1686. Captain Cowley in Harris Voyages, i., 82. We walked,
moreover, without the town to the villages inhabited by the
hodmandods, to view their nasty bodies.
Hoe. To hoe in (American Univ.).—To work with vigour; to swot (q.v.).
To hoe one’s own row, verb. phr. (American).—To do one’s own work.
Hard row to hoe. See Hard Row.
Hoe-down, subs. (American).—A negro dance; a breakdown (q.v.).
Hog, subs. (old).—1. A shilling: also a sixpence: and (in America) a
ten-cent piece. For synonyms, see Blow. Half-a-hog = sixpence, or
five-cent piece.
1688. Shadwell, Squire of Alsatia, s.v. Hog, a shilling.
1690. B. E., Dict. Cant. Crew, s.v. Hog, You Darkman Budge, will
you Fence your hog at the next Boozing ken?
1714. Memoirs of John Hall (4th Ed.), p. 12, s.v.
1725. New Cant. Dict., s.v. Half a Hog, Six-Pence.
1809–12. Miss Edgeworth, Ennui, ch. vi. ‘It’s only a tester or a
hog they want your honour to give ’em, to drink your honour’s
health,’ said Paddy. ‘A hog to drink my health?’ ‘Ay, that is a
thirteen, plase your honour; all as one as an English shilling.’
1825. Egan, Life of an Actor, ch. iv. You shall have ... eighteen
hog a week, and a benefit which never fails.
1842. Thackeray, Cox’s Diary in Comic Almanack, p. 237. Do you
think I’m a-going to kill my horses, and break my precious back,
and bust my carriage, and carry you, and your kids, and your traps,
for six hog?
1851–61. H. Mayhew, Lond. Lab. and Lond. Poor, vol. i., p. 529. The
slang phrases are constantly used by the street lads; thus a
sixpence is a ‘tanner’; a shilling a ‘bob,’ or a hog.... The
collections of coin dealers amply show, that the figure of a hog
was anciently placed on a small silver coin.
1857. Mrs. Mathews, Tea Table Talk, p. 207. The shopwoman satisfied
Suett after her fashion, that his little lump of Suett had absorbed
flour and lard (pastry) to the amount of what her queer customer
would have termed a hog.
1859. Matsell, Vocabulum, s.v. Hog, a ten-cent piece.
2. (colloquial).—A foul-mouthed blackguard; a dirty feeder. Also, a
common glutton.
1598. Florio, A Worlde of Wordes, s.v. Ciro, a hogge, a swine, a
filthie fellowe.
1892. Milliken, ’Arry Ballads, p. 69. ’Arry’s a hog when he feeds.
3. (Cambridge Univ.: obsolete).—A student of St. John’s. Also, Johnian
Hog. See Crackle, Bridge of Grunts, and Isthmus of Suez.
1690. Diary of Abraham de la Pryme (Surtees Society, No. 54),
quoted in Notes and Queries, 6, S. xi., 328. For us Jonians are
called abusively hoggs.
1795. Gent. Mag., lxv., 22. The Johnian hogs were originally
remarkable on account of the squalid figures and low habits of the
students, and especially of the sizars of Saint John’s College.
[Another story of how name originated is given in detail in Gent.
Mag. (1795), lxv., 107.]
1889. Whibley, In Cap and Gown, p. 28. An obsolete name for members
of St. John’s College, Cambridge.