chamois drags the huntsman down th' abyss; The very ox, the partner of man's toil, The sharer of his roof, that meekly bends The strength of his huge neck beneath the yoke, Springs up, if he's provoked, whets his strong horn, And tosses his tormentor to the clouds.

The Terek o'er its pebbles Blusters through the vale, On its shores the little Khirgez Whets his murdrous blade; Yet thy father grey in battle Guards thee, child of woe, Safely rest thee in thy cradle, Lullaby, By-low!

" It might be added, "A grass widow whets the appetites of bovines".

Funnell the West Saxon, who was reckoning up how much Liquor had past through him in the last twenty Years of his Life, which, according to his Computation, amounted to twenty three Hogsheads of October, four Ton of Port, half a Kilderkin of small Beer, nineteen Barrels of Cider, and three Glasses of Champaign; besides which, he had assisted at four hundred Bowls of Punch, not to mention Sips, Drams, and Whets without Number.

None of your eastern imitations, but a ninety-mile wind that whets slivers of ice off the frozen drifts all the way down from the North Pole.

Defeat whets victory, they say;

Thy skilful hand contributes to our woe, And whets those arrows which confound us so.

This misunderstanding whets my curiosity. SECKENDORF.

That whets our longings in the spirit's thrall To lay aside these trials, and forestall The hours of Paradise.

" So fumes the fierce swash-buckler, And his toy-rapier whets.