a. and sb. [ad. L. Fescennīn-us pertaining to Fescennia in Etruria, famous for a sort of jeering dialogues in verse.]
A. adj. esp. in Fescennine verses. Pertaining to or characteristic of Fescennia; usually in a bad sense, licentious, obscene, scurrilous.
1601. Holland, Pliny, I. 443. They [walnuts] are in some request among other licentious and wanton Fescennine ceremonies, at weddings.
a. 1637. B. Jonson, Underwoods (1640), 243.
| Christians know their birth | |
| Alone, and such a race, | |
| We pray may grace, | |
| Your fruitful spreading vine, | |
| But dare not ask our wish in language fescennine. |
1726. Amherst, Terræ Fil., i. 2. A merry oration, in the Fescennine manner, interspers’d with secret history, raillery, and sarcasm, as the occasions of the time supply’d the matter.
1815. Scott, Guy M., xxxvi. Those upon whom the lot fell were obliged … to repeat a certain number of fescennine verses in a particular order.
1873. Symonds, Grk. Poets, viii. 252–3. Starting from the primitive comic song, in which a rude Fescennine license of what we now call ‘chaffing’ was allowed, and tempering its rustic jocularity with the caustic bitterness of Archilochian satire, comedy became an instrument for holding up to public ridicule all things of general interest.
† B. sb. A song or verses of a licentious or scurrilous character. Obs.
1621–51. Burton, Anat. Mel., III. i. I. i. 405. Menander, and many old poets besides, did in scriptis prurire, write Fescennines, Attellanes, and lascivious songs.
1660. Jer. Taylor, Ductor Dubitantium, II. iii. rule 5 § 1. I haue seene parts of Virgil changed into impure fescennines.
