Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 9.djvu/426

 348 NOTES AND QUERIES. [i2S.ix.o OT .29 f 1921. STIR. Prison. STRAFE. A reprimand. (See B.) STOPPED ONE. Beceived a wound. STUMER. A failure ; one with no pluck. " Never let it be said your mother bred a stumer." STUNT An adventure ; escapade ; anything to be performed. SUDS. Ale. In expression " Government suds," Government ale. SWEATING. In a state of suspense. If a soldier expected a furlough very shortly he would describe himself as " sweating on leave." SWEATING ON THE TOP LINE. Anxious ; nearly, but not quite. SWINGING rr. Malingering. SWINGING ON THE EAR. The frequent and wheed- ling request for a loan. SWINGING THE LEAD. Malingering. TICKET. Certificate of discharge from the Army. TOLD OFF (TO BE). To be reprimanded. TOTSACK. A bag usually a sandbag which accommodated the rations of a number of men. TRES BEANS. Tres bien. TURN rr IN (TO). To die. TWIST (TO). To defraud. UMTEEN (UMPTEEN). An unknown quantity or number implying very many. UNCLE NED. Bed. UNGUMMED (UNSTUCK). " Sacked " ; dismissed. UP THE POLE. Daft ; silly. VAN BLONK. Vin blanc. VAN ROUGE. Vin rouge. VELVET (TO BE ON). To be fortunate. WADS. Small cakes sold in Y.M.C.A. and other canteens. WASHOUT. A failure ; musketry term for a miss. WASH our (TO). To cancel, suppress. WEST (TO GO). To die ; come to nothing. WHIZZ-BANG. Field post cards. (See B.) WIN (TO). To acquire ; purloin. WIND UP. Fright ; nervousness. WINDY. Nervous ; scared. WIRE AT Loos (ON THE). Missing on parade. WORK ONE'S TICKET. Get discharged from the Army ; obtain discharge by malingering. WORST. Description applied by prisoners of war to a sausage ; meat issued by Germans to prisoners. (Wurst). You AND ME. A cup of tea. " YOU'RE FOR rr 1 " Meaning that a soldier was for the " high jump " (q.v.) before the " old man " (q.v.). PASSING STRESS. (See 12 S. ix. 241, 263, 283, 303, 325.) SHAKESPEARE, and his day, said : Be not obdurate, open thy deaf ears. (' Titus Andronicus,' II. iii. 180.) Milton said, " the baleful eyes " of Satan were Mixt with obdurate pride and stedfast hate, and A. de Vere's ' St. Thomas,' III. vi., in 1876: In that obdurate will and lawless humour ; though Wordsworth and Shelley had already shifted to obdurate. Yet Swinburne's (c. 1885) ' Bothwell,' I. iii. : Unkindliness and soul's obduracy Have made her soft heart hard. Now we hear the verbs contemplate (vide sup.), enervate if Wordsworth in ' Departing Summer ' (1819) does not mean to have that, all the better : Best pleased with what is aptliest framed To enervate and defile alternate ; in Milton, of course, not yet so : Melodious hymns about the sovran throne Alternate all night long. (' Paradise Lost,' v. 652.) Shelley's only use being already alternate (' Calderon,' ii. 182); concentrate Byron's ' Lara ' (ii. 794), having Such as long power and overgorged success Concentrates into all that's merciless. illustrate, not acknowledged until the ' Encyclopaedic Dictionary' (ending in 1888), and, e.g., in Coventry Patmore (c. 1850), still, It is that you illustrate it ; or in a Scottish professor -editor of English in 1918 ; exculpate in Bridges's (1890) ' Affliction of Richard,' not yet changed : What marvel in me wrought Shall quite exculpate thee ? and objurgate. These verbs in -ate, " all familiar with penult stress to middle-aged men." So consummate as verb, thus accented, " until within the last few years," adds 'N.E.D.,' is in A. de Vere's 1846 second sonnet on his father : Thy Will consummate in my will's despite ; and in Patmore' s somewhat later ' Angel in the House,' xi. : But he who casts Heaven's truth to swine Consummates all incontinence. Going back to Pope's ' Odyssey,' xx. if Popfi it be : And let the peers consummate the disgrace. Yet, not only Wordsworth, before de Vere, has only consummate, but Shakespeare, before Pope, has To consummate the business happily. (' King John,' V. vii. 35.) And in his contemporary ' Titus Androni- cus ' : There shall we consummate our spousal rites. In fact Dr. Johnson's note is, " Anciently accented on the first syllable " which would place " consummate " with " access," &c., among the exceptions temporary, modern dictionaries will allow consummate, yet also consummate. An ex -classical Fellow