a. [ad. L. villātic-us, f. villa VILLA.] Of or pertaining to a villa or villas, or the inhabitants; esp. (after the original sense of villa), rural, rustic; village-.
The Miltonic passage has been freely echoed in the 19th c.: see the first group of quots. and 1822–56 in (b).
(a) 1671. Milton, Samson, 1695. The perched roosts, And nests in order rang’d Of tame villatic Fowl.
1822. Lamb, Corr. (1870), 164. Widgeon, snipes, barn-door fowls, ducks, geese—your tame villatic things.
1889. Gd. Words, Nov., 786/2. [Jacob] herding the tame villatic sheep of his father.
(b) 1751. Johnson, Rambler, No. 147, ¶ 8. He … consulted with her … how I might be … disencumbered from villatick bashfulness.
1771–2. Ess. fr. Batchelor (1773), I. 162. Two rebellious enchanters, whom villatic rusticity styled, Cow-herds,—or Cow-boys.
1822–56. De Quincey, Confess., App. 284. Little asteroids that formed ample inheritances for the wants of this or that provincial squire, of this or that tame villatic squireen.
1846. Lowell, Biglow P., Ser. I. ix. Introd. A feeling of villatic pride in beholding our townsman occupying so large a space in the public eye.
