SPUDDY, a seller of bad potatoes. In _Scotland_, a SPUD is a raw
potato; and roasted SPUDS are those cooked in the cinders with their
jackets on.
SPUNGING-HOUSE, the sheriff’s officer’s house, where prisoners, when
arrested for debt, are sometimes taken. As extortionate charges are
made there for accommodation, the name is far from inappropriate.
SPUNK, spirit, _fire_, courage, mettle.
“In that snug room, where any man of SPUNK
Would find it a hard matter to get drunk.”
_Peter Pindar_, i., 245.
Common in _America_. For derivation see the following.
SPUNKS, lucifer matches.—_Herefordshire; Scotland._ SPUNK, says Urry,
in his MS. notes to Ray, “is the excrescency of some tree, of which
they make a sort of tinder to light their pipes with.”
SPUNK-FENCER, a lucifer match seller.
SQUABBY, flat, short and thick.
SQUARE, honest; “on the SQUARE,” _i.e._, fair and strictly honest; “to
turn SQUARE,” to reform, and get one’s living in an honest manner,—the
opposite of CROSS.
SQUARE, “to be SQUARE with a man,” to be _even_ with him, or to be
revenged; “to SQUARE up to a man,” to offer to fight him. _Shakespere_
uses SQUARE in the sense of to quarrel.
SQUARE COVE, an honest man.
SQUARE MOLL, an honest woman.