1600. Shakspeare, Much Ado, iv. 1. Talk with a man out at a window! A proper saying!
1664. Pepys, Diary, 24 June. I was properly confounded. Ibid., 14 July. All . . . was most properly false, and nothing like it true.
1843-4. Haliburton, Attache, xxvi. Father . . . gave me a wipe . . . that knocked me over and hurt me properly.
To make oneself proper, verb. phr. (colloquial).—To adorn; to tittivate (q.v.).
Property. To make property
of one, verb. phr. (old).—To
use as a convenience, tool, or
cat's-paw.—Grose (1785); Bee
(1823).
1596. Shakspeare, K. John, v. 2, 79. I am too high-horn to he propertied.
Prophet, subs. (Fleet St.).—A
sporting tipster.
Propster and Prop-nailer. See
Prop.
Pros, subs. (Cambridge).—A
W.C.: hence the old undergrad
wheeze:—When is pote put for
pros? When the nights are dark
and dreary, When our legs are
weak and weary, When the quad
we have to cross, Then is pote put
for pros.
Adv. (streets').—See quot.
1887. Walford's Antiquarian, April, 250. Pros means proper. Nothing but the word prosperous offers in explanation.
Prose, subs. (Winchester).—A
lecture: also as verb.
Prosit, intj. (academical).—A
salutation in drinking: 'Your
health!' [Ut tibi prosit meri
potio.] Fr. Ut!
Pross, subs. (streets').—1. A
prostitute: see Tart: also
prossy.
2. (theatrical).—A cadged drink: also as verb, (or adv., on the pross) = (1) to spunge, and (2) to instruct or break in a stage-struck youth; prosser = (1) a cadger of drinks, dinners, and small monies (but see quot. 1851), and (2) a ponce (q.v.). Prosser's Avenue = the Gaiety bar.
1851. Mayhew, Lond. Lab., iii. 145. The regular salary [of strolling player] doesn't come to more than a pound a-week, but then you make something out of those who come up on the parade, for one will chuck you 6d., some 1s. and 2s. 6d. We call those parties prosses.
c.1876. Song, 'I Can't Get at it.' I've prossed my meals from off my pals, oft-*times I've badly fared.
1883. Referee, 18 Nov., 3, 4. For he don't haunt the Gaiety Bar, dear boys, A-standing (or prossing for) drinks.
1885. Saturday Review, 15 Aug., 218. Accept his decision and neither thunder against him in Prosser's Avenue (as it is called), nor encourage young journalists to state your views upon him in print.
1886. Cornhill Mag., Nov., 559. Gradually, he became what is known as a prosser—a loafer, a beggar of small loans, a respectful attendant outside the circle of other men's merriment, into which for charity's sake he was sometimes invited.
1893. Emerson, Signor Lippo, xiv. He started walking about clamming, getting a few middays as from one and another, fairly on the pross and glad to put up with a quatro soldi kip, like the rest of us.
Protected-man, subs. phr. (old
naval).—A merchant seaman
unfit for the Royal Service and
therefore free of the press-gang.
Protection. Under protection,
phr. (conventional).—In
keeping (q.v.); living tally
(q.v.); dabbed-up (q.v.).
