clay n.
a clay pipe.
![[UK]](/static/img/flags/uk.png "United Kingdom") | Reading Mercury 24 Sept. 4/1: Ode on a Pipe of Tobacco [...] Then let me smoke in health and peace / [...] /Then calmly, when the fates shall please, / Lay down my clay. | |
| ‘Ode To the Livery of London’ Works (1801) V 48: Master Pipemaker, don’t be a prig, And let that clay of yours be quite so stiff. | |
| ‘Swished for a Week’ in Rake’s Budget in Spedding & Watt (eds) Bawdy Songbooks (2011) III 72: [I] own’d it was a happy release, / To blow my clay and take a drop. | |
| Paul Periwinkle 72: I think a ‘bird’s-eye’ view may be best of such a long clay. | |
| ‘Ode to Tobacco’ Works (1901) 29: Jones – (who, I’m glad to say, / Asked leave of Mrs. J.) – Daily absorbs a clay / After his labours. | |
| Leaves from Diary of Celebrated Burglar 123/2: Eight or ten were there, each with their ‘clay in their duke,’ and two or three flagons before them. | |
| Ally Sloper’s Half Holiday 10 May14/2: ‘Gi’ ’im a chance,’ said a gentleman from behind a long clay. | |
![[Aus]](/static/img/flags/aus.png "Australia") | Bulletin (Sydney) 24 Jan. 7/1: The fair typo., however, does not let her terrible genealogy lift her out of her boots, but she roosts in front of her case 12 hours a day, and, when her toil is done, fills herself up to the ears in nectar and sucks at a black clay, after the fashion of the gay caravan to which she now belongs. | |
| Autobiog. of a Gipsey 159: Taking with me my whole stock of dirty, well-beloved clays. | |
| Truth (Sydney) 30 Sept. 1/4: And prosy dreams come drooping, / In the smoke from my old clay. | |
| Bushman All 202: They both laughed and lit their short clays for a farewell smoke. |
SE in slang uses
In compounds
(US) stupid, peasant-like.
![[US]](/static/img/flags/us.png "United States") | Gonif 50: They had so many damn clay-assed, two-bit chippies in Atlanta, the screws actually seemed to welcome a con with a reputation. |
stupid; thus clay-brains, a fool.
| Henry IV Pt 1 II iv: Why thou clay-brained guts, thou knotty-pated fool. | |
| Soddered Citizen II iv: Those earthy, Dull, Clay-pated fellowes. | |
| Boon’s Lick Times (Fayette, MO) 18 Mar. 1/1: You ought to be ashamed of yourself [...] you jealous, addlepated claybrains. | |
| Stormy Weather 307: Wild guess says you’re named after that clay-brained Georgia bigot [i.e. Governor Lester Maddox]. | |
| Da Bomb 🌐 7: Clay-brained: Stupid. |
(US) a poor white, esp. a native of North or South Carolina or Georgia; thus clay-eating adj.
| Kinsmen 57: He was a little, dried up, withered atomy,—a jaundiced ‘sand-lapper’ or ‘clay-eater’ from the Wassamasaw country . | |
| Chronicles of Pineville 41: Then, too, might be seen the torpid clay-eater, his bloated, watery countenance illuminated by the [...] rum. | |
| Ladies’ Repository (N.Y.) VII July 402: The clay is very hard when burnt, and is the same as the ‘clay-eaters’ use. | |
| in Overland Monthly (CA) May 420: Many a lettre de Jerusalem was dispatched by the Tar-heels, the Goobers, the Clay-eaters, from Point Lookout. | |
| in Overland Monthly (CA) July 51: That degenerate and fortunately small class called ‘clay-eaters’. | |
| Great Locomotive Chase 74: The terms ‘sand-hiller,’ ‘clay-eater,’ or ‘poor white trash,’ conveyed a terrible reproach, for even the negroes looked down on them. | |
| ‘The Fool-Killer’ in Voice of the City (1915) 167: Why can’t you go back South and kill Congressmen and clay-eaters and let us alone? | |
| Two & Three 10 Jan. [synd. col.] Everybody’s stuck in a bid for the Demspey-Carpentier fight except the clay-eaters of Arkansaw. | |
| 29 Feb. diary in Aaron (1985) 355: We see lazy and indifferent slaves, proud and shiftless clay-eating ‘white trash’. | |
| ‘Citadel Gloss.’ in AS XIV:1 Feb. 26/1: clay-eater, n. A native of the low country of South Carolina or Georgia. | |
| A Treasury of Amer. Folklore 322: Pineywoods tackies, hill-billies, dirt-eaters, clay-eaters. | |
| in Journal of Amer. Folklore 🌐 At one time or another Southern local colorists used these analogs for poor white: [...] clayeater. | |
| Maledicta VII 28: The practice of geophagy, seeking some nourishment from eating earth or clay, gave the names sandlapper (rare) and clayeater, to poor whites. | |
| Dict. of Invective (1991) 118: A poor Southern white, a.k.a. clay-eater. |
(Aus.) a miner.
| Bulletin (Sydney) 5 Nov. 9/2: So on a Sabbath afternoon Brother Burnett, accompanied by a number of local preachers and followed by a crowd of curious clay-punchers, sailed for the aborigines’ camp. |
(Aus.) working as a miner.
| Bulletin (Sydney) 16 Jun. 24/4: Dunky was never a working miner, he was much too cute for clay-punching. |
In phrases
to take a drink, to quench one’s thirst.
| Spectator 23 May (1857) 86/2: To moisten their clay, and grow immortal by drinking . | |
| Letter Writers II ii: A Soph, he is Immortal, And never can decay; For how should he return to Dust Who daily wets his Clay. | |
| Boarding-School 29: Let Bacchus now see, / We’re immortal as he, / Whilst drinking to moisten the Clay. | |
 | song in Bullfinch 178: And with honest old stingo was soaking his clay. | |
| Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue n.p.: An old soaker; a drunkard, one that moistens his clay to make it stick together. | |
| ‘The Irish Schoolmaster’ Banquet of Thalia 7: For day and night ’twas his delight [...] to wet his clay. | |
| Sporting Mag. Oct. VII 54/2: He moisten’d many a time his clay. But from him death the cup now dashes. | |
| Gradus ad Cantabrigiam 129: Moisten your clay with a bumper of wine. | |
![[Ire]](/static/img/flags/ire.png "Ireland") | Spirit of Irish Wit 30: ‘Paddy loved to wet the clay’. | |
| Headlong Hall (1816) 75: Let us moisten the clay, since ’t is thirsty and porous: / No thinking! no shrinking! all drinking in chorus! | |
| ‘The Galley Slave’s Complaint’ in Memoirs (trans. W. McGinn) I 129: And the produce of our hands, my boys, / Will moisten well our clay. | |
| ‘Darby the Swift’ Bentley’s Misc. July 71: We went to wet our clay together at the ‘Three Jolly Pigeons’. | |
| Drogheda Argus 4 Feb. 1/2: [He] would return home quite gay, / And with some fine old claret soak his good old clay. | |
| Seymour’s Humourous Sketches (1866) 44: [He went] straight home — as he could, leaving his spouse (like many a deserted wife) soaking her clay, because he refused to support her ! | |
| (con. 1703) Jack Sheppard (1917) 33: And drink a full measure to moisten his clay! | |
| Bell’s Life in Sydney 6 Feb. 2/6: Mr Ikin [was] standing at the bar, peacably ‘moistening his clay’. | |
| Digby Grand (1890) 156: A few steady old sexagenarians whose clay [...] requires a deal of moistening. | |
| ‘Dear Tome This Brown Jug’ in Victorian Street Ballads (1937) 88: And with honest old stingo was soaking his clay. | |
| Kentish Gaz. 9 Sept. 4/5: We have about 160 public houses [...] One house in every sixteen or seventeen supplies intoicating liquors to moisten the clay of the occupants of the rest. | |
| Mercury (Hobart) 23 Apr. 2/5: [from the Stranraer Free Press] [...] ‘wet yer whistle,’ [...] soak your clay. | |
| Low-Life Deeps 187: It was like throwing water on a sand heap the gin they swallowed, and there appeared not the least indication of their ‘clay’ being a bit moister at the conclusion. | |
| Huddersfield Chron. 30 Jan. 4/5: Moderation in all things. Moisten yer clay a little by all means, but don’t make a bog of it. | |
| Huddersfield Chron. 18 Apr. 4/5: I sit and soak my clay in fiery liquor. | |
| Brisbane Courier 16 Mar. 7/1: We were on a wide cool veranda. our clay was duly moistened and the smoke wreaths hung overhead. | |
| Baboo Jabberjee BA 32: [W]e moistened the drooping clay of our internal tenements at an Aerated Tea Company. | |
| Pink ’Un and Pelican 172: Some five years ago I was engaged in damping earth’s clay in the old bar at Romano’s. | |
| Bulletin (Sydney) 15 Sept. 31/1: We’ll wet our ‘clay’ what-time the day / Break o’er the Land of Wonder; / And we’ll converse o’ bards and verse, / And ships and seas Out Yonder. | |
| Sun. Times (Perth) 14 Feb. 11/3: To judge by the way / That I moisten my clay / I’ve a large and perpetual ‘drouth’. | |
| Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit 103: After moistening her clay she had relapsed into a sort of frozen coma. |