subs. (literary).—Sense; shrewdness. [From the Greek nous].

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  1678.  R. CUDWORTH, The True Intellectual System of the Universe, Bk. i. iv. 406. But in other places of his Writings he frequently asserts, above the Self-moving Psyche an Immovable and Standing NOUS or Intellect, which was properly the Demiurgus, or Architectonick Framer of the whole World.

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  1729.  POPE, The Dunciad, iv. 244.

        Thine is the genuine head of many a house,
And much divinity without a Νους.

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  c. 1796.  WOLCOT (‘Peter Pindar’), i. 229.

        Oh! aid, as lofty Homer says, my NOUSE,
To sing sublime the Monarch and the Louse!

4

  1819.  BYRON, Don Juan, II. cxxx. The good old man had so much ‘NOUS.’

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  1823.  BADCOCK (‘Jon Bee’), Dictionary of the Turf, etc., s.v. NOUS—uppishness; ‘to be up,’ is to be NOUS; but this latter is chiefly confined to the gambling-houses—hells.

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  1827.  REYNOLDS (‘Peter Corcoran’), The Fancy, ‘The Fields of Tothill.’ Most men of any NOUS will tell you this.

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  1831.  R. POLWHELE, in Biographical Sketches in Cornwall, ii. App. p. 37.

        In admiration of my own keen NOUS
That fram’d the model of so fine a house.

8

  1838.  The Comic Almanack, 133.

        No doubt it’s very wrong, and shows but little NOUS,
    To go a tea-drinking, and making merry.

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  1839–47.  R. B. TODD, The Cyclopædia of Anatomy and Physiology, iii. p. 144/2. Aristotle regarded the NOUS or reasoning faculties as separable from the remainder of the psyche.

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  1840–45.  R. H. BARHAM, The Ingoldsby Legends, ‘The Lay of St. Medard,’ II. 247.

        Dont … fancy, because a man’s NOUS seems to lack,
That, whenever you please, you can ‘give him the sack!’

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  1846.  HOOD, Poems, 92, ‘Ode to Rae Wilson.’

        But where’s the reverence, or where the NOUS,
To ride on one’s religion thro’ the lobby.

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  1862.  THACKERAY, The Adventures of Philip, ii. ch. xvii. (1887), p. 244. The fellow has not NOUS enough to light upon any scientific discovery more useful than a new sauce for cutlets.

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  1870.  London Figaro, 26 Oct. ‘A Bab Ballad.’

        When burglars came to rob his house,
He never failed their chief to thank;
And, to reward their skilful NOUS,
Would hand them cheques upon his bank.

14

  1877.  C. READE, A Woman-Hater, xiv. (1883), p. 136. It is only of late I have had the NOUS to see how wise she is.

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  c. 1880.  J. G. SAXE, The Wife’s Revenge, ix.

          The literal Germans call it Mutterwiss,
The Yankees gumption, and the Grecians NOUS,—
A useful thing to have about the house.

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