Also 5 vngwent, 6–7 vnguent. [ad. L. unguent-um, f. unguĕre to anoint. Cf. F. onguent, It., Sp., Pg. unguento.] An ointment or salve.
c. 1440. Pallad. on Husb., IV. 147. Or madifie hit so in oil lauryne, Let drie hem, sowe hem, vp by oon assent They wol, and haue odour like her vnguent.
1448–9. J. Metham, Amoryus & Cleopes, 1500. For had not a bene that precyus vngwent, He had be slayn and on pecys rente.
1563. T. Gale, Antidot. II. 7. Unto whiche I haue also added no smal number of vnguents.
1624. Heywood, Gunaik., III. 131. Forgetting the Physitions with all their drugges, unguents, and emplasters.
1656. J. Smith, Pract. Physick, 66. Unguents for scaldings must be made so that they stick not too fast.
1720. Pope, Iliad, XXIII. 229. Celestial Venus hover’d o’er his head, And roseate unguents, heav’nly fragrance! shed.
1778. Lightfoot, Flora Scot., II. 618. The buds yield a yellow resinous unguent.
1857. Maurice, Ep. St. John, x. 162. Oils and unguents in the East had a virtue which we do not commonly attach to them.
1887. Bowen, Æneid, III. 280. Bared and anointed shoulders with glistening unguent stream.
attrib. 1894. Daily News, 13 Dec., 8. A small unguent bottle, only slightly damaged, was in this part of the building.
b. fig. or in fig. context.
1595. Fitz-Geffrey, Sir F. Drake (1881), 19. Soules sweet Emplastrum, unguent of the eyes.
a. 1625. Fletcher & Mass., Elder Bro., V. i. Your festred reputation, which no Balm or gentle Unguent could ever make way to.
a. 1683. Owen, Two Discourses Holy Spirit (1693), 62. An Unction, an Unguent from the Holy One.
1838. G. P. R. James, Louis XIV., I. 257. There was no unguent which made the wheels of their foreign policy move so rapidly as gold.
c. spec. (See quot.)
1867. Ure’s Dict. Arts (ed. 6), III. 971. Unguents, the name given by engineers to the greases applied to the bearing parts of machinery.
