Forms: 5 wys(e)ard, -sar, 6 -sarde, -zard, wyssarde, wissard, Sc. weser, 6–7 wisard, (7 wiseard, wizer), 7–8 wizzard, (vizard), 6– wizard. [late ME. wysar(d, f. wys, wis, wiss, WISE a. + -ARD. The pronunciation with voiced s (z) follows wisdom and wise.]
A. sb.
† 1. A philosopher, sage: = WISE MAN 2. Often contemptuous. Obs.
The second quot. may belong to sense 2.
c. 1440. Promp. Parv., 530/1. Wysard (K. wysar), sagaculus.
a. 1500[?]. Chester Pl., Coming of Antichrist, 371. Antichristus. Out on the [sc. Enoch], wyseard [v.rr. rasarde, roysarde], with thy wyles! For falcsely my people thou begyles.
1547. Bauldwin, Mor. Philos., I. i. (1550), A ij. The Grecians … haue therin taken great paynes, naming it first Sophia, and suche as therin were skilled Sophistes or wysardes.
1594. [Greene], Selimus, 214. Perhaps you thinke that now forsooth you sit With some graue wisard in a pratling shade.
1596. Spenser, F. Q., IV. xii. 2. Therefore the antique wisards well inuented, That Venus of the fomy sea was bred.
1601. B. Jonson, Poetaster, IV. v. (1905), 82. Albi. I haue read in a booke, that to play the foole wisely, is high wisdome. Gall. How now, Vulcan! Will you be the first wizard?
1676. Doctrine of Devils, 56. The Politicians, the Philosophers, the Wizers of the World.
1697. Dryden, Virg. Georg., IV. 571. First the wily Wizard [sc. Proteus] must be caught, For unconstrain’d he nothing tells for naught.
1841. W. Spalding, Italy & It. Isl., II. 99. Two young philosophers and wizards, called Phidias and Praxiteles.
2. A man who is skilled in occult arts; in later use, a man who practises witchcraft (the masculine correlative of WITCH sb.2): = WISE MAN 3.
† Occas. applied to a woman.
c. 1550. Cheke, Matt. ii. 1. When Jesus was boorn in beethleem…, lo then ye wisards cam from th’est parties to Jerusalem.
1552. [see WISE MAN 3].
c. 1574. G. Harvey, Marginalia (1913), 163. Owr vulgar Astrologers, especially such, as ar commonly termed Cunning men or Artsmen. Sum call them wissards.
1596. in Spalding Club Misc., I. 84. Sche is convick … as a common weser and socerer, and ordint to be brunt.
1606. Holland, Sueton., 237. Yet to none was he more spitefully bent than to wiseards and Astrologers.
1621. [see WHITE WITCH].
1629. Milton, Nativity, 23. The Star-led Wisards haste with odours sweet.
1674. Hobbes, Odyssey, 73. I was forc’t to come T’inquire of th’ Wizard, old Tiresias, What the Fates say about my going home.
1713. Swift, Author upon Himself, 7. Clowns on Scholars as on Wizards look, And take a Folio for a conj’ring Book.
1751. Tryal T. Collet (ed. 3), 3. A large Mob … at Tring … declaring Revenge against Osborne and his Wife, as a Witch and a Vizard.
1825. Hone, Every-day Bk., I. 942. In July, 1825, a man was ‘swam for a wizard,’ at Wickham-Skeith, in Suffolk.
1851–61. Mayhew, Lond. Labour, III. 107. I call myself a wizard as well; but that’s only the polite term for conjurer; in fact, I should think that wizard meant an astrologer, and more of a fortune-teller.
1872. Hardwick, Trad. Lanc., 133. A wizard who had wrought sad havoc amongst his neighbour’s cattle.
1897. F. Thompson, New Poems, 113. To dower her, past an eastern wizard’s dreams.
b. transf. and fig.: esp. a man who ‘does wonders’ in his profession: in recent use often trivially applied to an expert.
The Wizard of the North, Sir Walter Scott.
1620. Shelton, 2nd Pt. Don Quix., xxxi. 201. I haue heard my Master say, who is the very Wizard of Histories,… when he came [etc.].
1817. Shelley, Rev. Islam, VI. xxiii. The choicest winds of Heaven, which are enchanted To music, by the wand of Solitude, That wizard wild.
1858. Hawthorne, Fr. & It. Note-bks. (1871), II. 35. Gerard Dow, and other old Dutch wizards, who painted … such earthern pots that they will surely hold water.
1871. L. Stephen, Hours in Libr., Scott (1874), 218. Some reason for suspecting that the great ‘Wizard’ has lost some of his magic power.
1903. Westm. Gaz., 31 Aug., 7/2. The wizard of yacht-building.
c. A witch-doctor or medicine-man.
1845. Darwin, Voy. Nat., x. (1879), 214. Each family or tribe has a wizard or conjuring doctor.
1899. Rider Haggard, Allan’s Wife, 28. This man … had for some years occupied the position of Wizard-in-chief to the tribe.
3. attrib. and Comb., as wizard-craft, -finder, -man, -swarm; wizard-woven adj.
1819. Shelley, Faust, ii. 210. Wizard-swarms cover the heath all over.
1819. Keats, Otho, III. ii. If he flames longer in this wise I shall believe in wizard-woven loves.
1876. H. Brooks, Natal, 334. The wizard-finder is not unfrequently turned to account by the stronger men of a tribe who have an antagonist that they desire to rid themselves of.
1891. Kipling, Life’s Handicap, 277. He went to Juseen Dazé, the wizard-man who keeps the Talking Monkey’s Head.
1897. A. Nutt, in Folk-Lore, March, 53. Wizardcraft has the same ultimate origin as, and is but the unholy and malign side of, the fairy belief.
B. adj. 1. Having the powers or properties of a wizard; that practises wizardry; hence gen. having magical or witching power or influence.
1579. E. Hake, Newes out of Powles (1872), F iiij b. O wylie wincking wyzard Woolues.
1649. Hammond, Serm., vi. Wks. 1684, IV. 506. That wizard flesh within us, that hath thus bewitch’d us to its false pleasures.
1679. Dryden & Lee, Œdipus, IV. i. 55. Thou blind old wizard Prophet.
1746. W. Collins, Ode to Liberty, Antistr. 2. Beyond the Measure vast of Thought, The Works, the Wizzard Time has wrought! Ibid. (1747), Ode to Manners, 11. Some Pow’r … At which the Wizzard Passions fly.
1794. Mrs. Radcliffe, Myst. Udolpho, xlix. Or in some shadowy glen’s romantic bower, Where wizard forms their mystic charms prepare.
1820. Shelley, Witch Atl., xxvi. All day the wizard lady sate aloof, Spelling out scrolls of dread antiquity.
1835. Lytton, Rienzi, III. ii. These wild and wizard extremes of life.
1897. Daily News, 14 June, 5/3. The audience were sent away without the satisfaction of witnessing the artificial production of diamonds by the wizard chemist or to-day.
2. Of, pertaining to, or associated with wizards or wizardry; hence gen. magic, enchanted, bewitched.
1638. Milton, Lycidas, 55. Nor on the shaggy top of Mona high, Nor yet where Deva spreads her wisard stream.
c. 1796. Roscoe, in Currie, Burns’s Wks. (1800), I. 343. And let Despair, with wizard light, Disclose the yawning gulf below.
1808. Scott, Marmion, III. xx. Lord Gifford … tarried not his garb to change, But, in his wizard habit strange, Came forth. Ibid. (1813), Trierm., III. xxv. The wizard song at distance died, As if in ether borne astray.
1817. Moore, Lalla Rookh, Fire-worshippers, II. 221. Those tow’rs sublime,… Were sever’d from the haunts of men By a wide, deep, and wizard glen.
c. 1820. S. Rogers, Italy, Interview, 194. Tasso, Guarini, waved their wizard-wands, Peopling the groves from Arcady.
1850. Tennyson, In Mem., cxxii. The wizard lightnings deeply glow.
1918. N. Munro, Jaunty Jock, ii. 20. It was like as they were in some wizard fortress cut from rock.
3. Comb.: wizard-like a. = WIZARDLY a.
1859. Geo. Eliot, Adam Bede, v. I know you are fond of queer, wizard-like stories.
Hence (nonce-wds.) Wizardess, a female wizard, witch; Wizardism, wizardry; † Wizardizing ppl. a., practising wizardry or witchcraft; Wizardship, wizardry.
1789. H. Walpole, Let. Hannah More, 9 Aug. I wish my Macbethian *wizardess would tell me ‘that Cowslip Dale should come to Strawberry Hill.’
1866. Cornh. Mag., March, 353. It was vaguely left to force the belief, that on this occasion our basket either carried a distinguished wizardess, or even conveyed the person of a wondrous medium.
1682. W. Richards, Wallogr., 96. The study of *Wizzardism hath also been famous amongst them.
1726. De Foe, Hist. Devil, II. ix. Whether Wizardism made them ugly, that were not so before.
1603. Harsnet, Pop. Impost., xxi. 135. *Wisardizing Augurs, imposturizing South-sayers.
1882. Mabel Collins, Cobwebs, II. 252. Vansittart had learned the secrets of *wizardship during his travels.
