Avast!
»Avast!» (Stage-Land 82. 8.)
A sailor.
Sailor slang = Hold! Stop!
The term is much used by landlubbers who desire to get local colour cheap.
Little-go
»Perhaps you’d get through your Little-go in the course of the next few years.» (They And I. 7. 21.)
Conversation between a young lady and her brother, who is a student.
At Cambridge, Little-go is the common name for the public examination which candidates for an »ordinary degree» have to pass in the second year of residence.
Cf. Great-go: the final examination for the B. A.
nurse
»I had been ‘nursing’ her, as we say in the political world, for years.» (The Prude’s Progress 67. 20.)
A young author.
Political slang: used of a candidate for Parliament who seeks to ingratiate himself with the electors by paying them attentions and giving them things they like with a view to securing their votes when the election takes place. Here used of trying to prepare a young lady’s mind to accept a proposal of marriage when the moment comes to make it.
pater, mater
»I say to myself I’ll do a thing, but the mater talks and talks, and——.» (Sketches 41. 12.)
A young gentleman.
»I promised the Mater I would, and I did.» (Sketches 80. 30.)
The same.
»The Mater gave me half-a-crown a week for pocket-money.» (Sketches 81. 9.)
The same.
»The pater came to the conclusion that it was time he laid down a dog.» (Novel Notes 48. 18.)
The same.
The commonest familiar names for the parents on the lips of the average public schoolboy.
plough
«You have been ploughed then?» (Prude’s Progress).
Schoolboy slang for to be rejected in an examination.
Cf. the synonymous to be plucked and to be spun.
ratty
»Against one such [a portraiture to the living original], evidently an attempt to help Dick see himself in his true colours, I find this marginal note in pencil: ‘Better not’. Might make him ratty.» (They And I. 258. 1.)
A schoolgirl.
The expression is, I think, schoolboy slang for waxy, annoyed.
(Cf. Swed. «gnafven».)
shoot
»They’re all of ’em in the parlour, the whole blooming shoot.» (P. Kelver II. 66. 2.)
Uneducated young man.
Carters’ slang for mob, medley, rabble, miscellaneous horde. The exact meaning is probably: the whole mass of them as «shot» in one indiscriminate «shoot» from a tipping-cart or waggon into a place marked «Rubbish may be shot here» (afstjälpningsplats).
(Cf. Swed.: «hela skoffan».)
slack, swot
»To ‘slack’ in this term, with the full determination of ‘swotting’ in the next.» (Tommy And Co. 94. 14.)
The author.
To sweat or swot is schoolboy slang for drudge, study hard. To slack means the contrary.
The term «swot» originated at the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, in the broad Scotch pronunciation of Dr. Wallace, one of the Professors, of the word sweat.
Cf. »He used to despise a swot, as we used to call a lad with a taste for literature». (Percy White: Mr. Bailey-Martin. I.) »That’s the worst of clever little swots» (Rudyard Kipling, Stalky & Co.)
spin
»You have been ploughed then?»
»Oh, come, you mustn’t despair. You’ve only been »spun», as you fellows call it, for a few months.» (The Prude’s Progr. 52. 15. 35.)
To be spun: to be rejected in an examination = to be plucked and to be ploughed.
Baumann and Farmer-Henley call it military slang (Royal Military Academy), but here it occurs during a conversation between two medical students and their civil friends.
swag
»His ‘swag’ generally consists of an overcoat and a pair of boots.» (Novel Notes 176. 15.)
The author.
»A policeman found them afterwards, sitting on a doorstep, the ‘swag’ behind them in a carpet bag.» (Sketches 147. 22.)
A gentleman.
Thieves’ slang for booty, stolen things; not used outside thieves’ language—except, of course, as a conscious quotation.