Page:Farmer - Slang and its analogues past and present - Volume 3.pdf/202

 3. (American). To fall; to go to ground; hence, to be puzzled or bewildered.

1869. S. L. Clemens, Innocents at Home, p. 21. You're most too many for me, you know. When you get in with your left I hunt grass every time.

To cut one's own grass. verb. phr. (thieves').—To earn one's own living.

1877. Five Years' Penal Servitude, c iii., p. 242. 'Cut her own grass! Good gracious! what is that!' I asked. 'Why, purvide her own chump—earn her own living,' the old man replied.

To be sent to grass, verb. phr. (University).—To be rusticated; to receive a travelling scholarship (q.v.).

1794. Gent. Mag., p. 1085. And was very near rustication [at Cambridge] merely for kicking up a row after a beakering party. 'Soho, Jack!' briskly rejoined another, 'almost presented with a travelling fellowship? very nigh being sent to grass, hey?'

Go to grass! phr. (common).—Be off! You be hanged! Go to hell!

1848. Durivage, Stray Subjects, p. 95. A gentleman who was swimming about, upon being refused, declared that he might go to grass with his old canoe, for he didn't think it would be much of a shower, anyhow.

1865. Bacon, Handbook of America, p. 363. Go to grass! be off! get out!

To let the grass grow under one's feet, verb. phr. (colloquial).—To proceed or work leisurely. Fr., limer.

To take Nebuchadnezzar out to grass, subs. phr. (venery).—To take a man. [Nebuchadnezzar = penis.] For synonyms, see Greens.

Grass-comber, subs. (nautical).—A countryman shipped as a sailor.

1886. W. Besant, World Went Very Well Then, ch. xxix. Formerly, Jack would have replied to this sally that, d'ye see, Luke was a grass comber and a land swab, but that for himself, there was no tea aboard ship, and a glass of punch or a bowl of flip was worth all the tea ever brought from China.

Grasser, subs. (sporting).—A fall.

Grasshopper, subs. (common).—1. A waiter at a tea-garden.

2. (rhyming).—A policeman, or copper (q.v.).

3. (thieves').—A thief. See Gunner.

1893. Pall Mall Gaz., 2 Jan., p. 4., c. 3. Quite a 'school' of youthful grasshoppers are in possession of one corner of the ice, but on the Westminster side of the park 'pon bridge there is a good sprinkling of old hands.

Grassing, subs. (printers').—Casual work away from the office. See Smouting.

Grassville, subs. (old).—The country; cf., Daisyville.

Grass-widow, subs. (old).—1. An unmarried mother; a deserted mistress. See Barrack-hack and Tart.

1690. B. E., Dict. Cant. Crew, s.v. Widow's weeds, a grass-widow, one that pretends to have been married, but never was, yet has children.

1785. Grose, Vulg. Tongue, s.v. Widow's weeds; a grass-widow; a discarded mistress.

2. (colloquial).—A married woman temporarily separated from her husband.

[The usually accepted derivation that grass = Fr., grâce is doubtful. Hall (says J. C. Atkinson, in Glossary of Cleveland Words) gives as the definition of this word 'an unmarried woman who has had a child'; in Moor's Suffolk Words and Phrases, grace-widow, 'a woman who has had a child for her cradle ere she has had a husband for her bed'; and corresponding with this is the N. S. or Low Ger., gras-wedewe. Again, Sw. D., gras-anka, or -enka = grass-widow, occurs in the same sense as with us: 'a low, dissolute, unmarried woman living by herself.' The original meaning of the word seems to