Bleeding, adj.—An expletive, which, if meant, would partake of the
nature of an oath; as it is there is little enough, sanguinary, either
literally or metaphorically about much that is described as bleeding.
It sounds big and weighty to those who use it, and that suffices.
1877. Besant and Rice, Son of Vulcan, pt. II., ch. xxiii. ‘When he
isn’t up to one dodge he is up to another. You make no bleeding
error.’
Bleeding Cully, subs. (old).—One who parts easily with his money, or
bleeds freely.—Grose.—[See Bleed.]
Bleed the Monkey, verbal phr. (nautical).—To steal rum from the mess
tub called ‘the monkey.’ The term is exclusively naval, ‘monkeys’ not
being known on merchant ships. The practice is also called sucking the
monkey, and tapping the admiral.—See Admiral.
1889. Chambers’ Journal, 3 Aug., p. 495. To suck the monkey is a
phrase explained in Peter Simple as having originally been used
among sailors for drinking rum out of cocoa-nuts, the milk having
been poured out and the liquor substituted. It is now applied to
the act of drinking on the sly from a cask by inserting a straw
through a gimlet hole, and to drinking generally. Barham, in the
legend of the Black Mousquetaire says:
What the vulgar call sucking the monkey,
Has much less effect on a man when he’s funky.
Blenker, verb (American).—To plunder. A cant phrase much used during
the Civil War. Possibly allied to the northern provincialism ‘blenk,’ a
trick or stratagem. ‘Blenk’ was also used in Morte d’Arthur in the
sense of ‘to bilk,’ or ‘cheat.’
Bless, verb (popular).—To curse; to damn.—See Blessed.
To bless oneself, verbal phr. (common).—To be surprised; to be vexed;
to be mortified. Generally, ‘God bless me!’ or ‘Bless my eyes!’ ‘Bless
my soul!’ ‘Lor’ bless me!’
1592. Shakspeare, Midsummer Night’s Dream, iv., 2, 11. Quin: Yea,
and the best person too: and he is a very paramour, for a sweet
voice. Flu: You must say, paragon: a paramour is, God bless us, a
thing of nought.
1615. T. Adams, Black Dev., 71. He ... would blesse himselfe to
think that so little a thing could extend itself to such a
capacity. [M.]
1665. Pepys, Diary, 1 Apr. How my Lord Treasurer did bless himself,
crying he could do no more, etc.
1759. Sterne, Tristram Shandy, ch. xl. Rub your hands thrice across
your foreheads—blow your nose—cleanse your emunctories—sneeze, my
good people!—God bless you.
1814. Miss Austen, Mansfield Park, ch. xviii. Could Sir Thomas look
in upon us just now, he would bless himself, for we are rehearsing
all over the house.
1843. Dickens, Christmas Carol, p. 77. ‘Why, bless my soul,’ cried
Fred, ‘who’s that?’
1853. Bulwer Lytton, My Novel, I., p. 307. After they had lain
apart for a little while, very silent and sullen, John sneezed.
‘God bless you!’ says Joan, over the bolster.
Not a [penny] to bless oneself with, phr. (popular).—Utterly
impecunious; ‘without a sou.’
1843. Dickens, Martin Chuzzlewit, I., p. 237. He landed there
without a penny to bless himself with.
1849. Dickens, David Copperfield, I., p. 113. I heard that Mr. Mell
was not a bad sort of fellow, but hadn’t a sixpence to bless
himself with.
1851. Mayhew, London Labour and London Poor, III., p. 55. The most
of ’em ain’t got a farthing to bless themselves with.
1861. George Eliot, Silas Marner, p. 38. I have not a shilling to
bless myself with.
To bless one’s stars, verbal phr. (common).—To thank oneself; to
attribute one’s good fortune to luck, generally in a ludicrous sense.
1845. Hood, Pauper’s Christmas Carol, iii. Ought not I to bless my
stars?
1877. Five Years’ Penal Servitude, ch. iii., p. 230. Forty-eight
marks! a week’s remission. The very thought made me savage, but I
blessed my stars I had not lost my class, or my good berth.
Blessed, Blest, ppl. adj. (popular).—An ironical euphemism; often used
like blazing for ‘cursed,’ ‘damned,’ etc., or as a vow.—See quot. from
Hindley and Oaths.
1806. Windham, Let. in Speeches (1812), I., 77. As one of the happy
consequences of our blessed system of printing debates, I am
described to-day ... as having talked a language directly the
reverse of that which I did talk. [M.]
1876. C. Hindley, Life and Adventures of a Cheap Jack, p. 139. One
Maidstone Fair time, I saw one of the gipsy Lees called ‘Jemmy,’
fighting with a man much bigger than himself. Tom Rosseter, the
mumper, was seconding his brother-in-law, Jemmy Lee, when, as Jemmy
kept throwing his man very heavily, he said, ‘My dear blessed
brother, don’t throw the blessed man like that or you will be sure
to kill him.’ ‘Well,’ said Jemmy, ‘but my dear blessed brother, if
I don’t kill the dear blessed man, why the big blessed —— will be
sure to kill me, and so I must keep on throwing the dear blessed
man, for you see what a blessed big dear fellow he is to me.’
1877. Five Years’ Penal Servitude, ch. iii., p. 245. ‘They called
in the coppers, and some feller in the shop twigged my old girl as
one he’d a-seen before, and blessed if they didn’t identify her as
having lifted some things out of the shop, and she was pinched for
seven “stretch.”’
1882. Punch, Aug. 5, p. 49. Sir Pompey Bedell: ‘Oh!—er—Mr. Grigsby,
I think! How d’ye do?’ [extending two fingers]. Grigsby: ‘I hope I
see you well, Sir Pompey. And next time you give me two fingers,
I’m blest if I don’t pull ’em off.’
1889. Sporting Times, July 6. St. Mannock.—Did you ever hear a
still, small voice whispering over its morning shrimps, ‘What a
pair of blessed fools you are!’
Blether, Blather, subs. (Scotch and U.S.A.).—Nonsense; vapid talk;
voluble chatter.
b. 1759, d. 1796. Burns, Tam Samson’s Elegy, st. 12.
Yon auld gray stane, amang the heather,
Marks out his head,
Whare Burns has wrote in rhyming blether,
Tam Samson’s dead!
1886. Pall Mall Gazette, 3 May, 6, 2. Havelock’s florid adjurations
to his men, the grim veterans of the 78th, bluntly characterized as
blether.
Hence blethering (verb, subs.) used in the same sense as blether, and
as an adjective for ‘volubly’ or ‘foolishly talkative.’ Cf.,
Bletherskate.
b. 1759, d. 1796. Burns, Holy Fair, st. 8.
And some are busy blethrin’
Right loud that day.
1816. Scott, Old Mortality, ch. xiv. ‘I hae been clean spoilt, just
wi’ listening to twa blethering auld wives.’
1883. Hawley Smart, Hard Lines, ch. vi. He had brought this
blethering Irishman down here, and deluged him with punch for the
express purpose of turning him inside out.
Bletherskate, Blatherskite, subs. (provincial and American).—1.
Boastful swagger, whether in talk or action.
2. A boaster; noisy talker of blatant nonsense. [From blether, to talk
nonsensically, + skate, allied to Scotch skyte, a contemptible fellow.]
It occurs in Maggie Lauder, a well-known Scotch song, a fact which
Murray says led to its popularisation in the United States. In Ireland
it seems to have taken the forms of bladder-skate and bladderum-skate.
Circa 1650. F. Sempill, Maggie Lauder, i. Jog on your gait, ye
blether-skate. [M.]
1825. C. Croker, Tradit. S. Ireland, p. 170. He was, as usual,
getting on with his bletherumskite about the fairies. [M.]
1870. J. R. O’Flanagan, Lives of the Lord Chancellors of Ireland.
‘Lord Redesdale was speaking of people who learnt to skate with
bladders under their arms, to buoy them up if they should fall into
a hole and risk being drowned.’ ‘Ah, my Lord,’ said Toler, ‘that is
what we call bladderumskate in Ireland.’
Blew, verb (common).—1. To inform; to ‘peach’; to expose; to
betray.—See Blow upon, of which it is a variant.
2. (popular.)—To spend; to waste; generally in connection with money.
When a man has spent or lost all his money, he is said to have blewed
it. [The derivation is uncertain, that most likely being its reference
to a corrupt grammatical use of blew, the past tense of ‘to blow.’
Money spent recklessly and wasted vanishes as if blown away by the
wind.]
1884. Daily Telegraph, May 28, p. 5, col. 1. ‘Which paid him £1,700
compensation, when he took to horses, and blewed the blooming lot
in eighteen months.’
1889. Sporting Times, June 29.
Isabel and Maudie knew the Turf and all its arts—
They had often blewed a dollar on a wrong ’un—
And Isabel one evening met a mug from rural parts,
An attenuated Juggins, and a long ’un.
French Synonyms. Se faire rincer (popular: ‘to be cleared out’ [at a
game]. Rincer, properly ‘to drench,’ ‘to serve out,’ also has the slang
signification of ‘to thrash’); paumer (thieves’ and vagrants’: this
verb is very old, and is derived from palma = empoigner. It also
signifies to arrest, lose, etc.); laumir (an old cant term); se faire
ratisser (familiar: literally ‘to scrape oneself’); faire rasoir
(gaming: ‘to be penniless’); se faire enturer (popular: ‘to cut into
oneself’; enture = incision or cut); panner quelqu’un (popular); mettre
dans le sac (gamesters’: Cf., ‘be in a hole’); décavage (familiar: a
term employed to signify the circumstances of a gamester who has
‘blewed it’; one who is in ‘Queer Street’—from décavé, a ruined
gamester); se faire lessiver: ‘to wash oneself.’ Michel gives lessive =
defence, and lessiveur = barrister, and remarks that better terms could
hardly be given to advocate and speech by those charged with offence,
and who wish to return from the same ‘white as snow,’ or, as police
phraseology hath it, without a stain upon one’s character. For other
synonyms, see Shave.
Blimey, intj. (low).—A corruption of ‘Blind me!’; an expression little
enough understood by those who constantly have it in their mouths.
Blind, subs. (common).—1. The night time—an allusion to the absence of
light.—See Darkmans.
2. (familiar.)—A pretence; a shift; an action through which one’s real
purpose is concealed; that which obstructs; a ‘make-believe.’
1663. Dryden, Wild Gallant, Act iii. He ... took your court to her,
only as a blind to your affection for me.
1694. Congreve, Double Dealer, Act ii., Sc. 5. I know you don’t
love Cynthia, only as a blind for your passion to me.
1703. Mrs. Centlivre, Beau’s Dual, I., i. (1872), i., 70. Am I
publish’d to the world as a blind for his designs?
1877. E. L. Linton, World Well Lost, ch. xxviii. The excuse was too
palpably a blind to be accepted as a reason.
1889. Answers, July 13, p. 104, col. 3. The Major and the Captain
he referred to in his letters were mere ‘blinds.’ The Captain
relied upon the fact that not one person in a dozen took the
trouble to apply to these gentlemen.
3. (printers’.)—A paragraph [¶] mark is so called; from the eye of the
reversed ‘P’ being filled up.
Adj. (old).—Tipsy; in liquor. Nares says this cant term was used with
others in the works of Taylor, the water-poet [1630]. For synonyms, see
Screwed.
Blind as a brickbat, adv. phr. (colloquial).—A facetious simile for
very blind—mentally or physically.
1849. Dickens, David Copperfield, III., p. 97. The old scholar ...
is as blind as a brickbat.
When the devil is blind, adv. phr. (common).—Never. The French have
three very graphic—though in one case very vulgar—analogues for this
expression—quand les poules pisseront, which need not be translated; le
trente six du mois, i.e., ‘on the thirty-sixth day of the month,’ and
quand les poules auront des dents, i.e., when cocks and hens have
teeth.
To go it blind.—A luminous figure of speech to convey the idea of
entering upon an undertaking without thought as to the result, or
inquiry beforehand. This is one of the many slang expressions which owe
their origin to the American game of poker, the special form of which
known as blind poker, where the cards are betted upon before being
looked at, being responsible for the phrase now in question. Cf., also
Blind (subs.).