1847. Robb, Squatter Life, p. 74. What in the yearth did you do with old Hoss on the road?—He ain't gin out, has he? Ibid, p. 70. None of your stuck-up imported chaps from the dandy states, but a real genuine westerner—in short, a hoss!
1848 Ruxton, Life in the Far West, p. 5. Hyar's a hoss as'll make fire come.
1857. Gladstone, Englishman in Kansas, p. 43. Here, boys, drink. Liquors, captain, for the crowd. Step up this way, old hoss, and liquor.
Verb (venery).—1. To possess a woman. For synonyms, see Ride.
1614. Jonson, Bartholomew Fair, iv., 3. Say'st thou so, filly? Thou shalt nave a leap presently, I'll horse thee myself, else.
2. (workmen's).—See quots. Cf., Flog the dead horse.
1857. Notes and Queries, 2 S., iv., p. 192. A workman horses it when he charges for more in his week's work than he has really done. Of course he has so much unprofitable work to get through in the ensuing week, which is called dead horse.
1867. All the Year Round, 13 July, p. 59. To horse a man, is for one of two men who are engaged on precisely similar pieces of work to make extraordinary exertions in order to work down the other man. This is sometimes done simply to see what kind of a workman a new man may be, but often with the much less creditable motive of injuring a fellow workman in the estimation of an employer.
The gray mare is the better horse. See Gray-mare.
HORSE FOALED OF AN ACORN, subs. phr. (old).—1. The gallows. For synonyms, see Triple-*tree.
1760-61. Smollett, Sir L. Greaves, ch. viii. I believe as how 'tis no horse, but a devil incarnate; and yet I've been worse mounted, that I have—I'd like to have rid a horse that was foaled of an acorn (i.e., he had nearly met with the fate of Absalom).
1785. Grose, Vulg. Tongue, s v.
1827. Lytton, Pelham, ch. lxxxii. The cove . . . is as pretty a Tyburn blossom as ever was brought up to ride a HORSE FOALED BY AN ACORN.
1839. Ainsworth, Jack Sheppard [1889], p. 8. . . . As to this little fellow . . . he shall never mount a horse foaled by an acorn, if I can help it.
2. (military).—The triangles or crossed halberds under which soldiers were flogged.
Old- (or Salt-) Horse, subs. (nautical). Salt beef. Also Junk and Salt-junk.
1889. Chambers's Journal, 3 Aug., 495. Mr. Clark Russell declares that salt-horse works out of the pores, and contributes to that mahogany complexion common to sailors, which is often mistakenly attributed to rum and weather.
One-horse, adj. (American). Comparatively small, insignificant, or unimportant.
1858. Washington Evening Star. On Friday last, the engineer of a fast train was arrested by the authorities of a one-horse town in Dauphin County, Pa., for running through the borough at a greater rate of speed than is allowed by their ordinances.
1871. De Vere, Americanisms, p. 221. The indignant settler who has been ill-treated, as he fancies, in court, denounces his attorney as a 'miserable, one-horse lawyer;' and the Yankee newly arrived in England does not hesitate to declare that 'Liverpool is a poor one-horse kind of a place,' a term applied by Mark Twain to no less a city than Rome itself: and a witty clergyman of Boston inveighed once bitterly against 'timid, sneaking, one-horse oaths, as infinitely worse than a good, round, thundering outburst.
1891. National Review, Sep., p. 127. Mr. Marion Crawford's Witch of Prague (Macmillan & Co.) is, as his compatriots would say, rather a one-horse witch.
To BE HORSED, verb. phr. (old).—To be flogged [from the wooden-horse used as a flogging-stool]; to take on one's back as for a flogging.
