r sorts of
Carnations, and was generally applied to the single sorts. It must have
been a very favourite flower, as we may gather from the phrase "Pink of
courtesy," which means courtesy carried to its highest point; and from
Spenser's pretty comparison--

"Her lovely eyes like Pincks but newly spred."

_Amoretti_, Sonnet 64.

The name has a curious history. It is not, as most of us would suppose,
derived from the colour, but the colour gets its name from the plant.
The name (according to Dr. Prior) comes through _Pinksten_ (German),
from Pentecost, and so was originally applied to one species--the
Whitsuntide Gilliflower. From this it was applied to other species of
the same family. It is certainly "a curious accident," as Dr. Prior
observes, "that a word that originally meant 'fiftieth' should come to
be successively the name of a festival of the Church, of a flower, of an
ornament in muslin called _pinking_, of a colour, and of a sword stab."
Shakespeare uses the word in three of its senses. First, as applied to a
colour--

Come, thou monarch of the Vine,
Plumpy Bacchus with Pink eyne.

_Antony and Cleopatra_, act ii, sc. 7.[210:1]

Second, as applied to an ornament of dress in Romeo's person--

Then is my pump well flowered;

_Romeo and Juliet_, act ii, sc. 4.

_i.e._, well pinked. And in Grumio's excuses to Petruchio for the
non-attendance of the servants--

Nathaniel's coat, Sir, was not fully made,
And Gabriel's pumps were all unpinked
I' the heel.

_Taming of the Shrew_, act iv, sc. 1.

And thirdly, as the pinked ornament in muslin--

There's a haberdasher's wife of small wit near him, that
railed upon me till her Pink'd porringer fell off her head.

_Henry VIII_, act v, sc. 3.

And as applied to the flower in the passage quoted above. He also uses
it in another sense--

This Pink is one of Cupid's carriers;
Clap on more sail--pursue!

_Merry Wives of Windsor_, act ii, sc. 7.

where pink means a small country vessel often mentioned under that name
by writers of the sixteenth century.

FOOTNOTES:

[210:1] It is very probable that this does not refer to the
colour--"Pink = winking, half-shut."--SCHMIDT. And see Nares, s.v. Pinke
eyne.

PION