E. Cobham Brewer 1810–1897. Dictionary of Phrase and Fable. 1898.
Posy
properly means a copy of verses presented with a bouquet. It now means the verses without the flowers, as the “posy of a ring,” or the flowers without the verses, as a “pretty posy.”
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“He could make anything in poetry, from the posy of a ring to the chronicle of its most heroic wearer.”—Stedman: Victorian Poets (Landor), p. 47.
