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 Meal-mouth, subs. (old).—See quot.

1690. B. E., Dict. Cant. Crew, s.v. Meal-mouth, a sly sheepish Dun, or Solicitor for Money. Cf. Mealy-mouthed.

Meal-tub (or -sack), subs. (clerical).—The stock of sermons. 'I've nothing in my meal-tub' = I've no sermon ready.

Mealy- (or Meal-) mouthed, (or mealy), adj. (old: now recognised).—Fluent; plausible; persuasive. See also quot. 1748. Cf. Meal-mouth.

1587. Harmar, Beza's Sermons, 315. Ye whited walls and painted sepulchres, ye meal-mouthed counterfeits, ye devourers of widows.

1598. Marston, Sat., ii. Who would imagine yonder meale-mouthed precisian  is a vile, sober, damn'd politician.

1600. Dekker, Shom. Holiday [Grosart (1873), i. 13]. This wench with the mealy mouth that wil neuer tire, is my wife I can tel you.

1606. John Day, Ile of Guls, iv. 4. p. 93. Wife. Tho I may not scold I may tel em roundly out I hope and Ile not be mealely mouthd, I warrant em.

1631. Shirley, Love Tricks, i. A very crazy, old, meal-mouth'd gentleman; you are younger at least by thirty years.

1639. Fletcher, Bloody Brother, iii. 2. A place too good for thee, thou meal-mouth'd rascal!

1748. Dyche, Dictionary (5th ed.). Mealy-mouthed, one that is faint-hearted, bashful, or afraid to speak his mind freely.

1759. Townley, High Life below Stairs, ii. Out, you mealy-mouthed cur!

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

1854. Whyte Melville, General Bounce, ix. 'We might get money—ay, plenty of it—if you were only like the rest: you're too mealy-mouthed, Mrs. Blacke, that's where it is.'

1854. Dickens, Hard Times, I didn't mince the matter with him. I'm never mealy with 'em.

1886. Edinburgh Review, clxiii. 425. Angry men hotly in earnest are not usually mealy-mouthed.

Mean, adj. (colloquial).—1. Disobliging; petty; stingy. To feel mean = to feel guilty.

2. (old: now American).—A general epithet of disparagement: mean night = a bad night; mean horse = a sorry screw; mean crowd = a man of no account; mean bit = a worn-out whore.

1848. Georgia Scenes, 27. He'll cut the same capers there as here. He's a monstrous mean horse.

1887. Francis, Saddle & Mocassin, p. 146. There ain't a drop of mean blood in him.

1888. Century Mag., Oct. There can be no greater provocation than is given by a mean horse, or a refractory steer.

Mean enough to steal acorns from a blind hog, phr. (American).—As mean as may be.

Mean white, subs. phr. (American negro).—See quots.; poor white trash (q.v.)

1837. H. Martineau, Soc. in America, ii. 311. There are a few, called by the slaves mean whites, signifying whites who work with the hands.

1873. Justin McCarthy, Fair Saxon, xix. That despised and degraded class, the mean whites—the creatures who had neither the social position and property that seemed essential to freedom in the South, nor the protected comfort of slavery.

Measly, adj. (vulgar).—Contemptible. [Cf. var. dial. measled = diseased].

1864. M. E. Braddon, Henry Dunbar, xxviii. 'And to think that the government of this country should have the audacity to offer a measly hundred pounds or so for the discovery of a great crime!'