Sunderland-fitter, subs. Phr. (provincial).—The Knave of Clubs (Halliwell).
Sun-dodger, subs. (military).—A
heliographer.
1900. Illust. Bits, 22 Dec, 10. A first-class trooper with over three years' service to his name, and a qualified sun-dodger according to the regimental signalling instructor.
Sun-dog, subs. phr. (nautical).—A
mock sun.
189[?]. Kipling, Three Sealers [Works (1898), xi. 256]. The good fog heaved like a splitten sail, to the right and left she bore, And you saw the sundogs in the haze.
Sundowner, subs. (Australian).—See
quots. and Overlandman.
1880. Oakley, Victoria in 1880, 114. [Title of poem] The Sundowner.
1888. Macdonald, Gum Boughs, 32. When the real sundowner haunts these banks for a season, he is content with a black pannikin, a clasp knife, and a platter whittled out of primæval bark.
1890. Argus, 20 Sept., 13. 5. Sundowners are still the plague of squatocracy, their petition for 'rashons' and a bed amounting to a demand.
1891. Adams, John Webb's End, 34. 'Swagsmen' too, genuine, or only 'sundowners,'—men who loaf about till sunset, and then come in with the demand for the unrefusable 'rations.'
1892. Scribner's Magazine, Feb., 143. They swell the noble army of swagmen or sundowners, who are chiefly the fearful human wrecks which the ebbing tide of mining industry has left stranded in Australia. [This writer does not differentiate between Swagman (q.v.) and Sundowner.]
1893. Sydney Morning Herald, 12 Aug., 8. 7. Numbers of men who came to be known by the class name of sundowners, from their habit of straggling up at fall of evening with the stereotyped appeal for work; and work being at that hour impossible, they were sent to the travellers' hut for shelter and to the store-*keeper or cook for the pannikin of flour, the bit of mutton, the sufficiency of tea for a brew, which made up a ration.
1896. Windsor Magazine, Dec, 132. 'A sundowner?' I queried. 'Yes; the lowest class of nomad. . . . They approach a station only at sunset, hence the name.'
Sunny-bank, subs. phr. (old).—'A
good rousing winter fire'
(B. E. and Grose).
Sunny South, subs. phr. (rhyming).—The
mouth.
1887. Referee, 7 Nov., 7. 3. She'd a Grecian, 'I suppose,' And of 'Hampstead Heath' two rows, In her Sunny South.
Sunshades, subs. pl. (Stock
Exchange).—The Sunehales Extension
of the Buenos Ayres and
Rosario Railway Company shares.
Sunshine. See Sun.
Supe (or Super), subs. (theatrical).—1.
A supernumerary: whence
super-master = the director of
the supernumeraries: also as verb.
2. (Australian) = the superintendent
of a station.
1870. Gordon, Bush Ballads, 23. What's up with our super to-night? The man's mad.
1884. Yates, Fifty Years of London Life, i. ii. Preternaturally stupid people as . . . the supers are found to be.
1890. Boldrewood, Colonial Re-former, ix. That super's a growlin' ignorant beggar as runs a feller from daylight to dark for nothing at all.
1890. Argus, 10 June, 4. 1. He . . . bragged of how he had bested the super who tried to 'wing him' in the scrub.
3. (old).—A watch: supe and slang = watch and chain; super-screwing = stealing watches.
c.1866. Vance, Chickaleary Cove. How to do a cross-fan for a super or a slang.
4. (American University).—A toady: spec. one who bum-sucks (q.v.) the professors.
