c. 1500. Roberte the Deuyll [Hazlitt, Early Pop. Poetry, i. 229, 261]. The Duke . . . asked Robert, iff he woulde lyue vnder awe Of God, and the order of knight-hode beare, He aunswered: I sett not thereby a strawe.
1534. Udal, Ralph Roister Doister [Dodsley, Old Plays (1874), iii. 128]. Then a straw for her. . . . She shall not be my wife were she never so fair.
c. 1540. Doctour Doubble-Ale, 10. Popish lawes; That are not worth two strawes, Except it be with dawes.
1604. Shakspeare, Winter's Tale, iii. 2. Mistake me not; no life, I prize it not a straw, but for mine honour.
1675. Wycherley, Country Wife, iv. 3. I will not be your drudge by day, to squire your wife about, and be your man of straw or scarecrow only to pies and jays that would be nibbling at your forbidden fruit.
1700. Dryden, Wife of Bath's Tale. When you my ravish'd predecessor saw You were not then become this man of straw.
1705. Ward, Hud. Rediv., 1. i. 9. No Zealot valu'd if a straw. But mounted . . . like Hunter's o'er a five-barr'd Gate.
1740. North, Examen, 508. Off drops the vizor, and a face of straw appears.
1753. Richardson, Grandison, vi. 387. All those, however, were men of straw with me.
1754. Fielding, Jon. Wild, 1. ii. . . . He had likewise the remarkable honour of walking in Westminster Hall with a straw in his shoe.
1772. Bridges, Burlesque Homer, 198. To me how all your matters go, Don't signify a single straw.
1809. Malkin, Gil Blas [Routledge], 104. The players are not men of straw as I foolishly believed.
1827. Lytton, Pelham, iii. He cared not a straw that he was a man of fortune, of family, of consequence; he must be a man of ton, or he was . . . no man.
1848. Thackeray, Snobs, xviii. Why the deuce should Mrs Botibol blow me a kiss?. . . I don't care a straw for Mrs Botibol.
1876. Telegram from Washington, 13 Mar. [Bartlett]. The House post-office committee has agreed to report Luttrell's bill to prevent straw-bidding for mail contracts, and to punish straw-bidders when caught.
1892. Sydney, England and English, ii. 275. Perjury at this time [c. 1750] was a regular trade. . . . The lawyer who required convenient witnesses . . . going into Westminster Hall . . . would address a straw-man with a 'Don't you remember?' (at the same time holding out a fee).
1902. Sp. Times, 1 Feb., 2 i. I do not care two straws what alleged people write about myself.
2. (common).—A long clay pipe; a churchwarden.
3. (common).—A straw hat. Also strawyard, and (schools) STRAWER.
Phrases. In the straw = in childbed (Grose); to break A STRAW = to quarrel; TO LAY A straw = to pause; to draw (or pick) straws = to show signs of sleep; a pad in the straw = anything amiss; to throw STRAWS AGAINST THE WIND (Coles) = to essay the impossible. Also (proverbial) 'A straw shows which way the wind blows'; 'He gives straw to his dog, and bones to his ass' (of one given to absurdities); 'To make a block of a straw'; 'To stumble at a straw and leap over a block,' etc., etc.
1526. Pilgr. Perf. [W. de W., 1531], 93. Lest of a strawe we make a block.
1551. Still, Gammer Gurton's Needle, v. 2. Ye perceive by this lingring there is a pad in the straw.
15 [?] Collier, Old Ballads [Halliwell]. Here lyes in dede the padde WITHIN THE STRAWE.
1562. J. Heywood. Prov. and Epig. (1867), 76. s.v. Ye stumbled at a strawe, and lept ouer a blocke.
