(of anything absurd or foolish); 'To grow like a cow's TAIL' (i.e. downwards); 'Lay the head of the sow to the tail of the grice'; 'To have a slippery eel by the tail' (of anything uncertain); 'It melts like butter in a sow's TAIL'; 'To swallow an ox, and be choked with the tail'; 'The higher the ape goes, the more he shows his tail'; *'There is as much hold of his word as of a wet eel by the tail'; 'He hath eaten a horse and the tail hangs out of his mouth.'
Tail-block, subs. phr. (nautical).—A watch.
Tail-board, subs. phr. (nursery).—The back flap of a little girl's breeches.
Tail-buzzer, subs. phr. (thieves').—A pickpocket.
Tailer (or Taylor), intj. (old).—A fall on the breech; a prat-fall (q.v.); and (2) an exclamation on falling, or unexpectedly sitting down on one's tail (q.v.). [Cf. crupper (or cropper), HEADER, etc.].
1592. Shakspeare, Mid. Night's Dream, ii. 1. Sometime for three-fool stool [she] mistaketh me, Then slip I from her bum, down topples she, And, tailer, cries!
Tailor. Nine (ten, or three) TAILORS MAKE A MAN, Subs. phr. (old).—See quots.
1605. Shakspeare, Lear, ii. 2. 60. Kent. A tailor made thee. Corn. Thou art a strange fellow: a tailor make a man?
1607. Dekker, Northward Hoe, ii. 1. They say three tailors go to the making up of A man, but I am sure I had FOUR TAILORS AND A HALF WENT TO THE MAKING OF ME thus.
1630. Taylor, Works, iii. 73. Some foolish knave (I thinke) at first began The slander that three taylers are one man.
1635. Glapthorne, The Lady Mother, i. 1. He was by trade a taylor, sir, and is the tenth part of the bumbast that goes to the setting forth of a man.
1635. Quarles, Emblems, iv. 15. The nine sad knells of a passing bell.
d. 1643. Nabbes [quoted by Nares]. I would take the wall of three times three tailors, though in a morning, and at a baker's stall.
1663. Butler, Hudibras, 1. ii. The foe, for dread Of your nine-worthiness, is fled.
d. 1665. T. Adams, Soul's Sickness [Works, i. 487]. God made him a man, he hath made himself a beast; and now the tailor (scarce a man himself) must make him a man again.
1671. Buckingham, Rehearsal, iii. 1. Why . . . marry? If nine Taylors make but one man; and one woman cannot be satisfi'd with nine men: what work art thou cutting out for thy self?
c. 1709. Ward, Terræfilius, v. 31-33. An old Wealthy Limb-trimmer . . . the very ninth part of a man that put the jest upon a Shoe-maker.
1763. Foote, Mayor of Garratt, ii. A journeyman tailor . . . who is but the NINTH PART OF A MAN.
1767. Ray, Proverbs [Bohn], 135. Nine tailors make but one man.
1785. Grose, Vulg. Tongue, s.v. Tailor. . . . A London tailor rated to furnish half a man to the trained bands, asking how that could possibly be done, was answered, by sending four journeymen AND AN APPRENTICE.
1822. Nares, Glossary, s.v. Tailor, How old the sarcasm of nine tailors making A man may be, does not appear; but it is very old.
1833-4. Carlyle, Sartor Resartus, 111. xi. An idea has gone abroad . . . that Tailors are . . . not Men, but fractional Parts of a Man. . . . [Did not] Queen Elizabeth, receiving a deputation of Eighteen Tailors, address them with a 'Good morning, gentlemen both'? Did not the same virago boast . . . a Cavalry Regiment, whereof neither horse nor man could be injured; her Regiment, . . . of Tailors on Mares?
