Also 7 centon. [a. L. cento, centōn-em, pl. centōnes, garment of patchwork, also the title of a poem (as the cento nuptialis of Ausonius) made up of various verses. In It. centone, F. centon. Orig. with L. pl. centones; afterwards centoes, now usually centos; the F. and It. forms of the sing. have also been used.]
† 1. A piece of patchwork; a patched garment.
1610. Healey, St. Aug. Citie of God (1620), 605. Centones are peeces of cloath of diuerse colours; vsed anyway, on the back, or on the bed.
1628. Shirley, Witty Faire One, II. ii. (1633), E. His Apparell is a cento or the ruines of ten fashions.
1643. Sir T. Browne, Relig. Med., ii. § 13. There is under these Centoes and miserable outsides … a soule of the same alloy with our owne.
2. ‘A composition formed by joining scraps from other authors’ (J.).
1605. Camden, Rem. (1614), 14. Quilted … out of shreds of diuers Poets, such as Schollers do call a Cento.
1646. Jer. Taylor, Apol. Liturgy, Pref. § 16. A very Cento composed out of the Massbook, Pontifical, Breviaries, Manuals, and Portuises of the Roman Church.
1730. A. Gordon, Maffei’s Amphith., 95. They affected a kind of Medley or Cento.
1882. Farrar, Early Chr., I. 554. A cento of Scripture phrases.
b. more loosely: cf. ‘string,’ ‘rigmarole.’
1780. T. Jefferson, Corr., Wks. 1859, I. 264. Henry’s map of Virginia … is a mere cento of blunders.
1822. Hazlitt, Table-t., II. viii. 194. A cento of sounding common-places.
3. transf. (of persons, etc.) Obs.
1626. W. Sclater, Expos. 2 Thess. (1629), 158. Amongst the many Centones of reuolters of Poperie.
1647. Sanderson, Serm., II. 217. The Moabites and the Agarens, Gebal and Ammon … a cento and a rhapsody of uncircumcised nations.
Hence Centoism (also Centonism); Centonical a., of the nature of a cento; Centoize v., to make into a cento.
c. 1618. E. Bolton, Hypercr., in Haslewood, Anc. Crit. Ess. (1811), II. 237. The vast vulgar Tomes procured for the most part by the husbandry of Printers … in their tumultuary and centonical writings, do seem to resemble some huge disproportionable Temple.
1838–9. Hallam, Hist. Lit., I. I. iii. § 80. Not too ambitiously chosen, nor in the manner called centonism. Ibid., viii. § 2. Tassoni has ridiculed its centonism, or studious incorporation of lines from Petrarch.
1842. Mrs. Browning, Gr. Chr. Poets, 24. The tragedy is … a specimen of centoism, which is the adaptation of the phraseology of one work to the construction of another. Ibid., 54. Eudocia … thought good to extend her sceptre … over Homer’s poems, and cento-ize them into an epic on the Saviour’s life.
1859. Sat. Rev., VIII. 257/1. Warton seems to have imagined the text of Comus, Lycidas, etc. to have been little more than a centonism of borrowed thoughts.
