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 Verb.—To abuse; to slang. Cf., Bullyrag. The allusion is, of course, to the rough mode of speaking peculiar to bargees or bargemen.

1861. Albert Smith, Medical Student, p. 102. 'Whereupon they all began to barge the master at once; one saying "his coffee was all snuff and chick-weed."'

(Uppingham School.)—To knock against a person; to come into collision with.

Barge-Arse, subs. (common).—A man or woman of rotund development at the back. [From barge, a clumsy vessel, + arse, O.E., posterior or buttock.] A low term of ridicule. Also used as an adjective, barge-arsed.

Barge-Pole, subs. (Winchester College).—A large stick or thick bough, of which there was one in each fagot. Also generally used for any large piece of wood.

Bark, subs. (common).—1. An Irishman or Irishwoman. Cf., Barkshire.

1869. Notes and Queries, 4 S., iii., 406. In Lancashire an Irishman is vulgarly called a bark.

1876. C. Hindley, Life and Adventures of a Cheap Jack, p. 191. Mike when asked by some of his countrymen why he called Fairbanks a 'bark,' i.e., an Irishman, said, 'If I had not put the 'bark' on him he would have put it on me, so I had the first pull.'

2. The skin. This occurs also dialectically. In Alan Ramsay's poems [1758] it is so used.

1843. Dickens, Martin Chuzzlewit, ch. xx., p. 209. To the great detriment of what is called by fancy gentlemen the bark upon his shins, which were most unmercifully bumped against the hard leather and the iron buckles.

1876. Family Herald, 2 Dec, p. 80, col. 1. With the bark all off his shins from a blow with a hockey stick.

3. (colloquial.)—A cough. Cf., verb, To bark, sense 2.

Verb.—1. To scrape; or rub off the skin; to abraise.

1856. Hughes, Tom Brown's Schooldays, p. 227. So, after getting up [the tree] three or four feet, down they came slithering to the ground, barking their arms and faces.

1859. Macmillan's Magazine, Nov., p. 18. The knuckles of his right hand were barked.

1872. Mark Twain, Roughing It, p. 16 (Routledge's ed.). Every time we avalanched from one end of the stage to the other, the 'Unabridged Dictionary' would come too; and, every time it came, it damaged somebody. One trip it barked the Secretary's elbow; the next trip it hurt me in the stomach, and the third, it tilted Bemis's nose up till he could look down his nostrils—he said.

2. To cough; generally applied when it is persistent and hacking.

The word with the bark on it, phr. (American).—Without mincing the matter; without circumlocution.

1872. Mark Twain, Roughing It, chap. xv. If ever another man gives a whistle to a child of mine, and I get my hands on him, I will hang him nigher than Haman! That is the word with the bark on it.

To take the bark off, phr. (popular).—To reduce in value, either deliberately, or by accident; a figurative usage of 'to graze,' 'to take the skin off.'

1849. Dickens, David Copperfield, p. 310. I rode my gallant grey so close to the wheel, that I grazed his near foreleg against it and took the bark off, as his owner told me, to the tune of three pun' sivin.

1853. Rev. Ed. Bradley ('Cuthbert Bede'), Further Adventures of Verdant Green, p. 31. That'll take the bark from your nozzle, and distil the Dutch pink for you, won't it?