1653. Urquhart, Rabelais, bk. IV. Author’s Prologue. The devil of
one musty crust of a brown George the poor boys had to scour their
grinders with.
1693. Dryden, Persius, V., 215.
Cubb’d in a cabin, on a mattrass laid,
On a brown George, with lousy swabbers fed.
Brownie, subs. (nautical).—The polar bear.
Brown Janet, subs. (nautical).—A knapsack.
Brown Joe, intj. (rhyming slang).—No. Cf., Brown Bess for ‘yes.’
Brown-Papermen, subs. (thieves’).—Low gamblers.—See quot.
1851. H. Mayhew, London Lab. and Lon. Poor, vol. I., p. 502. ‘But
the Little Nick is what we call only ‘brown papermen,’ low
gamblers—playing for pence, and 1s. being a great go.’
Brown Stone, subs. (American thieves’).—Beer. For synonyms, see Swipes.
Brown Talk, subs. (common).—Conversation of an exceedingly ‘proper’
character, Quakerish. Compare blue.
Browse, verb (Marlborough and Royal Military Academy).—To idle; loll;
take things easy. [A transferred sense of the legitimate word—to eat
lazily.]
Adj.—See foregoing. ‘A browse morning,’ i.e., one in which there is
little work.
Bruise, verb (prize-fighters’).—1. To fight; box—generally with the
idea of mauling.
Bruise along, verbal phr. (hunting).—To pound along.
1865. Dublin University Magazine, II., 19. A majority of those who
follow them have ... no notion of hunting, but go bruising along.
1872. Anteros, xii., p. 110. The baron hunted his five days ...
bruising along determinedly.
Bruiser, subs. (pugilistic).—1. A prize-fighter; a boxer. [From bruise,
to maul, + er.]
1744. Nov. 26, Walpole, Lett. to Mann (1833), II., 57. He let into
the pit great numbers of bear-garden bruisers (that is the term),
to knock down everybody that hissed.
1753. Foote, Englishman in Paris, Act i. Dick Daylight and Bob
Bread-basket the bruisers.
1830. S. Warren, Diary of a Late Physician, ch. xii. The man last
named was short in stature, but of a square iron build; and it
needed only a glance at his posture to see he was a scientific,
perhaps a thorough-bred bruiser.
1846–48. Thackeray, V. Fair, ch. xi. At college he pulled
stroke-oar in the Christchurch boat, and had thrashed all the best
bruisers of the ‘town.’
1860. Thackeray, Philip, ch. xlii. A jolly wag, a fellow of
indifferent character, a frequenter of all the ale-houses in the
neighbourhood, and rather celebrated for his skill as a bruiser.
1880. Jas. Greenwood, Flyfaker’s Hotel, in Odd People in Odd
Places, p. 58. Nearly every one seemed to have some little job or
other that was necessary to be done at this almost last moment for
the business of to-morrow; even one of the two villanous-looking
bruisers had. They were of the very lowest of the ‘rough’
type—broken-nosed, besotted, pimple-visaged, and
unwholesome-looking fellows, whose foul and blasphemous language
seemed to pollute the pestilent air of the place more than anything
else that contributed thereto.
2. (thieves’.)—A prostitute’s bully or fancy man. For synonyms, see
Bully.