half-shaved --1803, 1804

[Joel S. Berson]

(1)  1803 March 29.

[A lengthy quotation in order to enclose the "half shaved" within two
references to "Rum and Whiskey".]

None but a most impregnable democrat, can have forgotton, [sic] what
was said and done about that abominable Sedition Act---the noise that
was made; the long poles that were raised; and the new Rum and
Whiskey that was drank upon that ever memorable occasion.  I then
frequently told them it punished nothing but _lies_.  The truth would
be always a protection, it could hurt no honest man in the
country.  But all in vain, they bellowed out to me that it was a
cursed Sedition Act and a gag law; and one fellow, I remember, who
was swaggering about, full half shaved, swore it was
unconstitutional, he knew it was, for he had seen it in the papers a
hundred times, and they would make a noise, and raise poles as high
as Babel if they pleased, and drink new Rum and Whiskey till it was
put out of the way.

Connecticut Centinel, published as The Connecticut Centinel; Date:
03-29-1803; Volume: XXX; Issue: 1515; Page: [1] col. 2. EAN.

[The article is preceded by "From the New-York Herald", where it
presumably appeared earlier, but EAN does not reveal "half-shaved"
although it holds the Herald from 1803.


(2)  1804 April 26.

Original Anecdote.  A certain Judge rather elevated with the juice of
the grape, entered a barber shop ... to get shaved.  ... he tendered
the barber six pence for his labour, who took it and returned three
pence change! But how is this, exclaimed his honour, you have always
charged me six pence for shaving .. True, replied the barber, but you
was _half shaved_ when you came in.

Windham [Conn.] Herald; Date: 04-26-1804; Volume: XIV; Issue: 686;
Page: [4], col. 3.  EAN.

[Credited to the Troy Gaz., apparently not held by EAN.  Repeated in
1810 in the Ulster [New York] Plebeian, Jan. 6, p. 4.]


Joel

At 10/12/2009 08:52 PM, George Thompson wrote:
>[a barber claims his razors are sharp enough to shave an angel]  We
>saw an angel half-shaved at a supper party last night -- but she had
>no razor, and the glass was not a mirror.
>Morning Courier, July 23, 1828, p. 2, col. 1
>
>OED (under "shaved", adj.) 2. U.S. slang. half shaved, partly intoxicated.
>
>1834 Atlantic Club-book I. 138 (Farmer) When I met him, he was
>aboutyesjust about half shaved. 1836 HALIBURTON Clockm. Ser. I.
>xxii, When he was about half shaved he thought every body drunk but himself.
>
>GAT
>
>George A. Thompson
>Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre",
>Northwestern Univ. Pr., 1998, but nothing much lately.
>
>------------------------------------------------------------
>The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org