1781. Cowper, Truth, 385. Strained to the last screw he can bear.
1847. Thackeray, Vanity Fair, viii. They both agreed in calling him an old screw, which means a very stingy, avaricious person.
1851-61. Mayhew, Lond. Lab., 1. 319. Mechanics are capital customers . . . They are not so screwy.
1852. Dow, Sermons, i. 302. Love strains the heart-strings of the human race, and not unfrequently puts the screws on so hard as to snap them asunder.
1855. Thackeray, Newcomes, xliv. Did you ever hear of me screwing? No, I spend my money like a man.
1857. New York Times, 15 Sep. Such turns of the screws as we have had for the last three weeks, if continued, would bring almost every mercantile house in New York to wreck.
1859. Kingsley, Geoffrey Hamlyn, xxvii. However I will put the screw on them. They shall have nothing from me till they treat her better.
1860. Cornhill Mag., 11. 381. He was an immense screw at school.
1866. G. Eliot, Felix Holt, xi. A screwing fellow, by what I understand—a domineering fellow—who would expect men to do as he liked without paying them for it.
1869. Greenwood, Seven Curses, &c., 170. If I entrust my tailor with stuff for a suit, and it afterwards comes to my knowledge that he has screwed an extra waistcoat out of it.
1874. Mrs. H. Wood, Johnny Ludlow, 1st S., No. xvii. 301. For once in his screwy life, old Brown was generous.
1876. Braddon, Joshua Haggard, xxx. He were so hard upon 'em, and that screwy, never a drop of milk or a fagot to give 'em.
1876. Burnaby, Ride to Khiva, ii. The Russians will not openly stop you, but they will put the screw upon our own Foreign Office and force the latter to do so.
1885. Field, 12 Dec. The utterly exorbitant rents that Scotch proprietors . . . have managed to screw out of sportsmen in the last few years.
1885. D. Telegraph, 12 Sep. He had little doubt of being able to put the screw on me for any amount I was good for.
2. (American collegiate).—(a) An unnecessarily minute examination; and (b) a screw. The instructor is often designated by the same name.—(Hall, College Words.)
18[?]. Harvard Register, 378 [Bartlett]. One must experience the stammering and stuttering, the unending doubtings and guessings, to understand fully the power of a mathematical screw.
3. (common).—An old or worthless horse: whence (loosely) anything old. Screwy = worn-out, worthless.
1835. Apperley, Nimrod's Hunting Tour, 215. Mr. Charles Boultbee, the best screw driver in England. (Note.) This is somewhat technical, and wants an explanation. A lame or very bad horse is called a screw.
1858. Lytton, What Will He Do with it, viii. vi. I suppose I was cheated and the brute proved a screw.
1869. Whyte-Melville, M. or N., 61. The utmost speed attainable by a pair of high wheels, a well-bred screw, and a rough-looking driver.
1870. R. Broughton, Red as a Rose, xix. The oldest and screwiest horse in the stables.
1870. Times, 23 July, 'Speech of Lord Granville.' A considerable number of what are vulgarly called screws have been bought at £20 a piece.
1874. Collins, Frances, xlii. Julian Orchard proved his skill as a whip by making four screws do six miles in twenty-five minutes.
1897. Kennard, Girl in Brown Habit, i. 4. A couple of likely-looking screws.
4. (common).—See quot. 1851.
1851-61. Mayhew, Lond. Lab., 1. 494. I never was admitted to offer them in a parlour or tap-room; that would have interfered with the order for screws (penny papers of tobacco), which is a rattling good profit.
18[?] Dickens, Reprinted Pieces (Bill-Sticking), 181. A pipe, and what I understand is called a screw of tobacco—an object which has the appearance of a curl-paper taken off the barmaid's head with the curl in it.
