Also (6 feritee), 7 feritie. [ad. L. feritāt-em, f. ferus wild; see -ITY.]
1. The quality or state of being wild or savage; brutishness, wildness; hence, ferocity.
c. 1534. trans. Pol. Verg. Eng. Hist. (Camden), I. 109. This woorcke for a time restrained the rude raginge of the frenetick Scotts, which notwithstandinge afterwarde burste foorthe, encresed with more beastlie feritee.
1682. Sprat, Serm. bef. Artillery Co., 15. Is it not brutish Ferity rather than manly boldness.
1774. J. Bryant, A New System; or, an Analysis of Ancient Mythology, II. 363. The lion ramped: the pard sported: the neighing of the horse was heard: none of them betrayed any ferity; but gamboled, and played with the greatest innocence, and affection.
1883. J. Burroughs, Nature in England, in Century Mag., XXVII., Nov., 111/2. Even in rugged Scotland, nature is scarcely wilder than a mountain sheep, certainly a good way short of the ferity of the moose and caribou.
b. Of a plant, etc.: Wildness, uncultivated condition.
1664. Evelyn, Sylva (1776), 648. The suckers are drawn, transplanted, and educated by human industry, and, forgetting the ferity of their nature, become civilized to all his employments.
1713. Derham, Phys. Theol., II. vi. 55. So many Plants … so far from being useful, that they are very noxious; some by their Ferity, and others by their poisonous Nature.
2. Savage or barbarous condition; † a form or instance of this.
1646. Sir T. Browne, Pseud. Ep., VII. xix. 384. Though the blindnesse of some ferities have savaged on the dead, and been so injurious unto worms, as to disenter the bodies of the deceased; yet had they therein no designe upon the soule.
1652–62. Heylin, Cosmogr., II. (1682), 204. The Ferity and barbarous condition of the first Inhabitants.
1705. Stanhope, Paraphr., I. 415. We might not have retained the ancient Rudeness and Ferity of our Country.
1848. Herbert, in Todd’s Nennius, p. xcix. A population of the extremest ferity.
† 3. Barbarity, barbarous or savage cruelty or inhumanity. Obs.
1614. Raleigh, Hist. World, v. ii. § 2. 584. The true nature of tyranny, when it grows to ripeness, is none other than Ferity; the same that Aristotle saith to be worse than any vice.
1658. Sir T. Browne, Hydriotaphia, iii. 45. To burn the bones of the King of Edom for Lyme, seems no irrational ferity; But to drink of the ashes of dead relations, a passionate prodigality.
1718. Prideaux, Connection, II. I. 19. Fearing the brutal ferity of Anitpater his son, who had murthered his own mother, he withdrew into Egypt.
