Lammas-tide a harvest festival formerly held in England on Aug. 1, when bread baked from the first crop of wheat was consecrated at Mass. The festival is used to symbolize fertility and plentitude, qualities which can be linked to Juliet as a young adolescent.
laid wormwood to my dug rubbed wormwood on my nipple: a method of weaning children. The Nurse's role when Juliet was a young child was to act as her wet-nurse and breast-feed Juliet.
tetchy touchy; irritable; peevish.
trow think.
by th'rood an oath: by Christ's cross.
broke her brow fell and cut her forehead.
by my holidame from the Anglo-Saxon for holiness, here used by the Nurse to mean "holy dame," that is, the Virgin Mary.
young cockerel's stone young rooster's testicle.
stinted stopped crying.
disposition inclination.
he's a man of wax he's perfect, without fault, like a wax figure.
endart shoot as a dart.
