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Charcoal Sketches in Schele de Vere Americanisms (1871) 602: Not to hurt a gentleman’s feelings and to make him feel flat afore the country .at flat, adj.1
Charcoal Sketches in Schele de Vere Americanisms (1871) 602: Not to hurt a gentleman’s feelings and to make him feel flat afore the country . A Visit to Nantucket in (1872) 649: He yanked and yanked, but the sapling wouldn’t come, and thar he was caught in his own trap.at yank, v.1
Galveston News 4 May in Schele de Vere Americanisms (1872) 581: The crowd then gave a specimen of calumny broke loose, And said I’d snatched him bald-headed, and likewise cooked his goose.at snatch bald-headed (v.) under bald-headed, adv.
Americanisms 601: Few, a, in slang means a little. ‘Were you alarmed? No, but I was astonished a few.’ It is in this case synonymous with rather, which is used more frequently in the South. J. R. Lowell [...] traces a few back to the French un peu.at few, a, adv.
Americanisms 616: Lord a mussy or Luddy Mussy, for Lord have mercy! are ejaculations heard with almost equal frequency in New England and in the South, where they are much affected by the negroes. ‘Lud a mussy, Mas Bob, is dat you? whar on arth is you gwine to?’.at lor-a-massy/-mussy!, excl.
Americanisms 577: About right, are called those things and acts which are judged to be very nearly right. ‘Well, that’ll be about right, I reckon, but I think you might have done better, Pete.’ (J. P. Kennedy, Horse Shoe Robinson).at about right, adj.1
Americanisms 613: Knock about, to, is a favorite phrase applied to persons who have no regular business, and are said contemptuously ‘to be knocking about in spots,’ or ‘promiscuously’.at knock about, v.1
Americanisms 577: Agur-forty, a curious corruption, showing the almost irrepressible tendency of the uneducated to give some intelligible and suggestive form to terms which they do not comprehend. It is the aqua fortis of medicine.at agur forty, n.
Americanisms 601: Eye, all in your — a phrase expressive of utter unbelief in an account related by another.at all my eye, phr.
Americanisms 347: The American who hesitates not to speak of himself as [...] an alligator, occasionally varying the phrase and making himself out to be half-horse half-alligator, in Kentucky, does not neglect the life on the waters.at half-horse, half-alligator, adj.
Americanisms 597: Sick as a dog is [...] replaced by sick as a cat, while to ‘vomit as a cat’ is said to have as little reference to the animal as dog-cheap has (Latham, English Language), but to mean throwing up like a cataract, whch, if true, would be quite American in its proportions.at …a cat (adj.) under sick as…, adj.
Americanisms 152: Even the familiar appellations of Uncle and Aunt, by which for many generations every colored man and woman was called, were not peculiar to America, as Pegge’s Supplement to Grose distinctly states that the two words are ‘in Cornwall applied to all elderly persons’.at aunt, n.
Americanisms 283: The Mossyback […] was the man of the South, who secreted himself in a remote forest, or an inaccessible swamp, in order to escape conscription. His name was derived from the quaint fancy that he was determined to keep in hiding till ‘the moss should grow on his back’.at moss-back, n.
Americanisms 151: Its meaning is occasionally transferred to white objects, and negroes thus speak of buckra yam, with the understanding, however, that it is not only white, but peculiarly good also.at backra, adj.
Americanisms 151: Buckcra, which, on the African coast, is universally applied to white men, meaning originally ‘a spirit, a powerful being,’ and is used in that application throughout the Southern States.at backra, n.
Americanisms 630: Save one’s bacon, to, a slang phrase very frequently heard in spite of its objectionable character — for bacon does not mean smoked meat in this case — suggests a lucky escape from danger.at save one’s bacon (v.) under bacon, n.1
Americanisms 358: The baggage-smasher, as the porter is commonly called, handles his burdens with appalling recklessness.at baggage-smasher (n.) under baggage, n.
Americanisms 306: He is very apt to become a drummer, an agent of other houses of commerce, represented in England by the ‘touting bagsman,’ or the more ambitious ‘commercial gent.’.at bagman, n.
Americanisms 581: To snatch bald-headed, on the other hand means to defeat a person in a street-fight.at snatch bald-headed (v.) under bald-headed, adv.
Americanisms 581: Bald-headed, to go it, is a very peculiar but not infrequent phrase in New England, suggestive of the eagerness with which men rush to do a thing without taking time to cover their head.at bald-headed, adv.
Americanisms 581: Bald-face, one of the many slang terms under which bad whiskey passes in the West.at baldface (whisky), n.
Americanisms 283: The old Bastille, and its painful memories, were revived in American speech when the term was applied to the secret military imprisonment of suspected sympathizers with the South.at bastille, n.
Americanisms 642: If you talk about hunting for meat, I am there; if you want me to follow a trail, I am there, and, by Jingo, if you want me to snuff you out as you are, I am there too.at be there, v.
Americanisms 83: One would almost imagine that the Dutch of old must have been greater people than even the Knickerbocker Annals give them credit for – how else could the phrase: That beats the Dutch, have obtained such general currency?at beat the Dutch, v.
Americanisms 613: Kiss-curl, a name for the little curls on ladies’ temples, also known as ‘beau-catchers’.at beau-catcher (n.) under beau, n.1
Americanisms 577: Above one’s bend means, above one’s power of bending all his strength to a certain purpose.at above one’s bend under bend, n.1
Americanisms 582: Bender, in the sense of a spree, a course of drinking, is the facetious name given to the arm, which becomes a bender from being so frequently bent or ‘crooked’ to lift the glass to the mouth. The word originated with the Scotch, among whom it designated the hard drinker as well as the drinking.at bender, n.2
Americanisms 582: Bender, in the sense of a spree, a course of drinking, is the facetious name given to the arm.at bender, n.1
Americanisms 291: When the Hon. T. H. Benton [...] put his whole strength forward [...] to introduce a gold currency, he accidentally called the latter mint-drops, with a slight attempt at a pun. [...] For many years gold coins were largely known as Benton’s mint-drops.at Benton’s mint drops, n.
Americanisms 136: In other parts of the Union it is represented by a term which has come from the West Indies. There — especially in Jamaica — a bit meant the smallest silver coin current, worth about sevenpence ha’penny; from thence the Southern States obtained their bit, fully known as fi’penny-bit, amounting to six and a quarter cents; a defaced twenty-cent piece being called a long bit.at bit, n.1
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