Page:Farmer - Slang and its analogues past and present - Volume 1.pdf/21

 As easy as a. b. c., adv. phr. (popular).--Extremely facile; the acme of ease, i.e., from an adult's point of view; children, however, probably view the matter in a different light. In this, as in much else, distance lends enchantment to the scene. This colloquialism is by no means of modern growth; Shakspeare speaks of answer 'coming like A. B. C. book.'

A-Bear, v. (provincial and vulgar).--To suffer, or to tolerate. [From old English abearan, to bear or carry].--This term, though hoary with age, and long of honorable usage (from a.d. 885 downward), must now be classed with degenerate words, or at all events with non-literary English. Though still largely dialectical, its use amongst people of education is reckoned vulgar. It is now invariably employed in conjunction with 'cannot'--'I can't abear furriners.'

Abelwhackets.--See Ablewhackets.

Aberdeen Cutlet, subs. phr. (familiar).--A dried haddock.--Cf., Billingsgate pheasant.

Abide, v. (vulgar).--To tolerate; to put up with. This, like abear (q.v.), has ancient sanction for its use. In the senses of to endure, suffer, bear, or sustain--meanings which are now obsolete--the word can be traced back as far as a.d. 1205; the modern vulgar usage, rarely employed affirmatively, dates from about a.d. 1526, when Tindale translated John viii. 43, by 'He cannot abyde the hearyng of my words.' Abide, therefore, may be classed amongst those words which, once respectable, have now fallen into disrepute. Shakspeare puts into the mouth of one of his characters a phrase which, to those acquainted with the speech of the uneducated classes, has a very modern appearance, 'I cannot abide the smell of hot meat.'

Abigail, subs. (popular).--A lady's maid. There can be little doubt that the familiar use of this name for the genus 'waiting woman,' was primarily an allusion to the title of handmaid assumed by Abigail, the wife of Nabal, in speaking to the servants of King David. 'Behold, let thine handmaid be a servant to wash the feet of the servants of my Lord' (1 Sam. xxv. 41). Other names recorded in the Bible, and for the matter of that elsewhere, have been used much in the same way as marking distinctive character. Abigail has thus become associated with the idea of a female servant; so, too, a giant is spoken of as a Goliath; a patient man as a Job; a shrew as a Jezebel; a coward as a Bob Acres, cum multis aliis. In Beaumont and Fletcher's comedy of The Scornful Lady (1616), one of the characters, Mrs. Youngton, a 'waiting gentlewoman,' is named Abigail. This play, having a long run of public favour,--Pepys in his Diary [1666], iv. 195, specially mentions it,--possibly led to the popularization of the nickname. At all events it subsequently appeared on more than one occasion in the same connection