arouse: [16] Shakespeare is the first writer on record to use arouse, in 2 Henry VI, 1593: ‘Loud howling wolves arouse the jades that drag the tragic melancholy night’. It was formed, with the intensive prefix a-, from rouse, a word of unknown origin which was first used in English in the 15th century as a technical term in falconry, meaning ‘plump up the feathers’. => rouse