a. [f. FELONY + -OUS.]
1. Wicked, atrociously criminal. Cf. FELON a., FELONOUS. Now chiefly poet.
1575. J. Still, Gamm. Gurton, III. iii., in Hazl., Dodsley, III. 219.
| And here, gammer, Diccon’s devil (as ich remember well) | |
| Of Cat and Chat, and Doctor Rat, a felonious tale did tell. |
1593. Shaks., 2 Hen. VI., III. i. 129.
| Vnlesse it were a bloody Murtherer, | |
| Or foule felonious Theefe. |
1599. Warn. Faire Wom., II. 1206. How sayest thou to these fellonious murders, art thou guilty or not guilty?
1601. Holland, Pliny, II. 12. These sly theeues and night-hookers, the wicked rabble (I say) and off-scouring of the base multitude (not to be reckoned) committed such felonious outrages, as forced men to naile vp couers and cases before these faire lights and beautifull prospects.
1651. Sir H. Wotton, in Ellis, Orig. Lett., Ser. I. III. 254, note. That felonious conception.
c. 1750. Shenstone, Elegies, vii. 63.
| Must I not groan beneath a guilty load, | |
| Praise him I scorn, and him I love betray? | |
| Does not felonious Envy bar the road? | |
| Or Falsehood’s treacherous foot beset the way? |
1827. Pollok, Course T., IX. 204.
| He set himself, with most felonious aim | |
| And hellish perseverance, to root out | |
| All good, and in its place to plant all ill: | |
| To rub and raze, from all created things. |
2. Law. Of or pertaining to felony; of the nature of felony. Hence, in popular lang. of an act or purpose: Thievish.
1634. Milton, Comus, 195.
| O theevish Night | |
| Why shouldst thou, but for som fellonious end, | |
| In thy dark lantern thus close up the Stars, | |
| That nature hung in Heav’n, and fill’d their Lamps | |
| With everlasting oil, to give due light | |
| To the misled and lonely Travailer? |
1769. Blackstone, Comm., IV. 188. Felonious homicide … the killing of a human creature … without justification or excuse. Ibid., IV. 227. Such breaking and entry must be with a felonious intent.
c. 1780. Erskine, Speech on the Trial of Lord George Gordon (1810), I. 82. High treason, if perpetrated by such a force, as distinguishes a felonious riot from a treasonable levying of war.
1812. Sir H. Davy, Chem. Philos., 14. An act was passed … making them felonious.
1869. Pall Mall G., 5 Oct., 7. Condemning the appropriation of tenants’ improvements as ‘felonious.’
b. Of a person: That has committed felony.
1857. The Saturday Review, III. 21 March, 271/2. He sees no longer the respectable and sumptuous Mr. Redpath, but only the felonious clerk.
Hence Feloniousness, the quality or state of being felonious.
1727. in Bailey, vol. II.
1886. Pall Mall G., 6 Aug., 4/1. A young man … does not forge a cheque for a paltry £20 in a mere access of playful feloniousness.
