[In med.L. the logical term goes back to the 12th or 13th c. On the question of its relation to senses 2, 3, there appears to be no evidence: the conjecture has been offered that the prison may have been named in jocular reference to the impossibility of directly reducing this mood to the First Figure, or because it was considered an awkward form of the syllogism to get out of. The mutual relation of senses 2 and 3 is also uncertain: so far as the evidence goes, 2 may be a specific use of 3, or 3 a generalized application of 2. If the prison was named from the scholastic term, there would be an appropriateness in the name being first given in Oxford.]
1. Logic. A mnemonic word, representing by its vowels the fifth mood of the third figure of syllogisms, in which the premisses are a particular negative and a universal affirmative, and the conclusion a particular negative, the middle term being the subject of both premisses: thus some M is not P; all M is S; some S is not P.
1509. Barclay, Shyppe of Folys (1874), I. 144. Another comyth in with bocardo and pheryson.
1838. Sir W. Hamilton, Logic, xxii. I. 443. Bocardo, which … was the opprobrium of the scholastic system of reduction.
1870. Bowen, Logic, 204. Baroko and Bocardo have been stumbling-blocks to the logicians.
† 2. The name of the prison in the old North Gate of the city of Oxford, pulled down in 1771.
1535. R. Layton, in Strype, Eccl. Mem., I. I. 210. Wee haue set Dunce [Duns Scotus] in Bocardo, and haue utterly banished him Oxford for ever, with all his blynd glosses.
1555. Latimer, Lett., ibid. III. II. App. xxxvi. 99. An epistle sent by Mr. Latimer to all the unfayned lovers of Godds trewthe owte of a prison in Oxenford, called Bocardo.
1694. Strype, Abp. Cranmer, III. xi. 341. And so Cranmer was returned to Bocardo, and the other two [Ridley and Latimer] to other Places.
1772. Wharton, Newman’s Verses. Rare tidings for the wretch whose ling’ring score Remains unpaid, bocardo is no more.
1874. M. Burrows, Worthies All Souls, iii. 37. His brother, who was confined in Bocardo, the famous old prison-gateway which formerly stood at the top of Corn-market Street.
1875. M. Pattison, Casaubon, 415. Bocardo, a miserable hole, where he was like to have died of filth and starvation.
† 3. A prison, dungeon. In phr. in, into (to) Bocardo.
1535. [The quot. of this date in 2, may possibly have the general sense of ‘in prison’].
1550. Latimer, Serm. bef. Edw. VI., 232. Elias had preached Gods word … Was not this a seditious fellow? was not this fellows preaching a cause of all the trouble in Israel? Was he not worthy to be cast into bocardo or little ease?
1583. Stubbes, Anat. Abus., K vij b. If he have not to satisfie aswel the one as th’other then to Bocardo goeth he as round as a ball, where he shalbe sure to lye untill he rotte.
1653. Rob. Bailie, The Dissuasive … vindicated (1655), 62. For myself, I care the less to be cast in these Bocardo’s.
1709. Lett. to Ld. M[ayor] 6. Your Lordship cou’d … not put him in Bocardo.
