Page:Farmer - Slang and its analogues past and present - Volume 1.pdf/298

 African explorer. Ibid, p. 342. What is wanted for this country is a heavy bore—No. 10 or 12 is the real bone-crusher, that will drop every animal shot.

Boned.—See Bone, verb, sense 1.

Bone-Grubber, subs, (common).—One who lives by collecting bones from heaps of refuse, selling his spoils at the marine stores or to bone grinders. [From bone + grub, to seek by burrowing, + er.] Also called bone-picker (q.v.), and tot-pickers (q.v.). See first quotation and cf. bone-picker form. The French term is un biffin, which also signifies a foot-soldier, his knapsack being compared to a rag or bone-picker's basket; also un chifferton or un chiffortin; un cupidon (an ironical allusion to his hook and basket); un graffin. For other synonyms, see Tot-picker.

c. 1750. 'The Hunter's Wedding,' quoted in J. Ashton's The Fleet, 1888, p. 366. Sam the grubber, he having had warning, His wallet and broom down did lay.

1851-61. H. Mayhew, Lon. Lab. and Lon. Poor, vol. II., p. 155. The bone-grubber generally seeks out the narrow back streets, where dust and refuse are cast, or where any dust-bins are accessible. The articles for which he chiefly searches are rags and bones,—rags he prefers,—but waste metal, such as bits of lead, pewter, copper, brass, or old iron, he prizes above all.

1862. Mayhew, Crim. Prisons, 40. A black-chinned and lanthorn-jawed bone-grubber.

2. A resurrectionist; a violator of graves. Cobbett was therefore called 'a bone-grubber,' because he brought the remains of Tom Paine from America. Cf., Bone-house. Latterly, from the quotation which follows, the term seems to have been extended to all having to do with funerals.

1863. G. A. Sala, Breakfast in Bed, essay vii., p. 181 (1864). The crowd in Cheapside declared that I was a mute. They called me bone-grubber.

Bone-house, subs, (familiar).—The human body—an obvious allusion.

1870. Emerson, Soc. and Sol., vi., 119. This wonderful bone-house which is called man. [m.]

2. A coffin. The term is also used to signify a charnel-house, and Americans generally call a cemetery a 'bone-yard.'

1836. Dickens, Pickwick Papers, II., p. 207. Nothing soon—lie in bed—starve—die—Inquest—little bone-house—poor prisoner.

1846. Walbran, Guide Ripon. The celebrated bone-house no longer exists.

1848. Forster, Life and Times of Oliver Goldsmith, II., p. 165 (bk. IV., ch. viii.). The body [of a man who had poisoned himself] was taken to the bone-house of St. Andrew's, but no one came to claim it.

Bone Muscle, verbal phr. (American college).—To practice gymnastics. Cf., Bone, verb, sense 3.

Bone-Picker, subs, (common).—1. A footman. [Evidently a contemptuous allusion to sense 2, a footman's duties being to pick up and set in order after his employer.] The French term is un larbin.

2. (common.)—A collector of bones, rags, and other refuse from the streets and places where rubbish is placed, for the purpose of sale to marine dealers and bone crushers. The same as bone-grubber, sense 1 {q.v).