1610. Fletcher, Maid's Tragedy, i. 2. This is no place for such youths and their trulls.
1611. Coryat, Crudities, i. 104. I never saw in all my life such an ugly company of truls and sluts as their women were.
1637. Davenant, Brit. Tri. [Dram. Rest., ii. 280]. Shall I grow weak as babe when ev'ry trull is So bold to steal my sloes?
1638. Ford, Lady's Trial, iii. 1. The wench is your trull, your blouze, your dowdie.
d. 1639. WoTTON [England's Helicon]. Be thy voyce shrill, be thy mirth scene: Heard to each swaine, scene to each troll.
1648-50. Braithwait, Drunken Barnaby, ii. 61. Thence to Holloway, Mother Redcap, Where a troop of Trulls I did hap.
1659. Massinger, City Madam, ii. 2. Tinker's trull, A beggar without a smock.
1678. Cotton, Virgil Travestie (1770), 126. Shall I invite to be my Spouse . . . Æneas' Leavings, or, like Trull here Run away basely with this sculler?
1688. Rand. Holme, Acad. Armory. Guteli, or trulli, are spirits like women, which show great kindness to men, and hereof it is that we call light women trulls.
1693. Stepney, Juvenal, viii. To make the world distinguish Julia's son, From the vile offspring of a trull, who sits By the town wall.
1694. Motteux, Rabelais, v. xxviii. Buttock of a monk!. . . how plump these plaguy trulls, these arch semiquavering strumpets must be!
1700. Congreve, Way of the World, i. 8. These are trulls whom he allows coach-hire.
1707. Ward, Hud. Rediv., ii. ii. 15. This is the Charm that tempts rich Fools To marry worthless Jilts and Trulls.
1727. Somervile, Fables, etc., xiii. Leave, leave, for shame your trulls at Sher hall, And marry in good time or not at all.
1748. Smollett, Rod. Random, xlvii. This friend is no other than a rascal who wants to palm his trull off upon you for a wife.
Truly. See By my truly and
Yours truly.
Trump, subs. (colloquial).—1. A
good fellow, a friend in need,
'one (Grose) who displays
courage on every suit': the highest
measure of praise.
1774. Bridges, Homer, 26. But I, in spite of all his frumps, Shall make him know I'm king of trumps.
1837. Barham, Ingolds. Leg., 'The Execution.' What must I fork out to-*night, my trump, For the whole first-floor of the Magpie and Stump?
1843. Dickens, Chuzzlewit, xxviii. I wish I may die if you are not a trump, Pip.
d. 1849. Poe, Works, iv. 211. Thingum, my boy, you're a trump.
1857. Hughes, Tom Brown's Schooldays, i. 6. Tom . . . took his three tosses without a kick or a cry, and was called a young trump for his pains.
1873. Carlton, Farm Ballads, 86. The editor sat in his sanctum, and brought down his fist with a thump: 'God bless that old farmer,' he muttered, 'He's a regular editor's trump.'
2. (provincial).—A fart(q.v.): also as verb.
1774. Bridges, Homer, 456. To which her bum plaid double-bass And made such thund'ring as she trump'd, Both Ajax and Achilles jump'd.
3. (Scots).—A Jew's harp. Whence tongue of the trump = a chief, an essential: properly the steel spring or reed by which the sound is produced.
d. 1872. Macleod, Life in a Highland Bothy. He has two large Lochaber trumps, for Lochaber trumps were to the Highlands what Cremona violins were to musical Europe. He secures the end of each with his teeth, and, grasping them with his hands so that the tiny instruments are invisible, he applies the little finger of each hand to their vibrating steel tongues.
