ppl. a. Obs. Also 5–6 byched, 6 bychyde, biched. Origin (see below) and precise meaning unknown: in general the sense ‘Cursed, execrable, shrewed,’ suits the context.
a. 1400. Alexander (Stev.), 165. [The basiliske] A straȝtill and a stithe worme stinkande of elde, And es so bitter, and so breme, and bicchid in himselfe, That … quat he settes on his siȝt, he slaes in a stonde.
a. 1400. Cov. Myst., 395. Faste, harlotys, go youre gate, And brynge me that bychyd body, I red.
1522. Worlde & Chylde (Roxb.), C ij b. That bychyde Conscyence.
1533. More, Apol., xxii. Wks. 884/2. Helpe me vp agayre with this bichede burdayne & lay it in my necke. Ibid., Debell. Salem, v. Wks. 941/1. Anye of the blessed byched newe broched bretherhead … playnelye proued heretikes.
b. Bicched bones: opprobriously applied to dice.
c. 1386. Chaucer, Pard. T., 328. This fruyt cometh of the bicched bones two, fforsweryng, Ire, falsnesse, Homycide [So 2 MSS.; 2 read bicche, 1 becched, Wr. bicchid].
c. 1460. Towneley Myst., 241. I was falsly begylyd withe thise byched bones, Ther cursyd thay be. Ibid. The byched bones that ye be, I byd you go bett.
[Bicched appears rather early to be certainly referable to BITCH in an opprobrious sense, from which moreover the formation is not easily explained (for shrewed there was a verb to shrew.) The conjecture has been offered that it was a contracted form of ME. biwicced ‘bewitched’; but for this no evidence or analogy has been found. In bicched bones applied to dice, some have suggested a corruption of Du. bikkel ‘knuckle-bone, astragalus, cockal, bone-plaything, dice, marbles,’ Ger. bickel ‘ankle, ankle-bone, astragalus, die, dice’; this is possible, but would suppose an Eng. series *bikkel, *bicchel, bicche, bicched bone, of which the most important links are neither represented nor accounted for, and it would only show assimilation of *bikkel to the opprobrious bicched, leaving the latter unexplained. That bicched bone could be for a Du. *bikked been ‘bone picked with holes or pips,’ is highly improbable: moreover, this would not connect the expression with Du. bikkel, since the latter (whether or not connected with bikkel a pickaxe, bikken to pick, or notch) certainly did not mean ‘bone picked with holes,’ but was a name of the ankle, and of the astragalus or knuckle-bone used in play, long before it passed over to dice. See Grimm s.v.]
