Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. equipment.

1828		J. Hall Letters from the West 304: These little fixens [i.e. a knife, flint and steel] said glass, make a man feel right peart, when he is three or four hundred miles from any body or any place.
1833		J. Hall Soldier’s Bride 149: The Mackinaw blanket, the leggins, and other fixens as we say in the West.
1847		J.S. Robb Streaks of Squatter Life 31: Throw yourself wide on the literary fixins and poetry, for the galls.
1847		Jeffersonian Republican (Stroudsburg, PA) 5 Aug. 1/4: That breast-pin thar, with the korneelion stone and the gold chicken fixins — I must have that.
1855		Browning Men and Women, Bishop Blougram’s Apol. 212: Neat ship-shape fixings and contrivances.
1861		R.F. Burton City of the Saints 78: She had forgotten her ‘fixins’ [...] a reticule containing a ‘bishop,’ a comb and a pomatum pot.
1872		Daily Tel. 30 Sept. n.p.: Still stoutly asserted by some sceptical Down-Easter to have been an itinerant dealer in hardware and kitchen fixings from Salem, Mass [F&H].
1875		Hartford Herald (KY) 27 Jan. n.p.: Git her up sniptious [...] None of your dratted one-horse fixins for me.
1885		Bulletin (Sydney) 28 Feb. 14/2: A large billiard-room, containing three tables, has been fitted up, and better still, in our opinion, a sparring apartment, with shower and ‘fixins’ that cannot fail to take the most æsthetic lovers of the noble art by storm.
1890		H. Lawson ‘A Word to Texas Jack’ in Roderick (1967–9) I 65: How I’d like ter see a bushman use yer fixins, Texas Jack.
1906		S. Ford Shorty McCabe 216: I’ll give you that, and ten per cent, more on account of the fixin’s.
1937		Everyday Fashion of the Thirties [...] in Sears Catalogs (1986) 91: MAD MONEY ‘stays put’ in this pleated Acetate Crepe bag with ‘jools’ on top and the right fixin’s inside.
1952		Kerouac letter 10 May in Charters I (1995) 348: The bed was a straw pallet on crisscross sticks [...] under which Saint Junkey kept his fixings and shit.
1984		P. Corris ‘Luck of Clem Carter’ in Heroin Annie [e-book] Make some coffee; I see you’ve got the fixings.
2017		D. Winslow The Force [ebook] Monty found the envelope of smack in his pants pocket, with fixings.

2. food.

1842		Dickens Amer. Notes (1985) 132: Will you try, said my opposite neighbour, handing me a dish of potatoes, broken up in milk and butter, will you try some of these fixings.
1842		Wkly Rake (NY) 12 Nov. n.p.: They consumed their sherry with other ‘fixin’s’.
1850		W.K. Northall Life and Recollections of Yankee Hill 26: Captain Gay was tried, found guilty, and condemned to be shot, or, rather, to pay the shot for the amount of oysters, champagne, and other fixings.
1854		E.R. Sullivan Bungalow or Tent 35: Buddhist in faith [...] reside in furnished houses [...] living on the best of ‘chicken fixings’.
1864		‘Edmund Kirke’ Down in Tennessee 101: I’se mighty pore fixins, stranger.
1884		C.F. Lummis letter 25 Dec. in Byrkit Letters from the Southwest (1989) 192: We boys have chipped in and got the fixin’s for a big Christmas dinner.
1902		J. Masefield ‘The Yarn of the Loch Achray’ in Salt-Water Ballads 6: I’ll just [...] buy the fixins ’n’ cook the meats.
1907		Wash. Times (DC) 15 Dec. 46/7: ‘Chicken fixings’, a friccassee.
1936		(con. 1920s) Dos Passos Big Money in USA (1966) 893: You know you like our dinners better here than all those fancy fixin’s over there.
1999		J. Ridley Everybody Smokes in Hell 77: Frozen buritos, which were across from the hot-dog fixin’s stand.

3. clothes or their embellishments (see cite 1869) .

1843		W.T. Thompson Major Jones’s Courtship (1872) 43: They all had ther Sunday fixins on and was fraid to go into the brush much.
c.1849		‘One of the Boys’ in G.S. Jackson Early Songs of Uncle Sam (1933) 58: Trousers I’ve got ’em forty inches round the bottom [...] The gals, them little vixens, how they eyes my fancy fixins.
1850		Life in Boston & N.Y. (Boston, MA) 6 Apr. n.p.: ‘I want six yards of blue fixin’s for a bonnet’.
1851		Manchester Spy (NH) 4 Oct. n.p.: ‘Get your fixins’ on’.
1869		Sportsman (London) 18 Nov. 2/1: Notes on News [...] [E]very horse was under full run, the ladies were applying the whip, and the air was tilled with hats, ribbons, laces, and ‘fixins’ which have no place on the race track.
1884		Sporting Times 6 Dec. 5/5: They were induced [...] to don their ’oliday fixin’s and swallow soup and speeches.
1905		Sun. Times (Perth) 3 Dec. 1/1: Her descent on the village in ‘blush-rose’ fixings caused a sensation.
1905		F. Hutchison Philosophy of Johnny the Gent 32: [E]ight sets o' home-made slippers [...] an a few more bug fixin’s that you couldn't pay a sane citizen a salary to wear.
1919		Perrysburg Jrnl (Wood Co., OH) 22 May 2/2: Shed the apron, kid and I’ll show you the real silks [...] and doll-fixings from Paris.

4. (Aus.) strong drink [it ‘fixes one up’].

1889–90

Barrère & Leland Dict. of Sl., Jargon and Cant I 365/1: Fixings [...] (Bushmen), strong liquor.

5. (Aus.) in fig. use of sense 1, a situation.

1910

Sun. Times (Perth) 15 May 2nd sect. 12/8: Whenever I acquire the pip, / Or find the way too rough, / I let the whole durned fixing rip, / To seek their bright compardonanip.

6. anything used to dilute or mix with alcohol, e.g. tonic water.

1940		R. Chandler Farewell, My Lovely (1949) 28: She [...] came back with two thick smeared glasses. ‘No fixin’s. Just what you brought is all.’.
1958		R. Prather Scrambled Yeggs 47: She busied herself with the fixings and I watched her as she measured by guesswork – she wasn’t a scientific bartender.

7. the tobacco and matches required to light a pipe.

1989

J. Lansdale Savage Season (1996) 41: Leonard got his pipe and fixings out of his coat pocket, packed the pipe, and lit it.