Page:Farmer - Slang and its analogues past and present - Volume 6.pdf/183

 Shirt. To get one's shirt out (or lose one's shirt), verb. phr. (common).—To make (or get) angry. Hence, shirty = angry, ill-tempered.

1851-61. Mayhew, London Lab., iii. 147. They knocked his back as they went over, and he got shirtey.

1897. Maugham, Liza of Lambeth, iii. You ain't shirty 'cause I kissed yer?

Colloquialisms.—To bet one's shirt (or put one's shirt on) = to risk all; to fly round and tear one's shirt = to bestir oneself; shirt (or flag) in the wind = a fragment seen through the fly, or through a hole in the breech; 'that's up your shirt' = 'That's a puzzler for you'; 'Do as my shirt does' = 'Kiss my arse!'

c.1707. Ballad of Old Proverbs [Durfey, Pills, &c. (1707)], ii. 112. But if she prove her self a Flurt, Then she may do as does my shirt.

See also Boiled shirt; Bloody shirt; Historical (or Illustrated) shirt.

Shirt-sleevie, subs. phr. (Stonyhurst).—A dance: on winter Saturday evenings, and sometimes in the open air at the end of summer term. [The costume is an open flannel shirt and flannel trousers.]

Shise. See Shice.

Shit (or Shite), subs. (vulgar).—Excrement: as verb. = to ease the bowels. Whence, shit = violent abuse: generic. Thus shitsack = (1) 'a dastardly fellow,' and (2) a Nonconformist (Grose): also shit-sticks, shit-rag, shit-fellow, &c.; shitten = worthless, contemptible; shiddle-cum-shite (shittle-cum-shaw or shittletidee) = nouns or exclamations of contempt; shit-*fire = a bully; shitters = the diarrhœa; shit-bag = the belly: in pl. = the guts; shit-house = a privy; shit-pot = a rotten or worthless humbug; shit-hunter (or stir-shit) = a sod; shit-shark = a gold-finder; shit-shoe (or shit-shod) = derisive to one who has bedaubed his boot; shit-hole = the rectum; and to shit through the teeth = to vomit. Also proverbs and proverbial sayings: 'Shitten-cum-shite's the beginning of love' (proverbial); 'Wish in one hand and shit in the other, and see which will first fill'; 'Only a little clean shit (Scotticé, 'clean dirt')': derisive to one bedaubed or bewrayed; 'He (she, or it) looks as though the Devil had shit 'em flying': of things and persons mean, dwarfed, eccentric, or ridiculous; 'Like shit (sticking) to a shovel': very adhesive indeed; 'To swallow a sovereign and shit it in silver' = the height of convenience; 'Shit in your teeth' (old) = a foul retort on somebody who does not agree with you; 'It shines like a shitten barn-door' (Grose); 'All is not butter the cow sh—ts'; 'Claw a churl by the breech (or culls—Jonson) and he'll sh— in your fist'; 'The devil sh—s upon a great heap'; 'Shitten luck's good luck'; 'Lincolnshire, where hogs sh— soap, and crows sh— fire'; 'Go and eat coke and shit cinders' (popular) = derisive and defiant; 'Thought lay abed and shit himself, and thought he hadn't done it.'