18[?]. Trying It On [Title of a popular farce].
1874. Siliad, 57. We do not pardon the flagitious claims—Call them, or damages, 'tries-on,' or shames.
1899. Gould, Racecourse and Battlefield, vi. Owen Righton did have a try, but . . . Alec Medway brought him up short.
Phrases and Colloquialisms.—To try a fall with = to compete, contest; to try back = to revert to, to retrace one's steps: as to a former position, standpoint, or statement, etc., with a view to recover something missed, or lost: hence tryback (Bee).
1857. Hughes, Tom Brown's Schooldays, i. 7. The leading hounds . . . are trying back.
1859. Lever, Davenport Dunn, xi. She was marvellously quick to discover that she was astray and to try back.
1887. Nineteenth Century, xxii. 812. Would it not be well then to try back? to bear in mind . . . that meat is suitable for grown men, that milk is suitable for babes?
Tryning. See Trine.
Tub, subs. (old).—1. Formerly a
cure for the lues venerea: also
sweating-tub and powdering-tub.
[The patient was disciplined
by long and severe
sweating in a heated tub, combined
with strict abstinence: cf.
Spenser, Fairy Queene, 1. x.
25, 26.] Hence tub-fast = the
period of salivation.
1599. Shakspeare, Henry V. ii. 1. 78. To the spital go, And from the powdering-tub of infamy Fetch forth the lazar-kite of Cressid's kind. Ibid. (1603), Meas. for Meas., iii. 2. 59. Troth, sir, she hath eaten up all her beef, and is herself in the tub. Ibid. (1609), Timon of Athens, iv. 3. 87. Be a whore still; . . . bring down rose-cheeked youth To the tub-fast and the diet.
1639. Mayne, City Match [Dodsley, Old Plays (Reed), ix. 377]. One ten times cur'd by sweating, and the tub. Ibid. And coming to this cave, This beast us caught, and put us in a tub, Where we these two months sweat, and should have done Another month, if you had not reliev'd us.
1647. Cartwright, Ordinary [Dodsley, Old Plays (Reed), x. 293]. Trust me, you will wish You had confess'd and suffer'd me in time, When you shall come to dry-burnt racks of mutton, The syringe, and the tub.
1676. Wiseman, Surgery, B. vii. 2. Tub and chair were the old way of sweating, but if the patient swoons in either of them, it will be troublesome to get him out.
1688. Holme, Acad. Arms and Blazon, B. iii. 11. 441. He beareth Argent, a Doctor's tub (otherwise called a Cleansing Tub), Sable, Hooped, Or. In this pockified and such diseased persons, are for a certain time put into, not to boil up to an heighth, but to parboil.
2. (old).—A pulpit. Hence tub-drubber (-pounder, -preacher, -thumper, or tubster) = a ranting divine: spec., in reproach, of Dissenters (Grose, 'a Presbyterian parson'): also tub-thumping, subs. and adj.
1661. Merry Drollery, 176 [Ebsworth]. [A tub is connected with preaching.]
1661. Semper iidem [Harl. Misc. vii. 401]. George Eagles, sirnamed Trudge-over-the-World, who, of a taylor, became a tub-preacher, was indicted of treason.
1692. Hacket, Williams, ii. 165. Here are your lawful ministers present, to whom of late you do not resort, I hear, but to tub-preachers in conventicles.
d.1704. Brown, Works, i. 194. The tub preachers are very much dissatisfy'd that you invade their prerogative of hell. Ibid., iii. 68. He (says the tubster) that would be rich according to the practice of this wicked age must play the thief or the cheat. Ibid., iii. 198. Business and poetry agree as ill together as faith and reason; which two latter, as has been judiciously observ'd by the fam'd tub-drubber of Covent Garden, can never be brought to set their horses together.
