Page:Farmer - Slang and its analogues past and present - Volume 5.pdf/228

 To water one's plants, verb. phr. (old).—To shed tears: see Bib.

Plaster, verb, (common).—To flatter.

Plaster of warm (or hot) guts, subs. phr. (venery).—Copulation; 'one warm Belly clapt to another.'—B. E. (c. 1696); Grose (1785): see Greens and Ride.

Plasterer, subs. (sporting).—An amateur gun: see quot. and cf. Peter Gunner.

1885. Bromley-Davenport, Sport. The plasterer is one who thinks nothing of the lives and eyes of the men who surround him on all sides, and blows his pheasant to a pulp before the bird is seven feet in the air.

Plate (Plate-fleet or Family Plate), subs, (common).—1. Generic for money: formerly a piece of silver: also (Halliwell) = 'illegal silver money': see Rhino. Hence to melt the plate = to spend lavishly; when the plate-fleet comes in = money in plenty.—B. E. (c. 1696); Grose (1785).

1586. Marlow, Jew of Malta [Dodsley, Old Plays (Reed), viii. 335]. He's worth three hundred plates.

1608. Shakspeare. Antony and Cleopatra, v. 2. In his livery Walk'd crowns and crownets; realms and islands were As plates dropt from his pocket.

1624. Beaumont and Fletcher, Rule a Wife, ii. 2. 'Tis such a trouble to have a thousand things of great importance, Jewels and plates.

1749. Smollett, Gil Bias, vii. vii. I left [Phenicia] busy in melting the plate of a little merchant goldsmith, who, out of vanity, would have an actress for his mistress.

2. (rhyming).—In pl. = the feet: originally plates of meat: see Creepers. Whence to plate it = to walk. Also (American thieves') plates of meat = a street.

1886-96. Marshall, Pomes from the Pink 'Un ['Some Object Lessons'], 108. He is rocky on his plates, For he has forced them into 'sevens.' Ibid. ('Nobbled'), 114. A cove we call Feet, sir, on account of the size of his plates.

1887. Sims, in Referee, 7 Nov. 'Tottie.' As she walked along the street With her little plates of meat.

Old Plates, subs. phr. (Stock Exchange).—The shares of the London and River Plate Bank. New Plates = shares of the English Bank of the River Plate: see Stock Exchange.

To be in for the plate and win the heat, verb. phr. (old).—To get pox or clap.—Grose (1785).

To foul a plate, verb. phr. (old).—To dine or sup.—Grose (1785).

Platform, subs, (colloquial).—Formerly a plan, design, or model: now a declaration of principles or doctrines (chiefly religious and political) governing organised public action, each section or paragraph of which is called a plank. Also, as verb. = to draft or publish such a declaration of principles or doctrines. [See the earlier quots. for an inkling of the modern usage.]

1555. Foxe, Acts and Monuments, vi. 25. If my lord of St. Davids have their head encumbered with any new platform. Ibid., 592. The bishop had spent all his powder in casting such a platform to build his policy on as he thought should stand for ever and a day.