perfect picture'—child, horse, and so forth: also ironically, e.g., a pretty picture = a strange figure.
Not in the picture, phr. (colloquial).—Strange; inappropriate; better away; and (racing) unplaced.
See also Lawful Pictures.
Picture-frame. See Sheriff's
PICTURE-FRAME.
Picture-hat, subs. phr. (common).—See
quot.
1901. Referee, 14 Ap., 5 3. The lady who is the subject of the picture [the Gainsborough Duchess of Devonshire] set a fashion in hats which women continue to wear up to the present style. Even the Parisian ladies affected the style. And nowadays no suburban wedding is complete if the bridesmaids do not wear picture hats, the usual but very foolish description of the articles under discussion. Ibid., 9, 3. The return of the Gainsborough will, we are told, revive the big hat. The amiable "Gainsborough" of South Molton-street assures me that the picture hat has never really gone out of fashion.
Piddle, subs. (nursery).—Lant
(q.v.). Also as verb. = rack
OFF (q.v.); STROAN (q.v.).—Grose
(1785).
2. (common).—To do languidly or to little purpose; To niggle (q.v.). Hence, piddler
a trifler; and piddling
mean, of small account, squeamish.—Grose (1785).
1544. Ascham, Toxophilus [Arber], 117. And so . . . auoyde bothe greate trouble and also some cost whiche you cunnynge archers . . . put your selues vnto . . . neuer ceasynge piddelynge about your bowe and shaftes when they be well, but eyther with . . . newe fetheryng, &c.
c. 1622. Middleton, Mayor of Quinborough (1661), v. 1. Nine geese, and some three larks for piddling meat.
1629. Massinger, Picture, iii. 6. My lord Hath gotten a new mistress. Ubald. One! a hundred . . . They talk of Hercules' fifty in a night, 'Twas well; but yet to yours he was a piddler.
1632. Shirley, The Changes, ii. 2. Let children, when they versify, stick here and there these piddling words for want of matter. Poets write masculine numbers.
1690. Crowne, English Friar, ii. He has a weak stomach and cant make a meal, unless he has a dozen pretty dishes to piddle upon.
1733. Pope, Horace, 11. ii. 137. Content with little I can piddle here, On brocoli and mutton round the year.
d. 1745. Swift [quoted by Maidment]. From stomach sharp, and hearty feeding, To piddle like a lady breeding.
d. 1774. Goldsmith, Criticisms [Century]. A piddling reader . . . . might object to almost all the rhymes of the above quotation.
1902. Henley, Views and Reviews, 11. 10. Though the Castle of Otranto is a piddling piece of super-nature.
PIE, subs. (colloquial).—(1) A magpie;
and (2) a prating gossip.
Wily pie = a sly rogue.
1369. Chaucer, Troilus, iii. 527. Dredeles it clere was in the wynde Of every pie, and every lette-game.
d. 1529. Skelton, Balletys and Dyties [Dyce, i. 24, 34]. By theyr conusaunce knowing how they serue a wily py.
1577. Stanihurst, Desc. of Ireland, 13. Howbeit in the English pale to this day they use to tearme a slie cousener a WILIE PIE.
c. 1580. Ballad of Troilus [Halliwell]. Then Pandare, lyke a wyly pye . . . Stept to the tabell by and by, And forthe he blewe the candell.
[?]. M.S. Rawlinson, C 258. The pye hathe pecked you.
3. See Pi, subs., sense 1.
[More or less colloquial are:—TO HAVE A FINGER IN THE PIE (or, indeed, any matter) = to meddle, to join in: cf. boat; TO make a pie = to combine with a view to profit; like pie = with
