Slyboots, subs. (old).—A seemingly simple but really clever and designing fellow (B. E. and Grose).
c.1680. North, Lives of the Norths, 169. [Lord Guildford was nicknamed] Slyboots.
1729. Addison, Adv. of Abdalla, 32. The frog call'd . . . several times, but in vain . . . though the sly-boots heard well enough all the while.
Smabbled (or Snabbled), adj.
(Grose).—Killed in battle.
Smack (B. E. c.1686).—1. 'A
Twang or ill Taste.'
2. (tailors').—A liking; a fancy: e.g. 'He had a real smack for the old 'un': cf. (old colloquial) smackering = 'a longing for' (Bailey).
3. (colloquial).—A kiss: also smacker. Whence to smack calf's skin (common) = to take oath.
1786. Burns, Jolly Beggars. Ilk smack still, did crack still, Just like a cadger's whip.
1809. Irving, Hist. N. York, 171. The gentlemen gallantly attended their fair ones to their respective abodes, and took leave of them with a hearty smack.
1860. Dickens, Uncom. Traveller, 'Titbull's Almshouses.' Heard the sound of a smack—a smack which was not a blow.
Smack smooth, phr. (colloquial).—'Level with the surface; everything cut away' (Grose).
1790. Dibdin, Poor Jack. Though the tempest the topgallant mast smack smooth should smite.
Smacking-cove, subs. phr. (Old
Cant).—A coachman (B. E.,
Bailey and Grose).
Small, subs. (colloquial).—1. In
pl. = breeches: spec. the close-fitting
knee-breeches of the 18th
and early 19th centuries: also
small-clothes [Grose: 'A
gird at the affected delicacy of the
present age; a suit being called
coat, waistcoat, and—articles or
small clothes'].
1812. Coombe, Syntax, i. 20. His small-clothes sat so close and tight, His boots, like jet, were black and bright.
1813. Stephens [Anti-Jacobin Rev. of Life of Horne Took, quoted by Southey, Doctor, Interchap. xx.] His breeches he [Stephens] calls small clothes; the first time we have seen this bastard term, the offspring of gross ideas and disgusting affectation, in print, in anything like a book.
1818. Byron, Beppo, iv. You'd better walk about begirt with briars, Instead of coat and small-clothes.
1836. Dickens, Sketches, 'The Last Cabdriver.' His boots were of the Wellington form, pulled up to meet his corduroy knee-smalls.
1840. Hood, Miss Kilmansegg. Wear a negative coat and positive smalls.
1869. Stowe, Oldtown, 52. His well-brushed Sunday coat and small-clothes.
2. (Univ. Oxon).—In pl., see quots. Little-go is the Cambridge equivalent. Properly 'Responsions.'
c.1840. E. A. Freeman [1823-92], Cont. Rev., li. 821. 'Greats,' so far as the name existed in my time, meant the Public Examination, as distinguished from Responsions, Little-go, or smalls.
1853. Bradley, Verdant Green, ii. xi. The little gentleman was going in for his degree, alias Great-go, alias Greats; and our hero for his first examination in literis humanioribus, alias Responsions, alias Little-go, alias Smalls.
1861. Hughes, Tom Brown at Oxford, x. In our second term we are no longer freshmen, and begin to feel ourselves at home, while both smalls and greats are sufficiently distant to be altogether ignored if we feel that way inclined.
1863. Reade, Hard Cash . . . Julia reminded her that smalls was the new word for little go.
