reluctant to confess the ownership of a share. This is called buttoning up.
Butty, subs. (common).—A comrade or partner. Properly and specifically a miner who raises coal or ore by contract at a special price per ton, employing others to do the actual work. Perhaps more provincial than slang, although a writer in Notes and Queries, July 30, 1870, suggests its origin in the Romany: he says in the gipsy dialect booty is the term for work. Booty-pal is a fellow-workman (literally work-brother). As usual when a polysyllable is imported into ordinary use, it loses its tail; so booty-pal, in the mouths of navvies ignorant of its origin, would soon be cut down to booty or butty.
1845. Disraeli, Sybil, wks. III., ch. i. Suppose we were to make a shift for a month or six weeks, . . . and have no tommy out of the shop, what would the butty say to me? [A note to foregoing explains that a butty in the mining districts is a middleman: a Doggy is his manager. The butty generally keeps a Tommy or Truck shop and pays the wages of the labourers in goods.] Ibid, p. 385. The butty has given notice to quit in Parker's field this se'nnight. Ibid, p. 389. Th s o the people: all butties, doggies, dealers in truck and tommy.
1859. H. Kingsley, Geoffrey Hamlyn, ch. xxxi. 'He and I cottoned together, and found out that we had been prisoners together five-and-twenty years agone. And so I shouted [stood drinks] for him, and he for me, and at last I says, 'Butty,' says I, 'who are those chaps round here on the lay?'
1876. C. Hindley, Life and Adventures of a Cheap Jack, p. 101. William Carrol was his partner, or butty, in the 'lollipop' business—a dismal looking man, who had always a burnt short clay pipe in his mouth.
Buvare, subs. (strolling players').—Explained by quotation. Cf., also Beware.
1851-61. H. Mayhew, London Lab. and Lon. Poor, vol. III., p. 201. [Ethiopian serenader log.] 'We could then, after our "nunyare" and "buvare" (that's what we call eat and drink, and I think it's broken Italian), carry home our 5/- or 6/- each, easy.'
Buy a Prop, phr. (Stock Exchange).—A term used to signify that the market has gone flat, and that there is no one to support it.
Buz or Buzz, subs. (common)—A parlour game which is thus described by Hotten, who, however, erroneously limited it to public-houses:—The leader commences saying 'one,' the next on the left hand 'two,' the next 'three,' and so on to seven, when 'buz' must be said. Every seven and multiple of 7, as 14, 17, 21, 27, 28, etc., must not be mentioned, but 'buz' instead. Whoever breaks the rule pays a fine.
1868. Miss Alcott, Little Women, ch. iii. They . . . were in the midst of a quiet game of 'buzz' with two or three other young people who had strayed in, when Hannah appeared.
Verb (general).—1. Some uncertainty exists as to whether to buz signifies to drain a bottle or decanter to the last drop, or whether it means to share equally the last of a bottle of wine, when there is not enough for a full glass to each of the party. [See, however, quot. 1795.] Annandale and Hotten incline to the latter; Grose and Murray to the former view, and the following quotations appear to favour the explanation of the
