v. [f. TRANS- 2 + PROSE sb. Orig. a nonce-word, to match TRANSVERSE v.2, q.v.] trans. To turn into prose; to translate or render in prose. (Chiefly humorous.)
1671. Villiers (Dk. Buckhm.), Rehearsal, I. i. (Arb.), 31. Bayes. … I Transverse it; that is, if it be Prose, put it into Verse, (but that takes up some time); if it be Verse, put it into Prose. Johns. Methinks, Mr. Bayes, that putting Verse into Prose should be call’d Transprosing. Bayes. By my troth, a very good Notion, and hereafter it shall be so.
1672. Marvell (title), The Rehearsal transpros’d: or, Animadversions upon a late Book, entituled, a Preface, shewing What Grounds there are of Fears and Jealousies of Popery.
1673. [R. Leigh], Transp. Reh., 4. What Miracles men of Art can do by Transversing Prefaces and Transprosing Playes.
1681. Dryden, Abs. & Achit., II. 443. Instinct he follows and no farther knows, For to write verse with him is to transprose.
1710. Steele, Tatler, No. 194, ¶ 1. I shall transprose it, to use Mr. Bays’s Term.
1732. [see TRANSVERSE v.2].
1826. Museum Criticum, I. 411. Babrius versified them [Æsop’s apologues]: various persons, as Mr. Smith says in the Rehearsal, transprosed the choliambics of Babrius.
Hence Transprosal, the action of ‘transprosing,’ or something ‘transprosed’; Transproser, one who ‘transproses’ (whence Transprosorship); Transprosing vbl. sb.
1671. Transprosing [see above].
1673. S’ too him Bayes, 4. Godsookers you’l spoil all my Transprosal. Ibid., 34. I … bid your Transprosership heartily farewell.
1673. Answ. to ‘A Seasonable Disc.,’ 19. Has not the judicious Transproser a long Paragraph of the furious temper of these Clergy Men?
1718. J. Trapp, Æneis (1735), I. Pref. 81. Tho’ the Translating of Poems into Prose is a strange, modern Invention; yet the French Transprosers are so far in the right; because their Language will not bear Verse.
