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 before, and blessed if they didn't identify her as having lifted some things out of the shop, and she was pinched for seven "stretch."'

1882. Punch, Aug. 5, p. 49. Sir Pompey Bedell: 'Oh!—er—Mr. Grigsby, I think! How d'ye do?' [extending two fingers]. Grigsby: 'I hope I see you well, Sir Pompey. And next time you give me two fingers, I'm blest if I don't pull 'em off.'

1889. Sporting Times, July 6. St. Mannock.—Did you ever hear a still, small voice whispering over its morning shrimps, 'What a pair of blessed fools you are!'

Blether. Blather, subs. (Scotch and U.S.A.).—Nonsense; vapid talk; voluble chatter.

b. 1759, d. 1796. Burns, Tam Samson's Elegy, st. 12. Yon auld gray stane, amang the heather, Marks out his head, Whare Burns has wrote in rhyming blether, Tarn Samson's dead!

1886. Pall Mall Gazette, 3 May, 6, 2. Havelock's florid adjurations to his men, the grim veterans of the 78th, bluntly characterized as blether.

Hence blethering (verb, subs.) used in the same sense as blether, and as an adjective for 'volubly' or 'foolishly talkative.' Cf., Bletherskate.

b. 1759, d. 1796. Burns, Holy Fair, st. 8.

And some are busy blethrin' Right loud that day.

1816. Scott, Old Mortality, ch. xiv. 'I hae been clean spoilt, just wi' listening to twa blethering auld wives.'

1883. Hawley Smart, Hard Lines, ch. vi. He had brought this blethering Irishman down here, and deluyed him with punch for the express purpose of turning him inside out.

Bletherskate, Blatherskite, subs. (provincial and American).—1. Boastful swagger, whether in talk or action.

2. A boaster; noisy talker of blatant nonsense. [From blether, to talk nonsensically, + skate, allied to Scotch skyte, a contemptible fellow.] It occurs in Maggie Lauder, a well-known Scotch song, a fact which Murray says led to its popularisation in the United States. In Ireland it seems to have taken the forms of bladder-skate and bladderum-skate.

Circa 1650. F. Sempill, Maggie Lauder, i. Jog on your gait, ye blether-skate. [m.]

1825. C. Croker, Tradit. S. Ireland, p. 170. He was, as usual, getting on with his bletherumskite about the fairies. [m.]

1870. J. R. O'Flanagan, Lives of the Lord Chancellors of Ireland. 'Lord Redesdale was speaking of people who learnt to skate with bladders under their arms, to buoy them up if they should fall into a hole and risk being drowned.' 'Ah, my Lord,' said Toler, 'that is what we call bladderumskate in Ireland.'

Blew, verb (common).—1. To inform; to 'peach'; to expose; to betray.—See Blow upon, of which it is a variant.

2. (popular.)—To spend; to waste; generally in connection with money. When a man has spent or lost all his money, he is said to have blewed it. [The derivation is uncertain, that most likely being its reference to a corrupt grammatical use of blew, the past tense of 'to blow.' Money spent recklessly and wasted vanishes as if blown away by the wind.]

1884. Daily Telegraph, May 28, p. 5, col. 1. 'Which paid him £1,700 compensation, when he took to horses, and blewed the blooming lot in eighteen months.'

1889. Sporting Times, June 29. Isabel and Maudie knew the Turf and all its arts— They had often blewed a dollar on a wrong 'un—