shed. After serving as priest
in several Bavarian towns, he made his way in 1799 to Linz in Austria,
where he was welcomed by Bishop Gall, and set to work first at Leonding
and then at Waldneukirchen, becoming in 1806 pastor at Gallneukirchen.
His pietistic movement won considerable way among the Catholic laity,
and even attracted some fifty or sixty priests. The death of Gall and
other powerful friends, however, exposed him to bitter enmity and
persecution from about 1812, and he had to answer endless accusations in
the consistorial courts. His enemies followed him when he returned to
Bavaria, but in 1817 the Prussian government appointed him to a
professorship at Dusseldorf, and in 1819 gave him the pastorate at Sayn
near Neuwied. He died on the 29th of August 1825.

See _Life_ by J. Gossner (1831).

BOOT, (1) (From the O. Eng. _bot_, a word common to Teutonic languages,
e.g. Goth, _bota_, "good, advantage," O.H.G. _Buoza_, Mod. Ger.
_Busse_, "penance, fine"; cf. "better," the comparative of "good"),
profit or advantage. The word survives in "bootless," i.e. useless or
unavailing, and in such expressions, chiefly archaistic, as "what boots
it?" "Bote," an old form, survives in some old compound legal words,
such as "house-bote," "fire-bote," "hedge-bote," &c., for particular
rights of "estover," the Norman French word corresponding to the Saxon
"bote" (see ESTOVERS and COMMONS). The same form survives also in such
expressions as "thief-bote" for the Old English customary compensation
paid for injuries.

(2) (A word of uncertain origin, which came into English through the O.
Fr. _bote_, modern _botte_; Med. Lat. _botta_ or _bota_), a covering for
the foot. Properly a boot covers the whole lower part of the leg,
sometimes reaching to or above the knee, but in common usage it is
applied to one which reaches only above the ankle, and is thus
distinguished from "shoe" (see COSTUME and SHOE).

The "boot" of a coach has the same derivation. It was originally applied
to the fixed outside step, the French _botte_, then to the uncovered
spaces on or beside the step on which the attendants sat facing
sideways. Both senses are now obsolete, the term now being applied to
the covered receptacles under the seats of the guard and coachman.

THE BOOT, BOOTS or BOOTIKIN was an instrument of torture formerly in use
to extort confessions from suspected persons, or obtain evidence from
unwilling witnesses. It originated in Sc