cut = drunk

[Jonathan Lighter]

Given their scarcity in print, no 18th or 19th C. slang ex. is unworthy.

Am familiar with "callithumpian," but OED dissuaded me from listing it as slang.
JL

George Thompson <george.thompson at NYU.EDU> wrote:
---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: George Thompson
Subject: cut = drunk
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I perhaps ought not to flaunt this one before the membership, since it
isn't close to being an antedating, but in a way it is, since HDAS's
citations were not caught in the wild.

HDAS has cut = drunk from dictionaries: 1650 from Partridge's DSUE;
1698-9 from (I must admit) a genuine 17th C. dictionary, B. E.'s Dict
of the Canting Crew; 1722, from Ben Franklin, but as quoted in Amer
Speech; and 1748, from Farmer & Henley); then 1813-18 & 1821, from U.
S. sources.

*** On enquiry, I found these amateurs were assembled to see a Boxing-
Match, between a Mr. Crosby and a Scotch baker. *** After waiting a
considerable time to see the anticipated spectacle, the Scotch baker
disappointed us. Crosby went away in triumph, half cut. *** Daily
Advertiser, October 5, 1802, p. 3, col. 2

Go ahead and delete it, if you find it unworthy.

GAT

George A. Thompson
Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern
Univ. Pr., 1998, but nothing much lately.

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