a. [f. as prec. + -LESS.]
1. a. Without an enclosure or hedge; unenclosed, open.
1587. Turberv., Epit. & Sonnets (1837), 397.
| Blacke shall you see the snow on mountains hie, | |
| The fish shall feed vpon the barren sand, | |
| The sea shal shrinke, and leaue the Dolphins dry, | |
| No plant shall prooue vpon the fencelesse land. |
1649. R. Roberts, Clavis Bibliorum, 432. Utterly to lay this vineyard waste, fencelesse, fruitlesse.
1770. Goldsm., Des. Vill., 307. Those fenceless fields the sons of wealth divide.
1887. R. Meeker, Through the Caucasus, in Harper’s Mag., LXXIV., April, 725/2. The fenceless, treeless landscape of the steppe.
b. Without a fortification; unfortified.
1740. C. Pitt, Æneid, XII. 789.
| When, lo! before him, in a full survey, | |
| Exempt from war, the fenceless city lay. |
a. 1873. Lytton, Pausanias, IV. vi. (1878), 509. The fenceless villages of Sparta.
2. Without means of defence; defenceless.
1594. Carew, Tasso (1881), 60.
| Behold mine armes downe held you I present, | |
| Fencelesse my brest, why stay you it to cleaue? | |
| Will you dispatch the worke? now, now content | |
| Of curets go, if corps that bare I leaue. |
1667. Milton, P. L., X. 303.
| The Wall | |
| Immoveable of this now fenceless world. |
c. 1750. Shenstone, Love & Hon., Wks. (1764), I. 327.
| Full on my fenceless head it’s phial’d wrath | |
| May fate exhaust. |
1813. Scott, Rokeby, I. xvi.
| How o’er my friend my cloak I threw, | |
| And fenceless faced the deadly dew. |
1850. Blackie, Æschylus, II. 254.
| Then, in one onslaught fiercely massed, the Greeks | |
| Our fenceless chiefs in slashing butchery | |
| Mowed down, till not one breath remained to groan. |
absol. 1887. E. M. Thomas, Frailty’s Shield, in Century Mag., XXXIV. July, 334.
| Look what arms the fenceless wield,— | |
| Frailest things have frailty’s shield! |
Hence Fencelessness, † lack of skill in fence (obs.); the condition of not being protected by a fence.
1656. Trapp, Comm., Matt. vii. 3. A general doctrine, not applyed, is as a sword without an edge, not in it self, but to us, through our singular fencelessness.
1856. Ruskin, Mod. Paint., III. IV. xiv. § 34. As the fencelessness and thicket of sin led to the fettered and fearful order of eternal punishment, so the fencelessness and thicket of the free virtue lead to the loving and constellated order of eternal happiness.
