Obs. [ad. L. excrēment-um, f. excrē-, excrēscĕre, f. ex- out + crēscĕre to grow.]
1. That which grows out or forth; an outgrowth; said esp. of hair, nails, feathers.
1588. Shaks., L. L. L., V. i. 109. It will please his Grace … to dallie with my excrement, with my mustachio.
1609. C. Butler, Fem. Mon., i. (1623), C j. Men, beasts, and fowles: which haue outwardly some offensiue excrement, as haire or feathers.
1615. W. Hull, Mirr. Maj., A iv a. Siluer and gold, the white and yellow excrements of the earth?
1688. R. Holme, Armoury, Armoury, II. 85/2. Agarick, an Excrement or hard Mushroom, growing out of the sides of old Trees.
1705. trans. Bosman’s Guinea, xiv. 236. That Excrement in the Negroes being more like Wool than hair.
b. A growth, product.
1616. Surfl. & Markh., Countrey Farme, 507. The excrements of the poole … are the frogge and the creuisse.
2. fig. (When the notion is that of ‘superfluous outgrowth,’ this is sometimes not easily distinguished from the fig. use of EXCREMENT1.)
1549. Compl. Scot., vi. 59. The myst, it is the excrement or the superfluite of the cluddis.
1590. Nashe, Pasquil’s Apol., I. A iiij b. Our Religion in England is no newe excrement of the braine of man.
1606. Warner, Alb. Eng., XV. xciv. (1612), 376. Wit so is wisedomes Excrement.
a. 1677. Barrow, Serm., Wks. 1716, I. 322. Unwilling to part with the very superfluities and excrements of their fortune.
3. abstr. Growth, increase, augmentation.
1607. Topsell, Serpents (1653), 653. Otherwise they [great Worms] would increase after the same sort in all respects, as the common Wasps do.
The excrement is only in the small Worms.
1609. Dowland, Ornith. Microl., 47. Augmentation … is the excrement of some Note. For in it is put a Minime for a Semibreefe.
