Page:Farmer - Slang and its analogues past and present - Volume 1.pdf/98

 cant).—A Quaker's meeting-house; also a desk therein.

Author-Baiting, subs. (theatrical).—Calling the author of an unsuccessful play before the curtain, and then, wanting all sense of decency and feeling, to overwhelm him with every imaginable source of annoyance—yelling, hooting, bellowing, etc.

Avast! intj. (nautical).—Hold on! Stop! Shut up! Stow it! etc., etc. No word perhaps has more suggested derivations than avast! Webster writes it down as from the Italian basta, enough; literally, it suffices, from bastare, to suffice. He does not, however, seem to have been altogether certain, for he queries whether it is not a worn-down form of the Dutch houd vast, hou' vast, hold fast! a derivation which Dr. Murray endorses as 'probable' in his New Dictionary of the English Language. Bearing in mind that avast, although used colloquially is first and foremost a sailor's term, this derivation does not seem far-fetched; for, the Dutch having been themselves one of the great maritime nations of the past, it is not unlikely that the term should have come from them, especially when it is borne in mind that a large proportion of nautical terms are so derived.

Such are boom; sprit; reef; schooner; skate; sloop; stiver; taffrail; yacht (jaghten, 'to chase'), etc.

On the other hand, as regards the Italian basta, it is only fair to point out that French workmen use basta, in the sense of enough! no more! The same term occurs also in the Spanish.

Hotten connects it with the old cant bynge a waste, get out of the way! go hence! but though one cannot speak with certainty, this is not, on the face of it, apparent. There seems no discoverable connection between the two; moreover, the comparative and historical method of dealing with slang shows us that avast in its present form and sense can be traced as far back as 1681, within about a hundred years of the publication of Harman's Caveat where bynge a waste first occurs. The probability therefore is that the two terms are distinct, and that avast is derived from a different source to bynge a waste (q.v.) which, as Leland points out, has probably its origin in the Romany.

1681. Otway. Soldiers' Fortune, iv., i. Hoa up, hoa up; so avast there, sir.

1748. Smollett. Rod. Random, ch, xli. 'Avast there, friend: none of your tricks upon travellers.'

1751. Smollett. Peregrine Pickle, ch, xcvii. 'And upon this scrap of paper—no, avast—that's my discharge from the parish.'

1884. W. C. Russell. Jack's Courtship, ch.,[**extra,?] xiv. But avast now! we've had enough of philosopherising.

Avoirdupois-Lay, subs. (old thieves' cant).—This is given by Grose as meaning the theft of brass weights off shop counters.

Avuncular-Relation, subs. (common[**)].—A pawnbroker—a facetious variant of uncle (q.v.), another name for the same individual.