Page:Farmer - Slang and its analogues past and present - Volume 7.pdf/17

 See Bright; Heap; Jigger; Oil; Rich; Rose.

Strike-me-blind, subs. phr. (nautical).—Rice.

Strill, subs. (provincial).—A cheating lie (Hotten).

String, subs. (printers').—A hoax; a discredited story. Hence as verb = to hoax, to deceive. Also (Bee) on a string (or line) = hoaxed, bamboozled; STUFFED (q.v.).

1857. Marshall, Pomes, 68. You can't kid me they've been having you ON STRING.

Verb. (billiards).—To cast for play: each player to the top of the table to return to balk; the one nearest the bottom cushion has then the choice.

In a string, phr. (old).—At command.

1706. Ward, Wooden World, 27. 'A Sea Lieutenant.' In fine, he is the Captain's humble Pig in a string.

TO HARP UPON ONE STRING, verb. phr. (colloquial).—To repeat incessantly (Heywood, Proverbs, 1546).

1640. Two Lancashire Lovers, 14. But her parents, ever harping upon one string, expounded this aversenesse and declining of hers to a modest bashfull shame.

TO FEEL LIKE GOING TO HEAVEN IN A STRING, verb. phr. (old).—To feel blindly and confusedly happy.

Stringer, subs. (old).—1. A wencher: see Mutton-monger.

1611. Beaumont and Fletcher, Kn. Burning Pestle, i. 1. A whoreson tyrant, hath beene an old stringer in his days, I warrant.

2. (cricket).—A difficult ball to play.

Stringy-bark, subs. phr. (Australian).—See quot.

1890. A. J. Vogan, Black Police, 217. Stringy-bark, a curious combination of fusil oil and turpentine, labelled 'whisky.'

Adj. (Australian).—Rough, uncultured; hence mean, ne'er-do-weel: equivalent to 'bush,' and usually in contempt.

1833. New South Wales Magazine, Oct., 1. 173. I am but, to use a colonial expression, a stringy-bark carpenter.

1853. C. Rudston Read, Australian Gold Fields, 53. After swimming a small river about 100 yards wide he'd arrive at old Geordy's, a stringy-bark settler.

1892. Nisbet, Bushranger's Sweetheart, 30. He was a Larikin of the Larikins, this tiny stringy-bark, who haunted my thoughts.

Strip, verb. (old).—1. See quot.

c. 1696. B. E., Diet. Cant. Crew, s.v. Strip, c. to Rob or Gut a House, to unrig any Body, or to Bite them of their Money. Strip the ken, c. to Gut the House. Strip the table, c. to Winn all the Money on the Place. Ibid. 'Poor, naked': e.g. 'We have stript the Cull' = 'We have got all the Fool's Money'; 'The Cove's stript' = 'the Rogue has not a Jack left to help himself.'

Stripe, subs. (colloquial).—A characteristic; kind; kidney (q.v.). Spec. (American) = persons of the same political colour.

1613. W. Browne, Britannia's Pastorals, i. 2. I shall go on; and first in differing stripe The flood-god's speech thus tune an oaten pipe.

1856. New York Herald, 7 July. The call of the Soft-shell Convention was signed by twelve men of the Free-Soil Buffalo stripe.

1875. Stedman, Vict. Poets, 256. Various poems are of a democratic, liberal STRIPE.

The Stripes, subs. phr. (American).—Short for 'Stars and Stripes' (q.v.).