"miss-nancying"

[George Thompson]

The OED has Miss Nancy as a noun: An effeminate or homosexual man or boy, from 1824.

        Literature.  -- The last fifteen years may be called the age of literature -- of thinking -- of preparing for action.  We have been reading novels, poems, travels, narratives, &c. since the occupation of Paris, and talking of them in the drawing rooms, salons, and public places.  The day of thinking -- of musing -- of reading -- of "miss-nancying," is now nearly over.  The day of action is at hand.  The manners, customs, and modes of acting, of society -- corrupted by a thousand years indulgence -- are beginning to be swept away before the spirit of liberty, intelligence and good sense.
        Morning Courier & New-York Enquirer, November 3, 1830, p. 2, col. 1

The opinions of the editor (James Watson Webb) are not necessarily those of his transcriber.

But on the other hand, they might be.  One never knows, do one?

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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