subs. (old).—1. A cabalistic word, formerly used as a charm. Hence (2), any word-charm, verbal jingle, gibberish, nonsense, or extravagancy.
[?]. Additional MSS. [Brit. Mus.], 5008. Mr. Banester sayth that he healed 200 in one yer of an ague, by hanging ABRACADABRA about ther necks, and wold stanch blood, or heal the toothake, althogh the partyes wer 10 myle of.
1687. AUBREY, Remaines of Gentilisme and Judaisme, 124 (1881). [In this work ABRACADABRA is given arranged trianglewise, as a spell.] Ibid. (1696), Miscellanies, 105. ABRACADABRA, a mysterious word, to which the superstitious in former times attributed a magical power to expel Diseases.
1711. Spectator, No. 221. I would not have my reader surprised, if hereafter he sees any of my papers marked with a Q, a Z, a Y, an &c., or with the word ABRACADABRA.
1722. DEFOE, A Journal of the Plague Year [BRAYLEY (1835), 56]. ‘This mysterious word [ABRACADABRA], which, written in the form of a triangle or a pyramid, was regarded as a talisman or charm of wonderful power. It originated in the superstitions of a very remote period, and was recommended as an antidote by Serenus Sammonicus, a Roman physician, who lived in the early part of the third century, in the reigns of the emperors Severus and Caracalla. Its efficacy was reputed to be most powerful in agues and other disorders of a febrile kind, and particularly against the fever called by the physicians Hemitritæus.’
1829. COLERIDGE, Aids to Reflection (1848), I. 130. Leave him … to retaliate the nonsense of blasphemy with the ABRACADABRA of presumption.
1837. R. H. BARHAM, The Ingoldsby Legends, ‘A Lay of St. Dunstan.’ The words of power!… I know there are three, And ABRACADABRA … is one of them.
1879. The Literary World, 5 Dec., 358, 2. The new ABRACADABRA of science, ‘organic evolution.’
