Page:Farmer - Slang and its analogues past and present - Volume 1.pdf/60

 aller manger les pissenlits par la racine (popular: [** ']to go and feed off dandelion roots'--observe, by the way, that pissenlit is an exact equivalent for one of the English field names of the dandelion, viz., 'piddle-the-bed'); laisser fuir son tonneau (familiar: lit. 'to let fly' or 'kick away the cask.' Cf., 'to kick the bucket'); calancher (vagrants'); laisser ses bottes quelque part (familiar: lit. 'to leave one's boots somewhere'); déchirer son habit (popular: properly 'to rend' or 'cast aside one's coat'); déchirer son tablier (popular: in literary French this means, 'to throw aside or destroy one's apron'); souffler sa veilleuse (popular: meaning lit. 'to blow out one's night-*lamp' or 'floating wick.' Compare with 'to snuff it' or 'to put out one's light' in English slang); pousser le boum de cygne (popular); avoir son coke (familiar); prendre sa secousse (popular: i.e., 'to take one's blow' or 'shock'); rendre sa buche (tailors': the allusion is an obvious one); rendre sa canne au ministre (military: lit. 'to resign one's commission to the Minister [of War][** '][**)]; rendre sa clef (gypsy: lit. 'to give up the key'); rendre son livret (popular: lit. 'to throw up one's cards').

German Synonyms. See Hop the twig.

Italian Fourbesque. Sbasire (lit. 'to faint away'); sbasire su le funi (lit. 'to faint away on the rope').

Alone, adv. (old).--In the flash vocabulary of the time of Pierce Egan's Tom and Jerry [circa 1800-1825], only an experienced man of the world could be allowed to go alone. Such a one was said to be fly; up to snuff (q.v.), etc.

Along Of, adv. (vulgar).--A dialectical form for on account of; owing to; pertaining, or belonging to. Formerly along on, and it so appeared as early as a.d. 880: along of was used by Chaucer, but it is now mainly confined to the illiterate or vulgar.

1369. Chaucer, Troylus ii., 1001. On me is not along thin evil fare.

1581. W. Stafford, Exam. of Complaints, p. 16 (New Shaks. Soc.: Ed.). Complaining of general poverty, he says: 'Whereof it is longe, I cannot well tell.'

1601. Holland, Pliny, p. 25, quoted in Morris' Elem. Hist. Eng. Gram., p. 198. And that is long of contrarie causes.

1858. Dickens, Xmas. Stories (going into Society), p. 65 (II. ed.). Would he object to say why he left it? Not at all; why should he? He left it along of a dwarf.

1881. W[** .] Black, Beautiful Wretch, ch. xviii. 'Mayhap the concert didn't come off, along of the snow.'

Alsatia, or Alsatia the Higher, subs. (old slang).--1. Whitefriars, once a place privileged from arrests for debt, as was also Alsatia the lower, or the Mint in Southwark. Both were suppressed, in 1697, on account of the notorious abuses committed there. A charter of liberties and privileges had been granted, in 1608, by King James I. to the inhabitants of this district, and it speedily became the haunt of insolvent debtors, cheats, and gamesters, who conferred upon it the jocular cant name of Alsatia, a Latinised form of Alsace, a province which had long enjoyed