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.
4. (common.)—An inhabitant of Birmingham.
1876. Hindley, Life and Adventures of a Cheap Jack, p. 321. For Nottingham is a rare place for good eating; here you may buy anything to eat of the commonest person, or in the commonest place with confidence that it is good, clean, and wholesome, very different to dirty Birmingham and the Brums.
Adj. (Winchester College).—Mean; poor; stingy. A superlative form is dead brum. [There are two derivations suggested; viz. (1) from bruma = winter; and (2) traditional in 'College' that it is an abbreviated form of brevissimum.] A popular French equivalent, used both as a substantive and adjective, is rapiat.
Brumby, subs. (Australian).—A wild horse. An Antipodean counterpart of the American 'broncho.'
Brummagem, subs. (popular).—1. A nickname for Birmingham.
1862. Cornhill, Nov., p. 648. We have just touched for a rattling stake of sugar (i.e., a large stake of money) at Brum.
2. (old.)—Base money of various denominations has been so called—especially groats in 17th century—hence its application to anything spurious or unreal—as in adjectival sense.—See also Brummagem buttons and Brums.
1691. G. Miege, New State Eng., 235. Bromicham, particularly noted a few years ago for the counterfeit groats made here, and from hence dispersed all over the kingdom. [m.]
1754. B. Martin, Eng. Dict., 2 ed. Bromidgham, money of base metal.
1834. Southey, The Doctor, ch. cxl. He picked it up, and it proved to be a Brummejam of the coarsest and clumsiest kind, with a head on each side.
