Rosy about the gills, phr. (old).—(1) 'fresh-coloured' (B. E., Grose), (2) = sanguine: cf. white about the gills. Also rosy = favourable, auspicious, healthy: whence the rosy = good fortune.
1885. Field, 3 Oct. The future looks most rosy.
1893. Milliken, 'Arry Ballads, 69. A doin' the rorty and rosy as lively as 'Opkins's lot. Ibid., 77. Not my idea of the rosy.
Rot, subs. (common).—Nonsense;
bosh (q.v.): also tommy-rot
(q.v.). As verb. = to humbug;
to bully; rotter = a good-for-nothing.
1861. H. C. Pennell, Puck on Pegasus, 'Sonnet by M. F. Tupper.' A monstrous pile of quintessential rot.
1879. Braddon, Cloven Foot, iv. I thought he despised ballet-dancing, yet this is the third time I have seen him looking on at this rot.
1888. Boldrewood, Robbery Under Arms, xliii. Half what them fellows puts down is regular rot.
1891. Harry Fludyer at Cambridge, 106. Everybody here would have rotted me to death.
1892. Henley and Stevenson, Deacon Brodie, 111. i. 30. Oh, rot, I ain't a parson.
1894. Moore, Esther Waters, xxxix. All bloody rot; who says I'm drunk? Ibid., xi. A regular rotter; that man is about as bad as they make 'em.
1899. Critic, 18 Mar., 13, 2. Rotter, at both our seats of learning, is applied indiscriminately to all persons prone towards intellectual levity. But the word must have an elastic meaning; for it embraces quacks and impostors who pass through existence with their tongue in their cheek.
Rot it (or Rot'um), intj. phr. (common).—Hang it! damn it!
1664. Cotton, Virgil Travestie, 75. Where once your what shals' cal' ums—(rot um! It makes me mad I have forgot 'um).
1682. Dryden, Prol. to Southern's Loyal Brother, 5. Both pretend love, and both (plague rot 'em!) hate.
1742. Fielding, Joseph Andrews, 111. x. I don't cart to abuse my profession; but, rot me, if in my heart I am not inclined to the poet's side.
1759. Sterne, Tristram Shandy, 1. xvi. Rot the hundred and twenty pounds—he did not mind it a rush.
1806. Lamb, Mr. H., i. 1. Rot his impertinence! bid him . . . not trouble me with his scruples.
1854. Martin and Aytoun, Bon Gualtier Ballads, 'Lay of the Lovelorn.' Sink the steamboats! cuss the railways! rot, oh rot the Three-per-Cents!
Rotan, subs. (old).—Any wheeled
vehicle (Grose).
Rot-gut, subs. phr. (old).—Poor
drink: generic; spec. bad beer or
alcohol: also rotto (B. E.,
Dyche, Grose).
1597. Harvey [Ency. Dict.]. They overwhelm their panch daily with a kind of flat rot-gut, we with a bitter dreggish mall liquor.
1633. Heywood, Eng. Traveller, iv. 5, 226 (Mermaid). Let not a tester scape To be consumed in rot-gut.
1789. Parker, Life's Painter, 40. That . . . is better than all the rot-gut wine that ever came from Popish grounds.
1796. Wolcot, P. Pindar [1830], 53. A poor old woman, with diarrhœa, Brought on by slip-slop tea and rot-gut beer, Went to Sangrado with a woeful face.
1830. Marryat, King's Own, xxxiv. The master requested a glass of grog, as the rot-gut French wines had given him a pain in the bowels.
1856. Hughes, Tom Brown's School-Days, 1. vi. Drinking bad spirits and punch, and such rot-gut stuff.
1892. Henley and Stevenson, Deacon Brodie, iv. 13. What brings the man from stuff like this to rot-gut and spittoons at Mother Clarke's.
1895. Pall Mall Gaz., 19 Sept., 9, 1. I armed myself with a supply of the fieriest rot-gut . . . and set out to wish him good-bye.
