In 1771 de Wailly published Moyens simples et raisonnés de diminuer les imperfections de notre orthographe, in which he advocated phonetic spelling. He was a member of the Institute from its foundation (1795), and took an active part in the preparation of the Dictionnaire de l’Académie. His works, in addition to those cited, include L'Orthographe des dames (1782) and Le Nouveau Vocabulaire français, ou abrégé du dictionnaire de l’Académie (1801). He died in Paris on the 7th of April 1801.
WAINEWRIGHT, THOMAS GRIFFITHS (1794–1852), English journalist and subject-painter, was born at Chiswick in October 1794. He was educated by his distant relative Dr Charles Burney, and served as an orderly officer in the guards, and as cornet in a yeomanry regiment. In 1819 he entered on a literary life, and began to write for The Literary Pocket-Book, Blackwood’s Magazine and The Foreign Quarterly Review. He is, however, most definitely identified with The London Magazine, to which, from 1820 to 1823, he contributed some smart but flippant art and other criticisms, under the signatures of “Janus Weathercock,” “Egomet Bonmot” and “Herr Vinkbooms.” He was a friend of Charles Lamb—who thought well of his literary productions, and in a letter to Bernard Barton, styles him the “kind, light-hearted Wainewright”—and of the other brilliant contributors to the journal. He also practised as an artist, designing illustrations to Chamberlayne’s poems, and from 1821 to 1825 exhibiting in the Royal Academy figure pictures, including a “Romance from Undine,” “Paris in the Chamber of Helen” and the “Milkmaid’s Song.” Owing to his extravagant habits, Wainewright’s affairs became deeply involved. In 1830 he insured the life of his sister-in-law in various offices for a sum of £18,000, and when she died, in the December of the same year, payment was refused by the companies on the ground of misrepresentation. Wainewright retired to France, was seized by the authorities as a suspected person, and imprisoned for six months. He had in his possession a quantity of strychnine, and it was afterwards found that he had destroyed, not only his sister-in-law, but also his uncle, his mother-in-law and a Norfolkshire friend, by this poison. He returned to London in 1837, but was at once arrested on a charge of forging, thirteen years before, a transfer of stock, and was sentenced to transportation for life. He died of apoplexy in Hobart Town hospital in 1852.
The Essays and Criticisms of Wainewright were published in 1880, with an account of his life, by W. Carew Hazlitt; and the history of his crimes suggested to Dickens his story of Hunted Down and to Bulwer Lytton his novel of Lucretia. His personality, as artist and poisoner, has interested latter-day writers, notably Oscar Wilde in “Pen, Pencil and Poison” (Fortnightly Review, Jan. 1889), and A. G. Allen, in T. Seccombe’s Twelve Bad Men (1894).
WAINGANGA, a river of India, flowing through the Central Provinces in a very winding course of about 360 m. After joining the Wardha the united stream, known as the Pranhita, ultimately falls into the Godavari.
WAINSCOT, properly a superior quality of oak, used for fine panel work, hence such panel-work as used for the lining or covering of the interior walls of an apartment. The word appears to be Dutch and came into use in English in the 16th century, and occurs in lists of imported timber. The Dutch word wagenschot, adapted in English as waynskott, weynskott (Hakluyt, Voyages, i. 173, has “boords called waghenscot”), was applied to the best kind of oak, well-grained, not liable to warp and free from knots. The form shows that it was, in popular etymology, formed from wagen (i.e. wain, wagon) and schoi, a term which has a large number of meanings, such as shot, cast, partition, an enclosure of boards, cf. “sheet,” and was applied to the fine wood panelling used in coach-building. This is, however, doubted, and relations have been suggested with Dutch weeg, wall, cognate with O. Eng. wah, wall, or with M. Dutch waeghe, Ger. Wage, wave, the reference being to the grain of the wood when cut. The term “wainscot” is sometimes wrongly applied to a “dado,” the lining, whether of paper, paint or wooden panelling, of the lower portion of the walls of a room. A “dado” (Ital. dado, die, cube; Lat. datum, something given, a die for casting lots; cf. O. Fr. det, mod. dé, Eng. “die”) meant originally the plane-faced cube on the base of a pedestal between the mouldings of the base
and the cornice, hence the flat surface between the plinth and the capping of the wooden lining of the lower part of a wall, representing a continuous pedestal.
WAIST, the middle part of the human body, the portion lying between the ribs and the hip-bones, comprising the compressible parts of the trunk. The word is also applied to the central portion of other objects, particularly to the narrowest portion of musical instruments of the violin type and to the centre of a ship. The word appears in the M. Eng. as waste, “waste of a mannys’ myddel” (Prompt. parv. c. 1440), and is developed from the O. Eng. wæstm, growth, the “waist” being the part where the growth of a man is shown and developed; cf. Icel. vōxtr, stature, shape; Dan. vaext, size, growth, &c. It is thus to be derived from the O. Eng. weaxan, to grow, wax.
WAITE, MORRISON REMICK (1816–1888), American jurist, was born at Lyme, Connecticut, on the 29th of November 1816, the son of Henry Matson Waite (1787–1869), who was judge of the superior court and associate judge of the supreme court of Connecticut in 1834–1854 and chief justice of the latter in 1854–1857. He graduated at Yale in 1837, and soon afterwards removed to Maumee City, Ohio, where he studied law in the office of Samuel L. Young and was admitted to the bar in 1839. In 1850 he removed to Toledo, and he soon came to be recognized as a leader of the state bar. In politics he was first a Whig and later a Republican, and in 1849–1850 he was a member of the state senate. In 1871, with William M. Evarts and Caleb Cushing, he represented the United States as counsel before the “Alabama” Tribunal at Geneva, and in 1874 he presided over the Ohio constitutional convention. In the same year he was appointed by President U. S. Grant to succeed Judge Salmon P. Chase as chief-justice of the United States Supreme Court, and he held this position until his death at Washington, D.C., on the 23rd of March 1888. In the cases which grew out of the Civil War and Reconstruction, and especially in those which involved the interpretation of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth amendments, he sympathized with the general tendency of the court to restrict the further extension of the powers of the Federal government. He concurred with the majority in the Head Money Cases (1884), the Ku-Klux Case (United States v. Harris, 1882), the Civil Rights Cases (1883) and the Juillard v. Greenman (legal tender) Case (1883). Among his own most important decisions were those in the Enforcement Act Cases (1875), the Sinking Fund Case (1878), the Railroad Commission Cases (1886) and the Telephone Cases (1887).
WAITHMAN, ROBERT (1764–1833), Lord Mayor of London, was born at Wrexham in 1764. After being employed for some time in a London linen draper’s, he opened, about 1786, a draper’s shop of his own, and made a considerable fortune. In 1818 he was returned to parliament, as a liberal, for the city of London. He lost his seat at the election of 1820, but regained it in 1826, and retained it till his death, taking part vigorously in the parliamentary debates, and strenuously supporting reform. In 1823 he was Lord Mayor of London. Waithman died in London on the 6th of February 1833. An obelisk erected by his friends in Ludgate Circus, London, adjoining the site of his first shop, commemorates his memory.
WAITS (A.S. wacan, to “wake” or “watch,”), the carol-singers and itinerant musicians who parade the streets at night at Christmas time. The earliest waits (those of the 14th and 15th centuries) were simply watchmen who sounded horns or even played a tune on a flute or flageolet to mark the hours. This appears to have been known as “piping the watch.” The black book of the royal household expenses of Edward IV., under date 1478, provides for “a wayte, that nyghtely from Mychelmas to Shreve Thorsdaye pipe the watch within this courte fowere tymes; in the somere nightes three tymes and maketh bon gayte at every chambre doare and offyce, as well as for feare of pyckeres and pilfers.” Elaborate orders as to his housing occur. Thus he was to eat in the hall with the minstrels and was to sup off half a loaf and half a gallon of ale. During his actual attendance at court he was to receive fourpence halfpenny a day or less in the discretion of the steward of the
