1876. Providence Journal, 30 Sep. The Democrats are getting up a soldiers' convention at Indianapolis. As Union soldiers are scarce in the Democrat ranks, many are recruited from the plug-uglies of Baltimore.
1891. Daily Telegraph, 13 July, p. 5, col. 1. The plug-ugly, the 'dead rabbit,' and the Californian 'hoodlum' are as racy of the soil of America as the 'larrikin' is of that of Australia.
1896. Crane, Maggie, xiv. And she goes off with that plug-ugly, who looks as if he had been hit in the face with a coin die.
Plum (or Plumb), subs. (common).
—1. £100,000; a fortune: see
Rhino. Hence, a rich man.—Grose
(1785).
1709-11. Steele, Tatler, No. 244. An honest gentleman who sat next to me, and who was worth half a plumb, stared at him.
d.1721. Prior, The Ladle, Moral. The Miser must make up his Plumb, And dares not touch the hoarded Sum.
c.1719. Vision of Justice [quoted in Century]. Several who were plums, or very near it, became men of moderate fortunes.
1766. Colman, Clandestine Marriage, iii. My brother Heidelberg was a warm man, a very warm man; and died worth a plumb at least.
1821. Egan, Life in London, 11. v. Then your visit to Almack's will be at least worth a plum to you.
1844. Thackeray, Barry Lyndon, xiii. An English tallow-chandler's heiress, with a plum to her fortune.
1890. Boldrewood, Squatter's Dream, 104. Twenty years on the Warroo with the certainty of a plum and a baronetcy at the end.
1899. Besant, Orange Girl, 56. You the only son of Sir Peter Halliday . . . the heir to a plum—what do I say? Three or four plums at the least.
2. (common).—A good thing; a tit-bit: also as adj. (q.v.).
1889. Academy, 2 Nov., 280. The reviewer who picks all the plums out of a book . . . is regarded with . . . terror . . . by both authors and publishers.
1892. The Writer, 120 [Century]. Often, indeed, the foot-note contains the very plum of the page.
Adj. (old).—A general appreciative: good; desirable; exactly; quite; dextrously; thorough-going. Whence also plumb-centre = exactly at the centre: as a plummet hangs.—Grose (1785); Vaux (1819). Also plummy.
1667. Milton, Paradise Lost, ii. 933. He meets a vast vacuity, all unawares, Fluttering his pennons vain, plumb down he falls.
1748. Richardson, Clarissa, iv. 262. Neither can an opposition, neither can a ministry be always wrong. To be a plumb man therefore with either is an infallible mark that the man must mean more and worse than he will own he does mean.
1819. Song, 'The Young Prig' [Farmer, Musa Pedestris (1896), 82]. Frisk the cly, and fork the rag, Draw the fogles plummy.
1830. Barrington, Personal Sketches [Bartlett]. The best way to avoid danger is to meet it plumb.
1859. Reid, Osceola, 415. We seed 'em both fire acrost the gleed, an' right plum-centre at young Randolph.
1867. London Herald, 23 March, 222, 1. Ain't this ere plummy.
1876. George Eliot, Daniel Deronda, xvi. The poets have made tragedies enough about signing oneself over to wickedness for the sake of getting something PLUMMY.
1883. Century Magazine, xxxvi. 900. O Sal, Sal, my heart ar' plum broke.
1888. San Francisco Weekly Examiner. I'm awful fond o' po'try—jus' plumb crazy ovah it.
1895. Pocock, Rules of the Games, 11. 10. But, doc, he ain't plumb stove up; He ain't going to die here in this goal 3.
1898. Winthrop, Cecil Dreeme, vi. How refreshing to find such a place and such a person plump in the middle of New York.
Verb. (common).—To deceive: see Gammon.
See Blue plum.
