red-rag to a mad-bull'; red-ribbon = brandy (Grose): cf. white-satin; red-sail docker = a buyer of stores stolen out of the royal yards and docks (Grose); red-skin = a North American Indian.
c. 1485. Lady Bessy (Queen of Henry VII.) [Percy Soc. Pub. xx.]. [Oliphant, New Eng., i. 396. We now first hear of reade coates, Lord Stanley's soldiers; a well-known word in Cromwell's day, 130 years later].
1626. Smith, Treatise on English Sea Terms [Arber], 262. [Oliphant, New English, ii. 66. An English ship is called a red crosse].
1662. Rump Songs, ii. 5. Our Politique Doctors do us teach, That a Blood-snarling Red-coat's as good as a Leech.
1670. Ray, Proverbs [Bell], 59. The lass in the red petticoat shall pay for it. Young men answer so when they are chid for being so prodigal and expensive; meaning, they will get a wife with a good portion, that shall pay for it.
1707. Ward, Hud. Rediv., 11. iii., 24. A drum was beaten on the ground By an old red coat.
c. 1720. Old Song [Durfey, Pills, &c. (1720) vi. 324]. Old musty Maids that have Money . . . May have a Bit for their Bunny, To pleasure them in their Beds, Their hearts will turn to the Red-coats.
1815. Scott, Guy Mannering. . . . We'll see if the red cock craw not in his bonny barn-yard ae morning before day dawning.
1826. Cooper, Last of Mohicans [Bartlett]. What may be right and proper in a red-skin may be sinful in a man who has not even a cross in his blood to plead for his ignorance.
1830. Lytton, Paul Clifford, 80. A tumbler of blue ruin fill, fill for me, Red tape those as likes it may drain.
1834. Ainsworth, Rookwood, 1. ix. Famous wine this—beautiful tipple—better than all your red fustian.
1848. Ruxton, Far West, 8. Jest then seven darned Red Heads top the bluff. Ibid., ii. Being as a Redskin, thirsting for their lives.
1848. Thackeray, Book of Snobs, xxv. A woman who was intimate with every duchess in the Red Book.
1851. Mayhew, London Lab., ii. 564. The Red Liners, as we calls the Mendicity officers, who goes about in disguise as gentlemen, to take up poor boys caught begging.
c. 1852. Traits of Amer. Humour, 11. 114. With their furniture, and the remains of a forty-two gallon red-head.
1852. Bristed, Upper Ten Thousand, 144. It was a great catch for Miss Lewison, without a red cent of her own.
1861. Macaulay, Eng. Hist., iii. "Oliver's redcoats had once stabled their horses there."
1871. De Vere, Americanisms,. . . "Salted provisions and red-eye to boot" is the refrain of many a rude song, and if the latter is fiery and raw it is none the less welcome.
1883. C. Marvin, Gates of Herat, 98. These opinions cannot but be so many red rags to English Russophobists.
1889. Century Dict., s.v. Red. The copper cent is no longer current, but the phrase red cent remains in use as a mere emphatic form of cent: 'as it is not worth a red cent.
1888. Detroit Free Press, 15 Dec. When I got up on election morning I hadn't a blamed red in my pockets.
1892. Nisbet, Bushranger's Sweetheart, 33. Who would take her for twenty-five, and an old traveller, to see her mounting the red rag like a girl of fourteen?
1896. Crane, Maggie, IX. Not a cent more of me money will yehs ever get—not a red.
1899. Whiteing, John St., 217. Won't it be fine to see the sojers on 'orseback? I hope its the Reds.
1892. Kipling, Barrack-room Ballads. 'Tommy.' The publican 'e up an' sez, 'We serve no Red-coats here.'
1892. Globe, 28 Sept. 6, 1. On his journey he gathers the anathemas of those to whom the literary picture is the red rag.
Neither fish, flesh, fowl, nor good red-herring, phr. (old).—Nondescript; neither one thing nor another; neither hay nor grass.—Ray.
1528. Rede me and be nott Wrothe, 1. iij. b. Wone that is nether flesshe nor fisshe.
