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To release oneself from a vow. It was a custom in Cheshire to register a vow by driving a nail into a tree, swearing to keep your vow as long as it remained there. If you wished to retract, the nail was with- drawn and the vow thereby cancelled.
To beat. I'll dress his hide neatly; I'll beat him soundly.
To get one's drink at someone else's expense.
To drink heavily, to excess, or habitually.
To drink abundantly or excessively. Many fish swim with their mouths open, thus appearing to be continually drink- ing. The expression is found in Beaumont and Fletcher.
To take medicinal waters, especially at a spa.
To exact more than is quite equitable. Heaven would no bargain for its blessings drive. — DRYDEN: Astrcea Redux, i, 137.
To do a brisk business. To drive the swine through the hanks of yarn.
To snore very loudly. To hear as a hog in harvest. In at one ear and out at the other; hear without paying attention. Giles Firmin says, "If you call hogs out of the harvest stubble, they will just lift up their heads to listen, and fall to their shack again." {Real Christian, 1670.
To make a highly tactless remark. Brick-and-mortar franchise. A Chartist phrase for the £10 household system, long since abolished.
To make a casual call, not invited; to pay an informal visit.
"Friends drop off," fall away gradually. "To drop off to sleep," to fall asleep (especially in weariness or sickness).
To put too much water into" spirrts, or tea. The idea is that the supply of water is so great that even the miller, who uses a water wheel, is drowned with it.
To beat any one with a stick, or rope's end: perhaps a contraction of DRY RUB. It is also used to signify a good beating with any instrument.
To get together unexpectedly or in an emergency, as "to drum up a meal.
To open a door: a contraction of DO OPE or OPEN. See DUB.
Everyone has their own preferences and tastes
To be hanged, or condemned to death. The wages of sin is death — Rom. vi, 23.
To partake of his hospitality. Among the Arabs to eat a man's salt was a sacred bond between the host and guest. No one who has eaten of another's salt should speak ill of him or do him an ill turn.
To be forced to do something extremely disagreeable. The expression arose from an incident during an armistice m the war between Britain and the U.S.A. in 1812. A New Englander, having crossed the British lines by mistake, while out hunting, brought down a crow. A British officer, who heard the shot, determined to punish him.
To put up with insults and mortification. Dirt-track racing is a form of motor-cycle racing on a track of cinders or similar sub- stance. Features of the sport are the shortness of the laps (about 440 yards) and the sharpness of the turns. It was introduced into England from Australia in 1928.
An Indian custom at councils of importance. Later when white men took exception, they were permitted to avoid offence by placing a silver dollar on the dish and passing it: the next man took the dollar and ate the dog. Hence the expression in American politics to eat dog for another.
T9 cost more in food than he is worth; to do little or no work. The phrase comes from the stable.
To come down from a position you have assumed; to be obliged to take SL lower room." Here "humble" is a pun on umble, the umbles being the heart, liver, and entrails of the deer, the huntsman's perquisites. When the lord and his household dined the venison pasty was served on the dais, but the umbles were made into a pie for the huntsman and his fellows, who took the lower seats.
Said of an animal (usually a horse) that eats more than he is worth, or whose work does not pay for the cost of keeping.
Indicative of strong emphasis. "I'd eat my hat first," "I'd be hanged first.
To brood over some trouble to such an extent that one wears one- self out with the worry of it; to suffer from hopeless disappointment in expectations.
To fret or worry un- reasonably; to allow grief or vexation to predominate over the mind, tincture all one's ideas, and absorb all other emotions.
To be studying for the bar. Students are required to dine in the Hall of an Inn of Court at least three times in each of the twelve terms before they are "called" to the bar.
To retract in a humili- ating manner; to unsay what you have said.
To be compelled to eat your own words, or retract what you have said. Fluellen (in Henry V) is taunted by Pistol for wearing a leek in his hat. "Hence," says Pistol, "I am qualmish at the smell of leek." Fluellen replies, "I beseech you ... at my desire . . . to eat this leek." The ancient answers, "Not for Cadwallader and all his goats." Then the peppery Welshman beats him, nor desists till Pistol has swallowed the entire abhorrence.
To have a good appetite. But "It eats well" means that what is eaten is agreeable or flavorous. To "eat badly" is to eat without appetite or too little.
To excite, stimulate, or provoke; or as it is vulgarly called, to egg a man on. Fall back, fall edge; i.e. let what will happen. Some derive to egg on, from the Latin word, AGE, AGE.
To move away very gradually, as a ship moves from the edge of the shore.
See EGG ON. To fall by the edge of the sword. By a cut from the sword; to be slain in battle.
To incite, to urge on. Here egg is simply another form of edge — to edge on, i.e. to drive one nearer and nearer to the edge until the plunge is taken.
To push one's way through a crowd; to get a place by hook or crook.
To tell the whole matter and conceal nothing (Fr. vider le sac, to expose all to view).
To come to no practical result. The allusion is to kindling, which smokes, but will not light a fire.
English proverb; full definition pending editorial review.
Mistakes are inevitable, but forgiveness is a noble trait.
To withstand with boldness and effrontery.
To persist in an assertion which is not true. To maintain without changing colour or hanging the head.
To stand up boldly and meet a crisis without faltering.
To beat. Fag the bloss; beat the wench; Cant. A fag also means a boy of an inferior form or class, who acts as a servant to one of a superior, who is said to fag him, he is my fag; whence, perhaps, fagged out, for jaded or tired. To stand a good fag; not to be soon tired.
To be deficient of a supply. To fall short of the mark is a figure taken from archery, quoits, etc., where the missile falls to the ground before reaching the mark.
To lose flesh; to degenerate; to quit a party, as "his adherents fell away one by one.
To fail, through hesitating between two choices. The French say, Etre assis entre deux chaises.
To lie prostrate or procumbent; to fail to interest, as "the last act fell flat.
To make an assault on someone; to quarrel with, or run up against someone. A sea term, A rope is said to be/ow/1 when it is entangled ; and one ship falls foul of another when it runs against her and pre- vents her free progress.
To violate, as "to fall from his word*'; to tumble or slip off, as "to fall from a horse"; to abandon or go away from, as "to fall from grace," to relapse into sin.
Apart from a theological implication, this means to relapse from a moral position one has attained.
To take one's place with others; to concur with, as "he fell in with my views" — that is, his views or ideas fell into line with my views or ideas. Cp. FALL our.
To meet accidentally; to- co me across. This is a Latin phrase, in aliquant casu Incidere.
To stumble accidentally into a snare. This is a Latin phrase, insidias incidere. Similarly, to fall into disgrace is the Latin in offensionem cadere.
To quarrel; also, to happen. Cp. FALL IN.
To fail of being carried out or accomplished.
To begin (eating, fighting, etc.). Come, Sir, fall to, then; you see my little supper is always ready when I come home, and I'll make no stranger of you. — Cotton, in WALTON'S Compleat Angler.
To fail from lack of support; to become of no account. "In view of what has happened my proposals fall to the ground," i.e. are rendered useless.
To fight and scratch each other; to contend in strife. See EAR.