/ · 1894 Brewer’s · F · Fenton
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One who seeks to mend his fortune by marriage. He is the suitor of Anne Page. Her father objects to him, he says, because
“I am too great of birth;
And that, my state being gallʹd with my expense,
I seek to heal it only by his wealth.”
Shakespeare: Merry Wives of Windsor. iii. 4.
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Entry taken from Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, edited by the Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D. and revised in 1895.
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