4. (American.)—A generic name in large cities for a rowdy or bully.
Sometimes, however, the term has been limited in its application to a
particular band of ruffians. This was the case once in Baltimore.
Bruising, verbal subs. (prize-fighters’).—Fighting with the fists;
boxing.
1751. Smollett, Peregrine Pickle, ch. c. The combatants were, in
point of strength and agility, pretty equally matched; but the
jailer had been regularly trained to the art of bruising.
1855. Thackeray, Newcomes, ch. x. At that time the Sunday
newspapers contained many and many exciting reports of boxing
matches. Bruising was considered a fine manly old English custom.
1860. Thackeray, Philip, ch. xxxv. Mugford always persisted that he
could have got the better of his great hulking sub-editor, who did
not know the use of his fists. In Mugford’s youthful time, bruising
was a fashionable art.
Ppl. adj. (hunting).—That pounds along.
1872. Anteros, by the author of Guy Livingstone, I., p. 207. He was
a good second-rate shot, and a fair, though by no means bruising
rider to hounds. Ibid., p. 234. There were not a few admirers of
his bruising style, etc.
Brum, subs. (old).—1. A counterfeit coin. [Contracted form of Brummagem
(q.v.).] The term appears to have been given specially to some
counterfeit groats [about 1691].
2. (common).—Something counterfeit; not genuine. [A contraction of
Brummagem (q.v.).]
1883. Daily Telegraph, July 9, p. 3, col. 2. One [earring] might be
gold, and the other a Brum, though exactly alike.
3. (common).—Copper money struck by Boulton and Watt at their works at
Soho, Birmingham.
1787. J. West, Trip to Richmond, in Ashton’s Eighteenth Century
Waifs, p. 133. My silver I chang’d for a handful of Brums.