Some (Irish?) lingo

[Joel S. Berson]

At 11/12/2009 09:29 PM, Wilson Gray wrote:
>Is _kitchen stuff_ a double-entendre?

You bet.  OED, :kitchen-stuff", sense 2, "The refuse or waste
products of the kitchen; spec. dripping, kitchen-fee"; sense 2.b,
"fig. Of persons or things. contemptuous."  (2.b. has three
quotations:  1737, 1654, 1754.)

Additional evidence -- the the entire piece is:

A Limerick paper asserts that a learned (Irish) judge has "just led
to the hymeneal altar his aged cook."  For our parts we have few
pretensions to learning, neither can we plead guilty to a relish for
"kitchen stuff."  Doubtless the flame of love burnt fiercely to
induce the learned judge to take this step, in doing which he seems
to have reversed the usual rule---he has got out of the fire into the
"frying-pan."  Cooky, however, can hardly prove a tid-bit, and we
decidedly prefer his lordship having a "taste of her quality" to ourselves.

[The last surely means "to ourselves having a taste."]

Joel

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