Page:Farmer - Slang and its analogues past and present - Volume 1.pdf/246

 And Isabel one evening met a mug from rural parts, An attenuated Juggins, and a long 'un.

French Synonyms. Se faire rincer (popular: 'to be cleared out' [at a game]. Rincer, properly 'to drench,' 'to serve out,' also has the slang signification of 'to thrash'); paumer (thieves' and vagrants': this verb is very old, and is derived from palma = empoigner. It also signifies to arrest, lose, etc.); laumir (an old cant term); se faire ratisser (familiar: literally 'to scrape oneself'); faire rasoir (gaming: 'to be penniless'); se faire enturer (popular: 'to cut into oneself'; enture = incision or cut); panner quelqu'un (popular); mettre dans le sac (gamesters': Cf., 'be in a hole'); décavage (familiar: a term employed to signify the circumstances of a gamester who has 'blewed it'; one who is in 'Queer Street'—from décavé, a ruined gamester); se faire lessiver: 'to wash oneself.' Michel gives lessive = defence, and lessiveur = barrister, and remarks that better terms could hardly be given to advocate and speech by those charged with offence, and who wish to return from the same 'white as snow,' or, as police phraseology hath it, without a stain upon one's character. For other synonyms, see Shave.

Blimey, intj. (low).—A corruption of 'Blind me!'; an expression little enough understood by those who constantly have it in their mouths.

Blind, subs. (common).—1. The night time—an allusion to the absence of light.—See Darkmans.

2. (familiar.)—A pretence; a shift; an action through which one's real purpose is concealed; that which obstructs; a 'make-believe.'

1663. Dryden, Wild Gallant, Act iii. He took your court to her, only as a blind to your affection for me.

1694. Congreve, Double Dealer, Act ii., Sc. 5. I know you don't love Cynthia, only as a blind for your passion to me.

1703. Mrs. Centlivre, Beau's Dual, I., i. (1872), i., 70. Am I publish'd to the world as a blind for his designs?

1877. E. L. Linton, World Well Lost, ch. xxviii. The excuse was too palpably a blind to be accepted as a reason.

1889. Answers, July 13, p. 104, col. 3. The Major and the Captain he referred to in his letters were mere 'blinds.' The Captain relied upon the fact that not one person in a dozen took the trouble to apply to these gentlemen.

3. (printers'.)—A paragraph [¶] mark is so called; from the eye of the reversed 'P' being filled up.

Adj. (old).—Tipsy; in liquor. Nares says this cant term was used with others in the works of Taylor, the water-poet [1630]. For synonyms, see Screwed.

Blind as a brickbat, adv. phr. (colloquial).—A facetious simile for very blind—mentally or physically.

1849. Dickens, David Copperfield, III., p. 97. The old scholar is as BLIND AS A BRICKBAT.

When the devil is blind, adv. phr. (common).—Never. The French have three very graphic—though in one case very vulgar—analogues for this expression—quand les poules pisseront, which need not be translated; le trente six du mois, i.e., 'on the thirty-sixth day of the month,' and quand les poules