tripe n.1
1. the guts, the intestines, the stomach; thus double tripe n.1
![[UK]](/static/img/flags/uk.png "United Kingdom") | (trans.) Life of Guzman Pt I Bk I 47: We had also fresh Sallad [...] but for such washie Tripes as mine then were, I held it no good meate. | |
| Staple of News IV i: Let master doctor dissect him, have him opened, and his tripes translated to Lickfinger, to make a probation-dish of. | |
| ‘Ballad’ in Court Satires of the Restoration (1976) 11: Old fatguts himself, / With his tripes and his pelf, / With a purse as full as his paunch. | |
| All Mistaken V i: Fight with me? by this Light wou’d we Had two Swords, I’de have one pass At all thy Tripes. | |
| Fifteen Plagues of a Maiden-Head 7: Eating Chalk, Cindars, or Tobacco-Pipes, / Which with a Looseness scowers all my Tripes. | |
| New Canting Dict. n.p.: tripe, the Belly or Guts. | |
| Street Robberies Considered 34: Tripe, the Belly. | |
| , , , | | Universal Etym. Eng. Dict. [as cit. 1725]. |
| Burlesque Homer (3rd edn) 64: She guess’d he’d either got the gripes, / Or some strange twitching in his tripes. | |
| Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue n.p.: Don’t flash your ivory but shut your potatoe trap and keep yours guts warm, the devil loves hot tripes [...] Tripe. The belly, or guts. Mr. Double Tripe; a fat man. | |
![[Ire]](/static/img/flags/ire.png "Ireland") | ‘Lord Altham’s Bull’ in Ireland Ninety Years Ago (1885) 89: I’ll butter my knife in his tripes, and give him his guts for garters. | |
| ‘Odes to Ins & Outs’ Works (1801) V 297: Pitt is a violent cathartic, Creating very grievous gripes (in butcher phrase) among our tripes, Making the stomach, head, and heart sick. | |
| Lex. Balatronicum. | |
| Spirit of Irish Wit 102: My Gossup greased the chir [i.e. a scraping knife] in his tripes. | |
| Pierce Egan’s Life in London 19 Dec. 373/1: This blow put the tripery in commotion — the big and little guts were all in an uproar. | |
| ‘George Barnwell’ in Universal Songster I 19/1: Now soon this voman did persuade him / Vith her fascinating pipes / To go down into the country / And let loose his uncle’s tripes. | |
| ‘A Grand Turn-Up’ in Randy Songster in Spedding & Watt (eds) I 188: Give him a poke in the wittling office, cries bandy Moll [...] That’s a queer hit in the tripes! | |
| ‘The Vent Peg’ Knowing Chaunter 7: Three times a day she’d cheer her tripes with Hyson or Bohea, / For like all other old maids, she was very fond of tea. | |
| ‘Ax My Eye’ Dublin Comic Songster 101: Of grub I stows a dollop in / My tripes at least four times a day. | |
| Swell’s Night Guide 68: So if you likes to drop in at the arms over the vay, and stick into the munjary, there’s plenty of peck for the tripe box. | |
| Kendal Mercury 3 Apr. 6/2: Ye knows it isn’t swellish to have von’s tripes blown out like the rum-cull. | |
| ‘Gorton Town’ in A Touch of the Times 68: Poor folks have empty tripes; There’s no roast-beef to stuff their hides. | |
| Gilt Kid 118: [If] I find you and Bedbug aren’t adrift, I’ll get Bedbug and make you eat his tripes. | |
![[Aus]](/static/img/flags/aus.png "Australia") | Poor Man’s Orange 241: You ice-slinging bonehead, come on in here and I’ll pull out your tripe and feed it to the cat. | |
| Fowlers End (2001) 279: What time a Hogarthian, gap-toothed, hairy-handed gathering in the public bar were geeing me up, as the carters used to say, urging me to take the landlord’s tripes home for supper, to tenderise his kidneys before stewing them. | |
| At Night All Cats Are Grey 76: If a vulture could lick its chops at the sight of a nice steaming mess of human tripes, that was what the bold Scrog was doing. | |
| Birthday 44: Cancer had dug its claws into your tripes. |
2. in fig. use, the essence, ‘the guts’; thus one’s body, oneself.
 | Mine Own People 105: Why the triple-dashed asterisks did ye not let me curl the tripes out of him? | |
| Bulletin (Sydney) 20 Aug. 24/4: ‘Shift!’ sez he, ‘’r I’ll belt the tripes out iv yeh,’ he sez. | |
| Handful of Ausseys 110: Drillin’ the tripe outer us. | |
![[US]](/static/img/flags/us.png "United States") | ‘Death’s Passport’ in Goodstone Pulps (1970) 117/2: He blooped that sedan up to seventy from a standing start; kicked the everlasting tripes out of it. | |
| December Bride 256: Quit that, Molly, or I’ll cut the tripes out o’ ye! | |
| (con. 1940s) Veterans 80: It it wasn’t spotless and perfectly ironed he’d roar the tripe out of me. | |
| Fear 4: The Comrade will belt the tripes out of you for being cruel to Joseph. | |
| Confessions of Proinsias O’Toole 68: After listening to you my one inclination is to put the width of the Atlantic between my tripes and them Simbas. | |
| Never in My Lifetime in Best Radio Plays (1984) 62: They’d beat the tripes out of you just for something to do. | |
![[NZ]](/static/img/flags/nz.png "New Zealand") | Dict. of Kiwi Sl. 114/2: tripe human intestines in phrs I’ll tear your tripes out an exaggerated threat of a thrashing, usually to badly behaved juvenile. | |
| This Game of Ghosts 155: Anyway, I thought, watching Wayne strut away from me, the little bastard would probably beat the tripes out of me. | |
| Success in Store 119: The destruction of the World Trade Centre in New York knocked the tripes out of international tourism. |
In compounds
(Aus./UK) an insult, thus tripefaced.
| Wkly True Sun (London) 19 Feb. 16/4: Why my brother was worth a hundred such tripe-faced baboons as you. | |
| Seeing Warren 37: Sit down, tripe-face! | |
| Punch (Melbourne) 4 Jan. 11/2: ‘Who’re yer callin’ tripe face? I’ll biff yer in the blanky jaw!’ . | |
| Express & Teleg. (Adelaide) 9 Apr. 4/1: ‘Well, my little piscator,’ said the benign one, laying a kindly hand on the youngster’s shoulder. The boy looked up sharply, ‘Well,’ he retorted, ‘tripe face!’. | |
| Canberra Times (ACT) 16 Aug. 16/1: I dutifully read almost everything old tripe-face had written, including plays and librettos, and I soaked up various studies of the verse. |
1. an unpleasant or contemptible person.
| Taranaki Herald (NZ) 26 July 2/7: Local teams who adopted the probably expressive but inelegant titles of ‘tripe hounds’ (whatever that might mean) and ‘Bonsors’. | |
| Arthur’s 288: Now then – wake up, you tripe-’ound. D’y’ear me? | |
| Barrier Miner (Broken Hill, NSW) 18 Mar. 6/1: Larkin criticised the Labor Party and those he termed the ‘tripehounds’ running the Labor movement. | |
| Cairns Post (Qld) 18 May 2/2: A man who fails to come up to their standard is a ‘tripe-hound’. | |
| Sometimes Even Now 89: That little tripe-hound! All right. I’ll invite him – and he can bring all his ‘lovelys’ and ‘frippets’ with him. | |
| Mercury (Hobart, Tas.) 3 Aug. 9/3: It was recently decided at the Guildhall; Court that ‘lying tripehound’ is not fighting talk. One man at Smithfield Market called another that, and the reply was a pair of black eyes. | |
| Poor Man’s Orange 116: ‘Oh, you flabby-faced little tripehound!’ roared Mumma. | |
| Delinquents 101: You little tripe hound. | |
| Start in Life (1979) 339: That cock-headed tripehound seemed not to have altered in all his waking life. |
2. (Aus./N.Z.) a dog, esp. a sheepdog.
| West. Champion & General Advertiser (Barcaldine, Qld) 4 Dec. 11/3: The owner gravely informed him that the dog in question was a ‘liver-and-white tripehound’. | |
| ‘A Cracksman’s Conscience’ Sporting Times 18 Jan. 1/3: I’d one myself, though ’twasn’t quite so costly or well bred, / And I sent him my own tripe-hound by return. | |
| Chuckles 10 Jan. 1: But mine poor tripehound Snitzel! | |
| Mirror (Perth) 31 Mar. 4/7: Charlie D reckons his tripehound is equal to a thoroughbred bow-wow. | |
| (ref. to 1890–1910) Early Canterbury Runs (1951) 407: Tripe-hound – Slang for sheep dog. | |
| Western Mail (Perth) 20 May 61/1: in Sheep Dog notes [...] Harry quotes some of the brainy things his tripe-hound does besides work sheep. | |
| Burra Record (SA) 23 Apr. 4/4: ‘Work of Dogs’ Home [...] to be Cur-tailed,’ says Lady Lyle. ‘Taking a tip from the tripehound?’ queries a correspondent. | |
| Dict. of Kiwi Sl. 114/2: tripehound sheepdog. | |
| Reed Dict. of N.Z. Sl. [as cit. 1988]. |
3. a newspaper reporter or an informant.
| Sun. Times (Perth) 27 Apr. 2/2: A few tale-tellers and tripehound tipsters are likely to get their quietus [...] in very short order. | |
| Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club (1977) 150: If you’ll call off your tripe-hounds, we’ll let you have an interview. | |
| Argus (Melbourne) 12 Dec. 9/5: The uxorious ‘Prince’ Aly Khan, due dfor another film start bride, according to the tripehounds. |
the stomach.
| Pierce Egan’s Life in London 24 Oct. 309/1: Pat sent a left-handed customer to the butcher’s tripe-shop, that knocked down the stall. | |
| Anecdotes of the Turf, the Chase etc. 83: When Pat on the mark placed a terrific blow / [...] / Encore on the tripe-shop. |
(Aus.) a newspaper.
| Sun. Times (Perth) 13 Sept. 4/7: ‘This,’ says the evening tripe-wrap sententiously, ‘is in excess of the highest speed [etc.]’. |
In phrases
(N.Z.) don’t get over-excited; don’t overdo things.
| Dict. of Kiwi Sl. 114/2: don’t bust your tripe don’t overdo it. | |
| Reed Dict. of N.Z. Sl. [as cit. 1988]. |
to have someone at a disadvantage.
| Spoilers 206: Think you got me by the tripes since – the accident. But you ain’t. I’m your master any day. |
a nickname for a fat person.
| Bartholomew Fair I iii: There cannot be an ancient tripe or trillibub i’ the town, but thou art straight nosing it. | |
![[Scot]](/static/img/flags/sco.png "Scotland") | Order of the Beggar's Benison and Merryland (1892) 88: Scotch Saws [...] Ye’re a tripes and trollybags. | |
| , , | | Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue n.p.: Tripes and trullibubs, the entrails, also a jeering appellation for a fat man. |
| Lex. Balatronicum [as cit. 1785]. | |
| Grose’s Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue. |