AGACER

Scheler supposes that agacer, irriter, provoquer, and agacer, to set the teeth on edge, are essentially différent words, deriving the former from OHG. hazjan, G. hetzen, to incite, irritate, set on. Littré hésitâtes between hazjan and a Fr. dialect agasser, to cry like a pie {agace), driving away other birds, and thence (as he supposes) « piquer, provoquer et enfin irriter les dents ». It is a fatal objection to the proposed etymologies that they give no explanation of the old sensé, vouched by Palsgrave and Cot grave, of making blunt, taking off the edge of what was sharp. Palsgrave has: «Blont, not sharpe, rabat u, agasse. Bluntnesse of any edged toole, agasseté, agassure ». And Cotgrave explains agacer, « to egg, urge, provoke, exasperate, also to set the teeth on edge, also to blunt or dull a weapon. » Perhaps indeed the sensé of making blunt or dull may be virtually preserved in the phrase of agacer les dents, as the sensation in question is expressed in G. and Du. by the terms stumpff machen, and stomp, or sleeuw maken, to make blunt or dull. Now ail the sensés of the word are satisfactorily accounted for by a dérivation from OHG. hwassi, MHG. wasse, an edge. When a verb is formed from this noun, it may signify either to give an edge or to take it away, according to the nature of the ellipse, as to bridle a horse is to put a .bridle on, to bark a tree, to take the bark off. It will be observed that the first word by which Cotgrave renders agacer, is to egg (from AS. ecg, edge) i.-e. to urge or provoke. The same sensé is conveyed by MHG. wetzen, from wasse, or from was, sharp. « Sus begunde in wetzen unde reizen uf den tôt. » — Wigalois. The corresponding form in E., to whet, to sharpen or give an edge to, is used in the same metaphorical way :

« When she to murder whets the timorous thane » (Rosciad. v. 81 5). The dérivation from wasse, an edge, seems tobe directly feltin the phrase agacer, or, as Rabelais writes it, esguasser les dens, to set the teeth on

edge, in Dutch, eggig maken. It may however be, as we have already suggested, that agacer is here to be proximately understood as blunting the tecth, or raaking them feel as if they had lost their edge ».