As a balcone is not an upper chamber, nor a chamber over a gate, but is precisely “a loftlike erection supported upon beams,” it seems more reasonable to suppose it an augmentative formed in the usual way from balco.  Mr. Wedgwood’s derivation of barbican from bala khaneh seems to us more happy. (Ducange refers the word to an Eastern source.) He would also derive the Fr. ebaucher from balk, though we have a correlative form, sbozzare, in Italian, (old Sp. esbozar, Port, esboyar, Diez,) with precisely the same meaning, and from a root bozzo, which is related to a very different class of words from balk.  So bewitched is Mr. Wedgwood with this word balk, that he prefers to derive the Ital. valicam, varcare, from it rather than from the Latin varicare.  We should think a deduction from the latter to the English walk altogether as probable.  Mr. Wedgwood also inclines to seek the origin of acquaint in the Germ, kund, though we have all the intermediate steps between it and the Mid.  Lat. adcognitare.  Again, under daunt he says, “Probably not directly from Lat. domare, but from the Teutonic form damp, which is essentially the same word.”  It may be plain that the Fr. dompter (whence daunt) is not directly from domare, but not so plain, as it seems to us, that it is not directly from the frequentative form domitare.—­“Decoy.  Properly duck-coy, as pronounced by those who are familiar with the thing itself. ’Decoys, vulgarly duck-coys.’—­Sketch of the Fens, in Gardener’s Chron. 1849.  Du. koye, cavea, septum, locus in quo greges stabulantur.—­Kil. Kooi, konw, kevi, a cage; vogel-kooi, a bird-cage, decoy, apparatus for entrapping waterfowl.  Prov.  E. Coy, a decoy for ducks, a coop for lobsters.—­Forby.  The name was probably imported with the thing itself from Holland to the fens.” (p. 447.) Duck-coy, we cannot help thinking, is an instance of a corruption like bag o’ nails from bacchanals, for the sake of giving meaning to a word not understood.  Decoys were and are used for other birds as well as ducks, and vogel-kooi in Dutch applies to all birds, (answering to our trap-cage,) the special apparatus for ducks being an eende-kooi.  The French coi adverbialized by the prefix de, and meaning quietly, slyly, as a hunter who uses decoys must demean himself, would seem a more likely original.—­Andiron Mr. Wedgwood derives from Flem. wend-ijser, turn-irons, because the spit rested upon them.  But the original meaning seems to have no reference to the spit.  The French landier is plainly a corruption of the Mid.  Lat. anderia, by the absorption of the article (l’andier).  This gives us an earlier form andier, and the augmentative andieron would be our word.—­Baggage.