- envy. The job of a lexicographer is not to decide how a word ought to be used but to look at how a word has been used and to try to work out definitions from what people actually say and write. So, when we come across a quotation like this, we are well pleased: I haue synnit in the . . . syn of invy beand evill content . . . of the prosperite of other personis; (John Irland Of Penance and Confession c1490).
King James VI of Scotland, later James I of England, comfortingly counsels in his Essays of a Prentise in the Divine Art of Poesie (1585): Lose not heart, though pale inuye Bark at thy praise.
We also find invy used as a verb. In John Bellenden’s translation of Boece’s The Chronicles of Scotland (1531) the English King, Edward, is clearly up to no good towards the Scottish hero when he decides to send his ambassatouris to the . . . men quhilkis [who] invyit Wallace mais.