Brewer's: Caliban

Rude, uncouth, unknown; as a Caliban style, a Caliban language. The allusion is to Shakespeare's Caliban (The Tempestnew creation, but also a new language.

“Satan had not the privilege, as Caliban, to use new phrases, and diction unknown.” —Dr. Bentley.

Coleridge says, “In him [Caliban], as in some brute animals, this advance to the intellectual faculties, without the moral sense, is marked by the appearance of vice.”

(Caliban is the “missing link” between brute animals and man.)

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