To do brown, verbal phr. (common).—To do well; also 'to take in'; deceive; to exceed bounds. Cf., Brown, verb, sense 1. French equivalents for 'to allow oneself to be done brown' are godancer and être flouè.—See second quotation for variation in usage.
a. 1600. John Bon, 162 in Hazl. E. P. P., iv., 16. Ha! browne done. [M.]
1828. Jon. Bee, Picture of London, p. 5. 'Those who consider themselves brown to every move upon the board' of actual life.
1837. Barham, I. L. (The Execution). 'Why, they'd laugh at and quiz us all over the town, We are all of us done so uncommonly brown!'
1854. Harper's Monthly, January. 'And some of the greenhorns Resolved upon flight, And vamosed the ranch In a desperate plight; While those who succeeded In reaching the town, Confessed they were done, Most exceedingly brown.'
1861. Times (on American affairs). John Bull, slyly winkin', then said unto he: 'My dear Times, my old covey, go pitch into he; Let us wallop great Doodle now when he is down; If we wallops him well, we will do him up brown.'
1876. Hindley, Life and Adventures of a Cheap Jack, p. 267. I was once done myself with some pigs—I! and done brown too, and at a time when I ought to have known better.
Brown Bess, subs. (rhyming slang).—1. Yes.
2. (military.)—The old regulation musket. Considerable discussion has taken place over the origin of this term. It first appears in Grose [1785], but the term 'brown musquet' occurs at the beginning of the eighteenth century [1708]. The following suggested derivation appeared in N. and Q. [2 S., v., p. 259]. Brown Bess, in its primary meaning, is equivalent to brown barrel. Bus, in Dutch is the barrel of a gun; in Low Germ. büsse, in Swed. byssa. Hence our English Bess as applied to a gun-barrel. (Conf. in Med. Latin—bus-bas fragor scloporum et certaminis.) The Dutch bus appears often in composition. Hand-bus, a pistol; literally a hand-barrel. Bus-*schieter, a gunner; literally a barrel-shooter. We have the Dutch bus (a barrel) in three English names of fire-arms: namely anquebuse, obus, blunder-*buss. At the first of these three, arquebuse, we must look a little more closely would we trace the term brown Bess to its primæval source. The most formidable of cross-bows before fire-arms came into general use, was one which shot a ball or pellet from a barrel. Specimens may yet be seen. Now this was the original arquebuse (i.e., arc-bus, or arc-et-bus, bow and barrel). In process of time as gunpowder came into use, the arc disappeared, and the buss or barrel remained. Hence arquebuse, though it properly implies a bow fitted with a tube or barrel, came into use as the old appellation of a soldier's firelock. And hence the name of Bess (bus, büsse or byssa), which the musket has borne more recently. Bess or bus is the last syllable of the old arquebuse or harquebus cut off for separate use, just as in the more recent instance of bus from omnibus. The barrels of firelocks were sometimes browned. Sometimes, however, they were required to be kept bright.
