Page:Farmer - Slang and its analogues past and present - Volume 3.pdf/175

 Gob-stick, subs. (old).—A silver table-spoon. (In use in America = either spoon or fork); (nautical), a horn or wooden spoon.

1789. Parker, Life's Painter, s.v.

1859. Matsell, Vocabulum, s.v.

Gob-string (or Gab-string), subs. (old).—A bridle.

1785. Grose, Vulg. Tongue, s.v.

1811. Lexicon Balatronicum, s.v.

Go-by, subs. (colloquial).—The act of passing; an evasion; a deception. To give one the go-by = to cut; to leave in the lurch. Cf., Cut (subs. sense 2, verb. sense 2).

1876. Hindley, Cheap Jack, p. 214. When we came in contact with a travelling bookseller we could give him the go-by with our library.

1892. R. L. Stevenson, Kidnapped, ch. ix. She gave us the go-by in the fog—as I wish from the heart that ye had done yoursel'!

1892. Sala's Journal, 25 June, p. 194. Now can you understand how it is possible, and, I think, expedient, to give politics the go-by, so far as one conveniently can?

Go-by-the-Ground, subs. (old).—A dumpy man or woman.—Grose.

God, subs. (common).—1. in. pl., the occupants of the gallery at a theatre. [Said to have been first used by Garrick because they were seated on high, and close to the sky-painted ceiling.] Fr., paradis = gallery; also poulailler. In feminine, Goddess.

1772. Cumberland, Fashionable Lover [probably spoken by printer's devil]. 'Tis odds For one poor devil to face so many gods.

1812. J. and H. Smith, Rejected Addresses, p. 128 [ed. 1869]. Each one shilling god within reach of a nod is, And plain are the charms of each gallery goddess.

1843. Thackeray, Irish Sketch Book, ch. xxvii. The gallery was quite full one young god, between the acts, favoured the public with a song.

1872. M. E. Braddon, Dead Sea Fruit, ch. xiv. There come occasionally actors and actresses of higher repute, eager to gather new laurels in these untrodden regions, and not ill pleased to find themselves received with noisy rapture and outspoken admiration by the ruder gods and homelier goddesses of a threepenny gallery.

1890. Globe, 7 Apr., p. 2, c. 2. The gods, or a portion of them, hooted and hissed while the National Anthem was being performed.

1892. Sydney Watson, Wops the Waif, iii., iv. It is only when we have paid our 'tuppence' and ascended to the gallery just under the roof, known as 'among the gods,' that we begin to understand what is meant by the lowest classes, the 'great unwashed.'

1892. Pall Mall Gaz., 20 Apr., p. 2, c. 3. If theatre managers would only give the public the chance of as good a seat as can be got at the Trocadero or the Pavilion, at the same price, and manage the ventilation of their houses so as not to bake the gods and freeze the 'pitites,' I venture to think that fewer people would go to the music halls.

2. in. pl. (printers').—The quadrats used in jeffing (q.v.).

3. (tailors').—A block pattern. Gods of cloth = 'classical tailors.'—Grose. See Snip.

4. (Eton).—A boy in the sixth form.

1881. Pascoe, Life in our Public Schools. A god at Eton is probably in a more exalted position, and receives more reverence than will ever afterwards fall to his lot.

A sight for the gods, phr. (common).—A matter of wonderment.

1892. Hume Nisbet, Bushranger's Sweetheart, p. 31. Stringy Bark prepared to greet his native land, was a sight for the gods to behold with satisfaction, and men to view from afar with awed respect.