1840. Dickens, Old Curiosity Shop, ii. Last night he had had 'the sun very strong in his eyes'; by which expression he was understood to convey to his hearers, in the most delicate manner possible, the information that he had been extremely drunk.
1857. Eliot, Janet's Repentance, i. He was in that condition which his groom indicated with poetic ambiguity by saying that 'master had been in the sunshine.'
1857. Marshall, Pomes, 75. She was thick in the clear, fairly sosselled on beer.—In the sun is poetical license.
To make hay while the sun shines, verb. phr. (old proverbial).—To seize an opportunity.
1509. Barclay, Ship of Fools (1874), ii. 45. Be besy about your hay while Phebus is shining.
1546. Heywood, Proverbs. When the sunne shineth, make hay.
1809. Malkin, Gil Blas [Routledge], 296. Make hay while the sun shines. You are on the high road to fortune; push forward.
TO get the sun over the foreyard, verb. phr. (nautical). To drink before noon.
See Knight; Shoot.
Sunburnt, adj. (old colloquial).
1. Superficial; hackneyed; unbeautiful.
1570. Ascham, Schoolmaster, 137. But to dwell in epitomes and books of common places, and not to bind himself daily by orderly study . . . maketh so many seeming and sunburnt ministers as we have; whose learning is gotten in a summer heat, and washed away with a Christmas snow again.
1612. Webster, White Devil, v. 1. It is a dowry, Methinks should make that sun-burnt proverb false, And wash the Æthiop white.
1881. Davies, Supp. Glossary, s.v. Sunburnt. Ascham applies the word curiously to superficial scholars, whose mind receives as transient an impression from what they read as the face does from exposure to the summer sun.
2. (old).—'Having many (male) children' (B. E. and Grose); and (3) 'clapped' (Grose).
Sunday. See Show-Sunday;
Month of Sundays and Queen
Dick.
Sunday-best (or -clothes), subs.
phr. (colloquial).—1. Clothes kept
for use on Sundays and holidays;
best clothes.
1838. Beckett, Paradise Lost, 30. In his Sunday jacket drest, And perch'd up higher than the rest.
1866. Gaskell, Wives and Daughters, xlv. Mrs Gibson was off, all in her Sunday best.
1897. Marshall, Pomes, 'Her Sunday Clothes,' 105. Her Sunday best was her week-day worst, 'Twas simply a caution to snakes.
2. (venery).—An erecto penis: as in the phrase, 'the old man (= the penis) has got his Sunday clothes on': see Horn.
Sunday Face, subs. phr. (common).—The
posteriors: see Bum.
Sunday-man, subs. phr. (old).—1.
'One who goes abroad on that
day only, for fear of arrests'
(Grose).
2. (common).—A prostitute's bully. Also Sunday girl = a week-end (q.v.) mistress.
Sunday-saint, subs. phr. (common).—One who roisters through the week and pulls a long face on Sunday.
Sunday's-fellow, subs. phr.
(old).—See quot.
1611. Tarleton, Jests. One asked Tarlton why Munday was called Sundaies fellow? Because he is a sausie fellow, saies Tarlton, to compare with that holy day. But it may be Munday thinkes himselfe Sundayes fellow because it followes Sunday, and is next after; but he comes a day after the faire for that.
