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 18(?). Colonel John Hay, Ballad, 'The Mystery of Gilgal.' He went for his 'leven inch bowie knife: I tries to foller a Christian life, But I'll drop a slice of liver or two, My bloomin' shrub, with you.

1887. G. R. Sims, Dagonet Ballads (Told to the Missionary). 'I feels like a bloomin' babby—I gets so infernal weak.'

1877. Five Years' Penal Servitude, ch. iii., p. 222. 'Afore that I worked in the galleries, a making the casemates for the guns, and blooming hard work it was.'

1882. Punch's Almanac, p. 4. The Steam Launch in Venice ('Sic Transit Gloria Mundi')—'Andsome 'Arriet: 'Ow my! If it 'yn't that bloomin' old Temple Bar, as they did aw'y with out o' Fleet Street!' Mr. Belleville (referring to guide book): 'Now it 'yn't. It's the fymous Bridge o' Sighs, as Byron went and stood on; 'im as wrote 'Our Boys,' yer know!' 'Andsome 'Arriet: 'Well, I never!'

1880. Jas. Greenwood, Flyfaker's Hotel, in Odd People in Odd Places, p. 59. 'Who's got any music?' presently exclaimed the dirty scoundrel who had been mending the boxing-glove; ' me, let's have a bloomin' lark! Let's have a tune and a song. Who's got any bloomin' music?'

1884. W. C. Russell, Jack's Courtship, ch. xxxviii. 'And if there's fire there ought to be nothen to stop us from cooking a bloomin' old goat.'

1889. Ally Sloper, July 6. Injured Innocence: Indignant Son of Labour. Well, I'm blowed! If that 'ere bloomin' swell ain't a-himitatin' me!

Bloss, subs, (old, and American thieves').—A generic name for a woman, whether girl, wife, or mistress. Probably from an attributive sense of 'blossom.' For example, Shakspeare, in Titus Andronicus [1588, iv., 2, 72], employs it in the sense of one lovely and full of promise. 'Sweet blowse you are a beautious blossome sure.' Tennyson also [1847] in the Princess [v., 79] uses the expression, 'My babe, my blossom, ah, my child!' Cf., Blowen.

1785. Grose, Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue. Bloss (cant), the pretended wife of a bully or shop-lifter.

1881. New York Slang Dictionary, 'Slang Stories,' p. 42. 'Why, Bell, is it yourself? Tip us your daddle, my bene mort. May I dance at my death, and grin in a class-case, if I didn't think you had been put to bed with a shovel' 'No, Jim, I only piked into Grassville with a dimber-damber, who couldn't pad the hoof for a single darkman's without his bloss to keep him from getting pogy.'

Blot the Scrip, verbal phr. (old).—To put an undertaking into writing; the modern phrase is 'to put it in black and white.' Hence

To blot the scrip and jark it (old), i.e., to stand engaged, or bound for anyone.—Grose. Jark means a seal, and in Oxford slang, a safe conduct pass; in the former sense it is retained in the patter of modern American thieves, a synonym being jasker. Jarkman is the name given in America to a begging letter writer, whose accomplishments in this respect are varied by the production of false characters for servants, and other documents of a kindred nature. This is a case, like many others, in which old English cant terms have, across the Atlantic, been invested with a new meaning. Formerly a jarkman was equivalent to an 'Abram-man,' i.e., a licensed beggar.

Bloviate, verb (American).—To talk aimlessly and boastingly; to indulge in 'high falutin'. [A factitious word probably founded on the verb blow, sense 1, on the model of 'deviate.'] Said to have been in use since 1850.