W A G

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W A K

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W is the twenty-first letter of our alphabet; and is comJ posed, as its name implies, of two v’s. It was not inuse among the Hebrews, Greeks, or Romans; but chiefly peculiarto the northern nations, the Teutones, Saxons , Unions, &c. Rutstill it is not used by the French, Italians, Spaniards, or Portu-guese , except in proper names, and other terms borrowed fromlanguages in which it is originally used, and even then it is sound-ed like the single v. This letter is of an ambiguous nature; beinga consonant at the beginning of words, and a vowel at the end.It may stand before all the vowels except u ; as water, wedge,winter, wonder: it may also follow the vowels a, e, o, and uniteswith them into a kind of double vowel, or diphthong ; as in saw,few, cow, &c. It also goes before r, and follows s and th ; as inwrath, swear, thwart; it goes before h also, though in reality it issounded after it, as in when, what,&cc. In some words it is ob-scure, as in shadow, widow, &c.

WAADBR1DGE, or WADEBRIDGE, a town of Cornwall ,242 miles W. by S. of London. Lon. 5. 4. W. Lat. 50. 35. N.

WAAL, orWAHAL, a river of Holland , which runs from E.to W. through the province of Dutch Guelderland, and joiningthe Meuse, falls into the German Ocean below Brie).

WACCE, in mineralogy, a species of the clay-genus, of agreenish grey colour, of various degrees of intensity; it occurssometimes massive, sometimes vesicular, and the vesiculte areeither filled when the compound is denominated amygdaloid, orempty. It is not very heavy, and falls to pieces in the open air.

WACI1ENDORFIA, in botany a genus of plants in the classtriandria, and order monogynia ; natural order, Ensatre. Styleone; stamina three; flowers spathaceous; capsule Irilocular andsuperior. Corolla hexapetalous, unequal, and situated below thegermeu. There are four species, all foreign plants.

WACHOVIA, an extensive country of North Carolina , inStokes and Surrey counties, between the Yadkin and the Hawand Deep rivers. It is chiefly cultivated by the Moravians, whofounded Bethlehem, their first settlement in it, in 1753, which isnow very flourishing But Salem is the capital.

WACI1TENDONCK, a town of the Netherlands , in theprovince of Dutch Guelderland. Lon. G. 7. E. Lat. 51.23. N.

WADD, or WADDING, is a stopple of paper, hay, straw, orthe like, forced into a gun upon the powder, to keep it close inthe chamber; or to put it up close to the shot, to keep it from roll-ing out. See Projectiles.

WADDAHS, a savage people in Ceylon. They live bythemselves, and neither till the ground nor breed cattle; but sub-sist entirely by lumtiug with bows and arrows: except that theycollect wild honey.

WADERO, ati'island on the W. coast of Sweden . Lon. 12.30. E. Lat. 50. 24. N.

WADSTENA, a town of Sweden, in East Gothland , seated onthe lake Wetter, 26 miles W. of Linkaping.

WAFER, in the eucharist. See Transubstantiation.Wafers, or Sealing Wafers, are made thus: Lake veryfine flour, mix it With glair of eggs, isinglass, ami a little yest ;mingle the materials; beat them well together; spread the batter,being made thin with gum-water, on even tin-plates, and drythem in a stove ; then cut them out for use. They may be madeof any colour, by tinging the paste with brazil or vermillion forred; indigo or verditer, & c. for blue; saHYon, turmerics, or gam-boge, &c. for yellow.

WAGENINGEN, a town of the Netherlands , in the provinceof Dutch Guelderland ; 7 miles W. of Arnheim , and 24 E. S. E.of U tree In.

WAGE, in law, denotes the giving security for the performanceof any thing.

WAGER OF BATTEL, See Battel.

Wagf.rok Law'. See Law.

WAIFS, BONA WAV1ATA, are goods stolen, and waived orthrown away by the thief in his flight, for fear of being apprehend-ed. These are given to the king, by the law, as a punishmentupon the owner for not himself pursuing the felon, ami takingaway his goods from him, And therefore if the party robbed dohis diligence immediately to follow and apprehend the thief (w hich'is called making fresh suit), or convict him afterwards, or procureevidence to convict him, he shall have his goods again. Waivedgoods do also not belong to the king till seized by somebody forhis use; for if the parly robbed can seize them first, though at thedistance of twenty years, the king shall never have them. If thegoods are hid by the thief, or left any where by him, so that liebad not them about him when he fled, and therefore did notthrow them away in his flight; these also are not bona waviata,but the owner may have them again when he pleases. The goodsof a foreign merchant, though stolen and thrown away in flight,shall never be waifs: the reason whereof may be, not only for theencouragement of trade, but also because there is no wilful defaultin the foreign merchant’s not pursuing the thief, he being generallya stranger to our laws, our usages, and our language.

WAIGATZ, straits between Russia and Nova Zembla ; throughwhich the Dutch attempted to find a N. E. passage to China anddie East Indies, and sailed, but without success, as far as 75° Ion.

E. in lat. 72. 25^ N.

WAIN FLEET, a town of England, in Lincolnshire, 130 milesN. by E. of London . Lon. 0. 20. E. Lat. 53. 10. N.

WAINSCOT, in building is the timber-work that serves toline the walls of a room, lining usually made in pannels, andpainted, to serve instead of hangings.

WA1TZEN, a town and bishop's see of Hungary, on the Da-nube ; 72 miles E. S. E. of Presburg, and 100 E. S. E. of Vienna .

WAIVE, in law, a woman that is put out of the protection ofthe law. She is called waive, as being forsaken of the law ; andnot outlaw as a man is; by reason women cannot be of the 3ecen-na, and are not sworn in leets to the king, nor to the law, as menare; whereas women are not, and so cannot be outlawed, sincethey n-’ver were within it.

WAKE, in navigation, the print or track impressed by thecourse of a ship on the surface of the water. It is formed by thereunion of the body of water which was separated by the ship’sbottom whilst moving through it; and may be seen to a consider-able distance behind the stern, as smoother tjian the rest of thesea. Hence it is usually observed by the compass, to discoverthe angle of lee-way. A ship is said to be in the wake of anotherwhen she follows her on the same track, or a line supposed to beformed on the continuation of her keel. Two distant objects ob-served at sea are called in the wake of each other, when th< viewut the farthest is intercepted by the nearest; so that the observer’seye, and the two objects, are all placed on the same right line.

Wake, is the eve-feast of the dedication of churches, which iskept with feasting and rural diversions. The learned Mr. Whi-taker, in his History of Manchester, hath given a particular ac-count of the origin of wakes and fairs, lie observes, that everychurch at its consecration received the name of some particularsaint: this custom was practised among the Roman Britons, andcontinued among the Saxons : and in the council of Cealchythe,hi 816, the name of the denominating saint was expressly requiredto be inscribed on the altars, and also on (he walls of the churclbor a tablet within it. The least of this saint became of course lb®festival of the church. Thus Christian festivals were substitutedin the room of the idolatrous anniversaries of heathenism: accord-ingly, at the first introduction of Christianity among the Jutes of

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