Page:Farmer - Slang and its analogues past and present - Volume 1.pdf/43



Agony Piler, subs. (theatrical).--An actor who performs blood-curdling parts in sensational plays.

Aground, adv. (common).--Stuck fast; stopped; at a loss; ruined; like a boat or vessel aground.

Ain't, sometimes a'n't, verb. phr. (vulgar).--A corruption for (1) 'am not'; (2) 'are not'; (3) 'is not.' This vulgarism appears to be of much older standing than set down in the New English Dictionary, where the earliest example is dated 1778.

1710. Swift, Journal to Stella, 24 Nov., Letter ix. I ain't vexed at this puppy business of the bishops, although I was a little at first.

1800. Coleridge, Piccolomini, II., xiii. Ter. Where's the hurry? Come, one other composing draught. ... Goetz. Excuse me--ain't able. Ter. A thimble-full! Goetz. Excuse me.

1835. Dickens, Sketches by Boz, p. 275. 'You are a clever fellow, Tottle, ain't you?'

Air and Exercise, subs. phr. (old).--To have had air and exercise, signified that one had undergone a whipping at the cart's tail. About the beginning of the present century the same operation was termed shoving the tumbler (q.v.). Among thieves at the present time, air and exercise means penal servitude; in America it is only applied to a short term of imprisonment.

Airing, subs. (racing).--When it is not intended that a horse shall win a race for which it is brought to the starting post, it is said to be out for an airing.

1889. Evening Standard, June 25 (Sir Chas. Russell's speech in Durham-Chetwynd case).--What he (Sir C. Russell) meant was that Sir G. Chetwynd never did anything so gross and vulgar as that [tell the jockey to 'pull' horses], and that if horses were pulled, that was not the way in which in any class of turf society instructions were given. A wink was as good as a nod, and trainers and jockeys, from various trivial circumstances, very easily gathered whether a particular horse was only out for an airing, or whether it was on the job.

Air Line, or Air Line Road (American).--To take the air line; to go direct, and by the shortest route; idiomatically, to avoid circumlocution. The origin of this expression is to be found in the straight lines of railway, without expensive detours and grades, which in the New World are rendered possible by the vast expanses of unbroken level. These lines of railway are called air line roads, or straight shoots (q.v). De Vere remarks that since the number of such roads has increased in the more thickly settled parts of the Union, the advantages of direct lines between two great centres over others which meander from town to town have become very manifest, and for a few years a tendency to build such air lines has agitated Legislatures, from whom and from financial circles in the States and abroad help is asked. These lines not unfrequently run for long distances by the side of older lines.

1888. St. Louis Globe Democrat, Jan. 24. The obese style once admired is now disliked. Many old English authors had too much rhetoric for our age. Of one thing we are profoundly convicted, that we have no time to spare for superfluities. An author must take the air line or we will not travel.

1888. Florida Times Union Advertisement, Feb. 11. Ask for tickets viâ Augusta or Atlanta and the Piedmont air line.