1607. Dekker, Westward Hoe, ii. 1. A certain well where all the Muses watered.
2. (old).—To urinate; piss (q.v.); also to make water, to water the dragon, and to water one's nag. Whence (venery) waterworks = the urinary organs male or female: also water-engine (see water-drop); water-box (gap, course, gate, etc. ) = the female pudendum: see Monosyllable; water-caster (-doctor or waterologer) = a urine-inspecting physician: spec. a quack; to cast water = to diagnose by means of the urine.
c. 1350. Tale of the Basyn [Hazlitt, Early Pop. Poetry; iii. 47]. if thu my with any gynne The vessell owt of the chaumber wynne, The same that thei make water in, And bryng it me, I the pray.
1598. Marston, Satires, iv. 125. Well, I have cast thy water, and I see Th' art fall'n to wit's extremest poverty.
1598. Florio, Worlde of Wordes (1611), 185. [Water-box = female pudendum.]
1606. Shakspeare, Macbeth, v. 3. If thou could'st, doctor, cast The water of my land, find her disease.
1607. Puritan, iv. 1. There's physicians enough to cast his water: is that any matter to us?
1630. Taylor, Workes. A face like rubies mix'd with alabaster, Wastes much in physicke and her water-caster. Ibid. Which was the fare of quack salvers, mountebankes, ratcatching water-casters, and also for all botching artificers and cobling tradesmen.
1653. Urquhart, Rabelais, i. 20. I might have cleft her water-gap, And joined it close with my flip-flap.
1678. Quack's Academy [Harl. Misc., ii. 34]. You must either pretend to be waterologers . . . or star-wizards.
1706. Ward, Wooden World, 39. He is acquainted with the Nature and Depths of all Soundings but that of his Wife's Water-course.
Canterbury-water, subs. phr. (old).—The blood of Thomas à Becket diluted with water: Archbishop of Canterbury, murdered in 1170, canonised as a saint and martyr.
1849-54. Rock, Church of our Fathers, iii. i. 424. To satisfy these cravings, so as to hinder an uneasy feeling at the thought of tasting human blood, a tiny drop was mixed with a chalice-full of water, and in this manner given to those who begged a sip. This was the far-famed Canterbury-water.
Burning-water (q.v., vol. i. ante).
3. (commercial).—To increase nominal capital by the issue of shares for which, though they rank for interest, no additional increase in the actual capital has been provided: the practice, it is urged, is justified by profits already earned, or by a supposed enhancement of the value of the property, franchises, etc.; but watering is usually only resorted to by companies on the down grade. Hence as subs. = additional shares created in this way.
1878. Scribner's Mag., Oct., 896. Those which relate to the betrayal of trusts, the watering of stocks.
1887. North Am. Rev., cxliii. 92. By the much-abused word 'property' he referred, of course, to the fictitious capital, or water, which the gas companies had added to their real capital.
1888. St. James's Gaz., 14 June. But it is said by the chairman of the Committee on Public Finance, that 'more than half of this stock is water, and could not have come into existence had not this business been superior to the control of competition.'
1888. Fort. Rev., xliii. 857. The stock of some of the railways has been watered to an enormous extent by the issue of fictitious capital, existing only on paper, though ranking equally for dividend, when money for this is forthcoming. Usually the paper stock has been sold to unwary customers.
