limey 1906

[Jonathan Lighter]

I'm not sure why OED2 separates "limey" so sharply into a. and b. subsenses unless  because the primary citation (1888) could just as well be an adj.  Documentation is sparse till 1918; certainly the following is the only other pre-1918 ex. I've seen. It is also the earliest U.S.:

  1906 in Charles Fowler _A Rocky Mountain Sailor in Teddy Roosevelt's Navy_ (R. G. Tomlinson, ed.) (Boulder, Co.: Westview Press, 1998) 76: When the Limies, (English), at the pumps got tired, we would relieve them.   [Punctuation sic]

  From the evidence, there's not much doubt that the term originated as nautical slang.

  JL


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