Page:Farmer - Slang and its analogues past and present - Volume 6.pdf/331

 Squab, subs. (old).—1. Anything fat, short, and dumpy. Hence (2) a fat sofa or well-filled bed. As adj. (squabby, squaddy, squatty, squabbish, &c.) = fat and short, heavy, bulky (in quot. 1756 = short, abrupt).—Grose. As verb. = to fall heavily, to plump down.

1593. Greene, News from Heaven and Hell. A fatte squaddy monke that had been well fedde in some cloyster.

1666. Harvey, Of Consumption. Diet makes them of a squabbish or lardy habit of body.

1675. Wycherley, Country Wife, iv. 3. A little squab French page who speaks no English.

1692. L'Estrange, Æsop. The eagle took the tortoise up in the air, and dropt him down, Squab, upon a rock.

c. 1708. Pope, Artemisia [Chalmers, Eng. Poets, xii. 211]. 'Artemisia.' On her large squab you find her spread, Like a fat corpse upon a bed.

1712. Betterton, Miller of Trompington. Nor the squab daughter nor the wife were nice.

1714. Addison, Spectator, 529. Seated upon a squab.

1716. Pope, Letter, 'To Lady M. W. Montague,' 18 Aug. We shall then see how the prudes of this world owed all their fine figure only to their being a little straiter laced; and that they were naturally as arrant squabs as those that went more loose.

1759. Goldsmith, Bee, No. 2. A French woman is a perfect architect in dress She never tricks out a squabby Doric shape with Corinthian finery.

1756. Walpole, To Mann, 25 July, iii. 125. We have returned a squab answer.

1855. Gaskell, North and South, xii. Bessie, herself, lay on a squab, or short sofa, placed under the window.

1865. Major Downing, May-Day. I had hardly got seated when in came a great, stout, fat, squaddy woman.

1870. Judd, Margaret, ii. 11. Ladies in short cloaks, with hoods squabbing behind.

1885. D. Tel., 10 Sep. The squabby stone structure.

2. (colloquial).—An inexperienced person; a fledgling. As adj. = callow (q.v.), coy, quiet.

1635. Brome, Sparagus Garden, ii. 2. Brit. Is he a trim youth? Mon. We must make him one, Jacke: 'tis such a squab such a lumpe.

1689. Nat. Lee, Princess of Cleves, iii. 1. Your demure ladies that are so squob in company are devils in a corner.

d. 1712. W. King, The Old Cheese [Chalmers, Eng. Poets, ix. 297.] Why must old pigeons, and they stale, be drest, When there's so many squab ones in the nest.

1781. Cowper, Prog. of Error, 218. Gorgonius sits, abdominous and wan, Like a fat squab upon a Chinese fan.

Verb. (King Edward's School, B'gham).—To squeeze by: also squob: with foot on wall or desk, and back against the victim who is similarly treated on the other side, or pressed against the opposite wall. Also squab-up = to push.

Squabash, verb. (old colloquial).—To crush. As subs. = a flattening out; spiflication (q.v.).

1827. Scott, Diary, 17 Jan. His satire squabashed at one blow, a set of coxcombs who might have humbugged the world long enough.

1830. Intelligencer, 11 Ap. Compared with the sarcastic irony which squabashes poor Mr. Nicholas Carlisle.

1833. M. Advtr., 1 July. A squabash of the growing incumbrance of chivalrous novels.

1837. Barham, Ingolds. Leg., 'House Warming.' Harry the Sixth who, instead Of being squabashed, as in Shakespeare we've read, Caught a bad influenza, and died in his bed.

Squabbled, adj. (printers').—'Broken': of type which, after 'setting,' has been knocked so much awry that it is a painstaking job to prevent it going to pi (q.v.).

Squaddle, verb. (American).—To decamp; to absquatulate (q.v.).