The definition of the word honeymoon in an old dictionary, Blount’s Glossographia (1656), on our shelves delights us:
“Hony-moon, applyed to those marryed persons that love well at first, and decline in affections afterwards; it is hony now, but will change as the moon.”
Thomas Blount, however, merely paraphrased the definition in Richard Huloet’s Abecedarium, printed a hundred years earlier, reading:
“Hony moon, a terme prouerbially applied to such as be newe maried, whiche wyll not fall out at the fyrste, but thone (the one) loueth the other at the beginnynge excedyngly, the likelyhode of theyr excedynge loue appearing to aswage, ye which time the vulgar people cal the hony mone, Aphrodisia.”
