1767. Ray, Proverbs [Bohn], 175. To be tost from post to pillory.
1898. Braddon, Rough Justice, 18. Hunted from pillar to post.
Other Colloquialisms are:—To run (or knock) the head against a post = to go blindly; stiff as a post = unyielding: as a gatepost in the ground; to talk (or preach) to a post = to talk to deaf ears: hence deaf as a post = as deaf as may be; to ride a post = to copulate; to go to the post = to visit a woman; to talk post = to speak hastily; post alone = solitary; to kiss the post = (see Kiss, and add quots. 1529 and 1548); to hold up a post (or the wall) = to cling for support when drunk. See also Bedpost; Knight; Nick.
1400. Hymns to Virgin and Christ [E. E. T. S.], 61. [Here conscience is scornfully told] to preche to the post.
d.1529. Skelton, Phyllyp Sparowe, 715. Troylus also hath lost On her moch loue and cost, And now must kys the post.
1548. Barclay, Eglogues (1570), ii. sig. B iiii. Yet from beginning absent if thou be, Eyther shalt thou lose thy meat and kisse the post.
1582. Stanihurst, Œnid, iv. 492. Her self left also she deemed Post aloan, and soaly from woonted coompanye singled.
1599. Shakspeare, Hen. V., iii. 2. A' never broke any man's head but his own, and that was against a post when he was drunk.
d.1608. Sackville, Stafford D. of Buck., st. 49. She chang'd her cheer, and left me post alone.
1632. Shirley, The Changes, i. 1. 'Twere no good manners to speak hastily to a gentlewoman, to talk post (as they say) to his mistress.
Post-and-rail, subs. phr. (Australian).—A
wooden match;
post-and-rail tea = ill-made
tea, with floating stalks and
leaves.
1851. Australasian, 298. Hyson-skin and post-and-rail tea have been superseded by Mocha, claret, and cognac.
1855. Mundy, Our Antipodes, 163. A hot beverage in a tin pot, which richly deserved the colonial epithet of post-and-rail tea, for it might well have been a decoction of 'split stuff,' or 'ironbark shingles,' for any resemblance it bore to the Chinese plant.
1870. Braim, New Homes, i. The shepherd's wife kindly gave us the invariable mutton-chop and damper, and some post-and-rail tea.
1883. Keighley, Who are You? 36. Then took a drink of tea . . . Such as the swagmen in our goodly land Have with some humour named the post-and-rail.
Posteriors, subs. (old colloquial).—1.
The buttocks; and (2) the
after part.
1594. Shakspeare, Love's Lab. Lost, v. 1, 94. It is the King's . . . pleasure . . . to congratulate the princess at her pavilion in the posteriors of this day, which the rude multitude call the afternoon.
Postern, subs. (venery).—1. The
fundament; also postern-door:
see Monocular-eyeglass; (2)
the female pudendum; also postern
gate to the Elysian
Fields (Herrick): see Monosyllable.
1678. Cotton, Virgil Travestie [Works (1725), 139]. And thrice her latest breath did roar, In hollow Sound at Postern-door. Ibid. (1st ed., p. 8). Whom Jove observing to be so stern, In the wise conduct of his postern.
1719. Durfey, Pills to Purge, i. 264. So Sissly shone with Beauty's rays Reflecting from her Postern grace.
1749. Robertson of Struan, Poems, 83. So to a House of Office streight A School-Boy does repair, To ease his Postern of its Weight.
Post-horn, subs. phr. (common).—The
nose: also paste-horn:
see Conk.
Postillion. See St. George.
