a small kind of fish-pond, the peculiar use of which is to maintain fish, and keep them in readiness for the daily use of the family, &c.

STEWS (from the French estuves, i.e. thermæ, balneum), those places which were permitted in England to women of professed incontinency; so called, because disolute persons are wont to prepare themselves for venereal acts by bathing; and hot baths were by Homer reckoned among the effeminate sort of pleasures. These laws were suppressed by King Henry VIII. about the year 1546.