Prynne

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. The surname of William Prynne, a 17th-century English Puritan lawyer and pamphleteer who was harshly punished for his writings
2. A name belonging to William Prynne, the Puritan author whose outspoken pamphlets against the theatre and the court made him famous
3. Refers to the Puritan lawyer and polemicist William Prynne, known for his fierce religious tracts and for losing his ears as punishment

Etymology: William Prynne, an English lawyer and polemicist, was so prolific and combative that his name became a common noun. His lengthy attack on the stage brought him before the Star Chamber, which fined him, imprisoned him, and sentenced him to have his ears cropped. Pamphleteers of the period were a noisy, quarrelsome lot, and Prynne was among the most relentless. Over time his name came to stand for the type: the seventeenth-century Puritan writer of furious, heavily argued tracts. Dictionaries record it as a noun, so it now names a category of writer rather than only one man.