bayoneteer

[Jonathan Lighter]

OED recklessly calls Thackeray's 1848 usage a "nonce-wd.":


1838 _ United Service Journal_  (Dec.) 537: More than a match for the best
bayoneteer.

1840 _ United Service Journal_ (Jan.) 106: Facts? Why he has had plenty of
them, from the stern fighter, Patrick, to the jovial bayoneteer, Tovey.

1874 J. Alfred Skertchley_Dahomey as It Is_ (London: Chapman and Hall) 515:
The...bayoneteer company.

1901 Richard Danes _Cassell's History of the Boer War_ 1397: There bursts
from the throats of
the 2nd Rifle Brigade the stern shout of the British bayoneteer.

1918 _ Century Magazine_ XCVI 372: The bayoneteer uses the same movements.

1978 Barry Hannah _Airships_ (rpt. N.Y.: Grove Press, 1994) 116: If I'd had
a carbine like usual, I could' ve taken the bayoneteer off and at least five
of the others.
1999 Patrick Campbell _Siegfried Sassoon: A Study of the War Poetry_
(Jefferson, N.C.: Mcfarland) 102: A climactic shudder...transmitted to the
bayoneteer.


Google Books alleges an 1832 ex., also from _United Service Journal_, but
won't show it.

JL

--
"If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."

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