Put that in your pipe and smoke it, phr. (common).—A straight rebuke; 'digest that if you can.' Fr. mets ça dans ta poche et ton mouchoir par dessus. See Take.
1824. Peake, Americans Abroad, i. 1. Dou. (writes.) "No tobacco allowed in England." There—(shuts book.) put that in your pipe and smoke it. There's another slap at 'em!
1836. Dickens, Pickwick (1857), p. 6. Pull him up—put that in his pipe—like the flavour—dammed rascals! And with a lengthened string of similar broken sentences . . . the stranger led the way to the travellers' waiting room.
1840. Barham, Ingoldsby Legends (Lay of S. Odille). For this you've my word, and I never yet broke it, So put that in your pipe, my Lord Otto, and smoke it!
1883. Miss Braddon, Golden Calf, ch. xix. Ah, then he'll have to put his love in his pipe and smoke it! That kind of thing won't do out of a French novel.
To pipe another dance, verb. phr. (old).—To change one's means, or one's course of action or attack.
d. 1529. Skelton, Colyn Clout [Brewer]. They would pype you another daunce.
1544. Knox, Godly Letter [Maitland, Ref., 88]. Nowe they haue . . . lerned amongst ladyes to daunse as the deuill lyst to pype.
1749. Smollett, Gil Blas [Routledge], 112. How do I know but my young mistress may caper to a tune of my piping.
To pipe in (or with) an ivy-leaf, verb. phr. (old).—To busy oneself to no purpose: as a consolation for failure; 'to go whistle,' or 'to blow the buck's horn.' [Ivy-leaf = a thing of small value, as fig, rush, straw, &c.].
c. 1374. Chaucer, Troilus, v. 1433. But Troilus thou mayst now east and west Pipe in an ivie leafe, if that thee lest.
1383. Chaucer, Cant. Tales, 1. But on of you, al be him loth or lefe, He mot gon pipen in an ivy lefe.
1387-8. [T. Usk], Test. Love, III. vii. [Skeat], l. 50. Far wel the gairdiner, he may pipe with an yue leafe, his fruite is failed.
1390. Gower, Conf. Aman., II. 21. That all nis worth an yvy leff.
Pipeclay, subs. (colloquial).—Routine;
red-tape (q.v.).
Verb. (colloquial).—1. To wipe out; to settle: as accounts.
1853. Dickens, Bleak House, xvii. You . . . would not understand allusions to their pipe-claying their weekly accounts.
2. (tailors').—To hide faults of workmanship; or defects in material.
Pipe-layer, subs. phr. (American).—A
political intriguer; a schemer.
Hence pipe-laying = scheming
or intriguing for political purposes.
[Bartlett: circa 1835, a
traitorous New York Whig election
agent concocted a plot to
throw odium on the party, supporting
it by correspondence in
the form of bogus business letters
relating to the Croton water
supply then in progress, the number
of men hired to vote being
spoken of as so many yards of
pipe.—Abridged.]
1848. New York Tribune, 30 Oct. The result of the Pennsylvania election would not be in the least doubtful, if we could be assured of fair play and no pipe-laying.
1856. New York Herald, Sep. There is a magnificent scheme of pipe-laying and log-rolling going on in Pennsylvania.
1883. Thurlow Weed, Autobiography, 493. Among the Glentworth papers was a letter in which he said that the men sent from Philadelphia were to be employed in laying the pipes for the introduction of Croton water. The Whig leaders were immediately stigmatised as pipe-layers, a term persistently applied to them for several years.
